Our Lady, Mother of Bradford, pray for us

I visited one of our seminarians who is doing a parish placement at St Joseph's, Bradford, late this afternoon. He's doing lots of interesting things: he recently attended a community meeting about drugs in this poor area of the inner city and he is helping with the case of an asylum seeker who is in danger of being killed if he returns to his home country. It's a very different experience from seminary life and just the kind of thing our men need in order to ground them and help them understand the purpose of their on-going formation which, necessarily, takes place at a certain remove from society, in order that they may be sufficiently recollected as they prepare to give themselves definitely for God's work as priests. The life at St Joseph's - which is a splendid jewel in the heart of Bradford, whose interior is exceptionally well illuminated thanks to a new lighting system - resembles that of a seminary in one important respect however: parish priest, Fr John Newman, insists that seminarians staying in the house join him and other parishioners for various parts of the Divine Office. After my chat with our seminarian, Fr Newman invited me to attend Exposition and Vespers so I went into the beautiful side chapel which houses the recently created Annunciation Shrine of Our Lady, Mother of Bradford. The exceptionally gracious white marble statue of Our Lady holding her infant son towards us, who extends his arms outwards in anticipation of the crucifixion, is very affecting: it was transferred from the equally splendid and even larger Church of St Mary which is only about a mile away, the last Mass in which, celebrated about seven years ago, I concelebrated, with a heavy heart, but glad nevertheless to be there. My grandparents, who came to Bradford from Count Rosccommon, used to go to confession at St Mary's and then went for a drink to the nearby Cock and Bottle. When I was a parish priest in Bradford the number of parishes was cut from 20 to ten, so great had been the movement of Catholics out of the city and, let's face it, so astonishing had been the fecklessness with regard to faith of so many, not least the Yorkshire Irish. Within the prayerful oasis of the shrine this evening, however, as the noise of the city penetrated at odd moments, I was aware only of the strength of the Catholic Church, portrayed in all her maternal solicitude by the delicate but steely gesture of the statue of Our Lady, proffering her Son to us, as she looks modestly downwards, conscious of all the darkness which infests our hearts, (symbolised by the drugs being offered no doubt at that very moment to addicts not far away, doorways into hopelessness and unreality) and not wishing to accuse us of sin, but graciously allowing us to look upon her in her purity and recover hope through the very act of beholding her, she the truly human one. As I left, a young man held the door open for me and we chatted briefly before he got into his car. He had been baptised in the church; he now lives some way away. "I love Evening Prayer," he said, with deep conviction. It was worth returning to the city simply to hear those words.

God revealed himself to me this afternoon

Every Tuesday afternoon at 4pm at Leeds Trinity we have Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for an hour followed by Mass. Right in the midst of perhaps the busiest day in the week, as lecturers conclude their presentations all around us, Christ manifests himself in the spiritual heart of the university. The attachment of young people to Eucharistic Adoration is one of the surprise developments of the last twenty years ie the course of my priesthood. I remember helping with a Youth 2000 retreat in my first year as a priest and being struck by the way that the group was, as it were, breathing new life into an old devotion. When I was a lad I used to serve during Sunday afternoon Benediction in my parish church in Burley in Wharfedale, swinging the thurible, occasionally coughing quietly as the incense tickled my throat, delighting in the scarcely comprehensible Latin chants whose very strangeness beautifully conveyed the transcendence of the moment and staring, staring, staring at God as he revealed himself to me and Fr Scannell kneeling at my left and everybody else in the church, the uncontainable contained in the monstrance, whose Spirit prompted me to stare some more, notwithstanding my watering eyes and aching arms, convincing me that the one who eluded me now would not always elude me. By the time I celebrated Mass this afternoon, such intimacy had been established with Our Lord that the four students and graduates present - and the numbers are almost always low - listened with unwonted attentiveness to the few poor words I uttered after the gospel and the daily event, become ordinary through familiarity, seemed suddenly charged once more with supernatural significance, its inner importance flooding out and becoming newly apparent in the external sphere, such that none of us then present, I know, would have wished to have been anywhere else at that moment, and all of us - I could tell by the others' faces - felt simply very grateful.

A packed programme of events

We've just produced our term card for the Spring Term and, though I say so myself as shouldn't, there's plenty going on. Christian Unity Week will soon be upon us: as well as our annual service (led by Revd Jane de Gay, who is a senior English lecture here) we're going to have impromptu singing from a number of groups in the foyer, a Taize Service, a party for Christians only (or anybody who has ever thought of becoming one, or who is well disposed towards Christians) and, a litle later in the year, an "ecumenical train" down to the local Methodist Church to join in their Sunday morning worship.

Lent is always a big period in the Chaplaincy: the lunchtime Ash Wednesday Mass is invariably well attended. This year we will also have regular Stations of the Cross. These are great because they provide young people with an opportunity for an affective response to Christ, something which they have been deprived of due to the fall-off in pious practices in recent times. The Stations will take place in the chapel on some occasions, once in the corrdiors of the university and as Lent nears its end we are going to have a trip to the outdoor stations at Myddelton Grange in Ilkley, which are superb (see below). We are also going to have confessions for an hour every Wednesday evening to conform with a Year of Faith initiative in the diocese: it will be interesting to see how many students avail themselves of the Sacrament.

On the Friday before Education Sunday we will offer Education students and staff coffee and cakes. We thought of inviting them to a service but we opted for marking it in a fun way instead: I'll slip a prayer card to each person as I hand out the doughnuts. Then we'll be observing Holocaust Day by an exhibition and a special prayer station in the chapel.

We also do purely social stuff. For example we have a couple of six-mile walks planned (plus pub), ice-skating on the Leeds Millennium Square (plus pub), Les Miserables at the Imax cinema in Bradford (plus pub). Leeds Trinity very generously allows me to drive the 16-seater minibus - it's a Godsend.

A new departure this year is that we are going to address the issue of relationships directly around the time of Valentine's Day. (I keep forgetting when this is exactly, which I think is a good sign, all things considered) I thought of giving a talk entitled "Fr Paul on sex" but I thought that it might not pull them in. Instead, we are going to run a speed "getting to know" you session for young men and women. It'll be light-hearted and will include refreshments and a prize. Actually we might organise a barn dance as part of this. I used to love those when I was a student. You were never left alone wishing the ground would open up and swallow you and they involve lots of wholesome physicality! In additon we're going to have a few lunchtime sessions on "good relationships" led by a member of the Chaplaincy Team who has loads of experience as a counsellor. It's hard pushing against the massed forces of secularisation and many is the initiative which has failed, but there is nothing like the buzz of an event coming together, even when the numbers aren't great, and over a pint, or on the ice or after a period of worship a student begins to talk as he/she becomes suddenly aware of the reality of God.

Transfixed by a saint's gaze

I venerated the relics of St John Bosco at Liverpool Cathedral a few days ago. The Salesians had organised things beautifully. I lined up with lots of high school children. As the line we were in slowly progressed towards the reliquary, we passed numerous banners giving details of the saint's life, his commitment to youth, his writings, his spirituality and the work of the Salesians throughout the world. Two words sprung out from the texts with particular clarity: joy and patience. In the early years, don Bosco had to keep moving his oratories because the neighbours complained about the behaviour of his boys. His ears must have been assailed by all sorts of foul language!

He has always been one of my heroes. There is a photograph of him playing football with some boys dresed in a cassock. It sums up for me the heart of pastoral outreach to the young. We go to them, spend time with them, laugh with them, love them and lead them to Christ. Don Bosco would always insert prayer into fun activities. I'm trying to do that more and more, overcoming a fear that the young people whom I accompany might find it too heavy. He was able to do this, I am sure, because his life of prayer was so rich. His eyes, in a famous photograph taken when he was 65 (see below) are incredibly penetrating: as he looks out towards us they suggest that he has seen Christ and that he is continuing to see Christ. His face is strangely youthful. I was reminded of words that Blesed John Paul II wrote about the Church being always young because she is always animated by the Holy Spirit. This thought was particularly moving because we had just heard that Archbishop Kelly had offered his resignation to the Pope due to ill health following his recent stroke.

If there is one thing that makes us feel exhausted and old it's rivalry among ourselves. Here is something don Bosco wrote to his fellow priests which I read on one of the banners at the exhibition: "Put an end to criticism which makes the heart grow cold, and most of all encourage one another to live in friendship with God. If we are not at peace with God we are not at peace with ourselves nor with one another." The New Evangelisation requires the clergy to be united, plain and simple. I saw the teenagers reverently pressing their hands on the reliquary, experiencing the seriousness of the moment. They need us to be there for them, undistracted and undismayed by whatever insecurities assail us.

Alistair and Catherine

I have just officiated at the wedding of Alistair and Catherine who both studied at Leeds Trinity a few years ago. Catherine indeed was baptised here as a baby. The photographer organised a phalanx of guests outside the main doors and much confetti was thrown over the happy couple as they passed between their friends. Suddenly, the full nature of this place became clearer to me: it provides (at its best) a truly wholistic formation. Young people study here, but for what precisely? To get jobs? - yes. of course. Alistair and Catherine have good jobs teaching in local high schools. Our primary education degrees and PGC courses are well respected. But the education provided by a university like our own has to involve more. This is what I think it is: every student who passes through our doors has the opportunity to see something truly beautiful, namely the Catholic Church. Even if they can't accept the truth claims we make - namely that our lives have meaning, that we are unutterably loved, that God guides us through the teachings of his Church - they will know that there are some people who do believe all this, and that will give them hope. Then when a young man and a young woman who were in part formed here and who gave themselves to each other in holy matrimony in the chapel here emerge from the main doors, with her arm in his, one dark January afternoon to embrace the challenge of married life, unafraid, in a swirl of confetti, it says something powerful and joyful to the world. It says: we as a Church have the answers to all the deepest questionings of the human heart. We are convinced that we were made for love and we dare to proclaim what the Church has always proclaimed, following Christ's lead: marriage is for the whole of one's life. Now I'm going to St Aelred's in Harrogate to preach on vocations to the priestly life. Marriage and priesthood - both options for love, both liveable in a radical way through sacramental grace, both by their very nature open to new life, both ordered to the upbuilding of the Church.

French, cool and celibate

I've been looking up flights from Leeds/Bradford to Paris this evening. My friend Fr Pasquino, a Comboni Father who lives nearby, and I are hoping to go there for a night or two next month to visit Cyrille Delort, a seminarian at the Seminaire aux Carmes, who completed his Masters here at Leeds Trinity a few years ago. He is studying for the Missions Étrangères de Paris. He recently told me that the numbers from the Mission in the seminary is growing rapidly, from 14 when he first arrived to 27 now. I don't have favourites, but if I did he'd be one of them. When most English lads think serving at the altar somehow cissyish, Cyrille put on an alb and brought Gallic grace to the sanctuary. Once when the bishop came to celebrate Mass and I had forgotten to organise any servers I ran round to Cyrille's room while the bishop was vesting, appealed for his help and with a smiling "of course" he was in the sacristy within two minutes, poised and serene. He also plays tennis excellently, is very comfortable in the presence of young women (who evidently enjoy his company) and he often used to join me for Adoration. It was while he was at Leeds Trinity that he began to think seriously about the priesthood. He subsequently spent a year in Thailand, continuing to discern. He has just received the ministries of lectorate and acolytate and sounds very happy. I'm going to put a photo of him on the Chaplaincy Facebook site to show that celibacy is cool.

Preparing for ordination

I had a delightful day to begin the year: I met up with the two Leeds seminarians who received Candidacy just before Christmas, Sean Crawley and Anthony Rosso. Candidacy is the moment in a man's formation when he says "Yes, I definitely want to be a priest" and the Church says "Yes, we think that you have the makings of a good priest." In every man's vocational journey, there is a moment of transition when he stops discerning whether God is calling him to the priesthood and begins preparing for ordination. Candidacy is the public seal of that spiritual shift. Both Sean and Anthony have changed since I last met them. They have gone deeper. It's great to behold. They are now in their fifth year at the Venerable English College in Rome and are studying at the Pontifical Gregorian University. I had a pub lunch with Sean and then we walked around the lake in Roundhay Park in Leeds; afterwards I had tea and cakes with Anthony in my flat at Leeds Trinity University. "So he gets a full lunch and I get a cream bun!" said Anthony.

The pictures show Sean with Archbishop Arthur Roche, who was our bishop until a few months ago and who is now the Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in Rome and Anthony in my sitting room.