All posts by 3 churches

Junior Club Mother’s Day sale

Christ the King, junior club

The Junior Club is holding a special Mother’s Day Sale this Friday Evening, 14 March in Christ the King parish centre, 6.30 – 7.45pm. A large assortment of gifts suitable to buy for Mum, Nan, Aunty or anybody special will be available, priced from 50 pence to £4.

There will be a free gift wrapping service and card making materials available too. All funds raised will go to ‘Leaves of Hope’ a local charity helping children in Belarussian orphanages. Usual Junior Club activities will also be available.

Giving meaning to Lent

lent

Ash Wednesday marked the beginning of Lent 2014. How will you be preparing to celebrate Holy week and Easter this year? Here are encouragements…

Confession

On Wednesdays March 12 – April 9 from 7pm to 8pm, the doors of St Brigid’s and Christ the King, and most other Catholic churches in the city, will be open, because “The Light is On for you”. Bring a Catholic family member or friend, come in, and rediscover our Father’s heart of mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession). A warm welcome awaits you.

To find Confession times in other parishes and for additional resources visit here. Also see: www.catholicnews.org.uk/confession

Reconciliation Service

On 2 April the Wednesday “Light Is On” time 7-8pm at Christ the King will be a Reconciliation Service.

Mass

We celebrate eleven weekday Masses most weeks in our 3 Churches. Why not attend one more? Note Wednesday evening Masses at Christ the King during Lent will be at 8pm.

Station Mass

The Cardiff Deanery Station Mass with the Archbishop, clergy and people of the city will be this Tuesday 7pm at St Philip Evans. All 3 Churches should be represented.

Stations of the Cross

The Way of the Cross will be followed each Friday at St Paul’s and Saturday at St Brigid’s, both at 9am before Mass. Why not come along?

The Great Three Days

In the second half of Lent Fr Matthew will lead three gatherings reflecting on the Triduum, the centre of the Church’s Year. Starts 24th March.

Each weekend in Lent we will print a prayer for use at Mass and elsewhere. Here is the one for this First Sunday of Lent.

Lord Jesus,
You chose to share the accounts of your own temptations
with your first disciples and with us –
so that we should know that even you faced temptation, just as we do. Give us joy in knowing this about you.
And arouse in us the desire to share all we know about you with others, especially those who need to know of your unending love and mercy for them.
Amen 
Fr Matthew

Christ the King bidding prayers, Ash Wednesday 2014

bidding prayers, Christ the King, ,

CELEBRANT: Taking the first steps on our Lenten journey let us pray with trust and confidence.

Reader: The response is Lord hear us, Lord graciously hear us.

Reader:  Lead the church to places and situations yet  undiscovered where you want your presence felt and your spirit strengthened.

Lord hear us,Lord graciously hear us

Reader:  On this feast of Ash Wednesday we pray for greater self reflection and desire to search for God in theless obvious.

Lord hear us,Lord graciously hear us

Reader: Give us a courageous spirit and a steadfast resolve to embrace things that we do not always understand or do not necessarily feel comfortable with.

Lord hear us,Lord graciously hear us

Reader: Inspire us this Lent to spend more time in individual prayer  visiting our inner room and meeting God in quietness.

Lord hear us,Lord graciously hear us

Reader:  We pray for men and women that we know who are suffering greatly, and whose journey appears unbearable and dark. Lift their burden and lighten their path for them to glimpse the glory of Easter.

Lord hear us,Lord graciously hear us

Reader: We ask Mary the mother of God to help us as we say HAIL MARY……

Reader: As we gather here on this Ash Wednesday 2014, may we reach out and take the hand of God who will accompany us to the cross of Good Friday and the resurrection of Easter Sunday.

CELEBRANT: May God bless our faltering first steps in this new journey through Lent. We ask this through Christ our Lord, Amen

Confirmation

newsletter

Thank you to all candidates for attending our first Confirmation preparation meeting last night at Christ the King, especially for arriving nice and early!  It was great to meet you all.

Don’t forget the Masses of Enrolment on Saturday evening 6pm at St Paul’s and 6.30pm at Christ the King. Please can all those who are reading be at Christ the King by 6pm and St Paul’s at 5.45pm.

The next preparation session will be on Sunday 16 March at 7pm.

St Peter’s rarebit

Uncategorized

DaffodilsThe weekend of St David’s Day reminds us that we are part of a local church. Our diocese is Cardiff, but we can also talk about the local church of our country, Wales. Our history is long, going back beyond St David, and full of interesting people. I was searching on the internet the phrase “meditation for St David” and came across a curiosity. I found a piece on Wales in “The Tablet” of 28th February 1946 written by a Fr Illtud Evans, a Welsh-speaking Dominican friar. It’s quite long, but the opening paragraph made me smile. I’ve adapted the quote he uses into more modern English….

He writes : “If a Tudor jest book is to be believed, Welsh rarebit has a remarkable history. ‘Saint Peter received complaints that there was in Heaven a great company of Welshmen, who, with their croaking and babbling troubled all the others. He decided that they must leave. So Saint Peter went out through Heaven’s gates and cried with a loud voice : “Caws pob!” that is to say, “Toasted cheese!”, whereupon the Welshmen, hearing this, ran out of Heaven at a great pace. And when Saint Peter saw them all out, he suddenly went back into Heaven and locked the door, and so shut all the Welshmen out.’”

You can find the rest of the meditation, which is rather more serious, in the Tablet archives. It’s a reflection on how the Church was doing just after the Second World War. I enjoyed the tale, and wondered who this Fr. Illtud Evans was. John Evans was a convert, born in London in 1913, but educated in Wales and he learned Welsh. After reception into the Catholic Church he joined the Dominican order in 1937, taking the name Illtud, and was ordained in 1943. He did a lot of preaching on the radio as well as on parish missions. He combined this with his writing, contributing regularly to periodicals such as the Tablet and the Times Literary Supplement. He became editor of “Blackfriars”, the Dominican magazine, and Prior of the London community. Asked to work in the USA, he was in great demand for diocesan and religious retreats there too, and edited another magazine. Health problems caused him to return to Britain in 1970, and he died in 1972.

So, just a reminder that in Wales too, we can all play our part in the ongoing life of the Church. And I hope there is still some Welsh rarebit left in heaven– or Welsh rabbit, which seems to be the original name…

Fr Matthew