Dec 31, 2020
St. Catherine's during the year that was 2020!!
It has been a very difficult year for all of us as we went through terrible bushfires, calamities and Covid-19. It was indeed very challenging but at the same time God can work in mysterious ways. It was a very busy and spiritually fruitful year for our Parish.
Covid restrictions forced us to celebrate Easter without our faithful and yet God's Grace filled our hearts!
The rest of the year was a year of spiritual renewal and growth for our Parish.
Even though we were not able to celebrate our Parish's 40th year anniversary and the Consecration of the Church, St. Catherine's was blessed with the reception of her Holy Relics kindly provided to us by the Holy Cross Monastery.
We were able to do our Easter and Christmas Food Collections- more successful this year than ever due to the support from our Modern Greek Societies in Sydney- HELLSOC and MUGA- and our Christmas Toy visits were extended to 3 more organisations.
We were blessed with the creation of our Youth Fellowship with its very active coordinators- Dora, Gia and Stephanie- and the St. Catherine's Parents Group. We hope to continue our growth in 2021.
We hosted the very successful FOCUS Youth Forum with guest speaker His Eminence Archbishop Makarios and organised our inaugural commemoration of the Asia Minor Catastrophe with Professor Vrasidas Karalis as our guest speaker in the presence of our beloved Archbishop.
Our Greek School and Sunday School continued- in a different format- and yet we were able to host an ice-skating event, a gingerbread workshop, a visit to the new Chau Chak Wing Museum at Sydney University and our annual Christmas Carols at St. Basil's Randwick.
A very blessed year! And this happened through God's Grace and the hard work of all people involved in our beautiful Parish- members of Committee and the Ladies Auxiliary, chanters, Sunday School teachers, Greek School teachers, Youth coordinators, parents, children and everyone involved in the running of the parish.
A big thank you to our wonderful friend and photographer Eirini Alligiannis who captured so masterfully our events throughout the year!
So as we approach a new year-2021- our prayer is that God will bless our efforts to continue our spiritual growth in the Church. May God bless us all with Health- let us hope that Covid will become a thing of the past- Love, Happiness and Faith. Let us all remember that everything is part of God's providence! 2020 was a difficult year and yet it was a spiritually blessed year. Let us all remain steadfast in our faith and our trust in our Church and its Shepherds.
On behalf of our wonderful parish, I wish you all a Blessed New Year!!