St Teresa & St John Southworth Churches, Cleveleys
Fr Chris Cousens—Phone: 853340
Rev Bernard Ward (Deacon) (Tel: 858346)
Enquiries for St John Southworth: Phone: 853340
2 March 2025
http://www.st-teresas-church.co.uk
Email: st.teresas.cleveleys@gmail.com
Lancaster Roman Catholic Diocesan Trustees Registered Charity Number 23433
Sunday : Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Contents: Gospel
Notices
Reflection
Gospel – (Luke 6:39-45)
Jesus told a parable to his disciples. ‘Can one blind man guide another? Surely both will fall into a pit? The disciple is not superior to his teacher; the fully trained disciple will always be like his teacher. Why do you observe the splinter in your brother’s eye and never notice the plank in your own? How can you say to your brother, “Brother, let me take out the splinter that is in your eye,” when you cannot see the plank in your own? Hypocrite! Take the plank out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter that is in your brother’s eye.
‘There is no sound tree that produces rotten fruit, nor again a rotten tree that produces sound fruit. For every tree can be told by its own fruit; people do not pick figs from thorns, nor gather grapes from brambles. A good man draws what is good from the store of goodness in his heart; a bad man draws what is bad from the store of badness. For a man’s words flow out of what fills his heart.’
Gospel Reflection : Inside Each Of Us
Inside each of us is a home, where God and love can dwell – a place of warmth and safety, a place of welcome and forgiveness, and there God makes his home. Or, inside each of us is a garden where God and love may grow, with soil for beauty and colour, and variety, and there God makes his home.
Our home needs care, and our garden needs tending, and then they are places of love, and spaces of growth, and others may live and grow in our care and love too.
The next generation always grows in the shade of the previous, and we need to care for our home if others are to find safety there, and if it is to be the dwelling place of God. And we need to nourish the garden if the fruit is to be sound, and the tree strong, and others live in its shadow and gather good fruit. We are a mixture of good and bad, but in prayer we nourish the good so that the home is loving and the garden is sound.
And then – we hope that by our fruits many will know the reality of love in their own lives.
We Remember In Our Prayers Margaret Joyce Martin, whose Funeral was last week. We remember her and her family, and those whose anniversaries are at this time. May they all be in God’s peace.
Household Support Fund – Important Information. People in the community struggling to pay for essentials such as food, heating and water this winter, can now apply for Support Funding from Wyre Council. Wyre residents can make an application now, using the online form on the Wyre Council website at www.wyre.gov.uk/household support. The closing date is 31st March 2025. Eligible residents are encouraged to seek support early, as the scheme may close earlier if the funds are exhausted due to demand.
There Is A Lancaster Diocese Pilgrimage To Walsingham, led by Bishop Paul, on 20-24th October, 2025. For details, please see the poster on the noticeboard at the back of church.
Lent, the Season of Reflection and Renewal leading up to Easter, begins on Wednesday 5th March. The “Walk With Me” booklets, containing daily reflections for Lent, are now on sale in the church shop at St. Teresa’s, priced just £1. Also available are gifts and cards for St. Patrick’s Day and First Holy Communion. Please feel free to call in and look around.
Ash Wednesday, This Wednesday 5th March, There is One Mass in Cleveleys, 9.30 am, at St.Teresa’s, at which our School children will be attending.
The Annual CAFOD Lenten Family Fast Day is on Friday March 14th. By praying, eating simply and giving, we will be supporting local experts to provide simple, effective solutions to the toughest problems facing people around the world. As usual there will be CAFOD envelopes in church to be picked up beforehand for this. If you can Gift Aid your donation, you”ll add a free 25 percent to anything you give!.
Next Weekend, Sue Ward, our Parish CAFOD representative, will be speaking about this year’s CAFOD theme. This year of course is a Jubilee Year in our universal Church, with its theme that we should all be pilgrims of Hope, both for ourselves and others. In supporting CAFOD in our parish collection we will be supporting the many communities experiencing the impacts of war, poverty and climate change to find solutions, and Hope..
Daily Reflections for this week
Monday (Fr. George Aschenbrenner, SJ: The Examen)
God reveals himself in our feelings as much as he does in our clear and distinct ideas. If we want to find God more intimately, we must let him draw us at the core of our being, which means becoming more aware of our feelings. Here we recognise God’s ceaseless invitation to come closer, to be more like him to be at one with him. We are also conscious of the resistance to him, which arises from sin in ourselves and in the world around us. We are not talking about feelings on the surface, but about movements deep in our hearts, where God has placed his word. If we stay away from the depths where we are truly ourselves, we shall miss much that the Spirit is saying to us. At the level of our deeper and more lasting feelings we discover ourselves and our real relationship with God.
Scripture (Luke 6:39-42)
Jesus told a parable to them, “Can one blind man guide another? Surely both will fall into a pit? The disciple is not superior to the teacher; the fully trained disciple will always be like the teacher. Why do you observe the splinter in your neighbour’s eye and not notice the plank in your own? How can you say to your neighbour, ‘Let me take out the splinter that is in your eye,’ when you cannot see the plank in your own? Hypocrite! Take the plank out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take out the splinter that is in your neighbour’s eye.’
Tuesday (Evelyn Underhill)
St. John of the Cross says that every quality or virtue which the Spirit really produces in our souls has three distinguishing characters: Tranquillity, Gentleness, Strength. If we desire a simple test of the quality of our spiritual life, a consideration of the tranquillity, gentleness and strength with which we deal with the circumstances our outward life will serve us better than anything that is based on the loftiness of our religious notions, or fervour of our religious feelings. Tranquillity, gentleness and strength, carrying us through the changes of weather, the ups and downs of the route, the varied surface of the road; the inequalities of family life, emotional and professional disappointments, the sudden intervention of bad fortune or bad health, the rising and falling of our religious temperature: this is the threefold imprint of the Spirit on the souls surrendered to His great action.
Scripture (Ecclesiasticus 24:4-7)
In a shaken sieve the rubbish is left behind, so too the defects of a person appear in their talk. The kiln tests the work of the potter; the test of a man is in his conversation. The orchard where the tree grows is judged on the quality of its fruit, similarly a person’s words betray what they feel. Do not praise someone before they have spoken since this is the test of people.
Wednesday (Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium)
The primary reason for evangelizing is the love of Jesus which we have received, the experience of salvation which urges us to ever greater love of him. If we do not feel an intense desire to share this love, we need to pray insistently that he will once more touch our hearts. We need to implore his grace daily, asking him to open our cold hearts and shake up our lukewarm and superficial existence. How much good it does us when he once more touches our lives and impels us to share his new life! The best incentive for sharing the Gospel comes from contemplating it with love, lingering over its pages and reading it with the heart. If we approach it in this way, its beauty will amaze and constantly excite us. There is nothing more precious which we can give to others.
Scripture (1 Jn1:1-3).
Something which has existed since the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have watched and touched with our own hands, the Word of life – this is our theme. That life was made visible; we saw it and are giving our testimony, declaring to you the eternal life, which was present to the Father and has been revealed to us. We are declaring to you what we have seen and heard, so that you too may share our life. Our life is shared with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
Thursday (Caryll Houselander)
To talk to someone about God, Christians need to learn their faith literally by heart, and then to pray daily that they may never fall into the temptation of merely showing off their knowledge and that what they are striving to give will always be God and not themselves. There is a way of convincing a person that puts them off. Christianity is represented to the person not as life in which their own life will grow and flower, but as a set of dogmas which must be swallowed whole like vitamin pills. The person’s head cannot answer them. Their heart rebels. It seems easier to forgo the certainty of Faith than the touch in darkness that is the sweetness of life.
Scripture (Luke 6:43-45)
There is no sound tree that produces rotten fruit, nor again a rotten tree that produces sound fruit. For every tree can be told by its own fruit: people do not pick figs from thorns, nor gathers grapes from brambles. A good person draws what is good from the store of goodness in their heart; a bad person draws what is bad from the store of badness. For a person’s words flow out of what is in their heart.
Friday (Cardinal Basil Hume)
The layperson finds his or her role principally in those circumstances of everyday life where their life and work place them. As husbands and wives, parents, as workers or professional people, in local communities and on a wider stage, the laity help to sanctify their surroundings, their families, their workplace, the communities of which they are members. They do it by the witness of their lives, the silent effect of their presence at the heart of secular life, and by the influence of their words and action aimed at creating a more just and humane society. This is the lay vocation: to bring society back to God; to offer it to him as a living sacrifice of praise.
Scripture (1 Peter 4:10-11)
Each one of you has received a special grace, so, like good stewards responsible for all these gifts of God, put it at the service of others. If anyone is a speaker, let it be as the words of God, if anyone serves, let it be as in strength granted by God; so that in everything God may receive the glory, through Jesus Christ, since to him alone belong all glory and power for ever an ever.
Martin Bennett