MESSAGE ON THE 4TH SUNDAY OF EASTER (YR B)
Friday 19th April 2024
My dear people,
We will celebrate our parish Feast Day this year on Saturday 27th April (next Saturday) from 7pm in the CRC Hall. This parish event will be hosted by our Maltese parishioners for all of us and will be a fundraiser shedding some light on Maltese culture. As is the case with our International Food Day when we invite everyone to come and share part of their culture, we are inviting our Maltese parishioners to showcase their culture for us. It is my intention to have more similar cultural events in our parish throughout the year. From this weekend, tickets will be available for the evening. Sonny Mallia is the contact person, and he can be contacted on 0412583069.
Our parish is running its tenth session of Alpha, which started on 17th April. I highly urge you to think about attending Alpha this year. We all have gone through times in our lives when we have questioned the very meaning of life. Perhaps you are going through this right now. Perhaps your daughter or son, brother or sister, or colleague is going through this now. Alpha is the best way to come to reflect on the deeper meaning of life, over dinner, a short film and conversation. May I ask you to consider attending and warmly inviting others to attend Alpha? The transformation in people’s lives their healing and closeness to Christ is testament to the fruits this wonderful program has to offer! We are blessed to have 29 participants who started on Wednesday, and we have more seats if people want to join.
This weekend, the 4th Sunday of Easter, we celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday around the world. This is the Sunday which the church sets aside as the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. We are privileged and blessed to have Greg with us on his pastoral internship. Greg will speak to us this weekend on this occasion of Good Shepherd Sunday. I must say that Greg is a bit of an answer to our daily prayers for vocations to the priesthood in our parish. The next step now is to see one of the men in our parish answering positively to the invitation of God to follow him as a Good Shepherd. God is constantly calling men to the priesthood but with all the distractions most don’t hear him calling!
It is so heartwarming to see the tremendous amount of support for Victor, Mary and Zaleha, Jason’s wife, as we gathered at the Memorial Mass for the repose of his soul on Thursday evening. I was reminded, as a parish community, of the strength we can draw from our Lord and from each other in the most difficult of times. Let us continue to pray for Jason as well as for Victor, Mary and Zaleha and their whole families at this difficult time.
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