The Sermon on the Mount

Racial Justice Sunday

After this weekend, there are just two more Sundays before Lent begins, and so it is good for us to begin to prepare ourselves for Lent.  What is God calling us to undertake this year?  Today we hear again “The Sermon on the Mount” or “Beatitudes”.  Jesus gives us a blueprint for the happiness or blessedness that he wants us to aspire to.  This might well provide a focus for Lent.

Today is Racial Justice Sunday, and the Beatitudes certainly remind us of a world which urgently needs restoration in terms of justice and peace with the mention of the poor, the hungry and people who are hated and reviled.  We are called to build up the kingdom of God in which there is a “levelling up” to use the modern term.

The Confirmation programme begins this weekend and next weekend there will be a Confirmation at the Sunday mass.  The candidates will be praying for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit and for the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit.  We too might join them in praying for the same gifts and fruits in Lent.

With a new Sacred Heart statue and also a new Sacred Heart picture at church, and also in recognition of Pope Francis publishing “Dilexit Nos”, an encyclical encouraging us to a devotion to Jesus’ Sacred Heart, I am also going to be promoting a new Consecration to the Sacred Heart which we will be invited to make in the parish in Lent.  

God bless, Fr Kevin.