The other day I visited Fr. Sherbrooke at St. Patrick’s on Soho Square.
Today I receive an e-mail from one of the staffers there. It is a good cause, so I want to pass it on and make it visible.
Dear Fr Z,
I’m delighted to read your entry on your recent visit to St Patrick’s, Soho Square. Several of us here are avid followers of your blog, so we’re happy that you have been able to visit us and clearly came at such a Providential time.
As you noted, it’s a busy parish! One thing which you will have missed – though perhaps it was mentioned to you when you visited – SPES, or St Patrick’s Evangelisation School http://www.stpatricksoho.org/spes/index.htm . It’s a nine-month full-time formation programme for Catholic young adults from all over the world, combining spiritual and personal formation with study and missionary outreach. The spiritual programme includes daily Mass, adoration, the Office and spiritual direction. We live in community, and share what we have received in street evangelisation, serving the homeless, and at youth events. Alongside accredited study of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, guest lecturers include Fr Tim
(HERE , HERE, HERE, and HERE).We are currently recruiting for this year’s intake (October 2009 – June 2010)
Would it be possible for you to include some of this information and a link on your post? As I said, we are currently recruiting, and this may be of interest to some of your readers.
Remaining keen followers of your blog,Jeanine and all at SPES
Jeanine M Den Tandt
Director
St Patrick’s Evangelisation School (SPES)
21a Soho Square
London W1D 4NR
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 207 434 9965
Fax: +44 (0) 207 287 9844
Email: spes@stpatricksoho.org
"Always be ready to give an account of the HOPE that is within you" 1 Pet 3:15
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Thanks for posting Jeanine’s email.
I was blessed enough to spend eight months at SPES from 2003-2004 (it was called COMMISSION back then). My time in St. Patrick’s changed my life. Ask anyone who knows me, they will tell you the same. I went there looking for a way to do some good while I figured out what to do with myself after college.
What I found was a profoundly deepened love of Christ. Encountering Christ always demands of us a response. SPES was not easy. In fact it was in many ways the most spiritually challenging time of my life. Yet for those eight months I was given the great grace of living in a community that was truly Christ-centered, not just as an idea, but as a matter of fact. Christ was literally and physically the center of everything we did.
Daily Eucharistic adoration and Mass are the engine of SPES. It was there that I came to understand what it means to call the Eucharist the true “source and summit” of the life of the Church. It was there that I experienced what I already thought I knew: that without Christ we can do nothing.
SPES didn’t make me a saint…just ask my wife. But it did convince me beyond all doubt that being with Christ is worth striving for, worth fighting for every stumbling day, even if it costs me everything. No doubt it will.
amazing sounding program and I hope they get lots and lots of young people to fill up all their slots. My prayers for their program!
“I went there looking for a way to do some good while I figured out what to do with myself after college. What I found was a profoundly deepened love of Christ.”
Wow Steve! That rings so true for me. I was in the School 2006-7, and the things I learnt that year are still unfolding in my relationship with the Lord.
http://www.stpatricksoho.org/spes/
Vincent,
Can you tell me what the fees for the SPES were back then? Looks like a really good program.
Tnx
Hi Mark,
This year it will be £1,000, including all in-programme food, accomodation, travel &c. Obviously the real cost is much more, but generous benefactors greatly subsidise it.
Don’t worry if you don’t have that sort of money lying around; students are normally able to cover half or even all though sponsorship, collections at their home parish &c.
I would encourage you to look at the website and blog, and email Jeanine asap if you are thinking about doing a programme like this.
God bless