MESSAGE ON THE 3RD SUNDAY OF LENT (YR C)

My dear people,

Our Stewardship Renewal Program is drawing to a close. Thank you for your prayers for its success. I encourage you to keep praying for our parish, that we will continue to be a parish full of vitality, where everybody knows they have a place and are valued by their brothers and sisters. I would like to thank Parish First, particularly Mr Frank Schobben, for guiding us over the past month or so with our program. The final results of the program are being worked out at the moment and will be communicated to you as soon as possible.

Our Lenten initiative of inviting the children of the parish to carry out ministry roles at the 12pm Mass continues. We welcome them, their families and all other families who are joining us for this initiative. It is wonderful to see so many children around at these times for it reminds us that we are indeed a young parish.

The committee looking into the future of our parish, particularly in terms of facilities, had a follow-up meeting this week. Conversations are still going on to determine the best way to provide for all the services required when our parish is at capacity in terms of dwellings within the parish boundaries. A consultant, whose role will be to formally audit our facilities, should be selected in the next week or so.

I hope you have been able to visit our new parish website. As always, we welcome any and all feedback you may have.

Last weekend in Adelaide was truly a blessing. I found it extremely encouraging that young men are still offering themselves to ministry in the church by being priests. I invite you to pray for Fr Anthony Beltrame and Fr Olek Stirrat who were ordained priests last Saturday. We also continue to pray for vocations to the priesthood and religious life and that God may inspire one of our own parishioners to explore the possibility of the priesthood or religious life.

We continue to pray for Ukraine. The horrors perpetrated there at the moment should not stop making us sad but let us not despair and continue to pray for a prompt end to this senseless war. May Our Lady of Peace also intercede for us at this terrible time. To that effect, there is a wonderful initiative by some parishioners to have a novena to pray for peace in Ukraine which will start on Monday 21st March. More details can be found on a poster in our gathering space, on our website in the “News and Events section”and on our Facebook page. 

I wish all of you a blessed third Sunday of Lent and May God bless you.

We continue turning to our patron saint and we ask for her intercession.

St Catherine of Siena, Pray for us.

Yours sincerely in Christ,

Fr Richard Rosse PP