Today’s Mass: The wisdom of Sirach is almost selfishly simple: forgive your neighbour so that the Lord will forgive you. But in the elaborate parable of the unforgiving servant, the Matthean Jesus goes one better: you have already been forgiven by God, so you must forgive in like fashion. It is not a matter of the chicken or the egg, because we already know that the initiative in the forgiveness game is God's. This is why it's particularly fortunate that the continuous reading of the letter to the Romans, begun last June, has reached chapter fourteen: all this forgiveness would be impossible were it not for the fact that we belong to the Lord. Even the psalmist reminds us that God's forgiveness is infinite, putting our sins past us "as far as the east is from the west." Jesus' answer to Peter about forgiving seventy-seven times reaffirms that.

Thank you and congratulations to everyone on all our joint efforts to ensure the Masses last weekend went as smoothly as they possibly could have – how will we do this weekend!? It’s going to take time until we get used to all the changes – all-in-all, the majority of feedback was in favour of the changes.

FIRST HOLY COMMUNION PROGRAMME 2011/12: This is the last day to submit your application forms for this programme. The first session for the children commences this Tuesday, 13^th September, at 5.15pm in St. Norbert’s Community Hall. The Mass of Enrolment will take place during the 11.00am Mass in Spalding on the 25^th September.

We note that we have not received any applications to date from Holbeach. Children from Holbeach have the option of attending a programme in Holbeach or joining with the children in Spalding – if Holbeach children decide to join the Spalding group then they still have the option of celebrating their first Holy Communion in Holbeach or Spalding.

FR. PAUL arrives amongst us tomorrow (Monday) – we hope that he will be very happy and soon settle in at the Priest’s House in Holbeach. Fr. Jim wishes to express his gratitude to all those who have looked after the house whilst it has been unoccupied, and those who have been busy preparing for Fr. Paul to move in. We have now set up a weekly schedule, which is not set in stone, but we will give it a try to see how we get along. It has been decided to hold an evening Mass on Fridays in Holbeach, for that reason we have switched our Mass to welcome Fr. Paul to Holy Trinity – we hope you will be able to join us and contribute something towards a Shared Table after the Mass.  The Mass will be a joint parish occasion: musicians, readers, servers, Eucharistic Ministers etc from both parishes.