During Lent 2009, Bishop Terry is giving a personal invitation to every young person aged 13 to 30 in the Diocese. This is his message to you…
Last year I had the privilege of being at World Youth Day in Sydney. What a breathtaking experience that was! I wish you could all have been there with Pope Benedict and 400,000 young Catholics from all over the world. To be with so many young people full of faith was wonderful.
During our time in Australia, the Pope reminded us that Christ is the Truth and the Way which leads to real Life. Our faith brings us to life in Christ. This is the reason the Church exists, so we can come to know Jesus Christ and the life only he can give.
Pope Benedict reminded us all that we have been specially chosen by God who loves us. God our Father has called us into existence for a specific reason. He wants us to search and find Him in all that is good, beautiful and true in our lives and in the world. His gift of freedom enables us to choose these things and so find genuine happiness.
We talked about the gifts God gives us in the sacraments of Baptism, Eucharist and Confirmation. We receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, who gives us all we need as we journey through life. He helps us find our real purpose, so we can help build God’s family, of which we are all members.
When you were baptised, God drew you into his own life and you became his adopted son or daughter. Right then, the Holy Spirit came to live in you. During the ceremony the priest told your parents you had become a new creation. Let me quote from the Holy Father in Australia: Dear young friends, remember that you are a new creation! As Christians you stand in this world knowing that God has a human face - Jesus Christ - the Way who satisfies all human yearning and the Life to which we are called to bear witness, walking always in His light.
Returning from that special experience in Australia, it struck me that a simple way of supporting and encouraging you would be to create a life-changing opportunity for you. Each week during Lent I will come to Hull, York and Middlesbrough. I hope to meet you there. If you are open to what the Lord is saying, life will never be the same again. I promise. Together, I want us to begin to answer Jesus’ challenging question: Who do you say I am?
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Homily: 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time yr. B, (2009)
He heals the broken-hearted, he binds up all their wounds. - Psalm 146
I’m sure that more people find the concept of the Holy Spirit easier to grasp and accept than that of the Eternal Word truly becoming flesh and blood for us. ‘I’m not religious but I’m a very spiritual person’. We are happy to admit a universal spiritual sense because it does not seem to demand too close a definition. Oh, but for us Catholics the truth about him is closely defined.
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Fr Des Hanrahan & Fr Peter Corcoran
Changing The Model
Although the three parishes were quite different with regard to numbers, age span, social mix and things like that, they shared one common feature–the priest was very much the focal point of their parish activity. We wished to change that and asked our fellow parishioners if they were prepared (with us) to try another model. We explained………….& they said Yes.
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By Anthony Larkman
One of your contributors asks if we remember Fr. Cornwall. Indeed I remember him well.
I was an altar boy during the second World War and served Mass daily for Fr. Cornwall. But this is by the way. Fr. Cornwall was very patriotic (I believe he flew fighter planes during the First World War.) However war-time meant a shortage of food, so using the land behind the church (the church hall came later) he built a hen house and raised chickens from young pullets. A bold venture you may think? But - next came the ducklings followed by the young geese. Finally the turkeys which were almost fully grown and took some persuading to roost in the turkey house.
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(the code name given to the evacuation of children in WWII)
My mother was fourteen years old when the Great War started and could remember vividly the Zeppelin raids on Hull. During the 30’s we had seen newsreel shots in the cinemas of air raids by the Japanese in Manchuria, by the Italians in Abyssinia and in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, particularly the raid on Guernica. She was a pessimist, and after Munich and the distribution of gas masks, preparations for war began in earnest and she was really worried about what would happen. At this time I was a pupil at the Hull College of Commerce in Brunswick Avenue which covered a two-year course in commercial subjects. It was a mixed school with ninety pupils in each school year and we had completed our first year of the course in the summer of 1939. During that year parents had been asked to indicate whether or not they wanted their children to be evacuated in the event of war and my mother gave her consent for my sister (who was at a different school) and me to take part. My friend, Kathleen Murtagh, was also a possible evacuee and we hoped we could “be together”. We were both in our fourteenth year.
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Hello, Mona Plumtree here.
Twenty years ago I came to St. Wilfrid’s to be Fr. Peter Coleman’s housekeeper from which I found a great pleasure and joy as we got on so well together.
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By John Oxley
On moving to South Cave we discovered it would only take 15 minutes on a Sunday morning, without travelling at breakneck speeds, to reach St. Wilfrid’s. My wife and I found great changes afoot.
Father Boyd was ill in Ireland and Father Corcoran and Hanrahan were running 3 parishes.
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By Mary Davies (From the Hull Catholic Magazine June 1975)
Farewell
The sudden death in early April of our beloved late parish priest, Canon Hall, brought a wave of deep sadness such as this parish has never seen before. The Canon had not been well for some considerable time and died while on holiday in the South of England. Five years ago he was appointed to the easier parish of St. John’s, Beverley, where he was received with great kindness, and where he established the first Parish Council. The wonderful farewell party they gave on his retirement in 1971 was an indication of the esteem and affection they had for him.
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I have happy memories of all the West Hull Parishes. The youngest of six children I was baptised at St. Wilfrid’s and educated there for my first two years. Sister Mary Sebastian was in charge of the infants, a sweet and gentle nun, and Sister Mary Vianney the headmistress, a strict disciplinarian, but no less fondly remembered.
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