Tag Archives: newsletter

Praying for our neighbours

July 15, 2017newsletternewsletter3 churches

One day this week I had two phone calls just 15 minutes apart from the same street in our 3 Churches area. No, it wasn’t to complain about parishioners’ parking, or burst water mains, or enquiring about Baptism or Catholic schools! It was to thank me – and all of us – for our prayers. The callers had just had our prayer cards dropped through their letterbox, another way in which we are reaching out in love.
One woman – neither was Catholic and I have never met either of them – went on to chat with me about her life and the problems she had been facing recently which she found difficult to handle. She said it was wonderful to think that somewhere nearby whole churches were praying for her. The other person also not a Catholic also wanted to show her appreciation of our thoughts and prayers when, like so many others, she was alone – an ‘aloneness’ which often turned to loneliness. You see, it might sometimes feel that we are getting nowhere in projects like this, as with various aspects of our lives – as individuals, families or parishes. I have had quite a few similar phone calls and emails – you just never know the effect of the smallest gestures!
It’s now a while since our 3 Churches Proclaim group, which reflects on how we can bring Good News to our neighbourhood and world, launched this prayer card project. We have now covered a large proportion of our area, which stretches from Caerphilly Mountain to Colchester Avenue – and that is thanks to all you helpers, fantastic people who week by week take turns to drop the cards in people’s letterboxes. There is no obligation to engage with the resident(s), no doorstep chatter – unless residents want to. Let us know if you would like to help…
The other part of this outreach is, of course, that we all do in fact pray for those who are receiving the cards in a particular week. Each week the names of the relevant streets in the area of our three churches are on the back page of this newsletter. Please do not let your eyes just wash over those street names.
Pause, and think of those two ladies who phoned me this week, and how much it meant to them, and to many, many like them. Indeed, perhaps you could make them part of your daily prayers at some point.

Fr Matthew

Big hearts through red boxes

July 1, 2017newsletternewsletter3 churches

In our series on the caring side of our 3 Churches parish life we come to one of our most successful works, in fact so successful that we are 1st and 3rd out of the top 3 parishes in our diocese for the amount raised. In 2016 we gave the extraordinary amount of Christ the King £4,939.48 + St Brigid/St Paul £3,447.40 = Total £8,386.88. So what are the famous Red Boxes all about?
Since 1922, Missio has been the Catholic Church’s official charity for overseas mission, bringing the hope of the Gospel where there is turmoil, poverty and uncertainty in the world, and where the Church is new, young or poor. Missio empowers local people to form and sustain communities of faith and trains and nurtures future leaders so that the vital work of the Church in the world can take place.
Probably the best known wing of Missio is the Association for the Propagation of the Faith (APF). The APF assists all of the Catholic Church’s 1,069 mission dioceses to provide pastoral care and preach the Gospel effectively. It was founded in Lyon, France, in 1822 by a young French woman, Pauline-Marie Jaricot. She began by persuading local working people to support overseas mission by giving a farthing a week. A century later, when the organization was established in almost every country in the world, Pope Pius XI made it the official mission-funding society for the Catholic Church.
In England and Wales, funds for overseas mission are collected through the famous Red Boxes. These can be found in over 200,000 homes and they have helped raise millions of pounds for the missionary Church. The APF in England and Wales works collaboratively with the Mill Hill Missionary Society; the only major missionary society to have been formed in England. Mill Hill Missionaries are sent to the most remote places in the world to share the love of Christ with those who are in need, both spiritually and materially. Find out more at www.missio.org.uk
To all our box-holders, collectors and organizers – a huge thank you!

Fr Matthew

More fully human

June 24, 2017newsletternewsletter3 churches

In today’s second reading St Paul celebrates the fact that God’s grace, which flows to us through our Lord Jesus Christ, is greater and more powerful than every expression of human sin and experience of death. And we celebrate that divine grace that is communicated to us through the sacraments. Ministering as a hospital chaplain for the past six years, I’ve come to increasingly appreciate the efficacy of the sacraments as we face difficulties of life and our broken human condition – whether we are a baby with only hours to live, a young person struggling with schizophrenia or an elderly person in the autumn of life.
I remember sharing the Blessed Sacrament with a man crippled by dementia who had grown up in a devout family and had been a choir boy in his youth. As he drew to the end of his life, the dementia meant that he struggled to comprehend where he was, who others were, and he couldn’t recall his memories of the life that he’d lived.
On one of my last visits to him before he died, the light of Christ seemed to penetrate the fog of his dementia. On receiving the Blessed Sacrament tears rolled down his drawn cheeks and he spontaneously began singing the ancient Eucharistic hymn ‘Let all mortal flesh keep silence.’ I sat in wonder as he worshiped God, then he turned to me and said ‘Thank you for making me feel human again.’
It wasn’t me who had made him feel human again – it was his encounter with our Lord, the Great Physician and the divine grace received through the holy sacrament. However, his words expressed the truth that our humanity is indeed only fully restored through receiving God’s grace and in responding to Him in worship. Just as the sacraments are central to the Church’s ministry to the sick, so they need to be central to our lives as we allow God to recreate us in the likeness of His Son.
It has been nearly two years since I left my ministry in the Anglican Communion and was received into the Catholic Church. Why did I leave the Protestant tradition? It was to draw closer to our Lord through the sacraments, teaching and fellowship entrusted to the Catholic Church. As we receive God’s grace this week through the sacraments of the Church, may our response be one of worship and in obedience to his will may he become more fully human.

Peter Davies, Chaplain at UHW