Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Following a request from bishop`s house at all Masses this weekend we united ourselves with Pope Francis as he consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary today in the presence of the Statue of Our Lady of the Rosary from the Capelinha (Little Chapel of the Apparitions) from Fatima.

We united ourselves with the Holy Father today by saying the consecration prayer at Mass.

Consecration Prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, to your Immaculate Heart we consecrate ourselves, in an act of total entrustment and of oblation to the Lord.

 

By you we will be led to Christ your Son, and Only-Begotten Son of God, and by Him and with Him to His Eternal Father. We shall walk in the light of faith, of hope and of love so that the world may believe that Christ is the One sent by the Father to give to us His word, and we, as His ambassadors, shall carry His knowledge and love to the ends of the earth. 

Thus under the maternal protection of your Immaculate Heart, we will be one people with Christ, ransomed by His death and witnesses of His Resurrection, and by Him led to the Father for the glory of the Most Holy Trinity Whom we adore, praise and bless. Amen

A Day in Darlington

A recent development in the diocese has been a new venue for the Extraordinary Form at St Augustine`s, Darlington. This started as a monthly Mass on a Wednesday, became a weekly Mass in Lent and now is reverting to a monthly Mass. Tomorrow I`ve been asked to travel to the south to sng a Missa Canata for the feast of St Wilfrid. This is being preceded by a servers training day and there will be an exhibition of vestments and missals and items of interest. I`m looking forward to saying Mass in this lovely church at 2pm.

Move update

Interestingly, I get more daily visitors to Forest Murmurs than to this blog. I`m still getting comments on Forest Murmurs and have recently acquired two more followers! A good number of visitors here also come here after visiting my old blog. I didn`t think it made sense to keep the old name now I have left Forest Hall but this one is taking a while to get settled in. I still have things to transfer from the other blog here but hope it will be all done soon.

Fabric of Britain

Just before I forget again this BBC4 programme is a must for anyone interested in the history of vestments. It focuses on the Opus Anglicanum from the High Middle Ages which was much sought after throughout Europe and which thanks to the work of the Reformers largely survived on the continent. There are some quite remarkable pieces of work. Also featured for about eight seconds are the hands of well-known LMS MC Richard Hawker as he lays out vestments in Watts and co!

Can be viewed until October 13th. Click here to view.

Settling In

Well I`ve been back in Gateshead over a month now and I am still regularly asked how am I settling in. I reply `slowly`. However it is going well. I have a very heavy schedule of weekend Masses with a vigil Mass at St Wilfrid`s at 6pm on Saturday, then three Masses on a Sunday morning at St Joseph`s. the 9am is a quiet OF Mass with no singing. At 10.30 there is a sung English OF Mass. I`m pleased to say we have a small but enthusiastic group of singers and I like what they do. We are fortunate to have an organist too.The Mass starts with the entrance antiphon I am delighted to say, sung to a psalm tone after which there is the opening hymn. The ordinary of the Mass is sung, apart from the Kyrie, and with organ accompaniment.  The EF Mass follows at 12. Attendance has increased dramatically since the demise of he Sunday EF Mass at St Dominic`s, Newcastle and I would say it makes more sense to have one well-attended Mass rather than two small congregations on each bank of the Tyne. This is normally a Low Mass but I am very keen to increase the number of sung Sunday Masses as Low Mass feels somewhat less than one might hope for on a Sunday. I hope we will have a sung Mass every fortnight. We are trying to recruit singers as the schola is only two strong and we have no organist.

Once a month there is an African Mass at 2pm and I said that too last Sunday. I hope we will get a rota of priests from the diocese to help but 2pm on a Sunday afternoon is not a hugely popular time. The singing is accompanied by percussion, mainly drums. The music was lively and enthusiastically sung. I had wondred whether a solution might be to have the Missa Luba so we could combine the African and Latin Mass! It would make for an interesting article in Mass of Ages!

Each of these Masses is very different and it is hard to see how they could be amalgamated.

Apart from Sunday Mass, there is a weekday Mass at 12.05 from Tuesday to Friday and a 10am Mass at St Wilfrid`s a couple of times a week. The idea of 12.05 is to offer a Mass for workers. St Joseph`s is in Gateshead town centre and the civic centre is very near. I`m not sure many workers come to the Mass.  So all in all I`m kept busy, apart from being Judicial Vicar too. The parish hall is used by many groups and our hall bookings organiser is retiring his month and I`m hoping the transition to our next volunteers goes smoothly. I`m still chairman of the North East Catholic History Society which I enjoy and which is not onerous and de facto chaplain to the diocesan Association of the Eucharist which meets at St Joseph`s. And of course I`m also Northern Chaplain to the LMS although that is not a presssured role and teach a bit of Latin in the classics department ( as was) at Newcastle university.

Apart from this I`ve been trying to get sorted out in the presbytery. My cats have been settling in too. As I live in a first floor flat in the old presbytery they have quite a few stairs to descend to get outside but as yet I haven`t managed to get a cat flap installed so they`re not getting out much and show little interest in leaving the flat. I do take them out sometimes but Dizzy seems to have lost his enthusiasm for meeting people. At Forest Hall he was in the sacristy every morning to see who was there and who would stroke him. He also never missed a Tuesday coffee morning but here he seems content to lie on the sofa all day. I hope he`s not depressed. Here he is on a rare trip outside last week.

So there we are. Sorry this blog has been rather quiet but I`m kept very busy here. And as well as all this we have Pope Francis with whom there seems never to be a dull moment.

Brinkburn again

Rather late in the day but just to say Brinkburn went well. The weather was glorious, the liturgy beautiul and a respectable turnout made it all worthwhile. Mike Forbester has a number of pictures on Rudgate Ramblings one of which I include here.

Frank Erskine RIP

I was shocked and saddened to hear at lunchtime that Frank Erskine had died. I`d learnt recently that Frank had cancer. I last heard from him on Tuesday by email: Frank wrote to ask how the Brinkburn Mass had gone and again to hope all went well at Ryhope where it was my turn for the Missa Cantata on Wednesday. I`ve know Frank for as long as I`ve been celebrating the Tridentine Mass in the diocese which is since 1992. He was always supportive and, a keen photographer, he took many of the pictures of our Masses which appeared on Forest Murmurs. Our paths hadn`t crossed as much recently with me being out of the mainstream of the Extraordinary Form during my years in Forest Hall. For years Frank offered lifts to others with no transport to take them to Latin Masses. His dog, Pericles, often went with him and waited outside church. Frank was quiet but with a good sense of humour and kept up to date with developments regarding the Extraordinary Form. He was 65 years old.

His Requiem in the Extraordinary Form will be held at St Patrick`s, Ryhope on Tuesday 1st October at 9.30am and Fr Dickson will be the celebrant. Sympathy to his sister Bernadette and all the family. He will be missed. May he rest in peace.

Letter from Mgr Newton on the Ordinariate

Our own Ordinariate community at Gainford contnues to thrive. New members were recently received. I can`t find a webpage with a link to the story so here is the entry from the Ordinariate site

A former priest of the Traditional Anglican Communion, Ian Westby, was among four people received and confirmed into the Darlington Ordinariate group at St Osmund’s Church, Gainford in August. Music for the occasion included Gounod's Messe du Sacré Coeur dé Jesus, Brahms’ How lovely are thy dwellings fair; and Elgar’s Imperial March. The new members bring to nine the number received into the Darlington group this year.

 Mgr Newton has written a letter which Archbishop Nichols has asked we make available this weekend by reading or displaying it. The request is all a bit vague and may be ovelooked so I post here the text of Mgr Newton`s letter.

 Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Next Tuesday, September 24th, the Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham, is an
opportune moment to be invited to write to you about the Personal Ordinariate of
Our Lady of Walsingham, established two and a half years ago. I am grateful to your
bishop for giving me this opportunity to tell you about the contribution the
Ordinariate makes to the life and mission of the Catholic Church in our country.
Pope Benedict XVI established this new structure in 2011. He wanted to help groups
of Anglicans, who wished to bring with them some of the traditions and beauty of
the Anglican heritage in which they were nurtu-red, the ability to enter into full
communion of the Catholic Church.

Since then more than eighty former Anglican clergy have been ordained as Catholic
priests of the Ordinariate in England and Wales. They lead about 40 groups of former
Anglican lay people, as well as serving the wider Catholic Church as chaplains in
hospitals, prisons or schools or as diocesan priests. In London two churches have
been entrusted to us. Elsewhere, our groups celebrate Ordinariate Masses in
diocesan Catholic churches. We now have our own Ordinariate rite, which draws on
those elements of the Anglican tradition which are consistent with Catholic teaching.
As it is gradually introduced, it will add to the distinctive character of our worship.
Already, one of the jewels of the Anglican tradition, choral Evensong, is being
regularly celebrated by the Ordinariate in some Catholic churches.

The Ordinariate adds to the rich diversity of the Catholic Church. Any Catholic is free
to take part in the life and liturgy of the Ordinariate and receive the Sacraments from
its clergy. Our priests are just like any other Catholic priests. By attending an
Ordinariate Mass, you are fulfilling your obligation, just as you would by going to any
Catholic church in the world. Members of the Ordinariate are likewise free to attend
Mass in any Catholic church, being truly and fully members of the Catholic Church.
People coming to our Masses have spoken positively about the conviction of our
preaching, our strong musical tradition and hymn singing, our pastoral outreach and
the welcoming nature of our gatherings afterwards. This puts us in a strong position
to play a full part, with the whole Church, in the urgent task of the New
Evangelisation.

Like many members of the Church of England, in which I was ordained for over 35
years, I longed and prayed for union with the Catholic Church and the Ordinariate
was a personal fulfilment of those prayers. It has been an incredible and uplifting
journey for us all, full of grace, joy and blessings. Of course, we have experienced
hardship and sacrifice as well. For many, especially those of our priests who are
married with families, there has been great financial uncertainty; for us alt it has
meant leaving friends and familiar places of worship in the Church of England. We
ask for your encouragement, your support and your prayers.

You may ask why we did not become Catholics in the usual way. It is a reasonable
question but misses the most important point about the Ordinariate, that it is "a
prophetic gesture that can contribute positively to the developing relations between
Anglicans and Catholics" and "It helps us to set our sights on the ultimate goal of all
ecumenical activity: the restoration of full ecclesial communion in the context of
which the mutual exchange of gifts from our respective spiritual patrimonies serves
as an enrichment to us all" (Benedict XVI, Address to the Bishops, Oscott College,
September 2010}.

The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham has begun in a small way but it
is a concrete expression of the Church's desire to fulfil our Lord's command that
'they may all be one'. It is a small step towards healing one of the most damaging
wounds of our history: the dividing of Christ's Body, the Church in this land.
With the assurance of my prayers for the whole Church as we all seek to be faithful
to Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Monsignor Keith~
Ordinary

More information about the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham can be found
on our website www.ordinariate.org.uk

A trip to Chislehurst

Last weekend I enjoyed a brief stay at St Mary`s, Chislehurst with Fr Briggs. On Sunday we were joined for lunch by Fr Finigan and later by Mulier Fortis. There is a photo of we three priests out there somewhere but it`s not emerged yet.  Chislehurst has a lovely parish church, a very congenial liturgy and a most informative website, which is well worth a visit. The above picure is of Fr Briggs` Silver Jubilee Mass in 2011. St Joseph`s, Gateshead has a website too but I`ve yet to meet the webmaster. My Silver Jubilee is drawing close and I must start thinking about it but first I have my induction Mass on Thursday.

UPDATE; 15.09.13
Thanks to the Mulier Fortis for the plug. Here is the picture I mentioned by Michael Davies` grave.

Brinkburn

Rather late but I hope everyone who is thinking of coming knows that the annual Solemn High Mass at Brinkburn Priory in Northumberland takes place this Saturday at noon. The Schola Sancti Bedae will sing the proper and the Rudgates will sing Byrd`s Mass for Four Voices. Here`s some footage  from 2008`s Mass.

Me too.

Here we go

Thought I better put smoething here just to show it is starting up. This is only a first draft of the template. I have a few posts in mind so will be back soon.