MERCY GROVE

This year’s Season of Creation theme is LIVING WATER with the motto being RENEWAL AND REGENERATION. If you look around Mercy Grove today you will notice green guards around new plants. In June, 200 shrubs, grasses and ground covers were planted as an understory corridor as habitat for small animals, birds and insects. The planting was carried out by students from our own Nativity School as well as five other local primary schools. This coincides with, and celebrates, ten years of our Church community caring for and developing this corner of the Belair National Park.

 

Background

In 2015 a small group of parishioners from the then Blackwood Catholic Parish negotiated with the Belair National Park to care for and regenerate a small degraded former house-site section of the Belair National Park. Around this time Pope Francis declared an ‘Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy’ to run from the end of 2015 through to the end of 2016. This led to the site becoming known as Mercy Grove. In 2016 the main tree planting occurred through working bees, and the site was consecrated by Archbishop Philip Wilson during an on-site Mass.

 

Many other events have followed: special tree plantings by parish priests as well as the bishop, the annual ecumenical services for Season of Creation, Stations of the Cross in Lent, Youth Group activities and personal visits for personal reflection. A bench seat was donated during the Year of Mercy, and ‘Mercy Grove’ has been carved into a piece of fallen trunk.

 

While the Mercy Grove is a small patch of scared land in Belair National Park, it is a reminder of the importance to gather, and to remember our responsibilities in caring for our Common Home.