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3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
24th January 2021

Sunday Mass available from 3pm       )    
Wednesday Mass available from 9am )
Friday Talk available from 9am           )        

Spring
For those who missed the sermon last Sunday I include part of it here:
‘I feel it is time for me to be more direct in my vision for the Parish.  In the Forest we use three Churches.  I feel we should have one building; one for the Forest and one for Newent.  Much of our money, time and energy in the Forest goes on keeping these three buildings going.  Our congregation is divided into three smaller groupings.  I think it is time to bring our people into one Church.  This is the wrong time to be making decisions but it might be the right time to be saying a prayer and asking God what is right for our Parish.  However, it is no good this being my vision unless it is also your vision!  As a Parish we have a duty to provide Mass so that, post COVID, people can come, sit at the back and say “No they don’t want to join in but thank you they are grateful for Mass being provided.”  But we also have a duty to those who feel called by God.  A duty to form them, give them confidence in their faith, commission them and send them out in the name of Jesus Christ.’
After a hard Winter comes Spring.  I have already seen primroses and snowdrops and also daffodils that are coming on.  Little by little the days are lengthening and despite the pandemic, thank God, we have our faith.  Praise be to Jesus Christ!
Bless you all Barnabas

A reflection taken from ‘A Year with the Bible by Dom Henry Wansbrough OSB’ published by CTS
Matthew 4:18-25; Mark 1:16-20; Luke 5:1-11; John 1:35-51 
The Call of the First Disciples
The accounts in the four gospels are so different that it is impossible to harmonise them historically. It is best to regard each of them as conveying a different lesson about discipleship. Matthew’s account follows Mark’s closely. Both of them have a double account, the call of the first two brothers, fishermen, with the charge that they are to become fishers not of fish but of people, followed by the call of another couple of brothers. In both cases the stress is on the immediacy of the response: they immediately drop everything and follow Jesus. Or is the stress on the magnetic power of this unknown stranger who walks past them on the shore of the Lake of Galilee? The shape of the story is perhaps borrowed from the call of Elisha by Elijah in 1 Kings 19:19-21; there again the stress is on the absolute priority of the call.
Luke’s account, also at the shore of the Lake, has a different shape and timing. Much the same story appears in John 21, which also has the prelude of an unsuccessful night’s fishing. There is the same emphasis on the obedience of the disciples, but it is significant that Luke delays the event until they have had the experience of the wonders of Jesus: he has already started proclaiming the Good News when he calls them to join him. One factor in this evangelist of repentance is that Jesus makes the first move, but you cannot be his disciple unless you first confess that you are a sinner – just like Zacchaeus at Jericho and the ‘good thief ’ on Calvary.
John’s account is the most different, in location too, for the disciples called are followers of John in the Jordan Valley where John was baptising. Here the stress, as the disciples gradually assemble, is that they are gradually getting to know Jesus. For John this is the first prerequisite of discipleship.
Question: In each of the gospels the burden of the call is that the disciples give themselves wholly to Jesus. Can I manage that?