Below are a few interesting news items from this week’s Bulletin. To download the full version of our latest Bulletin, please go to our Bulletin page. Thank you.
THOUGHT FOR FIFTEENTH SUNDAY YEAR B
A Shepherd? Or Prophet? Or Healer?
So who is this Jesus who sends His friends out into a pain-filled world of oppression and injustice with … NOTHING! But love and vision and unconquerable hope in a different kind of world.
Do not be weighed down with possessions to protect, He says, buildings to keep safe, strategies and timetables to computerize! No go with nothing but the Love I place in your hearts. That Love has everything you need – power to heal, courage to challenge evil, vision to see the most broken people whole and free, the most despairing living with a new hope. I am a shepherd, but not to build up my flock, but to give life in abundance to all. I am a prophet who will challenge all the evil that oppresses and denies humanity to my little ones. I am a healer who brings the Kingdom breaking into lives not with empty words, but with the Word of Power that literally sets you free! And I send you – ‘to go and do likewise … for by your Love they will know me, and find themselves!’
‘COMMUNITY STEWARDS’ I am pleased to inform our parish family that the following have agreed to serve the life, ministry and mission of St Nicks as ‘Community Stewards’:
Eustace Tameh, Margaret Ulloa, Mary Hopper, Benedicta Lobela Amba, Epiphania Chipato.
Some others also carefully considered whether to accept to be “Community Stewards’ but for many reasons discerned that they were not able to fulfil this role at this present time. We hope that one or two others will be able to join the Team in the coming months. I wish to thank not only those who have accepted this new role and ministry supporting the future development of our parish, but also all who prayerfully considered who should be invited and all to were not able to accept this role at this time. This process of ‘communal discernment’ is at the heart of being a ‘synodal parish in mission’. I also look forward to working closely and collaboratively with the Team of ‘Community Stewards’ to ensure the long-term development of our parish as a ‘Eucharistic Community of Mission’.
POPE FRANCIS SPEAKS ON DIVERSITY OF GIFTS, CHARISMS & MINISTRIES: “The most beautiful experience is the discovery of all the different charisms and all the gifts of his Spirit that the Father showers on his Church! This must not be seen as a reason for confusion, for discomfort: they are all gifts that God gives to the Christian community, in order that it may grow in harmony, in the faith and in his love, as one body, the Body of Christ. The same Spirit who bestows this diversity of charisms unites the Church. It is always the same Spirit. Before this multitude of charisms, our heart, therefore, must open itself to joy and we must think: “What a beautiful thing! So many different gifts, because we are all God’s children, all loved in a unique way”. Never must these gifts become reasons for envy,
RICHARD NOT RETIRING YET! To clarify, Richard will remain our parish priest while living outside the parish but in Bristol, not retiring (health permitting) until 2028, when he will be 80 years young! He will however reduce his workload and share more fully responsibilities with the Team of ‘Community Stewards’ (a provisional name). Richard moves out of the presbytery September 8th – Feast of St Nicholas of Tolentino. We hope to commission our ‘Parish Stewards’ at our Patronal Feast
CALLING OUR INNER CITY COMMUNITY: THE POLICE WANT TO LISTEN TO US
In the light of the tragic events – stabbings and murders – in our part of Bristol, the Bristol Police Commander and others from our local Police are meeting with residents and listening to our concerns, hopes and fears. The next meeting is on Thursday 18th July from 7.00 to 8.30pm at Easton Christian Family Centre on Stapleton Road (about150 yards from St Nicks!) I expect to be there and hope others from our community will attend.
SUPPORT THOSE WHO SERVE US ON THE SEAS – ‘SEA SUNDAY’ On Sunday July 28th we will be praying for and taking a retiring collection in support of the Church’s mission among those serving on the seas. Seafarers and fishers can lead hard and dangerous lives. Your gifts and prayers will welcome and them and help them get the support they need. The Church’s Mission to seafarers is a vital life-line for so many, helping to protect them from exploitation and working conditions very like modern forms ofd slavery. Do please support Sea Sunday as best you can.
NEED FOR WELCOMERS It is so important that when people come to Mass on Sundays (especially if they are visitors or have not been to Church for a long time) that they are warmly welcomed. We need more volunteers for our Welcoming Ministry. It makes such a difference when people are greeted at the door. Welcomers will need to arrive no later than 9.30am for this Ministry, ready to hand out the bulletin and any Liturgy sheets.
URGENT NEEDS OF OUR FOODBANK [1] Volunteers urgently needed – we need members of our Christian community with a heart for the disadvantaged and poor to volunteer in our foodbank. Can you give one morning a week? (opening times – Monday, Wednesday and Friday 9.30am to 1.00pm). Some of our existing volunteers cannot help during the school holidays because of childcare. Please see Michael Conway (mob: 07482425539).
[2] Food and Toiletries needed – It has become much more difficult to source suitable food and other items and often we have little to offer those with great need. Please bring anything you and ask your friends and neighbours to help and share with those who have so little. We need fresh meat (which can be frozen), bread, eggs, fruit and vegetables; pasta, rice, breakfast cereals, milk, sugar, tea/coffee, pasta sauces, and tinned fruit, vegetables, meat and fish, baked beans etc. Some vegan foodstuffs also needed as well as some pet food. And of course also washing powder, cleaning materials and toiletries. Please bring what you can at the Offertory on Sundays – larger deliveries by arrangement with Michael, our foodbank manager, (mob: 07482425539). THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROSITY!
JOINT MEETING OF OUR PARISH PASTORAL COUNCIL, PARISH FINANCE COMMITTEE AND THE LEGACY MANAGEMENT GROUP Next Saturday 13th July from 9.30am to 12noon (when there will be Mass), these three committees will gather to share information and plan for the future of our parish community, especially during this time of transition to being served by a non-resident parish priest (Richard for the next four years). We hope for a full attendance.
DO YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER TO SUPPORT THE PARISH MISSION? Arising from the recent Parish Forum on the future of our parish, the Parish Pastoral Council is delighted that many have expressed the wish to offer some time and energy in support of the life and mission of St Nicks. So the PPC is establishing a ‘Volunteers Whatsapp’ to let people know the needs and opportunities for volunteering either on a long-term or an occasional basis. Some cannot commit themselves to a regular slot or programme but could volunteer from time to time and for limited periods. If you would be willing to join such a team of volunteers on this Whatsapp Group, then please contact the Parish Office or Patience Bird (07411406411) and give your mobile no. Thank you!
WEEKLY PARISH EMAIL: To improve communications among our diverse parish community, we will begin to send weekly a brief Parish News Email, highlighting key news or issues that we all need to be aware of. Please check your emails for the Parish Update!
GLASTONBURY PILGRIMAGE – 14th JULY – Our new Bishop, Bp Bosco, will be leading our annual pilgrimage, ‘Mary, Woman of Prayer’. We cannot organise a coach because of expense but we do encourage as many as possible to take part especially as this will be first time our new Bishop will lead the Pilgrimage. Exposition, Confessions and healing Prayer from 12noon until 3.00pm; Healing Prayer 12 noon to 3.00pm; Rosary Procession at 2.15pm; Mass at 3.30pm. Please see poster for more info.
DIOCESAN PILGRIMAGE TO LOURDES Join some of our diocesan family on the Annual Pilgrimage to Our Lady of Lourdes shrine in southern France. Friday 23rd August to Friday 30th August. Accommodation in 3/4* hotel, full board including transfer from Toulouse Airport to Lourdes. Single rooms from £680 and shared rooms from £510. Pilgrims to arrange own flights (Bristol-Toulouse on EasyJet) and travel insurance – information available from email: lourdes@cliftondiocese.com or Alexander House on 0117 902 5590
‘ALL ARE WELCOME IN THIS PLACE’ It is our privilege to host here at St Nicks the Diocesan Ministry among the LBGTQ+ community. It would be a great sign of welcome, valuing ‘Gay’ Catholics, if more parishioners would come sometimes to our 3rd Sunday a month Mass with our LGBTQ+ friends. Do try to come occasionally and share with us.
CALLING SISTERS AND BROTHERS WHO FEEL ALIENATED FROM THE CHURCH
There are so many who have been hurt by their experiences in the Catholic Church and many reasons for that hurt. A particularly destructive hurt has been abuse especially by priests and religious. Yet Christ calls us to be a welcoming, safe and healing community.
Here at St Nick’s we seek to offer an unconditional welcome and a safe and respectful place to be and to speak your voice. We seek to echo the words of Jesus: ‘Come to me all you who labour and are burdened and I will give you peace’. So we want to welcome you, be a community where you can if you wish speak your pain, voice your hurt and anger, or just come and be. We understand that for many it is impossible to trust the Church again, and we do not expect or deserve that trust. But we do want to earn it and so offer to share your journey and make together the safe space that is your right. ‘Our community currently includes those who have expressed some of their own experience of this particular hurt. They, particularly, would like you to know: “If you come to see us you won’t be alone – it isn’t easy but we do seek to journey together gently.”We understand it may be difficult for some to enter the Church. If you wish to make contact please tell us what might help to make things easier for you.
CHURCH CLEANING – FRIDAY MORNINGS Thank you to those who have been serving the parish in this way each Friday morning from about 10.00am onwards. Some have found work so we urgently need more volunteers who can commit once or twice a month to come. Please Contact Eddie or Richard to volunteer for this ministry, this act of service to God and the whole community. Thank you!
THE PARISH DATABASE The Parish Pastoral Council seeks to create a comprehensive database to include all our parish members. Today forms will be distributed asking for some essential information – names of all family members, address with postcode, telephone and email contact details etc.The purpose of this is to enable effective pastoral care, community building and effective communication. The information given will be used solely for internal parish and pastoral reasons and will not be divulged to any other party. Please sign the forms giving your permission for us to hold your details on our database – this is essential for compliance with GDPR (Data Protection legislation). THANK YOU!
URGENT APPEAL FOR BAME BLOOD DONORS The NHS has issued an urgent call for more Black people to give blood to meet increasing demand for Asian, Black African, Black Caribbean or mixed ethnicity donors. Some 16,000 new donors from these ethnic groups must be recruited this year as demand rises for life-saving transfusions for people with sickle cell disease, according to the health service. Sickle cell is the fastest growing genetic disorder in the UK, affecting 15,000 people with around 300 babies born with the blood disorder each year; the illness can cause organ failure, stroke or loss of vision, sometimes even leading to death. The disorder is more common in Black people and, as such, people from this ethnic group are more likely to have the rare blood sub-group Ro that many Black sickle cell patients need. The Church strongly encourages blood donation as a life-saving gift to others. PLEASE CONSIDER BECOMING A BLOOD DONOR – ONE PINT OF BLOOD CAN SAFE UP TO THREE LIVES! To become a blood donor today, register today and book and appointment by visiting www.blood.co.uk, downloading the GiveBloodNHS app or calling 0300 123 23 23.
GOD’S CALL TO SERVE THE LIFE AND MISSION OF YOUR PARISH It is very clear that our parish, together with all churches and voluntary organisations around the country, has not yet recovered fully from the effects of the Covid Pandemic and the restrictions placed upon our meeting together during that time. A significant number of our community are not coming to Mass here for a variety of reasons. It is a joy to welcome new families and individuals who have found their way to St Nicks. However there has been great difficulty in drawing members of the parish into being part of the many ministries and tasks of the parish. Whether it is the SVP, the welcoming Ministry, Church Cleaning, the Foodbank, Catechists, too few are doing too much in support of the parish’s life and mission. We are all called by our baptism to serve and build the Church as a mission community. We are all called to sacrifice time and energy to build our parish community and supports the Mission of Christ entrusted to us. I realise only too well that many have heavy commitments caring for children or elderly family members and juggling work and family. They are indeed serving Christ in these ways. But I do ask everyone to reflect whether some time can be given to sustain the parish’s life and mission as we move towards a lay-led parish. This will be a great challenge for all of us. Please pray about this urgent need in building the future of our unique parish.
ST NICK’S AND COMMITMENT TO ‘SYNODALITY’ We have played our part in contributing to the Church’s world-wide ‘Synod’, as last year we gathered in different groups to listen to one another and share our thoughts and feelings about being part of the Catholic Church. The result was a 60 page report (which remains on our parish website for all to read) which we sent not only to our Bishop but also to those overseeing the Synod in the Vatican in Rome. But this is only the beginning! For the first time the ‘International Synod of Bishops’ in October in Rome will include 70 non-bishops (clergy, religious, lay men and lay women) with full voting rights. This is a very significant step forward – but there is a long way to go yet! But what is equally important is that your Parish Pastoral Council is committed to finding ways of embedding ‘Synodality’ in the life and ‘governance’ of our parish community – prayerful listening to one another in order to discern what the Spirit is saying to us in our parish about the way forward into a future different from the past yet fully alive with Prayer, Community and Mission. The Synod’s working document emphasises that those who experience being excluded from church life “are bearers of Good News that the whole community needs to hear” and that “whenever we encounter another person in love, we learn something new about God.”
WHAT IS OUR COVENANT WITH THE POOR? In preparation for the great Millenium of year 2000 the Bishops of England and Wales asked every parish to draw up and make a ‘Covenant with the Poor’. As part of our parish’s Covenant we pledged to pray regularly for Justice & Peace, to serve the homeless and poor who come in increasing numbers to our extensive Food Bank and the Wild Goose Café and to encourage parishioners to volunteer time and energy to work in the Food Bank and the Wild Goose Café; and also to give non-perishable food (especially rice, pasta, tinned fruit and tomatoes, tinned fish and meat etc) and/or money (in special envelopes) to be used for the poor. This food and money goes to support our ministry among the poor of our area. During Lockdown this as greatly expanded and very many people inn Bristol are supporting us, in addition to our parishioners. We also founded and developed our Borderlands Charity (‘from exclusion to belonging’) to serve our asylum & refugee community that has remained serving throughout the periods of Lockdown. In normal times, the Offertory Procession at Mass regularly sees gifts to be shared with the poor and vulnerable, carried to the Altar (restoring the ancient meaning of the Offertory Procession). So the Covenant with the Poor that we renew solemnly at each Patronal Feast of St Nicholas of Tolentino (early September) has continued to grow and develop and as such has shaped the life, mission and witness of our parish community. The development of the ministry of the Parish Office has enabled us to develop our ‘Option for the Poor’ in obedience to the Gospel Let us praise God for such rich grace and love poured out upon our community, and though our community to many in their need.
LOVE THE CHRIST OF THE POOR – WORDS OF ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM “Would you honour the Body of Christ? Do not despise His nakedness; do not honour him here in church clothed in silk vestments and then pass him by unclothed and frozen outside. Remember that He who said ‘This is my Body’ also said ‘You saw he hungry and gave me no food’. I am insisting that nothing can take the place of care for the poor. What use is it to adorn the altar with gold cloths and deny Christ a coat for his back? He would be outraged!”
MEN AND WOMEN EQUAL IN MINISTRY There are many charisms and ministries in the Body of Christ – each one of us, young and old, male and female, lay and clergy, and whatever our gender identity – all of us are ‘beloved children of the Father’, each of us is gifted by the Holy Spirit to serve, to proclaim, to build the missionary Body of the Christ and to transform the world. In our parish we are moving towards a parish community led and served by predominantly lay ministry, served and supported by the ordained ministry including a part-time (non-resident) priest. We are committed as a parish to promote, empower and train many different forms of ministry. The ministry of women and men are equally valued, the ministry of lay people and ordained deacons and priests are equally valued. All of us over 40 years old have almost certainly grown up in a church that has neglected and minimised the ministries of lay people. We are still in a clergy (and therefore male) dominated church and this has caused major problems while being unfaithful to the New Testament. Some ministries are denied to women (and not just ordained ministries) … therefore there is an urgent need to enable voices of women to be heard, their gifts to be recognised and their ministries to be released, for the good of the whole Church and its Mission and witness. This is to correct the imbalance and injustice that has been the norm for centuries. Please do not misinterpret this as diminishing or demeaning the ministries of our brothers, lay or ordained. We are all called to work together for the Kingdom as equal partners in the Lord’s work.
IS GOD CALLING YOU TO FOSTER OR ADOPT A CHILD? 109 children are taken ‘into Care’ each day in this country! 109 children everyday looking for security, for a home where they can belong and thrive. Also there is an increase in the number of unaccompanied child refugees arriving in this country (which will increase with the Afghan Exodus). I know from my own personal experience how important adoption is to give a child a new start in life. Many children are from the BAME community and there is a great need for more fostering and adoptive families from these diverse ethnicities. Could God be calling you, your family, to this healing vocation for a child in care? Contact CCS Adoption (tel: 0117 935 0005 or email info@ccsadoption.org) or ‘Home for Good’ (clare.walker@homeforgood.org.uk )
WHAT TO DO IF YOU ARE IN HOSPITAL: Can I remind everyone that when a Catholic goes into hospital, the patient or their family MUST request a visit from the Catholic Chaplain – data protection and confidentiality rules in hospitals prohibit the passing on of information to chaplaincies otherwise. The Chaplain will not know of your presence in hospital and cannot visit a patient without the patient’s prior request and permission.
SCRIPTURE SHARING GROUP We meet on Thursdays at 5.30-6.30pm: come & share reflections, questions, insights on the Scripture Readings used at Mass on the following Sunday: ideal for all of us, but especially for Lay Readers Ministers of the Eucharist, and Catechists. Contact John Flannery (email: j.flannery@btinternet.com) for the Zoom link.