Last week I mentioned that we have five people in this parish seeking the sacraments this Easter, and we prayed at the 11am Mass for the four of them who are already baptised: Julie, Joel, Reece and Joanne. This Sunday and the next three Sundays, we pray for our fifth person, who is currently unbaptised, Anthony. So we haven’t lost anyone. It wasn’t anything either you or I said to them. When you have someone in your parish who is preparing for baptism at the Easter Vigil, no

This year we have five people in this parish who are preparing to receive the sacraments at Easter, and we went together last Sunday to St Chad’s Cathedral in Birmingham for something called the Rite of Election. This is a service, not a Mass, with the Archbishop and other bishops of the diocese, in which people who are preparing to become Catholics at Easter get to meet one of the bishops and are then officially recognised as the “Elect”, hence the Rite of Election. But this

In a novel I read some time ago, set during the Second World War, one of the characters, a communist, is about to be executed. He has failed his communist masters and is about to pay the price. But as an atheist, he doesn’t mind. His life has been very difficult in all sorts of ways, and probably has pangs of conscience, or he should do, about some of the things in his past. He thinks that, at death, all will come to an end, just like switching off a lightbulb. How wrong he w

Today, we begin Lent.  One of the themes of Lent is that we fast.  Not as in exceeding the speed limit, but rather it’s about cutting back, self-discipline, eating plainer food and eating less of it.  We might, instead, prefer the word “feast”.  It’s just the same as fast, but with an extra letter – the letter “e”.  But the letter “e” is the beginning of the word “Easter”.  We can feast at Easter, but for now, and especially today, we fast.  Besides, feasting is much more enj

Are you the sort of person that doesn’t like to throw things out? Do you prefer to hang onto things, just in case they come in useful later on? Or do you prefer to get rid of items that don’t have a use at the moment, and just buy what you need later on? When I was getting ready to come to Thame I had deliberately accumulated quite a few boxes, empty jam jars and so on, and quite a few of them came in useful when I was packing things, and the rest I either put for recycling o

Next month, so just in a week or so’s time, we begin our deanery vocations month. It’s quite well timed with today’s readings – in the Gospel, Christ calls the apostles Simon, Andrew, John and James to follow Him – the adventure of a lifetime. In this deanery, we have one person actually from this deanery training for the priesthood in Rome, Luke Theobald, and his reflections have been put on the back of the bulletin over previous vocations months. We also have a priest in tr