Wednesday 28 September - National Day of Prayer and Fasting for Life.

On Wednesday 28th September please pray and fast for the end of abortion and euthanasia. Your prayer and fasting is urgently needed. Join us in:

Fasting: Fast from all food except bread and water for the day or fast from a particular food or luxury, e.g. chocolate, alcohol, cigarettes, TV. Fast from whatever you can given your state of health etc, but make sure it is something that involves a sacrifice to yourself.

Prayer: We are asking people to say a Rosary (or an extra Rosary if you say it daily already). You could also offer an extra effort such as going to Mass (or an extra Mass) on the day, or going to Adoration. You can even pray before a closed tabernacle if Adoration is not available near you.

For information on the day of Prayer and Fasting contact;
The Good Counsel Network on 020 7723 1740.
www.goodcounselnetwork.com
http://mariastopsabortion.blogspot.com

And the people of Ninevah believed in God; they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least...God saw their efforts to renounce their evil ways. And God relented about the disaster which He had threatened to bring on them, and He did not bring it. (Jonah 3:5,10)

THE POPE HAS COME TO GERMANY, HE SPEAKS OF GOD

L'Osservatore Director Reflects on First Days of State Visit

http://www.zenit.org/article-33511?l=english

ROME, SEPT. 24, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Here is the signed editorial by Giovanni Maria Vian, director of the semi-official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, published today, on the second day of Benedict XVI's four-day state visit to Germany. The editorial is titled "The Sun Over Germany."

* * *

It is already possible to extend to the whole journey the well-chosen image of the sun over Berlin chosen by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as the title of a commentary on the masterful discourse of Benedict XVI -- which with an intelligent and perfect journalistic choice the authoritative German daily published in its entirety. Not only and not so much because of the beautiful fresh, sunny weather that is accompanying him, as rather for the importance of the visit in the different events. Therefore the sun is shining on Germany to which Joseph Ratzinger has returned for the third time since he was elected Pope to meet the people and to speak of God, as he explained at the outset.

In the Christian tradition sunlight also symbolizes that divine light which illuminates the world, and the Bishop of Rome has chosen to speak of God's light itself, meeting the Evangelical representatives in Erfurt -- in the very place where the young Luther studied theology -- whom he welcomed with genuine warmth. And it was of course the question on God, central in the thought and torment of the young Augustinian monk, which Benedict XVI had at heart above all. Who is concerned about it, even among Christians? Who takes his own failings and the reality of evil seriously? Rethinking "Christ's cause", dear to Luther and hence to faith, is the main ecumenical commitment today in a world in which God's absence weighs ever more heavily.

The very image of light is used by the Pope to describe the gradual distancing of the world from God: at the outset, his reflection still illuminates man but increasingly he ends by losing his life. This is why it is always necessary to overcome the error of the past, the emphasis of what divides Christians, and to insist instead on what -- and it is already a lot -- unites them. The faith of the Trinitarian God revealed by Christ and his testimony in a world thirsting for it as if it were penetrating ever deeper into a waterless desert.

One must reflect upon this common witness of Christians -- in a society where ethics are replaced by solely utilitarian calculations -- in the struggle to defend "the inviolable dignity of every single person, from conception until death". In the dialogue with other religions, and especially with Judaism and Islam, as the Pope repeated while meeting with a few representatives. In fact, Christians can and must collaborate with Muslims and Jews, in a society where it is necessary to struggle together to make the public dimension secure and to create through justice the conditions for peace: opus iustitiae pax, to use the Old Testament phrase that Eugenio Pacelli chose as his motto.

In a time of restlessness and indifference and in circumstances that often squeeze you like a wine press, those who live in the joy of the Church, which is the most beautiful gift of God, must let themselves to be mysteriously transformed into the sweet wine of Christ, offered to all with friendship and reason. Today man can destroy the world and because of this he must rediscover through reason the foundations of law, as he explained to Parliament in Berlin. As was evocatively written in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "The fisher of men has come from Rome".

Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham - 24 September.

The story of Our Lady of Walsingham is a familiar one, but it bears remembering on this day when we commemorate the title. The following account is from the website of the Community of Our Lady of Walsingham. http://www.walsinghamcommunity.org/i[03]b.html

The story of how Walsingham became a place of pilgrimage is enshrined in an old ballad, written many years after the events it purports to speak of actually took place.

In 1061, so the story goes, the lady of the manor of Little Walsingham in Norfolk, a widow named Richeldis, prayed to our Lady asking how she could honour her in some special way. In answer to this prayer Mary led Richeldis in spirit to Nazareth and showed her the house in which she had first received the angel's message. Mary told Richeldis to take the measurements of this house and build another one just like it in Walsingham. It would be a place where people could come to honour her and her Son, remembering especially the mystery of the Annunciation and Mary's joyful 'yes' to conceiving the Saviour.

The late eleventh century and all through the twelfth and thirteenth century was the era of the crusades, which saw a growing interest in the sites consecrated by the human presence of Jesus in the Holy Land. But now pilgrims need not go so far; in England itself there was a 'new Nazareth' built by one of their own countrywomen.

After some time Augustinian canons took over the care of the holy house and enshrined it in a special chapel within a much larger church. Pilgrims began to come from all over England and even abroad. From the time of Henry III nearly all the kings and queens of the realm visited Walsingham, as well as hundreds of ordinary people seeking help, healing and inner peace. Walsingham ranked with Rome, Jerusalem and Compostella in importance as a pilgrimage destination.

However, the Shrine was destroyed at the time of the Reformation, and only rebuilt at the beginning of the twentieth century, mainly due to the inspired leadership of the Anglican vicar of Walsingham, Fr Hope Patten. He revived devotion to Our Lady under this title and built a new shrine Church and Holy House in the village, together with a statue modelled on that depicted on the ancient priory seal. It shows a seated Mary with her Son on her lap holding a book of the gospels.

Meanwhile a Miss Charlotte Boyd had purchased and restored the ancient Slipper Chapel a mile away and gifted it to the Catholic Church. This has since become the National Shrine of the Catholic Church in England. So Walsingham is a village dedicated to Mary, a place of ecumenical pilgrimage with a growing understanding of the original message of Walsingham as received by Richeldis – that it should be a place where the joy of the Annunciation could be remembered and celebrated, for the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us through Mary's joyful and ready 'yes,' spoken within an ordinary house that would become the boyhood home of the Son of God himself.

O God, who through the mystery of the Word made flesh didst in thy mercy sanctify the house of the blessed Virgin Mary, and wondrously place it in the bosom of thy Church: Grant that being made separate from the tabernacles of sinners, we may become worthy to dwell in thy holy house; through the same Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

The Episcopal Ordination of The Right Reverend John Sherrington - the new Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of Westminster.

Dear Friends

We were very pleased to attend today the Episcopal Ordination of The Right Reverend John Sherrington who will be the new Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of Westminster.

We have include some photos taken by Br Michael for you to see.
God bless

Deacon Arthur, EP

The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary - September 8th

The feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is celebrated each year on the eighth of September. Usually it is the custom of the church to celebrate the feast day of a saint on the date of their death as this is truly their "die natalis", the day remembered as their birth into everlasting happiness. Mary, however, entered this world sinless through the privilege of the Immaculate Conception and is the firstborn of the redeemed. Her nativity is a cause for great joy as it is considered the" dawn of our salvation" as Pope Paul VI wrote in the document, Marialis Cultus in 1972.

Symbols: bruised serpent, sometimes encircling a globe; the lily; fleur de lis; virgin's monogram; pierced heart; crescent moon; sun and moon; starry crown; Mater Dei; rose; flowering almond; gilly flower; snow drop; hawthorn; the star; the balsam; the Ark of the Covenant; the mirror or speculum; apple; myrtle; palm, cypress and olive; closed gate; book of Wisdom; sealed book; rod of Jesse; lily of the valley; house of gold; city of God; vessel of honor; seat of wisdom.


Prayer in honor of Mary's Nativity
by St. Anselm.

Vouchsafe that I may praise thee, O sacred Virgin; give me strength against thine enemies, and against the enemy of the whole human race. Give me strength humbly to pray to thee. Give me strength to praise thee in prayer with all my powers, through the merits of thy most sacred nativity, which for the entire Christian world was a birth of joy, the hope and solace of its life.

When thou wast born, O most holy Virgin, then was the world made light.

Happy is thy stock, holy thy root, and blessed thy fruit, for thou alone as a virgin, filled with the Holy Spirit, didst merit to conceive thy God, as a virgin to bear Thy God, as a virgin to bring Him forth, and after His birth to remain a virgin.

Have mercy therefore upon me a sinner, and give me aid, O Lady, so that just as thy nativity, glorious from the seed of Abraham, sprung from the tribe of Juda, illustrious from the stock of David, didst announce joy to the entire world, so may it fill me with true joy and cleanse me from every sin.

Pray for me, O Virgin most prudent, that the gladsome joys of thy most helpful nativity may put a cloak over all my sins.

O holy Mother of God, flowering as the lily, pray to thy sweet Son for me, a wretched sinner. Amen.