St Urban’s has issued is annual prospectus for admissions, they are available from the back of St Urban’s church . St Urban’s is a great school and a lovely community, we are so lucky to have it, also Sacred Heart School, in our parish. At Cardinal Heenan , in their assemblies this week students have been reflecting on 'Green Careers' - how they can use their gifts and talents to work in careers thinking about others and the world around them. They will be doing themed activities in their lessons to complement this. Cardinal Heenan’s chaplaincy group have also been fundraising for CAFOD and are now selling poppies. Year 10 have been expressing their interest in the Pilgrimage to Lourdes. Please keep our great school communities in your prayers.
On the first Tuesday of the month, after the evening Mass at St Urban’s, we gather at The Meanwood Tavern, Monkbridge Road junction for a short informal social time. No agendas just a social drink for an hour or so after Mass. Everybody’s welcome! Next date: Tuesday 1st December 8pm.
Tea, coffee and conversation, every Wednesday after Mass at St Urban’s. All are welcome.
NEW CENTRAL HEATING BOILER FOR ST URBAN’S: many of you will be aware that the current central heating boiler is an unrepairable antique! A new boiler will be installed this coming week! The cost is £11,400 plus VAT. Luckily, we have enough money in the bank to pay for this but do feel free to make a donation if you can (three donations has been received; thank you). Weekday Masses at St Urban’s will be held in the meeting room.
ALTAR SERVERS NEEDED AT BOTH OUR CHURCHES: Boys and girls, and older young people too, who have made their first communion can become altar servers . It is a great way of understanding more about the sacrifice of the Mass and what the priest and deacon does. I have noticed a number of young regular Mass goers who could join me on the altar! Fr Chris
Some of you will be aware that the wonderful Ukrainian Orthodox community use Our Lady of Lourdes for their Divine Liturgy when their priest, Father Vladislav, is in the country. I have had a request from Fr Vladislav as to whether there is anyone in the parish willing to sponsor someone to come pro tem to the UK. My understanding is that sponsorship does not involve the person living with the sponsor. If you are interested in helping with this please let me know. Thank you. Fr Chris
Preparation for the Sacrament of Confirmation happens in year 6 in our schools. This is now underway. I need to know of children in year 6, or older, who are not in our schools who need the sacrament. I intend to get preparation sessions underway as soon as possible. Confirmations are likely to take place after the new year. If you have a child or young person who needs this sacrament, and who are not in our schools, please email the parish office as soon as possible. Thank you. Fr Chris
CAFOD FAMILY FAST DAY is on Friday 2 October. It is a day when we are invited to pray, eat simply and give generously. Giving to CAFOD puts our faith into action and enables us share God’s love with our neighbours overseas helping communities support children to stay in school with better access to water, nourishing school meals, and gardens where food can be grown, even during times of drought. Please collect a CAFOD envelope as you leave church.
Tuesday 13 October 2026, 10am1:30pm, Cathedral Hall, Leeds. This event, hosted by Growing Old Grace-fully will explore Catholic Social Teaching regarding the blessings of later life, led by theologian Dr Peter Kevern. To book a place, please email growing.old.gracefully@dioceseofleeds.org.uk
On the first Tuesday of the month, after the evening Mass at St Urban’s, we gather at The Meanwood Tavern, Monkbridge Road junction for a short informal social time. No agendas just a social drink for an hour or so after Mass. Everybody’s welcome! Next date: Tuesday 1st December 8pm.
ANNUAL SERVICE AT KILLINGBECK CEMETERY NOVEMBER – MONTH OF THE HOLY SOULS: this Sunday the 8th November at 2.30pm. All the Diocese are invited to come to the cemetery and pray for the deceased members of the Diocese and extended family. The service, led by Canon Patrick Wall, Dean of East Leeds, will be in the chapel with readings, hymns, and rosary. Weather permitting, we will walk around the clergy circle reciting the rosary.
It is time to refresh our November Dead List for 2026/27 . Masses are offered throughout the year from All Soul’s Day for our faithful departed. It is a beautiful custom. If you wish for deceased loved ones and friends to be included on our List please mark an envelope “November Dead List”, place in it the list of people you wish to be remembered throughout the year, your own name, and an offering for the cycle of Masses throughout the year, then either put it into the Offertory bag or hand it to me directly. I want to finalise the new list over the next week. Thank you. Fr Chris
Dear Brothers and Sisters, I hope that during your working life you have had a good boss, or, if you are younger, a good teacher at school or lecturer at college or university. During my working life I certainly have had bosses I admired, respected and imitated. On the other hand I have also had bosses who always made me feel that I was not up to the job. The first type get the best out of you, make you more productive; the other paralyse you with fear. In Sunday's gospel we see a boss who inspires some people and obviously terrifies others, but he is the same person. It’s a bit of a paradox really. Paradoxes are not uncommon in Jesus’ parables. The word parable comes from Greek. As is common in Greek, it has more than one meaning or interpretation, including “a comparison”, or “to compare”. This is why we see in the gospels phrases “is like”, such as “the kingdom of God is like”. Parables are structured to make you think, to give you pause for thought, to invite you to use your imagination. So what is Jesus getting at in Sunday's gospel about the talents? Context is important. If you think back over the past few weeks, Jesus is trying to tell his listeners, you and me, what the kingdom of God “is like”. Last week it was about readiness, the wise bridesmaids with full lamps of oil when they are waiting for the bridegroom who, when he arrives unexpectedly, are not caught out and they get into the wedding feast, the others, who are not prepared, not ready, are locked out. If we are not prepared throughout our lives we too can be locked out of eternal life with God. This week Jesus has another go at explaining things to us. He uses a different scenario. This time the master is going away for a long time. Jesus is in fact taking about himself after his ascension to heaven, though his listeners at the time do not realise this. Jesus says that the master will return, just as Jesus says that he certainly will. We will personally encounter Jesus at the time of our own death when we return to him and, with the rest of humanity, at the end of time. And what about the talents? We need to remember that our understanding of "talent" would be alien to Jesus and his listeners, in the context of the story, a talent was only a large sum of money and nothing else. How much are we talking about? There are different views about how much a talent was worth. It varies between 150 pounds weight of silver or 6,000 drachma, each drachma was a silver coin. A drachma was a day’s wage, over 14 years of a person’s salary. The talents handed over by the master are given proportional to his view of his servant’s abilities, in other words everybody is different. But one thing is for sure, the master expects something to be done with his investment. On the master's return things go well for two of the servants but not the third, what is this about? It seems to me that the first two servants have taken time to get to know their master, this enables them to understand that he admires creativity, that he does not mind risks being taken for the right reasons, also that he realises that some things will work out, other things won’t. The third servant has a very different view, he is paralysed by fear. He does not grow his investment, more than this he is stunted in his very heart and soul. Perhaps he has not taken time to fully understand his master. The master’s response is harsh but notice that this only happens after the servant has in effect repudiated the master in the rudest possible terms. So what does this parable mean for us? Well, for me one point is waiting. The kingdom of God is both now and not yet. All of us are citizens of this kingdom but it is yet to be fully realised, as it will be in the new heaven and earth that has been promised to us. Yet the time of transition and transformation, from what we are now to what we will be in eternity, starts now. If we are faithful to God and each other our destination is, God willing, experiencing the reality of the Holy Trinity for ages unending. The other point is that all of us are gifted and talented, in different ways and to different degrees, the world would be rather boring if we all had the brain of Einstein of the hand of Michaelangelo! God requires us to reflect and act on the singular contribution we can all make in making his investment in us pay off, by making his kingdom live in our hearts and souls and a reality in our world. Put simply, sitting on our hands as Christians and waiting for Jesus is not enough, and a harsh judgement awaits those who think it is. How alive is the life of grace in you? What are you doing with God’s investment in you? As always, please accept an assurance of my daily prayers for your needs and intentions. God bless and keep you. Fr Chris
Dear Brothers and Sisters, We often hear the term things being a “full circle”; something that has a beginning and an end. In a sense churches can feel like this where people can be baptised, married, and be buried, place where things come “full circle”. But in Sunday's reading from the letter of St Paul we hear, “We believe that Jesus died and rose again” and that it will be the same for those who have died in Christ, namely us, who have already symbolically died in Christ through our baptism. This is a staggering claim now as it was then; what is the basis for the claim? How can we be confident that it applies to us? The author, St Paul, had undergone a radical conversion from a persecutor of the early Christians, imprisoning them and being present at least one martyrdom, to being a Christian himself. This was based on a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, a man who to that point Paul genuinely believed to be dead and the claims of Jesus’ resurrection to be a complete fiction. This led him to meet others, we are told elsewhere hundreds of others, who had met Jesus after He had, body and soul, risen from the dead. Paul’s letters show us that he was a clever man with a sophisticated education, a man not easily taken in by fraud. He knew that his claims of Jesus’ resurrection, and consequently the promise of our own, were extraordinary and would be hard for others to believe too, so he writes this letter in which he tries to describe how we will, like Jesus, rise again. Will be the same but different, perfected. Elsewhere he says this because when people encountered the risen Jesus He was the same person as before His death. After his resurrection Jesus went to great lengths to show people that he was real and not a ghost, and one of the first things he asks for is something to eat, but He is also different in some way, in some beautiful and glorious way. Yes, this is a comforting thought but it is much more than that. Paul and his fellow Christians had a direct encounter with Jesus. They could not keep it to themselves, they knew that it put them at risk of persecution and death, but they had to do it. Who would live and die for something based on a lie? So what is the path to the glory of eternal life in Christ? In this life it is not easy but in the gospels Jesus gives us a series of road maps. We see in them the characteristics of what it is to share the life of Christ in our lives here, today. Gentleness; the desire for what is right in the world; being merciful; being peace makers in our homes and the places where we live. Sacrificing ourselves for the good of others (something we particularly bring into our minds this Remembrance Sunday). If we want to see how to actually do this we only need to look at the life of Jesus, though it proved to be for Him the way to the cross, He rose again in glory and is alive forever and He tells us in the gospels, as Paul does in his letters, that we can be there with him too. Jesus never loses anyone who are His and who desire to be with Him. All we need to do is stay close to Jesus. Even at those times in our lives when we are far away from Him there is, this side of eternity, always a back. Way before the time of Jesus people believed that God cares for people beyond this life, that the souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God. God desires all people to be saved and to be in eternal union with Him, sharing the life of the Holy Trinity. Beyond our time here, if we do our best to be faithful, God our loving Father will bring us to Himself, as He has brought countless others. In the Christian belief we believe that the destination in following the path of Jesus is to be united with Him and to be reunited with each other. God Himself, in the act of a loving father, will personally wipe away our tears and bring us to everlasting joy with Him and with each other. He will destroy death, forever. But as we are told in Sunday's gospel, we need to stay awake, to be aware of the limits of our earthly life. We do not know the time our the hour when God will invite us to return to Him and if we will be able to accept the invitation. But for the dead who are with God, rather than things having come “full circle” for them their circle is the circle of eternity; eternal life in God. As always, please accept an assurance of my daily prayers for your needs and intentions. God bless and keep you. Fr Chris
Dear Brothers and Sisters, This Sunday we celebrate the great 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, St Urban, and St Anthony of Padua 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 many of them. In the presbytery I still have my family’s image of the Sacred Heart dedication 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. So how do you imagine saints to be? Who are your favourites and why? Why do we have saints, and why do we have a day in the year when we celebrate them? For me the first thing to bear in mind is that the saints did not have a "pearly heavenly life" on earth. They were all people like us, with our strengths and weaknesses. Not all of them were easy people to be with; St Jerome living in his cave was seen as being a very difficult even unbearable man. 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. For that matter the apostles were a pretty unpromising bunch, Peter had no special training in religion and Matthew was a tax collector, people who were notorious for collaborating with the occupying power, theft, and extortion. People at the time must have wondered why on earth Jesus chose them as his closest associates. Therese of Lieseux 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, as we do just by being Christians, 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, even 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 many of them cost them their lives. Jesus tells us how to be a child of God in Sunday’s gospel 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 Wilde commented that every saint has a past and that 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. Please accept an assurance of my daily prayers for your needs and intentions. God bless and keep you always. 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.