Kelvedon Catholic Parish

Kelvedon Catholic Parish This page is for the parishes of St Mary Immaculate & The Holy Archangels-Kelvedon; St John Houghton-Tiptree and St Bernard-Coggeshall.

Mass Times

St Bernard - Coggeshall

Sunday - 9.00 am
Thursday - 7.30 pm
Holy Days - 6.00 pm


St Mary Immaculate and The Holy Archangels

Sunday - 11.00 am
Weekdays - see the Newsletter for the weekly times

Sacrament of Reconciliation
Saturday: 10.30 am - 11.00 am

Eucharistic Adoration
Tuesday: 7.30 pm - 8.30 pm

Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction
Saturday: 10.30 am - 11.00 am



St John Houghton - Tiptree

Sunday - 6.00 pm

Eucaristic Adoration & Rosary
Tuesday: 11.00 am - 12.00 noon

Wednesday, June 10, 2026Tenth Week in Ordinary TimeMatthew 5:17–19Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus promises that he has...
10/06/2026

Wednesday, June 10, 2026
Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

Matthew 5:17–19
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus promises that he has not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it. Matthew says that Jesus went up a mountain, sat down, and commenced to teach, calling to mind Moses, who went up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God.

Therefore, Jesus is being presented here as the new Moses who will promulgate from this Galilean mountain the definitive law. I realize that this immediately poses a problem for contemporary readers, who are put off by a religion that leads with laws, rules, and prohibitions. An Irish wag once summed up the Catholicism that he was taught with this phrase: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was no!”

Since the Ten Commandments have been honored mostly in the breach, why should anyone think it a good idea to introduce new and even more stringent laws? But then we attend to the first word out of the mouth of the lawgiver: “blessed,” “happy.” The law that the new Moses offers is a pattern of life that promises to make us happy.

Tuesday, June 9, 2026Tenth Week in Ordinary TimeMatthew 5:13–16Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus asks, “If salt loses it...
09/06/2026

Tuesday, June 9, 2026
Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

Matthew 5:13–16
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus asks, “If salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?” That question ought to bother us as much today as it did Jesus’s audience long ago. What he means is that a weak Christianity is a disaster for the world, for it depends upon the Christian Church in order to become what it was meant to be.

Consider the truly awful gun violence in the streets of Chicago and other large American cities. A vibrant Christianity would actively get in the way of this affront to human dignity; vibrant Christian churches would rub salt into the earth of this violence; vibrant Christian witness would be a city set on a hill.

Consider the tens of millions of unborn eliminated since Roe v. Wade. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of the mothers and fathers of these murdered children came from a Christian background. Why wasn’t their Christianity strong enough to function as salt and light? Why wasn’t their faith illuminating enough to shine a light into the darkness of what they were doing?

The clear implication is that, without vibrant Christians, the world is a much worse place.

Monday, June 8, 2026Tenth Week in Ordinary TimeMatthew 5:1–12Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus goes up a mountain and si...
08/06/2026

Monday, June 8, 2026
Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

Matthew 5:1–12
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus goes up a mountain and sits down to teach. In the Old Testament, we find Moses, the great teacher, also going up a mountain to receive the law and then sitting down to teach it. However, Jesus is not receiving a law; he is giving one.

Theologian N. T. Wright has pointed out that the Old Testament is essentially an unfinished symphony. It is the articulation of a hope but without a realization of that hope. Thus, as the fulfillment of Israel’s entire story, Jesus begins his primary teaching with the Beatitudes, a title that stems from the Latin noun beatitudo, meaning “happy” or “blessed.”

Through this series of paradoxes, surprises, and reversals, Jesus begins setting a topsy-turvy universe aright. How should we understand them? A key is the Greek word makarios, rendered “blessed” or “happy” or perhaps even “lucky,” which is used to start each of the Beatitudes.

And so, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” We might say, “How lucky you are if you are not addicted to material things.” Here Jesus is telling us how to realize our deepest desire, which is the desire for God and not for passing things that only bring temporary comfort.

Sunday, June 7, 2026Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)John 6:51–58Friends, today’s Gos...
07/06/2026

Sunday, June 7, 2026
Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi)

John 6:51–58
Friends, today’s Gospel passage is one of the most shocking in the New Testament. Those who heard it were not only repulsed intellectually; they were disgusted, viscerally. For a Jewish man to be insinuating that you should eat his own flesh and drink his blood was about as nauseating and religiously objectionable as you could get.

So what does Jesus do? Does he soften his rhetoric? Does he offer a metaphorical or symbolic interpretation? Does he back off? On the contrary, he intensifies what he just said: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.” As all the scholars point out to us, the verb used here in Greek is trogein, which indicates the way an animal eats.

So what do we do? If we stand in the great Catholic tradition, we honor these mysterious and wonderful words of Jesus. We resist all attempts to soften them or explain them away or make them easier to swallow. We affirm, with all of our hearts, the doctrine of the real presence.

Address

Kelvedon
CO59AH

Website

https://www.tiktok.com/@kelvedoncatholicparish, http://www.kelvedonca

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