Justice and Peace

Cathedral Record

by Peter Ross

Letter from Oscott

Do not be misled by the name of this column – I left Oscott around 10 weeks ago and have been spending the lockdown period in Knotty Ash. The college community had been holding onto the prospect of returning to Oscott for the last week of June in order to celebrate the annual diaconate ordinations. This will no longer be the case, sadly. Instead, we have been informed that Oscott will re-open at the beginning of the next academic year. This is the right decision and will make returning in the autumn all the more joyful. In the last few weeks of May, I had my oral exams (via Zoom) and also submitted all of my work, so the seminary year is slowly drawing to a close. On top of all of that, the end of May brought the news that Archbishop Bernard Longley had appointed Father Giles Goward as the 24th Rector of Oscott College. Fr Giles is, at present, our pastoral director. His appointment as rector, needless to say, comes at a strange time so if you could spare a prayer for him, I’m sure he would be very grateful. In the period following the Feast of the Ascension, we held a Novena to the Holy Spirit at Saint Margaret Mary, streamed live on YouTube. Alongside the prayers that accompanied the Novena, we included a prerecorded reflection each evening from a different person associated with the parish. These reflections included contributions from Father Joe Bibby, pastoral associate Jo Wallace, and Sister Bridget Folkard. Fr Ian McParland and I enjoyed putting this Novena together and you can access it, if you wish, by going to the parish YouTube channel for St Margaret Mary Liverpool. One thing I must say is that live streaming is extremely temperamental. You can plan everything perfectly and then because of a poor signal, it can all go wrong. Nevertheless, I must say equally that people in the parish have been so kind and supportive, even when it does buffer! As lockdown begins to ease, I feel as though ‘normality’ may slowly be returning. Yet let’s not forget all of the people who have been fighting the virus and pray that they will be given strength. As for me, I can see that a ‘Letter from Oscott’ will in reality be a ‘Letter from Knotty Ash’ for a few months more; nevertheless, Knotty Ash is a good place to be, with some wonderful people. Let’s keep praying that the Holy Spirit of Pentecost will inspire us all during this time, so that we may be all the more open to loving God and loving one another.

Even in dark days, remember to live love

By Steve Atherton, Justice & Peace fieldworker

In the first reading of Ascension Day, as Jesus is taken up into the sky, his disciples are asked: ‘Why are you men from Galilee standing there looking at the sky?’ The same question needs to be asked today.

For those of us who would follow Jesus, our eyes should not be focused above on heaven but on the needs of this world, here and now. We are called to find the Jesus who is still here, crucified in our midst, to stand at the foot of that Cross, and to mourn.

There is much to be mournful about: malnutrition is still the main cause of death throughout the world; 30 million people survive on less than £3 a day; 900 million people are illiterate; there are 40 wars going on in the world; refugee numbers are increasing; the worldwide Covid-19 death toll, at the start of June, stands at around 375,000; the world climate is becoming inhospitable to human life ...

But there is also much that gives us reason to rejoice. Pope Francis wrote in Gaudete et exsultate: ‘Saint Paul says that what truly counts is “faith working through love” (Gal 5:6). We are called to make every effort to preserve charity: “The one who loves another has fulfilled the law … for love is the fulfilment of the law” (Rom 13:8.10). “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’.” (Gal 5:14).

‘In other words, amid the thicket of precepts and prescriptions, Jesus clears a way to seeing two faces, that of the Father and that of our brother. He does not give us two more formulas or two more commands. He gives us two faces, or better yet, one alone: the face of God reflected in so many other faces. For in every one of our brothers and sisters, especially the least, the most vulnerable, the defenceless and those in need, God’s very image is found. Indeed, with the scraps of this frail humanity, the Lord will shape his final work of art.’

When a fellow parishioner tells me that I always write the same thing, I reply that there is not really a lot to say – just the challenge of finding new ways to tell the same good news: God loves us. We love God. We love each other. There’s an account elsewhere in this edition of the Pic that shows one of the ways our diocese is living this commandment of love.