Proclamation of the Holy Year for the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in UK

For the Feast of the Holy Family
From an address given at Nazareth by Pope Paul VI
The example of Nazareth

The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus – the school of the Gospel.
The first lesson we learn here is to look, to listen, to meditate and penetrate the meaning – at once so deep and so mysterious – of this very simple, very humble and very beautiful manifestation of the Son of God. Perhaps we learn, even imperceptibly, the lesson of imitation.
Here we learn the method which will permit us to understand who Christ is. Here above all is made clear the importance of taking into account the general picture of his life among us, with its varied background of place, of time, of customs, of language, of religious practices – in fact, everything Jesus made use of to reveal himself to the world. Here everything is eloquent, all has a meaning.
Here, in this school, one learns why it is necessary to have a spiritual rule of life, if one wishes to follow the teaching of the Gospel and become a disciple of Christ.
How gladly would I become a child again, and go to school once more in this humble and sublime school of Nazareth: close to Mary, I wish I could make a fresh start at learning the true science of life and the higher wisdom of divine truths.
But I am only a passing pilgrim. I must renounce this desire to pursue in this home my still incomplete education in the understanding of the Gospel. I will not go on my way however without having gathered – hurriedly, it is true, and as if wanting to escape notice – some brief lessons from Nazareth.
First, then, a lesson of silence. May esteem for silence, that admirable and indispensable condition of mind, revive in us, besieged as we are by so many uplifted voices, the general noise and uproar, in our seething and over-sensitized modern life.
May the silence of Nazareth teach us recollection, inwardness, the disposition to listen to good inspirations and the teachings of true masters. May it teach us the need for and the value of preparation, of study, of meditation, of personal inner life, of the prayer which God alone sees in secret.
Next, there is a lesson on family life. May Nazareth teach us what family life is, its communion of love, its austere and simple beauty, and its sacred and inviolable character. Let us learn from Nazareth that the formation received at home is gentle and irreplaceable. Let us learn the prime importance of the role of the family in the social order.
Finally, there is a lesson of work. Nazareth, home of the ‘Carpenter’s Son’, in you I would choose to understand and proclaim the severe and redeeming law of human work; here I would restore the awareness of the nobility of work; and reaffirm that work cannot be an end in itself, but that its freedom and its excellence derive, over and above its economic worth, from the value of those for whose sake it is undertaken. And here at Nazareth, to conclude, I want to greet all the workers of the world, holding up to them their great pattern, their brother who is God. He is the prophet of all their just causes, Christ our Lord.

https://www.bcos.org.uk/Catholic-Scotland/History


In time, with considerable courage, colleges were established secretly in Scotland, in remote locations and under primitive conditions, Loch Morar in the West Highlands and Scalan in the Braes of Glenlivet being the best known. Both suffered at the hands of government soldiers after the Jacobite up...

The Holy Year opens in our diocese with a pilgrimage moving towards the Cathedral behind the cross prepared by Holy Cross High School for the jubilee – a pilgrim people behind the cross of Christ which remains the anchor of salvation.

People are invited to gather at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in Carfin at 1pm on Sunday 29th December for a short gathering that introduces the pilgrimage and the opening of the Holy Year. Bishop Toal, with a small group of young people, will then make the first part of the pilgrimage towards the Cathedral.

At 2.30pm, all people from across the Diocese are invited to gather in St Bride’s Hall (across from the Cathedral) for another gathering time on the journey behind the cross and for the short pilgrimage to the Cathedral, the veneration of the Cross, a memorial of our baptism and the celebration of Mass on the feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.