SAINTS PETER AND PAUL
(YEAR C)
WEEK: JUNE 29TH - JULY 5TH 2025
“The Lord stood by me and strengthened me.”
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: Breeda Bradley, Michael Martindale, Sheila Woods (Fr. Phil’s Aunt; she was 101years old), Avelina Calilung Mercado, and the victims of the air disaster in India.
ANNIVERSARIES: Terry Mills Sr., Terry Mills Jr, Michael McGladdery, Raymond Wood, John O’Brien, Reynaldo Dante Eustaquio, Phil McDermott, Irene Melia, Jimmy Flood, John Miley, Kathleen Street
LAST WEEK'S COLLECTION: £698.48
Standing Order: £572.00 a month
CHURCH BOXES / DONATIONS
NA £30.00 for rent of the meeting room
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 Saints Peter and Paul - Missalette
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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).
ANOTHER JUBILEE!
Fr. Raymond McKee, formerly the Parish Priest of Our Lady’s, Moorside, is celebrating 60 years as a priest this weekend. Congratulations!
MADONNA DEL ROSARIO PROCESSION |
SYNODAL PROCESS AND THE SALFORD DIOCESE
The bishop writes: “Our Diocese continues its journey of renewal and listening, begun by the Synod process. A synod implementation team has been formed to guide the four key areas identified at our voting day in March. Each grouping of Leadership and Collaboration, Community and Outreach, Young People and Schools, and Spirituality and Formation, have their own dedicated subgroup.
As these teams begin their work, two recommendations are already developing.
The Community and outreach group is recommending the establishment of Welcome Teams in every parish. Parishes are encouraged to share their good practice on Welcome and are asked to form teams by the First Sunday of Advent
Ideas and opinions are being gathered which may promote appropriate support structures for our clergy. Let us continue to pray that we may discern what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church in our Diocese in these times.
Stay with us on our journey!”
HOPE FOR OUR COMMON HOME PILGRIMAGE |
SPECIAL DAYS THIS WEEK
Monday 30th June – The First Martyrs of the See of Rome - are martyrs who dies (with SS Peter and Paul) in the first great Roman persecution under the emperor Nero in the year 67. The famous Roman writer, Tacitus, records their deaths.
Tuesday 31st July – Oliver Plunkett - he was born in Co. Meath (Ireland) in 1625 and died at Tyburn in 1681. He was ordained in Rome and then was eventually appointed Archbishop of Armagh in 1669. He held synods and visitations and promoted the reforms of the Council of Trent. He was imprisoned in Dublin in 1679. He was tried, condemned and executed in London, the final victim of the ‘Popish Plot’ and the last to be executed for the faith in England.
Thursday 3rd July – St Thomas the Apostle - He was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus and is commonly known as "doubting Thomas" because he initially doubted the resurrection of Jesus when he was told of it; he later confessed his faith ("My Lord and my God") on seeing the places where the wounds were on the resurrected body of Jesus.
According to traditional accounts of the Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala, Thomas travelled outside the Roman Empire to preach the Gospel, traveling through southern India in the modern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and eventually reached Muziris (modern-day North Paravur and Kodungalloor) in 52 CE.
Friday 4th July – St Elizabeth of Portugal - was Queen of Portugal from 1282 to 1325 as the wife of King Denis. Elizabeth quietly pursued the regular religious practices of her youth and was devoted to the poor and sick. Such a life was taken as a reproach to many around her and caused ill will in some quarters. Eventually, her prayer and patience succeeded in converting her husband, who had been a rather dissolute character.
THIS SUNDAY’S READINGS
There’s a bust, in the Museum of Classical Archaeology in the University of Cambridge, of the two Greek historians, Herodotus and Thucydides. It’s what’s called a ‘Janiform’, which means that it is a single bust with the two heads looking in opposite directions. Peter Green, who wrote ‘Essays in antiquity’, suggested that the choice of this form of sculpture spoke well of the two historians, saying that they were irreconcilable yet indivisible. Perhaps a similar sculpture should represent Ss. Peter and Paul who could be similarly described.
We hear a little of the tension that existed between Peter and Paul in Chapter 2 of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. There he writes, “When Cephas (the Aramaic word for ‘rock’ translated by the Greek word ‘Petros’) came to Antioch…I opposed him to his face, since he was manifestly in the wrong.” He explains further. It appears that Peter had been happily eating with the gentiles until some friends of St. James arrived to visit them. Then Peter stopped eating with the gentiles lest these visitors reported him to James. The other Jewish Christians were then said, by Paul, to join Peter in his hypocrisy.
In the same letter to the Galatians Paul tells us another of the differences between them: he says that the Disciples “recognised that I had been commissioned to preach the Good News to the uncircumcised just as Peter had been commissioned to preach it to the circumcised.”
But they were also indivisible, showing so many similarities. They both had significant failures, but Jesus chose them anyway. Peter had denied Jesus three times and Paul had persecuted Christians. Both were blessed with important revelations. We hear of the revelation to Peter in the Gospel story today, enabling him to proclaim that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. Paul, on the other hand, had the revelation where he was taken up to the seventh heaven, after which he was struck blind. Both shared a martyr’s death in the persecutions of the Emperor Nero. In the second reading today, we hear of Paul, in prison in Rome, convinced that he was going to be executed. He tells us that his life is being poured away as a libation (the translation today says ‘drink offering’). As he looks back on his life, he no longer speaks of the fact that he was taught at one of the most prestigious schools, at the feet of the Rabbi Gamaliel. He doesn’t speak of what he had acquired in life but about how he had poured his life away. In his letter to the Philippians, he writes: “For him I have accepted the loss of everything, and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ.” This is the fight he has had, and the race he has finished. And, more important than anything, he declares how the Lord stood by him and strengthened him
DIOCESAN JOB VACANCY: Cathedral Site Officer |