Weekly Record
2nd November 2008
 We
begin the final month of the church’s year with the Feast of All
Saints this weekend. The month of November with its opening
liturgies of All Saints and All Souls (Monday) focuses on the
resolution of all things in Christ. It encompasses prayer for peace,
remembrance of our loved ones, of those who sacrificed their lives for
our freedom, of past turmoil and failures on a global scale and of
judgement and eternal life. Plenty for us to reflect on and for us to
grapple with in the liturgy over the next few weeks. Next Sunday is
Remembrance Sunday and the Sunday following this we will pray for our
deceased loved ones, benefactors and all the faithful departed at all
of our weekend Masses.
On the last Sunday of the Year we celebrate Christ
the King and this
year we will be awash with Bishops, Archbishops and the odd Cardinal
for this occasion and the few days leading up to it. This is due to a
joint African and European Bishops Conference which is being held in
Liverpool this year. Archbishop Patrick is anxious to get the right
balance of languages for the various services held here and has us on
our toes at the moment swatting up on our French and German and Latin.
I was never that good at languages at school so final proof reading of
the service sheets that week will be more of a challenge than normal as
will marshalling that number of hierarchy within the Cathedral –
organising priests is bad enough! Anyway there should a very grand
celebration of our Cathedral Feast Day this year.
Welcome to those who will be attending the
Confirmation Mass at 3pm
this Sunday afternoon. Bishop Malone will confirm over 250 young people
from the Woolton, Childwall, Halewood and Speke Pastoral Area with St
Theresa’s- Upholland and St Clares and St Hughs - Wavertree joining
them.
There are a few interesting events to look forward
this week. On
Tuesday we have another fund raising meal at 60 Hope Street. The last
meal was a great success and we are hoping that this will be just as
enjoyable. There is a firework theme running through the evening but I
had to pull rank to stop our co-ordinator (who shall remain nameless)
from arranging sparklers to accompany every course – at least I think I
have. Also the Archbishop is not able to join us for this meal so there
will be no worries that he will run off with the top raffle prize again.
On Wednesday Johnstone Godfrey will be talking on
the life and designs
of Edwin Lutyens. There will, no doubt, be plenty of references to the
Lutyens Crypt and his uncompleted design of the Cathedral however his
legacy spans the whole range of work from garden design and wonderful
country houses to monumental public buildings. Add to that an insight
into his character and personality traits and it promises to be an
informative and entertaining evening. I have always wondered how
Lutyens and Archbishop Downey got on – two very powerful, determined
and strong willed personalities! It would have been interesting to have
been a fly on the wall at their meetings!
Two of our young choristers entered for the
‘Chorister of the Year’-
Joseph Pimblett and James Orrell. Joseph missed qualifying for the
final by a whisker and James was to travel to London for the final this
Friday (31st) with 8 choristers from across the country competing for
the title. By the time you read this we will know the outcome but we
should be proud of the abilities and standards that our choristers
attain here. If James doesn’t win we will have been robbed!
Canon Anthony O’Brien
Cathedral Dean
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