This Sunday our central figure is the man born blind, and there’s an important link with the Lenten theme of Baptism: “[Jesus] spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. The he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool at Siloam’ (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.” Baptism takes its name from the Greek word baptizein which means to “plunge” or “immerse”; the plunging into the water symbolises being buried with Christ, from...

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 matter which...

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 year, there was...