Open House Volunteer Retreat Day

In the gardens of the Kairos Centre

Although we have not yet started volunteering at Open House we were invited along on their Volunteer Retreat Day yesterday.  It was out at the Kairos Centre in Roehampton.  It was a great day, both in terms of weather and the retreat.  We headed off at 9.45am in the minibus and made it there in 45mins, which is pretty good so we are told.  We were greeted by the Sisters who run the Kairos Centre.  They are the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, the same congregation as Sr Mary, our Parish Sister.  The Kairos Centre has some very beautiful gardens which we were free to wander through. 



SPES were definitely here

There was tea, coffee and biscuits available for us also when we arrived so of course we all had to have a cup of tea.  No point wasting time sitting inside so we took our tea outside. Don't worry we were good and returned the cups, once we collected them all off the grass.  The others gradually arrived and it was time to begin. 







Fr Alex speaking to us about Open House

We began our retreat with a prayer before Fr Alex gave us a spiritual talk/reflection.  He spoke beautifully about our need for God's mercy and forgiveness and how we must extend it to others.  His talk focused on how we can do this with our guests at Open House.  After Fr Alex's talk we had some time to go away by ourselves to reflect on what we had heard and to pray about it.  We gathered again for some lunch and then we shared some of our thoughts about Open House, about what is working well, what we can improve on and generally how we can best bring the love and mercy of God to our guests at Open House. 

Since we have not yet been to Open House we listened more than talking.  We learnt more about how Open House was run before we had our beautiful community centre.  Things have changed over the years but the same principles are there; we want to be a welcoming place for our homeless guests and to feed them both physically and spiritually.  We are very much looking forward to volunteering at Open House and thankfully now we have met some of the other volunteers it won't be as difficult the first time.  We finished the day together with Mass.

Ambrose enjoying all the attention!

Our First Catholic History Walk with Joanna Bogle

 

After a fascinating session of storytelling from Joanna Bogle, we ventured out, in her words, for "a romp around London".  We first discussed a little history of St Patrick's Church, the parish we are based at. In 1940, during a bomb raid, a bomb became lodged in the floor, but miraculously did not explode. This church was founded by Irish immigrants while Catholicism was still outlawed in England. 

 

Our first stop was not far from our St Patrick's. St Giles-in-the-Fields is an Anglican church, which was once a hospital for lepers while it was Catholic before the reformation. We then walked past Lincoln Inn Fields which is now a large square, but once fields in which Catholics were martyred for their faith after King Henry XIII had outlawed Catholicism. 

 

The Ship Tavern, from 1549, which has a nice amount of character, was a place where Mass was held in secret while Catholicism was illegal. Embassy chapels were a place that Mass could be celebrated legally as technically each London embassy was not a part of England, but of the country it represented. 

 

We popped into St Anselm and St Cecilia's Church at Lincoln's Inn Fields, a place of beautiful peace.   Another lovely church, St Brides, is the three tiered church that inspired the classic wedding cake design.

 

Our last sight was the ornate Anglican cathedral of St Paul's, which as many churches were, was Catholic before Henry XIII named himself head of a new church. Because of this, much of the art of Catholic churches was stripped.

The afternoon ended on a delightful and refreshing note of three pots of tea and carrot cake at a tea shop across from the cathedral, by the Thames. Here is to a year of exploring history and faith with hundreds of cups of tea to come!

With Joanna outside St Paul's

 

Scarborough Mission Day 2

Our first full day in Scarborough was a nice quiet relaxing one.  We attended the 10am Mass at St Joseph's and the 11.30am Mass at St Peter's.  It was Ben and Alfonso's turn to introduce SPES to the parishioners and explain a little about what we do (sorry no pictures to prove this due to beautiful Paschal candles being in the way).  We have been made to feel very welcome here in the Parish.  After the Mass at St Peter's we joined some of the parishioners in the Parish Centre for tea and coffee.  It was lovely to have the chance to speak to some of the parishioners, who were all very nice to us.

We were then picked up and whisked off to an absolutely fantastic lunch with Jennie out at her sisters lovely caravan park.  Fr William and Jennie's friend Mike joined us and it ended up being quite a long lunch with a lot of chatting. The rest of our afternoon was nice and relaxing also as we took a walk up through the town centre and down by the seafront, harbour, and castle with Fr William.  We met Maisie when we were in town so she joined us for the rest of our walk and will hopefully be helping us out during the week as she has done in the past.

In the evening we had a lovely quiet Holy Hour in St Peter's before heading back to Jane and Hugh's house. We had a good evening with time to chill out, chat and have a lot of laughs together (and some tea and cake of course!).  It looking like this is going to be quite a 'sweet' week!  The boys will be happy especially our sweet toothed Ben, who even had cake for breakfast!

Scarborough Mission Day 1

Today we had a pretty early start, well for a Saturday that is. We left St Mary's at about 7.45am to head towards Victoria Coach Station. It's a good thing we left in plenty of time cos when we arrived at our bus stop towards Victoria it was Out of Use!! A burst water main at Notting Hill Gate was causing there to be a number of diversions. So we gave up on the bus and headed to the tube station lugging our suitcases, backpacks and guitars - so many steps!! But we arrived safely and in good time to catch our coach to Scarborough.    We were not looking forward to the journey, leaving Victoria at 9am and not seeing Scarborough til 5pm! Seriously ridiculous! At least we had a bit of a stop off in Leeds to stretch our legs.

We filled up our time on the coach by praying a few Rosaries, listening to music, putting some finishing touches to mission stuff and of course sleeping!  It could have been worse. As we left London we had a group of very talkative girls who were enjoying a drink on the coach. Thankfully after an hour or so they fell asleep too :)




We arrived in Leeds at 1.20pm where we tucked into some nice ham & cheese sandwiches as well as chocolate, crisps, fruit & of course a hot chocolate. Then it was on to a local bus service to get to Scarborough.  Another two and a half hours of travel.  Thankfully when we arrived into Scarborough we were greeted with smiling faces from Tom and Maurice, who were going to drive us up to St Peter's.  Scarborough is definitely the hospitality capital! Delicious food was waiting for us at the Parish centre served up by Lesley and her daughter Maisie (our honourary SPES member).



Supper had to be quickly eaten, dessert had to be left for later in the evening as we were due to be at the 6.30pm Mass at St Edwards.  Ola spoke at the end of the Mass about who we are and what we will be doing this week.  She spoke very well.  We were made very welcome by the parishioners, they were all very friendly and supportive of us and offering to keep us in prayer, which is probably the best thing anyone can offer us during this week.



After Mass we met Hugh and Jane who are our hosts this week.  They are a lovely couple and have made us very welcome and at home in their home, as has Buddy their 16 year old Beagle dog. And we thought we were going to be dog less this week!  We spent the evening enjoying a cup of tea with our dessert and chatting about pretty much everything and anything.

We are shattered but so excited for this week! Please pray for us and those we will speak to.

Our Relaxing Retreat

The lovely Chapel at the
Vocations Centre

Recently we returned to the Southwark Vocations Centre in Whitstable for a short retreat. Once again Fr. Stephen made us all very welcome. The main theme of the retreat was to prepare us for this time of Advent we are just about to begin, particularly with our upcoming Advent Mission!!

Since our last visit the centre has come along well, new sofas downstairs, new and improved pillows on the beds, but still the odd armchair in the downstairs toilet.

Keeping watch out at the beach

The retreat itself was great, we had plenty of time for recollection, to look back on our first couple of months together and to see how we are going to approach the rest of the time here. We had plenty of prayer and meditation led by Fr. Stephen, providing us with some great talks on Advent, Mass and other such things.

A bit of piano to entertain us

We also had the pleasure of being joined by two Australian seminarians, Marcus and Trevor, who are staying at St Patrick's through ‘till just after Christmas, so they provided plenty of hymns and chants for our prayer, as well as chocolate cake to accompany regular tea sessions.

The singing nuns
that have a 'habit'
of moving around the place

We are all back now, refreshed and excited to begin the Advent mission. (More info to come)

 

And so the study begins . . .

After our busy week last week you'd think we would have had a bit of a break but no such luck.  Instead we are thrown into our first week of studying the Catechism.  Sounds a little silly but we are starting off with Unit 6 (the last unit!), which is all about Prayer.  So far this week we have been reading through the corresponding section in the Catechism and the Maryvale study book.  It has been very interesting, so often we are being referred to Scripture, writings of the Saints and also to documents of the Church, such as those from Vatican II.

For each of us I think it has been the first time we have actually sat down with the Catechism and properly read it.  We have also had some great instruction and guidance from Fr Francis, Deacon Michael and Wisam - I think we'd be lost without them.  This afternoon's session be our last guided session and then it will be time to knuckle down and get writing.  This year we do not need to write essays as students in previous years had to, instead for each Unit there are a number of shorter tasks that we need to answer.  Not sure which one is better but we shall see how it all goes.  We have stocked up with tea and biscuits for some late night assignment writing!