Dear friends,
We look forward very much to welcoming you to Mass this coming weekend: Saturday’s Vigil Mass is at 6pm, and Sunday’s Parish Mass at 10.30am. Please bring to these Masses any final donations for Harrow StreetPastors: our external giving in August will be in support of Caritas Bakhita House – about which more in next week’s mailing.
There will be three special outings in August (including one from Kingsbury!), as well as welcoming a visiting choir to sing Mass at St Mary’s on Thursday, 29 August at 6pm (see the attached poster). This Mass will be followed by light refreshments: might any budding bakers among the congregation be prepared to contribute a cake? On Sunday, 11 August at 6pm we will journey once again to All Saints, Margaret Street for their Assumptiontide Solemn Evensong, Benediction and Procession of Our Lady along Oxford Street. Posters for this, and for the St Andrew, Kingsbury coach trip to Bournemouth, on Saturday, 17 August, are attached: please see Cynthia for one of ten tickets for the coach (£25 adults/ £15 under-18s). Please add your name to the list in church to come to Margaret Street, as also for the Walsingham Pilgrimage for Healing and Renewal on Bank Holiday Monday, 26 August – tickets from Fr Richard (£20/ £5) – as well as for a trip to St John, Kensal Green on Sunday, 8 September, for Evensong and a barbecue, beginning at 5pm.
Please see Pat to sign up to bring a dish to a bring-and-share parish lunch after Mass on Sunday, 1 September – to welcome our new pastoral assistant, Ryan Davey: please also see the list in church to provide him and his new housemates with a welcome pack of household essentials.
Next week we celebrate a rich selection of saints: on Monday 29, the Church commemorates Sts Mary, Martha and Lazarus: St Martha’s warm hospitality and instant recourse to Jesus in the face of bereavement led Our Lord to declare, ‘I am the resurrection and the life‘. May we, amidst life’s trials and tribulations, turn always with confidence to Jesus – and may we welcome him into our hearts with the same readiness as we welcome the stranger and the guest into our homes and into our Christian fellowship.
Such trust and generosity are also evident in this Sunday’s Gospel, which tells of the feeding of the five thousand: the boy with the barley loaves gives to Jesus from the little which he has – and his confidence in Christ and self-forgetfulness are rewarded in the miraculous multiplication of this meal. This story is also a symbol of the Eucharist, in which Jesus gives to us the bread of his Body, to satisfy the hunger of the soul. We come to Mass to receive this spiritual nourishment, and to be schooled afresh in generosity and trust.
May the Lord be close to all you who call upon Him, and to all who call upon Him from their hearts,
Fr Richard