Welcome Helen Priests and Parishes
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Christmas 2018 THE MAGAZINE OF PETERSFIELD CATHOLIC PARISH Priests And Parishes Welcome Helen Our New Parish Secretary to Liphook and asked me to become In early August the the Parish Priest. The parishes Bishop's secretary I am Helen Mason, wife to Simon who would remain separate and Fr Doug is Head of History at Highfield School arranged an Grandon and his wife, from the appointment because and mum to Thomas (14) who is in Year USA, would live in the presbytery 10 at Oaklands and Jemima (11) who is the Bishop wanted and help out when not undertaking to see me. I had little idea what this in Year 6 at Langrish. Simon and I met wider responsibilities. In the event while I was working at Highfield as a might be about until I sat down with this arrangement was not confirmed the Bishop and Canon Paul Matron in the Girls' House and we have and Fr Vitalis Kondo, who is on been married for 21 years. We have Townsend who is Head of the study leave, will be here from Department for Clergy. It seems lived in Petersfield for the last 14 years. January until his situation is that Fr Murtagh the Priest in Charge reviewed in June 2019. Simon and I, along with Tim at the Immaculate Conception, Concannon, are the current co-conveners Liphook, had decided to retire and I would like to express my gratitude of PACT. We are members of Life they wanted to speak to me as to Deacon Andrew Carter for the Church Petersfield, where I also help support he has given during the Coordinating Pastor for the area. with the Admin. period of transition and I look Fr Murtagh has served in Petersfield forward to meeting and listening to I am one of the organisers of Messy (1972-2001) and more recently in many parishioners of the Church in Petersfield and of the Tots Liphook and is very well known in Immaculate Conception in the Disco which is held each month at the the area. However, the years have weeks ahead. Methodist Church. I trained a few years been catching up with him and at ago as a Parenting Support/Mentor the age of 92 he has decided to In the meantime I would like to which I have transferred to my retire. I remember well the first wish you, all the readers, a happy volunteering in the community. I and joyful celebration of the Lord's occasion I supplied the Vigil Mass volunteer with HCC as a family mentor. because he expected a tiring day birth. I have a passion to see the lines between with a family celebration. He asked the churches in Petersfield blurred but me to announce to the congregation still keeping our individual identities that he was still alive! In fact Fr while we work together to display who Murtagh would have preferred to Jesus is to those in our community who come to the end of his life ‘in have never met Him. harness’ but he had recognised that was not to be. Having been offered I like to watch cricket and am currently various options he decided to live at involved at Petersfield Cricket Club as Maryfield Care Home at Hook run the Welfare Officer. As a family we by the Dominican Sisters of Malta. have explored bits of Europe by train but The accommodation, part of a new only in the summer months as I cannot build that has been delayed, should abide that white stuff! be ready in December. I know that I look forward to meeting more of you – Fr Murtagh would still like to keep putting names to faces, not that I in touch with so many friends in the promise to always get that connection Petersfield/Liphook area. right! At our meeting the Bishop told me Immaculate Conception that he did not have a priest to send Church, Liphook The magazine is published online on the Church website. If you would like a paper copy then a donation would be appreciated to help cover printing costs Christmas 2018 The Dome Page 2 Ecological Conversion: A Necessity, Not an Optional Extra: - Treating the Natural World Like a Person By Dr Carmody Grey of the ocean, which no-one has Parishioner Carmody Grey seen or ever will see, is in continues her discussion Christ. The woods and hills, about Laudato Si… the fields and rivers, the mountains, the oceans, the In Laudato Si Pope Francis asked us stars – these are all personal to practise a surprising new set of realities. There is nothing virtues towards creation. We are to impersonal anywhere, show mercy to it; to repent for because, in the words of Pope wounding it; to care for it. It is as Francis, the risen Christ though he regards creation as being embraces it all, penetrates it in some ways like a person. Indeed, all. he suggests as much when he says that the Earth is one of the poor, who Laudato Si gives us many ideas In Berlin two women have created Original Unverpackt, Berlin’s first supermarket cries aloud in her distress. of the sorts of changes that might be involved in learning without any disposable packaging We might be a little offended by the to see creation as personal, as idea that the natural world is like a being ‘in Christ’. Consumption is a abuse the Earth and its creatures. person. Surely, we think, that critical opportunity for us in the UK. compromises the unique dignity of Many agricultural practices rob the Questions for Reflection the human being, made in the image earth of the nutrients it needs to feed • Do I examine my conscience of God. But Pope Francis is helping future generations, and poison the about what I put in my shopping us to recognise that for the Christian wildlife that enriches our lives and trolley? all of reality is personal, because it is sustains our ecosystems. When we • Am I willing to make sacrifices in shaped by and holds together in the buy our loaf of bread without regard order to make more ethical divine Word, which is Christ. for the fields and the waterways choices? Reality as a whole is Christ-shaped. which allowed the wheat to grow, we If you missed Carmody's first article ‘In Him all things hold together’, are treating the Earth as an object on Laudato Si, you can read it in The and through Him, God ‘reconciles to which exists merely to serve our own Dome Summer 2018: Himself all things’. pleasure. In the same way, many https://petersfieldparish.org.uk/get- products are made to be disposable. The word ‘Catholic’ literally involved/thedome/ translated means ‘according to the Plastics and metals are strewn whole’. As Catholics we are carelessly over our land and oceans. concerned with the whole of reality. Many domestic cleaning products We believe that the entire cosmos, poison our waterways when we wash every particle of time and space, is in them thoughtlessly down the sink. Christ. That ladybird crawling over These things are signs of the the windowsill is in Christ. That ‘throwaway culture’ that Pope strange fish which lives at the bottom Francis laments. Seeing the Earth as embraced and penetrated by Christ should make us consider the ways we are complicit in such practices. Consumer choice is one of the most Editorial Team direct forms of influence any one of us can have. Learning what we can buy in good conscience takes time and effort, as we educate ourselves and become aware of the issues at stake. Laudato Si makes clear that this is not ‘above- and-beyond’. It is a Christian's Christine Traynier - obligation. [email protected] Responsible consumption witnesses to our faith that Christ is the one Ann Saunders - through whom all things were made Jane de Halpert - and in whom all things hold together. It is Him we dishonour when we Christmas 2018 The Dome Page 3 A Reflection on The Real Christmas By Jean Halliday The meaning of homes by those Christmas has changed a lot for me in authority or by as I have grown older, now it has a violence. Mary richer and much deeper meaning. and Joseph's When I reflect on the gospel story it plight does not relates so well to today. Mary, very end there, later near the birth of her first born, must they must flee journey with Joseph to Bethlehem, from Herod to because Caesar Augustus has another strange ordered a census. (Lk. 2 vs 2 – 5). It country and was an uncomfortable journey on a leave behind a donkey whilst she was heavily massacre of children. From the understand what it is that God is pregnant, with jostling crowds beginning Mary's heart was pierced saying to her in each episode and around them. Arriving at their by a sword, (Lk. 2 Vs 35.) never doubting God's love for her, destination and finding nowhere to and His people, even as she stands stay but a stable, Mary must have her But Mary and Joseph also met with beneath the cross. baby away from family in a strange, kindness and blessings, the unwelcoming place. We see this shepherds and the Kings paid Understanding the real Christmas, its happening daily on the news, so homage to their special son and joys, love and blessings, helps me to many families forced from their Mary… ‘treasured all these things understand my own journey and puts and pondered them everything into context.