​​​​This Sunday is the 100th World Mission Sunday, a time when we are invited to contribute to a collection in support of the work of Missio, the Pope’s missionary charity.  While working as a missionary in Peru, the bishop who is now Pope benefited greatly from the work of Missio, or the Pontifical Missionary Societies, as they were then called.  In his Message for World Mission Sunday this year, he points out that “No baptised person is exempt from or indifferent to mission: everyone, each according to their own vocation and condition of life, participates in the great work that Christ has entrusted to his Church.”  So it is the responsibility of each one of us to help spread the Gospel, both at home and abroad.

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    I know that many of you were deeply concerned to learn of Pope Leo’s need for surgery last Monday, because of a nodule that had been discovered on his lung.  We continue to pray for his full recovery, confident that the surgery he received will have achieved the desired effect of averting the risk to his health.  We pray in particular that he will recover sufficiently for the demanding visit to Latin American countries scheduled for next month.

 

    Next month is of course November, when we pray in a special way for the Holy Souls, those we have known and those that no one remembers by name.  The month begins with the glorious feast of All Saints, when we give thanks for the witness of countless blessed souls, both those who have been canonized and the many whose cult has not been specifically sanctioned by Church authorities.  That will be the Sunday after next.  This is followed immediately by All Souls Day, on Monday 2 November, when we pray for the souls in Purgatory, undergoing the purification that will prepare them for an eternal life in God’s presence.

 

    It is customary at this church for parishioners to submit the names of their loved ones who have died, to be placed in a box on the altar and remembered at one of the daily Masses each day in the month of the dead.  Envelopes for this purpose will be available from next weekend.  

 

    When someone close to us has died, it is perfectly natural to want to do something that will help them - often we feel powerless to do anything at all, but in fact our faith tells us that we can do the most wonderful thing anyone could possibly do: we can commend them to God’s loving mercy and assist them with our prayers on their journey into his presence.  That is why eulogies are actually forbidden in the Catholic funeral liturgy - because they almost always look back in sadness at what has been lost, while the point of the Catholic liturgy is to look forward in hope to all that God has in store for the faithful departed.

 

    It so happens that November will also be a month when we help our parish SVP, the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul that does so much good work, attending to the poor and needy of the parish.  A collection will be taken after all Masses on 1 November, in support of the work of the SVP, and a jazz evening will be held later in the month, on Saturday 21 November, in the Social Centre, with a view to boosting the Society’s available funds.  See elsewhere on the newsletter for further details.  

 

    Don’t forget to put your clocks back next weekend.  We gain an extra hour of sleep next Sunday as we make the transition back to Greenwich Mean Time after six months of British Summer Time.  The mornings will be lighter, but the evenings will be darker.  It is a sure sign that summer is over and the season of shorter, darker, colder days is looming.

 

    Next Sunday, being the last Sunday of the month, sees the participation of the Young Adults at our midday Mass.  We are greatly encouraged to see the way in which our young people have responded to this initiative and we wish them well in all their activities.  Father Toby Lees OP will be addressing the group on Wednesday 18 November in the Social Centre, while the monthly Bible study evening will take place the previous Wednesday, 11 November, in the Rectory Dining Room.

 

    This Sunday’s Gospel contains Our Lord’s famous and wise saying, “Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.”  He was responding to a question intended to trap him, and his response deftly avoided the trap set for him.  Admittedly, it leaves us with a question: what exactly is owed to Caesar, and what is owed to God?  This is the question that Pope Benedict asked when he addressed Members of Parliament in Westminster Hall  on 17 September 2010 (https://shorturl.at/tfRG8).  He recommended “dialogue between faith and reason at every level of national life” as the most helpful way of discovering an answer to this fundamental question.  We pray that his wish may bear fruit in our national life.

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    As Pope Benedict mentioned in this very speech, Catholic Social Teaching has much in common with the British common law tradition.  Sometimes described as the Church’s best-kept secret, the body of Catholic Social Teaching (cf.  https://shorturl.at/5cYYl) which has emerged ever since Leo XIII’s pioneering encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891 is something of which we can all be justly proud.  Indeed, the current Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, was consciously placing himself in the same tradition by choosing the name of his distinguished late 19th-century predecessor.  In line with this body of teaching, we continue to pray that God’s will may be done on earth, as it is in heaven.