No.1647 S. THE MARTYR AND THE MOST HOLY TRINITY, KENTISH TOWN Presbytery: Tel and Fax 020 7485 3727. Website: www.saintsilas.org.uk E mail: [email protected] News sheet for the week beginning 8th November 2020

Sunday 8th Holy Trinity open 9.00 – 10.15am Pro populo XXXII PER ANNUM S. Silas open 10.30am – 12.30pm 11.00am Act of Remembrance at the War Memorial outside S. Silas S. Silas open 5.30 – 6.30pm.

Monday 9th S. Silas open 7.30 – 8.15am, 12 noon – 1.00pm Reunion with the Holy See Dedication of the Lateran

Tuesday 10th S. Silas open 7.30 – 8.15am, 12 noon – 1.00pm Keith Buckland S. Leo the Great

Wednesday 11th S. Silas open 7.30 – 8.15am Walsingham S. Martin of Tours

Thursday 12th S. Silas open 7.30 – 8.15am, 12 noon – 1.00pm, Diana Holden S. Josaphat 6.00 – 6.30pm

Friday 13th S. Silas open 7.30 – 8.15am, 6.00 – 7.30pm Elsie Webb R.I.P. Feria

Saturday 14th S. Silas open 9.30 – 11.00am Departed Priests R.I.P. Of Requiem

Next Sunday 15th Holy Trinity open 9.00am - 10.15am XXXIII PER ANNUM S. Silas open 10.30am – 12.30pm S. Silas open 5.30pm – 6.30pm

Confessions: by appointment. ______TODAY we shall have a short vigil for the Dead, for those who died in war, at the Memorial outside S. Silas. This will begin just before 11.00am and include the traditional two minutes silence. During the current lockdown, all public worship is suspended. I have therefore advertised the times when our churches will be open for private prayer. I shall still, of course, be saying a private Mass every day and have published the intentions for those Masses so that you can remember them in your personal prayers at home. If possible, please also make an act of Spiritual Communion each day, by which you will receive the benefits of that offering being made in Church. PLEASE PRAY FOR all who are seriously ill and the sick commended to us – Keith Buckland, Su Beard, Judith Eyre, Raymond McCann, Bernard McCann, Janet Dann, Anthony Lucas, Amber Arthurs, Hector Chisholm, Hazel Hallam, Doreen Moodie, Gill Bell, Mary Maunsell, Marquis Coker, Clare Smith, Maura O’Donnell, Patrick O’Donnell, Mary Hinton, Una Wade, Gloria Williams, Sylvia Reid, Frances Sherwood, Joan Rawlins, Ethel Hostler, Mary Balch, Tanya Talbot, Andrew Woodd, Damien Knight, Peter Jonas, Marilyn Chiltern, Vitor Lourenco, Ian Macgregor, Chai Seng Pee, Maud Gardner, Roy Evans, Fr Stephen Taylor and Hilda Hodgman; all who teach and learn in our school; for those recently bereaved: for all who have died especially Winifred Turner, Lynford Harding, Vincent Locquès. Simone Barreto-Silva, Nadine Devillers (recently departed), Charles Warman, Hilda Bromwich, Rudolph Dusch, William Troops, Ian Pavey, Dorothy Hinds, Harvey Rowlands, Leonard Richbell, Horace Ramdin, Elsie Webb, William Butcher, Edwin Williams, Jackson, Elfreda Morris (Anniversaries). A BRIEF REFLECTION Both of our churches are like a ‘walk-in’ war memorial: you cannot get into the building without walking past a list of names of those from the Parish who died in the First World War. We offer the Mass today first of all for the sacrifice they were prepared to make, willingly or unwillingly, for the life we now enjoy. But we also do something for them by making this offering, For the amazing, stunning fact about God is that he always ready to forgive. As they nailed him to the Cross, prayed, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’. As he hung on that Cross in agony, he could still say to the penitent thief, ‘Today you will be with me in ’. In the Mass today we offer the Risen to our heavenly Father for all who have died in war. They died a violent death, often with hatred in their hearts for the enemy and curses on their lips for those who had forced them to be there. They need our prayers. But as we make this offering, we should also try to learn some lessons for the future. Since the end of World War II there have been only 26 days without a war going on somewhere in the world, usually in many different places and for many different reasons. Human beings are still wounding and maiming and slaughtering one another with increasing effectiveness and ingenuity. The violence on the streets of London becomes almost a daily routine. So we pray too that we may find a greater sense of the value of human life. The poet Wilfrid Owen was killed seven days before the end of the war in 1918. In one of his last poems he speaks to his fellow soldiers moving the body of someone who has just died. ‘Move him into the sun…gently its touch awoke him once at home, whispering of fields half-sown. Always it woke him, even in France, until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now, the kind old sun will know.’ By what we do in the Mass, we move him into the sun, not the light of this wretched world but of the next. And that only can achieve the healing that he and, dare I say it, we so desperately need.