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
24 December 2023
http://www.st-teresas-church.co.uk
Email: st.teresas.cleveleys@gmail.com
Lancaster Roman Catholic Diocesan Trustees Registered Charity Number 23433
Sunday : 4rd Sunday of Advent
Contents: Gospel
Notices
Reflections for the coming week
Gospel: Luke: 1:26-38
The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. He went in and said to her, ‘Rejoice, so highly favoured! The Lord is with you.’ She was deeply disturbed by these words and asked herself what this greeting could mean, but the angel said to her, ‘Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God’s favour. Listen! You are to conceive and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David; he will rule over the house of Jacob for ever and his reign will have no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘But how can this come about, since I am a virgin?’ ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you’ the angel answered ‘and the power of the Most High will cover you with its shadow. And so the child will be holy and will be called Son of God. Know this too; your kinswoman Elizabeth has, in her old age, herself conceived a son, and she whom people called barren is now in her sixth month, for nothing is impossible to God.’ ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord,’ said Mary ‘let what you have said be done to me.’ And the angel left her.
Gospel Reflection :
For this last Sunday before Christmas we have a very human story, a story of fear and faith – Mary afraid of what God wants her to be.
Fear and faith somehow go together. You believe in a person, but maybe they will let you down. You believe in God, but where is He at times? So much of life is lived in trust – that love once promised will last; that children will be safe and do the right thing; even that health will be good and old age safe. We want our security.
Mary and Joseph were the same. They wanted security in relationship and religion. Their real safety was only found when they trusted enough in God, that He was with them in everything he was asking them to do.
To Mary, the Lord says : “Do not be afraid”. Worry and fear are a part of human life. But, the whole Christmas message tells us that He is with us in everything and at all times, even, or especially, when the lights seem to have gone out!
We Remember In Our Prayers Janet Lavin whose Funeral is at St Teresa’s next Thursday, 28th December, at 12 noon, Barry Kershaw whose Funeral is at St. Teresa’s on Friday, 5th January 2024, at 10 am, Paul Smith whose Funeral is at St. Teresa’s on Wednesday 10th January at 2.15 pm, and Peggy Mcloughlin whose Funeral has yet to be arranged. We remember them and their families, and those whose anniversaries are at this time. May they all be in God’s peace.
A Big Thank You to the Wednesday Evening Senior Citizens Keep Fit Group, for their generous donation to our Parish Funds.
Christmas Mass Times
St Teresa’s : Sunday 24th December (Christmas Eve) 6.30 pm
Monday 25th December (Christmas Day) 9 am and 10.30 am
St. John Southworth : Monday, 25th December (Christmas Day) 10 am
(There is no 5pm Mass on Sunday 24th December)
A Warm Wednesday Afternoon Welcome If you are on your own after Christmas, on Wednesday 27th December, why not join us for a festive afternoon, 12 noon – 3.00 pm, in St. Teresa’s Parish Hall. Come and pull a ‘cracker’ and meet some old or new friends, with food and a ‘natter’ to while away the afternoon. If you would like to be there, let us know, purely for catering numbers. Call Sue or Bernard 07889 532158 / 07515 347256.
The Food Bank At St. Teresa’s will be closed on Christmas Day (Monday 25th) and Boxing Day (Tuesday 26th), but will be open on Wednesday 27th, December at 10.30 am, and at the normal times of 10.30 am-12 noon on Thursday and Friday.
Sunday Morning Mass Times At St. Teresa’s : St. Teresa’s Parish Pastoral Council has been giving considerable thought to the number of Sunday Masses we have at St.Teresa’s Church, aware of the changing circumstances we have in all our parishes, including the decrease in the number of priests, and the increase in ages of those priests who remain. It is therefore proposed that there should be one Sunday morning Mass, and that at 10 am. There will still be the Saturday evening Mass at 6. 30 pm, and the Sunday evening Mass at St. John Southworth Church at 5 pm. The Council is also aware that this will upset the long-established routine of Sunday morning parishioners, but sincerely hopes that you will feel able to accept and support this change as being both a necessary and important change for the Parish. It is suggested that the starting date of the new Sunday morning Mass time of 10 am, replacing the 9 am and 10.30 am Masses, will be in the new year, Sunday 14th January 2024.
Daily Reflections for this week
Monday (Caryll Houselander)
I think the most moving fact in the whole history of mankind is that wherever the Holy Spirit has desired to renew the face of the earth he has chosen to do so through communion with some humble little creature. It is always a love story, a culmination of love between the Spirit of light and the Bride of the Spirit. This is something that can happen to everyone now, but it could not happen to anyone but for the fiat of the peasant girl in Nazareth. It is in Our Lady that God fell in love with Humanity, and the love of God culminated in the conception of Christ in the human race. The whole world trembled on the word of Mary, on a child’s consent. To what was she asked to consent? First of all, to the descent of the Holy Spirit, to surrender her littleness to the infinite love, and as a result to become the mother of Christ. It was so tremendous, yet so passive. Our Lady said yes. She said yes for us all. Each of us must echo that yes in our own lives.
Scripture (Luke 1:26-38)
The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee, to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the House of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. He went in to her and said “Mary, do not be afraid; you have won God’s favour. Look! You are to conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.” Mary said to the angel “But how can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel answered “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most High will cover you with its shadow. So the child will be holy and will be called the Son of God.” And Mary said “You see before you the Lord’s servant, let it happen to me as you have said.”
Tuesday (Albert Schweitzer)
Only when thinking becomes quite humble can it set its feet upon the way that leads to knowledge. The more profound a religion is, the more it realises this fact— that what it knows through belief is little compared with what it does not know. The first active deed of thinking is resignation— acquiescence in what happens. Becoming free, inwardly, from what happens, we pass through the gate of recognition.
Scripture (Matthew 1: 18-20,24)
Before Mary and Joseph came to live together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Being an upright man and wanting to spare her disgrace, Joseph decided to divorce her informally. He had made up his mind to do this when suddenly the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins.’ When Joseph woke up he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do: he took his wife to his home.
Wednesday (A Carthusian)
Those souls for whom this world is too small need breathing space, and this world stifles them. This God whom we are longing for has loved us from the beginning, and will love us to the end. There is nothing he wants more than to give himself to us, and the greatest joy we can give him is to believe this. To believe in God is one thing; to ‘taste and see how sweet’ he is, is quite another. God never refuses the former to us if our will is good, but the latter depends entirely upon his good will and pleasure. The one is the gift we make to him of our mind, the other is a communication of his own joy which he makes to us.
Scripture (Titus 3: 4-7)
When the kindness and love of God our saviour for us were revealed, it was not because he was concerned with any righteous actions we might have done ourselves; it was for no reason except his own compassion that he saved us, by means of the cleansing water of rebirth and by renewing us with the Holy Spirit which he so generously poured over us through Jesus Christ our saviour. He did this so that we should be justified by his grace, to become heirs looking forward to inheriting eternal life.
Thursday (Cardinal Basil Hume)
The Christian Church is not the product of human wisdom. It is the guardian and herald of a revelation from God, and so it deals in mysteries — profound truths beyond the grasp of our unaided intellects, yet yielding their riches to the humble and the prayerful. In Jesus Christ, the believer perceives a two-fold reality: the eyes of faith gaze on him and see what man can be, and is meant by God to be. In Jesus Christ we stand at the intersection between the divine and the human.
Scripture (Romans 16:25-27)
Glory to him who is able to give you the strength to live according to the Good News I preach and in which I proclaim Jesus Christ, the revelation of a mystery kept secret for endless ages but now is revealed, as the eternal God commanded, to be made known to all the nations, so that they obey in faith. This is only what scripture has predicted, and it is all part of the way the eternal God wants things to be. He alone is wisdom; give glory therefore to him through Jesus Christ for ever and ever.
Christmas Day (Oscar Romero)
With Christ, God injected himself into history. With the birth of Christ, God’s reign is now inaugurated in human time. Every year we recall that God’s reign is now in this world. His birth attests that God is now marching with us in history, that we do not go alone. Humans long for peace, for justice, for a reign of divine law, for something holy, for what is far from earth’s realities. We can have such a hope, not because we ourselves are able to construct the realm of happiness that God’s holy words proclaim, but because the builder of a reign of justice, of love, and of peace is already in the midst of us
Scripture (Micah 5:1-4)
The Lord says this: You, Bethlehem, the least of the clans of Judah, out of you will be born for me the one who is to rule over Israel; his origin goes back to the distant past, to the days of old. When she who is to give birth gives birth, the remnant of his brothers will come back to the sons of Israel. He will stand and feed his flock with the power of the Lord, with the majesty of the name of his God. They will live secure, for from then on he will extend his power to the ends of the land. He himself will be peace.
Happy Christmas
Martin Bennett