Christmas Masses: Sunday 7pm, Midnight (with blessing of the crib at 11.45pm), 9am, 11am. There will be Benediction with carols at 4pm.

N.B. There will be no Sunday 4.30pm Mass this weekend. Instead, there will be a one-off Saturday 5.45pm Vigil Mass.

Please also note that two separate obligations must be fulfilled: the Sunday obligation and the Christmas obligation. The law requires that these be fulfilled at two separate Masses. This means that we must attend Mass twice: once for Sunday and once for Christmas.

The last of our Advent Rorate Masses in honour of Our Lady will be at 7.30am on Saturday morning. Please see our website for the Christmas Mass schedule.

The feast of Blessed Antony Grassi of the Fermo Oratory.

The Fermo Oratory was founded with the help of Fr Flaminio Ricci, a member of St Philip’s own community in Rome. It was under Fr Ricci’s direction that the young Vincenzo Grassi came after the death of his father. He went on to join the Fermo Oratory, taking the name Antony, and lived the Oratorian life with great edification for 62 years until his death in 1671.

He was known for his gentleness of manner, love of the poor and compassion as a confessor. In the Jubilee Year of 1625, he visited the sites in Rome associated with St Philip and spoke of him with Pietro Consolini, one of the saint’s surviving disciples at the Roman Oratory. On his return to Fermo, Bl Antony was elected Superior for 36 years. His reputation for holiness endured through the centuries and even outlived the Fermo Oratory’s suppression by the anti-clerical Italian government in 1860. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1900.

Blessed Antony, pray for us!

Pictures from the Sung Mass at dawn on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. (Click here)

“I think of thee, and what thou art,
Thy majesty, thy state;
And I keep singing in my heart,
Immaculate! Immaculate!” (Fr Faber)