Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Principal Celebrant and Preacher, and Archbishop Bernard Longley, pictured during Mass at Oscott College on Sunday 4 July.
“Follow in the footsteps of Cardinal Newman”!
This was the challenge that Archbishop Vincent Nichols gave to young people, aged 16 to 35, discerning a vocation to the priesthood or religious life, during his homily at the final Mass of Invocation 2010, in the chapel at St Mary’s College, Oscott, on Sunday 4 July,
The Archbishop of Westminster said: “These are the steps of the pathway of vocation – to know that we are anointed and sent by the Lord, to know that we never walk alone, to know that we are to announce his coming, and to know that we are strengthened from within by him.”
Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Archbishop Bernard Longley, Archbishop of Birmingham, pictured with bishops and priests outside St Mary's College, Oscott, after the final Mass of Invocation 2010.
Archbishop Nichols emphasised: “These are the gifts we are given and the mission that we gratefully accept.”
The Archbishop reminded the congregation: “In 1854, in this very chapel, Cardinal Newman spoke of a ‘second spring’ in the life of the Catholic Church in this country.”
At the end of the first national vocations discernment weekend, the former Archbishop of Birmingham, 2000-2009, added: “Today it’s not his words that we look for or attend to. You will be the words, you will be the sermon, you will be the message of new and fresh life in the Catholic community in our land.”
Dr Newman preached his famous “The Second Spring” sermon on 13 July 1852 during the First Synod of the New Province of Westminster, held at Oscott College, near Birmingham.
Archbishop Bernard Longley, Archbishop Vincent Nichols and me pictured outside Oscott College.
