Happy Feast Day to YOU!

Well, not all of you, just the nice people of Cheddar. Saturday saw the Feast of Our Lady Queen of Apostles, the dedication of our Church in Cheddar. I'm sure that there was many a cake made and eaten, many a lime-juice cordial quaffed.

The Feast is both theological and historical, but if anything the theological is secondary. Our Lady is Queen of Apostles, but we see that most beautifully in the history which this feast shows. Our Lady is there at the beginning of her Son's public life, with the Wedding at Cana, but she does not play too great a part in the recorded life of the Apostles in the Gospels. Of course, they would all have known her, and loved her. But this moment of the feast is where we see her as the Queen of the Apostles. For there she sits, in the midst of them, as they gather together in the locked room, as they pray this first Novena for the coming of the Holy Spirit. They are held together by the physical reminder and connection with Our Lord and God ... namely His mother. And they are united in fervent prayer by she whose life was given to pondering the love of God in her heart. And they will be filled by the Spirit as she was all those years ago at the Annunication. They, however, will only receive gifts of the Spirit (as we did in Confirmation), whereas she had been overshadowed by that same Holy Spirit, and had conceived within her the Son of God. Their Queen leads them into eternal life, into battle, into prayer.

For all of these reasons, we should ponder on the Queenship of our Lady ... not only for you Chedder-ites but us all. If she is our Queen, then we live for her and die for her. We shall protect her, but most of all, we shall love her. And, if you like, then this is a wonderful of the Apostles and their Queen at prayer in these days before Pentecost. They wait in expectation, and they wait in wonderment, but they wait in love. Bound together in love, and bound together by love.

We have no information about the opening of the Churches. We assume it will be the beginning of July ... but honestly, no one has been in touch with us, so we don't know.

My Jesus, I believe that You are present in the Most Holy Sacrament.
I love You above all things, and I desire to receive You into my soul.
Since I cannot at this moment receive You sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart.
I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You.
Never permit me to be separated from You.
Amen.