Christmas cards from the Shrine

If you're thinking about sending Christmas cards to your friends and family, the National Shrine of Saint Jude have a number of beautiful designs on offer this year. You can order five cards of the same design in one pack.You can order these via our on-line shop by simply clicking on the letter below each design.

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All prices includes postage and packing. Envelopes are included.

All proceeds go towards the Shrine and the work of the Carmelites in Britain and worldwide.

Thoughts from the Chaplain - Feast of Saint Jude

This weekend is the two day Saint Jude Celebration and for the last weeks the shrine team have been getting things ready:  new hymns sheets developed and printed, Mass texts re-read and errors corrected, signage made for the pilgrims, hundreds of bottles of Saint Jude oil labelled, filled and boxed, flowers are being arranged to adorn the altar, the repository moved from the hallway next to the shrine up to the office where it is all laid out on tables so the pilgrims have easy access.  Today, Thursday 22nd, the marquee is being set-up to house the candles which will be lit during the weekend as well as desks where pilgrims can write out their mass intentions and petitions for Saint Jude’s intercession. 

There is also another side to the preparation for the celebrations in honour of Saint Jude which came to me as I was preparing bottles of Saint Jude Oil. This is what I will call the spiritual dimension. Of course we are all aware the oil is blessed with the relic of Saint Jude and an accompanying prayer prior to being bottled; the reason we can only ask for a donation for each bottle the pilgrims take with them. But in the process of bottling the oil you enter into the pastoral care of those who will be anointed with the oil; it is in enabling this oil to be used that we become a link in that chain which culminates in the anointing of a pilgrim on the forehead with the oil. The blessing of the oil is done in the name of the God and of His Son Jesus; we ask God to bless the oil as a sign of his love for us; we invoke the intercession of Saint Jude, Apostle and kinsman of Jesus and ask that the Holy Spirit be poured into our hearts.  At the anointing we again ask God, through the intercession of Saint Jude, to free us from anxiety and help us in all our needs. And so even the act of filling oil into a bottle becomes in some way a pastoral act which is a part of our ministry as Shrine team.

In a similar way many other aspects of the Saint Jude Celebrations have a value above and beyond their material worth.  The things sold in the repository help to propagate an understanding in and a widening of the devotion to Saint Jude; the candles bought and lit become a vehicle of prayer – as the psalmist says: let my prayer come before you like incense; the flowers show our devotion to God and the desire to adorn everything to his honour.  I am sure that other people will be able to think of other examples of the spiritual side of the Saint Jude Celebrations. The important thing is to realise that these celebrations function on so many different levels: the devotion is not limited to the prayer at the shrine but is an integral part of our lives as Christians and a devotees of Saint Jude.

Fr Michael Manning, O.Carm

Novena to Saint Jude

The following novena recently published in Carmelite News and from the National Shrine of Saint Jude is for nine days.

You can pray the novena in private, with your friends or family, or in a group. The novena starts on 20 October and continues until the Feast Day of Saint Jude on 28 October.

Jesus, I praise you and bless you

And give you thanks for

all the graces and privileges

you have bestowed upon

your chosen apostle Saint Jude...

 (Make your special request now)

Loving God,

who revealed to Saint Jude

your desire to come to us,

and share your life with us,

open our hearts

so that your Spirit may teach us your truth,

and that keeping your commandments

we may know your abiding presence. 

Carmelite Holy Souls Society

‘It does not matter where you bury my body. All I ask of you, is that wherever you may be, you should remember me at the altar of the Lord.’: St Monica to St Augustine

Fr Antony Lester, O.Carm writes: "The Carmelite Holy Souls Society reminds us that the Church is not confined to this world, but extends into the next as well. By praying for the dead, as we prayed for them when they were alive, we can establish a special link with the communion of saints. In a way this is a two-way street. We remember them in prayer and we ask them to pray for us. It is a helpful reminder that our brothers and sisters who die do not lose their identity, or their relationship with us. They remain the people that they are and the core of their identity is carefully reserved by God as they are transformed by God’s love and set free to love.

If you are anything like me, I imagine that you may be increasingly aware of just how much unfinished business we have in life. Things we may have said or done which we shouldn’t have, and which we now cannot put right. Often, once a word leaves our mouth, we lose all control over it!

Prayer, true prayer, is always an act of love. Our Catholic Christian tradition assures us that our prayer for the Holy Souls is one of the ways in which God loves our departed brothers and sisters into life in all its fullness. It is a gift of the tenderness of God to allow us to share in this loving process."

For many years, the National Shrine of Saint Jude has promoted the Carmelite devotion to the souls of the departed by establishing a Dead List that is renewed each year. People simply send in their lists of dead relatives and friends to be included in our prayers for the Holy Souls.

All those on your list will become members of the Carmelite Holy Souls Society for the year. 

Membership includes:

1. A daily Mass for deceased relatives and friends through the year (except the three days of Holy Week); 

2. A Mass each month for deceased members and benefactors;

3. A share in the Masses, prayers and good works of the whole Carmelite Order.

There is no fixed membership fee, or annual subscription. Please simply donate what you would like to become a member. You can either donate and send in your names via our on-line service, or by printing a form and sending it to the Shrine office.

Sponsored Walk

For many centuries, pilgrims have walked from Canterbury to Rochester. Our Development Manager, Matt would like to challenge himself to do the same in November this year. 

Matt will be walking from Canterbury via Faversham to Rochester, so that he can raise money for the Shrine of Saint Jude – in celebration of sixty years.

If you can sponsor Matt, please donate using via our on-line site, here. Or you can send your cheque or postal order made payable to: “The Carmelites” to: Sponsored Walk, Carmelite Friars, P.O. Box 140, Kent, ME20 7SJ

THANK YOU

Photo of the Month - September 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 future! Here are the Shrine toilets, which have not been upgraded for some time! In celebration, we have decided to completely refurbish areas of the Shrine for future generations. 

Can you donate towards our refurbishment work? All you have to do is donate via here to support us. 

Thoughts from the Chaplain - Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Our Gospel for this feast is the genealogy of Jesus according to John and we can see that God had been working throughout salvation history through the Hebrew people, all the way through the genealogy of our Blessed Lord. But in a very specific and particular way it was with Our Lady’s birth that the work of salvation had begun in a very practical way. Our Lady, then, could be seen as the dawn; that is, the way that the sky becomes bright even before the sun rises. Jesus being the Sun, Our Lady the dawn that announces the fact that the Sun is coming. We hear in the first reading the prophecy from the prophet Micah about Bethlehem Ephrathah being too small to be among the clans of Judah and yet it is from that particular little town that One is going to be raised up who is going to be the Saviour of the world. Mary, married to Joseph the smallest, the most humble, a young woman from a small town who has been chosen to be the bearer of the Son of God; theotokos  It is through her that  the saviour came into this world; the one whom God had chosen specifically for this task.

By looking to Mary we can learn what we have to do: to strive for humility; to serve the will of God; to bear, each in our own way, the Son of God. If we, as Christian people, are to strive for the bringing about of God’s Kingdom on earth.  If we are to live according to his wisdom then we also need to take on board those values of service, humility and poverty which Mary’s life present before us. We cannot have one without the other because they are so intertwined, tied together as to present one image of what God wants of us. We are to follow the teachings of the Son; to always have the poor, the marginalised, the sick, elderly and widows in our hearts and in our actions.  Similarly we need to be willing to see in Mary the first and perfect disciple. As Saint Athanasius writes: “The Holy Scriptures, which instruct us, and the life of Mary, Mother of God, suffice as an ideal of perfection and the form of the heavenly life”.   Mary is our model which we seek to imitate in order that we may be welcomed as good and faithful servants. established. And we will be prepared, as one day the world will be, for the blessed and glorious coming of Our Lord prefigured and preceded by the glorious coming of His mother.