Family Events and Celebrations
It is a privilege for the church community to host people when they come to celebrate and commemorate the important events of family and community life.
Whether you are wishing to celebrate the gift of new life through Baptism, or your marriage, to commend a loved one at the end of their life, or to commemorate or celebrate any event or achievement, you are most welcome to contact us about it.
Wherever you are on Life’s pilgrimage, we can assure you of our prayers.
Initially, please contact the Parish Priest.
Priest's Letter October 2025
From the Parish Priest
Dear friends,
As many of you know, due to recent — and not so recent — events in our families’ lives, Katie and I are in the position of reviewing and sorting out vast numbers of archive documents and photographs that we have inherited from our parents.
There are packets and packets, and album after album, of small black and white photos — mainly of anonymous faces — staring out at us.
“I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,
I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
— Matthew 25:35
The context of these pictures is a million miles away from our lives now, and it is so easy to forget the real lives behind the faces staring out.
But these were real lives of real people — not characters in a book or a play — but human beings made in the image of God, each carrying the likeness of Christ in their faces.
The same can be said for the faces we see today on the screens of our televisions and phones, or in our newspapers — people whose lives we hardly recognise, as they struggle with war, violence, statelessness, and extreme poverty.
It is so easy to ignore — or even deny — the humanity of people who are different from us. And sadly, the language sometimes used by those who claim to lead us to describe fellow human beings can be uncaring and unchristian.
Whatever opinions we may justly hold regarding the security of our nation, the stability of the world, or our society, we must never remove the humanity from those whose situation is desperate.
History — and the present — is littered with examples of people being denied their God-given human dignity by others who believe themselves to be superior.
Jesus walked, talked, and ate with all the groups of people that the authorities of His society regarded as enemies or worthless. And we must always work to demonstrate the priceless value of each and every human life — wherever that life is from, whatever language they speak,
whatever the colour of their skin, whatever situation they find themselves in.
With love and prayers,
Philip