St Joan Of Arc Catholic Church | Catholic Church Farnham | Catholic Church Farnham Surrey | Mass times at St Joan of Arc Farnham

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time A 2026

The Eucharist is the Source and Summit of our Lives!

There is still time to take part in our Holiday Picture Raffle that runs until 6th September. Full details are found on the notice boards in the Church porch and on the eternal notice boards.

Everything we do flows from the Most Holy Eucharist celebrated with the context of the Sunday Mass. Each week, we bring back to the Mass an offering of everything we have done in Lord’s service – hopefully we will not come back empty handed! The Catechism tells us that all the ‘ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it’. Indeed, The Most Holy Eucharist is the culmination of God’s work of sanctification in the world and so, at Mass, we continually offer our ‘thanksgiving’ to the Father through Christ, with Christ and in Christ, and always in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

The Most Holy Eucharist, then, expresses our unity as the ‘body of Christ’, the Church. Thus, we only receive Holy Communion when our life (both by our profession and disposition), actively demonstrates our unity with the Catholic Church. In other words, our whole way of thinking and acting is always attuned to the Eucharist in a way that demonstrates: ‘this is my body which is given up for you’. The Blessed Eucharist perfectly express the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself. By our participation in the Eucharist each Sunday, we unite ourselves to heaven and begin to anticipate our place in the communion of saints