Father Rory Kelly

I am happy to say until the day I die “I am 49 “.

’59 was the year of the great summer, when the Yanks came home on holiday, it was also the time of Pope John 23rd, and many happy memories. The great days of the 2nd Vatican Council were on the horizon.

’69 saw me launched upon my Seminary years.

’79 saw me return from my first Sabbatical, hopes still high but fading like the morning dew.

’89 saw me as part of an ill supported venture team ministry

’99 saw me halfway through ten years spent on an ecumenical project - ”A time of insight and surrender”

And now it is 2010, and time to move on. We had two lovely weddings at St. George’s – two young couples, a credit to the human race, and above all, a blessing to the Church.For them, an important part in their choice of partner was that they would actively support each other and share their  faith.

Another young couple, well, twins really, Etienne and  Anusha, won their appeals for places in our Catholic school, St. Richards, as indeed they deserved to.  The challenge for them now is to live up to the high standard required, a credit to the school, and thanks be to God that we have it.

Our  project for St. Wilfrids continues to circle, I will keep you posted, in the meantime keep your eyes on the screen, our website is up and running, full credit to Mark Muller and the ones we know, where the  sustained effort came from. Mark would appreciate our prayers for his family, who are battling with illness at this time.

More Thoughts from Fr. Rory 

 Its now well into 2011, time to move on.

 Holy Spirit, Jesus, Lord God our Father, please show us the way.

Lord God, Infinite and Divine, Your word has become flesh in Jesus who said ” I have come so that you may have life, and have it in full.” This life is expressed as individual and communion.

Holy Communion, an Infinite and Divine Being with a heart set on our salvation.

Where there is love and loving kindness, there is God.

Where there is hardness of heart in all situations, there are divisions, disunity, injuries and strife.

Grace and Salvation, Your sins are forgiven, the only sin not forgiven is to sin against the Holy Spirit.

A certain urgency now touches my mind and my heart, but I cling to the fulcrum. Jesus is God’s salvation, and it is of the greatest importance, viz.  the Gospel of John, “None can claim except what is given from above.”  The human temptation is always to claim too much —- more than is given from above.

Through the ages the Spirit of God has raised up men, women, movements, churches, monasteries and institutions so that the living spring water in the well of life has nurtured and nourished the people. He is a faithful God, in our time he has poured out his Spirit freely and constantly in the charismatic renewal, raising up spirits of Word and Sacrament.

The Catholic Church of the 2nd Vatican Council, was confronted by two significant millstones  - Legalism and Clericalism.  Now at the heart of truth are always the words of Jesus. ” Not a dot or an iota of the law will be abrogated until           

So that in remembrance of Him, the night before he died, a most precious gift before He ascended into Heaven, He breathed on them….

After the confession of Peter “You are the Christ, the holy one of God…. you are Peter and upon this rock I will ……           

These are loving words, beautiful and consoling, ” Then in your Kingdom, freed from the corruption of sin and death we shall sing your glory”

 I returnto the work of Jesus and his promise “the gates of hell shall not prevail against you.”  When He was confronted with the law (as it was distorted by Satan) and they presented Him with the woman caught in the very act of committing adultery, and in accordance with the law of Moses, and indeed used by others as apparent in the Koran, it is absolutely important to listen to Jesus, ” It was because of their hardness of heart.”  This is always the hub of the matter, as the hardness of heart manifests itself in many places masquerading as true holiness. It was to deal with the hardness of heart that Jesus died on the cross for our sins.

One of the things I try to do is to listen, and the number of people unjustly and unfairly crucified by life brings me back to a perfect gift I received from my Mum. As a schoolboy full of complaint, her words, “No cross, No crown,” has been a silver lining throughout my Ministry. The only doubt I never had is that Jesus should die on the cross, there was no other way.

The other great bugbear is power. Another outstanding memory comes to mind, I was in a pub in Windsor, surrounded by poppies, it was remembrance Sunday, and I was drinking orange juice, (honestly, the story would be too long,) talking to a person at the bar, and dressed in full priestly regalia, I could not help but notice a person deeply affected by my presence, and had made a note to speak to him after my conversation ended. Suddenly he presented himself at the bar, full of apology for his intrusion, saying how out of character it was for him The reason for his intrusion was this.  He had returned from visiting the war graves in France, overwhelmed by the young age of the dead soldiers, he walked through row upon row of them, until he came upon a monument, he was totally taken by its inscription, “When the power of Love overcomes the Love of Power, then there will be Peace ”.      

Like the law, Clericalism is too easily and subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, influenced by the evil one, but the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it,

Growing up on a farm, and if there was an idle moment, working on the building, was one of the blessings of my early life, but I did not see it as such then, and one of the abiding images was the horse and cart. I was doing a little bit of work by the end of the fifties, and it has left an enduring impression. When the horse is before the cart a lot can be achieved, but when the cart is in front of the horse, then you have a recipe for disaster. Put Christ in place of the horse, put the cart in place of our sins, and ponder it well.

The honest part of me so often turns to disappointment, our generation had such an opportunity to grow and have a mature, loving relationship with God. Clericalism played a part in the obstacles. When the obligation of the Law was rejected, many good practices, fish on Friday, fasting before communion, the abandonment of confession, and indeed Sunday and Holyday obligations showed how superficial was the commitment to what should be grace filled events if freely partaken of.

Anybody who could not see the writing on the wall, when I was in the seminary, was fairly close to being blind. The Scripture passage was there to be seen, resonating with Seminary life, and indeed with the outcome of Ministry in the Church. It was like a great river in a dry summer, the levels were beginning to fall and the big fish were making for the big pools. When I entered the Seminary at Saint Peters College, Thurles, I was part of a class of 32, one of the largest ever. I put it down to the scraping of the bottom of the barrel. I have a first cousin, older than I, and from our perspective a proper Priest. He is spending his life in Africa, in the Missions, and continues to do so with verve and life. My vocation came from the family, with grand aunts as nuns in America.  O.K. we did not have a bull in the yard, but we had a lot of the pedigree of Irish Catholic life….. My parents were faithful witnesses, with the Rosary, the Mass and the devotions, yet the writing was on the wall, there would be no more bulls in the yard, alongside a lot of other things that would change, yes, life was changing in every way, and God would expect his Church to change with it. ( My understanding all the time was that we changed in order to stay the same).

God was preparing the ground, with the gift of good Pope John XXIII, the 2nd Vatican Council and the outpourings of the Holy Spirit.

I have had a number of sabbaticals, the first after my first Parish, a lifetime ago, well the life of Christ time ago.

It was a great grace, most of it spent travelling in America… the Charismatic Renewal, Marriage Encounter, new monuments in catechesis, new opportunities for ministries and Catherine De Heuck Doherty, spending time in Paustinia in Cumbermere in Canada, intending to round off with a six week stay in Taize, but the writing was on the wall, even to being confronted with knowledge that a Diocese was paying out a great sum of money because of a paedophile Priest.   I never got to stay in Taize, I was reassigned to Ministry, God’s Providence, Man proposes, God disposes, and as with many things, I echo the early Church, the early Christians in their response “Lord I believe, help my unbelief’.

The Gospel for the 5th Sunday of the year said “You are the salt of the earth”, and that has always been my deepest conviction, that the local community, the people who gather to celebrate the Mass are indeed the salt of the earth, the Body of Christ, the light that shines from the lampstand for all to see.  That Sunday, when the Gospel was proclaimed I was on holiday in Cuba enjoying perfect sunshine, when an encounter with a housewife from Devon had a disturbing effect. Needless to say as part of a tourist party, I was not dressed in clerical attire. (Others may have chosen a different option, but that is their conviction,) When insistently asked by her “What do you do ?,’ I replied that I was a Catholic Priest, and she said strikingly ” But you must have your doubts “.  I was surprised by my reply ” No,” I said , “but great sadness, that the window of opportunity that was ours was so brilliant.  We had experienced the 2nd Vatican Council, and the hope that filled the air after good Pope John XXIII.  I went on to outline that this inheritance that was squandered, echoed by the failure of the banks and the national debt handed down to future generations, was a great indictment of our era and a cause of great sadness.

Now everything we do must be to address the reality of our time.  Live and never learn would be worse than what has gone before us. We are at a time when communications and the learning curve is going forward in leaps and bounds, I have always felt it is a fabulous time, a great, great opportunity that is given to us , and we must make the most of it.

The website is like the spirals that rose from churches and cathedrals in days gone by, rising from the countryside and its natural surroundings, pointing to the Heavens to the Lord God above all.

The website without a living community, living witnesses to their lives of faith, would be like so many empty and dying churches with their greatest hope of survival as museums

My great hope is that with our website and our new Church project, and above all and far more important, the real communities of faith that we have here in St Georges and St Wilfrids.

I especially look to the Leaven groups, and also to each person offering themselves in Ministries of service, and all who reach out to each other, overcoming the comfort zone that can be seats in pews

Together, and especially blessed with our children we can look to a better future.

 

Deacon John 

Our Deacon, Rev. John Truman, has now retired.  We thank him for his great work among us and his encouragement and wish him and Tessa a long and peaceful retirement.

 

 

 

 

 OUR MISSION STATEMENT

“The Lord gave me this answer;
Write down a vision,
inscribe it clearly on tablets of stone
so that it may be easily read.”
(Habbakkuk 2:2)

The vision of our Catholic family is that the church will grow and develop through an experience of life together in the local communities of St. George and St. Wilfrid, serving the areas around Polegate and Hailsham.

Our community will be a place where faith in Jesus Christ is experienced, transforming our lives, giving us hope and making us warm and compassionate.

Our community will be a place where, within a climate of openness and reconciliation, we come to pray, hear the Word of God, celebrate our liturgies, share our festivals, care for and reach out to each other.

Our community will be a place where all will find a welcome; a place which shows concern for all outside the Catholic community, a place which reaches out to those in our locality and those beyond.