3 April 2020
Dear Parishioners,
We are delighted to announce that the Holy Week, the Triduum, and Easter Sunday celebrations will be livestream broadcast by the clergy of St Thomas More, Bateman Parish from a private chapel space.
You can watch the Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord Mass on Sunday 5th April 2020 at 10.00am via this link
www.shorturl.at/fnCU3
It is suggested that if you have access to Palms, to have these at your home on Sunday to mark the liturgical day. You could display them at your door with a red ribbon for the liturgical colour of the day. If you have them in the home, you can receive a blessing for the palms
during the livestream. (If you have some holy water at home, you can also use this too).
If you don’t have palms at home, there will be palms blessed for people to pick up from the Parish from midday onwards on Sunday 5thApril. These will be left out until the next day, or whenever they run out.
So please don’t crowd the grounds to pick them up.
PLEASE REMEMBER SOCIAL DISTANCING AND NO MORE THAN TWO PEOPLE IN A PUBLIC SPACE.
The blessed palms will be available in the following locations:
– The Portico of Church
– The Shrine to Our Lady
– The Commemorative Rock
– Front Rose garden at the presbytery
– Front entrance of the Hall
– Side entrance of the Church (opposite the toilets)
If there are more than two people collecting palms when you arrive,
please wait in your car until they have left. Please spread yourselves out across the collection points and remember all social distancing rules, no physical contact with others, please don’t linger on the Church grounds to talk and unfortunately please don’t stop to pray either. Your visit must be very brief purely to collect a palm (or for others) and to immediately leave the Church grounds.
Some basic tips on Mass at home via TV:
– Dress up as you would for Sunday Mass
– Create a prayer space near the TV, possibly with candles, a crucifix and a bible.
– Sit on chairs that are not couches eg dining room chairs.
– Engage with all the responses and pray through the Mass.
Program of livestream broadcast for Holy Week, the Triduum, and
Easter Sunday are as follows:
- Holy Thursday, 9 April – Mass of the Lord’s Supper at 7.30pm
- Good Friday, 10 April – The Celebration of Lord’s Passion at 3.00pm
(Please remember: Good Friday is a day of Fast and Abstinence) - Holy Saturday, 11 April – Easter Vigil Mass at 7.00pm
- Easter Sunday, 12 April – Mass at 10.00am
We look forward to sharing this Holy Week with you, even if it is through Live streaming and through social distancing.
Although during this challenging time of “self-isolation” and “social distancing” due to such an extraordinary circumstance of the Covid-19, we do need to connect with one another even more through our prayerful support.
Let us reach out, stay together, and be united with one another in whatever ways possible, and through any useful means of technology these days, so that engaging with our fellow parishioners, we can truly experience our loving God in the midst of world health crisis.
The parish clergy, office staff, and I have received many encouraging
emails, notes, and phone calls over the last few weeks. Thank you wholeheartedly, your warm words of appreciation have no doubt lifted our spirit in these difficult circumstances, which have been deeply impacted by the Coronavirus.
I invite you to make connection with us at our parish from any of the
following ways:
- St Thomas More, Bateman Parish website – batemancatholic.org
- Register at St. Thomas More Catholic Flocknote at:
stthomasmorecatholic.flocknote.com
As we begin to enter Holy Week with the Triduum and Easter celebrations, let us pray that we may share in the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross, so that we too can rise with him to newness of life at Easter.
Fr. Phong Nguyen
Parish Priest