Dear Friends in Christ

The agenda of the Readings which the Church gives us in these Sundays before Lent begins, relate various occasions of encounter and healing at the start of the public ministry of Our Lord. They give us, as I suggested last week, a programme for our own efforts in evangelisation. I wrote last week about some of the ways we want to implement this within our own Parish Family, and taking the Mission last October as the inspiration for this, we are starting to prepare for a vision of evangelisation that will equip us with the tools needed to firstly, be confident in our own faith and secondly to have the courage to reach out to others and show them the beauty of Christ and His Church. Lent would seem the natural time for the start of this process.

The Gospel of this Sunday tells of the cure of a man possessed by the devil. We have to remain on watch so that the wiles of the evil one do not mislead or enslave us. One of the worse forms of this entrapment is the attitude of apathy and lukewarmness; the overwhelming sense that it doesn’t matter, that there is no urgency, that we can make-do as we are. The devil always applies subtlety in his tactics to bring down the followers of Christ. Our vocation is to be faithful to Christ, His Church and the call to evangelise, as Pope Saint Pope John II said:

Deliver us Lord, from the evil one, lead us not into temptation. Grant in your infinite mercy that we should not give in to the infidelity to which the one who has been unfaithful from the beginning endeavours to seduce us.

God bless you and keep us all faithful in His service!
Msgr Kevin Hale