From Fr Greg's Desk: Sunday 25th June, 2023

Hi everyone!
Hope the ‘cold snap’ this last week hasn’t cooled your work in volunteering for Jesus at the Parish!
Appeal for volunteers and other contributions
Please be aware how dependant I am on your goodwill and gratuitous help in service hours, monetary donations and the like. Your regular contributions are vital in sustaining the mission of this Parish and extend the outreach to the neighbouring suburbs which fall within our generous Parish boundaries. I thank you in advance for increasing them periodically in line with cost-of-living increases, to the best of your ability, as you are making it possible to keep our Parish not just ‘up-and-running, but beautifully maintained, and thriving’!Would you please consider, if you haven’t already, becoming a regular contributor to the Parish finances, to do so either through our ‘direct debit’ facility or via credit card (or via envelope if these electronic means are beyond you). See page 3

May the Good Lord bless all of you who already do so, and multiply the graces meted out to you all via other means!

Final Confirmation Mass this Sunday
This weekend will be the last of our ‘Confirmation Masses’ for the year, so we once again welcome all the families who will be with us, accompanying their young ‘intrepid confirmands’ who will be presenting themselves for the gift of the Holy Spirit this Sunday at midday. Please keep them – and their sponsors - all in your prayers!

Widening of paths leading to Parish Office

You will have noticed a lot of ‘creative energy’ going into the SCB grounds of late, with the work of widening the cement paths outside the Parish Office and Noah’s Ark Cafe. We realised some time ago that, with the introduction of the ‘After School Pick-up’ on the St. Charles side of the school (thereby reducing the infamous ‘snaking lines’ of cars around Frederick and Potts St in the afternoons), that there was very little room to lead our school kids around Noah’s Ark Cafe and then 'park’ them safely outside the Parish Office until their parent’s had picked them up from the adjacent road.

Hence, we widened the paths by approximately 60cms, built a lovely wooden border around them, in the form of an extended park bench. This gave us the opportunity to re-site the three seats in front of the triangular garden to their new ‘homes’ outside the SCB double gates.

The light pole, originally centred ‘bang smack’ in the middle of the path, was in the way of all this, and so it has now been conveniently relocated to one side, improving the access along the existing cement pathway, and the ‘cement lip’ trip hazard (due to tree roots) has been improved. We will probably move the other light pole at the other end of the cement path into the side garden as well in coming months to improve access.

New Seating Outside St. Charles Primary School

What did we do with those three seats? ‘Rest assured’ we have put them to good use! Our maintenance man, Keith Stanshall, has finished building the cement pads for them to be installed outside the large school gate on the Church side at SCB Ryde. I have no doubt they will be a welcome respite for the Mums and Dads waiting there in the afternoons.

Memorial plaques are available on outdoor furniture.
An opportunity exists also for those of you who might wish to have a small plaque installed on available outdoor seating, dedicated to the memory of deceased loved ones (as we did several years ago when we installed the other SCB garden seats). This has also been proposed as a means of raising some much needed funds for our constantly growing Parish. We will be asking the same one-off donation we asked three years ago ($1500) which will help defray the costs of extending the concrete paths and re-siting the seats to their present position outside the school gates.

Would you like to avail of this? Spaces are limited, so please get in quick to avoid disappointment. Contact the Parish Office on 9807 2966 or by email to office@rgcp.org.au for more details.

And that’s about it for now! Whilst the Blues State of Origin attempts didn’t exactly succeed, our cricketers have done well so far with the First Test of the Ashe’s series. Here’s hoping they keep going strong!

God bless!

Fr. Greg