Inside the Carmelite Monastery

Paddy, the Carmelites dog

This weeks theme for lectures was Community Life so after an early start and a lecture in the morning, the SPES community headed for the Carmelite Monastery in Notting Hill. We were quite apprehensive as to what to expect, considering the most that some of us knew about Carmelites was from a short film about St. Therese! We were greeted by a nun and a lovely big dog who immediately befriended Ambrose who we, of course, had brought along with us.




The grill from our side of the parlour, before it was opened

Entering the parlour room, we were faced with a closed window that led into another room. We heard what sounded like a stampede of elephants entering the room on the other side of the wall however, when the grill was finally opened we were met by 17 radiant Carmelite nuns all eager to see us and introduce themselves! The age varied among them as did the accents; from Scottish to Malaysian to South African! After such a warm welcome from the nuns, only two were able to stay to give us a talk on community life. One of the nuns was from Yorkshire which seemed to excite one of our community members and they spoke in a strange language for a couple of minutes that the rest of us could not understand... These nuns had both been in that Carmelite monastery for almost 30 years, compared to our just over 3 weeks in SPES, so they had a lot of experience on the topic we were to discuss.

 

 

The sisters kindly gave us a run through of what their typical day is like. They wake up at 5.20am which is slightly similar to us although we have breakfast together at 6.30am. They pray the hours of the day and have a very structured timetable, similar to ours, squeezing as much as possible into the little time available. They have work time which includes making of the hosts for the surrounding parishes and is where they get their main income from, gardening, making the habits that they wear and doing the washing, cooking and cleaning. They are in total silence apart from recreation time which is twice a day and during this time they sit around in a circle and talk to each other while doing something for fun like knitting for example. They spoke about the importance of sharing as a community because otherwise you don't fully know the people that you are living with, so they thoroughly enjoy and appreciate these recreation times they get to spend together.

 

 

We were curious as to what their rooms were like and were told that they in fact were called 'cells' and were very simple rooms with a bed, a desk and some drawers but that this was sufficient and one of the sisters even called them fashionable because most of the decor in the room is wooden!

 

 

 

 

The joy that radiated from these nuns was infectious and gave us hope, because if these ladies can live together for almost 30 years and still be so joyful, then we will definitely be able to survive these next 9 months!!

 

(Photo of Paddy and Sister's cell from Carmelites website http://carmelitesnottinghill.org.uk/ )

Our Day with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal!

We recently spent a day in Canning Town with the Grey Friars.  When we arrived we immediately began by helping with the preparations for the soup kitchen which they run for the poor and homeless.  This involved opening plenty of cans, chopping potatoes, getting stuff ready for tea and coffee and then serving the soup and toast to the people that came along to the Friary.  We had the opportunity to have a chat with many of the people that came along; both the helpers and the homeless and we were really able to see how God is working with and through this mission.


After getting some soup for ourselves we were given a lecture from Fr. Emmanuel on Community Living.  He made no secret that the next few months are going to come with many challenges and hardships, but, he also let us know that from these 9 months will come great graces and so much joy; this, everyone found very beneficial and we look forward to putting much of what he said into practice.  After a bit of free time, along with some basketball, we settled down for Evening Prayer and an hour of Eucharistic Adoration.





The whole day was rounded up with a lovely chicken dinner prepared by Fr. Emmanuel and some good social time with Br John Bosco, Br Angelo and Fr. Emmanuel.  We are all looking forward to any other opportunity that may come to meet up with the Franciscans again!

A Week of Community...

Wow!  What a week we've had!  The theme for the past week has been Community Living and it has been an amazing experience.  At the beginning of the week we had lectures about what community life is and how we can all contribute to the life of the community with our different gifts, talents, strengths and weaknesses.  We had the great pleasure of meeting and learning about some different communities; we met Paula, from the Cenacolo community, a community for those who suffer from addictions.  They have a prayer group here in the Parish on a Monday evening.  On Thursday we spent the day with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal (CFRs) in Canning Town, where we helped with their soup kitchen and experienced a little of what a typical day is like for them.  Friday was a long yet great day for the boys who headed out to Ealing Abbey early in the morning to spend the whole day with the Benedictines there.  But I think I can safely say the weekend was our highlight!  NightFever was happening here at St Patrick’s on Saturday and it was the first time we have been out evangelising as a community.  Let’s hope all our nights are as fun and exciting as our first.  Sunday meant wrapping up warm and finding our walking boots as we all headed off on the John Paul II Walking Pilgrimage along the Thames from Westminster Cathedral to Hampton Wick.  It was a long tiring day but it was so good, definitely going to make it an annual event!  You can read more about our adventures this week in the next few days as we update more posts.

Tomorrow (1st November) is a very important day, not only is it All Saints Day but for us here at SPES it is our Commitment Mass.  Please join us if you can; the Mass is at 6pm with a bit of social time afterwards.

Celebrate Conference, Rejoice Alleluia Christ has Risen!

This week at the Celebrate Conference in Devon was incredible. It was a great place to be to rejoice, give thanks, praise and worship to the Risen Christ. It was certainly a time filled with happiness, joy, and peace in our hearts. It was amazing to be there amongst a couple thousand people from all around the world and of all ages. There were many great workshops with incredible speakers who were full of wisdom and insight that gave us much to contemplate and reflect upon. The atmosphere was positive, uplifting and very energetic which made it quite difficult to be in a bad mood. It was nice to have met so many new people. We also enjoyed the time we had to pray together, giving praise to God with lots of singing, and daily Mass. There was a bit of time for relaxation too where we were able to go out for a walk, jog, and even a swim. It was a wonderful week to have together especially the week after Easter to celebrate Christ’s Resurrection.

This week coming we look forward to getting back into the swing of things at St. Patrick’s with our lectures which now will be at the French Church in Leicester Square, daily prayer of the Divine Office, Rosary, Mass and Adoration. Have a blessed week and enjoy this Mercy Sunday!!! You’ll be in our prayers and please continue to keep us in yours!!!! God bless.

On the road again...

We've been putting a lot of miles on the mini-bus lately! One Saturday we went up to Reading with Fr. Alexander to see Mapledurham, which has a rich Catholic history. It hid many priests during the Reformation and even housed priests from Douai, France during the French Revolution. Ambrose, Father's dog, even got to come along!

The next weekend we drove out to see the students at Fisher House, the Catholic Chaplaincy at Cambridge. The weather was beautiful and we were invited to join the students for Mass and lunch on the terrace. Anthony, who's a graduate from Cambridge, along with his sister, a current student, gave us an insiders tour of this amazing university. Thanks also to all the students who managed to get us into the different colleges!

The next day we again piled into that poor mini-bus and drove it all the way up to Birmingham for the day. There we popped in at the University of Birmingham's Newman House to talk about the school. We also got a tour of the Maryvale Institute since our Catechism course is through them and stayed to say evening prayer with the Bridgettine Sisters. Luckily, with the bank holiday, the traffic wasn't too bad on the drive home that night.

With all this traveling, we were happy to leave the mini-bus parked in Soho Square for our last Saturday outing and just remain in London for the Pentecost Festival.

Fun with the CFRs

Just thought I would do a post to show that we're not always with our noses in the books or on mission. This is at the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal's house in East London. We got back from the Confirmation Retreat and Edna couldn't resist starting a game!

Thanksgiving Day Celebration

It has been a real eye-opener to realize how unknown this American holiday is to other countries. I guess I just never stopped to think about it, but this was a great opportunity to share a bit of my culture with my classmates. So Saturday, I prepared a traditional Thanksgiving feast to be enjoyed by my classmates, Jeanine and our special guest, Bishop Bernard Longley!

I had spent the week leading up to this dinner scavenging St. Patrick’s and the local Sainsbury store to find the closest equivalents to my mom’s American foods (I did have some help by post with my parents sending me the pumpkin pie filling and some other essentials from home). I relied on all my classmates to pitch in with a rather impressive menu consisting of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce, coslaw, and finally pumpkin and mincemeat pies served for dessert. I was amused to watch everyone try egg nog, a common American holiday drink, for the first time. In the end it was a very special meal to celebrate our gratitude to God for all that he has given us this year. I know it meant a lot to me to have this tradition carried on even while I’m so far from home.

The Centre of Time and Space

Saturdays are set aside as a day spent together as a community to take a bit of a break from the basement of St Patrick's! The other week we went to Greenwich where we visited the Royal Observatory - 'The Centre of Time and Space'. It can make this boast because it is the home of both Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian - which is the line of longitude at which longitude is defined to be 0 degrees.

We had a great time at Greenwich - the museum there was well worth seeing. However, it occurred to me that we actually encountered the true Centre of Time and Space a little bit earlier during the same day...


... as indeed we do every time that we go to Mass!

Roles & Responsibilities

Washing up at Hare Street

It isn't until you try living community life that you realise how much careful thinking and planning is involved in making sure things happen.

One of our activities at Hare Street last week helped hammer this point home. Vron split us into two groups and gave us the task of 'designing' a community from scratch and drawing up plans for how the roles and responsibilities would be shared out.

I'll leave the description of our plans for a community of traveling musician evangelists for another day – it suffices to say that it was a real challenge to try and create and plan from scratch something that would be able to function harmoniously.

Here at SPES each student is given a particular role that is their own specific duty and very much a part of keeping the community working smoothly. For example, Mirela is housekeeper and gets to give the orders of who does the cleaning and when they do it. Allen is sacristan and makes sure everything is prepared for daily Mass and Adoration. Marcus is in charge of organising our weekly community outings; Jenny takes care of the Music, and so on.

You might say that the community is very much a living body where we rely on each others' different gifts in order to get things done - like a microcosm of the Church. But we also have to accept and respect each others roles even when we have our own ideas about better ways of doing things.

At the start of our next term in January we'll all rotate responsibilities - then will come the time for putting our own slant on things. At the moment we've been given jobs that we're fairly well suited too, but we know that being given a job we find challenging (or boring!) could be on the cards in the future and that this can be a real area of growth.

Edna's Arrival

Edna has been with us for over a week now. While awaiting her arrival we felt a bit like an excited family waiting for a new baby to be born!

Edna has already been living in London and she already knows a lot about St Patrick's and all the people here - in fact she had to exercise considerable patience in her first week as we all kept telling her things that she knew all about and introducing her to people she's known for years!

I think now we feel like we've all adjusted to our new, improved, larger family. We've already had Edna cooking omelettes for us, and her ipod and speakers have brought some music to the kitchen too!