My dear Friends:

Joy, Peace and Blessings! How are you all doing in these very interesting and challenging times? Spring is on the horizon, the days are getting ‘longer’, new life is ‘springing up’ in the gardens, and the hope-filled, awaited vaccine is unfolding! With God’s help, we are headed in the right direction towards a better tomorrow.

On Thursday, our professional IT technicians set to address, correct, and iron-out some of the glitches with our cameras, internet and other IT mysteries. Hopefully, this will enable all of us to celebrate our masses, liturgies and sacraments within the church, and online, to their full potential.

It is our sincere hope and prayer that as this vaccine is received by many of our parishioners; the social distancing, sanitising etc., reduces the infection rate, and the ‘R’ drops significantly in this area, we will feel safe to reopen our church building once again. We love each one of you too much to risk your being an accidental statistic of this virus.

If I may, I should like to draw your attention to the following:

• Via Church TV, our church is open 24/7! All you need to do is Google Immaculate Conception Church, Portswood. Enter our website. Scroll down to Live and recorded. Click...click the ‘arrow’ and you are in! Sit in stillness with the Lord, for as long as you wish, day or night!

• With the exception of Monday, live mass will be online each day of the week at 10.00 a.m. (you can also find it as ‘recorded’ later in the day)

• Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament will take place after the 10.00 a.m. mass each day, until the following morning before the 10.00 a.m. mass.

• Each Friday, after the 10.00 am mass commencing 29th January, we shall have the recitation of the rosary, in which we shall pray for our Front Liners.

In the not-too-distant future, we shall begin our various Sacramental Programmes online. But more about that later!

For now, just know that the Lord, and this Faith Community, loves you. We are with you every step of the way.

Remember me as loving you,

Fr. Antony