Stoke-on Trent update
by Sr Mary Felix
On Saturday October 29th the parish of Our Lady and the Angels and St Peter-in-Chains, Hartshill, Stoke-on-Trent, held a reflective day on Sts. Dominic and Catherine of Sienna, given by Elizabeth Rees a well known author of books on Celtic spirituality.
Our day started with our being warmly welcomed by the parish priest, Fr. Michael Miners and his Deacon, Tony Bradshaw, into their warm and recently renovated church which looked lovely with its many statues of Dominican saints. The celebration of Holy Mass followed at 10 am, which gave us a good start to the day.
After mass we were shown to the parish centre which we Dominicans hardly recognised as the cellar rooms once used as store rooms and now transformed into a very modern dining area for parish activities and where we now enoyed tea/coffee and chocolate biscuits!
At 11.15 Elizabeth gave an hours talk on the ‘Nine ways of Prayer of St Dominic’, which was good to hear because it reminded us of our heritage – especially during this 800 year Jubilee of the Order.
After a 20 minute break Elizabeth gave us an input on St Catherine and although we were not listening to or learning anything new it gave us the opportunity to rekindle our love of the Order and thank God for all that has been in the last 800 years.