Emerging as we are from a great period of lockdown and isolation and as we begin to open up our church once more, our website still provides us with an opportunity to create, build and sustain community at this particular time. It’s not just about offering information; its about keeping people in touch with a parish community and with one another. This time has seen parish boundaries stretched not just across a city but across countries and it has been touching to hear from people across the world linked up to St John’s at this time in our lives. It is good to be able to welcome so many to Mass, albeit virtually, day by day and Sunday by Sunday.

Much is still on hold but that doesn’t stop us from being a people of prayer and a people of hope and charity. If anything, this lockdown period has seen relationships built up and a real sense of people reaching out to others encountering a new spring time. This is how we are church and this is how we live the gospel message. Coming together through our parish livestream allows us still to hear the word of God, to ponder its message and to be challenged by it, too. We continue to find new ways of praying and keeping in touch with one another, we continue to find ‘virtual’ ways to be fed and nourished so that we can be sustained for the moment as the People of God.

The parish also has a Facebook page and this continues to be a useful way of keeping people together and keeping them in prayer and reflection. It is not so much about the tit-bits of news and trivia; it allows us to find space in isolation to stay connected and stay together as a community of faith, albeit remotely.

I hope you can find something useful to help you at this time by way of connecting with one another through our daily livestreaming of the Mass or the Rosary. I also hope that the one or two little pieces of catechesis are also helpful and thought-provoking.

As we emerge from the closed doors of isolation we can continue to be instruments of peace, of joy, of faith and love in so many ways. We are a community of hope and faith and love, and we are called to be proclaimers of the Gospel in the ordinary and in the everyday – wherever we are.

If you are in town and can pop into church then I look forward to bumping into you sometime soon.

May God watch over each and every one of us, and remind us – always – that he is near.

Fr Christopher