DEAR FRIENDS IN CHRIST,
At this very difficult time throughout the world, when people are worrying and anxious about Coronavirus, in conjuction with the Medical Health Officer & The Bishop’s Conference of England & Wales, The Catholic Church has made the decision to cease all public masses & services. This includes Daily & Sunday Masses, Baptisms, Weddings, Confessions, Funerals, etc. There will be no congregating together as Community. This is totally unprecedented; we have never known anything quite like this before, but we must continue to trust in the Lord Jesus, and pray daily that Almighty God will be with each one of us and our families.
ST EDMUND’S CHURCH
I will be praying Morning Prayer each day at 8.30am offering the Intentions for our whole Parish Community.
I will then celebrate Holy Mass on my own at 9.00am behind closed doors.
I will pray Evening Prayer at 6.00pm once again behind closed doors.
HOLY WEEK & EASTER
If we are able to set up a Livestream we will broadcast all of the Triuduum & Easter Services. Hopefully this will be a way of keeping in touch. I’ll let you know details when I have them.
The name Satan means ‘adversary’. In the book of Job, we are given a vivid picture of Satan in God’s heavenly court, along with all the other angels, where he has the role of accuser or prosecutor. The Scriptures identify Satan as the serpent in the Garden of Eden who tempted Adam and Eve and, therefore, as the origin of sin and temptation. What the Scriptures and tradition make known is than humankind has a mortal enemy who, although a finite being created by God, is in a desperate struggle to overthrow God’s reign, usurp his Lordship and lead his creation into darkness and death. On Easter Sunday each of us will recite our baptismal promises and in doing so renew them. Bear this in mind as we move through lent because, as you will be aware, a renewal of our baptismal promises involves us actively, freely and voluntarily rejecting Satan.
Lent is also a time for us to discover anew and afresh the gospel, the Good News which Jesus began to proclaim immediately after his time of testing. What is the Good News? The Good News is a message in two parts; the first part is to repent, and the second part is to believe in the gospel. We walk together on this road marked out for us by the church and take up our call to stand firm and resist the devil, knowing that he will flee, and embracing freely and with love the gospel, which is Christ with us and in us, the hope of salvation.
That perfection includes loving not only your friends but also your enemies. We are called to radical commitment to the Good News, which involves more generous, more prayerful and more willing to set aside our own needs for the good of others. But loving our enemies? This sounds like and impossible goal – we often struggle to be in the same room as them! Jesus is trying to help us to see the world a little more as God sees it. For God, there is goodness within each person; every person you meet is created in the image and likeness of God. Our task is to make room for everyone. Firstly, because that is how God is, but secondly because we do not want to be in bondage to our resentment and thus fail to grow in our own relationship with the Lord of love. Our efforts will demand much more of us spiritually and even emotionally but will pay dividends in a new kind of interior freedom.
Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist, her voice shaking with anger, told world leaders at the UN in New York, ‘You have stolen my childhood with your empty words. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is the money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth – how dare you.’ Many things make us angry, and some anger is right, fit and proper. Sometimes we know we are wrong to be angry; much more often we think we are right. We think the fault lies with others – they have made us angry. Or else certain situations provoke us to anger – and because these are bad situations, we feel that we have the right to express our anger. Jesus teaches with extraordinary clarity that ‘everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgement; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says: “You fool!” shall be liable to the hell of fire.’
There were, of course, occasions when Jesus himself knew righteous anger and expressed it – but his anger never led him to sin. When he was betrayed, insulted, ridiculed, tortured and crucified, he had full right to feel angry. However, Jesus let go of his feelings of anger and forgave his oppressors: ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. Jesus shows us a new way of living. As his disciples we must emulate him. Whenever we are angry, we must acknowledge our anger and then let it go by calling on the Lord’s grace. Christ’s Spirit will give us the power to fulfil his commandment to live as he did. 
‘Oh, they are salt of the earth,’ we often say when we are referring to a person who is straightforward, honest and without guile. Another common saying in the same vein is ‘what you see is what you get’. In today’s reading, Jesus’ description of his disciples as ‘the salt of the earth’ would have struck a chord and meant something very specific to his listeners.
Those who heard Jesus speak would have understood the meaning and tradition behind the idea of being ‘salt of the earth’. In the same way as salt prevents decay and corruption, so the witness of Spirit-led Christians protects society from decay and corruption. It also adds much needed flavour to society. And, drawing on the idea that too much salt in our food can make us thirsty. St. Augustine once wrote: ‘O Heavenly Father, you have put salt into our mouths that we may thirst for you.’ The work of the Holy Spirit id to create within us a thirst for the things of God: for union with God, communion with him and for grace to live a life which is holy and pleasing to him. When Jesus said ‘I thirst’ from the cross, his thirst wasn’t just physical, it was spiritual – God thirsts that we come into his presence as we long to come into him.
The great feast of the Epiphany marks the manifestation of Jesus as Messiah of Israel and Saviour of the world. The Magi, the three kings or wise men whom tradition has named Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, come to worship and adore, thus representing the acceptance of the ‘Good News’ by the pagan nations.
On this most holy feast-day we can re-cover and re-discover a sense of our own mission to make Christ known, not only to the nations but to those we live and work among. If we ask him, the Holy Spirit will imbue us with a new confidence to witness to Christ. Whatever is good, whatever is pure, whatever is beautiful and whatever is true in other cultures and natures is of Christ and in Christ. The message of Christ won over the Magi and it will win over pagan nations and those who resist the gospel – not by force or power but by the grace of the Holy Spirit, who reveals and convinces that there is only one King for all the nations, and that is Christ Jesus our Lord. 
During this holy season of Advent, we turn to the great witnesses of faith: to St. John the Baptist, to Abraham, our father in faith, who believed against hope, to Mary our Mother who often walked her pilgrimage in the night of faith, and many others.