Welcome to the website of the Shrine Church of Saint Melangell. Here you will find information about our services, events and facilities. Please use the menus at the top and bottom of the page to navigate to the page you need, or click the news links for up to date information.
Mae ein gwefan Gymraeg i’w gweld yma .
June services at the Shrine Church of St Melangell.
8th June marks the eightieth anniversary of D-Day, the beginning of the end of Nazi domination in Europe. The Allied invasion involved 3,000,000 soldiers, 11,000 planes and 4,000 ships in the largest armada ever known and was the most ambitious assault by air and sea in history. 22,442 British lives were lost that day and in the Battle of Normandy which followed, so commemorations honouring it are likely to be the last at which veterans will be present as the youngest of them are now in their late nineties.
Nearly 5,000 of those who died, from 11 different nations, are buried in the war cemetery in Bayeux where there is a translation from the Latin of an inscription on the nearby war memorial to those missing in the Normandy campaign. It reads: ‘We, once conquered by William, have liberated the country of our conqueror.’ That previous invasion in 1066, commemorated in the Bayeux Tapestry, when William the Conqueror and his army landed in England was reversed in some minds at D-Day nearly 900 years later and the human cost of both was grievous. The Cornish poet Charles Causley, on visiting the Bayeux cemetery, wrote, ‘I was deeply shocked when I went there. Absolutely awful…. I went with a young chap there and he said to me, “They’re just kids – they’re so young.” Awful.’
Causley later wrote the poem At the British War Cemetery, Bayeux about his visit in which he asked the dead what gift he should bring before he wept and walked away from them. He imagined that they replied, “Take our fortune of tears and live like a spendthrift lover. All we ask is the one gift you cannot give.” Since life could not be restored to them, their suggestion was to lead a generous life worthy of their sacrifice and therein lies the challenge for us.
There are many issues invading our national and local lives today, some worthy and others petty, and still much ongoing conflict, warfare and injustice. As we remember the freedom won for us at such cost, are we honouring that fortune of tears and the sacrifice made on our behalf by those of all nations who, in Causley’s phrase, lie in the careful, well-tended lines of the ‘geometry of sleep’ in so many war cemeteries the world over?
With my prayers; pob bendith,
Christine, Priest Guardian.
The following services will be held at St Melangell’s, followed by a shared lunch at the centre on Thursdays with tea and cake on Sundays:
First Sunday after Trinity, 2nd June, 3pm: Service of reflection.
Thursday 6th, noon: Holy Eucharist.
Second after Trinity, 9th June, 3pm: Service of reflection commemorating D-Day.
Thursday 13th, Noon: Holy Eucharist.
Third Sunday after Trinity, 16th June, 3pm: Holy Eucharist.
Thursday 20th, World Refugee Day: Holy Eucharist.
Fourth Sunday after Trinity, 23rd June, 3pm: Service of reflection.
Monday 24th June, 10.30am: Julian Group at the centre.
Thursday 27th: Holy Eucharist.
Fifth Sunday after Trinity, 30th June, 3pm: Service of reflection.
If you need any help or support you can contact us here.
A selection of images of St Melangell and other works (Stories in Stitches by Catherine and Tim Millar), displayed at the St Melangell Festal weekend
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For further details or to book the Shepherd’s Hut please email admin@stmelangell.org or ring 01691 860408.