Welcome to our first newsletter for 2024!  The coming week will see much of our parish life activities and ministries taking shape for the year.  We also look forward to our school students, teachers and parents returning and pray for a great year ahead. Parish life provides many opportunities for enrichment and for giving back to the local community.  At the centre of our parishes is the Sunday Eucharist and once again we have many opportunities for young and old to take up various roles and ministries across our Churches.  For the next three weeks we are running Sign up Sunday.

Sign up Sunday will run until the 11 February and is an opportunity for you to look at all the opportunities for involvement in parish life.  Once you find the activity or ministry that interest you please contact us and let us know where and how you would like to be involved.  You will be joining dozens of people who assist in creating the vibrant parish life across our communities.

Our ministries include roles such as reading at Mass, assisting with communion,  taking communion to the sick or housebound, singing, play a musical instrument, being involved as a catechists, supporting adults who are interested in joining the Church.  I know that both our parish choirs at Deepdene and Camberwell would welcome new members this year and that all our communities are in need of more cantors, readers and ministers of the Eucharist.  We are also always in need of more people to assist in visiting and taking communion to the sick.

We also have a number of practical outreach activities such as collecting the monthly baskets of donations for the asylum seekers and delivering them to Port Melbourne to the Brigidine Asylum Seeker Project.

This year we are promoting a new partnership with Servants Community Housing.  Stay tuned for more ways that you will be able to working with this organisation and the work they do to  support homelessness.

Finally, we have a new initiative from one of our young parishioners this year.  Tom Nunan is introducing each Sunday Mass on his new channel called This Sunday is..  This channel is designed to introduce each Sunday’s Mass to other young people, particularly Year 6 to Year 8.  I have viewed the last few weeks and I think there is something there for everyone no matter what age!   Look out for Tom’s commentary each week.

We have full information and complete role descriptions for most of our activities and ministries on our website.  We would love you to explore them and to join one of them during this Sign Up Sunday period.

By Fr Brendan Reed

Published: 25 January 2024