In the year 2000 the two parishes of Epping and Carlingford entered a common
relationship through the sharing of a single Parish Priest. Over the next six or
seven years the parishes entered a process of increasing collaboration and sharing
of resources and pastoral programmes, including the sharing of a common parish staff.
In July 2007 the two parishes formally became one parish with the name of
‘The Catholic Parish of Epping and Carlingford.’ In the model we are following
however we still retain two distinct (though of course collaborating and cooperating)
communities within our single parish structure – the communities gathered around
our two parish churches of St Gerard’s at Carlingford and Our Lady Help of Christians'
at Epping.
For more information about our way of working as two communities within one parish please click here.
For more information about our way of working as two communities within one parish please click here.
Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday’s Gospel: Luke 5: 1 - 11: In the readings today we see a reluctance to take up God’s call, a reluctance based on a sense of unworthiness. But when we do that we deny both the goodness, the worthiness, that God has planted in us, AND the fact that what will happen is in God’s hands anyway. To dwell on our own sense of unworthiness is to disregard the gift of God that we are: we can’t admire the goodness of others and deny our own – after all God made us all. So we can’t escape our call by dwelling on what we lack: the Gospel’s challenge is to acknowledge the gifts that we do have, and to place those at the service of the Gospel. We leave the rest to God.
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