DO YOU KNOW THAT 2026 IS THE JUBILEE OF ST URBAN’S CHURCH? 75 years ago the Parish of St Urban was established. The Diocesan archives show that from 1902 to 1951 it was a chapel-of-ease to the Cathedral and the chapel was on Brookfield Road. In 1951 a presbytery was purchased on Monkbridge Rd and the first Parish Priest was appointed - Fr Eugene Tehan. The present St Urban’s opened in 1963 and the old chapel became the parish hall, unfortunately the hall was later demolished. We really should mark our anniversary. With this in mind, during the Holy Year of 2025, I commissioned an icon of St Urban from Aidan Hart. Aidan has an international reputation as a maker of icons. The icon of St Urban is my personal gift to the parish to mark both the Holy Year and the church’s jubilee. The icon will be dedicated and blessed at the 10.30 Mass on the 6 th of September after our schools are back from their summer holidays and the August bank holiday . Afterwards we will have a “bring and share” lunch together to mark a special year for our parish . Of course it not just be a “St Urban’s event” and people who normally go to Our Lady Of Lourdes are warmly invited, after all we are one parish family. On Our Lady of Lourdes, I have also personally commissioned an icon of ST Bernadette as Our Lady of Lourdes does not have an image of St Bernadette in the church. Watch this space on that! Fr Chris

There will be times in our lives we will experience loneliness, isolation, feelings of rejection. When I arrived in Rome to train for the priesthood I found myself in a foreign country and city in what felt like unbearable heat; the room was small hot and stuffy. When the door closed behind me I had a feeling of being alone, wondering if I had made the biggest mistake of my life. Thanks be to God I came through it with prayer and the companionship of those starting out with me; we became like brothers. You too will have had your own story of such times. This is were we find Jesus at the beginning of Sunday's gospel about the feeding of the 5,000. He has heard about the execution (in fact the unlawful murder) of His cousin John the Baptist. Think about it for a moment, most likely Jesus and John grew up together as cousins often do, they would have been boyhood friends and companions. At the least Jesus would have been extremely upset, at most devastated at the news. Also just prior to today’s gospel Jesus has been in Nazareth, He has been rejected by people who have known Him since boyhood, they knew his foster father, Joseph and Mary too, but they run Him out of town. It is not surprising that He needs some time on His own, we would too. How does Jesus respond to this? Like people sometimes do in such situations, He regroups. He decides to do something of meaning rather then getting lost in destructive introspection. Out of simple compassion for those around Him, He heals and cares for others. His closeness to people in need moves Him from thought to action; from sadness to action with a meaning. The account of the feeding of the thousands of people is found in all four gospels (Matthew and Mark also record a second similar incident). This suggests to me two things, that the event happened, as why would all four writers tell the same story? Also that it was important. Some modern interpretations have offered a different perspective of events (such as the people sharing with each other food they already had with them), but the gospel writers are clear that the event took place as written. Why is this important? Of course there is the miraculous aspect, but also remember that to Matthew Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and the feeding points backwards to miraculous feeding in the Old Testament, the Hebrews being given manna in the desert by God is only one example. Jesus does for the people what God has done in the past. The return of heavenly manna was seen as being a sign of the Messiah. Eating together was also a sign to the Jewish people of unity. The meal they eat together points towards our own unity – our communion – where we share in more than bread and fish, we share in the heavenly banquet where we consume in the host, and drink from the chalice, which is something that the angels themselves long for but cannot have. We take into ourselves the body, blood, soul and divinity of the Lord Jesus. We are more than just physically fed, the sacred meal which we share unites us with the essence of the Holy Trinity, it binds us together as one people, one family of God. Despite everything in our lives Jesus never leaves us desolate and alone, he desires that each and everyone of us will have life to the full, particularly in the eternity of Heaven. I invite you to reflect on the enormity of Jesus’ gift to us in the banquet of the Eucharist. I invite you to be generous in your response to this gift in loving God and our brothers and sisters. Be as generous with your life as Jesus is with you in sharing his very self with you. Please accept an assurance of my daily prayers for your needs and intentions. God bless you. Fr Chris