Parish Logo - standardA new year and a new look

Welcome to Advent! With the beginning of Advent, we start a new liturgical season in the Church – and a new liturgical year. It seemed like the ideal time to launch a new look Parish bulletin – now called “Parish Life”, as well as a new Parish logo and just for good measure – a new Parish website.

I will explain more about all of this in the message today (the homily) and indeed I will be starting a new series of messages over the four weeks of this season of Advent. Let’s begin with the new Parish Logo.
Since arriving in the parish in September, I have been thinking and praying about what it means to be a parish – a local church – today. How do we go about this whole business of gathering to worship our God, being fed and nourished with the precious gift of the Eucharist each week? Equally importantly, how does being a Catholic in this particular part of Wollongong at this point in human history impact upon the rest of our lives and the local community?
In thinking about this, I began working with the brilliant graphic designer who works for the Diocese – Jeremy Yuen. There were a number of elements that were essential in the logo –

(1) it had to be clearly Christian;
(2) it had to represent the diversity yet unity of the parish;
(3) it had to be dynamic, not static/constant – suggesting the cycle of growth and development within the Christian life; and
(4) it had to incorporate what we will begin talking about during this season of Advent – the four-fold movement that lies at the heart of the Christian experience.

We worked through a number of designs – an early favourite was a series of jagged lines radiating from a circle in the centre which formed a monstrance-like object. But it never quite worked. Then Jeremy showed us a pattern comprised of coloured circles – which looked great and became the genesis of the final logo.
Even so, the richness of the logo needs to be explained. It has the cross of the Lord at its centre and heart.
There are 72 circles of varying sizes (three to be precise – a little honour to the Trinity) to suggest the variety of shapes and sizes and life circumstances that comprise our parish. 72 is a great biblical number – it was the number of elders that helped Moses during the period of the Exodus, and in the gospels (particularly Luke 10:1) it respresents the group of disciples that Jesus sent ahead of him – in teams of two – to all the towns and villages between them and Jerusalem. While the 12 Apostles represent the leaders in the Church, the 72 are everyone else – all of us, who have been called into community to encounter Jesus and share his love with those around us. It is a great model of the Christian life – especially during this Year of Mercy that lies ahead of us.
There will be more information about the parts of the cross and the different colours next week.
Grace + peace,
Fr Richard