18th Sunday Ordinary Time C 31st July 2016

Responsorial Psalm:
Many Thanks
O Lord, you have been our
refuge from one generation
to the next.
To all our friends at St. David's: enormous
thanks for the wonderful (and emotional)
farewell you gave us last Sunday. We
were humbled by the love and kindness
shown to us. We are truly blessed in all
we have shared and experienced at St
David's and will keep you in our prayers.
God bless you all.
On Sunday: Alternative Response
to the Psalm :
O that today you would
hear His voice! Harden
not your hearts
Gospel Acclamation:
Alleluia, alleluia!
Your Word is truth, O Lord;
consecrate us in the truth.
Alleluia!
Exhibition on Eucharistic Miracles
throughout the world:
at Our Lady of the Rosary Church
Hall, Jubilee Road, Buckley
on this Friday 5 August and Saturday 6 August, 10.30am to 6.00pm
Portiuncula 800 Years
This Tuesday (2nd August) – Porti-
uncula 800 Years: our Poor Clare Sisters at Hawarden (“Ty Mam Duw”, Upper Aston Hall Lane, Hawarden CH5
3EN) invite us all, saying “We welcome
all our friends of the Franciscan family
and all who love our father Saint Francis.
This is a family celebration for the Year
of Mercy with the opportunity to receive
the gift of mercy, the Portiuncula Pardon. 5.30pm an hour of prayer with opportunity for the Sacrament of Reconciliation 6.30pm Festival Mass.
See the notice at the back.
Eglwys Catholig Dewi Sant, Yr Wyddgrug
St.David’s Catholic Church, Mold
Parish Priest: Fr. Pius Mathew CMI,
St.David’s Presbytery, St.David’s Lane, Mold. CH7 1LH
Email: piuscmi@gmail.com
01352 752087
Deacon David Joy:01352 754722 LSUConvent:01352 700121
Website: http://www.stdavidsmold.org.uk/
www.wrexhamdiocese.org.uk http://www.cmi.org.in
Karen, Alan, Sophie & Amy Morris.
Money Matters :
Offertory Collection last weekend
£726.09 of which £413.50 was Gift Aided.
31st July 2016
Michael
Jones,
Anne
Jones, Jim Hughes, Margaret Carr, Judith Rowe, Margaret Evans, Fred Battersby,
Gwen Jones,Joe Goggin, Ian
Byron, Debra Ann Roberts,Tricia Twizell, Rosa Maria, Joan Lawrence, Gay McCornick, Moira
Catherall, Lea Hill, Anne Turner, Mary
Rowe, Jenny Mansley, Jennifer Rowley,
Nancy Wilson,
Joe & Luisa Desena,
Shelagh Fulham, Margaret Stubbs, Philomena Lamano, and Leo McManus.
We remember in our prayers
Those whose anniversaries
Occur this week
(31st July) John Daly, Mary Jacinta Roberts,
Lilian Muter, (1st August) Maria Teresa Bardini, Winefride Cliffe, Ethel Cotter, (2nd Aug)
John James O’Neill, Margaret Parry, Martin
Carney, Michael Bravey, Patricia Hannah
http://www.cmi.org.in
Year C
LITURGY OF THE WEEK: Psalter Week II
30th July Saturday
Mass 5.30pm
Flowers: £124.30
Gift Aid: If you are a Tax Payer, please
consider filling out the Gift Aid form which
is in the church porch to receive a box of
weekly envelopes for your offertory donation or for a one-off donation then please
use the Green envelopes. Please remember to write your name, address, sign and
date the green envelope.
Thank you for supporting our Parish.
Let us pray for the Sick
18th Sunday Ordinary time
Madeleine Davis RIP
(Michel Davis)
31st July Sunday
Mass 11am
For People of the Parish
Monday :
1st Aug
Tuesday:
2nd Aug
Mem: St. Alphonsus Liguori
Mass 9.15am
Patrick Reilly RIP (Mary& Alan McDonald)
Liturgy of the day
Mass 7pm
Int. Srs. Sophie, Marie Odette, Veronique
and Michele (Dea & Eddie Saul)
Wednesday: Liturgy of the day
3rd Aug
Mass 9.15am
Int. Helen Edwards (Mary McCarry)
Thursday:
Mem. St. John Vianney
4th Aug
Mass 9.15am
Int. Alice Higginbottom (HF, Wrexham)
Friday:
Liturgy of the day
5th Aug
Mass 9.15am
Bill Taylor RIP (Kitty Malone)
6th August Saturday
Mass at 5.30pm
7th August Sunday
Mass 11am
Roy Cropper RIP
(Mrs. D. Green)
For People of the Parish
Eucharistic
Adoration
with
Rosary and
Benediction
Every Friday
following the
morning Mass
at 9.15am
Sacrament of
Reconciliation
(Confessions)
Saturdays
10.30am to
11.30am
& Before the Vigil
Mass
(4.45-5.20pm)
Sundays before
the Mass
(10.30-10.50am)
The Humour of Jesus
FAITH IN FOCUS:
“
WHAT’S THE POINT?
Vanity of vanities!” is a
famous quotation from
the bible, but what does it
mean? It’s the preacher’s
way in the Book of Ecclesiastes of saying that life
seems “meaningless” or
“pointless”. What’s it all
about? It’s certainly not fair
and it seems to take all my
time and energy and keep
me to the grindstone.
very far. We’ll get bogged
down in its limitations; our
lives will not reflect anything other than our career
prospects, our bank balances, our reputations and our
comfort. Our cultural horizons will hit the buffers at
celebrity, gossip, fashion
A
radio pundit the other day said that there
should be more love shown
in the work place, because
love makes us more productive and that way we will
earn more money. Is that
the point of life, money?
And what’s the point of
stashing money away when
your children and grandchildren will only fritter it away
after you’ve gone? Is it
worth the hard work and
the restless nights worrying
about it, asks our reading
today?
and trivia, while our significant relationships will be
virtually found on Facebook
and Twitter.
here’s nothing fundamentally wrong with
our world; God made it and
it’s good. But if we limit our
sights only to the things of
this world then we won’ see
hat makes us tick?
What are our values and are any of them
transcendent? Do they go
beyond the make-up and
greasepaint, beyond simply
T
following the crowd in its
dream of success?
The preacher in today’s
scripture obviously feels
that life can be meaningless unless we have a clear
idea about the reason we
are on this earth. Without
such a spiritual compass
we are at the whim of a
pointless merry-go-round
that seems to take more
out of us than it gives.
S
W
o what’s the driving
force in your life?
What makes you want to
jump out of bed in the
morning and confront the
world and all its challenges? What motivates you to
keep on going and to make
your mark? Given that life
is short, what makes it
worth living? When today’s
psalmist came to answer
these questions, he put it
very simply:Make us know
the shortness of our life/that
we may gain wisdom of
heart/O Lord, you have
been our refuge/from one
generation to the next.
For life to be meaningful we
all need a goal. What’s
yours?
Because Jesus was fully human like us, he had to have a sense of humour. However,
sometimes we read what Jesus says and we think that it must be very holy and therefore very serious. We miss the wood for the trees. In fact, that was one of the many
one-liners that Jesus used in the New Testament. In trying to get across the idea that
some people are critical of others whilst applying much lower standards to themselves, he said that they notice the splinter in other people’s eyes but not the plank in
their own!
Leave the dead to bury the dead, was his quip to someone who wanted to be his follower but wasn’t prepared to drop everything there and then. When he said that the
poor will be with us always, it can only have been with tongue in cheek, for otherwise it
would have been completely out of character.
Often Jesus used irony to get his message across, claiming that the religious leaders
knew how to live the high-life but did nothing to lighten the burdens of the ordinary
people. He tells amusing stories about people who are just concerned with feathering
their nest but who die and don’t get their chance to enjoy their wealth.
He gives silly names to people, calling Peter a rock when he was anything but, and
referring to James and John as Sons of Boanerges, meaning Sons of Thunder, and
implying that they are hotheads.
When the woman at the well coyly says that she has no husband he points out wryly
that the man she is living with is not her husband and neither were any of the previous
five. He says, “You speak the truth there”; we would probably say, “You can say that
again!”
And with clever use of humour Jesus is not afraid to shock. The story of the Good Samaritan is funny because Samaritans were outcasts who were shunned by good Jewish people, but in the story it’s the priest and Levite (…heard the one about the priest,
the rabbi and the mullah….?) who ignore the man who has been mugged and it’s the
Samaritan (the chav, the punk, the hippie) who turns up trumps. Jesus puts the humorous sting in the tail of the story that would have delighted the ordinary people who
listened to him.
The pages of the gospels are packed with amusing references to whining widows who
wear down powerful judges, of nagging neighbours who come pestering for a loaf at
midnight, of people who embarrassingly have to be re-seated at a wedding because
they thought they were more important than they were, of religious people in the middle of the street with long, glum faces and ashes on their heads trying to show that
they are fasting, of a self-important person praying on the front row of the synagogue
but whose prayer is not as effective as the sinner who crouches on the back row…No
one was safe from the butt of his humour, a butt that was simply intended to get people to think and act differently.
Body, Mind and Spirit.
Jesus became fully human, and that extended to having a sense of humour. Someone
once said that God must laugh out loud daily when seeing how we human beings go
about our daily lives and the mess we often make of them. To be holy, you don’t have
to be miserable. The world has enough Holy Joes without our pretending that religion
is so sombre that it should never raise a smile. We are called to experience life with
body, mind and spirit: to use all our mental faculties in learning about our world, about
each other and about the promises that God has made to us in Jesus. And that includes our sense of humour.