Children's First Holy Communions in 2010 are in May-June and are organised by Fr Cassian. Of course there is much preparation required and these web pages are intended to help in that. If there is any information you would like to see included please contact Diz either directly by email, or after the 9.30 Mass on most Sundays - or via any of the people mentioned here.
For those children at St Austin's School Mrs Fitzpatrick will be the focal point for contact - and parents will be involved directly from about October 2009. For children not at St Austins, parents should contact Fr Cassian (or any of the priests in the first instance) and well before the end of December 2009 please. Communion Groups (targetting a selected day) are pencilled in around September/October in the previous year. These Groups will be organised by Group Leaders (usually one of the parents) who will then co-ordinate both the learning involved with the Sacrament and the First Communion masses themselves.
A key part of the process is choice of music and whether the Church Band and Choir is to be involved. Mark Phillips, the Church Band leader, is therefore responsible for Part 2 of this document.
Part 3, below, contains information from the "Group Leaders Pack" that is usually distributed around the 2nd week of December. Much of this information can also be obtained from the web-site, see the Part 3 section.
This template is to help Communion Group members decide which music is required at your children's Communion Service, and what form it should take. If you have MS Word (or similer) please download the (.doc version) of the template. It may be filled-in using MS Word and then emailed to me. Alternatively, it or this (.pdf version) can be printed off using the browser's or Adobe print buttons, filled in using a pen, etc, and sent to me. Of course you should not feel obliged to make use of the band and/or choir.
It is only fair to point out that the we depend on the good will of the choir and band members. All of the children are members of Saturday morning bands and must balance their commitments to these other bands. There is always the possibility that there would not be sufficient numbers of musicians to make a communion accompaniment viable, unfortunately this would only become apparent as May approaches. However, we have never had to disappoint any groups in all the years we have been playing.
Please indicate in Section 1 whether you require choir /band.
Once you have agreed a date and time for the First Holy Communion Service with Fr Cassian and Fr David, I would be grateful if you would include at least one contact name and phone number in Section 2.
To make the job of choosing hymns for the communion mass easier, you can refer to the list in this template.
Please discuss the choices for hymns at your meetings, when you have finalised your choices, complete the table in Section 3. I have included space for three communion hymns; sometimes depending on the choice of the first two hymns and the speed at which the Sacrament is distributed, a reserve hymn is needed. I would advise that you do not include a third hymn that is anybody's particular favourite as it may not be needed. You may also decide not to include it in the printed order of service.
In addition to the hymns there are five other prayers that are usually sung at 9:30 mass. Please decide within your groups whether you wish all, some or indeed none of these to be sung. Please indicate in the table Section 4 with a Y or N.
I would prefer if you could email the completed template to me at:
MARK_L_PHILLIPS@yahoo.co.uk
If this proves to be not possible, please pass the printed copy to Mrs Fitzpatrick marked for my attention.
The Group Leaders Pack consists of the following items. Some of these can also be obtained in alternative formats; follow the appropriate links.
Please note that all the material available from this "First Holy
Communion 2010" part of the website is free of copyright.
However, if you do copy any of the words from the Hymn books or
Prayers or Readings from any of the Prayer Books then you must
give a copy of the booklet to Debbie Doran in the St Austin's
Office.
Please write the date when the Communion Service is to be held,
and the number of copies of the Booklet you have made on the
copy you give Debbie.
The Parish pays for a license to copy this material but under the
terms of that license the Parish is obliged to keep appropriate
records.
NB This license does not extend to copying any music - you must
make your own copyright arrangments if you plan to copy music!!