We are taking a little communications break over the next couple of weeks after what has been a full-on year for our social media (SM) and community interaction. The pandemic and the isolation the lockdowns brought changed the way our SM looked. We have a wonderful community here at St Bon’s and much of our pre-pandemic SM was aimed at celebrating our community. During the pandemic a number of people gave a lot of their time to help create wonderful and inspiring content for our posts and a lot of what we produced was focussed around my efforts too. Laura, our Communications Coordinator works behind the scenes to bring all the content together. I believe what we did during the pandemic was pretty amazing but now we want to return to celebrating our wonderful community, the difficulty we have found in the last few months is that there aren’t that many community events happening yet, but we are ready for when things kick off again.
Life feels busy in the parish, not with community activities but with Baptisms, Weddings and Marriage requests and pastoral work. Of course we can’t put this on our SM but there is plenty going on. Our big community event of the year, our feast day, which will take place on 18th July has been compromised by the extension of the restrictions. We were going to close off the car park and do something fun after Mass but with the restrictions and the rising in virus cases we are lowering our expectations, we may have a special coffee after Mass that day but we need to see how things are going. What is guaranteed is that celebrations or not, we are a community of faith and prayer and nothing can shake that.
Prayer is at the heart of who we are as followers of Christ. Our daily conversations with God direct our day and help us grow in grace, it is that relationship that unites us, it is what we all have in common. Being together brings that to life in a unique way and prayer without the community aspect can feel hard. Maybe this last year has shown us that we sometimes rely more on the community than on prayer but prayer always comes first because it is what gives life to the community. So as we prepare for a quieter feast day this year each one of us can be consoled by the knowledge that we are held in prayer and that we too are called to pray for the parish. Each Sunday at Mass I pray that all our parishioners will be full of faith and be healthy and prosperous. Prayer brings a blessing, and each of us can pray a blessing on our community even if at the moment we are not quite as connected we would like.
The next newsletter will be on 16th July, God Bless, Fr Tom.
