This National Volunteer Week 2024, we are delighted to have Margaret Mary sharing her joy and honour to serve God at Our Lady of Victories Catholic Parish for the past decade. She also paid tribute to Don, who has volunteered as a sacristan for thirty years, and Ray who has volunteered at St Vincent de Paul for fifty years. Our Archdiocese has been blessed to have countless individuals, just like Margaret Mary, Don, and Ray, who selflessly give their time and talents to make our community a better place. Volunteering is a testament to the power of community and the strength that comes from working together for a greater good, it is about bringing God’s love into the world through our actions, creating ripples of kindness that extend far beyond what we can see.

To all volunteers within our Archdiocese and beyond, we say thank you. Your work is invaluable, and your impact is significant. We invite you to take a moment to honour and pray for these incredible individuals and pray for ourselves may we be inspired to give more of ourselves, to serve with joy, and to continue building a community where love and generosity thrive. St. Teresa of Calcutta, patron Saint of volunteers, pray for us! Happy National Volunteer Week!

• National Volunteer Week 2024

  National Volunteer Week 2024

  Author: Archdiocese of Brisbane

  
  I’ve been volunteering here at Our Lady of Victories Catholic Parish for around ten years. But really I’ve been volunteering in some kind of informal or formal capacity since I was a child. I first started volunteering as a result of my parents great example serving the community. So, Dad would bundle all the kids in my family and we’d go out and collect, put out bags one weekend for St Vincent de Paul and then the following weekend we’d go and collect the donations from our parish and give them to St Vincent de Paul to distribute.

  Currently in my parish I serve on the Pastoral Council. And I also do various communication and marketing type roles for the parish, some voluntary administration work, and more recently I have served as a Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults catechist. So I’ve had the absolute privilege and honour of being involved accompanying a young person who wanted to become Catholic. And also a big part of my volunteering has been the music ministry. It’s a joy and an honour to be able to use the talents God’s given me for singing and playing piano, playing the organ and share the gifts that God has given me with others.

  Volunteering for me is very much a way of expressing my love for God. That’s what’s unique about volunteering for the Catholic Church, we get an opportunity to share the gifts and talents that He gives to us and to show our love for Him and express our faith in action. Well, I certainly would love to say thank you to each and every one of the thousands of volunteers right across the Archdiocese of Brisbane and also our broader community. For all the voluntary work, the acts of service that they do. I’d also like to pay tribute to the many dedicated examples of service in our Church and community and we have an example here in our parish of our sacristan Don who’s just completed, he’s retiring now from over thirty years of service as a sacristan in our parish, in this beautiful parish. So one other example is Ray who serviced St Vincent de Paul, been involved for fifty years.

  Even the smallest act of service, it could be just a smile. You might be sitting back in a hospital bed thinking, what could I do to volunteer for the Church? Your beautiful smile, your act of acceptance can be offered to God, and the power that comes from that it’s just transformative. It’s no longer just these little acts that we do, it’s infused with God and His love. So what we do in volunteering in the Church has an effect not just for today, not just for a legacy for even generations. Our volunteering, because it’s infused by God’s love and bringing his love to the world has ramifications for all of eternity. So I encourage everybody to become involved in that. It’s the most profound thing.