17th October 2022 My first Blog

A note at the start of this blog

Those who arrive at this blog may know that I had my last mass at Leyland where I had been Parish Priest for 30 years, and for 5 years before that an assistant to Fr Ambrose. This last mass happened on Sunday 4^th of September, 6 weeks, and 3 days from today, Monday the 19^th of September. 

Martin Cahill is a parishioner of St Mary’s and is a particularly good photographer. He shot a vast number of photos of that last mass and has made them available on the site below. Also, he has made a slide show to music that you can watch which is quite short if you are interested. 

It was a wonderful send off and I want to thank all of you parishioners and friends who were present. It was touching for me and for you who attended as I have got to know so many people very well. You will always be my friends and I will not forget you. Friendships remain for ever and I hope that we can keep it touch. Certainly, we can pray for each other, and I am always available on my email address which is still jonathancotton43@gmail.com 

I also have a mobile number and many of you know that already. 

Now it is the time to move forward. But it is good to have reminders of wonderful events and I will never forget this one on Sunday 4^th September 2022. The singing that day was quite exceptional, and everything went very smoothly, despite the difficulty I had at the beginning overwhelmed with emotion, with joy at seeing so many good friends and sadness at leaving. By God’s grace I managed to overcome that as the mass unfolded. 

I do not want to get stuck in the past. We all must move on and find out what is the present plan of our loving God and eventually for the future for each one of us. 

Below are where you can find the link to the photographs of Martin Cahill and the beautiful slideshow with music that he did too. Thank you for this service, Martin and if anyone wants to know Martin’s address to photograph an event (his main job that he wants to develop is to be a photographer for others) then you can put up this on your search engine: Cahill Photography. 

Online Gallery: https://cahillphotography.pixieset.com/frjonathanleavingmass/ 

Slideshow: https://slideshows.cahill-photography.com/fr-jonathan-leaving-mass/ 

The password is: frjonathan35 

From Fr. Jonathan a report so far about some of the events at the start of my sabbatical at Loppiano.

17 October 2022

I arrived at Pisa airport on Wednesday 28^th of September without any hitches. It was an early flight in the morning that meant getting up at 02.45. I stayed with Seamus Edwards, a friend in Altrincham who kindly drove me and the two cases to the Airport about 15 minutes away from his home. He accompanied me to the check in which was very helpful. 

Egidio Canil ofm conventual met me in Pisa airport. The plane was on time. He is in a photo below. He is the person who coordinates the Formation House in Loppiano for men in consecrated life within the various religious institutes that are part of the Church. It is called “Scuola Claritas” “The School of clear light” 

 

Egidio, a Friar conventual is the little man with folded arms in the centre. The three including me on the right, and the two first on the left are the Religious with whom I live. Starting on the left is Milton from Brazil who has just left a new lay Movement in his country focussing on children of the streets with no parents or in great difficulties. Next to him is Nadeen from Pakistan, a Friar Minor. The two next men are diocesan priests who came to visit us. Next to Egidio is Theo Jansen, OFM capuchin from Holland. Fr Theo and Fr Egidio are also spiritual guides for our journey. Then myself.

There are four Franciscans now in the Claritas. Mariano (Capuchin) came yesterday to stay for 10 days or so. He has left us now. He was giving some talks to the focolarini and focolarini in formation. He is not in this photo. This predominance of Franciscans is not normal. Last time I was here there were none when I came on holiday to Loppiano about 10 years ago. The man who coordinated things then was a Spanish Marist brother. 

4 October being the feast of St Francis and St Francis is the patron saint of Italy, we honoured the great man. It included the prayer we read during 1^st Vespers of the Saint. The prayer we recited was the last testament of St Francis which is exceptionally beautiful and long. In the evening in the Claritas there was a festive meal. 

St Francis wrote this shorter testament between April and Mary 1226. 

"Write that I bless all my brothers who are now in the Order and those who will enter it until the end of the world. Since I cannot speak because of weakness and the sufferings of illness, I briefly manifest my will to my brothers in these three exhortations. 

·     In memory of my blessing and my will, always love one another.

·    Always love and observe our Lady holy poverty.

·    And always be faithful and submissive to the prelates and all clerics of holy mother Church".

All of us on the Ongoing Formation course The few religious were in our habits. I am at the back. There are diocesan priests entering Ongoing formation in their way, and lay men who want to consecrate themselves to God as focolarini, living and working in the world in small communities in their way. All are united by the Spirituality of Communion in the Church. Together we are a small cell of the Church

We went to Assisi simply to learn from Saint Francis his story and the events of his life that led him to be so close to God, and to understand how he achieved what he did. How is God working in our lives is what we are about. The world’s people in our time are becoming aware that we cannot survive on our own. The Church as well is aware that all who are trying to live the Christian life need to be in communion with all the others in Church Life. This communion is urgent for the world and Church of today. 

This man with me is Christof, a German focolarino consecrated to God. who worked in South Africa and who knows a South African girl and her family in Liverpool that I know. I was able to send greetings to her from us both. He is supporting the new young lay people who want to give themselves to God now and learn the ropes to live in communion following the charism of Unity that we are all trying to enter within our own different vocations.

Pope Francis wrote this in 2015 the year for Religious Life in the Church: “The same generosity and self-sacrifice which guided your founders – Saint John Paul II once said – must now inspire you, their spiritual children, to keep alive the charisms which, by the power of the same Spirit who awakened them, are constantly being enriched and adapted, while losing none of their unique character. It is up to you to place those charisms at the service of the Church and to work for the coming of Christ’s Kingdom in its fullness.” 

“You are aware that a charism is not a museum artifact that remains preserved in a glass case to be looked at and nothing more. Faithfulness or keeping it pure does not at all mean that we seal it in a bottle like distilled water so that the outside air cannot contaminate the charisms. In this way a charism will never be preserved. It must go out and meet reality, with people and their problems and concerns. Thus, in this fruitful encounter with reality the charism has a chance to grow and renew itself. Reality is also transformed or changed through the spiritual power that this charism brings with it.” (September 3, 2015)

I have enrolled in the Sophia University that is here in Loppiano. There are two courses that I am doing. One has the title “Insight: Structure of human knowledge according to the thought of Bernard Lonergan.” I had to do homework on “My first experience of insight.” I had never reflected on this but attending the first and second session which includes a dialogue between students and the professor I began to realise that my first experience of Insight occurred when I was three years old. An Irish scholar Paul O’Hara runs our course. He has been an academic in various American universities and is now working at Sophia in Loppiano. 

The other course has the title: “The Trinitarian Principle between Theology and Anthropology.” That too is incredibly good and excellent professors teach us and both answer questions and listen to comments. The course has entered the question “how God has revealed himself to humanity from the biblical point of view.” It is very enlightening.

Both these courses have made me think and has linked in with the mystery of God which we are all trying to penetrate and deepen and live with. It has affected my prayer for good. That was my experience when I was studying theology and philosophy many years ago getting ready for monastic and priestly life. 

In Claritas the house where we stay, we have Vespers, Lauds and Compline in common in our little chapel. St Benedict’s hall of Loppiano is where we celebrate mass in the big hall. We also have after lauds a meditation together and then we share small experiences of life.

Mass is not in the large and beautiful Loppiano Church that has the name “The shrine of Mary Theotokos.” Sadly, it is out of order. A freak world wind that included heavy rain and hailstones so big as to break the windows of cars occurred about 3 months ago. It destroyed a large section of the roof of the Church. It is now waterproof so as not to destroy the interior anymore, and a new and stronger roof will eventually arrive and be fitted. 

There is a picture below of what the Theotokos Church is like when it was in use 

The Marian shrine full of people at mass for the small town. It is not in use at present because of the damage done to the roof. 

Many events have happened.

There was a special mass celebrated outside the hall of St Benedict to show the support that Loppiano and the whole Focolare Movement wants to make for the future of the planet. The 2^nd of October was the last Sunday before the focussing of this topic so close to Pope Francis, It ended on the 4^th of October, the feast of St Francis. Pope Francis wrote his encyclical “Laudato Sii” on the subject. To be in touch with nature we celebrated outside. The Africans present in Loppiano did a quite simple dance during the offertory

Below is a picture of the old and sick elderly female focolarine that have a place of their own in which to live called “Casa Agape” “The home of God’s Love.” The ladies here present all over eighty and one is in her ninety’s. They have a group of younger focolarine looking after them and Fr Theo Jansen and I went there to celebrate mass for them on the feast of St Michael and all the Archangels on 29^th of September. Everyone was pleased to have this photo after the mass. Younger focolarini look after the older ones alongside some others. There are a few ordained focolarini men who celebrate mass for the elderly men focolarini in their equivalent house in Loppiano.

 

Some of the elderly focolarine ladies who have a lot of experience of the first days of the Focolare Movement when for 12 years it was looked at with much suspicion by the Holy Office. This came just after the mass on 29^th of September with Fr Theo and I at the back of the photo”

I have acquired a bicycle. The price for it was a decade of the rosary and to return it to the bicycle store and repair place when I leave. I have become good friends with a retired focolarino man who runs the store of bikes and builds them up and repairs them. His name is Luca, Luke in English. He used to teach religion for fifteen years in Zurich in four schools run by three parishes. He managed to speak the special Swiss German they speak there. 

Loppiano is a small town, but it is not compact. It is more like a big village with roads going through the village with ordinary homes of people who do not belong to the Focolare Movement. There are various big buildings. The buildings are not all together so there is walking from one place to another though many go by car. A few young and old have bikes and seeing them inspired me to look for one. It takes about ten minutes to cycle to the University; twenty-five by foot. Then the common refectory takes about fifteen minutes to get there on a bike. 

I was in the university yesterday from 10.15 to 1.15 as we had a lecture alongside comments and questions from students in two sessions on Theology, Anthropology and the Holy Trinity with a break of ¼ hour in the middle. But then twice a week there is a session of structured sharing with the professors and students together. Yesterday it was on the challenges of listening. Various people gave their experience of listening and that too was enlightening. The Professor introduced us to the new topic of “Discovering” and next time we students and Professors will share our experiences of discovering. We get to know each other in this way. 

In Loppiano there are about eight hundred inhabitants, and it is the first Focolare little town that came to birth. There are about eighteen others over the world, and one in Welwyn Garden City north of London. Loppiano is on a different scale to any of the other little towns, though in Brazil and Argentina they are quite big. 

There are about fifty to sixty different nationalities present and they are living and sharing in smaller groups in which the various people live out their spiritual lives with others of their own kind. The diverse cultures and the “old man of sin” within each person makes life not a bed or roses as it may seem. I am delighted to be here even though we have in our little group faced up to difficulties. The specific aim of the Focolare Movement is to bring “unity” that Jesus prayed for everywhere. “May the All be One” was the phrase Jesus used in St John’s gospel Chapter 17.

Not all know the spirit of communion. I met a Palestinian a few days ago at the university; he was so tired of speaking Italian that he came to me in the break as he knows English better. He is an impressive young man. He knows little of the Focolare spirit of communion. Somebody in Palestine advised him to come to Sophia University and he did. 

People arrive both planning to come and unexpectedly. A group of Swiss boys and girls called the third generation of the Focolare movement planned to come to visit first the Claritas here in Loppiano. They are aged about 12 to 18 years of age. They all speak quite openly and simply about being the young people who want to learn more and participate in their own way to the life of communion. Interestingly Egidio asked the young people if their parents were immigrants or Swiss. Only two of the group were of total Swiss origin. All the rest were children of immigrants, from the Philippines, the USA, Brazil and so forth. Below is the photo of the group and I was most encouraged by them as they had obviously wanted to visit Loppiano. They stayed for 3 or 4 nights here and had adults from the “Volunteers” with them, They were all from the German part of Switzerland

One more picture. Yesterday was the national feast day for Brazil. The patron of Brazil is Our Lady of Aparecida, where the biggest and most popular shrine of Our Lady is, twelve million people visit there each year which is much more than Lourdes.

Brazilian priests presided at the mass.

The Brazilians sang a beautiful popular song about Our Lady of Aparecida at the end of the mass. It is a song that was made up by the people, not a hymn. The people have a strong innate faith there. It was very tuneful and lovely in Brazilian Portuguese, sung by a young man and young lady solo and all joined in for the chorus. After the mass all the Brazilians at Church last night had their photo taken and this is what they look like. Not all the Brazilians would have been at that mass so more could have been present. 

I hope all this give an insight into what is my life here.