PASTORAL LETTERS
JANUARY 2006
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ
A very happy and blessed New Year to you all.
At the beginning of last year I wrote a letter to mark the beginning of the Year of ‘Listening to needs of families in our Church’ Thank you if you took part in that either as a speaker or as a listener. The report of what was heard has been published and, for those with the internet, it can be obtained on: www.celebratingfamily.org.uk Our Diocesan Family Focus Team have hard copies of it.
Over the next several years we will be looking as Church at some of the important highlights of what was heard and trying to respond to them. The first emphasis is on the need for family friendly parishes. So this year’s programme is entitled ‘Everybody’s Welcome’. The focus is on the sense of being accepting parishes where we are truly inclusive and welcoming of all. It is not just a question of young families with babies and toddlers but comes through in the way in which we are aware of the young, the elderly, people with learning difficulties, single parent families, people with marriage difficulties, families with a mum or dad who is not a Catholic. The list could go on and on. Nobody should have any reason for hesitating to come to Mass themselves or to bring another member of the family to Mass with them. The contrary should be true, that they know that they will be all the more welcome.
Obviously the ‘Everybody’s Welcome’ factor extends far outside our Sunday Mass gatherings, though how things are experienced there can usually be a good sign of how things are in other directions. This is the wider family in which we can expect to be accepted and loved for who we are. And this was said very forcefully by the families. It is not just a question of the practical help that is sometimes needed, but somewhere where they are held in their joys and their sorrows, where their faith and the values that flow from it are grounded and nourished and where they are affirmed both as individuals and families. And all of this doesn’t just apply to families, it applies to every last one of us.
This year is to be about asking ourselves how we can make sure that everybody does feel welcome, that the Spirit of Jesus is truly alive in our communities and that we share our good practice with each other.
And I would want to say that there is a lot of good practice around this diocese. It is very encouraging to travel from parish to parish and experience that sense of welcome to everybody. But that doesn’t stop any of us from examining our parish consciences and from taking a real interest in the way in which other parishes have built up their ethos of warm and supportive welcome.
If you want to share your experience on a much wider base than the parish or the diocese, the Bishops’ Conference team are setting up a website where practical ideas and resources can be shared: www.celebratingfamily.org.uk But more importantly we will be holding our own diocesan meetings, June 27 St Peter’s Doncaster, June 28 Our Lady’s Hackenthorpe and July 5 St Hugh’s Newbold. More details of these meetings will be published later in the year.
If we talk about ‘living parishes’, then this is one of the key areas where the Spirit of God can be seen to be at work.
May God bless us all.
Yours devotedly
+John
JANUARY 2007
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ
A very happy Feast of the Holy Family.
As a young priest, I lived for eight years in London, in Golders Green, in the midst of the one of the largest Jewish Communities in Britain. I grew to admire so many things about them, not least their very strong family ties, their great care of the elderly and their love for children.
One thing in particular I envied them and that was what I would call their domestic liturgy. I had the impression that all their big feasts were celebrated as much at home as in the synagogue and in the home mother played a very important part.
This coming year, all our dioceses in England and Wales are continuing the process of learning how best we support families. This past year has been about ‘Welcoming Parishes’ and this new year is entitled ‘Home is a Holy Place’.
I think my Jewish neighbours in Golders Green were very well aware that home is a holy place. But because we tend not to carry over our Church celebrations in any structured way into the home, there is a danger that we associate holiness with the Church and not with the home. I exaggerate, but the real danger is that we don’t connect the holiness of what we do in the home with the holiness of what we do in Church. But it can’t be emphasised too strongly that the place where first of all and most of all and all the time we meet God is in our homes. In all our relationships, but most of all in our family relationships.
God is present in the day to day struggle to cope with each other, to build each other up, to accept each other’s love as well as to give it. And we all know what a struggle that can be and how often it can involve disagreements, arguments, even heartbreak. But it is through all of this that we and our homes become holy. The only thing that would stop that would be our finally giving up on the struggle to make the love of God present in the home.
A couple of friends of mine have recently bought themselves a new dining room table! They tried to live without one, but in the end they had to admit that the table played a very important part in their own relationship and the relationships of those whom they invited to join them at the table.
I remember somebody once saying that every meal, every meal, has an element of Eucharist about it. In some way we share ourselves with each other around the table; just how many dynamics go on around that table is extraordinary, welcome, encouragement, good listening, affirmation, forgiveness, learning to know each other … it goes on and on. We share ourselves. The Eucharist we celebrate as the big community invites us to join in the total sharing Jesus made of himself with us and continues to make with us, not just in Church but in our homes as well.
It is just so important to recognise how the home is where we first of all and, other things being equal, most of all meet the Lord in our daily lives.
I do think there are ways in which we can support all of that - and family prayer of some sort really must be part of our home life, but so too the symbols we use, like crucifixes, statues of patron saints, holy water stoops that remind us that we are children of God and that our home is a holy place.
May we all take the spirit of this Feast of the Holy Family home with us in our hearts and may 2007 be a very blessed year for all of us.
Yours devotedly
+John