Welcome
Welcome to St Bede Catholic Church
The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
And the love of God
And the communion of The Holy Spirit
Be with you all
“He saw and Believed...”
Our gospel for this Sunday begins in a strange way. There is something striking about the way this gospel unfolds. It begins in darkness, in confusion, in uncertainty. Peter and John run to the tomb, breathless, urgent. They see everything that proves to them that the body is not in the tomb: the stone rolled away, clothes, empty tomb, strange order of it all. And then comes that simple, but powerful line about one of them: “He saw and believed.” But here is something that might feel very familiar to many of us: “they still did not understand.”
Belief(faith) can come before full understanding, that is Easter faith. It is easy to think that faith should feel like certainty, clarity, everything is neatly tied up. The gospel today gives us a different perspective of faith. Faith often begins in the dark. It begins in questions, in half-seeing, in running toward something we do not fully grasp.
John saw an empty tomb, not a risen Jesus, and yet something in him, in his heart moved first. He believed before he had all the answers about what was happening. Maybe that is where you find yourself this Easter. Not fully understanding, still carrying many questions, still standing in the quiet space between what was and what will be. And yet, something in you is stirring. That is enough. Sometimes, faith looks like simply showing up, looking in, and daring to believe anyway.
HAPPY EASTER ! - Fr.Henry.
IN THE NEWS...
Pope Leo: 'We are called to serve the People of God with our whole lives'
Celebrating the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday evening in the Papal Basilica of St. John Lateran, Pope Leo XIV tells his brother priests that they are to serve the Lord by giving all of their lives to the People of God, and stresses that in this time of great brutality around the world, we, too, are to kneel alongside the oppressed and all in need.
“In this world, and particularly in those places where evil abounds, Jesus loves definitively — forever, and with His whole being.”
Pope Leo XIV gave this powerful reminder on Holy Thursday evening during the Mass in Coena Domini at the Papal Basilica of St. John Lateran.
St. Teresa of Calcutta’s feast day inscribed in Roman Calendar on September 5
Mother Teresa of Calcutta was “a beacon of hope, small in stature but great in love, a witness to the dignity and privilege of humble service in the defence of all human life and of all those who have been abandoned, discarded and despised even in the hiddenness of the womb.”
Cardinal Arthur Roche, Prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, offered that praise of St. Teresa on Tuesday.
The Cardinal Prefect released a comment to accompany the decree inscribing St. Teresa of Calcutta into the General Roman Calendar.
The decree was accompanied by the liturgical texts (in Latin) to guide the faithful in praying the Liturgy of the Hours and the celebration of Mass.
Her feast day will be celebrated as an optional liturgical memorial annually on September 5, the date of her death in 1997.
Babies die in Mediterranean migrant tragedy
Babies die in Mediterranean migrant tragedy
Only two Nigerian women were rescued by Libyan search and rescue operators. One said she had lost her husband in the tragedy, the other said she had lost two babies.
They said the rubber dinghy overturned off the coastal Libyan town of Zuwara just six hours after its departure and immediately took on water.
IOM data show that in January alone, at least 375 migrants were reported dead or missing following multiple “invisible” shipwrecks in the Central Mediterranean amid extreme weather, with hundreds more deaths believed to be unrecorded.
These repeated incidents highlight the persistent and deadly risks faced by migrants and refugees attempting the dangerous crossing.
The U.N. agency also said that more than 1,300 migrants have gone missing in the Central Mediterranean in 2025, and that "The latest incident brings the number of migrants reported dead or missing on the route since the beginning of this year to at least 484.
The Libyan route one is one of the main transit routes for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe. It is a journey riddled with perils across the desert and across the Mediterranean Sea.
ABOUT SAINT BEDE...
St Bede 673-735AD
Bede was born in 673 AD in the northeast of England. From the age of seven, he received a Benedictine education at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Wearmouth, today part of Sunderland. Bede spent his whole life within the twin monasteries of St Peter at Wearmouth and St Paul in Jarrow, where he became a Benedictine monk and continued his studies using the fine libraries established by the monastery's founder, St Benedict Biscop, Bede's first teacher, and under the guidance of Abbot Ceolfrith (Ceolwulf).
Bede wrote on many topics. His most famous work, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (the Ecclesiastical History of the English People), earned Bede the title "The Father of English History". His works revealed not only Bede's qualities as a scholar and historian but also the qualities of modesty and humility which make his works so memorable. However, Bede's work shows that he had at his command all the learning of his time. Bede's writings included papers and articles on scientific, historical, theological, and mathematical matters, as well as poetry and literature. St Bede is widely regarded as the greatest of all the Anglo-Saxon scholars. His sainthood was generally recognized around fifty years after his death on 25th May 735 AD. His bones were later elevated from St Paul's in Jarrow to Durham, where they lie in the Galilee Chapel at Durham Cathedral. Bede's scholarship and importance to Catholicism were recognized on 13th November 1899 when Pope Leo XIII decreed the title of Doctor Ecclesiae to St Bede the Venerable, making him the only English Doctor of the Church.
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