Given for the 175th Anniversary of the first Mass offered in the parish of Our Lady of Dolours, Hendon by Blessed Dominic Barberi CP.
Today we gather to give thanks to God for the blessings which have been bestowed upon the parish of Our Lady of Dolours since the first Mass was offered in the parish by the Passionist Blessed Dominic Barberi on 15 April 1849. We mark and celebrate the 175th anniversary of the parish.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the freedom to practice the Catholic faith and build churches, which had been secured through generous sacrifice of priests and people, and the growing expansion of London led to the founding of this parish. The Passionists, who briefly had a house in Hampstead, moved into a house in the area of the Hyde to establish the Hendon Mission and opened a Mass centre in The Burroughs near this present Church in 1849. The first Superior of the Hendon Mission was the Venerable Ignatius Spencer CP (to whom Lady Diana Spencer was related) and included Blessed Dominic Barberi. You will recall that he had received St John Henry Newman into the Church in 1845. Newman wrote of him, ‘His very look had about it, something holy. When his form came within sight, I was moved to the depths in the strangest way. The gaiety and affability of his manner in the midst of all his sanctity was itself a holy sermon. No wonder that I became his convert and his penitent.’
They served the parish until 1858 when they moved to Highgate because of opposition to their works. Mgr. Edward Clifford was appointed as parish priest and asked to build a Church by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman. Earlier Bishop Wiseman, Coadjutor Vicar Apostolic of the London District lived at Ravensfield House in The Burroughs. He became the first Archbishop of Westminster with the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850. The first temporary chapel was briefly called St Edward’s (echoing the history of ownership of the land by Westminster Abbey and then later dedicated to the seven sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary), known later as Our Lady of Dolours whose feast we celebrate today.
Ravensfield House became the first school of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ who arrived from the East End in 1882 where they had served the German-speaking community. Today Usher Hall is built on this site. We thank the sisters whose service continues at St Joseph’s School and Pastoral Centre and thank Sr Anthony and Sr Maria today for their presence and ministry.
We celebrate this Mass in the spirit of the Venerable Ignatius who preached frequently of ‘thanking God for everything’ and wrote ‘The spirit of thankfulness is the one thing needful to correspond with God's purpose and to ensure its full accomplishment.’ (Fr Gerard Skinner, Father Ignatius Spencer, p.410)
We gather today and unite with the whole Church, the living and the dead and the whole communion of saints, in this Mass as we do in every Mass. Heaven and earth meet. The Church, ‘the people of God as the Body of Christ’, leads us as pilgrims on a journey towards our fulfilment in Christ and the promise of eternal life. Members of the Mystical Body of Christ, we are the members of Christ with Christ who is the Head. Together we are Christ. We give thanks for his self-offering on the cross that we might have life.
Gathered as the Body of Christ, Pope Francis reminds us that, ‘Liturgy is about praise, about rendering thanks for the Passover of the Son whose power reaches our lives. The celebration concerns the reality of our being docile to the action of the Spirit who operates through it until Christ be formed in us. (Cf. Gal 4:19) The full extent of our formation is our conformation to Christ… with becoming Him…’ As Leo the Great writes, “Our participation in the Body and Blood of Christ has no other end than to make us become that which we eat.” ‘(Pope Francis Desiderio Desideravi (2022) 41).
We gather around the altar as the Body of Christ to be fed by the Body and Blood of Christ and to go out into the world as his body on earth, as his hands, his feet, and his face. We are called to love by his Word. We pray for the mission of the parish into the next decades; gathering to praise God and helping God’s holy people to grow in prayer and reaching out to serve others, especially the poor, in love. We are called to be a sacrament of Christ witnessing to his victory over death with joy in Hendon and beyond.
We heard in today’s gospel of the Presentation of the child Jesus in the temple according to Jewish custom. This ceremony marks the naming of Jesus and his consecration as the first-born to the Father. The prophet Simeon recognises that he is hope of Israel, the Messiah who has been promised; ‘the light to enlighten the pagans’. He is our salvation. Blessed be the Name of Jesus!
Our blessed Mother Mary receives the message which we associate with her seven sorrows, ‘You see this child: he is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, destined to be a sign that is rejected, and a sword will pierce your own soul too, so that the thoughts of many may be laid bare’. Mary is our Mother and we come to the Church to ask her help and intercession as she knows and shares in the pains and suffering of Christ as a Mother. She shares in our sufferings as our mother. Everyday people enter this Church building, look up at the Pietà or the symbols of the Passion around the crucifix, and ask her help in sorrow and grief. She hears our prayers and offers them to her Son as a powerful intercessor: ‘Holy Mother, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death’.
Amen.
Bishop John Sherrington