 |
| Wow! What a roof! |
 |
| Bro. President gets some ideas for his next tie |
 |
| Bro. Peter shows off his German translation skills |
 |
| Meeting our guide |
 |
| Counting the historical errors made by the guide |
 |
| Too hot to handle? Maria and the world's first fire door |
 |
| "Where do they keep the jewels?" Anneli explores the Jewel Tower |
 |
| Recovering from the exertions of climbing the Jewel Tower |
 | |
| Rookwood Golf Course |
Whatever you may have read to the contrary, and despite the faults and flaws of the fallen human beings who belong to it, the Catholic Church is alive, well and thriving! Lay organisations like the Catenians are a great sign of the activity of the Holy Spirit in the Church and it’s good to know there are many such movements out there, each with their own charism and particular area of ministry.
One movement that has a good deal in common with the Catenians is Equipes Notre Dame (“Teams of Our Lady”). It’s an international organisation known in Britain as Teams GB and exists to support married couples as they live out the sacrament of matrimony with all its implications. Catholic in origin but by no means exclusively Catholic in membership, Teams was started in France in the 1940’s by Fr Caffarel and has flourished so much that there are now 10,000 Teams across the world with over 100 in Britain. Just over a year ago Fr Terry Martin, parish priest of St John’s, founded a Team in Horsham – known, logically enough, as Horsham 1 – to which Edek and myself belong.
The “Teams method” of living out married spirituality consists of attending monthly meetings and of following a flexible rule of life on a daily basis. At the meetings four or five couples meet together with a chaplain to eat, share the highs and lows of their lives, pray, read Scripture and study a spiritual topic. The meetings are relaxed and joyful affairs in which we experience support and spiritual sustenance alongside friendship and, inevitably, loads of laughter! The rule of life consists of a set of “Endeavours”: essentially encouragements to help us pray and read Scripture daily and sit down regularly with our spouse to really talk.
I can’t over-emphasise ho
w valuable Edek and I have found Teams GB. Marriage is as much a path to personal sanctity as the religious or clerical life and it’s good to be reminded of that and helped in our efforts. Marriage and family life are enormous blessings but we all know they ain’t always easy! I do feel that the Teams movement has loads in common with the Catenian Association – they are kindred spirits in that both share the aims of “strengthening family life through friendship and faith”. Our witness to the love of God as expressed in the commitment of marriage is much needed in a world that often has difficulty understanding either.
Sadly, as Fr Terry moves on from his post as Horsham’s parish priest, he is also unable to continue being Horsham 1’s chaplain and so we have a vacancy to fill... Last night he attended his last Team meeting and here you can see him with the Holy Family icon we presented to him as a token of our (very great) appreciation.
You can find out more about Teams GB at their website, www.teamsgb.org.uk.
There has of course been one major news item this week – the riots in London and other major cities. Now, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to associate the Crawley Catenian blogsite with my personal opinions on the topic. I’m certainly not going to opine whose fault the riots were. In any case the media are already packed with analyses far more astute than any I’m qualified to make!
However, I think I can venture that this sort of scenario is not what Jesus had in mind when (in Luke 6:20) He said “Blessed are you who are poor”: and that when He promised “for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven” He did not mean the first-century equivalent of plasma TVs and cool trainers. Neither is it just the “disadvantaged” sector of society that indulges in dangerously selfish behaviour, even if it's often manifested in ways that are less physically violent (though for that reason more insidious and therefore, in a sense, even more dangerous). As has been widely commented, our society seems to lack an overarching value system that enables us to get on together and promotes cooperation and therefore social cohesiveness. Morals are eminently practical things whether one has religious belief or not.
To go just a little deeper, I don’t think I’ll be courting controversy to state on a Catenian blogsite that, as a Christian, I believe in the fundamental role of a strong family to nurture individuals, give them a sense of identity and self-worth and an appreciation of the dignity of the human person; a worldview, in fact, that does not set the acquisition of power and material possessions as the pinnacles of aspiration but sees a deeper value to life.
Yes, all this has already been said. Let’s take the opportunity, though, to relate it to ourselves as members and wives of the Catenian Association. We belong to an organisation dedicated to the support not only of a group of people, but to the values and beliefs they (we) espouse. More accurately, perhaps, it’s an organisation dedicated to supporting us as we espouse our values and beliefs. In short, the Catenian Association provides us with fellowship as we work to build a society that recognises a shared value system: one that treasures individuals rather than being individualistic and aspires to a quality of life that is more than merely material.
We may each feel we can only make a humble contribution to that building work, but make it we must. If we each just lay a brick or two we’ll build a house... and eventually a whole Kingdom. Belonging to the Catenians and flying a public flag for our faith is a good start.
Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, a feast I love because it is so rich both in encouragement and in gritty reality. As our parish priest at St John’s, Horsham – Fr Terry - pointed out at Mass this morning, the disciples could not prolong their mountain-top experience with Jesus, Elijah and Moses indefinitely, but had to learn to bring the inspiration they had received back down into the valley of everyday life and, further, into the difficult times that lay ahead in Jerusalem. In the same way, this is for us a feast that fires us up with a vision of the glory of God and of the ultimate destiny of our humanity. At the same time it reminds us that in the here and now we will have to struggle, but always with hope.
For me, the white crucifix at St John’s (pictured here courtesy of the parish web site) speaks of both these elements: future hope and present comfort. When I lift up my eyes and heart to the Lord at Mass, I see a broken God-man hanging in shining-white glory. The glory gives hope; but the broken man offers me the comfort of a Saviour who has walked where I have walked and grieved as I have grieved.
When we walk and grieve with others, we are extending to them this glorious-broken comfort of the Cross. Our family has been blessed to experience a great deal of such comfort in the difficult times a child’s illness has brought to us over the past year or two. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Crawley Catenian Circle for their kind prayers, which have helped to transfigure our own experience of the challenges of daily life. I know there are many others too who are indebted to Catenian prayers and support.
"This excellent presentation is perfect for use in schools, youth groups, prayer groups, Confirmation classes and RCIA and gives a dynamic, relevant and interesting look at the priest and his ministry. Filmed on location at Brighton beach, Arundel Cathedral and Saint Pancras Catholic Church in Lewes, this important DVD resource has an accompanying question booklet for further discussion and information. Produced in collaboration with the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton. Many thanks to the Diocesan parishes and Catenian circles that have financially supported the production of this DVD."The Parish Priest of St Pancras, Lewes, is Fr Richard Biggerstaff who will be moving to St John's, Horsham, next month.
I will admit that before I got to the stage of encouraging my husband Edek to join the Catenians, I had a few mental obstacles to overcome (it took me a while to recognise a good thing when I saw it!). One of them concerned spending a certain amount of time and money (as “middle Britons” with a family, we don’t have either of those in as much abundance as we’d like) on membership of an organisation that was, as I thought, purely social. I could see the value of the Association in the days when Catholics were struggling for acceptance in the business world and needed their own network of support. But this hardly applied in the twenty-first century. Shouldn’t we join something “worthy” and do good, instead?
Before the Crawley Catenians rise up en masse to quite rightly debunk what I have just said, I will emphasise that the Catenian Association and its members actually do loads of good – for example, raising substantial amounts of money for local and national charities and supporting parishes and dioceses in a number of ways. And of course, being a Catenian doesn’t preclude membership of a charitable organisation: plenty of our members do both!
Above and beyond all that, though, I have learned not to turn my nose up at the “purely social”. Like everything else in our created world, relaxation, fun and companionship are gifts from God. Like everything else in our world, they can be horribly abused and exploited. They can be mindless distractions from the deeper realities of life or they can be grace-filled means to grow closer to Christ. One way or another, what we do in our spare time will shape us. It will either diminish us and contribute to the debasing of the world, or it will enrich us and empower us to fulfil the fundamental calling of the lay person – to order the world in accordance with God’s will. One good way of doing this is to share the warmth of the fellowship we have experienced with others (aka evangelisation).
In short, I realised that encouraging my husband to join a Catholic social network was a very “worthy” choice to make. Here’s to having fun... Cheers!
 |
| February 2011, Fr Gerard Hatton, then the Diocese's newest priest, assisted at the altar by then-deacon, now newest priest, Fr David King |
The priestly vocation is a gift from God. It is undoubtedly a great good for the person who is its first recipient. But it is also a gift to the Church as a whole, a benefit to her life and mission. The Church, therefore, is called to safeguard this gift, to esteem it and love it. (Pastores dabo vobis, 41)As Catenians, one of the things we pray for at every meeting is vocations to the Priesthood, Diaconate and the Religious Life. We should take seriously this call to prayer, and following from that our responsibility both for encouraging others to think about their vocations and for discerning the path to which the Holy Spirit is calling us personally.
