CONTINUING OUR FOCUS ON THE EUCHARIST:

Last Sunday’s special celebration with our reception children was a blessed occasion and now we will turn our attention to Year 4 and the children who will be preparing for their First Holy Communion early next summer. Once again I want to use the opportunity to encourage everyone to reflect seriously on how best we can support the children and their families so that the wonder of what God is offering us is not submerged beneath the focus on all the arrangements for the day itself. I am confident we can achieve this and ask the prayers and support of the whole parish in this venture. You know that I have a special affection for the French Jesuit, Fr Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who died on Easter Sunday in 1955. His wonderful poem, The Mass on the World, provides us with a perfect focus for all our prayers. Put simply, he sees all our work as a gift we can bring to the Lord and place on the altar in the form of the bread that will be consecrated into Christ’s Body. And then similarly he sees all our suffering as represented in the chalice which will be consecrated into Christ’s blood. Such a vision enables us to unite with the work of everyone and the suffering of everyone in our world. The more we reflect in this way, the more likely we are to see the importance of the Mass as the source and summit of our Christian lives.