Dear friends in Christ

The days of Jesus life following His Resurrection come to completion with the mystery of His Ascension into Heaven, celebrated this weekend.

Today we are not only made possessors of Paradise, but with Christ we have ascended, mystically but also really, to the heights of Heaven and have won through Christ a grace more wonderful than the one we had lost
– Pope St Leo the Great

Jesus is in Heaven with His glorified body, with the signs of His redemptive sacrifice, and with the marks of His Passion, which bring about our salvation.

Pope St Leo continues:

The Apostles benefited so greatly from the Ascension of our Lord that all that beforehand had caused them fear now caused them joy. From that moment on, their souls were fixed in contemplation on the the divinity seated at the right hand of the Father; the very vision of His body was no obstacle to their believing with their minds illumined by faith that Christ had not separated Himself from His Father when He descended, and had not separated Himself from His disciples when He ascended.

Please pray for our thirty-three young people who are preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation next Sunday (Pentecost) and also our sixty-five young children who are receiving First Holy Communion over these weeks too.

At the Clergy Deanery Meeting this week Fr Eamonn Power – the new Parish Priest of Canvey Island – was elected as the Dean of Southend to replace me. I am very happy to hand over the reins after eleven years in the post; I ask you to pray for him in this new responsibility. May God bless you all!

Msgr Kevin Hale