The Countdown Begins!

We are only 10 days away from welcoming all the new SPES Students to St Patrick’s here in London! Barbara has been busy preparing St Anne’s Presbytery, where the students will live for the next nine months, beginning next Saturday. She has also been doing some handy work in the classroom, preparing tables and chairs for the coming lectures. Allen, one of the students for the coming year, arrived on Saturday from China. He has been shadowing Mandy, a former student of the School and also a resident here at St Patrick’s, since he arrived, learning the ropes of St Patrick’s whilst he acclimatizes to the culture. The Conference for the New Evangelisation is happening in Budapest this week, flowing into the weekend. Please pray for that and for all of the new students! Stay tuned for more updates …

Holding the fort

The School year may have ended ... but the life of the parish continues. As the four 2005/6 graduates who stayed for a year to look after the School and parish move on (to pastures new, or a well-earned break), things have been left for a few weeks in the eager hands of Mandy and myself, 2006/7 graduates.

The basement flooded in the recent heavy rains, though I was too busy scooping the water up to take a photo for the blog. Thanks to Arnold, our highly efficient housekeeper, there is no lasting damage. Nevertheless, it's a reminder that the fabric of the church and School need repairing. There will be a Parish Meeting tonight to update on progress with the £4m Appeal.

We were joined for supper on Sunday evening by Fr Stephen Langridge and ten Spanish seminarians . Fr Stephen is well known to the School, having been one of our visiting lecturers. He has a group of Spanish young men (some as young as 15, going to school in the week and attending seminary on Saturday), and two Spanish priests, staying in his parish for a few weeks for something of a 'spiritual holiday', and to learn English. It was wonderful to welcome so many young men thinking seriously about priesthood.

While they were here, they were shown SOS Prayerline, a service where anyone can call from 7-11pm every night, and a volunteer prays with the caller in a small chapel with Jesus exposed in the tabernacle. Just as we were visiting the chapel, Mandy received was receiving the 30,000th call. You can call SOS Prayerline on 0207 434 9211.

Graduation

It was a packed house on Tuesday 12th June when Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor came to St Patrick's to celebrate the Graduation Mass, along with 25 Priests to concelebrate this very special occasion. The ceremony was beautiful, starting off with a tear-jerking hymn (for some of us, anyway!). The church was heaving with supporters of all kinds - lecturers, benefactors, companions, past students ... you name it - they were there! What a gift the school has been to so many people!

So endeth Spirit in the City

Yesterday was an intense day of talks, workshops, music evangelisation and Confession in Leicester Square, the busiest square in Europe. In the evening we were privileged at St. Pat's to be led in Evening Prayer, Adoration and Night Prayer by the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. Two of the Friars, Fr. Augustine and Fr. Emmanuel, are newly ordained and have returned from America to be missionaries in their homeland. May they bring great glory to God and do great good for the people of England. We will dearly miss Brother Martin and Fr. Angelus (who joined us last night), both of whom have had a lot to do with us in this year and are going to friaries in Ireland and Bradford respectively.

Last night we also listened to our beloved Gospel choir as they kicked up a storm in Soho Square. Long after everyone had gone, we had our own modest party on the terrace of St. Patrick's, knowing that Sunday was not an early morning! So the watchmen of the dawn slept in this morning... A big thanks to Anna Marie for oganising these three days.





P.S. If anyone's around this evening at 6.00 we have our International Mass and Corpus Christi Procession through the streets of Soho, made up of the Latin American, Brazilian and Chinese chaplaincies. A real wake up call for Soho!

Corpus Christi Procession

We are in the midst of Spirit in the City, a Catholic festival in the West End of London, with talks, music, evangelisation and processions. Last night Fr. Chris Connor gave a wonderful talk about the power of the Eucharist at Corpus Christi Maiden Lane, and then we went on procession to Leicester Square...

The last stretch

We're back from a relaxing week in Dorset, a time of retreat, walks, laughs and reflection on the year at SPES. Fr. Alex joined us for the first half of the week, and Fr. Matt our spiritual director came later to give us some meditations. We were able to use the rarely-used parish church in the area to say the Divine Office and have Mass and Adoration. We also got to visit Chideock, a church that has been the site of a recusant family from its beginnings as a barn many centuries ago, and the church which commemorates the death of local martyrs St. John Cornelius and companions. Coming back to Soho yesterday we found awaiting us the relics of St. Claude de la Columbiere, also a martyr for the faith who died as a result of his long imprisonment in the Tower of London for preaching the mercy of the Sacred Heart. The relics of our patron saint have been brought from France in order that they may be venerated in St. Patrick's and in other churches during the next few weeks.

We're now on the final stretch of our year, with just one more week until we graduate on June 12th! This weekend we will be involved with Spirit in the City, a festival of faith organised by the West End Catholic Churches, with talks, prayer, adoration, evangelisation and music events in the notable squares around the area. If you are interested please come along - check out the details on the website.

Relics of St. Claude

Bone fragments of St Claude de la Colombière, Apostle of the Sacred
Heart, are being brought to St Patrick's Church
for a special season of festivities in June!

A missionary and ascetical writer, St. Claude was born of noble parentage at
Saint-Symphorien-d'Ozon, between Lyons and Vienne, in 1641, and died
at Paray-le-Monial, 15th February 1682. He entered the Society of
Jesus in 1659. In 1674 Father de la Colombière was made superior at
the Jesuit house at Paray-le-Monial, where he became the spiritual
director of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, to whom Jesus gave the
revelation of His Sacred Heart, and was thereafter a zealous apostle
of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.



In 1676 he was sent to England as preacher to the Duchess of York,
later Queen of Great Britain. Although encountering many difficulties,
he was able to guide Margaret Mary by letter. While awaiting recall to
France due to ill health, he was suddenly arrested and thrown into
prison, denounced as a conspirator. Thanks to his connections to the
Duchess of York and to Louis XIV, he escaped death but was condemned
to exile in 1679.

He was canonised by Pope John Paul II on 31 May 1992. His relics are
usually preserved in the monastery of the Visitation nuns at
Paray-le-Monial. He is the patron of Saint Patrick's Evangelisation
School.

"The past three centuries allow us to evaluate the importance of the
message which was entrusted to Claude. Devotion to the Heart of Christ
would be a source of balance and spiritual strengthening for Christian
communities so often faced with increasing unbelief over the coming
centuries." John Paul II, at St Claude's canonisation Mass

Pentecost Vigil

This Saturday 6.00 pm at St. Patrick's Church, Soho Square. Mass with the Brazilian and Chinese communities followed by a prayer vigil until midnight. 'I will pour out my spirit upon all humanity.' Come and be present as we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church and as we call upon the Spirit to aid us in the New Evangelisation, so that the world may know the love of the Holy Trinity.

Parish Mission

This week the wheels don't stop turning. On Wednesday we had a lovely lunch after Mass with the parishioners of St. Patrick's, some of whom have been coming for over twenty years (quite an achievement in a place where no one stays still long enough to bat an eyelid). There were a few relatively younger faces as well - people working or studying in London who come for Mass or for Morning and Evening prayer at the parish. Maybe our singing is getting better... Now we are in the process of visiting all the residents in the area, trying to find the Catholics and see if they are interested in information about the parish. It's actually quite hard to get access to a lot of the flats where residents live, and most of them are not at all interested. One man leaned out of the window when we rang and after listening to our introduction said, 'I'm in the bath and I'm an atheist.' But we did talk to some people who wanted to know more about the church and that made the visits worthwhile. Soho, and England in general, is a place that is not very open to the discussion of religion, particularly if it is a religion that in their view had its chance and blew it. I wonder what they would think of the evangelisation linebacker...

Christ Alive in the North

We're just back from a weekend up north, staying with Fr. Richard Aladics in Huddersfield. He's on his own in an area that is largely lapsed (and also the product of a drug and binge drinking mentality) and he feels that if he is to do anything significant there then he needs the help of a community. 'It's not a parish, this - it's missionary territory.' On Friday he held a prayer and healing hour in his church, and we spent the morning handing out flyers as he processed through the streets blessing them with Holy Water and saying 'May the peace of Christ reign here!' We also handed out flyers at the local Catholic primary school. For the prayer and healing hour Fr. Richard heard confessions as we prayed before the Blessed Sacrament, and then he blessed individual people with the Blessed Sacrament as they came up. He said to us there were more parishioners there than at any other event he had held in the parish.

On Saturday we went to Bradford to help the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal with their event: Christ Alive in Bradford! A tent had been put up in the green, in which there was an afternoon of talks, testimonies, adoration, a May Crowning of Mary, and praise and worship. Fr. John Wilson from Leeds gave a particularly good talk on the Eucharist and the family, stressing the importance of families spending time together and praying together. The weather was not on our side for most of the day, but that did not stop the friars and the rest of us from going downtown to invite people to the event. A few people came to the tent from off the streets, merely because they were curious, but left noticeably changed. It was a wonderful event and hopefully the first of many like it.

Fr. Richard's 'unctious food' should not go without special mention. It's not often you find a priest who cooks like a Mediterranean chef. Cheers Fr., it was boss.