OUR PARISH SUPPORTS THE COBHAM AREA FOODBANK Please can you help local people in crisis by purchasing items on the list below and placing them in the Foodbank’s collection point in the narthex when to come to Mass at the weekend? 

Applications are now available for our Infant Baptism, First Reconciliation, and First Eucharist Preparation Programmes for the next academic year (Confirmation Applications will be made available once Bishop Richard provides a date for the celebration). PLEASE NOTE that these programmes are only for candidates from families who are Registered Parishioners who are actually regular members of our worshipping community - if this is not the case at present then talk to Fr Daryl about what can be done to rectify the situation for some point in the future.

The theme of asking God with boldness for what one needs runs through the first reading and the Gospel today. As a Jewish boy growing up, Jesus would have learned the stories of the many Old Testament figures who were unafraid to ask God directly and boldly for what they wanted: Isaiah, Moses, Hannah, Jeremiah, and here, Abraham, to name just a few. Jesus internalized the message, came before his Father with honestly and boldness (“take this cup from me”), and taught his disciples they can ask with confidence for what they need too. For all Christians out there who believe it is selfish to pray for what they want and need, today’s Gospel reading challenges that. First, Jesus teaches his disciples, and us, some brief lines we can always use when we don’t know what to pray. The Lord’s Prayer is a brief summation of praise, openness to God’s will, request for what we need, and desire for forgiveness as well as a willingness to forgive. It is a perfect prayer to focus on or to fall back upon when we are otherwise at a loss for how to pray.  Jesus also gives us great freedom in not limiting us to the words of the Our Father. He gives us permission to ask, seek, and knock, without telling us what we can or can’t ask for. Fifteen hundred years later St. Ignatius taught that our deepest desires are also God’s deepest desires for us and it is okay to ask for them! The challenge is to identify the true desires beneath the superficial desires. Sometimes we desire food when we aren’t hungry, or mindless entertainment when we are lonely. In those situations, we can ask “What is the desire behind those desires?” and then bring that to prayer. “God, what I really want is a greater sense of meaning and fullness in life,” or “I want a friend, a partner, a companion.” God may not answer us with chocolate cake or a Netflix series, but Jesus assures us that we will find what we are really asking for. Questions of the week  When have you asked God for something and received it, even if it didn’t come in the form you imagined?  What are you asking God for these days? Or, what do you want to ask God for that might seem like a “big ask”?

Moral theology, Vatican II said, should be more thoroughly nourished by Scripture, showing the nobility of the Christian vocation of the faithful and their obligation to bring forth fruit in charity for the life of the world. Alphonsus, declared patron of moral theologians by Pius XII in 1950, would rejoice in that statement. In his day, Alphonsus fought for the liberation of moral theology from the rigidity of Jansenism. His moral theology, concentrated on the practical and concrete problems of pastors and confessors. If a certain legalism and minimalism crept into moral theology, it should not be attributed to his model of moderation and gentleness. He founded the Redemptorist congregation in 1732. It was an association of priests and brothers living a common life, dedicated to the imitation of Christ, and working mainly in popular missions for peasants in rural areas. Almost as an omen of what was to come later, he found himself deserted after a while by all his original companions except one lay brother. But the congregation managed to survive and was formally approved seventeen years later, though its troubles were not over. He was made a bishop when aged 66 after trying to reject the honour, and at once instituted a thorough reform of his diocese. Alphonsus is best known for his moral theology, but he also wrote well in the field of spiritual and dogmatic theology. His Glories of Mary is one of the great works on that subject, and his book Visits to the Blessed Sacrament went through forty editions in his lifetime, greatly influencing the practice of this devotion in the Church.

The musings of one of God’s smallest creatures on events in and around the Parish over the past seven days . . . . Things around The Presbytery are beginning to slow down a bit, with schools now all on holiday and Bishop Richard and around eight hundred people from around the diocese on pilgrimage to Lourdes . . . . . . . After our morning Masses on Sunday Fr D was visited by a parishioner from one of his former parishes who took him out for lunch locally. As always the parishioner brought a number of Mass Offerings that Fr D agreed to celebrate over the next month or so. On Monday Fr D’s Ministry to Priests Support Group arrived for midday and were in the church for an hour before the Blessed Sacrament. When they went into the house they celebrated Midday Prayer of the Church together before moving off to a local hostelry for lunch. In the evening, after the other priests had left Fr D found himself writing a list of ‘To Do’s’ that he wanted to get completed during the rest of the week. After celebrating Morning Prayer, Mass, and Exposition Fr D re-read the contract that we have with Euro Car Parks to administer the Car Park for us. This was because the Parish Priest of Horsham was due at midday to have a meeting with Fr Daryl, Sarah, and our Treasurer to find out how things operate; Horsham as a large car park that has become difficult to administer. In the afternoon Fr D was preparing for a requiem for a parishioner next Friday (readings, prayers, music etc.). Wednesday, after Morning Prayer and Mass Fr D Fr D continued with the preparations for the requiem before going off in the car to meet with Fr Ruslan (Walton-on-Thames) for lunch. When he arrived back home Fr D began his sections of the newsletter for the weekend. Following Morning Prayer and Mass on Thursday Fr D was off to the diocesan office in Crawley where he continued work on a current penal case he is working on. Arriving back home in the late afternoon Fr D worked some more on the requiem and completed his parts of the newsletter ready for Sarah to complete and print/publish.  After Morning Prayer and Mass on Friday Fr D was out visiting a parishioner to anoint them before getting back and going through the weekend events with Sarah to make sure that all was ready. In the afternoon he spent time getting his homiles for the Masses during next week . . . . .

In recent weeks, those who care deeply about protecting the vulnerable have been dealt some devastating blows - with MP’s voting in June to legalise assisted suicide and to decriminalise abortion, allowing abortion up to birth. These are threats that we should all care deeply about. Pope Leo has already issued a call to action, saying: “No one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly.” We are living in very dark times - but SPUC invites us all to join in the fightback, to make our voices heard and to stand up for the most vulnerable. If enough people stand up for the pro-life cause, politicians will have to take heed of our concern for those lives lost to abortion and assisted suicide. SPUC urgently needs all of us to join in the work to bring about real and lasting protection for unborn children and those at the end of life. If we do not fight back, we can only expect the culture of death to encroach even further on our society.  As a first step, please take and fill out one of the postcards in the narthex, and SPUC will send you information about what you can do for the cause. Take some away too, for family and friends. In times like these, we need to stand up in defence of life. PLEASE leave completed postcards in the basket on the table at the back of church so we can send them on.

James was the brother of John. Both were called by Jesus as they worked with their father in a fishing boat on Galilee. So they left their father Zebedee in the boat along with the hired men and followed him.” James was one of the favoured three who had the privilege of witnessing the Transfiguration, the raising to life of the daughter of Jairus, and the agony in the garden. Two incidents in the Gospels describe the temperament of this man and his brother. St Matthew tells that their mother came - Mark says it was the brothers themselves - to ask that they have the seats of honour in the kingdom. “Jesus said in reply, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?’ They said to him, ‘We can.’” Jesus then told them they would share his baptism of pain and death, but that sitting at his right hand or left was not his to give - it “is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.” It remained to be seen how long it would take to realise their very confident “We can!” On another occasion, James and John gave evidence that the nickname Jesus gave them - “sons of thunder” - was an apt one. The Samaritans would not welcome Jesus because he was on his way to hated Jerusalem. “When James and John saw this they asked, ‘Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?’ Jesus turned and rebuked them…”  James was apparently the first of the apostles to be martyred. “About that time King Herod laid hands upon some members of the church to harm them. He had James, the brother of John, killed by the sword.

The musings of one of God’s smallest creatures on events in and around the Parish over the past seven days . . . . Another week around The Presbytery when having thought that things might start slowing down a bit for the summer events proved Fr D wrong . . . . . After Morning Prayer, Mass, and Exposition on Tuesday Fr D was busy making phone calls and writing emails to further the repairs to the car park wall (after a member of the public went and knocked down the right hand pillar and part of the low wall surround) and also to ask a few more questions and commission the removal of the leylandii around the car park ready for the installation of the new fencing. He also needed to prepare the template for two double issues of the newsletter in August whilst Sarah has a well deserved holiday break (he didn’t realise how accustomed he had become to the weekly template that he first designed when he originally came to the Parish in 2019 - adjusting things took quite some work). In the evening Fr D set about some reading for a meeting about the Pastoral Plan for this area that was to take place on Wednesday evening in Banstead. Following Morning Prayer and Mass on Wednesday, Fr D began work on his parts of this week’s newsletter (knowing that he had to be in Crawley on Friday for a judgement session on one of his marriage cases). He was being taken out for lunch by one of the people with whom he goes on holiday each year (over thirty years now). At 18.15 he took off in the car for the meeting at Banstead which was starting at 19.00 and was meant to finish at 21.00 (in fact it went on to just after 21.30); when he arrived home all he wanted was to get to bed! On Thursday morning Fr D almost overslept for some reason. After Morning Prayer and Mass he was off down to Crawley where he finalised his case for judgement on Friday and started a new penal case that Bishop Richard had asked him to take part in - these cases are always really difficult because of their sensitive nature; hopefully this one will be available for the Bishop when he returns from Lourdes. When he got home in the late afternoon Fr D finished getting his parts of the newsletter together ready for Sarah to complete and print/post online on Friday.  Once again, after Morning Prayer and Mass on Friday, Fr D went off down to the diocesan offices in Crawley where he was Presiding Judge in a team of three making the definitive decision about a marriage case . . . . .

Often this story of Martha and Mary is interpreted as Jesus’ teaching that the life of contemplation is more important than a life of action, or at least that we must balance action with contemplation. What if instead it is a story showing Jesus’ acceptance of a woman as an apostle? The gospels give us several stories of Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus. Interestingly, Mary and Martha are always mentioned first, and their brother is mentioned in relationship to them, not the other way around. Martha and Mary are identified as “from Bethany” not identified by a husband or a father. The two women seem to be the homeowners in the story, not their brother or another male relative. All these things are noteworthy because they lived in a strictly patriarchal culture, yet they are distinguished for their individual identities, not for their relationship to men. They have agency on their own.  In their culture, it was common for Jewish rabbis to gather disciples around them for training so that they could then go out to continue the rabbis’ work. Rabbis would sit with their disciples at their feet, teaching them their lessons. That is the case here. Luke paints a picture of Mary in the role of a fully included disciple - and Jesus has no problem with that! Martha does, however. She wants Mary to come back to the traditional role of a woman in that time - serving men. Jesus, in the other hand, doesn’t ask her to do that. He accepts her fully in the role of student and follower, just as one of the twelve male apostles. Questions of the week  What do you make of the above interpretation - that Jesus is affirming the equal role of women and men in discipleship?  Are there roles in the church that you would be uncomfortable seeing women in and might find yourself protesting like Martha to Jesus. Why?