Newsletter for 30 Nov/1 Dec - Advent 1(A)

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Thank you...

...for all your kindness today and over the last four years, and indeed before that.

Today's Mass and the celebration afterwards were beautiful. It was a great joy to have our young people so involved on Youth Sunday, and to welcome Charlie into the Church. Priests come and go. The parish community goes on.

Thank you for the miner's lamp, the cup, the tea bags, the very generous cheque and the numerous individual gifts and cards.

Please welcome Father David warmly and go forward with him to advance God's kingdom of justice, love, and peace.

Let us pray for each other.

Father Colin

Newsletter for 23/24 November - Christ the King

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Apologies for the mistakes on the back page of the newsletter. Please note: There is no RCIA or Prayer Group this Monday, but there will be Cherubs on Wednesday. There are two other mistakes on the back page - but they don't make any difference to the programme of events. No prizes for spotting them! I think my mind must have been on other things. I wonder why!

Extraordinary Synod on the Family 2014

You will have heard on the news and read in the Catholic Press that there will be an Extraordinary Synod on the Family in Rome in 2014. The Church is listening widely to people's experience of family life to help prepare for the Synod. Because of my imminent change of parish I have not been able to spend the time I would have wished talking to people about this.

I would like to draw your attention to this which tells you more about the whole process. You can also access the relevant questionnaire through the page to which the link takes you. If you respond to the questionnaire you will find that some of the questions are rather daunting.  Don't panic! There is no obligation to answer every question. Feel free to respond to the questions where you feel that you have something important to share, and simply leave the rest.

May God bless us as we work with his Church to enrich the sort of family life which will bring healing and hope to our society.

Newsletter for 16/17 November - Sunday 33(C)

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You will see from the newsletter that there will be a collection for the Philippines after the Typhoon. You can also give to this via CAFOD by credit card by phoning 0500 858885, or online here.

Pray for the Philippines

Let us respond to the call of the Holy Father:

I ask all of you to join me in prayer for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan / Yolanda especially those in the beloved islands of the Philippines
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) November 9, 2013

Let us pray, too, for those of our parishioners who are anxious for loved ones whose lives have been affected by the typhoon.

Newsletter for 9/10 November - Sunday 32(C)

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Newsletter for 2/3 November - Sunday 31(C)

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All Saints Day...

... is tomorrow, Friday. It is a Holy Day of Obligation and we should all be at Holy Mass. Mass will be celebrated at St Wilfrid's at 9.45am, and 7.30pm. Let's leave the ugliness of much contemporary 'celebration' of Hallowe'en behind and celebrate the beauty of heaven, as we....

... keep the festival of Your holy city,
the heavenly Jerusalem, our mother.
Around Your throne the saints,
our brothers and sisters,
sing Your praise for ever.
Their glory fills us with joy,
and their communion with us in Your Church
gives us inspiration and strength
as we hasten on our pilgrimage of faith,
eager to meet them.
Preface of All Saints

As it is Solemnity, there is no Friday abstinence tomorrow. Happy feast!

The task of the priest

As I prepare for a new chapter in my priestly ministry, I am moved and challenged by words that Pope Benedict spoke to students of the Venerable English College in Rome last December:

Your first task, then, is to come to know Christ yourselves.... Learn to pray daily, especially in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, listening attentively to the word of God and allowing heart to speak to heart, as Blessed John Henry Newman would say. Remember the two disciples from the first chapter of Saint John’s Gospel, who followed Jesus and asked to know where he was staying, and, like them, respond eagerly to his invitation to "come and see" (1:37-39). Allow the fascination of his person to capture your imagination and warm your heart. He has chosen you to be his friends, not his servants, and he invites you to share in his priestly work of bringing about the salvation of the world. Place yourselves completely at his disposal and allow him to form you for whatever task it may be that he has in mind for you.

To call you Christ, to invite you to pray

In my homily last weekend, I reminded you of what I said when I came to St Wilfrid's four years ago. I quoted some words of Blessed John Paul II from 1982. Here is a quote from a post I put on this site in September 2009:

As I reflect on this new stage of my life and ministry, I keep going back to words of Pope John Paul II when he addressed 35,000 young people in Cardiff in 1982. The Pope said that he hoped that, as long as the memory of his visit lasted, it would be remembered that he had come to Britain 'to call you to Christ, to invite you to pray!' Although I have had no time to form definite plans for the way the parish might develop, I am trying to keep those words of Pope John Paul as a sort of backdrop to my thinking and praying. I would be very happy if it were to be said of me, 'Father Colin came to Coalville to call us to Christ and invite us to pray.'

Newsletter for 26/27 October - Sunday 30(C)

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An eventful week

Last week was an emotional roller-coaster.

It started with great joy. Our first grandchild, Luca Vittorio Giorgio Patey was born late on Sunday evening, 13th October. I was able to get down to Milton Keynes the next day and had the great joy of seeing him and holding him in my arms.

Then on Wednesday I was asked to visit the bishop. Bishop Malcolm asked me to move from Coalville to Ashby and Measham where Monsignor Phelan, the present priest, is retiring because of ill health. The bishop was kind enough to explain his reasoning to me, and I am sure he has made a wise decision. However, it is very hard for me to say goodbye to a parish I love so much, where I was welcomed into the Catholic Church in 1994, ordained to the priesthood in 1998, and where I been privileged to serve as priest-in-charge since 2009. I found telling you all at the weekend Masses very hard indeed, as I think you are aware. I have been overwhelmed by the kind things people have said since.

Father David Cain will be your parish priest from the beginning of Advent. He was ordained in 2003. He was assistant priest at Sacred Heart, Leicester with Fr John Lally, well known to Coalville people, and later served as assistant priest at the Cathedral in Nottingham. He spent some years as full-time Vocations Director and was instrumental in increasing
the number of men offering themselves for the priesthood in our diocese. For the last two years he has undertaken further studies at Louvain in Belgium. Father David is very excited about coming to Coalville and is looking forward to living in the new presbytery flat. I know that you will welcome him, and that this wonderful parish will go from strength to strength under his leadership.

Let us pray for each other, for priests past, present and future, and for more vocations to the priesthood.

Newsletter for 19/20 October - Sunday 29(C)

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Newsletter 12/13 October - Celebrating St Wilfrid

Click here to read this week's newsletter. This weekend we celebrate our own Patron, St Wilfrid of York. Come prepared to thank God for him, to celebrate all that our parish means to us, and to ask St Wilfrid's prayers for all our needs.

O God, who endowed the Bishop Saint Wilfrid

with outstanding graces for the building up of your Church,

grant that by the help of his prayers

we may, like him, weather every storm

and be brought at last into the haven of your peace.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.