News

Saturday 12th September - Ride & Stride. Join the fun with a sponsored walk/cycle around our local churches to raise funds for Surrey Churches Preservation Trust and St. Joseph's. Full details to follow. Supporting this event will help to raise funds, some of which we, hope, will go towards the recent cost of our own church roof repair.

The school year finishes this week and for many it will be a holiday time, but we should take a moment to reflect on what holiday means! If we change the letter ‘I’ in ‘holiday’ for the letter ‘y’ then we get the real sense of the word, a holy day! We also talk of holidays as being a time of recreation, of being RE-created, which would suggest that we may have become ‘uncreated’ or more likely, pulled in a thousand directions by so many demands on our energies and time. Holidays should therefore be an opportunity to be recreated to the image and likeness of God, to become, once again, children of God, and this will only happen if we make holy time in our holiday. The holidays should enable us to more readily make time for prayer, for being with God, for being in the presence of God and basking in the sunshine of His love. The ancient understanding of prayer has been that it is ‘the raising of the mind and heart to God’, however, Pope St. John Paul II added ‘with joy!’ If we are to be recreated to our true image and likeness as children of God, we need to make time for prayer, for raising our minds and hearts to God with joy, and every family member, or whoever it is that we are having our holiday with, should be afforded the opportunity to pray. So, young people , if you are on holiday, please do your bit to allow your parents /guardians the opportunity to have a holiday; help with the domestic chores, be on time for things, volunteer rather than waiting to be asked or presuming that someone else will do ‘it’! That way, others too can have a holiday because the work load is shared! Parents/guardians , allow your children to help with the various tasks around the home, they may not do things in the same way as you do, or to your exacting standards, but at least things will be done, and it doesn’t really matter if the tea towels are not folded in exactly the way you want them done, or that the forks are in the knife section of the draw!  We should all decide on when is a good time for us to pray, whether together or perhaps individually, perhaps earlier in the day rather than later, which could mean going to bed a bit earlier the night before if a day trip is planned, in this way time can be given to prayer before going off on the day trip because everyone is up that little bit earlier for prayer.

For those being received into the Church on 12th July, we need to meet and ‘run through’ the ‘order of service’; could Friday 10th at 8 pm be an opportunity? (Fr. Ian has prior appointments at 6.30)

Next Sunday 19th July Fr. Ian will offer the 10 am Mass in thanksgiving for forty years of priesthood. Quite a number of people from his former parishes have indicated they will be joining us for the celebration and a reception in the hall following on from the Mass. Please do come along.

Next Sunday, 12th July we look forward to receiving a number of people into the Church at the 10 am Mass. As there will be adult Baptisms, the conferral of the Sacrament of Confirmation and First Holy Communions, please be aware that Mass will be somewhat longer than usual. We will surely do all we can to welcome any visitors that day. For the present, please keep those preparing to be received in your prayers. Many thanks.

“As you will have seen, the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has announced his resignation. Andy Burnham is now the clear front-runner to become the next Prime Minister. If there is no full Labour leadership contest, he could be in office by mid-July. This is a very important moment in defeating the revived Leadbeater assisted suicide Bill, which has been brought back by Lauren Edwards MP and is due to have its Second Reading on 11 September. That is why I am asking you to urgently email your MP today using the new tool we have just launched. It includes important new information MPs need to see, and asks them to vote NO on 11 September. If Burnham becomes Prime Minister before Parliament returns, he could arrive back in Westminster on 1 September facing an immediate and divisive fight over assisted suicide, just ten days before the vote on 11 September. At the New Statesman commented, ‘...it is hard to see a world in which he would welcome this Labour Party-dividing legislation” - and if it is not defeated on 11 September, we could see this issue totally dominating the beginning of his time in power.’ If MPs hear clearly from their constituents now that the last thing the country needs is another parliamentary session dominated by this dangerous Bill, there is a good chance that more MPs will vote NO on 11 September. We at Right to Life UK are already hearing from MPs that their inboxes are being flooded by supporters of the assisted suicide Bill. Dignity in Dying is putting pressure on MPs to vote for the Bill, and they will be putting huge pressure on Andy Burnham too.” Please use the link to contact your MP Write to MP to vote NO on the new assisted suicide Bill on 11 Sept – Easy tool Many thanks.

We are looking for more people to join us in the music group for the 10am Mass on Sunday’s, as well as for the important Church Celebrations and Holy days. We usually play every fortnight (with a break in the summer), but you don’t have to be available every week to be involved. Musicians need to be reasonably confident with their instrument, but please just come and have a chat to explore matters further. Singers too, are very welcome! And are there any organists out there who might want to play sometimes? If you have a teenager doing D of E joining the music group to sing or play can also count as your ‘Volunteering task’! We hope to have an informal practice – probably in September as an opportunity to get a sense of things and also have some fun making music together.  Please speak to Gabrielle or anyone else in the Music Group after Mass, or email gabrielle.musictherapy@gmail.com . or chat to or email Vinita . vmgoveas@hotmail.com

If you haven’t already done so, but would still like to commit to praying a decade of the Rosary each day during February, then please do put your initial or a tick in one of the boxes on the ‘Rosary Circle’ chart in the church porch.  The ‘Chart’ lists the 20 decades of the Rosary and a number of columns for people to put their initial or a tick in a box to indicate they will commit to praying the particular decade each day for the month of February, and hopefully, this will create a number of ‘circles’ praying for this intention. This is a very simple spiritual exercise many of us could join in with; at least 20 people praying one decade of the Rosary each day, so the whole of the Rosary is prayed for this particular intention, thus creating a ‘Rosary Circle’. Let it be said, however, that anyone can join the Rosary Circles at any time.

CHILDREN’S LITURGY at the 10.00 am Sunday Mass The last children’s liturgy for this academic year is next Sunday, July 12th at the 10 am Mass. As we come to the end of the academic year, we would like to warmly invite all children and parents to join us for a Children’s Liturgy picnic on Sunday 12th July, after the 10.00 am Mass. This is a lovely opportunity to come together and celebrate the children’s journey in faith over the past year. Everyone is very welcome. Please bring a picnic blanket and any food you would like to enjoy. Sandwiches and drinks will be provided for the children. See you then!