A special thanks to Tom Oliver for organising the tedious task of removing the fallen leaves outside St. Joseph’s. Thanks Tom. We are working on the possibilities available to us to be part of the wider movement of Warm Spaces. We’ll keep you updated. “The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and tying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going; for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts…. we cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need – not all the time surely, but from time to time - to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember – the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.” Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces
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- Nov 4, 2022
Confirmations went very well last Sunday. A special thanks to all catechists, and Paul Crilly on the music, for their input. It’s continuing this contact with those confirmed that is the big challenge for all of us. Parents, please do help with this. Your role is pivotal. Can I ask for a return to pre-Covid roles of readers and ministers of the Eucharist. In fact, can I ask those who were on either rota pre-Covid to consider returning to read, or, become ministers of the Eucharist again. Welcomers too. Our churches have always been places of welcome. I’ve met so many touched by that friendly smile of welcome that it was their main reason for returning. Please let me, or Marjorie know if you would like to get more involved. Fred Haywood, our Parish Treasurer for the past 15 years resigned in April this year after he and Helen, his wife, decided to move closer to their daughter and family in Marton, Middlesbrough. We did find a replacement initially but as a result of sudden additional work pressures the new Parish Treasurer had to withdraw. Fred has since returned to the job on a temporary basis. In the last few months the Treasurer’s role has changed significantly with most of the routine tasks being passed over to a book-keeper and the Parish Secretary. The Treasurer’s job is now much more of a management and co-ordinating role, which can be handled mostly at home if preferred. With a weekly Mass attendance of 500, I am sure there is someone in that number capable and generous enough to offer a small amount of their time to fill this important role. I would therefore ask you to please give serious consideration to whether or not you could help the parish by taking on this role. We should not need to rely on someone who has moved away from the Parish to continue to manage our Parish finances.
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- Oct 29, 2022
One of the graces of church attendance is to meet and be greeted by fellow pilgrims in this ever more challenging journey in life. Life’s increasing challenges of acute isolation and subsequent loneliness mean that a welcome smiling face can make a huge difference. As we now move from churches of stewardship which ensured your safety during an unprecedented pandemic, I hope we are now returning to normality. There are differences however. We are all different people. Covid has changed the world. The responsibility is more on us as a parish community to reach out. We have done this wonderfully during lockdown, but now a new church, a new challenge. People still need the Sacraments, the sense of belonging, the warmth of welcome. The new face of a student from home or abroad; the newly arrived family in Durham. The list is varied but the need is the same – a place to be. One of the significant changes during lockdown was the link the webcam provided. Some found the webcam an important conduit between church and housebound. However, there is a growing sense that they are now being overused and may be a reason for not returning to church. Church is community. Church is people.
Religious practice is not something solely limited to my own preference for whatever church I wish to link in with on the computer, especially if I am physically able to attend the parish in person. It undoubtedly has been a blessing for many who are sick or physically unable to attend church. However, there is a growing fear that the webcam is impacting on numbers attending Mass, especially at the weekends! It seems also that for some, it might be a more comfortable alternative than going to church! We welcome Bishop Robert to our parish this Sunday for Confirmations. We pray especially for the many young people receiving this Sacrament from this parish and the surrounding parishes. I would like to pray especially that they find a welcome in the church, and that parents and parish will continue to be supportive. “This conference on religious education seems to your humble servant the last word in absurdity. We are told by a delightful ‘expert’ that we ought not really to teach our children about God lest we rob them of the opportunity of making their own discovery of God, and lest we corrupt their young minds by our own superstitions. If we continue along these lines the day will come when some expert will advise us not to teach our children the English Language since we rob them thereby of the possibility of choosing the German, French or Japanese languages as possible alternatives. Don’t these good people realise that they are reducing the principle of freedom to an absurdity?” Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic.
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