St Hilda’s is a Forward in Faith Parish in the Diocese of Manchester and under the Pastoral Care of the Bishop of Beverley.
Following the Government’s Directive on Monday 23rd March 2020, St Hilda’s and all places of worship are now closed with immediate effect.
We ask you to keep one another in your prayers.
OUR MISSION STATEMENT: To love God through the Eucharist, Prayer and the Sacraments. To love and help each other through our shared beliefs, values and sense of community.
It is our hope that you will find visiting this website an interesting and helpful experience and a means of discovering who we are and what happens at St Hilda, Prestwich. We are a growing church that sits within the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church of England and has a focus on the community. The congregation is open and has a welcome second to none that embraces all ages and backgrounds and sets no expectations other than a willingness to embrace the love of God.
Once you have traversed the website we hope that you might feel moved to visit us and to worship Almighty God amongst a congregation who would love to meet you as an individual, or as a whole family and become part of the family of St Hilda.
Father Croft, as a member of the over 70’s club, is having to self-isolate and does not have access to a computer to write and transmit a message. I have spoken to him on the phone and he has asked me to pass on his good wishes and prayers for you all in the hope that this trial will soon be over and we can come back together in worship and friendship at St Hilda’s.
JFW
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Here we are once again into the season of Lent. Forty Days of waiting, of preparation. The Forty Days come to a glorious climax with the celebration of Easter – the Feast that expresses the real meaning of our belief as Christians.
We hear stories so often that there is a
tendency to switch off, to forget exactly what it is that we are commemorating. At the end of Lent, Good Friday, in the solemn
ritual at 2pm we will remember how Jesus was put to death by being nailed to a
cross. Yet two days later on Easter Sunday we remember how he rose triumphant
over death. He had suffered the torment of the Passion and such an horrific
death to atone for the sin of all mankind yet by overcoming death, through his
Resurrection we know that the pathway to heaven is clear and open to all those
who choose to follow it.
In Lent we are
getting ourselves ready to join all churches throughout the world in the
Paschal celebrations. We need at this time to take a hard look at ourselves;
no-one is spiritually perfect. How can we improve? There is a tradition that we
improve by giving something up during Lent. That is one way but another way is
to do something extra. We are so well off, we have much more than we need. How
can we share our good fortune with somebody else who is in need of help?
As part of your Lenten preparation why not join
us in the service of Stations of the Cross on Sundays at 6pm (not March 22nd). Please take home a Lent collection box to
donate money for charity.
God bless.
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February
Spring is upon us! The days are getting longer. When I was in Oldham at St James the ladies always commented that from the second Sunday in February you could eat your Tea without lighting the Gas.
On 2nd
Feb we celebrate the Presentation of the baby Jesus in the Temple; the Jewish
custom was to bring a new baby to be presented in the Temple forty days after
the birth. On the same day we celebrate
the Feast of Candlemas – light is being restored in the world; darkness has
been overcome. Candles are blessed and
taken home; in the past they would have been the only evening light in the
house.
In the Temple
Mary and Joseph meet Simeon, a very old man who had been promised by the Lord
that he would see the Messiah before he died. He holds the child and recites
the beautiful words of the Nunc Dimittis – we repeat his words each month at
our service of Compline.
We are almost
in Lent – Ash Wednesday is on the 26th Feb. Let us make a resolution that this will be a
time of prayer and preparation; it doesn’t have to be a time of “giving up” but
should be a time for doing something extra as we prepare ourselves for the
momentous events of Holy Week and Easter.
