THE SEVENTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (YEAR C)
WEEK: JUNE 1ST - 6TH 2025
“…that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you… that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
YOUR CHARITABLE PRAYERS are requested for our parishioners and friends, especially those whose names appear below.
SICK: John Green, Joan Killeen, Christine Clarke, Tony Kenny, Luke Burke, Dominic Boardman, Connie Marrone, Alexander Loughlin, Surya Duval, Margaret Lawless, Peter Barlow, Jean Barlow, Nynna Carpio, Terry Cummins, Elizabeth Flanagan, Margaret Emsis, Francis Doyle, Linda Solan, Fred Kibblewhite, Daniel Keane, Ethel Keenihan, Peter Bradbury,
LATELY DEAD: Mack Coleman (Laurina’s dad), Theresa Czerwonka
ANNIVERSARIES Michael and Catherine McGladdery, Mary Ellen Coen, Elizabeth Ann and Fred Lees, Jospeh Boyle, Catherine Duddy, Mary Boden, Ellie McDermott and Molly McDermott, Veronica Peace, Kathleen and Andrew Curran
LAST WEEK'S COLLECTION: £824.62
Standing Order: £674.00 a month
CHURCH BOXES / DONATIONS
Caritas (Homeless) £20.00
Many thanks for your kind generosity.
If anyone needs the Bank account details to set up Direct Debit payments, please contact Father Phil.
THIS SUNDAY'S MISSALETTE & HYMNS The Seventh Sunday of Easter - Missalette The Seventh Sunday of Easter - Hymns
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NOTICES:
All Masses will continue to be live streamed. A link is provided on the Parish website: www.smwsp.org.uk or via the Twitter App (@PhilipSumner13).
POPE FRANCIS’ MESSAGE FOR WORLD COMMUNICATIONS DAY (1ST JUNE)
“In these our times, characterised by disinformation and polarisation, as a few centres of power control an unprecedented mass of data and information, …
As I reflect on the Jubilee we are celebrating this year as a moment of grace in these troubled times, I would like in this Message to invite you to be “communicators of hope”...
Too often today, communication generates not hope, but fear and despair, prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred. All too often it simplifies reality in order to provoke instinctive reactions; it uses words like a razor; it even uses false or artfully distorted information to send messages designed to agitate, provoke or hurt. On several occasions, I have spoken of our need to “disarm” communication and to purify it of aggressiveness. It never helps to reduce reality to slogans. All of us see how – from television talk shows to verbal attacks on social media – there is a risk that the paradigm of competition, opposition, the will to dominate and possess, and the manipulation of public opinion will prevail.
There is also another troubling phenomenon: what we might call the “programmed dispersion of attention” through digital systems that, by profiling us according to the logic of the market, modify our perception of reality. As a result, we witness, often helplessly, a sort of atomisation of interests that ends up undermining the foundations of our existence as community, our ability… to listen to one another and to understand each other’s point of view. Identifying an “enemy” to lash out against thus appears indispensable as a way of asserting ourselves. Yet when others become our “enemies”, when we disregard their individuality and dignity in order to mock and deride them, we also lose the possibility of generating hope. As Don Tonino Bello observed, all conflicts “start when individual faces melt away and disappear”. We must not surrender to this mindset.”
SPECIAL DAYS THIS WEEK |
THIS SUNDAY’S READINGS
We are in that section of John’s Gospel today, known as the ‘priestly prayer of Christ’. John takes a quarter of his Gospel to cover what Jesus said and did at the Last Supper. This prayer is the climax of that section. When people speak of how Jesus taught us to pray, they usually refer to Matthew’s Gospel and to the ‘Our Father’, but we have a much longer example here in John’s Gospel. This is the reading that I often suggest being used at weddings. I imagine Jesus as a guest, praying for the couple. He prays that they may be one so that the world will realise that there is something of God in the world today. This is what is meant by the sacrament of marriage: God is made present through the love of the couple. We need people to bear witness in this way, not by preaching but simply by living their love.
But this reading is intended not just for married couples but for all of us. Jesus is praying that his disciples will be one so that the world will realise that there is something of God among them.
Last week, I had a conversation with someone who was thinking of becoming a Catholic. He spoke of how he’d been to visit many architecturally impressive churches, but that it was something about what happened in those churches, in terms of the community he witnessed, that impressed him the most. This is surely one example of an answer to Jesus’ prayer. God is made present in the world of today by people being a genuine communion of people, and a communion of diversity.
Remember that Jesus’ prayer was that his disciples would be one as the Father and the Spirit are one with him. This is a communion of diversity, a communion that embraces difference and respects it. He is not praying for uniformity in the Church but for what Pope John Paul II called ‘a spirituality of communion’. He described
this as knowing “how to "make room" for our brothers and sisters, bearing "each other's burdens" (Gal 6:2) and resisting the selfish temptations which constantly beset us and provoke competition, careerism, distrust and jealousy.” He also said: A spirituality of communion indicates above all the heart's contemplation of the mystery of the Trinity dwelling in us, and whose light we must also be able to see shining on the face of the brothers and sisters around us” (Encyclical: Novo millennio ineunte , 6th January 2001).
DIOCESAN PILGRIMAGE TO LADYEWELL |
A FILIPINO CULTURAL EVENT
“Kulturang Pilipino”. On 7th June, from 2.00pm-7.00pm at Heyside Parish Hall, Heyside, Royton, OL2 6NB. Cost of entry on the day will be £3.00. Anyone will be welcome.
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