St. Joseph.
Silent, hard working, content to work in the shadows.
Last week Pope Francis announced that from December 8th 2020 to December 8th 2021 there would be a jubilee year of St. Joseph.
This news lifted my spirits no end. St. Joseph is often one of our most overlooked Saints.
He’s overlooked because he just gets on with it. He is quiet, he is faithful, he is determined, he is a loving father who teaches Jesus how to be a man.
Pope Francis explains his example to us in this way:
“…during these months of pandemic, when we experienced, amid the crisis, how “our lives are woven together and sustained by ordinary people, people [are] often overlooked.
People who do not appear in newspaper and magazine headlines, or on the latest television show, yet in these very days are surely shaping the decisive events of our history.
Doctors, nurses, storekeepers and supermarket workers, cleaning personnel, caregivers, transport workers, men and women working to provide essential services and public safety, volunteers, priests, men and women religious, and so very many others. They understood that no one is saved alone… How many people daily exercise patience and offer hope, taking care to spread not panic, but shared responsibility.”
So then I ask you, how can we offer daily patience, hope and care to those around us?
Fr. Matthew
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Other news
Christmas services:
All the Christmas services can be found on a special page here – the headline services are:
- Christmas Eve, 3pm – Christingle & Crib service (please book here).
- Christmas Eve 11:30pm – Midnight Mass.
- Christmas Day, 10am – Parish Mass.
The children’s Christmas card’s are now available to buy in church. They are £6 a pack of 12 (very reasonable!). You can pay in cash in church or via PayPal / Bank Transfer – details on the Giving Page.
Please keep hold of your stamps for the RNIB Christmas Campaign, a box will soon appear in church to collect them. Please ask Susan Chick for details.
Refugee update. I now have a complete list of what is needed where and will be sharing it on Sunday – on the website and in Church. We’ll collect this week and bring everything into church by Sunday 20th for distribution to the hotels.