Easter message from Fr John

Dear Friends

Happy Easter with much joy and many blessings

I’m sorry that our zoomed Mass collapsed - I don’t know what happened but suspect the whole country was using the internet. I’ll try another route this morning - someone has suggested I try a ‘hot spot’!

It will be a very different kind of feast for all of us. I will miss you; I feel our packed churches are usually a testimony to our family spirit - more so than Christmas because there’s not the razzmatazz which can be distracting. We are there purely for our faith, purely for that deep and abiding sense that Jesus is alive here and now - alive for each of us and all of us.
Any sense of woundedness, weakness, sadness and of our joys, hopes and expectations is put into a clear perspective - everything is brought to life and to light in the Risen Jesus.
I will miss our Easter hymns always sung with great gusto, I will miss the trumpet at St Edmund‘s, the gentleness of Lancashire Martyrs, the quiet prayerfulness at Christ the King - and so many smiling faces among our younger members possibly fuelled by the thought of chocolate. I will miss you.

I will spend sometime this afternoon going through all the lists of names of people in the parish accumulated for various surveys and programmes. I will try to put faces to names and, as I do so, give thanks to God praying for you and your families. What a blessing we share.

I know this feast is usually a time for families to get together - often sharing the Paschal lamb. It’s not to be like that this year but, thanks to the wonders of technology (when it works) we can share in different ways. I know it matters so especially to grandparents.

We pray for all those who are caring for the sick and dying - and caring for us in any way. We pray for all those who are sick remembering Patricia, Evelyn, Steve, Winnie, Mary, Patrick, Michael - and for Roy, Alf, Malcolm, Mary, Matthew, Anne, Stella, Edward, Chris, Marcia and Emily who have died, and for all those who mourn them.

We will meet at 11.00am for Mass and I will be there for Exposition at 5.00pm.

Dear St Joseph, pray for us

Every blessing

Fr John

PS on a very different note can we have a survey?
Which is the best comfort food - malt loaf or Chorley cake?