Leigh Hatts – Page 3 – Advent to Easter

St joseph’s Day in lent

Today Friday 19 March is St Joseph’s Day and we are remembering him in this year of St Joseph marking the 150th anniversary of Pope Pius IX declaring St Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church. He is also patron of workers, including carpenters, and fathers. We know Joseph as Jesus’s step father who accepted Mary […]

Leigh Hatts 4 years agoOctober 29, 2023

Updates

St Patrick’s Day quiet again as in the past

Today’s 17 March St Patrick’s Day celebrations will for a second year be muted by the virus. But this is not rare for until very recently St Patrick’s Day in Ireland was a quiet family day like Christmas Day with even the pubs closed. Patrick is also patron of Montserrat in the West Indies and […]

Leigh Hatts 4 years agoOctober 29, 2023

Updates

Church alive at home

If it’s Mothering Sunday it’s the middle of Lent. Mothering Sunday, 14 March this year, is about both remembering our mothers and acknowledging our Mother Church. This is why in normal times at some parish churches the congregation marks Mothering Sunday by going outside, joining hands and surrounding the building. They hug their church. But […]

Leigh Hatts 4 years agoOctober 29, 2023

Updates

Twelfth Night not the end of Christmas

Is tonight Twelfth Night or is it tomorrow Wednesday? Tonight Tuesday used to be Twelfth Night for everybody but by the time of the Restoration in the mid-17th century it had become the custom to keep Twelfth Night on 6 January. Samuel Pepys wrote on 6 January 1665: ‘At night home, being Twelfthnight, and there […]

Leigh Hatts 4 years agoOctober 29, 2023

Updates

Christmas is for life and not just for one day

Just after 3pm on Christmas Eve you can hear on Radio 4 the start of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College Cambridge. In the gathering darkness the famous service will take us into Christmas night. Christmas cannot be cancelled. No party, no turkey is not the same as no Christmas. The […]

Leigh Hatts 4 years agoOctober 29, 2023

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Mary & Joseph set out for Bethlehem

Mary and Joseph are said to have set out today from Nazareth on their 90 mile journey to Bethlehem which they reach on 24 December. It was once the custom in monasteries to toll the loudest bell as each of the O Antiphons was sung over the coming days to remind people that Mary and […]

Leigh Hatts 4 years agoOctober 29, 2023

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St Lucy’s Day 2020

Firecrackers in Naples at 5.50am this Sunday morning will have welcomed the feast of Santa Lucia. In normal times the church near the waterfront would have been open all night following an eve of feast street procession at 10pm. In Venice at San Geremia, where many visit the body of St Lucy and candles glow […]

Leigh Hatts 4 years agoOctober 29, 2023

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Loreto’s Holy House is where Christmas began

The feast of Our Lady of Loreto, also called the Translation of the Holy House, today Thursday 10 December marks the arrival at Loreto in Italy of the house where Mary lived and heard from the angel that she was to give birth to the Messiah. The little house arrived in 1294. The journey of […]

Leigh Hatts 4 years agoOctober 29, 2023

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Immaculate Conception remembered in the virus

The Immaculate Conception on 8 December does not celebrate the conception of Jesus but the conception of the Virgin Mary by her mother Anne following normal sexual intercourse with husband Joachim. Mary’s birth, after Anne’s nine month pregnancy, is observed on 8 September. The announcement of the Virgin Mary being pregnant with Jesus without sexual […]

Leigh Hatts 4 years agoOctober 29, 2023

Updates

St nicholas Day

Advent is not Christmas but this weekend 5-6 December we can think about Father Christmas because he is derived from St Nicholas. Or is he St Nicholas as in Holland where last night children this Saturday will put out their shoes hoping for a present? This year St Nicholas does not get his usual a […]

Leigh Hatts 4 years agoOctober 29, 2023