This Wednesday Catholic Cardiff comes together to celebrate our annual Lenten Mass. It will be at St Mary’s, Kings Road, Canton at 7pm. Let’s make sure the church is full!

The idea of local churches coming together in Lent goes back to ancient Rome when the Pope would visit different city churches in turn through the great season. People would come from all over the Eternal City to join him and all the clergy. So it was really a journey through Lent, with stops (“Stations”) at different places. It’s this idea of stopping that is the reason these Masses are sometimes known as Station Masses – it’s nothing to do with Stations of the Cross! The Popes still visit churches at this time of year and so now do many bishops, including our own Archbishop George Stack. He visits each of our six deaneries, or divisions of our diocese, one or two each week.

So why not come along? Well, you know that we are in this together – life, our faith, our Lent, our city. Our Catholic Church is just that – “catholic” meaning universal. We are not little island parishes, even though we may sometimes behave as if we are. We all belong to each other, and each parish belongs to the greater family of the diocese, just as each diocese belongs to the worldwide Church.

With all the priests of our deanery – Cardiff, Penarth and Barry – gather around our Bishop, let’s all come together for a great celebration of the Eucharist. Yes, it’s the “other” side of the city, yes the parking at St Mary’s is very difficult. But so what? Lent was not meant to be easy. Share cars, offer lifts, “offer it up” as my Mum would say.

So, drop your plans for Wednesday, let’s put ourselves out a little to be the Church of Cardiff celebrating a great Mass together. St Mary’s, Kings Road, Wednesday 7pm.

Fr Matthew

What will your Lent 2019 look like? By Easter Sunday (21 April) what will you have achieved and how will you have grown?

Growing and Sharing “Journeying with Jesus” – A very special recommendation to join one of the groups which will be meeting through Lent to follow Fr Denis McBride’s excellent book for the season. Five groups have already been set up; their days and contact persons are as below. Please contact them if you would like to join or just come-and-see:

Monday 2.30pm Moira Meades (2075 4025)
Monday 2.30pm Tess Evans (2075 5528)
Monday 7.30pm Esther Mahoney (07979 824433)
Wednesday 1.30pm Sheila Roberts (2065 7546)
Thursday 3.30pm Nigel Tuck (2076 6837)

If you would like to take part but none of these times suits you, we can add other days. Please contact Marie York (2068 9253) or Tania Walsh (2061 1494)

“Walk With Me” Most of these books have gone – a few remain

Fasting and Almsgiving We have two special opportunities this Lent to give so that our sisters and brothers can live. Firstly this Friday is CAFOD Family Fast Day. Please take an envelope and return it next week with money you have saved by consuming less on Friday. Secondly the worldwide charity Aid to the Church in Need will be making an appeal in our churches – in St Paul’s next week and Christ the King and St Brigid’s the following weekend. We apologise for the closeness of these two calls on your pocket. When the CAN appeal was planned last summer we didn’t realize that Lent and so Family Fast Day were later than usual.

Sacraments and Prayer
Reconciliation During the week Monday – Friday 8 – 12 April parishes in our Cardiff Deanery take turns in hosting times for Reconciliation with visiting priests. Our allotted time is Wednesday 10 April 7 – 8pm. We will publish the full list as soon as possible. Note this will take the form of our Penitential Service replacing the planned date.

Stations of the Cross
Each Friday & Saturday at 9am before Mass at St Paul and St Brigid’s respectively

Deanery Station Mass
Wednesday 20 March 7pm at St Mary’s Canton