Holy Communions - Week 2 - And a special visitor . . .

We had another beautiful First Holy Communion celebration this Sunday. As you can see our children look wonderful and very happy which is exactly as it should be. Thanks once again to our parents, catechists and school.

We were also delighted to welcome a special visitor to our Mass. His Grace Johanna Peterus Mouchi, Archbishop of the Diocese of Mosul in Iraq, is a cousin of one of our First Holy Communion children. Doesn't he look splendid in his cope and mitre?

As last week, you will find a few more photos of the day on our parish Facebook page.

First Holy Communion - Week One

I'm over the moon!! What a joy and a blessing to celebrate Mass yesterday and to administer Holy Communion to the first group of our First Holy Communion children.

They were a credit to their parents, their catechists and to our parish. Well done to you all!

We were also blessed with a beautiful sunny day too which was an added bonus.

Here is just one of the photos from yesterday. There are more on our Facebook page - do take a look here.

Vatican Widget . . . Keeping up to date . . .

Do you like our new widget?

The Vatican Widget in the side bar will give you instant access to news from the Holy See. Use the drop-down menu at the top of the widget to direct you to videos of the Holy Father's daily Angelus address; General Audiences; the Bulletin and latest news from the Vatican.

This is yet another tool to help us in our understanding of our Catholic faith.

Throughout our lives we are growing and developing as human beings and the same is also true of our Catholic faith. We don't stop reading and learning once we've mastered our first book in the Reception Class; we continue to grow and develop throughout our lives.

In a similar way, we deepen our understanding and knowledge of our faith, from the day of our Baptism, through First Holy Communion and Confirmation and for the rest of our lives. It is an ongoing process. I do encourage you to take every opportunity to learn more about our faith.

We have a regular supply of Catholic newspapers available in the church porch which give excellent coverage of news related to the Catholic Church and Catholic teaching; from parish level, through local, diocesan and national news up to international events.

For those who are fortunate enough to have access to the Internet there is a seemingly endless supply of articles, videos and audio links concerning Catholic teaching.

From time to time I do try to put items on the parish Facebook page that I think are particularly interesting and helpful. I hope you have a look sometimes. There is no need to have a Facebook account yourself to see these items, just click on the link in the sidebar and it will take you straight to the parish page.

Apologies.

We are having 'teething problems' with our new Vatican Widget. It seems to have disappeared all by itself! We are waiting to hear how to remedy this from those that know. Meanwhile we ask for your patience please.

Surrexit Christus, Sicut Dixit, Alleluia !

Holy Saturday is always a very busy day in any parish - and St Ann's is no exception. We started the day with the Office of Readings which is a wonderful prayerful way to begin this day of 'waiting'.

Afterwards, the church is invaded by numerous volunteers who all come together to decorate the church and transform it from its solemn, sombre state to a place of joyful beauty ready to greet our Risen Lord at the Easter Vigil.

Here you can see just a few of our parishioners who were busy both inside and outside St Ann's yesterday.

Here are just a few shots taken after Mass this morning. The church is looking beautiful. Thanks to all who worked so hard to make sure our church looked her best for this great Feast of Easter. Thanks too to everyone who really pulled out all the stops for the Triduum. The list is endless but YOU know who you are and I am very very grateful to you all.

Happy Easter everyone - Christ is risen, Alleluia!

Palm Sunday . . .

We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful Spring day for our Palm Sunday procession. Here are a couple of photos taken yesterday. As usual, our magnificent magnolia almost stole the show . . .

Although we only have a short distance to travel for our procession, it's fortunate that we are able to process alongside the main road for a little while. Hopefully it makes passing motorists stop and think. (Though not literally, we hope!)

The procession leaving the parish hall seemed to go on and on . . .

All the Masses were beautiful yesterday with the always-moving reading of the Passion and a marvellous beginning to Holy Week. Extra times made available for Confessions have been popular too and it's good to see so many taking advantage of this opportunity to prepare well for Easter.

A very prayerful and blessed Holy Week to all.

FLAME . . .

Last Saturday our Confirmation candidates joined over 8,000 other young Catholics at the National Youth Congress, 'Flame', at Wembley Arena. I don't think many of them had much idea about what would happen once they got there but hopefully they benefited from the experience and enjoyed a good day out too.

Here they are all are just about ready for the off with their catechists and other adults who went along to help.

One of the group agreed to tell us about his experiences of the day. Over to you Kieran . . .

FLAME 2012

On Saturday 24 March 2012 the confirmation group and leaders by invitation of Fr Míċeál attended a catholic youth gathering (known as Flame) in Wembley Arena. Flame (in short) is an event aimed at the younger generation of Catholics to come together and give thanks for our lives. The whole day was “inspirational”, however it was a day in which if you went into it with a positive attitude then you got more out of it.

For some, travelling far and wide, it was an early start, but for us, we met at the church for 9:30 - which is early enough if you ask me! After the typical group photo of cheesy smiles and we all boarded our luxury coach that Fr Míċeál had commandeered for us. I will leave out the specifics of the journey but I think that it is safe to say that with all of us teenagers at the back of the bus we were quite a rowdy bunch!

On arrival we took the obligatory commemorative photo of the group, again a few cheesy grins and off we went to the Arena. For those of who don’t know, Wembley Arena is right next to Wembley Stadium where England football games are played.

We were then allocated our tickets and went to find out seats. Inside was...........simply VAST! We had time for a quick look around and took our seats for the start. .....

We were introduced to our Hosts for the day and were given a rough outline of what to expect. We were told that the day was to be split into sections: Respect, Friendship and Excellence.

In the first part of the day we prayed, watched some live drama, interpretative dance and watched a multimedia presentation. To finish this section we had a speech by Fr. Timothy Radcliffe OP on the theme of Respect.

We left the Arena then for lunch break and some taking advantage of the good weather decided to ‘cool off’ in the nearby water feature!!

After lunch we gathered back in the Arena where we were given a talk by the Mizen Family (whose son had been killed in a random attack while out shopping).

We then had an International speaker talking about the value of sports in bringing peace and transforming those communities living in poverty.

Following on from this there were a variety of different speakers and acts emphasising the importance of friendship. There was then another break and on our return we had some more speakers talking about excellence.

We then had a time of prayer and adoration, with a homily from Archbishop Vincent Nichols.

Finally we had a closing celebratory concert played by a group known as “Indecisive”. This is when many people started to leave and being the friendly bunch that we are, we waved, said goodbye and wished them a safe journey home.

Heading home we talked about the day as a group, with no adult influence, and we came to the conclusion that it was a thoroughly enjoyable event, that future confirmation candidates would be very lucky to go on.

Thank-you very much Fr Míċeál

Kieran Hiscock

And here's Kieran sporting a very fetching tee-shirt, with Leo another of our group.

La Fhéile Phádraig Shona Diobh . . . !

La Fhéile Phádraig Shona Diobh!

Happy St Patrick's Day everyone!