On a liturgical note

On the 22nd day of February, we keep Ash Wednesday and the beginning of our Lenten preparation for the great feasts of Easter.

We say feasts of Easter because, just like Christmas, after we have spent so much time preparing (40 days), Easter is not just a one-day celebration but rather it sets off a ‘chain reaction’. Resurrection leads to Ascension and to the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost … and then the time of Pentecost in which we are living, the time of the Holy Spirit who leads us to the complete truth of who Jesus is and who teaches us, in turn, how to ‘translate’ that truth into our own way of living.

No sooner were the Christmas puddings removed from the shelves than the Easter eggs appeared – and so the society around us (or at least the shopping aspect of it!) moved on relentlessly to ‘the next big thing’. However, as we said about Advent so too with Lent: slow down, pace yourself and let the season shape you rather than the other way around!

Sunday thoughts

I had been ordained a number of years and was at the bedside of a dying parishioner. We were saying the rosary. It suddenly hit me that I had been saying the Hail Mary over and over again since childhood. But it was only at that moment I understood the full impact of the words ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death’.

I was reminded of this when seeking out the Church’s teaching on assisted suicide. The people of the Isle of Man are being consulted on the possible introduction of a bill legalising ‘assisted dying’. This would place the island in a more liberal position than the United Kingdom. One fear is that, if such legislation were successful, the island might become the first choice for UK residents seeking assisted suicide.

I was surprised to find that it is already legal in so many countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, parts of the United States and all six states of Australia.

It is interesting to see how current practice in those countries has developed in spite of the safeguarding clauses in their original legislation. In one Canadian province where assisted dying has been legal for more than 15 years,

Canon Philip Gillespie

One very practical way of letting this happen is to take the liturgy of each day of Lent as our material for reading and reflecting. If you have a daily missal then use that; alternately, some of you may have a publication such as Magnificat or even prefer to use an app on your computer or mobile phone to access the liturgy. However you do it, we should try to allow the Liturgy of the Church to enrich our days.

The prayers, reflections and Scripture readings which go to make up the liturgy are the distillation of centuries of prayed experience so we can readily rely on it as a sure guide for our own praying in this Year of Our Lord 2023 and the deepening of our closeness to the God who wishes to be so close to us.

pure heart create for me, O God

Put a steadfast spirit within me’ (Psalm 50, used at the Ash Wednesday Mass)

Revealing God’s love and grace

Norah was an elderly woman that I met when I was a deacon.

In her late seventies, she was the sort of woman who could easily fade into the background. She was, seemingly, insignificant. I met her most days at Mass but apart from a beaming smile and a quick hello, I didn’t get to know her at all. So I decided to visit her and find out a little about her life

Like many people in Vauxhall, she had been born in the area and lived within a square mile all her life. She and her family lived in one of Liverpool’s famous courts and she used to beg in Scotland Road’s markets. Eventually the courts were demolished and Norah moved into a tenement block with her parents. The tenements were eventually demolished and Norah, by herself now, was rehoused in the flat that I was sitting in. She seemed to have very few needs and was content in her life. She filled her day by ‘helping out’, she said.

Mgr John Devine OBE

10 per cent of registered deaths are now by assisted suicide. In the Netherlands, doctors are obliged to include assisted suicide when discussing treatment options for a patient diagnosed with cancer. In another jurisdiction more than 50 per cent of those opting for assisted dying cite their desire to no longer be a burden on their families.

In the UK, pictures of ambulance queues and patients on trolleys in A&E might lead some to ask why those ‘blocking’ hospital beds should not be encouraged to consider assisted dying as an alternative. It would solve the funding crisis in the NHS – one more example of the ‘slippery slope’ argument. Speaking in February 2022, Pope Francis said that the dying need palliative care, not euthanasia or assisted suicide. He praised palliative care aimed at helping terminally-ill patients live as comfortably and humanely as possible: ‘We must accompany people towards death, but not provoke death or facilitate assisted suicide.’

He commended Saint Joseph as the ‘patron saint of the good death’ and reminded his listeners that, in the Hail Mary, Catholics ask the Virgin Mary to be close ‘at the hour of our death’.

As I got more used to the area, I began to visit several community projects, food banks, nurseries, credit unions, pensioners’ clubs and wherever I went, I met Norah. These were the ‘few things’ that Norah ‘helped out’ at.

I discovered she was one of the main people behind the credit union. She had founded the mother and toddler group and the pensioners’ group. In her quiet, deprecating way she had not really wanted me to know what she did in case I thought she was blowing her own trumpet.

One day I was in the mother and toddler group and Norah was on the floor with a couple of babies crawling over her. I sat down next to one of the mums who was at pains to tell me that she didn’t really believe in God. Then her eyes filled up and she nodded at Norah and said to me: ‘But if I did, I’d find God in that woman.’

You see, the face of God can be found in the most ordinary of people. These people may well have had an ignominious start in life. They may well have nothing much to show for their years on Earth other than – and this is everything – a depth of compassion and love which has its roots in God. Our lives, if we want them to, can be a revelation of the mystery of Christ and the love He pours out on the world. We are called to serve and in serving to reveal the face of God. Let’s pray for the courage to get involved in the world and be channels of God’s love and grace.

Father Chris Thomas