Auntie is touched, and honoured...

...to have been invited to be a Sponsor at the reception of a young friend into full Communion with the Catholic Church in the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. This is happening on the Tuesday of Holy Week.

Holy Week 2011 in Britain will mark, in a quiet way, the start of a new chapter in the country's Christian history as the Ordinariate groups around the country take these next steps towards becoming formal parishes. It is all happening during a time when other great events have been happening in Church and nation too - last year, a Papal Visit, the first such State Visit in our country's history, and then this year immediately after Easter, a Royal Wedding in London, and a great Papal beatification in Rome, the first time in history that a Pope has formally declared his predecessor to be Blessed and set him on the road to sainthood.

Both Popes visited Britain, both met our Sovereign, both prayed publicly with the Archbishop of Canterbury and leaders of other Christian denominations: both looked back down the years of our country's history and spoke of figures such as St Augustine, St Thomas of Canterbury, St Thomas More, John Henry Newman, and also great Christian men and women not in communion with the Catholic Church,such as William Wilberforce...

In his later years, Pope John Paul II spoke more than once of a "new springtime" in the Church. In Britain we know well that Spring can be a difficult, unpredictable season, with its promise often delayed or offering false starts. It can often be a time of anxiety, and historically also even of hunger (food from previous harvest used up, new crops not yet flourishing). But throughout the Church's long history, it has always been ued as an image of joy and hope, of God's faithfulness and our own commitment to work and prayer...