SECOND
SUNDAY OF LENT
MASS (OLHoC): 9.00am (Cyril Hardy RIP)
MASS (OLHoC): 11.00am (William Cummins RIP)
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• MONDAY, March 1st - St David
MASS (OLHoC): 9.00am (Paddy Clarke RIP)
Followed by Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament
& Confessions 9.30am – 10.00am
•TUESDAY, March
2nd - Feria
MASS (OLHoC): 9.00am (Richard Furlong RIP)
Followed by Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament & Confessions 9.30am – 10.00am
• WEDNESDAY, March 3rd - Feria
MASS
(OLHoC): 10.00am (Thanksgiving of Ema Deba)
STATIONS OF THE CROSS (St Joseph’s): 12 noon
• THURSDAY, March 4th – Feria
MASS (OLHoC): 9.00am (Holy Souls)
Followed by Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament & Confessions 9.30am – 10.00am
• FRIDAY, March 5th – Feria (Women’s World Day of Prayer)
FIRST FRIDAY DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS
Holy Rosary and Exposition (OLHoC): 9:00am
MASS (OLHoC): 10.00am (For the people of Vanuatu)
STATIONS OF THE CROSS (OLHoC): 12 noon
• SATURDAY, March 6th – Feria
First Holy Communion Zoom meeting:
9.00am
MASS (OLHoC): 10.00am (Archbishop Peter Smith RIP)
Followed by Confessions
10.30 – 11.00am
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Next Sunday: March 7th
THIRD
SUNDAY OF LENT
MASS
(St Joseph’s): 9.00am (Margaret Riordan RIP)
MASS
(OLHoC): 11.00am (People of the Parish)
CAFOD FAMILY FAST DAY – was on Friday, 26th February 2021. Envelopes
will be collected today and are still available at the back of the church.
Please place them in the collection basket or put your offering through the
door of the presbytery at 41 Guildhall Street.
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LENT - Lent is a 40-day
fast — a reference to the time Jesus spent being tempted in the desert. It’s a
time when we can prepare our hearts for the remembrance of Christ’s death. Our
observance of Lent culminates in the solemn celebrations of Holy Week when on
Palm Sunday we follow Christ from his triumphant entrance into Jerusalem to the
foot of the Cross as sorrowful bystanders to His Passion, before rolling back
the stone of the empty tomb and the joy of the Resurrection. The six-week period,
excluding Sundays, is dedicated to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving in
preparation for this great celebration of Christ’s Paschal Mystery in the
Easter Triduum.
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STATIONS OF THE CROSS – during Lent our parish can follow the Stations
of the Cross - at 12 noon on Wednesday at St Joseph’s and at 12 noon on Friday
at Our Lady, help of Christians. A “station” is a place on a journey where one
makes a stop – and we follow Jesus along the path of sorrow – the Via Dolorosa - from Pilate’s Court to
the tomb, and we make a stop at fourteen places to be with Jesus on this way of
suffering. The Stations of the Cross is a devotion that can reach deep into our
hearts and prepares us to enter into the heart of the Paschal Mystery at
Easter.
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PRAYERS – please pray for Francis McSwiggan and Michael Lyons who are both unwell in the William Harvey Hospital and for Louisa Schetter, also in hospital at this time.
Please pray for the repose of the soul of Sr Bridget Milligan, who died on Thursday morning and will be remembered by many who went to the school. Arrangements are now being made with Mother Superior Sister Bernadette for her funeral and requiem mass.
Please also pray for the soul of Martha Bennett-Blowes, who recently died in Saltwood, where she had been residing for the past year. Martha was a parishioner of St Joseph’s for 60 years and is remembered by many for being fabulous, tough, brainy and witty.
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OFFETORY AND FINANCE – last week’s collection (excluding standing orders) was £437.53 and an additional £71.93 for the retiring collection for Poor Parishes.
THANK YOU to everyone who continues to send in their Mass donations, weekly collections and other very generous payments to the parish funds and who give to all our collections or boxes for the Poor, Holy Souls, Church Maintenance, Candles, Flowers, SVP, World Hunger or the Renovation Fund.
Despite immense cost cutting due to Covid, we are still continuing to operate at a deficit. In January, income was £6,054.10. This included ringfenced donations of £2,310 for the Renovation Fund, SPUC, the crib collection, Poor Box and other collections. The total offertory including standing orders was £3,269.90. Actual expenditure was £3,449.61 which included £1,176 on utility bills, £473 monthly insurance costs as well as general costs for PPE, candles, council tax, food, sundries and webcasting costs. Outstanding commitments not yet included are a total of £529 covering salaries of the Sacristan and Parish Secretary and £1,213.28, which is our monthly Assessments Charges payable to the Diocese for the Diocesan Development Fund, the Bishops Fund, Safeguarding, and Health and Safety. This meant an overall deficit for January 2021 (after excluding ringfenced donations) of £1,492.61.
We continue to pray for the end of Covid and
for the Parish to resume normal interaction very soon following the
announcement of the Government’s Roadmap out of Lockdown.
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OUR LADY & ST JOSEPH’S 100 CLUB – Congratulations to Carol Chittock, winner of the February draw with number 8.
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WINTER SHELTER UPDATE - We’d been
expecting to tell you that this week marks the end of the 3-month Winter
Shelter run by the Folkestone churches through the Rainbow Centre.
Last year the District Council secured a government grant to house
10 homeless guests in B&B accommodation from the start of December through
to the end of February…. with additional funding so that any guests without
longer-term accommodation at the end of February could continue in the B&B
until the end of March.
Because of lockdown, contact with guests by Rainbow Centre staff
and other agencies has had to be via ‘phone, making the job of securing
longer-term accommodation more difficult, coupled with the local shortage of
affordable accommodation.
Meantime, our Wednesday team of 12 volunteers (9 from our parish)
has been providing meals each Wednesday evening, our cooks cooking at home,
serving the food into takeaway-style containers and our drivers delivering the
meals to the B&Bs. Our volunteers have been magnificent, and the operation
has run very smoothly and at no cost so far because our cooks have refused to
claim the cost of the ingredients!
Now we’ve been asked to continue for another month until the end
of March and our volunteers – every one of them – have said they wish to carry
on! The Rainbow Centre staff continue to work with guests to ensure longer-term
accommodation, so we hope, as March progresses, that guest numbers diminish as
accommodation is found.
Please continue to hold our
guests and the Rainbow Centre staff in your prayers. And nothing would have
been possible without our volunteers and their commitment. Over the last 3
months they’ve just quietly got on with the job in hand and for that we thank
them. We also want to say a big THANK YOU to our Parish Wednesday team
co-ordinators, Liz Willis and John Philpott, because without them none of this
would have been possible in such difficult circumstances.
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FINAL CALL FOR FINANCE COUNCIL MEMBERS – The Finance Council is being reconvened and the next meeting will be in March via Zoom. Fr Alex is inviting all existing members of the Finance Council to reapply if they would like to remain on the body. In addition any parishioners who have financial qualifications, skills or simply good financial acumen, please apply via email to be a member of the finance Council to folkestone@rcaos.org.uk saying why you would like to be a member of this important committee in the life of our parish.
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OUR LADY AND ST JOSEPH’S RENOVATION APPEAL
UPDATE
Thank you to all who have donated to the Renovation Appeal. To date, we have received £9,418 in donations.
Work continues and so far we have unblocked and dug out drains, has a full structural assessment of the church and repaired the lower roof at St Joseph’s. Unfortunately, we have received worrying news from Andrew Gibson, our roofer, that the upper roof at St Joseph’s will probably be okay to be repaired for another year but that it is perilously looking like it will require completely replacing at a cost of up to fifty thousand pounds! We await the outcome of his findings and will report to Finance Council in due course.
At Our Lady, Help of Christians and St Aloysius, we
now have all the scaffolding in place and roof repairs have been carried out
and the lead repaired so that the ongoing leaks have now been resolved. Next
the guttering will be replaced around the whole church. The roof of the
sacristy was repaired a few months ago and the leaks stopped and the holes have
been filled and we have also put a new stable door on our Catholic Bookshop.
Last week we took delivery of the new disabled ramp which has a lesser incline
and handrails. This is a welcome addition to accessibility to the church.
Plans are still being made for repainting the inside of the church, cleaning and waxing the wood and installing a new lighting system.
All donations received will only be used for the
renovation and maintenance of Our Lady and St Joseph’s churches.
You can donate via cheque payable to “The Parish of
Our Lady and St Joseph, Folkestone” and placed in the Collection Basket at
Sunday Mass in an envelope marked ‘Renovation Appeal’ or posted through the
Parish Office door at the Presbytery at 41 Guildhall Street on any day or via
bank transfer to The Parish of Our Lady and St Joseph Folkestone, Sort Code
52-41-42 and Account Number 08605556.
Alternatively, you can use our Just
Giving page online, a link is on our parish website, which allows for payments
to be made by credit and debit card or by PayPal with no fees at
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/olsj-folkestone
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ATTENDANCE AT MASS – We continue to have Mass every day in our Parish and you are all very welcome to attend.
·
Covid-19 may be spread most easily in enclosed
spaces. We would ask that you respect social distancing at all times and wear a
mask that covers the nose and mouth.
·
Please leave the church as soon as possible after
Mass has finished.
·
Please do not sit next to, or mix, with anyone
outside of your household or support bubble.
· If you are in a vulnerable category, please think very carefully before coming to Mass. The Sunday obligation is still suspended.
All Masses held at Our Lady, Help of Christians are broadcast live at https://www.churchservices.tv/folkestone
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ASK YOUR MP TO
SUPPORT A NEW AMENDMENT TO HELP STOP FORCED ABORTION IN XINJIANG, CHINA
There is extensive evidence that many
women in the Uyghur Muslim community in Xinjiang, China are being subjected to
forced abortions.
As you may have heard, the Government prevented a vote in the House of Commons on an amendment tabled by Lord Alton that was designed to help with putting international pressure on the Chinese Communist Party to stop the practice of forcing abortions on the Uyghur Muslim community along with the wider human rights abuses that evidence shows is being perpetuated against this community.
Lord Alton is currently championing a new amendment to the Trade Bill, which enables a Committee of the House to make a referral to five judicial peers in the House of Lords for a proper legal analysis of any assessment of genocide.
The amendment passed in the Lords on Tuesday afternoon by 367 votes to 214, and is likely to be voted on in the Commons shortly. In response to this, we are asking you to contact your MP, asking them to vote for the amendment.
If you would like to email your MP asking them to support the amendment, you can do this easily using a tool which has been set up on the Genocide Response campaign website, which can be accessed by visiting the link:
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Lord our God, without you we are so
weak and our courage so limited.
Comfort those who mourn and gather
into your kingdom all who have died.
We make this prayer through Christ
our Lord, who died and rose to life,
who lives and reigns with you, for ever and ever.
Amen.
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FIRST HOLY COMMUNION ZOOM MEETING will be on Saturday 6th March at 9am. Details will be emailed out to participants.
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English Passionist priest on course to be declared a saint
Pope Francis has approved the heroic virtues of Ignatius of Saint Paul who will now have the title Venerable.
Servant of God Ignatius of Saint Paul, an English Passionist priest, was born George Spencer on 21 December 1799 in London, a son of the 2nd Earl Spencer.
He is a relative of Diana, Princess of Wales, as well as the great uncle of Second World War Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The Spencer family, mostly members of the Church of England, were the fifth wealthiest family in England at the time.
Father Spencer converted to Roman Catholicism in 1830, in Rome, at the age of 31, scandalising some in the Victorian society. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1832 and entered the Passionist Order in 1847.
On the death in 1849 of Blessed Dominic Barberi, Father Ignatius became Provincial of the Passionist Congregation in England and Belgium.
Father Ignatius spent much of his life working for the conversion of England to the Catholic faith. He was also known for his work with the poor, particularly Irish immigrants, and once said that he wished he could die like Jesus – “in a ditch, unseen and unknown.” He also had a life-long love of cricket.
He died in Carstairs, Scotland, on 1 October 1864,
and was buried alongside his predecessor Father Barberi in the Church of St
Anne and Blessed Dominic in St Helens, Merseyside.
Causes of Saints
The authorisation of this decree by Pope Francis was one of eight presented to him by the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints on Saturday 20 February 2021.
In order to be canonised and declared a saint, two miracles must be attributed to Ignatius of Saint Paul. The first will see him beatified and declared ‘Blessed’. A second miracle will pave the way to sainthood.
For now, we say: Venerable Ignatius of Saint Paul – Pray for us!
