LiveMass.net schedule from St Mary’s Shrine Warrington for Low Sunday (19 April 2020 – UK time):
11:00am: Solemn High Mass
5:00pm: Solemn Vespers and Benediction with Divine Mercy chaplet.
Thank you for sending your Offertory gift to us via: www.fssp.co.uk/donate
Please click here to read the bulletin.
Easter Sunday 12 April 2020
Announcements: Thank you for your support through prayer and gifts over the past weeks of lockdown.
Lockdown continues. It is painful for us clergy and servers to celebrate the sacred mysteries with no one in the pews, since only those residing at St Mary’s Shrine can take part in our liturgical celebrations.
Please support this Shrine financially: bank transfer to WARRINGTON and PayPal on https://fssp.co.uk/donate/ .
Easter Sunday Homily, by Fr Armand de Malleray, FSSP
Dear friends,
How do you explain Easter to modern man? How do you bear witness of the resurrection when asked by men whose souls have been allowed to thirst and so far never tasted the true water of life? They simply don’t know what Easter is about.
I will venture a comparison for their sakes. Do you have special hobbies, skills? When you learn to drive, learn to play the piano, learn watercolour painting; learn to swim; learn mountain climbing… It takes a coach; it takes someone who knows; someone who’s done it before and who knows the technique perfectly. At first, when our coach tells us that he can make us proficient within six months, or six years, we think we will never make it. We fear that we won’t have what it takes; or that our coach could get fed up with us and might let us down.
So, what are we Christians doing this morning? What are we training for? Oil painting? Scuba diving? Wine tasting? None of that. Better than that. This morning we train for eternity. We listen to the One – Jesus Christ – Who is much more than a coach. He is our guide into eternity. He is truly a man, like we are human beings. We will die; and Jesus died. Jesus rose from the dead and we… Well, this is what it is all about it. We can rise from the dead – if… We can enter blissful eternity – if …. If what? We can enter blissful eternity if we follow the only One who walked through death successfully. Really, is Jesus the only One who can take us through death and beyond, to blissful eternity? Did not other people die and rise again? Like, Lazarus, the friend of Jesus. Or the young man, the only son of the widow, outside the town of Nain. Or the young daughter of Jairus? Yes, those were dead, and yes, they came back to life. But no, they did not rise by themselves. They were raised by another one, mightier than them. The Lord Jesus raised these dead people and brought them back to life. Furthermore, after these miracles, they died again some years later. Not so with the Lord Jesus. He rose from the dead of his own power, because He is not only man, but God incarnate. Also, He will never die again. The Lord Jesus is alive forever. No one else every achieved this. Jesus is the only one.
But we need a witness, don’t we? We need clues.
A significant clue is the sacred relic of the Holy Shroud of Turin. What does the Holy Shroud look like? It is a depiction of Our Lord’s tortured Body (both back and front), spread across a 14.5-feet-long by 1.4-foot-wide linen cloth, with such accuracy that this sacred relic has been termed ‘The Fifth Gospel’. The Holy Shroud – presently kept in Turin, Italy – is the most tested object in the world. The scientific findings, due to their number and complexity, now constitute a distinct branch of science called sindonology, after the word ‘sindon’, the Greek word for ‘shroud’.
Let us recall a few sindonological discoveries. It took nineteen centuries to realise that the Shroud is a photographic negative: inversing paler and darker areas reveals the actual picture. Further analysis established that the depiction results from irradiation, not from the application of pigments upon the linen material. Later on, the image was found to be three-dimensional, allowing the shaping of a resin model of Our Lord’s Body as when it was lying wrapped in the Shroud. Anomalies such as the absence of thumbs on either hand were explained, while microscopic examination found diverse pollens from the Middle-East stuck in the fibres of the cloth. The Holy Shroud is a very powerful incentive for our faith in the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And yet, the Shroud is not necessary for us to believe. We have billions of witnesses: these countless men, women and children who professed their faith in Christ, who followed his teaching, imitated his virtues, and often died for his love. They bear witness to the historical reality of the resurrection of Christ.
If you need witnesses, read the lives of the saints. If you need witnesses, start with St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. St Paul never met Christ until after his resurrection. But he met the Lord once risen, as he affirms: “if Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain: for you are yet in your sins. Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now Christ is risen from the dead, the firstfruits of them that sleep” (1 Co 15: 17-20).
If you need witnesses, look around you for those Catholics in whose lives the virtues of Christ shine with utmost fidelity, truth, gentleness, firmness, compassion, purity, piety. Look carefully, because the souls closest to Christ might not know it themselves, and surely they would not boast of it, so that the world would normally take no notice of them.
But dear friends, if you need witnesses, perhaps other people need them even more urgently than you do. So, why not becoming a witness yourself? Why not bearing witness of the resurrection of the Lord? I know, we think ourselves too lazy, too selfish, too incredulous, too heavy, too tired… But witnessing Christ is not about our own capacity. It is all about His divine power performing wonders through our emptiness. Becoming a witness of the resurrection takes a while. It does not happen in one instant. It is like unfolding the Holy Shroud. We know the full picture of Christ is impressed upon the cloth, but it takes our entire lives to unfold it in our mind and in our souls.
Let us fly back to Jerusalem. This Easter morning, St Peter, St John and St Mary Magdalene found the empty linens wrapped together in the empty tomb. Some time on that day, they took with them the precious relic. Back home in the Upper Room, with what emotion they slowly unfolded the linens, gradually displaying the Master’s silhouette: first his shoulder, then his elbow, now his foot and then his Head… Everywhere, their eyes would meet so many wounds, all endured for their redemption. For my redemption. For your redemption. For the redemption of all men.
I imagine St Peter alone at last in the Upper Room. Simon had unfolded the long strip of cloth, nowhere more fittingly than across the trestles of the Last Supper table. Three nights earlier, upon another cloth, the Lord had made Himself truly present under the Eucharistic species at the first holy Mass. The apostles had walked with the Lord to Gethsemane. Before cockcrow, Simon had thrice denied his Lord. Since then Jesus had died and was risen.
Back in the Upper Room on Easter day, today, Simon was on his knees at the far end of the long narrow linen rectangle. His eyes slightly higher than the level of the cloth swollen in successive waves upon the trestles, the fisherman would look at the maculated Shroud as a seaman looks at a vast archipelago spread across a limitless map. Wide or tiny, each bloodstain was an island, mystically bearing the name of each and every sinner, redeemed through the wounds of the Lamb.
Which stain bore Simon’s name? It could not be less than three, one for each denial – and so many more… Dear friends, which stain bears my name, your name? In St Peter’s soul, contrition connected the reddish shapes of various sizes like the stars under which he was reborn, as in a new constellation named Absolution. It was probably no surprise to Simon then, when he became aware of Christ’s bodily presence, standing at the other end of his unfolded Shroud. The contrite Vicar had opened his soul to the Saviour already. Christ confirmed his pardon and left, until they met again by the Sea of Galilee.
His Vicar remained on his knees looking across the bloodied sheet, while on either side of the table of redemption, hundreds of men, of women, of children materialised, imitating his posture. Billions of them. Billions of us. All the way down to us, my friends, and beyond, and further. All those who would believe in this extraordinary event are gathered in faith around this sacred cloth and bear witness to the One who lay in it no more, because He is risen, forever alive! Such is our glorious training for eternity.
May the Immaculate Mother of the Risen One, the Blessed Virgin Mary whose Sorrowful heart begot us to grace in union with Our Lord on Calvary two days ago, may she lead us to Jesus, our Resurrection and our Life, into bliss eternal.
A monk of my acquaintance once drily remarked, as he looked across at the banks of gloomy faces in the choir stalls opposite, that he sometimes doubted the Resurrection had really happened.
The point is well made. It can be easier in a way, for us Catholics, to identify with Lent and Passiontide than with Easter. Even if we haven’t kept our Lenten resolutions as well as we would have liked, we still relate more readily to the themes of penance and punishment, sacrifice, suffering, and death, than we do to joy and peace and new life.
And there is good reason for this. Suffering and anguish is ever present in our world – no one is spared it, to one degree or another, just as all will certainly undergo the sentence of death. But joy, when it comes, tends to be more fleeting, rapidly overshadowed by some difficulty. There is a risk that Easter, for us, becomes little more than a natural consolation, a merely temporary respite from gloom, when we are allowed to break the fast, put out flowers, and eat chocolate – with little sense of something life-transforming.
Perhaps this seems all the more the case now of all times, when the present pandemic continues to overwhelm just about the whole globe; and does not appear to be ceasing for the commemoration of Our Lord’s Resurrection. Indeed, we are denied even the consolation of celebrating Easter by attending the sacred rites.
And yet Our Lord has truly risen – and we must, we must, allow this glorious truth somehow to penetrate our lives.
There can be little doubt that the coronavirus pandemic is a divine chastisement. This really ought to be an uncontroversial statement, but it seems there is no shortage of people, even senior churchmen, to deny it. No doubt this ultimately springs from a loss of the sense of the supernatural, the recognition that God is the cause of all things whatsoever; but perhaps in part it is motivated by a false understanding of God’s love and mercy (“a loving God would never do that…”). And perhaps even more there is the anxiety that if we say God is punishing for sin, then we must ask, ‘which sin?’; and then it amounts to saying that those who die from the virus are the most guilty of that sin, that they apparently ‘deserved it’.
But that’s not really the case. Firstly, to us Catholics, it should come as no surprise if chastisement is visited upon a whole people collectively, or if the innocent are asked to suffer on behalf of the guilty. After all, both these aspects are precisely the themes of Holy Week. Your clergy have been reciting, in the Divine Office, the prophecies of Jeremiah, warning of the wrath upon Israel, the exile into Babylon, and the destruction of the temple – culminating in his haunting lamentations that are sung in the Office of Tenebrae during the Triduum. And then on Good Friday, we looked at Our Saviour upon the cross, He who was without sin accepting the terrible price for the redemption of sinners.
As to which sin God is chastising us for – well, there will always be the temptation to name our ‘favourite’, whichever of the innumerable manifold vices and perversions of fallen human nature pique our interest. There is more than enough to choose from in the secular society: abortion, euthanasia, same-sex “marriage”, gender ideology, human trafficking… the list goes on and on. Or there is the spread of false religions or militant atheistic ideologies. And then within the Church we can make another catalogue: clerical sexual abuse, rampant heresy, disobedience, and schism, disregard of Sundays and holy days, liturgical abuses, widespread impurity, indifference and faithlessness, sacrilegious Communions, badly made confessions (if made at all), and so on. It seems foolish to try and identify just one that is the cause of all our ills. But all of these things eventually boil down to one – the rejection of and failure to worship the One True God. And for this, our collective punishment is long overdue.
And in reality, all of these faults put together pale into insignificance next to but a single act of sacrilege or idolatry. We do not tend to feel it is so – but God’s view is not our view. God tends to punish precisely by abandoning the people to what they have craved. So in a world that elevates individualism over communal responsibility, perhaps it is fitting that there should be enforced ‘social distancing’; and if, as I suggest, everything is ultimately about our failure to give God right worship, then we should not be surprised if we Catholics have to bear our brunt of the chastisement in our very particular way – the cessation of public Masses (and even, in some places – horribile dictu – of all the sacraments).
In fact, in a sense, this is the worst of the curses. To say this may seem to be incredibly cold and indifferent given the very real pain, suffering, and loss that many are going through at this time because of the virus, not to mention the horrific economic fallout. I do not mean in any way to diminish this. But we should recognise that man’s purpose and fulfilment lies precisely in the worship of God. We are more than the body only, and there is more than this life only.
This is felt all the more keenly precisely by those who are the most devout, who we would think least ‘deserve’ it, since they want to offer God fitting worship and are struck by its loss the most acutely. But it was ever thus. The prophets warned Jerusalem of what was coming and wept for it, while the hierarchy repeated complacent, empty mantras: “peace, peace, but there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14; cf Ez. 13:10), or “we have the temple” – then even this consolation was taken away from them (Jer. 7:4).
Israel had gone after false gods; and then the True God withdrew from them.
Probably this Easter many will feel much like Psalm 136: “by the waters of Babylon, there we sat and wept when we remembered Sion…how shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?”
And yet, the Babylonian exile was not forever. Israel was restored – at least in part – and the temple was rebuilt. And all this was for a sign of the death and Resurrection of Our Blessed Lord. Ecce, omnia nova facio (Rev. 21:5). Death is not the final word; Christ has claimed victory, and it is decisive.
Thus there can be joy, even in the midst of distress and bewilderment. It is not a transient sentiment, but a deep conviction that stems from faith of the love that God has for us, a love proved dramatically on Calvary. This joy does not simply happen on its own: it can and must be cultivated, through acts of faith and above all charity.
This present moment too shall pass. But will our lessons have been learned? Divine chastisement is never a matter of an angry God fulfilling a lust for vengeance. It is a correction; and as a correction, it is a loving act of mercy, a means by which God draws us back to Him. For our part, we should not be longing for things to ‘return to normal’, but rather seeing where we need a true conversion of heart.
Is this not the message of St Paul? “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin may be destroyed, to the end that we may serve sin no longer” (Rom. 6:5-6); and: “Therefore if you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth. For you are dead: and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you also shall appear with him in glory” (Col.3:1-3).
May we never again take the Holy Mass for granted! May we come to treasure anew the beautiful gift of the Sacraments. Let us prepare well to make good, humble confessions, and approach the Holy Eucharist with awe. Let us resolve above all to pray always, with thanks in our hearts, and to take every opportunity to give to Almighty God the adoration that is owed to Him.
And if we do this, the mystery of Easter will have truly penetrated our lives, and the joy of the Risen Christ will be in us – and no one can take this away.
May God bless you, and Our Lady keep you.
To download the full liturgical texts for Tenebrae, three booklets are available by clicking on the link right under each image below.
Please note, all these prayers, without the chant notation, are also available in the Baronius Hand Missal [for sale at St Mary’s Shrine] on pages 1778, 1811 & 1842 for the respective days of the Triduum.
Follow the choral singing of Tenebrae from St Mary’s Warrington via LiveMass.net on 9th, 10th and 11th April 2020, from 10am to 12noon.
Our FSSP Warrington weekly Men’s Group will meet via LiveMass this evening, Wednesday 8th April, at 8:00pm (Warrington UK time), for a Lenten meditation by Fr de Malleray, FSSP on ‘The Cross and the Mass’ followed by choral singing of Compline. 😇
https://www.livemass.net/
Our LiveMass equipment has been working satisfactorily daily for years, but your prayer will help!
Our apologies to any viewers for the loss of sound for the first part of holy Mass on Palm Sunday; we were having technical issues following a loss of power earlier in the week which meant that we had to restart the equipment during holy Mass.
Some of our local people were communicating live on WhatsApp and, finding that all of them had lost the sound simultaneously, decided to pray the Prayer to St Michael, soon to hear the sound was back…
We blessed the LiveMass control room and the three cameras after Vespers yesterday (picture).
Please support LiveMass Warrington here: https://fssp.co.uk/bank-details-for-fssp-warrington/
(All liturgies behind closed doors – Covid-19 Lockdown Version 9th April 2020)
Times are given as local UK time zone, that is, Greenwich Meridian Time + 1 hr [due to summer time]
All liturgies are according to the Holy Week reformed under Pope Pius XII, currently in force as part of the 1962 Roman missal.
Location: Buttermarket Street, Warrington WA1 2NS, Cheshire, England
Website: fssp.co.uk/warrington
SUPPORT our SHRINE: https://fssp.co.uk/bank-details-for-fssp-warrington/
Palm Sunday, 5 April
11:00am-12:30pm Solemn High Mass with blessing of Palms and Procession
Maundy Thursday, 9 April
10am-12:00noon Tenebrӕ: Gregorian chant (click here to open the booklet)
8:00pm-9:30pm Solemn Mass:
9:30pm-midnight: Eucharistic adoration
Good Friday, 10 April – Fast & Abstinence
10am-11:40am Tenebrӕ: Gregorian chant (click here to open the booklet)
3:00pm-5:00pm Solemn Liturgy
Holy Saturday, 11 April
10am-11:40am Tenebrӕ: Gregorian chant (click here to open the booklet)
8:00pm-midnight Solemn Easter Vigil followed by Solemn Mass
(The Easter Vigil will begin at sunset and will end by 11pm):
Easter Sunday, 12 April
11:00am-12:30pm Solemn High Mass
[Attention: No 6pm Sunday Mass. Normal daily schedule resumes on Monday 13 April, subject to Covid-19 restrictions being lifted.]
Dear Friends, try for weekdays: http://s3.amazonaws.com/livemass/warrington/warrington-mass-of-the-day.html
if https://www.livemass.net/warrington/index.html does not work.
And try for Sundays: http://s3.amazonaws.com/livemass/warrington/index.html
Listen to the polyphonic litany of Loreto sung by the FSSP here: https://youtu.be/pp0CMz9hd1k .
Support St Mary’s Shrine as a broadcast site via bank transfer:
For FSSP Warrington
Bank Name: Lloyds Bank
Sort Code: 30-80-27
Account number: 30993368
Account name: FSSP Warrington
For international transfers, you may also need:
Bank Branch: Palmerston Rd Southsea
Bank Address: Ariel House, 2138 Coventry Road, Sheldon, B26 3JW
IBAN: GB97LOYD30802730993368
SWIFT code: LOYDGB21721
More feedback from First Passion Sunday:
29 March 2020, USA
Thank you for broadcasting the traditional Latin Mass from Warrington, England. When you mentioned a musical rosary in the announcements today, you piqued my interest. Not only did I watch the Mass but followed along for the rosary. The organ accompaniment and chant were beautiful!
29 March 2020
Blessed Passion Sunday, I am a lifelong Catholic senior watching your mass online everyday from USA! I love your church and wish I could visit in person sometime. The Tridentine mass is as important to me as it was to St. Pio. With much gratitude to you all+++ Can you tell me how it would be best to donate to your FSSP church in Warrington? I am not sure what method is best.
Thank you
29 March 2020
Deo Gratias! I am writing from Canada during the corona virus pandemic. I thank God for leading me to your church so that I can join in the celebration of the Eucharist! I have wept during the celebration and will always remember your beautiful church and priests in my prayers.
29 March 2020
Dear Dear Fathers,
Sincere thanks to you from the United States for your beautiful celebrations of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and for your profound and stirring homilies. I can’t wait to get up in the morning to hear Mass online!
God bless you and keep you all in good health.
Dear Parishioners,
I hope that you are all keeping well and positive in these tumultuous times through which we are living. Here are a few notes to update you as to the new status quo in St John Fisher Parish and our chaplaincy at Chesham Bois and Bedford.
Mass: While public Masses have ceased and church buildings closed, be comforted by the fact that each of your priests continue daily to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass – the principle way that we mediate on your behalf with almighty God…
To read this message in full, please click here:
