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This online retreat offered on the zoom platform will provide an opportunity to explore and deepen one’s individual practice of Lectio Divina as a way of praying the scriptures. The traditional four moments of the prayer (reading, reflecting, responding and rest) are explored as expressions of the four senses of scripture: the literal, allegorical, behavioural/moral, and unitive senses.  See website for more.

The monastic form of Lectio Divina is used for both individual and group experiences of the prayer. Prayer times will be followed by small group faith sharing. The fruits and gifts of Becoming a Word of God will be explored using the Lectio Divina method on a personal life experience. The retreat includes periods of silent prayer, such as Centring Prayer, to support the praying of Holy Scripture. Profound silence helps us open our hearts and minds to hear with the ear of our hearts both the presented conference materials and the scripture we pray.

The Retreat begins with Conference 1 on Friday 7th August at 7pm Central Time (U.S. time) but as this is 1am UK time, Lesley O’Connor (Waterford) has kindly offered to present the first conference on Saturday morning 8th August at 11.30am. Retreatants in UK can then continue with everyone for Conferences 2, 3 and 4 beginning at 2.30pm.  Here is a link to details of the Lectio Divina retreat UK time.

https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/event/lectio-divina-immersion-zoom-retreat/
When applying for the retreat you can make a request to attend the first conference on the Saturday morning.  If there is any problem please contact Lesley at [email protected] and she will get a link to you.

We are pleased to announce that we can now accept cashless donations for the Parish by debit and credit cards from all the major card schemes, using the handsets at the back of Church.

On the handset screen are a number of amounts you can choose, but if these do not suit you, you can choose a different amount to donate.

You can donate contactlessly, or you can insert your card into the keypad where you can authorise your donation using your card’s PIN.

You will be asked to register for Gift-Aid, and you would only have to do this the first time you donate.  NB.  You will need register even if you are already registered as a Gift-Aider with the parish.

If you want to give your donation to the Parish Collection as cash, there are baskets at the back of Church.  If you would like to give regularly by standing order, please contact the Parish Office.  Many thanks on behalf of the parish.

** As churches are closing from Thursday 5th November, there will be no booking for Masses, as these will only be live-streamed and no one can attend Mass physically.

Click on St Joseph’s picture, or see below

Welcome back to Mass at St Joseph’s. For info and the link to book a Mass please see below. When capacity is reached, we regret that we will not be able to accept more people, due to the government and diocesan guidelines regarding social distancing. God Bless and see you in church!

Appeal for Stewards / Cleaners

STOP PRESS!! WE ARE STILL EXTREMELY SHORT OF VOLUNTEERS, ESPECIALLY FOR THE DAILY 10 AM MASSES. PLEASE PLEASE IF YOU COULD OFFER TO HELP AT ONE MASS A WEEK, THE PARISH WOULD BE VERY GRATEFUL. OTHERWISE THE CHURCH MAY NOT BE ABLE TO OPEN !

As you may have seen online or in the latest bulletin, from Saturday 4^th July Fr Uche is hoping to restart Masses at all normal times of the week, except for 7am on weekdays, and probably one of the Sunday morning Masses, to allow time for cleaning.  Hopefully, families and couples will come as well as individuals, who would have been able to come to private prayer. This means that more people will be in the church, especially on Saturday evenings and on Sundays.

There will still be distancing and strict precautions, which will be made clear beforehand as well as an advance booking system.

However there is a great need for enough stewards to welcome, guide and usher parishioners in these circumstances, as well as to sanitise the areas where people will be sitting.

We are very blessed that so many parishioners volunteered for doing this for reopening for private prayer.

We now need 3 times that number to volunteer for the Masses!

If you have already given your name and your preferred Mass, very many thanks.

If not, please consider offering to do this, so that as many people as possible may return to the joys of being physically present at Mass and to receiving Our Lord in Holy Communion.

Masses will be shorter than usual, so the time a volunteer would need to be at the church is approximately one hour, possibly slightly more at weekends.  

Please do not volunteer if you are under 16 or over 70, unwell, shielding someone at home or have underlying health issues yourself.

If you are not in these categories, please reply all, with your name and your preferred Mass to help at. We very much hope that you will not be needed for more than one Mass but please let us know which one / ones you could help at.

These would be: 

10am on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

        6pm Mass on Saturday.

        9.30am (or)* 11.30am, 5.30pm on Sundays.

*we will start with just one Sunday morning Mass, and the decision will be made depending on the number of stewards available. 

Very many thanks.

As the government guidelines have now changed, allowing for services in church to take place, instead of opening for private prayer on Wednesday 1st July as previously planned, we will be open for Mass from Saturday 4th July, starting with the 10am Mass.  The times of Masses will be as in normal time, apart from the weekday 7am Mass, which is suspended until further notice.  Mass will be kept simple, and there can be no singing.  Fr Uche or someone else may give you some instructions during Mass re Holy Communion etc – please follow them.

As numbers will be limited, for social distancing reasons, there will be a booking system, details to follow.  Watch out for announcements on our live-streams, website and facebook page – there may also be last minute changes, depending on availability of stewards / cleaners.  For your safety, and that of others, please see attached guidelines below.