Parish of Hoyland Saint Andrew
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Week Commencing 8th August 2021

8/10/2021

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Forthcoming Services
Thursday 12th August 10.00am
Sunday 15th August 9.30am

​Reflections
 At Mirfield, where I trained for the priesthood, we had something called a “Deacons’ Week” towards the end of our first year of ordained ministry.  It was to reflect on how things were going.  I remember in one of our sessions, Fr George, one of the Community, asked us what reasons we had to be thankful in our ministry.  There was an awkward silence that was finally broken by Andrew, a rather genteel clergyman in a rural parish who said: “Some of my neighbours gave me some lovely rhubarb last week.”  Well, it certainly broke the ice.  I suppose we weren’t used to being asked that question about how God was at work among us and what cause this gave us for thanksgiving.  But it’s something well worth thinking about.
   Most of us go about our lives of faith day by day and week by week and often do not notice anything particularly remarkable.   Normally we might be aware of God’s presence in a fairly quiet and discreet way.  But still it is worth being more aware of how God is at work and how God is being revealed to us.   Ignatian spirituality leads us to be more aware of God’s presence in ordinary, everyday things.  God feeds us, body and spirit - maybe not with rhubarb, but certainly with the Bread of Life – our Lord, Jesus Christ.  God comes to us in Christ and Christ comes to us through his holy word and in the Sacrament of the Altar.
    Jesus invites us to see with his eyes.  Let’s watch him then, as he lifts up bread and says: “This is my body”.  Watch him as he takes the cup and hands it to his friends, saying: “This is my blood of the new Covenant”.  Look again and hear those words repeated in the world around us.  Mass will be celebrated today in churches and in cathedrals, in hospitals and in prisons.  People from all walks of life will come, whether happy or sad, reflecting all aspects of the human condition.  They will stretch out their hands and receive the Bread of Life that Jesus gives: his very own Body.
    This is made possible in the first place, not because of something that we do ourselves, but because of what God in Christ is doing among us.  Jesus comes among us in the Eucharist and in the words of John’s gospel he says:
“I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.  Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.”
    This surely should be our answer if we are asked what wonderful things God is doing among us and what cause we have for thanksgiving.  God reaches out to us in Jesus.  In him we find the strength and inspiration to do what we are asked to do in the letter to the Ephesians today:
“Try then to imitate God, as children of his that he loves, and follow Christ by loving as he loved you, giving himself up in our place as a fragrant offering and a sacrifice to God.”
Human strength alone will not achieve this, but the Bread of Life that we receive becomes our strength and inspiration.
    Let’s be clear: we need this spiritual food.  Like Elijah the prophet in our first reading, we can feel buffeted by the world, often weary and sometimes overwhelmed.  We may even ask ourselves, as he appeared to do, whether our efforts have been worth it.  Elijah had met with rejection.  He had offended Jezebel, the wife of the king, because he had spoken the truth about God and about the events that were unfolding around him.  His reward was hostility and rejection and he now felt tempted to give up and to despair.
    All this took place in the ninth century BC, but really, human beings do not change all that much.  People in our own time can be resistant to anything they do not want to hear.  The prophets of our own time who call people to take notice of what is happening in our world and to remember God, can also face hostility and rejection.  In the depths of Elijah’s despondency, God offers him food and calls him to eat it before continuing his journey.
    On our own journey through life, God feeds us too.  Jesus continues to give us his Body and Blood, in good times and bad.  Without that food and drink we struggle to continue our journey of faith.  I often take comfort in the words of Pope Francis:
   “The Eucharist… is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”
For those with eyes to see, God does great things among us at every table of communion as we gather together to receive the Body and Blood of the Lamb of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. 



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Upgraded Church Mice Cafe

8/4/2021

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Our Cafe has been upgraded with new tables and chairs ready for re-opening on the first Tuesday of September. The Prayer Tree has also been re-sited in this area of the Narthex, see pictures below.
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Week Commencing 1st August

8/3/2021

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Forthcoming Services
Thursday 5th August 10.00am
Sunday 8th August 9.30am

This Weeks Offering 
“I am the bread of life”, says Jesus, “He who comes to me will never be hungry.”  For the people of Israel, bread would have been a staple food, just as it is for us.  I don’t know about you, but I love it in all its varieties and find it hard to pass a bakery if I can smell freshly-baked bread.  I could demolish a French stick in one sitting.  Probably that would not be a good habit to get into, and Jesus does urge his listeners not to hanker after the food that will not last. After all, he had fed the crowd on the hillside and could see that they were wanting a repeat performance.  He tells them to “work for food that endures to eternal life.”
   Jesus is speaking to us here of what God provides for us in order to feed not only the body but also the soul.  When the people of Israel were on the move after being freed from slavery in Egypt, they found themselves yearning for the kind of things they would at least have been able to eat during their time and slaves.  They also rebelled in spirit and began to ask why they had been taken from a life that was at least predictable, to wander out in the desert, with no clear destination.  In the midst of this, God provided manna, which is described in the book of Exodus; something that satisfied their bodily hunger but which also appears to have been spiritual food.
   When we say in the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread”, we are not only asking God to provide for our bodily needs, but for our spiritual needs also.  As the people of Israel looked back nostalgically to the place where they were held as slaves, we might look back in a similar spirit to our lives before the pandemic.  Just as they had to learn themselves, God does not lead us back into the past, but forwards towards the promised land.  We do not like uncertainty or feeling as though we are never really sure of what comes next.  It can cause us to grumble and to rebel and to forget that in the past, not everything was perfect.  But what we are promised in the wilderness is bread from heaven.
   St Augustine spoke of the Word of God as being sacramental, because of the way in which it nourishes our hungry spirit.  As Jesus said when he himself was tempted in the desert: “One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4)  It is not only the words that Jesus spoke that are bread from heaven but above all, Christ himself, as he says in John’s gospel:
“I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never be hungry; he who believes in me will never thirst.”
When we live by that Word, we walk in the path of life.
   We know also that in the Sacrament of the altar, Jesus has given us his Body and Blood as a lasting memorial of his presence among us and as the pledge of eternal life.  This is food for our journey and it sustains us, no matter how hard that journey might seem.  The Church itself is not just a religious fellowship, but it is the Body of Christ on earth.  Brought into being by baptism and nourished by the Eucharist, it grows into the place where we can be incorporated as very members of the body of Christ.  The Eucharist builds the Church.  It is the way appointed by Christ in which the world itself is re- membered through the growth of his body.
   What we receive in the Eucharist breathes hope into our lives and gives us a glimpse of a world transformed by the death and resurrection of Christ.  In this, our own lives are renewed, so that we live not only for ourselves but for the good of our brothers and sisters and for the world of God’s creation.  We leave behind whatever is deadening to our human spirit.  In the words of the letter to the Ephesians:
“You must give up your old way of life; you must put aside your old self, which gets corrupted by following illusory desires.  Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth.”
   We live in a world that holds out the offer of a quick fix when what we need is something deeper and more lasting.  We are used to what can be bought and sold, but what God wants us to receive is something freely given.  We cannot possibly earn it and in truth we are unworthy to receive it, but God is inviting us to take and to eat.  Jesus is the bread of life and when we open our lives to his gift, we eat the bread of heaven, raising us up, body and soul, to eternal life.
 


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    Saint Andrew

    I am a rather old Saint.

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