+ Wednesday 3rd June – Midweek Mass for our friends in classrooms and other places

Dear friends –

You’ll notice a large red section near the top of the website that’s now showing an updated next step and plan for church opening and Masses at Our Lady of the Way. See yesterday’s Parish Blog post, 2nd June, for a full outline including Midweek times for Prayer/Adoration church openings, Masses, Communion Service opportunities and Reconciliation. That post on 2nd June also has some reflections and considerations relevant to the temporary program that is in place from this week. Your continued feedback – and bearing in mind those considerations shared – is most welcome.

SO TODAY, WEDNESDAY, IS  SPECIALLY CONNECTING TO THE PARISH SCHOOL CHILDREN 

Just for this first day under the new program, they’re all staying in their classrooms, using this blog and connecting through the voice recordings and video. From next Wednesday we will have children and teachers present and also live stream from the church into classrooms to others. And one idea among others, is to have some parish communion ministers with us at Mass at that time to0 – and send them into the school at Communion time to those who are joining us on the screen. Ideally we can reach out further and include some parents and other family members too. Let’s unite in our hope and efforts that we can use this time to develop and extend our parish mission. Hopefully together we’ll do more than settle back.


WELCOME TO MASS ON WEDNESDAY OF WEEK 9 IN ‘ORDINARY TIME’ 


INTRO TO MASS

The voice recording below is to the children in their classrooms – but is also shared with other adult parishioners joining in online today too. This intro recording is a greeting – shares some comments about Saint Charles Lwanga and companions from Uganda (including 13 year old Kizito) – and mentions the idea of moving back into ‘Ordinary Time’ in the church cycle. The voice recording then prays a penitential rite (Lord have mercy) and the opening prayer.


>>>Click on the triangle play button to activate the voice recording<<<


OPENING PRAYER (included in the recording above)


THE LITURGY OF THE WORD

FIRST READING

A Reading from the 2nd letter to Timothy   (1:1-3,6-12)

From Paul, appointed by God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus in his design to promise life in Christ Jesus; to Timothy, dear child of mine, wishing you grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Christ Jesus our Lord.
  Night and day I thank God, keeping my conscience clear and remembering my duty to him as my ancestors did, and always I remember you in my prayers. That is why I am reminding you now to fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you. God’s gift was not a spirit of timidity, but the Spirit of power, and love, and self-control. So you are never to be ashamed of witnessing to the Lord, or ashamed of me for being his prisoner; but with me, bear the hardships for the sake of the Good News, relying on the power of God who has saved us and called us to be holy – not because of anything we ourselves have done but for his own purpose and by his own grace. This grace had already been granted to us, in Christ Jesus, before the beginning of time, but it has only been revealed by the Appearing of our saviour Christ Jesus. He abolished death, and he has proclaimed life and immortality through the Good News; and I have been named its herald, its apostle and its teacher.
  It is only on account of this that I am experiencing fresh hardships here now; but I have not lost confidence, because I know who it is that I have put my trust in, and I have no doubt at all that he is able to take care of all that I have entrusted to him until that Day.

The word of the Lord

Thanks be to God.


RESPONSORIAL PSALM 

(Boys and girls – the Psalms are the prayer songs of our ancestors and can sometimes seem very ancient language. This  one is written in a time of servants and masters/mistresses! But see if you can work out something that it’s saying and adapt an idea for today. Doing this can help us feel like we’re part of an incredible, big, long story of life and of God’s people)

Psalm 122(123):1-2

Response>To you, O Lord, I lift up my eyes


(image credits: OLOW parish school website) 

To you have I lifted up my eyes,
  you who dwell in the heavens;
my eyes, like the eyes of slaves
  on the hand of their lords

R>To you, O Lord, I lift up my eyes

Like the eyes of a servant
  on the hand of her mistress,
so our eyes are on the Lord our God
  till he show us his mercy

R>o you, O Lord, I lift up my eyes


GOSPEL ACCLAMATION              

(Jn11:25,26)

Alleluia, alleluia!
I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord;
whoever believes in me will not die for ever.
Alleluia!


GOSPEL 

A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark  (12:18-27)

Some Sadducees – who deny that there is a resurrection – came to Jesus and they put this question to him, ‘Master, we have it from Moses in writing, if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but no child, the man must marry the widow to raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first married a wife and then died leaving no children. The second married the widow, and he too died leaving no children; with the third it was the same, and none of the seven left any children. Last of all the woman herself died. Now at the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be, since she had been married to all seven?’
  Jesus said to them, ‘Is not the reason why you go wrong, that you understand neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, men and women do not marry; no, they are like the angels in heaven. Now about the dead rising again, have you never read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the Bush, how God spoke to him and said: I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? He is God, not of the dead, but of the living. You are very much mistaken.’

The Gospel of the Lord


HOMILY SHARED BY FR PAUL TODAY


>>>Click on the triangle play button to activate the voice recording<<<


PRAYERS OF THE FAITHFUL

You are invited to take some moments now to compose and pray some Prayers of the Faithful. The following themes might assist your own reflections:

  • a prayer for students and those who work in education, especially as schools now return
  • a prayer for parents and families, especially those with challenges at the moment
  • a prayer for each of us for a growing faith to live our lives with purpose 
  • a prayer for our development of  new skills and possibilities in each phase of our lives
  • a prayer for places in the world where COVID-19 is still so threatening  – and where populations are living in daily fear
  • ?
  • ?

And so we now bring the bread and wine to the altar – as we now stream the second part of today’s  Mass from Our Lady of the Way church


THE LITURGY OF THE EUCHARIST 

>>>Click on the triangle play button in the middle of the picture<<<

 

 


See you in the next Parish Blog post and

With friendship in God’s mission

fr Paul

 

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Christine Rannaste
Christine Rannaste
3 years ago

Wonderful Thankyou