Holy Cross Church parish building fund: The estimated required cost for refurbishment is £18,000. This is to repair the front windows of the building - basically everything above the front doors.

SS James' & Luke's Church

Perry Road, Staple Tye, Great Parndon
Harlow, Essex CM18 7NP (maps & directions)

Mission began: 1962, church built: 1966.

St. James' with St. Luke's Church is a Local Ecumenical Partnership between Anglican, Methodist and Roman Catholic Congregations

Sunday masses: 9 am.

Week day celebrations: please refer to parish newsletter.

Sacrament of Reconciliation: before 9:00 mass.

Other churches in Harlow are listed here.

Various parts of the church

The presbtery
This is the priest house, to live in and entertaining guests.
The sacristy
The priest and the altar servers prepares for mass. The various vestnents, chalice, wine and host missals etc are kept.
The sanctuary of the church
The area in the front of the church where the altar is.
The altar
Each corner has a + cross and was blessed with oil. The centre of the altar has the altar stone in set with a relic of the cross in it, the priest always kisses this part of the altar before saying mass. Alpha and omega are denoted on the front of the altar.
The Bishops chair
when bishop not in attendance the parish priest uses this chair.
The Baptismal font
to be used at the time of Baptism.
The Ambo/Pulpit
A raised platform from which to preach from. This is used to read "the reading", the gospel, to preach the sermon to the concretation. The inscription of the front of the ambo are greek initials denoting Christ's name.
The Tabernacle
It holds the sacred body of Christ in the form of the sacred host. Red light denotes Christ's presence. As a mark of respect we kneel of bow toward the tabernacle on entering and leaving the church. The inscription of the fish goes back to ancient time when it was forbidden and sometimes put to death to be a catholic. So a Christ's apostles were fishermen instead of a cross symbol, fish symbol was used among catholics and it is still used today.
Altar rails
On the altar rails you will see symbol of grape and stalks of wheat. This is associated with bread and wine at the consecration of mass. Bread and wine is changed into body and blood of Christ.
The nave of the church
where the congrogation gather and at services in the church. You can light candles, book of remembrance, the organ loft. Where the choir sing at the various services.
The porch
When you enter the church you bless yourself with holy water. All information of the parish is available in many forms: parish newsletter, catholic newspaper and magazines, various events within the church, social and otherwise.
The repository
Where one can buy mass cards, medals, missals, brooches to denote you are a catholic when you were it, rosary beads, statues.

Holy Cross Church Sound System

The Holy Cross Church Sound System has recently been upgraded, and will hopefully provide greater clarity within the Church, which as you konw, can be a difficult building acoustically. The upgrading has been made possible, in part, due to a generous donation from one of our parishioners. With any new system, there will no doubt be teething troubles, as we undergo fine tuning. We hope that the end result will mean that prople will be able to hear better, the Word of God. Also, we have installed the 'induction loop system' for the hard of hearing. This operates by switching a hearing aid to the "T" position in order to pick up everything going through the microphone system. It would be very helpful to hear from people using hearing aids, as to whether we have the system adjusted correctly for them.