Holy Father.htm

We thank God for the life and inspiration of our beloved Holy Father,
His Holiness Pope John Paul II.
We pray for the repose of his soul, with confidence of his certain resurrection to Glory in heaven.

"If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me"
(Mt 16:24)

To contemplate the face of Christ, and to contemplate it with Mary, is the "programme" which I have set before the Church at the dawn of the third millennium, summoning her to put out into the deep on the sea of history with the enthusiasm of the new evangelisation. To contemplate Christ involves being able to recognise him wherever he manifests himself, in his many forms of presence, but above all in the living sacrament of his body and his blood. The Church draws her life from Christ in the Eucharist; by him she is fed and by him she is enlightened.

John Paul II; Ecclesia de Eucharistia 2003

"Let us make our own the words of St Thomas Aquinas,.......   an impassioned poet of Christ in the Eucharist, and turn in hope to the contemplation of that goal to which our hearts aspire in their thirst for joy and peace":

                                            Come then, good Shepherd, bread divine,
                                            still show to us thy mercy sign;
                                            Oh, feed us, still keep us thine;
                                            So we may see thy glories shine
                                            in fields of immortality.

                                            O thou, the wisest, mightiest, best,
                                            Our present food, our future rest,
                                            Come, make us each thy chosen guest,
                                            Co-heirs of thine, and comrades blest
                                            With saints whose dwelling is with thee.
                                                                                                             Extracts from Pope John Paul II
                                                                                                                                                 Ecclesia de Eucharistia 2003