A message from Fr John

Dear Friends

God morning - it’s getting cooler for sure

Today is the feast day of St Augustine who along with St Thomas Aquinas are the greatest of the theologians of the western Church. Neither of them are easy to understand and they are made even more complex by those who try to interpret them. It is said that the best way of understanding St Thomas is through his beautiful hymns that are so beloved of congregations especially ‘Tantum Ergo’ and ‘O Godhead hid’.

To understand St Augustine again is probably best summed up as ‘we find the truth of God in the truth of ourselves’ I would like to quote a passage from his Confessions which detail his own search for God and God’s search for him. It is one of the most profound passages in all of the writings of the Fathers of the Church.

‘Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you! For behold you were within me, and I outside; and I sought you outside and in my ugliness fell upon those lovely things that you have made. You were with me and I was not with you. I was kept from you by those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all.
You called and cried to me and broke open my deafness: and you sent forth your beams and shone upon me and chased away my my blindness: you breathed fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do now pant for you: I tasted you, and now hunger and thirst for you: you touched me, and I have burned for your peace.’

Truly the Lord is with us!

After that, the fishing can wait for another day.

Please pray for Bernadette Morris whose ages we will inter later today

Mass is at 5.00pm this evening

St Joseph, pray for us

Every blessing

Fr John