Some of you will be aware that the wonderful Ukrainian Orthodox community use Our Lady of Lourdes for their Divine Liturgy when their priest, Father Vladislav, is in the country. I have had a request from Fr Vladislav as to whether there is anyone in the parish willing to sponsor someone to come pro tem to the UK. My understanding is that sponsorship does not involve the person living with the sponsor. If you are interested in helping with this please let me know. Thank you. Fr Chris
IT IS GOOD TO BE BACK : I got back from Rome on Friday after two weeks away. There were some surprises when I was there. Obviously the Holy Father, Pope Leo, had his operation and I was of the view that there would not be an opportunity to see him, but remarkably he came to the window on the Apostolic Palace on the Sunday to address the crowd, recite the Angelus, and to give his Apostolic Blessing, the crowd was large as we were all moved to see our beloved Holy Father. My second week was with Bishop Marcus and recently ordained clergy (5 years or below). It was a mixture of time together, spiritual talks, and short pilgrimages. To everyone’s surprise we learnt that the Wednesday Papal Audience was going ahead and we had an early start to be in Rome to be there. Again, despite some very rainy weather, the Square was full of people wanting to see and greet the Holy Father. Both the Angelus and the Audience illustrated the universality of our Catholic community, our fellowship with each other in faith, also our loyalty to God’s Church and the office of the Pope. Another surprise was an opportunity to go into the Apostolic Palace (a first for me) to have an informal meeting the Archbishop Paul Gallagher, a priest of the Archdiocese of Liverpool, who is the Foreign Secretary of the Holy See. So, it was an eventful time, but as always, I celebrated the Mass and prayed for intentions every day. Also, as I normally do when in Rome, I brought back prayer cards at the back of the church which has Pope Leo’s Apostolic Blessing.
Preparation for the Sacrament of Confirmation happens in year 6 in our schools. This is now underway. I need to know of children in year 6, or older, who are not in our schools who need the sacrament. I intend to get preparation sessions underway as soon as possible. Confirmations are likely to take place after the new year. If you have a child or young person who needs this sacrament, and who are not in our schools, please email the parish office as soon as possible. Thank you. Fr Chris
ALTAR SERVERS NEEDED AT BOTH OUR CHURCHES: Boys and girls, and older young people too, who have made their first communion can become altar servers . It is a great way of understanding more about the sacrifice of the Mass and what the priest and deacon does. I have noticed a number of young regular Mass goers who could join me on the altar! Fr Chris
RESUMING OUR PARISH SOCIAL: after a break in which we were delighted to welcome Sarah and Joachim’s new baby, we are resuming our parish social evening just in time for these cooler, darker evenings! These will be the first Tuesday of the month after the evening Mass at St Urban’s church meeting at the Meanwood Tavern on the junction of Monkbridge Road. No agendas just a social drink for an hour or so after Mass. Everybody’s Welcome!”
TIME AWAY: I am away on a week’s leave with effect from the 12th of October, then I am away with Bishop Marcus for a further week. I return for the Sunday Masses commencing on the 24th . Sunday Masses will take place as normal, and I am very grateful to Fr Maurice Pearce covering my time away. However, I am sorry to say that there will be no weekday Masses in the parish when I am away. My week’s leave is in Rome and obviously I will be keeping up with my daily prayers which, every day, include your intentions, I will also be celebrating the Mass. If you have any specific intentions, as always, please do let me have them. Fr Chris
Preparation for the Sacrament of Confirmation happens in year 6 in our schools. This is now underway. I need to know of children in year 6, or older, who are not in our schools who need the sacrament. I intend to get preparation sessions underway as soon as possible. Confirmations are likely to take place after the new year. If you have a child or young person who needs this sacrament, and who are not in our schools, please email the parish office as soon as possible. Thank you. Fr Chris
CAFOD FAMILY FAST DAY is on Friday 2 October. It is a day when we are invited to pray, eat simply and give generously. Giving to CAFOD puts our faith into action and enables us share God’s love with our neighbours overseas helping communities support children to stay in school with better access to water, nourishing school meals, and gardens where food can be grown, even during times of drought. Please collect a CAFOD envelope as you leave church.
Tuesday 13 October 2026, 10am1:30pm, Cathedral Hall, Leeds. This event, hosted by Growing Old Grace-fully will explore Catholic Social Teaching regarding the blessings of later life, led by theologian Dr Peter Kevern. To book a place, please email growing.old.gracefully@dioceseofleeds.org.uk
It is time to refresh our November Dead List for 2026/27 . Masses are offered throughout the year from All Soul’s Day for our faithful departed. It is a beautiful custom. Envelops for the submission of names are available at the back of the church. With the names it is possible to include an offering for the cycle of Masses throughout the year.
RESUMING OUR PARISH SOCIAL: after a break in which we were delighted to welcome Sarah and Joachim’s new baby, we are resuming our parish social evening just in time for these cooler, darker evenings! These will be the first Tuesday of the month after the evening Mass at St Urban’s church meeting at the Meanwood Tavern on the junction of Monkbridge Road. No agendas just a social drink for an hour or so after Mass. Everybody’s Welcome!”
A sincere thank you to those who have expressed an interest in singing. I have discussed this with Jenny and Silvia. To get things moving, for those who have expressed an interest at St Urban’s, please come up to the choir loft for 10am on Sunday the 11th of October . Please be assured that information will be sent out in advance. It will be great to make a start and see where things go. Concerning volunteers for Our Lady of Lourdes, watch this space!
Dear Brothers and Sisters, We often hear the term things being a “full circle”; something that has a beginning and an end. In a sense churches can feel like this where people can be baptised, married, and be buried, place where things come “full circle”. But in Sunday's reading from the letter of St Paul we hear, “We believe that Jesus died and rose again” and that it will be the same for those who have died in Christ, namely us, who have already symbolically died in Christ through our baptism. This is a staggering claim now as it was then; what is the basis for the claim? How can we be confident that it applies to us? The author, St Paul, had undergone a radical conversion from a persecutor of the early Christians, imprisoning them and being present at least one martyrdom, to being a Christian himself. This was based on a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, a man who to that point Paul genuinely believed to be dead and the claims of Jesus’ resurrection to be a complete fiction. This led him to meet others, we are told elsewhere hundreds of others, who had met Jesus after He had, body and soul, risen from the dead. Paul’s letters show us that he was a clever man with a sophisticated education, a man not easily taken in by fraud. He knew that his claims of Jesus’ resurrection, and consequently the promise of our own, were extraordinary and would be hard for others to believe too, so he writes this letter in which he tries to describe how we will, like Jesus, rise again. Will be the same but different, perfected. Elsewhere he says this because when people encountered the risen Jesus He was the same person as before His death. After his resurrection Jesus went to great lengths to show people that he was real and not a ghost, and one of the first things he asks for is something to eat, but He is also different in some way, in some beautiful and glorious way. Yes, this is a comforting thought but it is much more than that. Paul and his fellow Christians had a direct encounter with Jesus. They could not keep it to themselves, they knew that it put them at risk of persecution and death, but they had to do it. Who would live and die for something based on a lie? So what is the path to the glory of eternal life in Christ? In this life it is not easy but in the gospels Jesus gives us a series of road maps. We see in them the characteristics of what it is to share the life of Christ in our lives here, today. Gentleness; the desire for what is right in the world; being merciful; being peace makers in our homes and the places where we live. Sacrificing ourselves for the good of others (something we particularly bring into our minds this Remembrance Sunday). If we want to see how to actually do this we only need to look at the life of Jesus, though it proved to be for Him the way to the cross, He rose again in glory and is alive forever and He tells us in the gospels, as Paul does in his letters, that we can be there with him too. Jesus never loses anyone who are His and who desire to be with Him. All we need to do is stay close to Jesus. Even at those times in our lives when we are far away from Him there is, this side of eternity, always a back. Way before the time of Jesus people believed that God cares for people beyond this life, that the souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God. God desires all people to be saved and to be in eternal union with Him, sharing the life of the Holy Trinity. Beyond our time here, if we do our best to be faithful, God our loving Father will bring us to Himself, as He has brought countless others. In the Christian belief we believe that the destination in following the path of Jesus is to be united with Him and to be reunited with each other. God Himself, in the act of a loving father, will personally wipe away our tears and bring us to everlasting joy with Him and with each other. He will destroy death, forever. But as we are told in Sunday's gospel, we need to stay awake, to be aware of the limits of our earthly life. We do not know the time our the hour when God will invite us to return to Him and if we will be able to accept the invitation. But for the dead who are with God, rather than things having come “full circle” for them their circle is the circle of eternity; eternal life in God. As always, please accept an assurance of my daily prayers for your needs and intentions. God bless and keep you. Fr Chris
Dear Brothers and Sisters, This Sunday we celebrate the great feast of All Saints. How do you imagine saints to be? In our catholic tradition we see lots of images of saints. We have statues of Our Blessed Mother, St Joseph, St Urban, and St Anthony of Padua in our churches. Many Catholic families have images and statues in their homes. In my childhood home, other than family pictures, virtually all of of our images were pictures of Jesus, Mary and other saints. After the death of my parents I kept many of them. In the presbytery I still have my family’s image of the Sacred Heart dedication when I was a two year old. In my missal I still have images of the saints going back to my childhood, all of them looking holy and often floating on a cloud in heaven. So how do you imagine saints to be? Who are your favourites and why? Why do we have saints, and why do we have a day in the year when we celebrate them? For me the first thing to bear in mind is that the saints did not have a "pearly heavenly life" on earth. They were all people like us, with our strengths and weaknesses. Not all of them were easy people to be with; St Jerome living in his cave was seen as being a very difficult even unbearable man. Some of them had, to put it mildly, chequered histories. As a nurse one of my favourite Saints was, and is, St Camillus de Lellis. Camillus was a soldier, drinker and a gambler. Not the most promising material, but he went on to found a religious order dedicated to care of the sick. For that matter the apostles were a pretty unpromising bunch, Peter had no special training in religion and Matthew was a tax collector, people who were notorious for collaborating with the occupying power, theft, and extortion. People at the time must have wondered why on earth Jesus chose them as his closest associates. Therese of Lieseux herself observed that she could have either been a great sinner or a great saint. So saints were and are people like us. So what made the difference? All of the saints, as we do just by being Christians, opted for something greater than themselves. Of their own free will, and despite their weaknesses, they opted for belief in God and in salvation through Christ. For many it meant giving up their old ways, drinking, gambling, theft, debauchery, even violence. For many others the conversion was less radical, more quiet. But all of them sensed, though the guidance of the Holy Spirit, something greater than themselves. Something that changed their lives for good. Changed their lives for eternity. They decided to live out in their lives being a child of God knowing that they had to change, also knowing that the world would not understand, that it would reject many of them and for many of them cost them their lives. Jesus tells us how to be a child of God in Sunday’s gospel in the beatitudes. A manifesto that if we follow it will transform our lives and the world around us. It is a manifesto so powerful that it also has meaning for people with no religion at all. The beatitudes are the guide on how to become a saint. It is not something that is risk free; people will not understand us and the choices we make. Some will speak badly of us and persecute us in different ways, but the reward is eternal union with God, eternal light, happiness and peace. We can see this in the saints. The saints show us the way. The saints show us how sainthood, if we persevere, is the destiny for all of us. We must not be discouraged, after all, Oscar Wilde commented that every saint has a past and that every sinner has a future. We are one people with the community of saints; we acknowledge this every time we say the creed. If you are in difficulty look up a saint who had had that difficulty too (there will be one or more), the saints are our friends, ask them for their help. Which saint’s name do you have? You can ask them for help too. I suspect that there are many saints just waiting to be asked, they are a group so large that they cannot be counted and thank God for that. Please accept an assurance of my daily prayers for your needs and intentions. God bless and keep you always. Fr Chris
Dear Brothers and Sisters, In this Sunday's gospel Jesus tells us something important about love. Love; one of the great preoccupations of humanity. Love is a concept, a thought, an experience that we cannot seemingly do without. We are surrounded by love, or at least the word, which is something we attach to many things, even down to what we eat, what we drink, or the clothes we wear. Sometimes love is part of the deepest emotions of our heart and soul enmeshed into the very fibre of our being, but perhaps more often than not we use the term carelessly where it is something that proves to be shallow and meaningless. Have you ever taken a moment to think about what it means to you? Have you ever been in love? What is it? Have you ever taken time to think about it, to try to understand it? Many philosophers and theologians – those who study the science of thought and religion – have looked at this over centuries, to try to understand the meaning of such a tiny word which has an enormous impact. The late Pope Benedict in his encyclical "Deus Caritas Est" – “God is Love” – helps us. He describes love as having three elements – 3 Greek words. The first is termed “eros”, this concerns the fundamental attraction that one feels towards the other, perhaps looks first, perhaps then common interests, perhaps a common view of the world. In essence this is the most intense phase of love; intense but often it is relatively short lived and can be no more than superficial. The second building block is termed “philia”, where the initial attraction becomes a strong and enduring attachment, where those that love are in effect each other’s best friend, but it is deeper where there is always concern for the other’s feelings and welfare. The third element is “agape”. This is where love reaches its fullest form of maturity, it is the point in a relationship where one will give anything and everything for the other, including their lives. For example I have been is situations where a person would willingly give their own life in place of the one dying of illness. God is truly, madly and deeply in love you, with us. Heaven knows we let God down enough times throughout the history of humanity and in our personal history too. But God reaches out across history to embrace us in the fullest form of agape, coming to us in the person of Jesus, in His life, death and resurrection, to enable us to die to the poison of sin and to rise to a new and eternal life in an endless embrace of eternal joy where the shadows in our imperfect love here in this life simply vanishes forever to be replaced by something immeasurably beautiful and glorious. Love is always about a relationship, it is always about reciprocity – it’s a two-way street. What has brought you here today? Do you love God? How can you show that you do? It’s quite simple really “if you love me you will keep my commandments” – the core of this love is love of God and love of those around us. This is easy to say but hard to do; we are surrounded by influences that want to pull us towards ourselves, where we put ourselves in prime position, though we always experience that this is something that leaves us feeling unsettled, anxious, detached from what we feel our true selves to be; someone who created in the image and likeness of God – the image and likeness of love. But in the paschal mystery – the life, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven of Jesus and the decent of the Holy Spirit – we are not left as orphans to struggle on alone. As Jesus is in the Father through the Holy Spirit, we too are one with all three persons of the Trinity through the sacraments. We are not alone, Jesus is always with us. If we stay close to Jesus we experience His love in our hearts and souls. In the love of Jesus we are always embraced too by the love of the Father; the Holy Spirit has been given to us. The victory of love over sin has been won for us by Jesus; it is up to us to make that victory our own. Please accept an assurance of my daily prayers for your needs and intentions. God bless and keep you always. Fr Chris
Pope Francis
If peoples are to remain brothers and sisters, prayer must rise unceasingly to Heaven, and one single word constantly echo on earth: peace.