Catholic Chaplaincy

Happiness

Websec — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:00:43 +0000

‘IF YOU REMAIN in me and my words remain in you, ask what you will in my name and you will get it.’ John 15.7, 14.14f.
If you remain in Me: so what we ask for must be in harmony with gospel teaching and the Spirit of the risen Christ and the Father, both helping us live according to our nature as people created in the image and likeness of God.
When St Thomas Aquinas wanted to talk about God he didn’t start with the Commandments and a long list of do’s and don’ts He began with a question – what do you want? – and found that invariably the answer was happiness.
How is happiness to be found? Not directly, but by doing ordinary things well, making friends, working honestly, being faithful. St Paul lists the effects of the Spirit of Christ Jesus and the Father as charity, joy, peace , patience, kindness gentleness faithfulness, self-control, humility, forgiveness, whatever is excellent and worthy of praise. Gal 5.22 Col 3.12f Phil 4.8
In one of T. S. Eliot’s plays, someone who had suffered much in her life, could say, ‘Now I feel quite happy, as if happiness depended not on getting all one wants or getting rid of what cannot be rid of, but in a different vision.’
The glory of God, said Irenaeus, is man fully alive; the glory of man is the vision of God. The way to happiness is open ‘through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.’
There will be many surprises in heaven, and one of nicest may be to see that all our heartaches were simply growing pains. 11/5/12
Peter Knott SJ

The Week Ahead: Fourth Week

Websec — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:53:24 +0000

Sun 13th May Sixth Sunday of Easter
11am Fr Dushan Croos SJ (Assistant Chaplain)
7pm Taizé Prayer
Mon 14th May 6pm Corpus Christi College Mass
Tue 15th May 6.15pm Queen’s College Mass
Wed 16th May 8pm Peter Edmonds SJ After Jesus, What?
Reading the Acts Of The Apostles 4. How did the
first Christians welcome strangers and foreigners?
Meeting Room
Thu 17th May 6-7pm Holy Hour & Adoration
7pm CathSoc pasta
8pm Rev Dr Michael Ward (Chaplain, St Peter’s
College, Oxford) ‘The Spiritual Imagination of
C.S. Lewis’ Blue Room
Fri 18th May 6.30pm Prayer for the Curious
8pm Bar Night
Sat 19th May 3pm Cathsoc Garden Party at Campion Hall

Garden Party

Websec — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:46:03 +0000

Saturday 19th May From 3pm- Cathsoc Garden Party at Campion Hall, Brewer Street. All Welcome.

Holy Hour and Pasta Plus

Websec — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:44:12 +0000

Thursday 17th May- 5-6pm Holy Hour with Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. 7pm tasty free Pasta plus, Rev Dr. Michael Ward (Chaplain, St. Peter’s College), ‘The Spiritual imagination of C.S.Lewis’ -8pm Blue room, All Welcome.

Prayer for the Curious

Websec — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:35:57 +0000

Friday 18th May. 6.30pm Prayer for the Curious, a time of prayer with scripture in an Ignatian way. Followed by the Last Bar Night of term- Drop in from 8pm for a well priced pint, bring your friends.

6th Sunday of Easter – Year B (May 13th)

Websec — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:45:49 +0000

6th Sunday of Easter – Year B (May 13th)
Readings: Acts 10: 25-26, 34-35, 44-48
Psalm 98: 1-4
1 John 4: 7-10
John 15: 9-17
One of the implications of the Easter season is that that God has made possible for us a whole series of new relationships, with God, with Jesus, and with each other, regardless of race or culture. The first reading presents this issue in a very challenging way. Peter, and one or two others in that early Church, have to be taught that the good news about Jesus is not reserved exclusively to Jews. For he has been summoned to the house of a professional Roman soldier, Cornelius, a prayerful centurion. Cornelius himself has a lesson or two to learn; when Peter arrives, he tries to kneel down and worship him, and has to be told “up you get – I am also a human being”. Then Peter proclaims the discovery that he in his turn has made: “God is not a snob – someone of any nationality [even a Gentile!] who fears God, and does what is justice, is acceptable to God”. Then something quite remarkable happens: “while Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell on all those who heard the word”. Now the Holy Spirit was for those earliest Christians a powerful experience; if you had it, you could not remain in any doubt about it. So Peter’s Jewish companions now see for themselves that the Spirit is not reserved just for Jews, for here you have non-Jews “speaking in tongues and magnifying God”. And so Peter is encouraged even to offer baptism to these Gentiles. It may seem obvious to us today; but in that first century of the Church’s existence, it represented a huge leap of faith.
The psalm for next Sunday gives voice to this faith: “Sing a new song to YHWH”, it proclaims, for he has worked marvels”, and “YHWH has made known his salvation in the eyes of the nations”. The word “nations”, of course, also means “Gentiles” – so the Old Testament is already well aware that the Jewish God is not the God only of the Jews. “God has remembered his love and truth to the house of Israel” – so we wonder if we are returning to a narrower view of salvation, but then are relieved as we hear “all the ends of the earth” (which is certainly us) “have seen the salvation of our God”.
The second reading, as it has been throughout the Easter season, is from the first “letter” of John. It too expresses the new relationship that Easter has brought about. Here, though, the relationship is within the little group of Christians. And the name of this relationship is “love”: “Beloved, let us love each other, because love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God”. God’s love is then given tangible form, for us to imitate: “God sent his only Son into the world, that we might live through him”. And the love is God’s initiative: “not that we have loved God, but that God loved us, and sent his Son”.
Next Sunday’s gospel, from very much the same stable, picks up the same theme: “as the Father loved me, so I have loved you – remain in my love”. Notice how Jesus, talking to these lonely disciples, on the night before he dies, has eyes only for them: “I have said these things that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete”. Then he comes back to the new relationship: This is my commandment, that you should love each other, just as I have loved you”. And he spells out what that means: “no one has greater love, than to lay down their life for their friends”. This is what Jesus is going to do, the very next day; and this is what we too are invited to do.

The Week Ahead: Third Week

Websec — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:33:25 +0000

Sun 6th May Fifth Sunday of Easter
9am Fr Peter Edmonds SJ (Campion Hall)
11am Bishop William Kenney CP (Auxiliary in
Birmingham) baptising, confirming and receiving
into the Church our RCIA candidates
12.15pm Community Lunch
5.45pm Fr Paul King (Parish Priest, Holy Rood)
Tue 8th May 6pm Oriel College Mass
Wed 9th May 6pm St. Hilda’s College Mass
8pm Peter Edmonds SJ After Jesus, What?
Reading the Acts Of The Apostles 3. How do we
account for the transformation of Paul from
persecutor to hero? Meeting Room
Thu 10th May 5-6pm Tanzania group, Blue Room
6-7pm Holy Hour & Adoration
7pm CathSoc curry
8pm Prof Conor Gearty (Director, LSE Centre for
the Study of Human Rights) ‘Human Rights –
Does Faith Matter?’ Blue Room
Fri 11th May 6.30pm Catholicism for the Curious
8pm Tanzania fund-raising concert Newman Rm.
All welcome “Karibuni!”

Faith, Reason and the Good Life

Websec — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:17:33 +0000

Thursday 10th May, 6-7pm Holy Hour with Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, 7pm- Tasty free meal kindly cooked by members of Lincoln CU who are participating in the ‘Live below the Line’ project plus 8pm, Fr Vincent Magat OP, ‘Faith, Reason and the Good Life’ – Blue room, All Welcome.

Fairtrade Breakfast

Websec — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:31:06 +0000

Sunday 13th May 9.45-10.45: Fairtrade Breakfast. A continental spread of Fairtrade goodies and hot and cold drinks – do come along at any point and bring your friends! Extra donations of fair-trade food or cash welcome, all proceeds go towards CAFOD’s work. Any money received will be doubled under the government’s ‘pound for pound’ scheme!

Tanzania Project Concert

Websec — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:21:10 +0000

Friday 11th May- Tanzania Project fund raising Concert, 8pm: a wonderful evening of music including Bach, Brahms, Dussek, Chertok, Henze, Dutilleux and Clarke.
Enjoy performances by Arend Koeditz (‘cello), Lucy Nolan (harp), Douglas Knight (clarinet), Aimée Taylor (flute) with accompaniment by Guy Newbury (piano) and a well priced pint afterwards from the chaplaincy bar! All this for only £5 on the door. All Welcome.