Church Schedule

Masses

Private/Individual Prayer only

Wednesday: 10am - 12noon

Friday: 10am - 11am,
6pm - 6.45pm

Saturday: 10am - 11am

Sunday: 4.45pm - 5.45pm

​Monday & Tuesday:
9:15 am

Wednesday: 7:30 am, & 12 noon

Thursday: 9:15 am

Friday: 9:15 am & 6:30 pm (confirmation celebration)

Saturday: 9:15 am & 6 pm

Sunday: 9 am, 11 am (also livestreamed), 6 pm

Parish Message

12th July 2021

The Reality of Rejection

Fr Richard writes: Our readings this week once again speak of the painful experience of rejection. In our first reading the prophet Amos, living about 800 years before Christ, is virtually kicked out of the royal sanctuary at Bethel because the religious and political elite don't want to listen to his message calling for profound conversion. But Amos, one of the great "plain speakers" of the Old Testament, refuses to budge because , as he explains, it is God who has sent him.

Then in the Gospel, Jesus, who as we heard last week had just been rejected by his own townsfolk in Nazareth, prepares the disciples for more of the same as he gives them their final team talk before sending them out in pairs on their first mini mission. Like Amos, the disciples are also called to proclaim a message of repentance - not a message we like to hear, let alone do something about in our own lives!

At our baptism we are all anointed as "Priest, Prophet and King" in imitation of Christ himself. So that means that we too, in our mission as modern-day prophets, are called to communicate the radical message and values of the Gospel to others - with charity and clarity. But before we can begin to do that, we first need to let ourselves be challenged and changed by the Gospel.

This week our parish will feature in one of the lead articles of 'The Tablet' Catholic magazine. The article will present a selection of voices from our community first presented in the "Rooting our Racism from our Parish" booklet published earlier this year. The booklet, as you may remember, is the fruit of a long series of weekly Zoom meetings in which parishioners, following the killing of George Floyd last summer, opened up about their own experiences of racism, not only in society in general but also within the Church, including in our own parish. These testimonies make sobering reading and are an urgent call for us to reflect and act on what they reveal. These voices also speak of the pain of rejection - this time by fellow Catholics, both consciously and unconsciously. I am glad to say that we are making real progress on almost all the areas highlighted for change in the book. And, although the booklet is not comfortable reading, I am proud as the parish priest of this wonderful multicultural parish community, that we have had the maturity to open up this conversation amongst ourselves. So it is good that The Tablet's article and exposure will widen the debate and, hopefully, help other parish communities to have similar conversations.

Free copies of the booklet are still available at the back of the church or see the link below to a full electronic version. If anyone reading this would like to respond in any way to what you read, perhaps even with your own personal experiences of racism within the Church, please feel free to write to me here at the parish using this email address: whitecity@rcdow.org.uk

With blessings and prayers from Fr Richard, Fr Ephrem & the parish team.

God bless,

Fr Richard

ROOTING OUT RACISM OUT OF OUR PARISH:

Please click the link below to read the whole booklet:-

https://bit.ly/3r56ShF

“Never be afraid of loving the Blessed Virgin too much. You can never love her more than Jesus did.”