Prayer for Synod 2017

GO YOU ARE SENT

God, whose power is at its best in weakness:
You have entrusted us, in our frailty,
with the awesome privilege
of being your presence in our world.
You say to each of us: Go, you are sent.

In naming and sending,
you honour our ability to serve.
Yet we know our need of you,
even as we travel in the
echo of your voice: Go, you are sent.

Bless our Archdiocese of Wellington as we set out
and, as you have done for so many,
strengthen our weariness; steady our trembling.
May we never forget that you are with us
and joyfully answer your call: Go, you are sent.

We go, gifting your mercy, proclaiming your truth,
and celebrating your goodness;
our words and actions
revealing your face
to all we meet.

Blessed are you, God of the journey. Amen.

– Fr James Lyons

Happy first year parish anniversary!

Time flies so quickly. It feels like it was just yesterday when we decided to leave our securities behind and chose to overcome our anxiety as to where this journey takes us. We took courage to come together and, launching our waka into the deep, we trusted God to lead us towards the shores of our hopes and aspirations.

After a year, we have certainly come a long way. There were times of confusion as if the wind was blowing from every direction. There were moments when we felt like the wind had died and we were drifting to nowhere. But we are also certain of those graced moments when we became familiar with the position of the stars in the night sky, and so we have become more creative and discerning as a community.

Hence, this celebration brings us to the mountaintop, the same feeling Peter felt with the transfiguration of Jesus before his eyes in the Gospel passage today. We are gradually “transfigured” into the community we envisioned. And like Peter, we gratefully exclaim, “Lord, how good it is for us to be here.”

It is indeed good to celebrate this milestone, to thank God, and to reflect and gain new insights that would help us process, understand, and bring to light our experiences. These bring the gift of discovery, encourage our growth, and generate valuable insights to our journey. These enhance the meaning of our community.

When we “take our dancing shoes off” and return to normality, we take all the consolations with us. These will sustain us in rough times, in times of monotony, or even in times of desolation. As William Barclay says, “We cannot live forever on the mountain, but we cannot live at all without it”.

Nga mihi nui i te Karaiti,
Fr. Dennis Nacorda

Our First Anniversary Mass

The Catholic Parish of Wellington South

First Anniversary Mass

Sunday 12th March at 10am

St Patrick’s College Hall, Kilbirnie.

Our combined Mass will be the usual Sunday Mass in Lent.
There will be no special ceremonies.
We’re just having it all together in one place and enjoying morning tea afterwards

There will be no other Sunday Masses in the Parish that weekend (including Vigil Masses).
Please let friends and neighbours know!

Please bring a plate for morning tea

A Food Basket collection will be taken up at the Anniversary Mass.
Goods will be donated to the Soup Kitchen. The following is a guidelines to appropriate food donations for the Food Basket:
Dry food: Lentils, peas, pearl barley, pasta
Tinned food: tomatoes, chickpeas, beans, tuna, coconut cream
Other: Cheese, eggs, milo, tea, sugar, powdered stock

.  Kia ora Fr. Dennis for the photos – Click for a larger view

Work has begun to reinstate the retaining wall that was damaged by flooding during the storm on 16 Nov. 2016.

photo from Stuff.co.nz,  16 November 2016

The Lenten edition of ‘THE COMMON GOOD’
 available on The Catholic Worker website.

Cardinal John has made a final decision and approved new Mass times for Wellington South. These Mass times are those recommended by the Parish Council and circulated to parishioners in late 2016. The new Mass times will begin the weekend after our Parish First Anniversary Mass in March.

New Mass times beginning on the weekend of 18/19 March 2017

Saturday
6pm Vigil Mass alternating between
–   St Francis de Sales every 1st, 3rd and 5th Sunday of the month and
–   St Bernard’s every 2nd and 4th Sunday of the month. (A calendar will be provided.)

Sunday
9am Mass St Anne’s
9am Mass St Joseph’s
10.30am Mass St Francis de Sales
10.30am Mass St Bernard’s
5pm Mass St Anne’s

Our Vision Statement—Our Communities

Our Vision Statement guided the Parish Council in forming recommendations on Mass Times.
The key principle which guided our recommendations was providing the greatest opportunity for our Mass communities to stay together so that, as a Parish, we can grow together and share Christ’s message.

In making the recommendations, the Council is full of hope for the future of our Parish. However we acknowledge that new Mass times will be a change and that they will not suit everyone. We also acknowledge that further discernment and adjustment to some Mass times may be needed, once communities have had an opportunity to experience the new times.

Our Wellington South Discernment process

The recommendations followed:

• a five week period of discernment in our communities
• a workshop with community representatives and
• two meetings of the Parish Council, including a discernment process of prayer and reflection.

Through the discernment process in our communities the Council heard experiences from the past, and fears and hopes for the future. Discernment is not a process of discussion or debate, but one of prayer and reflection and listening to everyone’s voice.

At the workshop, community representatives noted that everyone needed to change. A Vigil, staggered morning Masses, and a Sunday evening Mass were favoured.

How the Council formed recommendations
The Parish Council met on Tuesday 22 November and worked through a series of options for changed Mass times. There was no clear or perfect solution.
We established that a Vigil Mass and Sunday evening Mass were still required. For Sunday morning Masses, we looked at options with two hours between Mass times to allow our priests time to spend with parishioners after Mass. We considered that the Archdiocesan first language chaplaincy Masses need to remain at 11am at St Anne’s and that while the hospital Mass is important, it does not necessarily have to be presided at by Wellington South priests. We made considerable progress toward recommendations, but given the importance of Mass changes, we decided to meet again to pray and reflect.

On Monday 28 November the Council met for a process of discernment. Our reflection and prayer guided us to final recommendations on Mass times for Wellington South. It became clear that Mass times of 8.30am and 11am would be too disruptive to our communities—which communities should be allocated to these times and would those communities be able to stay together? With the support of our priests, we opted for two sets of 9am and 10.30am Mass times. We will need to look at ways for our priests and lay pastoral leader to be able to spend time with all communities.

Following the meeting a letter was sent to Cardinal John seeking his final decision on the Mass times recommendations.

Fr David Dowling, Fr Dennis Nacorda, Lay Pastoral Leader Joe Green, Deirdre Hanlon, Stephen Neal, Elisapeta Elama, John Price, John Whiting, Joy Andersen, Lesley Hooper, Penny Holden
Parish Pastoral Council, Catholic Parish of Wellington South

The Island Bay Little Italy Facebook page has an article
and an album of photographs of the re-internment of the remains of Suzanne AubertClick on this photo link to view

Christmas Eve Carols & Mass

5:15pm   @ St Bernard’s,  Carols with Mass at 5:45pm
7:00pm  @ St Anne’s,  Carols with Mass at 7:30pm
7:30pm  @ St Joseph’s,  Carols with Mass at 8:00pm
9:00pm @ St Francis de Sales, Carols with Mass at 9:30pm

Christmas Day Mass

9:30am   @ St Anne’s
9:30am   @ St Bernard’s
9:30am   @ St Joseph’s
10:00am @ St Francis de Sales