June 2009

Dear Friends,

This month at the Ordination in the cathedral at 10 a.m. on 27th June Mr. Michael Jarman of Ponthir will be ordained deacon to serve his title in this parish. Please remember Michael in your personal prayers as he prepares to serve as a deacon here. I know that you will welcome him warmly and make him feel at home. Also ordained on the same day will be Mrs. Christine Hockey of St. John’s Maindee who did a placement here, and Mrs. Susan Collingbourne, former diocesan schools’ officer, who will be serving in the parish of Maesglas and Duffryn.

Forty-one years ago I was ordained deacon in the same place and served my title in the cathedral parish. On 24th June, Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, I shall be celebrating the fortieth anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. I hope that our bishop will be coming to preach on Sunday 28th June at 10.30 a.m. and this will also be Michael’s first service with us. I hope also that we can all be together for that Parish Eucharist from Llanhennock and Caerleon, including all those who would normally make their communions at the 8 a.m. Eucharist, unless you are on holiday. I do not want a big fuss, just faithful communicants doing what we are supposed to do to remember God’s faithfulness and to thank him for the privilege of sharing in the Priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest.

At our P.C.C. meeting in May we agreed to have the lime trees along Church Street pollarded and the maples on the eastern boundary of the churchyard pruned. This will cost the church more than three thousand pounds. If anyone would like to contribute towards the cost of this work, we should be grateful, particularly since we are responding to an appeal from our neighbours to improve the quality of their daylight. The church did not plant the lime trees and it is a pity that more thought was not given thirty years ago to their future maintenance.

While the church is doing this to help our local community, we should be grateful for some consideration to be given to our excellent team of graveyard workers and grass-cutters whose job has been made more difficult by those who take it on themselves to put into our churchyard stone seats, windmills, artificial flowers and pebbles, which are contrary to the churchyard regulations of the Church in Wales which owns the churchyard. Regulation 17  reads as follows:- “Save for silk flowers and Remembrance Day poppies, no artificial wreaths or flowers, shrubs, permanent flower vases or containers, ornaments, chippings, gravel, paving stones or kerbs shall be placed on or around any grave or area set aside for cremated remains in a churchyard”. Please help our churchyard workers to go on doing a superb job easily and safely.

Your friend and Vicar,

Arthur Edwards