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    Contacts:
     
    St. Thomas of Canterbury - Cowes St. David  - East Cowes
    St. Thomas - Newport St. Michael - Bembridge
    St. Mary - Ryde St. Cecilia's Abby -Appley Rise
    Holy Cross -Seaview St. Patrick - Sandown
    St. Mary's Abby - Quarr St. Saviour - Totland
    Sacred Heart - Shanklin St. Joseph - Niton
    Our Lady & St. Wilfrid - Ventnor


    Information
    the VISION

    Communion and Mission are the two vital words, which describe and run through all that I, as your Bishop, have been saying over the last few years. Running through the entire work of the diocese and its agencies, they define precisely for me what I understand the Church to be: it has to be COMMUNION and it has to have MISSION. We must be a people with a sense of evangelical and Christian purpose. Everything else depends on that. All our pastoral priorities have to be measured against the demands of Communion and Mission.

     

    Communion: a way of describing the very life of God

    This has to be revealed to us and it is in Christ, the Word of God, that we begin to discover the inner life of God. Christ teaches us that love is to be found at the heart of God's life. "You must believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me." (Jn 14:11)

     The love which unites Father and Son, we call Spirit. Jesus tells us this in St John's Gospel when he says, "When the Spirit comes whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who issues from the Father, he will be my witness." (Jn 15:26)

    The Trinity - Father, Son and Spirit in relationship - defines what communion means. We are invited to share in that relationship which is the divine life of God. At the heart of the relationship are three distinct persons, at the same time perfectly united by the love, which flows between them.

    Communion: how we reflect the life of God

    In the same way that the persons of the Trinity are intimately related to each other, so we too are deeply and intimately related to each other. Created in the image and likeness of God, we are brought into that communion of love, which is God. For our part, what we have to do is to love one another because "everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God." (1 Jn 4:7)

    Communion: the Church

    This communion is established in the Word of God and in the Sacraments, which are the wonderful, mysterious ways in which God communicates with us, his chosen people.

    Through the Scriptures, proclaimed in the midst of the assembly, God actually speaks to us, and calls us to respond. (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium 7, GIRM 29, 55) "Listening to the Word of God should become a life-giving encounter which draws from the biblical text the living Word which questions, directs and shapes our lives." (Novo Millennio Ineunte 39)

    Through our initiation as Christians we are in communion with Christ - we are parts of his body. This means that we are also in communion with each other; and we call this communion "the Church". It is our sharing in the life of God that creates and sustains this communion.

    We become members of the Church through the sacraments of initiation, which draw us into one body. Together in Baptism we are given a share in the death and resurrection of Christ, together in Confirmation we are anointed with the Holy Spirit for service and mission as disciples, and together in the Eucharist we are nourished by the very life of God.

    Bishop Crispian Hollis