This Christmas update of the parish renewal website has quite a few new additions. On the home page we see the ‘Wise Men’ journeying towards the new born King. However, the shepherds too have made a journey to the nativity scene. Although they haven’t travelled from afar they tell us of their spectacular inner journey, from tending sheep in the loneliness of the night darkness to lives for ever enlightened and changed.
Mary and Joseph have also been on a journey. Not just to Bethlehem, but a faith journey with each other discovering, and not without some difficulty and personal cost, what is God truly asking of them. On that night, their journey together embraces a new beginning. They are now a family: they are now parents of God’s Son. Beginning a new path together, with new difficulties and challenges, soon they will be refugees in Egypt. However, they are graced. As St Paul would discover in his life, journeying with God we always receive ‘Sufficient Grace’ to bring about all that God is asking of us.
What about us?
The Gospel stories are never simply for historical records or stories simply to inspire our children. The Gospel stories are always to inspire the ‘child’ within us all. Fundamentally the Gospel of Jesus is about you and me and our life journey. As the Archdiocesan Plan 2016 -21 proclaims; we are called to walk together, in the footsteps of the Good Shepherd.
We are called to discern together, what does it mean to be God’s people and what is it that God is asking of us.
The new additions to our parish renewal website I hope will be ‘food’ for your journey together with us all. Very importantly, my hope is that you will be inspired to make the website a ‘meeting place’, where everyone can make their contribution to the renewal of our Archdiocese.
