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Holy habits, daily prayer & scripture.  

As we enter Holy Week our Lent Course – Holy Habits – focuses on daily prayer and scripture. Perhaps the most difficult habit we have discussed to date.

Each habit we’ve talked about so far has an external prompt that helps us to focus on God. Our physical posture in the liturgy is driven by the liturgy itself and the action of others around us. The practice of Pilgrimage contains an element of adventure that helps us along and gratitude is the reaction of God’s work around us. 

But the daily reading of scripture and our daily prayers require something far harder to prompt us into doing them.

Discipline. 

There are very few external prompts to open our bible or say our prayers. 

As Priests I think we’re fortunate to be required to say our offices each day – and are often prompted to do so by the public services we offer and the calling of the church bell at various times of day.

But if you’re not publicly accountable to carry out these tasks what keeps you focused on them?

Discipline. 

The only way to start to read more scripture and to pray with regularity is to simply do it – and the more you do it – the more it will become a habit. 

The more of a habit it becomes the easier it will get and the easier it gets the more scripture and the Holy Spirit will be able to work within you. 

As we end Lent and move into Holy Week dig out your bibles and place them next to your bed. Pray when you wake, read scripture before you sleep. 

Wake with God on your lips and sleep with Him in your heart.

Fr. Matthew

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As we start Holy Week together there are lots of changes to the usual schedule. Please do have a read and make sure you make time to come to the various important elements of Holy Week (not least Confession!)

Edmund will be the boat boy at the Chrism Mass with +Jonathan on Tuesday. You’re all warmly invited to attend this special service. 

Flowers – we really need some volunteers to make the altar of repose for the watch on Thursday night in the Lady Chapel and to dress the nave altar for the Vigil Mass on Saturday evening. I’d really appreciate any offers of help for this – or goodness knows what you’ll get if I do it! 

There is a Walk of Witness on Good Friday with our brothers and sisters in neighbouring parishes – we meet at 11am outside the Roman Catholic church in Botwell. 

Thank you to everyone (especially our online congregation) for the very generous donation of food and money to buy food for the foodbank over the last week. We’re back up to full strength and stand ready to help where we can. 

Holy habits, gratitude.  

It is very easy to fall into the habit of being cross with the world. Of being cynical. Of not seeing what God puts in front of you each and every day.

The Christian practice of gratitude is something that has existed in our relationship with God right back to our earliest covenants. 

Our offering of thanksgiving and praise has been at the heart of our relationship with God right the way back to Abraham and the earliest Israelites. 

We still see it today in our liturgy – our Eucharist always starts with a greeting ‘the Lord be with you’ and with a declaration of praise and thanks:

‘Let us give thanks to the Lord’.

The Priest continues,

‘It is right to give thanks and praise always and everywhere’.

This is not something that is reserved to the altar – it is something that we all do ‘always and everywhere’. 

Or rather – should do. It’s one of the easiest things to forget however and very quickly we fall into the trap of the world around us by being cynical and closed to the gifts of God.

To start practicing gratitude is to be open to those gifts and opportunities in front of you. To be able to discern those gifts enables you to make best use of them.

Start your day by crossing yourself and saying the Our Father, then thank God for the gift of another day here on earth, another day to share His love in the world, another day to care for those in need, another day to love your friends and family.

Thank you God for our family at St. Anselm, the friendships, the support and the love.

Fr. Matthew

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Our Lent Course – Holy Habits – continues on Thursday (7th). This week you’ll be hearing about the Holy Habit of Daily Prayer & Scripture from Fr. Sam. You can take part in person on Thursday mornings after mass or online on Thursday evenings at 7:30pm. More details on the website – stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/lent

Lent is a very good time to make your first confession. If you’ve not come to confession before, or if you’re worried about how it works please speak to Fr. Matthew. 

Please note there are several changes to the office and mass times this week to reflect the start of the Easter holidays. 

We are very short of tinned meat, soup & tinned vegetables for the foodbank and I’d really appreciate any donations you can bring this Sunday. 

It’s Palm Sunday next week, the start of Holy Week and our journey towards Easter Sunday. Please make an extra effort to be in church and receive your palm cross. 

Holy habits, pilgrimage.  

It may seem odd to think of pilgrimage as a Holy Habit. It’s very unlike the things we talked about last week – small, gentle, prods that encourage us to think about Jesus in our day to day lives.

But… over the years I’ve found regular pilgrimage to be a life giving source of understanding and questioning on my journey with Christ.

I tend to go on pilgrimage with my dear brother Fr. Sam Cross – who we heard from in this week’s lent course (which you can watch again on our website if you missed it). 

We have been all over the world together and in those travels have been consistently surprised at how the holy spirit seeks us out and shows us something new in our relationship with Christ.

The act of pilgrimage is one of body, mind, and soul. It is a deliberate act – to take yourself out of your current surrounds and life and to open your ears to what God may be saying to you.

Pilgrimage is as much an act of mental travel as it is physical, and so if you’re unable to travel you can still go on pilgrimage – in your mind. 

Take your soul out of the every day. Take your mind away from the worries of the day, of the week, of the year; and let them hear afresh the voice of God in your life. 

We’ll be travelling to Walsingham on pilgrimage later this year, if you’re interested in helping organise it do let me know.

Fr. Matthew

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This Sunday is Mothering Sunday. A day where we traditionally travel home to our families and visit our Mother Church, the church in which we were baptised. We can’t all do that and so we celebrate our homes – and at the heart of our homes are our mothers. So come this Sunday and celebrate, pray for, give thanks and perhaps even lament our Mothers and the women of our lives who make us who we are.

Our Lent Course – Holy Habits – continues on Thursday (31st). This week you’ll be hearing about the Holy Habit of Gratitude. You can take part in person on Thursday mornings after mass (with a lent lunch served afterwards) or online on Thursday evenings at 7:30pm. More details on the website – stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/lent

Lent is a very good time to make your first confession. If you’ve not come to confession before, or if you’re worried about how it works and what it is for – please speak to
Fr. Matthew. 

Please note changes to the office and mass times on Monday and Tuesday.

Holy habits, crossing ourselves.  

This week in our Lent Course – Holy Habits – we discussed those small things that point us in the direction of God as we come into church.

One of those things was crossing ourselves. Why do we do it? Why is it important?

It’s actually one of the very oldest physical actions we have any record of within the christian church. It first appears in writings around 200AD but was clearly in use long before. 

The action recorded at that time is much as we see at the reading of the Gospel when we cross our forehead, our mouths and our hearts.

In the earliest days it was a simple cross on the forehead before any task that you were seeking God’s blessing on. That developed into a cross over your mouth and heart, and over time that became one large cross – starting at your head and ending over your heart.

We do this to ask God to bless us or the task ahead of us. 

Think about how you use it in church – when you enter (bless me), when we start the service (bless us), when you are sent out into the world by the Priest and he makes the sign of the cross over you (bless you all for the work of the Gospel in the world). 

So be a blessing in the world and cross yourself often, and explain to people why you do it. 

Cross yourself when you walk past the church, when you start work, when you wake and when you fall asleep. Give it a try this Lent and see how blessed you feel!

Fr. Matthew

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This Sunday we welcome a new family into our fold. We met them last week when they first joined us and on Sunday we will be baptising their beautiful baby girl Maya. Please do come and offer your support and love as we gather them into the love of Jesus’ family. 

Our Lent Course – Holy Habits – continues on Thursday (24th). This week you’ll be hearing about Pilgrimage from Fr. Sam Cross. You can take part in person on Thursday mornings after mass (with a lent lunch served afterwards, this week it’s vegetable soup) or online on Thursday evenings at 7:30pm. More details on the website – stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/lent

Lent is a very good time to make your first confession. If you’ve not come to confession before, or if you’re worried about how it works and what it is for – please speak to Fr. Matthew. 

Please note changes to office times on Wednesday and Thursday.

Hearing God as we rest.  

There is a statue and a devotion of
St. Joseph that is said to be one of Pope Francis’ favourites. It’s one of mine as well. 

It’s the sleeping form of St. Joseph.

When I was growing up I was used to seeing St. Joseph working hard in his carpentry shop, lifting, cutting and shaping wood. This hard working man was the good family man who did the right thing when asked by God.

What I had missed in my youth was that each time God comes to St. Jospeh he does so in his sleep. 

No great announcement from an angel like Mary or the Shepard’s, no burning bush as for Moses – no great fanfare – just a very simple and quiet instruction in those calm moments of sleep.  

He comes to St. Joseph four times – all in Matthew. 

First God instructs him to stay with Mary, then to leave Bethlehem and flee to Egypt, then to come home when it is safe and finally to head to Galilee rather than Judea on his return. 

St. Jospeh listen each time with a quiet resolve to do what God has instructed him.

Do we listen to God in our times of rest? Do we hear that small voice in those small hours?  

Fr. Matthew

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A big thank you to the foodbank volunteers who rolled up their sleeves and gave the church a good clean this week.

Thank you also to Fr. Angus and to Susan for their sterling work and prayers this week. 

Our Lent Course – Holy Habits – will start this Thursday (17th). You can take part in person on Thursday mornings after mass (with a lent lunch served afterwards) or online on Thursday evenings at 7:30pm. More details on the website – stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/lent

Lent is a very good time to make your first confession. If you’ve not come to confession before, or if you’re worried about how it works and what it is for – please speak to Fr. Matthew. 

Repent, and believe in the Gospel.  

This week I collected your palm crosses and burnt them to make the ash for Ash Wednesday. 

There were only a few in the collection basket in church, and it’s something I notice each year. 

We are reticent to give up those beautiful palm crosses that we took home from church last Palm Sunday. 

They adorn our halls, our studies, our offices, our bedrooms, and we become used to their reassuring presence. 

Each time we walk past them we feel safe and soothed. 

This is a wonderful and good thing.

But, they are transitory. They are given to us so that we may return them. 

We must pick up our crosses and bring them to church so that they may be burnt and may act as a sign of our sin. 

They must be burnt so that we can start Lent with our focus on the cross of our our own sins. 

It is uncomfortable. We don’t want to remove them from our homes. They are OURS. 

Sin is much the same. It is hard to put down, it is hard to put away, it is OURS and if we’re not careful we start to hold onto sin in much the same way as we hold onto our palm crosses. 

But sin must be put down, it must be put away. 

Don’t keep it at home, bring it to church. Lay it down at the altar, lay it down in confession, lay it down in prayer, that it may be taken from you, that you may be forgiven, that you may know the full and awesome mercy and love of OUR God. 

Fr. Matthew

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Thank you to all who helped with the concert last Saturday – we raised over £500 for the good works of the church.

Our Lent Course – Holy Habits – will start on March 17th. You can take part in person on Thursday mornings after mass (with a lent lunch served afterwards) or online on Thursday evenings at 7:30pm. More details on the website – stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/lent

Lent is a very good time to make your first confession. If you’ve not come to confession before, or if you’re worried about how it works and what it is for – please speak to Fr. Matthew. 

This week we’ve had the final go ahead to advertise and employ a Mission Priest for Hayes. It’s very exciting news. We’ll be advertising the role after Easter, interviewing in June and we hope to have the new Priest in post by September. If there is something you feel this new role should focus on, do speak to Fr. Matthew.

Shrove Tuesday, why must we be shriven?  

We start lent by being shriven of our sins. It is a moment of weakness and as St. Paul tells us, ‘..when I am weak, then I am strong’. (2 Cor’ 12:10)

In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, our fragility gives us strength. Our willingness to expose our ugly sins to Christ, renews us.

Reconciliation is the sacrament of love and of mercy, it is a moment to die to sin and to our own desires that we may know Christ better, that we may be more open to what He calls us to in this world. 

I know that it can be hard to come to confession – especially if you have never been before. 

But we are not called to the easy things, we are not called to get caught up in our own feelings, we are called to trust in God and in His infinite mercy and love.

I understand that some of you may find it difficult to come to me and express your sins – but please do know and be assured that the seal of the confession is absolute. You will find your parish priest in jail long before I would ever break the seal – to anyone for any reason. 

I hope this reassurance will encourage more of you to come to confession this Tuesday (Shrove Tuesday) and to start lent as you mean to go on. 

Fr. Matthew 

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A Welsh Celebration Concert on Saturday night will really be a great last blast before Lent – tickets will be available on the door for £5.

Our Lent Course – Holy Habits – will start on March 17th. More details on the website – stanselm.matthewcashmore.com/lent

On Ash Wednesday there will be two opportunities to come to Mass – please make a special effort to get to one of them. 

On Shrove Tuesday I will be hearing lent confessions, please book a time or just come to Evening Prayer. 

We’ll be renewing the Prayer list with a new list for next Sunday. If you would like to remain on the list, or if there is someone you would like to add please speak to Susan.