PENTECOST SUNDAY (YEAR C)
WEEK: JUNE 8TH - 14TH 2025
“…how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language”
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: Brenda McGinn, Theresa Czerwonka, Michael Hebblethwaite, Michael Martindale ANNIVERSARIES Catherine Duddy, Mary Boden, Ellie McDermott and Molly McDermott, Veronica Peace, Kathleen and Andrew Curran, Moss Donovan, Christopher Frankland, John O’Brien
CONGRATULATIONS to the young people from our parish who were confirmed last Thursday by the Bishop in St Edward’s, Lees.
LAST WEEK'S COLLECTION: £935.09
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
|
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).
ANNIVERSARY OF ORDINATION TO THE PRIESTHOOD On the 12th June, Father Phil will be celebrating 49 years as a priest. He was ordained on 12th June 1976 at Sacred Heart Church, Darwen, which was his home parish at that time.
SPECIAL DAYS THIS WEEK |
THIS SUNDAY’S READINGS
Pentecost was one of the three occasions when many Jews would be expected to travel to Jerusalem for the festival. It marked the day, fifty days after the Passover, when God gave the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. There were so many Jews, of different nationalities, because it was the festival of Pentecost. So, Pentecost was a Jewish feast before it was Christianised and then remembered as the day the Spirit descended on the disciples. Sometimes, to convey the message in a painting more appropriately, the artist will paint on two or three panels; each panel could be a painting in its own right but, really, they should all be seen together. For me, the Feast of Pentecost should always be seen as the second panel of a painting. The first panel was painted in the book of Genesis with the story of the Tower of Babel. In that story, you hear of a people who all shared the same language, and of a people who wanted to prove their worth. They tried to build a tower that would reach heaven. It’s a story of human effort in which uniformity becomes too important. People want others to be like them so that they would fit in and no one would be an outsider. But God’s way is different. He saw their pride and recognised their version of self-love, and he destroyed the tower and scattered them apart so that different languages developed, and they could no longer understand each other. The story of Pentecost, on the other hand, is one of God working with humanity to enable us to achieve what we could not on our own. We hear of the Spirit enabling the apostles to communicate with people in their own languages; and there were people there from many different parts of the world. One of the main gifts of the Spirit, therefore, is the gift of being able to communicate with people who are different from us, because we can speak their language. This isn’t simply a matter of using words but of being able to connect with and understand people who are different from us. It’s a gift that enables us to enter into the lives of other people. It is, therefore, very different from the Tower of Babel, which was about gathering a community of sameness. St Paul, in his letter to the Romans tells us that you don’t have to be of the same race or ethnicity to belong at the table of the Lord. “Everyone moved by the Spirit is a Son of God.” Indeed, it’s through the Spirit working through your personality and you telling others of His presence in your life and giving praise to God in your way, that we become Church and become a genuine communion. It’s then, and only then, that, as the Gospel today says, God makes his home in us because we are one as they are one, not through sameness but through diversity, by being able to get away from basking in a type of self-love to being able genuinely to love. Little wonder that we refer to the feast of Pentecost as the birthday of the Church.
DIOCESAN PILGRIMAGE TO LADYEWELL |
REFUGEE WEEK
This year's Refugee Week takes place between 16th and 22nd June. Everyone deserves a safe, secure place to call home. For many people across the world, the home they once had is no longer a safe haven for them. There can be many reasons that lead to individuals or families becoming refugees. As a parish, we have been greatly blessed by those who had to flee their homes and decided to settle here. It was the potato famine in Ireland between 1845-1852 that caused many Irish families to leave their homeland and, some of them, to make a new home here in Oldham. This parish thrived on their immigrant spirit. And now, quite a few of our current parishioners are refugees, and there’s no doubt, in my mind, that they are adding to the vibrancy of our parish today. But we know that the anti-immigrant rhetoric is awash on social media and often used to gain political advantage. The Bishops of England and Wales issued a document in 2023 called, “Love the stranger” in which they set down several principles.
Some of these were:
1. Our response to migrants and refugees is rooted in the innate worth of each human person.
2. Recognising the universal destination of goods, we must not exclude others from having the means to flourish simply because of where they were born.
3. Nationalist or individualistic tendencies should not be allowed to take hold and prevent us seeing humanity as a single family….
4. We uphold the right to migrate, which may be exercised not only by those fleeing threats to their safety but also by those seeking to build a better life for themselves and their families.
Of course, they also recognised the need to control immigration, but that ‘control’ has, in practice, often further dehumanised those who have already suffered so much.
CAN YOU HELP? |
BOOST TO OUR FINANCES
During the week, I was surprised to see that £5,000 had been put into our bank account as a legacy in the name of G. Marzec. I had had no prior notice that this was going to take place so, I hope it had not been put in our account in error! But it was a very pleasant surprise and very much needed.