Ever thought of going on the Diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes volunteering as a nurse or as part of the hospitality team but want to know more, then you are invited to an information evening about the roles and pilgrimage. Hinsley Hall, Monday 1st December, 7pm . For more information, please email Phil Marshall on lourdes.enquires@dioceseofleeds.org.uk or 07766 148375. To register interest please email recruitment.lourdes@dioceseofleeds.org.uk, or simply turn up on the evening. It is a very busy but grace-filled week. Some members of our parish volunteer every year. Feel free to join us. Fr Chris
Two people have generously volunteered to count our collection after the 10.30 Sunday Mass, but we need more. The more we have the more the work can be spread out. Please, can you help? Please speak to Father Chris.
this winter St Urban’s meeting room will be open on the first Wednesday of each month from 7pm to 8.30pm as a warm and welcome space for anyone who has suffered loss, however long ago, and who would like an opportunity to talk about it. This is not counselling, it is just a warm and welcome space where your experience of loss can be shared, if you wish. The dates are: 5th November, 3rd December, 7th January, 4th February and the 4th of March. No booking is needed, just turn up. Also we need volunteers to provide cake, to help prepare the room, to welcome people, to make and serve hot drinks and to clean the room afterwards. It is a wonderful ministry to others and if you feel called to offer any help at all please contact Breda on 07858517163.
As in previous years we will give a Christmas Gift to our sick and housebound. If you know of a sick or housebound parishioner who would like a gift, please let the parish office know as we always try to keep the list of our brothers and sisters in need up to date.
The Parish Pastoral Council recently discussed how we can get the views of a wider group of parishioners. With this in mind, during tea/coffee after the 10.30 Mass at St Urban’s the 16th of November , we will use the time to have an open discussion about our community. It will be a time to celebrate what works well also to consider what we can do together in improve. If you cannot be there but have ideas, please feel free to drop a note at the presbytery, email the parish office, or leave a note in the suggestion box at the back of each church.
The winning numbers for the 7th draw were £30 number 100, and £20 number 85. The winning numbers for the 8th draw are £30 number 122, and £20 number 42. Congratulations to all of our winners! The 200 Club raises money towards the upkeep of both of our churches. It costs £10 for a 10-week session. The prizes are £30 and £20 each week, and, for the final draw on week 10, the prizes will be £100 and 2 x £50 prizes. There are plenty of spare numbers and it is not too late to sign up. The chances of winning are very high and it is a great way to support the parish.
Two people have generously volunteered to count our collection after the 10.30 Sunday Mass, but we need more. The more we have the more the work can be spread out. Please, can you help? Please speak to Father Chris.
this winter St Urban’s meeting room will be open on the first Wednesday of each month from 7pm to 8.30pm as a warm and welcome space for anyone who has suffered loss, however long ago, and who would like an opportunity to talk about it. This is not counselling, it is just a warm and welcome space where your experience of loss can be shared, if you wish. The dates are: 5th November, 3rd December, 7th January, 4th February and the 4th of March. No booking is needed, just turn up. Also we need volunteers to provide cake, to help prepare the room, to welcome people, to make and serve hot drinks and to clean the room afterwards. It is a wonderful ministry to others and if you feel called to offer any help at all please contact Breda on 07858517163.
The Parish Pastoral Council recently discussed how we can get the views of a wider group of parishioners. With this in mind, during tea/coffee after the 10.30 Mass at St Urban’s the 16th of November , we will use the time to have an open discussion about our community. It will be a time to celebrate what works well also to consider what we can do together in improve. If you cannot be there but have ideas, please feel free to drop a note at the presbytery, email the parish office, or leave a note in the suggestion box at the back of each church.
November is here and we will renew our November Dead List. Masses will offered for the repose of their souls throughout the year. Envelopes for names and an offering are at the back of our churches.
: Our Christmas Fair is on Saturday the 29th of November at St Urbans. A signup sheet is at the back of our churches for people willing to help with stalls etc. A sincere thank you to all those who have already signed up. Donations of items are urgently needed (last year I bought a “retired” statue of the Infant of Prague!). Please be generous with your time and effort to support our parish and build our community. Fr Chris
GETTING TO KNOW YOU: We meet at the Meanwood Tavern for a drink and some pizza. It's a great opportunity to meet new people in the parish and catch up with others. We walk up after the Tuesday evening Mass, or you can meet us there at around 7.50pm. The next date is the 2nd of December . If you’ve never been before, you’re more than welcome! For any questions, or to join the WhatsApp group for reminders, please get in touch with Joaquim Messa on 07454 678034 or Sarah Messa on 07952723416.
This weekend is the feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome. Instinctively we all need a place we can call home, even when we leave, perhaps to study, or perhaps marry, having that place of our origin, the place where we were formed is still important to us. Later in life though the physical location may be gone, we like to have things around us that somehow anchor us in a different time and place, perhaps photos, maybe letter, perhaps objects that take us back. Mine include some souvenirs Mum and Dad got on holidays, my small blue infant hairbrush, letters exchanged. What are yours? The "home" of the Jewish religion was the temple in Jerusalem at the heart of which was the Holy of Holies, a sacred space only accessible by the high priest once a year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. As Catholics we understand that the home of our church is in Rome, not Jerusalem. The Cathedral of the Catholic Church in Rome is not St Peter’s, but the Lateran Basilica dedicated to St John the Baptist, build in 324 AD and it is the oldest public church in Rome. That is why it has its own feast day. Why isn’t the heart of the church in Jerusalem, the place of Jesus’ death and resurrection, why Rome? There a number of reasons but Jesus came to break God out of the Holy of Holies (he must have been quite lonely there being visited only once a year), to enable God to be free, to be free to be in, and with, his people. But all people are physical beings and, as with our homes, we like to locate ourselves in actual places. God is with us in a particular way in our churches. As Christians we are called to come together as a community to strengthen and support each other and to give witness to belief both to each other and to the world. Jesus is truly present to us, body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist in every Catholic church where we can come into this actual presence. God also physically comes in the sacraments, which strengthen us and help us grow in the life of faith. Every church, large or small, is truly the house of God and the gate of heaven. The Lateran Basilica is where the church came out of the shadows of the catacombs and the locked doors of people’s houses. It is the place where the followers of Jesus could, for the first time, literally be seen. But Sunday's reading from St Paul tells us there is more. Remember when Paul was writing the temple in Jerusalem was still there and functioning. But he tells us something astounding, that each and every one of us is God’s temple. Through your baptism God is actually a living presence within you. This presence is strengthened by receipt of the Eucharist, when you literally become one with Jesus, and if you are one with Jesus you are one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. You, here, today and throughout your life as a Christian, are God’s temple and God’s spirit actually lives in you. If we were always fully conscious of this we would treat ourselves and others very differently, the world would be transformed. So, treasure two things, the first are the physical places, our churches, where God, in particular Jesus, makes himself available to us. We need to care for God’s home as we would do our own. Secondly, remember that you possess a great treasure, you are a living breathing temple of God, do not be afraid of it, ask God to enlarge your heart and soul so that others can see God; see him in your face, your words and your actions. Ask God to make his home in you. Finally, please remember that this Sunday is Remembrance Sunday; do your best to offer a prayer for the dead of all wars. As always, be assured of my daily prayers for your intentions. God bless and keep you. Fr Chris
BAPTISM PREPARATION SESSION: Saturday the 22nd of November commencing at 2pm, the Meeting Room at St Urban’s. Baptism registration forms are available by request from the parish office.
This weekend is the feast of All Saints. How do you imagine saints to be? In our catholic tradition we see lots of images of saints. We have statues of Our Blessed Mother, St Joseph, and others in our churches. Many Catholic families have images and statues in their homes. In my childhood home, other than family pictures, virtually all of of our images were pictures of Jesus, Mary and other saints. After the death of my parents I kept some of them. I still have my family’s image of the Sacred Heart, dedicated when I was a two year old. In my missal I still have images of the saints going back to my childhood, all of them looking holy and often floating on a cloud in heaven. Saints did not have a "pearly heavenly life" on earth. They were all people like us, with our strengths and weaknesses. Some of them had, to put it mildly, chequered histories. As a nurse one of my favourite Saints was, and is, St Camillus de Lellis. Camillus was a soldier, drinker and a gambler. Not the most promising material, but he went on to found a religious order dedicated to care of the sick. The apostles were also a pretty unpromising bunch, Peter had no special training in religion, and Matthew was a tax collector, people who were notorious for theft, and extortion. People at the time must have wondered why on earth Jesus chose them as his closest associates. Therese of Lisieux herself observed that she could have either been a great sinner or a great saint. So saints were and are people like us. So what made the difference? All of the saints opted for something greater than themselves. Of their own free will, and despite their weaknesses, they opted for belief in God and in salvation through Christ. For many it meant giving up their old ways, drinking, gambling, theft, debauchery, violence. For many others the conversion was less radical, more quiet. But all of them sensed, though the guidance of the Holy Spirit, something greater than themselves. Something that changed their lives for good. Changed their lives for eternity. They decided to live out in their lives being a child of God knowing that they had to change, also knowing that the world would not understand, that it would reject many of them, and for some cost them their lives. In Sunday's gospel Jesus tells us how to be a child of God in the beatitudes. A manifesto that, if we follow it, will transform our lives and the world around us. It is a manifesto so powerful that it also has meaning for people with no religion at all. The beatitudes are the guide on how to become a saint. It is not something that is risk free; people will not understand us and the choices we make. Some will speak badly of us and persecute us in different ways, but the reward is eternal union with God, eternal light, happiness and peace. We can see this in the saints. The saints show us the way. The saints show us how sainthood, if we persevere, is the destiny for all of us. We must not be discouraged, after all Oscar Wild commented that "every saint has a past and every sinner has a future". We are one people with the community of saints; we acknowledge this every time we say the Creed. If you are in difficulty look up a saint who had had that difficulty too (there will be one or more), the saints are our friends, ask them for their help. Which saint’s name do you have? You can ask them for help too. I suspect that there are many saints just waiting to be asked, they are a group so large that they cannot be counted and thank God for that. I am on leave next week but be assured of my daily prayers for your intentions and the offering of Holy Mass. God bless and keep you. Fr Chris
Pope Francis
If peoples are to remain brothers and sisters, prayer must rise unceasingly to Heaven, and one single word constantly echo on earth: peace.