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 CAFOD is responding with support of provision of food, water, shelter, medical assistance and winter kits for survivors. Your donations in recent months have made that quick response possible. Let us join CAFOD in praying for our sisters and brothers affected by the earthquakes and the winter weather. Your support for CAFOD throughout the year allows our Catholic agency to act quickly when disasters strike. For more details visit CAFOD’s Syria Turkey Emergency Appeal online at https://cafod.org.uk/give.

Bristol to Arundel Pilgrimage 2023:  Bookings will soon be open for our annual ecumenical walking  pilgrimage which takes place 12th—27th August.  Walking from the heart of ancient Bristol to Arundel Cathedral in its 50th year.  Walking along paths, old ways and byways from Avon through Wiltshire, Hampshire and West Sussex.

This traditional devotion is in danger of being lost and as a Whole Parish during lent we encourage maximum attendance from everyone.  Family Stations – 11am Sat 11th March at St George’s Church this will be followed by a Lenten soup lunch.   Stations – 3pm Sun 12th March at St George’s Church – led by our Parish Confirmation Group.  Palm Sunday Stations and Benediction 3pm Sun 2nd April, St George’s Church and refreshments in hall.  Good Friday Family Service/Stations 3pm Fri 7th April at St Wilfrid’s Church and refreshments in hall.  All parishioners our youngest to our most senior are encouraged to support these especially the Family Services. 

I wish to thank parishioners for their prayers, condolences and support over the loss of my husband, Peter.  Gillian Standen and Family.

Join us for a simple lunch of soup and bread at St Wilfrid’s Hall after mass on Sun Feb 26th, 11.30-1.00pm . This is an event for all the family to mark the start of our Lenten journey. There will be fellowship and Lenten themed activities for all.  Food is free but we welcome generous donations to CAFOD.  More volunteers are needed to help make and/or serve the soup.  If you are able to help please contact Teresa Palmer on 07951 082592 or [email protected],

A BIG thank you to all who have supported January’s Charity Breakfast at St George’s we are delighted to have raised £145 for St Wilfrid’s Hospice.  Lent Last Sunday Charity Breakfasts (Sunday 26th of February and March) will be for our local branch of HCPT (Hosanna House Children’s Pilgrimage Trust) offering pilgrimage holidays, to Lourdes, for disabled and disadvantaged children.  Delicious Bacon & Sausage Baps will be served. All Welcome (feel free to invite friends and family).

St Wilfrid’s & St George’s First Communion Children will be taking their first reconciliation during our Parish Penitential Service on Sat 18th March, 5pm at St Wilfrid’s.  Everyone is  invited.  Please make the effort to come and support our children.  In the past this has not been well supported.  So please attend this very moving service, our children are the  future, without them nothing can be achieved.

We often hear the following prayer in services and in private prayer: Eternal rest grant unto him/her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him/her. May he/she rest in peace. Amen. May almighty God bless us with his peace and strength, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The various prayers for the departed have three main purposes: first to pray for the repose of the departed, second, to comfort the living, and thirdly, to remind those who remain of their own mortality. The practice of praying for the dead is rooted in Christian belief in the everlasting life promised in Jesus’s teachings and foreshadowed by his disciples’ experience that God had raised him from the dead.

We gather together at a funeral service not to talk about the deceased but to pray for him/her. We believe that our prayer can help the deceased. We know that prayer is powerful so we pray for the deceased. There is nothing else we can give and prayer is something we can do so easily. Flowers, as in a wreath, will wither but the prayers we offer will never wither. Every prayer lasts into eternity. Prayer has lasting value. 

We do so many things during our lives that in the light of eternity, are a waste of time. The priority in our lives must be to put God first. Jesus said in St John’s Gospel that he is the Way, the Truth and the Life. (John.  14:6)  If we are not living our lives in union with Jesus then we are not on the way and if we are not on the way then we are lost. In St Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus instructs his followers “Seek the kingdom of God first and all these other things will be  given you as well. (Matt 6:33). It follows that when we do as Jesus said and seek his kingdom first, and love the Lord with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves, then, and only then, will we be on the way.

Drawn last Sunday and had over 50 prizes, our new way of no counterfoil tickets; but names on back of original certainly paid off.  Any absentees will have their prizes delivered asap.  The jewellery table proved popular and will appear again at our Table Top Sale on Sat 11th March, 10am-3pm in our hall.  A big thank you to all who helped in anyway.  The refreshment table was laden with goodies and quickly disappeared with a cuppa whilst the raffle was on.  We raised a grand total of £160.00.  Thank you.

Don’t forget our Parish St Patrick’s Evening Get   together:  St Wilfrid’s Hall on Fri 17th March, 6-9pm. Tickets will be available nearer the time, £5 per adult Children free.  We don’t expect many of us will get up for an “Irish Jig”, but we can assure you we shall have a great evening with plenty of goodies.