West Hull Parishes

Hull Faith Forum: Jesus Christ, Creator of the Universe, Centre of Our Lives

jamesp — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 12:59:31 +0000

[ October 29, 2012; 7:30 pm; ] Monday 29th October Fr Kevin Douglas will be speaking at St Joseph's Hall, Boothferry Road, Hull at 7:30pm. Age guide Senior School - 35 yrs.

Christmas Fayer

jamesp — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 12:54:48 +0000

[ December 1, 2012; 2:00 pm; ] On Saturday 1st December at 2pm at St Joseph's Church Hall. Donations to the Christmas Fayer for Cake Stall, Tombola, Christmas Stall and Bottle Stall would be appreciated and there will also be a Plant Stall, Whiskey Roll, Smartie Roll and guess the weight of the cake.

Free Booklets: Celebrating the Year of Faith

jamesp — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 12:52:36 +0000

Free booklets from the Diocese – Celebrating the Year of Faith.

Also: Dorway to Faith Booklets starting from 14th October to 13th January 2013 are £1 a copy.

Both booklets at the back of Church.

Say a Prayer and Light a Candle

jamesp — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 12:50:48 +0000

St Wilfrid’s 29th October 10:45am – 1:00pm

Corpus Christi 2nd November 10:45am – 12noon.

More volunteers are needed even if you can only give five minutes.

The Bible at your fingertips…………….

stmarys — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:41:58 +0000

Dear All,
Here is e-bible for your reading……….Click on any chapter……..

English Bible Online
http://www.jrsbible.info/bible.htm

Malayalam POC bible online
http://www.pocbible.com/

MALAYALAM MASS

stmarys — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:34:12 +0000

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Who Do You Say I Am?

jamesp — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 22:16:30 +0000

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?

I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE LORD, THE GIVER OF LIFE…

admin — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:07:16 +0000

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.

‘Giver of life’: of course, if the Son had a special role in creating all things, that was not to exclude either the Father or the Spirit. In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, there are two accounts of the creation of the cosmos. Those who accuse Christians of taking Genesis literally must face the fact that we’ve always know it wasn’t literal for there are two accounts and the world was only created once! The two accounts bring out complementary truths about creation, both of them in powerfully symbolic language. In the second account of creation, man’s body is described as being made from the dust or slime of the earth (sounds very much in keeping with Darwin’s theory of material evolution?!) But man was made special, given a unique relationship with God which none of the other animals were given: God breathed his spirit into the nostrils of Adam to bring him to life, “… and thus man became a living being”.

Now just think what this means to a man and woman who have sex and are open to bringing a new life into the world, who are open to having a baby: they are opening their hearts and lives to the Lord, the Giver of Life, really and truly. This is why sex, for a Christian, should always but always be something very special, very holy. It is a calling to be a cooperator with God, in bringing new life into the world. How wonderful! But doesn’t this also imply something quite serious about contraception? Doesn’t this also make sense of what the Catholic Church still says (what all the Christian churches said until the 20^th century) that contraceptive sex is always wrong, in fact very wrong: because couple is saying: we want sex but we exclude God from this, we exclude the Lord, the Giver of Life, in fact we positively want Him to stay away.

The Holy Spirit is the ‘Giver of Life’ to our spirits. There is a further, deeper meaning to this line of the creed. The ‘Life of the Spirit’ is more than just being alive. It is the life of a Christian. Even that doesn’t adequately express this life: it is what St Paul calls “life in Christ” . Let’s add the next line:

‘Who proceeds from the Father and the Son…’.

This was added to the creed at the Council of Toledo in 589. There was a concern that the divinity of the Son was being down played and so it was made clear that the Son sent the Spirit with the Father. If I were the pope I would add another line to the creed here which gets across the full meaning of what is intended by these lines:

‘and gathers all to the Father through the Son’

You see there’s NO separation between the work and Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. After the Ascension of Christ to heaven, the Father and Christ sent the Holy Spirit into the world to work in the hearts, minds of souls of all who are open to God to gather all to the Father by coming to Christ through his Church, through his sacraments, especially through the sacrament of his living flesh & blood, the Eucharist. Why? Because God still wants to come to us in a way we can fully grasp and so he wants to unite our living flesh & blood with his living flesh & blood.

·Giver of Life: and yet another meaning! ‘Get a life’ we sometimes say or think about someone. The ‘Life of the Spirit’ or ‘Life in Christ’ is the best life anyone could ever ‘get’. This kind of experience of life, of the Holy Spirit in our lives, is something some of us may experience. It’s the life of the mystic, the life of a few great saints. St Theresa of Avila almost certainly experienced it and wrote about it. It is accompanied by moments of exquisite joy and peace but these, we’re told by those who’ve had them, only last for moments. Sometimes it is to prepare us for a time of great trial or testing. I read something during the week which made the fairs on my neck stand on end: the account of the last Mass of the Carthusians in London on the eve of the Reformation…

One of the names that Jesus gave the Holy Spirit is ‘the Comforter’ and Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter would be given to those who needed him in times of great suffering. We’ll sing in the hymn to the Holy Spirit later in Mass:

Thou of all consolers best,
Thou the soul’s delightsome guest
Dost refreshing peace bestow:
Thou in toil art comfort sweet;
Pleasant coolness in the heat;
Solace in the midst of woe.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life: and that life has been given to us: in our Baptism, in our Confirmation, in divine Absolution after Confession, in EVERY sacrament; for in every sacrament, the priest holds out his hand over us and calls on the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life to come down upon us. “He heals the broken-hearted, he binds up all their wounds”. We heard that in today’s psalm. It’s true: the Holy Spirit does that for us, to us, above all through the sacraments.

‘he has spoken through the prophets.’

Do we always remember when we hear those sometimes difficult OT readings on a Sunday, from Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah, that it was the SAME Holy Spirit who inspired them as who spoke through and in Jesus and now speaks in and through his body the Church: through John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and hopefully your parish priest? Since the Spirit is one, the message must be one. Something is wrong if someone thinks that the Holy Spirit is leading them to act in a way that contradicts Scripture or Church teaching.

There is no one here whose life has not been touched, affected, deeply changed through the action of the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life: parent, child, Christian. How much our creed proclaims and celebrates!

Our Vision

jamesp — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:15:07 +0000

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.

Neither of us would be the Parish Priest of any of the Parishes. We would be parishioners who would contribute to the parishes our Priesthood and all that entailed–especially in the area of Sacramental activity and leadership. We would also bring our individual qualities and experiences, the same way that our fellow parishioners would bring their individual qualities and experiences.

My Parish……..Whose Parish?

We are aware that the path to full co-responsibility in the Church is not an easy one. Not a smooth one. With obstacles due to lack of confidence on the part of the laity and lack of willingness on the part of the clergy. Especially by clergy whose natural conversation includes such phrases as ‘my parish’ and ‘my church’ and ‘my people’. Whereas for some, this language is nothing more than a traditional way of speaking, it does tend to betray an underlying attitude of possessiveness, which somehow seems inappropriate in the Church of today. Perhaps co-responsibility is seen as a threat or possibly as an inevitable option for the Church, when all else fails. Unfortunately when the latter is the case one can tend to have a core of responsible volunteers doing Father’s wishes–which is not really co-responsibility, is it?

A Question of Role:

Not More Holy, Nor More Wise

Embarking on this new approach to parish life in West Hull, we felt that it was essential that pretty early on we looked at the distinct, different and complementary roles of clergy and lay people. We reminded ourselves that the priest was essential to the celebration of the Mass not because he was more holy or more educated – but simply by virtue of his ordination. That the priest was able to be the instrument by which the forgiveness of God and reconciliation with the Church comes to the individual penitent, not because he is more sensitive or a wiser person – but by virtue of his ordination. That the priest being the instrument of the sacrament of the sick to a person in a hospital bed does not have anything to do with his having a better bedside manner or being more comfortable with the medical staff but simply because he is an ordained priest. Likewise with the other sacraments where he is the chief minister.

Different Continent, Same Belief

In our opening ‘Three Parish Meeting’ we used quotations from Nelson Mandela’s Inaugural Speech as President of South Africa in 1994:

We ask ourselves.

Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

The words chosen by the newly inaugurated President of South Africa in 1994 suddenly took on a challenging relevance for us in West Hull in 2001. Words which made us stop and look deep into the mirror of our own being and with stuttering embarrassment reflect: I am brilliant? I am gorgeous? I am talented? I am fabulous? That’s me? In fact, to be honest, few of us could cope immediately with being either fabulous or gorgeous but the fact that some of us were admitting, first to ourselves, and hopefully soon to others, that Actually I’m not too bad, is at least a start. And an encouraging start for the future of the Church here in West Hull.

Historical Photos

jamesp — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:20:23 +0000

Fr James L M Hall at a wedding outside the old St Wilfrid

Fr James L M Hall - priest at St Wilfrid

Fr. Patrick Smyth with Rt. Rev Augustine Harris Bishop of Middlesbrough

Canon Wilson - priest at St Wilfrid

Fr. M Barry and Fr. Cornwall with two Missionary Priests

The Altar at the Old St Wilfrid

The Old St Wilfrid's Church Building

The old St. Wilfrid's after bombing