Again and again I return to what is most important “PRAYER”.
Abba Father please send your Holy Spirit, come Lord Jesus live in me.
The reality of life is often focused upon trials, and from my home when I was growing up came the response “These are the trials through which we triumph by the power of Him who loves us”.
After two years of the pandemic, which has made us all very brittle, my hope was that it would be ending and that things would feel very much better. Some things are very much better, it is very much easier to travel. This illness though very serious is not as fatal as it was in the beginning.
In the life of our parish we have the challenge of life, now focused by the shortage of priests. So we need to grow and develop as a parish community that does not rely upon having priests, this will entail the care of the elderly, responsibility for ecumenism, the constant care for mass and the sacraments, payments for maintenance of church and property, funding for the administration and financial needs of the parish. There will be other responsibilities. We have an important opportunity to develop and grow in response to these requirements. With the help of God a very important meeting will take place for our parish communities at 6pm in the Presbytery (or in hall if needed) on Tuesday 3rd May. This is following up upon the work that was done in response to the Synod. It is providing a firm foundation and a real challenge. A early comment “there is no support after Baptism or any of the other sacraments”.
Helpful to all our work will be “Core Groups” to identify and to commit to helping with the identified challenge in order to provide for a good outcome.
On the horizon are projects for celebrating the Queen’s Jubilee, our Centenary Year at St Wilfrid’s, with the first class work that has taken place at St George’s in their confirmation preparation program. With the help of God we may bear fruit, fruit that will last. Let us continue to plant seeds and nurture those already beginning to grow.