Superb singing....

...from the choir of the John Fisher School, a splendid welcoming ceremony with Mgr Keith Newton of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, a hall filled with stalls and displays from a great range of Catholic groups and organisations, and lots of freshly-brewed coffee and delicious cakes and sandwiches to great people as they arrived...the 2014 TOWARDS ADVENT Festival was by any measure a really wonderful day!

It seems extraordinary to reflect that it is our 15th Festival.  Standing on the platform at Westminster Cathedral Hall  I was suddenly conscious of  the great adventure it has all been. When I first chaired a gathering of various Catholic groups (Aid to the Church in Need, Fisher Press, the Catholic Truth Society, the Catholic Writers' Guild,  Gracewing Books) to discuss the possibilities for such a Festival, we did believe that we were on to something worthwhile and rather exciting. And we've been proved right - but I honestly don't think that we realised just how deeply and confidently it would become embedded into the life of the Catholic community in London and its suburbs, or how easily it would adapt to the many and swift changes of the past decade and a half...the internet, swift desktop publishing, mobile phones, two changes of Pope, and the arrival of some wholly new things on the Catholic scene including the Ordinariate, a new translation of the Mass.

We celebrated the 15th Festival with the presentation of prizes in our special Schools Essay Project (see below) and with the blessing of a picture of St John Paul which will be carried on pilgrimage to Walsingham with the John Paul Walkers. The choir of the John Fisher School filled the great hall with glorious music. The talks and workshops proved hugely popular - these take place in the Hinsley Room on the opposite side of the Cathedral but no one seems to mind hurrying out into rainy Ambroiseden Avenue to get there - and the stalls reported good sales of books, Christmas cards, rosaries, home-made jam, and more...

We'll have the usual wash-up meeting shortly. There are many groups that ought to be at the Festival (we have a waiting-list now for participants).There were special successes this year (big new coffee-maker - my small nephew proved particularly useful in helping to fill it up with water as Auntie poured freshly-ground coffee in the percolator at the top). And there are lots of things to talk about...
but it was a grand day, and a happy atmosphere, and I've come home with some lovely cards from a craft stall, and some delicious cakes, and a glorious John Paul  mug from Youth 2000, and lots of reading material...