St Teresa & St John Southworth Churches, Cleveleys
Fr Chris Cousens—Phone: 853340
Rev Bernard Ward (Deacon) (Tel: 858346)
Enquiries for St John Southworth: Phone: 853340
18 June 2023
http://www.st-teresas-church.co.uk
Email: st.teresas.cleveleys@gmail.com
Lancaster Roman Catholic Diocesan Trustees Registered Charity Number 23433
Sunday : 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Contents: Gospel
Notices
Reflections for the coming week
Gospel: Matthew 9:36-10:8
When Jesus saw the crowds he felt sorry for them because they were harassed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest.’
He summoned his twelve disciples, and gave them authority over unclean spirits with power to cast them out and to cure all kinds of diseases and sickness.
These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James the son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, the one who was to betray him. These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them as follows:
‘Do not turn your steps to pagan territory, and do not enter any Samaritan town; go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. And as you go, proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is close at hand. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils. You received without charge, give without charge.’
Gospel Reflection : Back to Jesus and His Way
Jesus preached the KIngdom of God and in doing so challenged the fixed attitudes, mindsets and practices of good, religious people of his own time, and revealed to them a new understanding of who God is and what God wants of us. The result was opposition, rejection and death. The Apostles too, were given the task of going out and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. And they also discovered that doing so was seriously harmful to their health!
The Church today is in crisis, and the God which the Church has been proclaiming has been rejected by many. That God is a God whose passion is the observance of his laws of love, expressed in definite moral demands. Salvation, we were told, comes from living God’s way, as shown in the life of Jesus, not from living what we think should be God’s way.
Pope Francis is calling us back to the God proclaimed by Jesus, a God whose passion is compassion, who reached out to the poor, the infirm, the excluded and to sinners. He healed lepers by touching them, an act of solidarity with those whom society shunned.
Pope Francis has a special concern for refugees, who are, for some, the lepers of today. Like Jesus, he too faces opposition from those whose fixed attitudes and mind-sets he challenges. Compassion is the ethos of the Kingdom of God, and the door by which we enter it. Salvation, Pope Francis insists, comes from compassion. We Christians have all been given the task of proclaiming the KIngdom of God in our world today, and we can only proclaim the God of compassion by being the compassion of God to others.
We Remember In Our Prayers Anne Beswick, whose Funeral is at St. Teresa’s church on Monday 19th, June at 12 noon. We remember her and her family, and all those whose anniversaries are at this time. May they be in God’s peace.
We Also Remember In Our Prayers Tony Edwards who died last Sunday. Tony has served so faithfully his home parish of Sacred Heart, Thornton, all his life, including for twenty-six years as the parish Deacon. We also of course remember his wife Margaret, and their family, and the parishioners of Sacred Heart at this sad time.
The Funeral Mass for Tony is at Sacred Heart Church on Thursday, 6th July, at 11.45 am, preceded by a Deanery (area) Mass for him on Wednesday, 5th July, at 7 pm, at Sacred Heart.
We Welcome Into The Family of The Church Sophia Elizabeth Tyne, whose Baptism takes place this Sunday at St. Teresa’s.
We Are Looking Forward To Celebrating The Twenty Five Years Bernard Ward Has Served Us As Our Parish Deacon. Please remember that the Silver Jubilee Mass is at 6.30 pm on Monday, 26th June. We are very grateful for all those who are supporting the preparation for this celebration in any way.
There Is A Flower Festival to celebrate the 90th Anniversary of St. John Vianney’s, Glastonbury Avenue, Blackpool on the 30th June – 2nd July. Please see the poster in the church porch. As St. John Vianney’s, St. Cuthbert’s, and Our Lady of Assumption parishes have now been combined to form one new parish, the name of that area has recently been changed, to ‘The Guardian Angels’, hence the title on the poster.
The Food Pantry at St. Teresa’s Church is open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 10.30 am – 12 noon, and on Wednesday, 2.30 pm – 4 pm.
The ‘Warm Space’ takes place in St. Teresa’s Church Hall on Wednesday afternoons, 2 pm – 4 pm. All welcome.
Compassion
A person in misery does not need
a look that judges and criticises,
but a comforting presence.
Jesus looked at the ordinary people,
and seeing how needy they were,
he had compassion on them,
and began to minister to them.
Compassion means that I suffer with you;
I accept into my heart the misery in yours;
I become one with you in your pain.
I may not be able to relieve that pain,
but by understanding it and sharing it,
I make it possible for you to bear it.
“Lord, give us warm and generous hearts,
so that we may be agents of your compassion to others.”
Daily Reflections for this week
Monday (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
His Gospel of the Kingdom of God and his power of healing belonged to the sick and the poor. There were questions but no answers, distress but no relief, anguish of conscience but no deliverance, tears but no consolation, sin but no forgiveness. From the human point of view, everything looked hopeless, but Jesus sees things with different eyes. Instead of the people maltreated, wretched and poor, he sees the ripe harvest field of God. ‘The harvest is great.’ The hour has come for these poor and wretched folk to be fetched home to the kingdom of God. Where the scribes and zealots saw only a field trampled down, burnt and ravaged. Jesus sees the fields waving with corn and ripe for the kingdom of God. The harvest is great but only Jesus in his mercy can see it.
Scripture (Matthew 9: 36-37; 10:6-8)
When Jesus saw the crowds, he felt sorry for them because they were harassed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest.’ He summoned his twelve disciples and sent them out, instructing them as follows: ‘As you go, proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is close at hand. Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils. You received without charge, give without charge.
Tuesday (Rowan Williams,)
[The church is a] sanctuary, where those who need a home and have none may find it. To be built by God into a sanctuary, a living temple, is not to be built into some closed holy space. It is to be built into a temple whose doors are open, where God is to be found and God’s peace makes a difference. In all these respects, what deep conversion is required of us? How readily we turn to anxious striving, as if Christ had not died and been raised. How easy it is for us to close our doors. But we are called to be a kingdom of priests, and to be built as a holy temple so that the world may be invited, may see, may be transfigured.
Scripture (1 Peter 2: 4-5,9)
He is the living stone, rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him; set yourselves close to him so that you, too, may be living stones making a spiritual house as a holy priesthood to offer the spiritual sacrifices made acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. You are a chosen race, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Wednesday (John Main, OSB)
The whole Christian mystery proclaims the meeting of our world with the world of God in the person of Jesus: the same person of Jesus who calls us to himself through the Spirit he has given us. And so, the power of God is a power within us – in our inmost hearts. And yet it is also a power utterly beyond us – the transcendent power of the God. This is the difference that the coming of Jesus has made for all humanity: his redemptive love is a continuous, insuperable power that makes it possible for us all to enter the experience of the power of God.
Scripture (Psalm 84)
How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, God of hosts. My soul is longing and yearning, is yearning for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my soul ring out their joy to God, the living God. How blessed are those who dwell in your house; they shall praise you continuously. Blessed those who find their strength in you, in whose hearts are the roads to Sion. As they go through the Bitter Valley, they make it a place of springs, the autumn rain covers it with blessings. They walk with ever growing strength, they will see the God of gods in Sion.
Thursday (Fr. Kevin Kelly)
The Church is not a mutual assurance club to serve the interests of its members. Its very raison d’etre lies in its mission to society and to the world. Vatican II’s vision is not one of a ‘churchy’ church but of a worldly church. The church exists to serve the world. A ‘sacramental parish’ is one which recognises that the whole of life is sacramental. In other words, a parish which believes that the presence and action of God is mediated to us through the daily humdrum of our everyday lives. A sacramental church helps people to become aware of the presence of God.
Scripture (Exodus 19:3-6)
Moses went up to God and the Lord called to Moses, saying, ‘Say this to the House of Jacob! Tell the Israelites, “You have seen for yourselves what I did to the Egyptians and how I carried you away on eagle’s wings and brought you to me. From this you know that now, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you, out of all peoples, shall be my personal possession, for all the earth is mine. I will count you a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.”.’
Friday (Pope Francis)
The Christian ideal will always be a summons to overcome suspicion, habitual mistrust, fear of losing our privacy, all the defensive attitudes which today’s world imposes on us. True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in the community, from service, from reconciliation with others. The Son of God, by becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness. Unless people who thirst for God find in the Church a spirituality which can offer healing and liberation, and fill them with life and peace, while at the same time summoning them to fraternal communion and missionary fruitfulness, they will end up by being taken in by solutions which neither make life truly human nor give glory to God.
Scripture (John 13) Jesus got up from table, removed his outer garments and, taking a towel, wrapped it round his waist; he then poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel he was wearing. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’ Jesus replied, ‘If I do not wash you, you can have no share with me.’ ‘Do you understand’, he said, ‘what I have done to you? You call me Master and Lord, and rightly; so I am. If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you must wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you. Now that you know this, blessed are you if you behave accordingly.’
Martin Bennett