ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: FR PHILLIP APPOINTED REC AT CBC

With the retirement of Mrs Sandy Millward as Religious education Coordinator at CBC at the end of 2016, St Joseph's Christian Brothers' College, Bloemfontein has appointed Fr Phillip as REC in her place. Fr Phillip teaches Religious Education Grades 4-12 and Creative Arts Grades 7-9. He is responsible for the school's six choirs and liturgical celebrations.

St Joseph's celebrated its 75th year of existence in 2015. Its Principal is Mr Wally Borchard.

The main entrance to St Joseph's Christian Brothers' College, Bloemfontein.

BLOEMFONTEIN ORATORY IN FORMATION: FR XOLISA MAFU CHAPLAINS THE KNIGHTS OF DA GAMA.

Fr Xolisa Mafu has been appointed as both local and regional chaplain of the Knights of Da Gama. The Regional Council consists of the Free State, Kimberley and North West councils. The Regional Council met last Saturday in the Donovan Hall at the Sacred Heart Cathedral. This was followed by their Corporate Mass at St Joseph's parish, the Archbishop presiding, and dinner at the New York restaurant.

Fr Xolisa is also a consulter for the Archdiocese of Bloemfontein.

The Archbishop celebrates the Corporate Mass of the Knights of Da Gama last Saturday evening, 22nd April, at St Joseph's, Bloemfontein. Fr Xolisa Mafu and Fr John Nolan, a former Cathedral Administrator, concelebrate.

BLOEMFONTEIN ORATORY IN FORMATION: THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER - 2017

"...and how they had recognised him in the breakking of the bread..." Matthias Stom, Supper at Emmaus.

How often in the lives of Jesus’ disciples did he say or do something they did not understand. But we are frequently, told that “After he had risen from the dead, his disciples remembered…and believed.” In other words, the Resurrection threw a whole new light on Jesus, his life, his words and his works. The Resurrection is the event that made, and still makes, God’s purpose” for his whole creation clear. We are told, in the hymns at the beginning of Ephesians and Colossians, that his plan was “to unite all things in Christ, making peace by his blood on the cross.” The whole of Creation is at war with itself because of sin, and sin has to be destroyed “by the blood” before we can be “united in Christ.”

This role of Jesus as Redeemer literally “risen from the dead” was a difficult one for his followers at first. The two disciples on the way to Emmaus are a case in point. After the death of Jesus they were deeply depressed, all their hopes in Jesus, as they thought, having been disappointed. So disappointed that when Jesus joins them, they do not even recognise him In fact, they say to him, “You must be the only person in Jerusalem who has not heard…” of Jesus’ death, a wonderful irony that must have amused Jesus no end. It is only after they have heard Jesus explaining that the scriptures point inevitably to his death and Resurrection that they recognise him “in the breaking of the bread.”

Jesus’ Resurrection really does change everything. It truly does roll back sin and death. The world may hate him, sneer at him, ignore him, persecute his followers. But whatever it does, it cannot achieve the ultimate victory. “In the world you will have sorrow, but be brave; I have already conquered the world,” he tells his disciples on his last night on earth. That message is for us all. In the words of the Apostle Paul, “He that endures to the end shall be saved.”

How real is the Resurrection to us? Real enough so that there is nothing in the world that we fear? Real enough so that, as Paul puts it, “Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.”? Real enough so that when the world and the Resurrected Lord are in conflict, we will unflinchingly choose the latter, no matter what the consequences might be? Again, in the words of Paul, “In all these things we are more that victors through the One who loves us.” Jesus is alive more really than even we are alive, for he is beyond death. If we want to share in that ultimate life, we must allow his Resurrection to become the greatest reality in our lives.  Then, whatever happens, we can be assured that indeed, “Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.”

Fr Phillip.

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: EASTER AT ST JOSEPH'S – 2017

One of our parishioners posted on FB, this beautiful photo of the St Joseph's sanctuary as it was set up for Easter. With her kind permission, we are placing it here for our whole community to enjoy. Many thanks, Michelle.

ORATORY COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: FR JOHNSON ADDRESSES UNIVERSITY AND SPEAKS ON RADIO

On Friday 21st April, Fr Johnson addressed a distinguished academic audience in the Afrikaans Department of the University of the Free State. The topic was the Apostolate of the Catholic Church. As part of the address, he played the Missa Brevis "John Henry Newman." The address was very well received.

Earlier in the day, Fr Johnson also recorded an interview on Radio Rosestad on the same topic. The interview will be broadcast in June.

Fr Johnson together with Prof. Johan Roussouw of UFS.

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: MAY CELEBRATION OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA - 2017

This May sees the celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima. There will be a full programme of celebration at the Sacred Heart Cathedral. Here is the programme:

ORATORY COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: RECENT PUBLICATIONS - 2017

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: PHOTO GALLERY, FIRST QUARTER OF 2017

Here is a selection of photographs showing recent events and liturgies in the Sacred Heart Cathedral and St Joseph's parish.

Distribution of ashes on Ash Wednesday, evening mass.

RCIA - Election of candidates during Lent. The Archbishop presides.

Fr Stephen celebrates the 8am Ash Wednesday Mass at St Joseph's CBC school.

Fr Johnson and the Archbishop during the latter's visit
to St Joseph's to see the extensive renovations.

Commissioning of the Archdiocese's Catechists at the Cathedral by the Archbishop.

Fr Stephen celebrates mass for the repose of the soul of his late father
in the oratory chapel. This was his first opportunity to do so 
since his ordination late last year.

The Cathedral Paschal meal on Monday of Holy Week.

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: NEWMAN ASSOCIATION - MARCH AND APRIL 2017

Our Newman association has held two meetings since last we appeared on these pages. In March, Fr Phillip presented "War and the Pity of War," which took a look at composers of the First World War. The featured work was Vaughan Williams's Pastoral Symphony, a work inspired by his experiences on the Western Front. This month, April, Denis Molyneaux spoke on capital punishment, a talk which drew a good audience and engendered lively discussion.

On Tuesday 9th May, Dr Jasieu Lewtak will address the society. If you would like to attend, please telephone the Cathedral parish office on (051) 447-2827 and let us know. We meet between 7 and 7.15 pm to converse and have dinner, after which follows the address.

Fr Johnson introduces March's Newman Association
by giving the historical background to the topic.

Denis Molyneaux addresses April's meeting
on the topic of capital punishment.

Dinner before the March meeting. Those attending included, from left to right, Prof Martina Viljoen,
Prof Nicol Voljoen, Fr Phillip, Hugh Miller and Prof Robert Schall.

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION - SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER 2017

There never was an event in the whole of history like the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was the trigger for an explosion that echoes throughout the world to this day. It fulfilled the promises God had made long before to a tiny nation called Israel, turning their faith into a world religion. The faith to which it gave birth, Christianity, has sent out missionaries, from the first apostles to the present day, to proclaim the Good News throughout the earth, most often at great cost and suffering, all of which, in his name, have been accepted joyfully. It has been the power through which civilizations have risen, through which empires have been laid waste. It has been the focus, throughout the ages, of ongoing hostility and attack, often bringing it low, but from which it has always risen again. More even than those of the Big Bang, its repercussions surround us still, and the hedonistic and secular world in which we live has been powerless to still it. The consequences of that empty Easter Sunday tomb haunt us still.

Why should this event, by world secular standards so insignificant, have had so tremendous an effect? It begins with the very evident facts of suffering, sorrow, sickness, pain, toil and above all, death. Human beings have tried to make sense of these things for millennia. Our in-built sense of justice rejects them as wrong. There have been many proposed solutions to this problem, none of them of any lasting significance.

Israel, from whom our faith comes, saw the problem as the disconnection of human beings from their Creator, an event so dramatically represented by the tale of Adam and Eve in the garden. Man, made, as the Hebrew anthropology would have it, of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, becomes a living being. Rejecting his unity with God, wanting to become like God, he forfeits that divine life, and becomes mortal, “returning to the dust from which he came,” with all the sad consequences with which we are already familiar.

God, however, out of love, even for his aberrant creation, has a plan for us. Central to this plan are two essential elements: a Covenant he has made with his people, and a mysterious figure called the Messiah, the Anointed One, who will finally redeem mankind from sin, suffering and death. Israel worshipped their God, not just as the God of Israel, but as “King over all the earth.” They foresaw a time when all nations would come to know the true God through Israel, a “light to the nations,” when Jerusalem would become the capital and religious centre of the whole world.

The key to this was that mysterious figure, the Messiah. 

He was originally a king, a successor of David, who would sit on David’s throne for ever. As their kings fell into disrepute, and their kingdom was divided, the Messiah deepened into a figure proclaimed by their prophets, a figure who, like the prophets themselves, became a Suffering Servant of God, on whom “lies a punishment that brings us peace.” Finally, as their kingdom was destroyed, living in exile, they understood that their only hope lay in a direct intervention of God from heaven itself, as the prophet Daniel would have it: “I gazed into the visions of the night, and saw, coming on the clouds, one like a Son of Man.”

Then came Jesus. For a time, he seemed to fit the profile of the Messiah. His teaching cut across the casuistry of the Jewish leaders, for he “spoke with authority.” His miracles certainly made a tremendous impression on his contemporaries. The hope of many in Israel, after centuries of depression and oppression, was fixed on him. True, he said some strange things, like his claims to divinity or his prophecies of suffering and death, but at the time, these were rather glossed over.

Then came disaster. He was arrested, tortured and crucified. His death was regarded as a cursed death, which put the nail in the coffin of all his followers’ expectations. It was the end of everything they had dreamed of, and made a mockery of their hopes that the fullness of time had come, that Jesus of Nazareth was to be the Messianic fulfillment of all God’s promises to Israel.

Then, the unbelievable happened. An empty tomb, rumours of strange events. Then the shattering reality as he actually appeared before his disciples, showing himself to have risen from the dead. In a flash, it all became clear to them. All those prophecies about suffering were real and literal! He really had risen from the dead! Jesus, descended from the house of David, the Suffering Servant, the Son Of God sent by the Father, really was the Messiah! All that God had promised to Israel in the pages of the Old Testament, really had been fulfilled in Jesus, but in a way they could never possibly have imagined.

But most of all, His death really had destroyed death. For the Jews, death was the climax to sin and suffering. If it was destroyed, so were all the others. If Jesus had really died and risen – and on the evidence of the gospels, there can be little doubt of this – then death was no longer the ultimate reality. There was real hope for the world, since at last, all that was wrong with it, could be set right.

After that, it was unstoppable. It spread through Israel, the Middle East, the Roman Empire, the world. It is spreading still. Its message is simple: in Jesus’ own words, “He is risen! He is Lord! He has ascended! he will come again! Repent and believe in the Good News!” The key to this Good News in a nutshell is “He is Risen!”

We are the heirs to his promise. And through faith in Jesus Christ, in submitting our lives to his will – which always wants only the best for us – we are called to share in that promise. In the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, death is no more than a passage to indestructible, eternal life with him.

In the simplest command he ever gave us, “follow me,” lies our hope of salvation. He has gone before us to prepare a place for us. He loves us and wants us to follow him. He is our Way, our Truth, our Life, the only path to the Father in heaven. In this world, we may still have sorrows, but he calls upon us to stand firm; by dying and rising from the dead, he has already conquered the world. He is our Resurrection and our Life. Let us worship him and praise him, for he is our only hope. "The Lord has truly Risen. Alleluia! Alleluia!"

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION - EASTER SUNDAY 2017

One of the most dramatic images of the Risen Jesus in the New Testament is to be found in the heavenly assembly in the Book of Revelation – also known as the Apocalypse of John. In it, John describes the risen Jesus as follows: “Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the centre of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” (Rev. 5,6). It is a striking, even terrifying image. The woolly lamb is, in our imagination, the weakest and most helplessly gentle of creatures. Yet here it becomes a divine creature with the fullness of power – seven horns – and the all-seeing vision of God – seven eyes.

Almost all of us would pass over the word “standing” as merely describing the Lamb’s physical position. Yet it is, perhaps, the most important word in the verse. In Greek, the word is hest­ekos, which comes from another Greek word, anhistemi, which means to “rise up.” In other words, the Lamb “standing” means the resurrected Lamb, and standing “as if it had been slain” is the crucified and resurrected Jesus, the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” The Afrikaans word “opstanding” translates it perfectly.

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the Resurrection of Jesus, because it is simply, without qualification or rival, the most important event in history. Resurrection is a Jewish idea, the basis for which we first encounter in the Bible as early as Genesis 2,7: “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being”. For a Hebrew, we are formed from those two most fragile of things; dust and breath. And yet, in this image, it is the breath, the Spirit, of God that gives us life. When God takes back his Spirit, life leaves us and we return “to the dust from which we came.” It is easy to see from where this imagery comes.

In other words, for the Hebrews, man is not a spirit trapped is a body; he is a living body. We are dependent upon God for our very existence. And for this reason, eternal life is impossible without a body. Therefore, without a resurrection, there can be no eternal life. And for a Christian, the Resurrection of Jesus makes possible our own resurrection; if he has not risen from the dead, then we cannot rise from the dead, and there is nothing beyond death for us. Paul puts this all exquisitely in 1 Corinthians 15.

And so, during this season of the Church, there is an explosion of joy in the Resurrection. “He is risen! He is risen! He is risen!” For in the Resurrection of Jesus is all our hope, and it is our only hope. It is strange, is it not, that all our hope should be placed in an empty tomb? Yet this is exactly the basis of all our hopes, our longings, our desires. May God grant us a blessed and happy Easter, and may we all experience the life-giving power of his Resurrection in our lives.

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: TIMES OF WORSHIP - HOLY WEEK 2017

PALM SUNDAY 13th April:             CATHEDRAL                                ST JOSEPH

                                                               Mass 7.15am, 9am, 6pm             Mass 10am

                                                               Confession 8.15am                      Confession 9.30am

MONDAY 14th:                                  Mass 9am                                       Mass 6.30am

TUESDAY 15th:                                 Mass 5.30pm/Stations                 Mass 6.30am

WEDNESDAY  16th:                         Mass 9am                                       Mass 6.30am

HOLY THURSDAY                          Mass of the Last Supper 7pm Cathedral & St Joseph's

                                                             St. Joseph's: Adoration and confession after Mass

GOOD FRIDAY                                Cathedral: Confession 10am-11.30am, 2pm-2.50pm, 
                                                            Stations of the Cross 10am

                                                             St Joseph's: Stations of the cross & confession 10am

                                                             Solemn Liturgy 3pm Cathedral & St Joseph's

EASTER SATURDAY                      Easter Vigil 7pm Cathedral & St Joseph's

EASTER SUNDAY:                          CATHEDRAL                                ST JOSEPH

                                                             Mass 7.15am, 9am                       Mass 10am

                                                             Confession 8.15am                      Confession 9.30am

                                                              PLEASE NOTE: NO 6PM MASS TODAY

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: PALM SUNDAY - 2017

After all the fasting, prayer and almsgiving of Lent; after forty days of denial, we come, at last, to the great saving events of Holy Week, with which Jesus ended his earthly life and mission. We see him proceeding triumphantly into Jerusalem. We see him disputing with the leaders of his people. He celebrates the Passover with his disciples. He washes their feet. He prays alone during his Agony in the garden. He is arrested, tried, scourged, crowned with thorns; and then crucified. He dies on the cross, and like any other human, is buried.

Jesus carried an immeasurable burden on his shoulders. He bore the weight of the sins of the world alone. But all through his earthly ministry, his suffering and death, his Father was close to him, and the Holy Spirit was present within him. The Holy Spirit sustains those who bear witness to Christ, frequently at the cost of their lives. They are called martyrs, and the word martyr means “witness”. All this is why we call this particular day Passion Sunday as well as Palm Sunday.

Passion comes from the Latin word for suffering. When we suffer things, they happen to us rather than being controlled by us. The Passion of Jesus was something that happened to him. He surrendered control of his life to the earthly powers who brought him to his suffering and death. He did this willingly, knowing that it was the will of his Father, that it was the only option for the human race that he should die, taking our sins on his shoulders. 

The Creed puts it like this: “He suffered under Pontius Pilate.” But we must recall that it was his choice, and the will of his Father: “You would have no power over me were it not given to you from above,” he tells the same Pontius Pilate. But Jesus does not allow earthly powers to triumph. He surrenders his life to them so that he may defeat them by rising from the dead. “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoso believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

There are times when earthly powers seem to triumph, when we appear powerless in the face of them, when we seem to have no choice but to yield to them. But we must never believe them to have the final say. Not only did Jesus have the ultimate victory over them by rising from the dead, but in the very act of defying God by killing his Son, these same earthly powers were actually carrying out God’s will. We can never grasp the fullness of God’s plan for his creation. But we can be assured of one thing: “He that doth endure to the end shall be saved,” as Paul expresses it. If we remain faithful to him despite all, we will share in his ultimate victory over sin and death.

Fr Phillip.