Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your divine love.
Send forth your spirit O Lord and renew the face of the earth
Having commenced the streaming of Sunday Mass from our parish community each Sunday, we value this important development. Lockdown at the beginning of the year was enforced because of the coronavirus, which introduced to us the possibilities of this technology as being particularly helpful and having a good outcome. My experience of “lockdown”, especially as it happened as we drew close to Holy Week was very beneficial. It helped me to be particularly attentive to the divine office, with the celebration of Mass giving great emphasis to the scriptures as we progressed through Holy Week. This brings God’s salvation, and after Good Friday the focus upon the resurrection, the ascension, and especially Pentecost.
How much we need that outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit.
Two things:
One: Will be the prayerful celebration of our liturgies, with the appropriate themes that emphasise each event in the life of our journey through the Christian year.
Two: Community; communication will help us build up the community life of our parish. The children’s liturgy has been a good help in this direction.
The coronavirus exposed our weaknesses, and brought home to me my biggest failure as a parish priest. When I had an episode with a breakdown in my health and the loss of my driver’s licence, some of my failures became particularly glaring to me. The great amount of help that I have received, emphasised what I always believed; a body made up of many parts working together, is truly important and is always the way forward to a good outcome.
When I came to the parish, I introduced Leaven Groups for each community, and please God, after the virus is contained we will be able to return to this. I had been in the process of establishing “The Missing Link” when we lost some great leaders within our communities, but now please God, is the time to return to this. I am asking three persons from each church to link together to get us off to a good start.