From Fr Greg's Pew: 5th April

Hi everyone, and welcome to Holy Week!

Without doubt, this is a very different Holy Week to anything you've experienced in the past. I know that for many of you, shuttered churches and spiritual communion with Jesus is a bit hard to accept. 

As a result, we have had to organise our Holy Week Liturgies keeping in mind the new directives given by the Archbishop, taking into account the significant restrictions on gatherings currently in force due to the present crisis. I do feel for you all, and ask you to offer this one up for an effective end to the coronavirus crisis.

We invite you to link up with our own Holy Week liturgies via "live streaming", direct to you from Saint Charles Borromeo Catholic Church Ryde (with the exception of Friday mornings' "Stations of the Cross" which will be celebrated at Our Lady Queen of Peace Gladesville). We are doing it this way for the purposes of simplifying technical issues associated with live streaming and the specific nature of each of our Parish Churches..

New large screen with responses. We are constantly looking at ways and means to improve the experience of 'live streaming'. We've added a large screen behind the altar at SCB Church, to show the responses at various parts of the liturgies. That way you can all easily join in the responses, and we won't feel quite so alone at this end! 

 

We worship together "In spirit and in print'! As Jesus told the Samaritan woman, four weeks ago, that in time she would worship the Father "in spirit and in truth", (John 4, 23), the novelty of this Holy Week is that you are offered the chance to worship "in spirit and in print". Many of you responded to our request to send in photos of yourselves and your families, to make your faces visible to us as we celebrate the Mass. Thank you!! If anyone has not yet sent in their photos, and if possible, photos which show faces clearly, then send them into us this weekend, so that we can have the Church "packed" with "printed parishioners"!

“Put out your palms” initiative.
As a further means of participating in the spirit of the upcoming Holy Week, we would invite you to place palms, branches or any sort of greenery on your front door. Let this be as a sign of our continued presence as a Parish community during this rather 'special' Holy Week. You might like to embellish it with a cross, a ribbon, a battery operated light/candle or something similar.


Please help us update our Parish database. In order to respond to you better, we are currently updating the details of all our parishioners on our Parish database, to be able to communicate with you via email, phone, post and even personally from one of our priests. We will be contacting you as a matter of courtesy to see how you are going and if you need anything or can help someone else in need.

Know of any New Parishioners? If you know of any new parishioners to our Parish, could you please enquire of them as to whether or not they are receiving our eNews? If not, please get them to send in their contact details so that we can welcome them to the Parish. 

Distribution of palms and bottles of holy water from Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. Several people have asked about how we are going to bless the palms this coming Palm Sunday. We have about a thousand little individual palm leaves tied into the shape of a cross that we will be distributing as a special gift this Easter period. These will be blessed on Palm Sunday at the 10 am Mass and distributed as best as we can. Details coming next week, but we would appreciate your patience as we find ways of distributing them without congregating large numbers of people or compromising their health.

 

'BYO' Palms. You can also supply your own palms, and hold them up from the safety of your living rooms to receive a symbolic blessing over them. Later on in the year we hope to have an opportunity to physically bless them at one of our future Parish Masses, with a generous dosage of holy water to boot! 

Lastly, thanks for your encouragement and feedback. It helps us to serve you better. We have had to improvise a lot, and it helps to work out which ones are better than others as we adjust our set-up and "Divine Online" liturgies. If you have any further ideas as to how we can make the experience of your current 'exile' a little lighter, please let us know: office@rgcp.org.au.



Whew! That's all for now. Happy Easter to all of you, and may the Risen Christ shine out of your hearts and eyes and into the world around you!



Your brother in Christ's ceaseless service,

Fr. Greg!