BEGINNING A SECOND CENTURY - THREE IMAGES

Saturdays night’s celebrations have involved the unveiling of three visual images to aid and inspired our community as it begins a new era.

1. The blessing of our new Statue of St Joseph the Worker (at the end of the Mass), filling a gap in the devotional arrangement of our Church. This is our first ‘St Joseph’, marking perhaps the work which brought so many from across the water to found and inspire our parish community, and the work just paid for through the continuing generosity of this community. Perhaps we may paint the statue at some point the future. We plan to put up a plaque on the adjacent column marking the Cardinal’s visit and our celebration.

2. Our Youth SVP has produced a mural to hang on our tower for a while, reaching out to passers by. It depicts a man, probably the Son of Man, with colours which symbolically suggest the Messiah. Below are Christ’s words “Who do you say that I am?. These may change over coming weeks. By providential design, but not our young people’s explicit design a few months back, the words they chose are in the Gospel on which the Cardinal has preached, and on which Fr Bernard Vaughan preached almost a century ago to the day.

3. At our reception a couple of songs from our upcoming Musical Rock of the Anointed have been performed. Today we start selling tickets for this. See details over. The musical will be part of our participation in the diocesan Open the Doors weekend. May it indeed be part of a new beginning, a new reaching out, a new fruitfulness in our spiritual lives and so the lives of those we touch.