Feast of Saint Jude celebrations 2015

The Feast celebrations are taking place on: 24, 25 & 28 October 2015.

The feast weekend is the highpoint of the calendar in Faversham, and hundreds of pilgrims come here in devotion to the Apostle. Although most come from London and the southeast, many others come from across Britain and even from abroad to celebrate this special time with God and with one another, in the company of the Carmelites.

The programme of activities during the feast includes regular celebrations of the Eucharist, blessings with the oil of St. Jude, and other devotions. During the celebrations there is a piety stall, a display of Carmelite books, and light refreshments available.

If you are bringing a group of more than 10 people to Faversham for any of the feast celebrations, it is very important that you please contact the Shrine Office in advance so that we have an idea of numbers and can let you know details for coach parking etc. You can contact us on shrineoffice@stjudeshrine.org.uk

The programme is as follows:

Saturday 24 October

12.00 - Saint Jude Mass with the Blessing of Oil and Anointing

14.00 - Saint Jude Mass with the Blessing of Oil and Anointing

Sunday 25 October

12.30 - Saint Jude Mass with the Blessing of Oil and Anointing

14.30 - Saint Jude Mass with the Blessing of Oil and Anointing

Wednesday 28 October

12.00 - Saint Jude Mass with the Blessing of Oil and Anointing

16.00 - Saint Jude Mass with the Blessing of Oil and Anointing

Plus.. meet some friars, purchase items from the shop, light a candle, and pray and leave intentions at the Shrine.

If you cannot attend, you can purchase a candle via our online shop. Your candle will be lit during the Feast weekend and day.

Please note that the Shrine is based at: 34 Tanners Street, Faversham, ME13 7JW

Photo of the Month - August 2015

We are continuing our celebration of sixty years of ministry at the National Shrine of Saint Jude with our photo of the month. This month, we are pleased to show the icon of Saint Albert.

In 2004 a fire broke out in the Shrine Chapel destroying the murals which once hung there and damaging much of the other artwork. Happily, the windows and ceramics could be repaired, but the murals had to be replaced.

The decision was made to install icons depicting saints inspired by the Carmelite Rule of Saint Albert, in commemoration of the 8th centenary of the Carmelite Rule in 2007. The icons were written by Sister Petra Clare, a Benedictine hermit living in Scotland.

Below is the icon of Saint Albert giving the Carmelite 'way of life' (Rule document) to Saint Brocard on Mount Carmel. Other icons in the Shrine, include: Blessed John Soreth and Blessed Frances d'Amboise; Saint Elias Kuriakos Chavara and Blessed Isidore Bakanja; Blessed Titus Brandma and Saint Edith Stein.

Thoughts from the Chaplain - St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

On Sunday, 9 August, it is the Feast Day of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross or as she was before becoming a Carmelite: Edith Stein.  Edith Stein was born in Breslau in the then Prussian province of Silesia, the daughter of strict Jewish parents who ran a business buying and selling wood.  The day she was born was the Jewish feast of Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement.  Although brought up as a practising Jew Edith Stein had lost her faith by her teens and described herself as an atheist.

Edith was a very gifted pupil and always had an enquiring mind and this led to her being accepted as a student at the University of Breslau.

Though her father died while she was young, her widowed mother was determined to give her children a thorough education and consequently sent Edith to study at the University of Breslau and then the University of Göttingen where, with the aid of her mentor Edmund Husserl she received a doctorate in 1916.  During her university years Edith had the occasional contact with Catholics but had never had any serious interest in their faith.  This was to change while she was on holiday with friends in the Rhineland, near the town of Landau on the German/French border.  He she started to read the autobiography of Teresa of Jesus or Teresa of Avila as she is better known. 

Edith was so impressed by the life of the Spanish mystic she started to take instruction in Catholicism and this started a process which was to lead to her baptism and entry into full communion with the Catholic Church on 1st January 1922.  Despite an initial wish to enter religious life her spiritual advisers told her to wait.  She went to the Cathedral town of Speyer and began to teach at the Dominican School there from 1923 - 1931.    But her academic work didn’t stop and she translated Thomas Aquinas’ book on Truth, something which Edith searched for all her life.  In 1933 the Nazi party came to power in Germany and their anti-Semitic laws forced her to give up her career.   It was at this stage that Edith Stein felt it was time for her to follow her vocation and she applied for entry into the discalced Carmelite convent in Cologne taking the name Teresa Benedicta a Cruce.  In the convent Teresa continued to write and published her book “Finite and Eternal Being”.  However, with every work she published the risk of her coming to the attention of the Nazis increased and so her Prioress moved both her and her sister Rosa to the convent of Echt in Holland.  Although she continued with her work as an academic it is in Echt that she began to enter more and more into the Carmelite way of life becoming more and more devout and taking joy in the silence and prayerful following of Christ as her namesake Teresa of Avila would have wanted.  This increased as the restriction of writing and publishing by any Jew became more and stricter until in the end it was totally banned.  But Teresa of the Cross didn’t stop teaching but instead turned to instructing the sisters in Latin and Philosophy.  In 1940 the Nazis occupied Holland but even before this Teresa realised that she would never be safe and would not survive the war.   She asked her Prioress for permission to “offer herself to the heart of Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement for true peace”.  After the Nazi occupation he sisters wrote that Teresa had started to prepare herself for life in a German concentration camp by “enduring cold and hunger”.   

On 2nd August 1942 the long feared knock came on the convent door and Teresa Benedicta a Cruce was arrested by the Gestapo along with her sister Rosa Stein who was an extern sister in Echt; they were sent to Amersfoort and Westerbork two Dutch camps prior to their deportation on 7th August 1942 to Auschwitz.  As they left the convent in Echt she said to her sister “come Rosa, let us go for our people”.   The transport went through the town of Speyer and during a halt there Edith managed to scribble a note and throw it out of the wagon.  It was found by the station master who read “We are going east” and signed Edith Stein.  All of the 987 Jewish deportees died with Edith and her sister Rosa in mass gas chambers on 9th August 1942.

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross pray for us

Icon of Bl. Titus Brandsma (left) and St. Edith Stein (right) in the National Shrine of Saint Jude

Thoughts from the Chaplain - Blessed Titus Brandsma

Last week on the 27th July we celebrated the feast of Blessed Titus Brandsma, a Carmelite Friar from Holland who died in Dachau.  Titus is an important 20th Century saint for the Universal Church but also for the Carmelite Order.

Titus was born Anno Sjoerd Brandsma on 23rd February 1881 in the province of Friesland; the son of Titus and Tjitsje who ran a small dairy farm.  The area where he was born and raised was a mainly Calvinist region although his family were devout Catholics.

Anno became a Carmelite and took the name Titus in honour of his father.  He studied and was ordain a priest in 1905 and after his doctorate in Philosophy was appointed professor of Philosophy at the Nijmegen Catholic University where he later served as Rector.

Brandsma was well known through his writings and lectures and in 1935 he was invited to take a lecture tour in the United States and the same year he became ecclesiastical adviser to the Catholic journalists of Holland and this brought him into confrontation with the rising Nazi government of the third Reich.  In 1940 the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and because of his outspoken writings and his campaigning for freedom of the press he came to their attention. This led to him being arrested and imprisoned in Scheveningen and then he was moved to Dachau arriving there on the 19th June. Titus Brandsma died in Dachau on 26th July 1942 from a lethal injection.

As Carmelites we can see many aspects of our charism in the life and death of Titus Brandsma:    

a)    we are called to be contemplatives, leading a life in the presence of God and in the footsteps of Jesus.  It was this following of Jesus and his grounding in prayer which led Titus to stand up for truth, freedom and the church.  This courage was to bring him to Dachau where he underwent his passion; deteriorating health, cruelty from the regime and finally a lethal injection

b)    Carmelites are to have the Eucharist at the centre of their lives and as proof of this Titus continued to celebrate the sacraments during his imprisonment, obtaining bread and wine for his offering.  But this offering was not just for him but for all those in need of it.

c)     Part of our life is to care for the marginalized and those in despair; what better place to find these than in the brutality of a Nazi death camp.  Titus was well known for his smile and welcome to all those who needed him, even to the nurse who came to administer his lethal injection.  It is said that she accepted his rosary and was at his beatification in Rome.

d)   Our rule tells us to ‘study the law of the Lord day and night’.  Titus fulfilled this exaltation and published the fruits of this in a number of writings. He wrote in one of a set of small booklets “Do not yield to hatred. We are here in a dark tunnel, but we have to go on. At the end, an eternal light is shining for us.”  This quote sums up the end of his journey especially in Dachau.

While he was in Scheveningen he scratched on the wall of his cell a poem called "Before an Image of Jesus Crucified" which I would like to share with you:

Dear Lord, when looking up to thee,I see thy loving eyes on me;love overflows my humble heart, knowing what faithful friend thou art.

A cup of sorrow I foresee, which I accept for love of thee. Thy painful way I wish to go;

the only way to God I know.

My soul is full of peace and light, although in pain, this light shines bright.For here thou keepest to thy breast my longing heart, to find there rest.

Leave me here freely all alone, in cell where never sunlight shone. Should no one ever speak to me, this golden silence makes me free!

For though alone, I have no fear; never wert thou, O Lord, so near. Sweet Jesus, please abide with me; my deepest peace I find in thee.

Blessed Titus Brandsma, Pray for us

Icon of Bl. Titus Brandsma (left) and St. Edith Stein (right) in the National Shrine of Saint Jude

Thoughts from the Chaplain - Mothers' Mass

As part of our celebration of the Solemnity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel we will be celebrating a Mass in the National Shrine of Saint Jude.  This Mass for mothers will be for all the intentions of those who have given a donation for this shared Mass and also for those who come to celebrate with us.  So why a Mass for mothers and why celebrate it on this day?

The church frequently tells us that all fatherhood and a father’s love for his children is a reflection of our heavenly Father and his love for his Son.  It is this that sowed the seed for a Mass for mothers; it is not a great step to saying that motherhood as well as reflecting the feminine aspects of tenderness, compassion and nurturing of God mirrors the motherhood of Mary and her support and caring for her Son.  This led to the celebration of a Mass giving thanks on behalf of all mothers for the life of Mary, Mother of God, Theotokos and what better day to celebrate this than on the great Feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the primary feast of the Carmelite order.  We venerate her as mother, sister, queen and intercessor - a relationship which brings her close to us in all our times of need, anxiety and doubt.  

Often we find it difficult to approach the saints in a close and intimate way.  With Mary and with her Son it is different; He died for us and Mary said yes to God’s will and by bearing Him in her womb enabled Him to be incarnate and to fulfil His Father’s plan for his creation.  Year for year, throughout the world the faithful dress Our Lady of Mount Carmel in costly robes and process with her through the streets singing her praises and asking for her intercession.  During these processions she is transformed from a plaster or wood carving into a symbol of our devotion and our need to be close to her.  She becomes truly our mother. 

This is why we are having this Shared Mass on the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in order for all mothers to see in her their mother and the source of all their motherly attributes.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for all mothers

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, National Shrine of Saint Jude

You still have time to send in your names. Simply add the name(s) of a mother, or grandmother via our on-line shop, and your donation. Those listed can be your mother, someone else’s mother, a grandmother, someone who is expecting, someone who is hoping for a child, or a maternal figure in your life.

Fr Michael Manning, O.Carm.

Saint Jude medals

Beautiful Saint Jude medals that have been created by the famous French artist and sculptor, André Lacôme are available to pre-order from the National Shrine of Saint Jude. They are currently being produced in the special town of Lourdes. All medals that are pre-ordered will be blessed by our Chaplain on arrival, and sent to you first class.

These special medals are only available for our sixtieth anniversary year, and there are only 100 silver and 100 bronze medals available. Please order as soon as possible.

Silver: £30 each
Bronze: £25 each

You can pre-order these via our on-line shop, or you can call the office to pay by debit or credit card: 01795 539214.

Novena for the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel: 8 - 16 July 2015

The following novena from the National Shrine of Saint Jude is for the nine days leading up to the Feast of Our Lady of Carmel, which falls on 16 July. You can pray the novena in private, with your friends or family, or in a group. The novena starts today.

Statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, National Shrine of Saint Jude

O God, 

you have given us Mary as our Mother

and, through the Order of Carmel, 

we learn to call her sister.

May we imitate her goodness and faith

and be ever joyful in the wonderful things

you have done for us.

May Mary watch over and protect us

on our pilgrim way to your holy mountain,

Christ the Lord.

We make our prayer through the same Christ, 

Our Lord. Amen.

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Our Father... Hail Mary... Glory be...