Portsmouth Roman Catholic

OUR LADY OF FATIMA EVENING AT ST JOSEPH'S BASINGSTOKE. TUESDAY OCTOBER 10TH AT ABOUT 7.45PM AFTER OCTOBER DEVOTIONS AT 7PM............There will be a documentary DVD shown at St Josephs on the above date concerning the appearance of Our Lady and the subsequent Miracle of the Sun at Fatima in 1917. Our Lady through three little shepherd children warned us about the future wars and destruction the would happen unless we followed her simple plan of saying the Rosary, do ing penance, and consoling God for the offences against him who already was suffering so much. We have had many apparitions before but this one was so special that God Himself showed his approval of Our Lady's Message by allowing 70,000 people to witness His power by causing the Sun to dance in the sky and then appear to fall to earth. The Miracle was foretold and many of the crowd were there to laugh and scoff, but stood there speechless. There is something in us that makes us feel disturbed when Faith is challeng...

The mother of our new Priest came to spend a week in the Parish.   I went to the Parish Office for a few minutes and on my return I saw about a dozen women surrounding her and asking her questions and sometimes interrupting one another.     She was the mother and she could answer so many questions about her son. This was probably the life of Mary when Jesus began his ministry.   When she appeared on the scene people would have approached her and asked the questions about his background his infancy and so many other things they wanted to know and only a mother could provide the answers.   After the crucifixion Mary became even more of a resource for the disciples when they tried to see the mind of Jesus in whatever they did.   She was there with the disciples in the Upper Room as they waited for the Holy Spirit, probably surrounded by the disciples just like the mother of our Parish Priest.    Her wisdom and insight into the future was invaluable...

The rosary is a most precious gift to the Catholic Church.   That Mary herself appeared at Lourdes and Fatima to accompany the visionaries in its recitation gives credit to the claim by St Dominic that it was Mary herself who revealed it to him.   There has been many occasions on which the last defence  of the Church was the saying of the Rosary by faithful Christians. In 1571 for example the Moslem Ottoman Empire assembled a large fleet containing thousands of soldiers to invade Europe.   Europe was in peril and the Pope Pius V instructed the people to turn to Mary and say the Rosary.   Indeed when a smaller number  of Christians went out to face the enemy on every ship the crew and soldiers joined together to say the Rosary.   The Moslems initially had the wind behind them and were threatening to crush the Holy League as the opponents of the Moslem Empire were called.   Suddenly the wind changed direction and the advantage now was with the Chr...

I have spoken so much about the relationship between Mary and her Son Jesus.   That bond of love which united them was certainly the love of a mother for her son, but on the part of Jesus it was not just a son for his mother, for he and God the Father could never have succeeded in their plan of salvation without such a wonderful, devoted, and holy woman.    She was the bridge between the Father and the Son, for to be born truly human God the Son humbled Himself to taker  the flesh of Mary.  As she cared for Him throughout his life Jesus experienced the best of being human.   When things went wrong she was there to put it right again.   When he doubted  his calling she was there to strengthen his Faith.  When he fell, she was there to raise him up again and tend to his wounds.    She was always there for him.   On Calvary she wept and suffered for him.   No, Mary was no ordinary woman she was an extraordinary one chosen ...

Mary had left the Temple and was now betrothed to a man called Joseph, although the final stage of the marriage had not yet happened.   Mary was probably still asking God to let her see the Messiah who was according to the writings of King David expected to arrive at this particular time..   Perhaps she also still wanted to serve the chosen Mother of the Messiah which was what she had prayed for in the temple.    Whatever her thoughts were they were interrupted by the sudden appearance of a young man.    He bent or knelt before her.  "Hail, full of grace".    He did not say "Rejoice, highly favoured one" a recent modern corruption of Luke, he said as scriptures faithfully translated for just less than two thousand years "Hail,full of grace, the Lords is with you?"   He could have said "Hail Saintly One" because the reason he was there was not because God had chosen Mary from a short list suitable candidates, but because she had been fash...

As we discovered when Mary was born she was totally pleasing to God.  As she became a young child she seemed to have wonderful gift of reasoning beyond her years.   Her parents Joachim and Anne had wanted children but until Mary came they were barren .   They promised God that if they did have a child then the child would be dedicated to His service.    Mary at the age of three was so close to God that she asked  them to allow her to be a Temple Virgin.   They both agreed and took her to the Temple in Jerusalem where girls would work and be schooled in scripture until they were fourteen.   Mary undertook her tasks there with love and dedication and growing closer to the God she loved. Mary would begin her day in prayer and since there was an expectation growing that the time for the Messiah had arrived, she asked God to let her see the Messiah before she died and would often slip into the Temple at midnight from her cell to ask this request over...

Whenever we are given a mission by God we are always given the graces needed to carry out the task.   The Trinity had a plan to for the salvation of man from sin and death so did they look at all the young Jewish girls and decide which one was the best to be the mother of Jesus.?   And did they decide that a young girl in Nazareth would do, and sent Gabriel to announce she was the candidate chosen?    Unfortunately Mary is given so little attention these days that one could quite believe that this was the case.   Yes, thank you Mary for being the mother of Jesus, remember to pray for us. When we read what Gabriel said to Mary "Hail, Full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee"  we may prefer the modernist translation "Hail, highly favoured one.." since grace is not a word used much nowadays, and we might  even believe that it means the same thing.  Grace is a gift given by God to the soul and the meaning is totally different.   Grace in the soul i...

St John Paul II’s consecration was accepted in heaven, as Sr Lucia subsequently testified on several occasions, because the Pope was “in union with all the bishops of the world”, exactly as Our Lady had requested. On that occasion, all the bishops of the world had received the text of the Pope’s act of consecration in advance, together with his invitation for them to join with him in making the act.        Following this consecration, Sr. Lucia was visited by the Apostolic Nuncio, and she confirmed that the consecration of Russia had indeed been accomplished, and that God had accepted it.  Within one years of the pope’s consecration, changes began peacefully within the Soviet Union. In Russia, on the death of Chernenko, on 11 March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party. In 1986, Gorbachev initiated the programmes of perestroika (restructuring), and glasnost (openness), which led to the process of democratisation and th...

Well it is quite a shock for generations born after Vatican II to hear about sin and hell, the possibility that maybe God feels hurt, and even worse that in some way God would punish the world.   It really is not very nice   And in some cases it is even worse when Father has told his parishioners that nobody goes to Hell.  Surely Mary would not contradict Father?   OK, Jesus said the same thing in the Bible that Mary says,  but the Bible was of its generation and poor fishermen may have believed such things but in our educated modern times the Bible is only the starting point of Christianity and as such we talk about it with esteem, we parade it to the altar, but we cannot take seriously so much of it, and we conform for the sake of our Community, and in the end we all have our own ideas which  are easy to conform to and make Church going so easy on a Sunday.   Father will not talk with the authority that Jesus spoke with, and was so admired for, but i...

Those who have been reading my posts for years will have noticed a difference in my writings recently.   I seldom talk about politics but instead I try to focus on the good things of the Church while at the same time trying to demonstrate how false teaching is affecting the lives of the people in the Church and in society.   We are inclined to agree or disagree on many teachings on the Church form a subjective point of view rather than an objective one which means asking the question if we do not teach this or if we teach this what will be the effect on our people, our children, and a future generations.   Most Catholic writers will approach doctrine from the point of view of Church teaching and say the Church is right or the Church is wrong but never look beyond this What I have found recently is that the Church seems very anxious to adopt to what it calls "a Church for the Present Day"   which seems to mean that we must look at the world we are living in and adop...

But, to his surprise, Caffarra received a lengthy letter signed by Sister Lucia in which she spoke of the “final battle” that would come at the end of time.  The Fatima visionary  wrote  that the “final battle between the Lord and the kingdom of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Do not be afraid, (she added), because anyone who works for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be fought and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue.” She then concluded: “However, Our Lady has already crushed his head.” The letter is now in the archives of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family The above was the result of Cardinal Caffarra asking a question of Lucy the visionary at Fatima.    But can it be doubted that Satan would wish to destroy the family for it is in the family the the offspring of a man and a woman first experience and recognise love.   Love is nourished in the family, the love of a natural parent ...

Now I have tried very hard in the past few weeks to write only what Mary would want me to write.   Mary never condemns anyone but only seeks their salvation and is always welcoming.   So part of this she would never want to say for justice is the role of her Son who will judge the living and the dead.  She deals entirely with mercy. During the apparitions Mary talked about the need to console God who has been very hurt by the sins that are commitied and young Francisco spent the rest of his life in prayer and often before the Blessed Sacrament consoling the God who was hurting.    That is one of the messages of Fatima,  that God cares so much for us that he hurts, it  is something the we should be proud of while at the same time our lack of love should make us ashamed that we treat Him so badly. But there is one point in the message of Fatima which we should not overlook.    Mary said that sins that brought most people to Hell were the si...

There have been times in my life as a Catholic where I experienced Spiritual Joy.   In my early days it was at those wonderful parish retreats when after a week of talks almost the whole parish had gone to Confession filled with the inspiration they had been given.     In later life I had the joy of going on pilgrimages and coming back ready to continue my life as a saint.   The feelings never lasted very long I am sorry to say,  and I began to look forward to my next spiritual drive.   In this I do not think I am so different from most other Catholics, O yes we want to be saints but it does take quite an effort  and we quickly go back to being sinners and trying to justify ourselves by going to Church on a Sunday where we excuse our sins by saying God is Love and  that all is well and our sins do not matter. I have had a different experience lately that really woke me up.   During a visit to the Pilgrim Statue of Our Lady of Fatima I had a...

That Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life can never be contradicted.  He Himself said this and gave witness to it by his teachings which came from God and therefore cannot be contradicted, and when people follow this way and this truth they find that life so close to God and His Love that they experience a joy they have never known..  In all things we must follow the words of Jesus and He will reward us with His Love and Mercy. So what does devotion to Mary add to this - absolutely nothing.   But there is an incident in the Gospels where a woman cried out to Jesus "Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the breasts at which you sucked"   But Jesus turned to her and said "No, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it".  He was not belittling the woman who gave him birth, rather he was pointing out the real measure of his Mother's greatness, she was faithful and obedient to God.   It was because of this faithfulness that she had been chos...