Dear Friends,
Happy New Year! I hope you all enjoyed the festive season and have returned refreshed and raring to go in 2024! Thank you all very much for the lovely presents. I am very grateful to you, my liver perhaps less so!
Of note for this year and great good fortune for our Parish, Sr Alejandra Guerrero, who most of you will know, has agreed to lead our youth ministry. She has worked for many years with young people at St Peter’s Italian Church and has been a stalwart of our First Holy Communion preparation here at St Mary’s for a long time. She is hugely knowledgeable, imaginative, and great fun and we are delighted that she will be working with us.
You might not have noticed but the church sign has been down for a couple of months. It was looking rather tired and in need of repair. We opted not to waste materials and money on a new sign but instead to have our old one re-done, very Laudato Si! The sign is currently being refurbished—the wood has been repaired and stripped down and new sign-writing is being done. We hope to get it installed very soon and we hope you will like it.
Our classes (First Holy Communion and post-FHC) start again on 14th January at 09h00 and 10h45 ish (depending on the length of the Family Mass) respectively. We look forward to seeing everyone.
As you might imagine, I am shattered and in need of some rest and relaxation so I am off to sunny Spain for a few days next week. This means there will be no weekday Masses here.
I think that’s all for now.
God bless, Monsignor Phelim