Dear Friends in Christ,
On the 5th October 1938, a young religious by the name of Sister Faustina (Helen Kowalska) died in a convent of the Congregation of Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Krakow, Poland. Having been born into a very poor farming family, Sister Faustina received only basic education, and so, on entering the convent, she was assigned the most humble and lowly tasks, usually in the kitchen or the vegetable garden.
On the 22nd February 1931, however, she began to experience visions of Christ in prayer. She wrote of her first vision in a diary: ‘In the evening, when I was in my cell, I became aware of the Lord Jesus clothed in a white garment. 
One hand was raised in blessing; the other was touching the garment at the breast. From the opening of the garment at the breast there came two large rays, one red and the other pale. In silence I gazed intently at the Lord; my soul was overwhelmed with fear, but also with great joy. After a while Jesus said to me, “paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the inscription: ‘Jesus, I trust in you.’”
In another vision Jesus explained the image to her: ‘The pale ray stands for the water which makes souls righteous; the red stands for the blood which is the life of souls. These two rays issue forth for the depths of my tender mercy at that time when my agonising heart was opened by a lance on the cross…fortunate is the one who will dwell in their shelter, for the just hand of God shall not lay hold of him.’ Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, and through the intercession of St. Faustina we ask for th grace to plumb the depths of God’s mercy and love.
Pope Francis has made God’s mercy almost a motif of his pontificate. He has transformed the noun ‘mercy’ into a verb, explaining that by receiving God’s love, we are ‘mercyed’, and in showing God’s mercy to others, we mercy. ‘Mercy’, then, is our watchword. Are we merciful as our Father in heaven is merciful?
The following words from Pope Benedict provide us with food for thought: ‘We could regard the resurrection as something akin to a radical evolutionary leap, in which a new dimension of life emerges, a new dimension of human existence. Indeed, matter itself is remoulded into a new type of reality. The man Jesus, complete with his body, now belongs totally to the sphere of the divine and eternal.’ In Jesus of Nazareth, God-made-man, the God-man, a new humanity was revealed, a new creation. This message turned the world of the first century upside down, and it can do so again in the twenty-first century if we will take courage and proclaim it. 
We retrace the final days of Jesus’ journey that will lead to Calvery and Resurrection on Easter Day! It is a personal journey of faith also. I encourage all of our parish community to enter into the full spirit of this Holy & Most Sacred Week. It can be a real moment of grace for you and your families. This weeks’s Newsletter lays out clearly all the ceremonies and masses to help us enter into this incredible drama of Salvation history. (Also on the website & Facebook) The ultimate sacrifce that Our Lord made on Good Friday was for our Salvation, to free us from the slavery of sin, and allow us to enter into the new life of grace!
I make an impassioned plea to all of you to share in the Sacred Triduum: Holy Thursday & the Mass of the Lord’s Supper; The Good Friday Passion of Our Lord, and the Easter Vigil. This is one continuous celebration with three different facets to it. Obviously the high point is the celebration of the Easter Vgil commencing at 7.30pm on 31
Please make every effort to enter into the spirit of this Holy Week, attend the Masses and Services organised here at St. Edmund’s. This is a truly wonderful time for parents to teach children about these most sacred events in Our Lord’s life; bring your children with you and let them experience these most wonderful events of our Salvation.
Bishop Alan will visit St. John Fisher School for an Assembly with the children. The Mass of Confirmation will take place at 7.00pm where 40 of our young people will receive the Sacrament. This is truly a momentous occasion in their lives of faith, and it has been a great joy to have helped them over the past several months prepare for this great day.
On behalf of the Candidates for the Sacrament of Confirmation, I would like to thank our six guest speakers over the past several months. They have certainly given a great insight into the importance and the sacredness of the Sacrament of Confirmation. Also I would like to thank our Catechists, who untiringly turn up to help our young people; To Mark Anthony, the Director of the Programme, Shirley Rooney, Andrew Burrowes, Ferdi Tisi, Mark Poulter, Ian Kendal, Ian McLay, & Aidan Potter. The wonderful input and example of these Catechists is truly inspiring for our young people and, for the whole parish community. Thank you!
It is remarkable, isn’t it, that an instrument of torture and execution, on a hill outside the city of Jerusalem, should become the world’s greatest symbol of self-sacrificing love? For John, Jesus was born to die: this was his destiny.
One way we can know the power of the Cross in our own experience is by examining what it is to boast of. We tend to boast of the external: in power, position, possessions and so on. Paul, however, taught that we should boast of the cross. He said: ‘far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world’. In other words, he praised and thanked God for Jesus’ cross; he glorified in the cross and rejoiced in it. We can be expectant that, as we glory in the cross, we will experience its power to transform our lives. 
It marks the mid-way point of our Holy Lenten Season. This gives us all a wonderful opportunity to review our Lenten resolutions. If we have been remiss in our resolve to renew and improve our lives of faith, it’s still not too late to make an extra special effort over the next few weeks of Lent. Obviously, this is a very personal journey that we make during this Lenten season. There is no one looking over our shoulder telling us what we should, or shouldn’t do. But personal self-discipline is very much at the heart of this Holy Season. Our Prayer, our fasting, our works of charity, our personal penance, all of these areas certainly help us on our spiritual journey to the Joy of Resurrection faith on Easter Day. To look forward in Rejoicing in the Lord Jesus is at the heart of our Liturgy today. Let us all really look forward to the remaining weeks of Lent as we anticipate the Joy of Easter!
Our First Holy Communion children on Sunday will participate in the celebration of Holy Mass. As part of their preparation for the Holy Eucharist the children have been systematically learning about each part of the Mass, this is their opportunity to participate in a tangible way by reading at mass, praying the prayers of Intercession, joining in the Offertory Procession. My sincere thanks to our Catechist Kathryn Poulter, and her great team of helpers who are doing the most wonderful job in preparing the children for the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Holy Eucharist.
Let us make an extra special effort today to do something special for our mothers. For all those whose mothers are no longer with us, but are with God in heaven, we ask them to continue to pray for us, and we remember them with great love and respect, and think of all the wonderful things they were able to teach and share with us.
to a highly symbolic story from the Old Testament. When Edom denied God’s people permission to pass through his land on the way back to Canaan, the Promised Land, and God instructed Moses not to fight him. The Israelites were far from being impressed at being forced to undertake a long and arduous journey going in the opposite direction to their destination and grumbled bitterly. As punishment for their rebellion God sent venomous serpents among them and many died. Repenting of their rebellious hearts, they begged Moses to help them. In response to his prayer, God told him to make a bronze serpent and raise it high on a pole, promising that if those who had been bitten looked up at the serpent raised on the pole, they would live. This incident was a prophetic reference to the cross of Jesus Christ. In the same way that Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so the Son of Man was lifted up on the cross, and everyone who believes in him will live. 
The 
As we are now well into our Holy Lenten Season, it’s important for each one of us to evaluate how we think our Lent is unfolding! The three disciplines of Lent, as we heard on Ash Wednesday – Prayer, Fasting & Almsgiving (Charity), are at the heart of this holy season. Have we put time aside each day for personal prayer, deepening our relationship with the Lord Jesus? Do we really enter into the spirit of the Mass when we attend each Sunday? Have we made an extra special effort to attend an extra mass each week, or pray the rosary, or attend Stations of the Cross? Have we really exercised restraint with food and drink, and have we fasted on Fridays? Are we conscious of those who are less fortunate than ourselves, especially during this very cold weather? Do we contribute to the Aid Agencies? Do we give time to family or friends or even the stranger who may need our help? These are all questions we can ask ourselves during Lent!