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GIFTEDNESS AND SERVICE are what community is all about. St. Paul
spells it out clearly above: each member of the community has a special gift and
that gift is to be used for a good purpose at the service of others in the community.
All that remains, therefore, is to ask: "What is my gift?",
"What am I good at?", "What do I do really well?" and, incidentally,
"What do I enjoy doing?" Now if you can't answer these questions, others can
help you. Ask your family, your close friends, work colleagues, your priest. Very
often others see fine things in our personality of which we are completely unaware.
Regarding the parish societies, associations and groups listed
in these pages; there is a sense in which we shouldn't need to have them. If
we need to have organisations to enable us to do what Our Lord asked all His followers
to do: to pray, to visit the sick and imprisoned, to feed hungry people, to assist
poor people, to clean and care for His house, its beauty and its surrounds, to
nurture young people, to study the Scriptures, to console the bereaved, to catechise
children and adults, to bring back the lapsed, to evangelise the unconverted etc.
etc... if these corporal works of mercy would only get done because we have
parish groups and societies, then we would seriously have lost our way. Our Lord
requires all His followers to engage in these good deeds as a matter of course.
In fact His clear preference is that we should do them very discreetly, in hidden
ways. He strongly suggests that we should perform good deeds by stealth and not
in the public gaze: 'Do not let your right hand know what your left is doing.'
(Matthew 6:3) However, it is also true that we are not isolated, individual Christians.
We are part of the vast community of the Church and we must work and serve together,
in unison. It is also true that 'many hands make light work'. Very often more
can be achieved by a group of highly motivated, like-minded people working harmoniously
together than by a single individual working solo. As well as providing effectiveness
and companionship, our parish organisations also provide a spirituality,
an inner set of Gospel values which gives a prayerful pattern of life to its members
and truly assists them to grow in holiness. All parishioners should seriously
consider belonging to one of these societies.
The existence of these parish organisations and societies is based
on the needs felt in our community. These, of course, are many and varied. In
fact, they sometimes overwhelm us for even if it were not the case that Hayes
is a government-designated area of social deprivation, Our Lord's words resound
down the centuries: 'The poor you have always with you'. (Matthew 26:11)
Finally, we must be aware of the possibility that our parish needs
to be open to meet the increasing and changing
needs of our times: for the divorced and remarried, for the bereaved and the grieving,
for people with physical and mental challenges, for single people, for awareness
of social justice issues, for refugees and asylum seekers, for parish recreational
and social events, for artistic and liturgical symbols, for the ministry of welcome
at the entrances to the church, ... the list could go on. If you
know of any area of need in our parish or our town which we should be addressing
then please do something about it and do it with your sisters and brothers in
the parish. Each one of us has been given a talent, a gift, a skill. Let us not
bury it in a field or otherwise hide it. Rather let us find out what it is, refine
and develop it and use it to the greater honour and glory of God!
We congratulate all those who work so tirelessly in our parish. We applaud all those who have show real dedication over
many, many years.
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