CATHOLIC CHURCH OF ST. EDMUND OF CANTERBURY 2 February 2020 20 Village Way, Beckenham BR3 3NP The Presentation of the Lord Email
[email protected] Website: www.saintedmunds.net Salesian Sisters Parish Office 020 8650 0970 25 Village Way, BR3 3NA Monday to Friday 9 - 1pm 020 8650 6313
[email protected] Fr. Steve Wymer - Parish Priest 020 8650 3390 -
[email protected] Missionary Sisters of Fr. Ashley Beck - 020 8650 4117 or 020 7998 5949 -
[email protected] St. Peter Claver Fr Vianney Alphonse - 020 8650 7533 -
[email protected] 89 Shortlands Road BR2 0JL Deacon Sean Murphy - 020 3490 5693 -
[email protected] 020 8313 3915 Deacon Duncan Aitkins - 07957 861404 -
[email protected] [email protected] Today is our collection for refugees LIGHT OF THE NATIONS, A REJECTED SIGN, LIGHT IN THE MIDST OF FAILURE CANDLEMAS is one of the loveliest book Fr Navone reminds us that as festivals of the Christian year; but as it Christians we don’t share in conven- only comes round on a Sunday every six tional success ideology. The crucifix- years, comparatively few Catholics ex- ion of Our Lord turns the values of the perience it. We have an account of it world upside down: by any conven- being celebrated in Jerusalem from the tional yardstick the ministry of Jesus, earliest centuries of the Church; what particularly as it is presented in the the old man Simeon says about the baby gospel of Mark, ended in failure, with in his arms being ‘a light to enlighten him having few followers, deserted by the pagans’ quickly inspired Christians them, arrested and tried on trumped-up to mark his words by carrying lighted charges and brutally executed as a hand candles in procession before going common criminal, without human into church (the equivalent of the rights or dignity, outside the walls of Temple in Jerusalem).