New benches around the Round House
There are now four benches and lots of lovely extra planting around the Round House. This has been a lovely collaborative project, and each of the four churches has supplied a bench. Each bench will have a little plaque on it. It is hoped the renovated gardens and comfortable seating will cause many friendships to flourish and ease the feeling of loneliness which has been a growing concern. Please see https://www.facebook.com/BurleyInWharfedaleCommunityTrust/posts/3453429128101742 for more information.
Pray Fast Give
This Lent our parish children and their families can find out here how we can look out and help each other, thinking of ideas based on the themes of prayer fasting and giving. Also we would like you to create an Easter garden and tell us just in a couple of sentences what you have made and why.
Not everything is locked down!
Still Unlocked!
Thanks to Mary we have this video to share…
Our church may be closed for just a little while but our prayers, like many other beautiful things, are not locked down.
Let’s all use this one minute video to pass on the 3 wishes we have for each other in the last chapter of this Covid year.
Please be safe, stay well, be happy about all that is still unlocked.
Tree of Life – Work with nature
In 2015 Pope Francis signed his landmark encyclical Laudato Si’: On the Care of Our Common Home, it asked us to think about the things we value most, how could we start to change what we do in our lives at home and in the parish to better protect and enhance our beautiful, but fragile world. At the end of 2019 we began our parish project: the Tree of Life, with these 3 main themes:
- work with nature
- reuse, reduce, recycle, renew
- campaigning
You can read here the progress our parish achieved in 2020 in the work with nature theme.
Sacraments 2021
6th December 2020
Dear Parent or Carer,
Below you will read the letter from the Diocese, this is different to previous years for 2 reasons. Firstly, the Diocese of Leeds have produced their own programme of materials including books to help you as the parent to play a main role in the preparation and learn alongside your children. Secondly, we have COVID as part of our lives for a little while longer and we need to call on the wonders of Technology to help us to continue our normal routines. In our Parish Family, the parents have been wonderful in helping their children to be ready to receive the Sacraments and despite unavoidable delay, all our Children will complete their Sacramental Preparation within the Calendar year.
Father Michael has asked me to invite you to enrol for next year’s programme from today. We will trial the Diocesan programme with you and will be pleased to receive your comments at any stage of the new programme so we can help the Diocese with their review at the end of the year.
Please take your time to read the next attachment below and follow the instructions and completion dates. If at any stage you have a query please phone 07939063120 – Sue. At a later stage you will have the care of your Catechist.
As always we need Parents to Volunteer as assistant Catechists not Leaders, please do this now so we can have your DBS in place in good time.
With all good wishes
Please take care and be wise
Sue Rix
Preparation for the Sacraments of First Reconciliation, First Holy Communion & Confirmation
As you may already be aware, Bishop Marcus has made changes to the programme for children preparing to celebrate the sacraments of First Reconciliation (Confession), First Holy Communion and Confirmation.
At your child’s Baptism, you made a solemn promise to bring your child up in the practice of the Faith and so, as we look forward to your child’s reception of the next sacraments of the Church, I ask you once again to commit to that promise.
Your child will prepare for and celebrate the sacraments in the following years:
- Year 3 – Sacrament of First Reconciliation (also known as Confession)
- Year 4 – Sacrament of First Holy Communion
- Year 6 – Sacrament of Confirmation
Preparation requires between 5 and 7 sessions, depending on the Sacrament. Following the outbreak of Covid-19 and the demands of social distancing, these sessions will (until further notice) take place at home. You will be provided with guidance and resources to help you and your child work through the materials together. For those who are able to meet using online platforms, we will contact you to arrange meetings; for those who cannot access online meetings, we will contact you by phone to assist you in the preparation.
If you would like to enrol your child for preparation for First Reconciliation, First Holy Communion or Confirmation, please open, print and fill in this form and return it to Fr Michael through the Presbytery front door of the house, no later than 28th December2020.
We will then ask you to fill in an Enrolment Form for your child (which includes a Consent Form for those who are able to attend meetings online). For those parents and carers who can access online meetings, we will then arrange a meeting online; for those parents and carers who cannot access online meetings, we will contact you about the next steps.
Because of the social distancing requirements in our churches, celebration of the sacraments will (until further notice) take place with small groups of families. We will tell you how this will work and inform you of any changes should social distancing requirements be altered.
Sincerely,
Father Michael and Sue Rix
Tree of Life – Reduce, reuse, recycle, renewable
Reduce, reuse, recycle, renewable – or not wasting resources Examples include buying only what we need, lowering temperatures a little in our homes, installing solar panels on roofs, changing lights to LEDs, carshare or walk to church, use showers rather than baths, insulate our homes better, stop single use plastic & waste, recycle more and better, eat less meat, buy local, in season food, and do not buy cheap fashion but quality clothing that lasts.
John has installed new solar panels on his roof, click here for John’s great story about this.
Let us know if you would be interested in having solar panels installed on your house. If you already have solar panels, how they have changed your lifestyle?
Tree of Life – Petition & educate
Examples of what we can do include asking supermarkets to stop using single plastics, petition for better & cheaper public transport, come to an extra mass each week, work to save animals that are in danger, and publicise and share what we are doing. Our Parish Council thought engagement with our students and children should be a high priority. This will help and encourage them to bring forward their ideas. We will provide a summary each month to be included within the bulletin, it will have a section for our students and children.
Laudato Si – Climate Change
Pope Francis calls on fossil fuel bosses to switch to renewable energy
Pope Francis has directly appealed to oil and gas companies to move from fossil fuels to renewable energy in order to prevent climate change pushing the world’s poorest people deeper into poverty. The Pope issued the call at a meeting held in the Vatican on Saturday 9 June 2018 attended by executives from many of the largest global energy companies.
The Holy Father told the fossil fuel representatives that switching to clean energy such as solar and wind power “is a duty that we owe towards millions of our brothers and sisters around the world, poorer countries and generations yet to come”.
Add your voice to the Pope’s call to bring energy access to poor communities
Renewables, not fossil fuels, needed for energy access
Some energy industry figures have tried to argue that fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas are necessary to tackle poverty, as people need access to energy to pull themselves out of poverty. However, the burning of fossil fuels is the main cause of the climate change which is having the greatest impact on poor communities.
“We received the earth as a garden-home from the Creator; let us not pass it on to future generations as a wilderness” – Pope Francis
And research from CAFOD and groups such as the Overseas Development Institute has shown that off-grid energy powered by renewable sources such as solar power are usually the quickest, cheapest, safest and most reliable way of bringing electricity to poor communities. Pope Francis echoed this, telling the oil and gas bosses that “the more than one billion people without electricity today need to gain access to it” if we are to end energy poverty, but “that energy should also be clean” – not generated by fossil fuels. Francis said:
“Our desire to ensure energy for all must not lead to the undesired effect of a spiral of extreme climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, harsher environments and increased levels of poverty”.
Speak Up to your MP about tackling climate change
We must meet Paris Agreement commitments to protect the poorest people
Pope Francis reminded the energy leaders at the Rome meeting that searching for new fossil fuels to burn is incompatible with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rises. Instead, business leaders must speed up the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy as it is “the poor who suffer most from the ravages of global warming”. The Pope said:
“Many of those who can least afford it are already being forced to leave their homes and migrate to other places that may or may not prove welcoming. Many more will need to do so in the future.”
Share the journey with refugees affected by climate change
Dialogue to care for our common home
Neil Thorns, Director of Advocacy at CAFOD, said:
“The Holy Father wrote in Laudato Si’ that he wanted to ‘enter into dialogue with all people about our common home’. Preaching to the not-yet-converted at this week’s meeting is an example of the Church doing exactly this.
“Francis reminds us in his encyclical that ‘Business is a noble vocation’, but also asks why anyone would want to be remembered for failing to act when the world’s poorest people are being pushed deeper into poverty by climate change. It’s a question fossil fuel executives would do well to ask themselves.
“If energy companies are serious about caring for our common home, they need to take the Pope’s advice and hurry up with shifting their priorities – and therefore their money – from fossil fuels to renewables.”
PRAYER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT – inspired by “Laudato Si”
Living God,
have mercy on us,
for the times we forget
that we belong to each other.
You call us to be still,
to hear the whisper of our Sister Wind,
to feel the radiance of our Brother Sun,
and to be nourished by our Mother Earth.
Renew us in your healing love.
Inspire us to water the earth,
and nurture one another,
so all may flourish.
Together, as one family,
may we always sing your praise.
Through Christ our Lord, Amen.
Rachel McCarthy/CAFOD
Connect2 & HandsOn programmes
Our parish supports CAFOD and its Connect2 projects. This began with the Puentecitos community in El Salvador in 2016. Read here about the amazing projects have been completed, helping to improve people’s income and food production in this very poor region of the country. From January 2019 we have supported people in Magdalena Medio, Columbia through CAFOD’s HandsOn programme. We have done this in several ways:
-from Lent and Harvest appeals
-donating and selling used books in the church foyer – in 2016 we raised £216
-supporting our parish team running in the Great North Run each September – since 2005 they have raised over £10,000 to support CAFOD and local charities through sponsorship from the parish, families and friends.
Our 2015 team at the finish!
Climate change
Climate change is hitting the poorest countries hardest. Severe weather events are undoing decades of development. World leaders signed a promise in 2015 to try and keep global temperature rises below 2 degrees. In 2018 scientists said that this target must drop to 1.5 degrees.
Pope Francis asks us to listen carefully to those times when we hear of the world been harmed or where we hear the cry of the poor and we should think about what we can do to help. We have pushed our world to its limits, we demand more cars, more flights to take us on holidays to faraway places, more land is built on for industry creating more pollution. All of this production and consumption is exhausting our world. The forests are cut down, the topsoil erodes, the fields fail, the deserts advance and the storms intensify. We are not allowing the land to rest at all or the earth to be renewed. During this season of creation we need to think about being satisfied with what we have and not constantly seeking more.
During lockdown
have ridden my bicycle rather than drive my car.
I have recycled my plastics and garden waste.
I have composted waste materials such as vegetable cuttings and egg shells and I will put this back on my soil when it has decomposed.
What have you done or would you like to do – send your ideas and your pictures to Tol.ssfishermore@gmail.com
As we think about our nature project, remember that God has created the whole world and all the people, animals, plants and other things in it. There are so many treasures in our world for us all to share. Like water, the sun, fresh air, trees, food.
So when you look around you and count all the treasures that God has given us. And try your hardest to do at least one thing to show your care for God’s world and the treasure that is in it.
