The Mission Statement is the fruit of ongoing prayer and consideration. The latest publication was authorised in January 2017: it will be kept under review and updated as necessary. This page always reflects the current text, and the Statement is also available as an A4-size PDF.

Eastbourne Ordinariate Mission Statement

A community in Christ seeking and sharing transforming grace, reconciling love, and compassionate hope.

A community in Christ,…

God the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit¹ is a community of love. We aim to reflect that love as a Eucharistic community by an active engagement and participation by each member². We celebrate the diversity and unity of each person’s human dignity rooted in the image of God.

We pray to see all God’s diverse family working together and aim to model a way of visible communion for all God’s people.³

…seeking and sharing transforming grace…

As the body need lungs to draw in the breath of life, so through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, mission is one lung of our community while the other lung is prayer and the nurture of our spiritual formation through on-going catechesis in the apostolic faith⁴. Through the sacraments we experience the transformative grace of the life of Christ. We prioritise prayer as the source from which all our actions arise and a means of becoming that which we contemplate. “In Christ Jesus, we no longer say we are ‘disciples’ and ‘missionaries’, but rather we are ‘missionary disciples.’”⁵

As Christ’s body we seek, by his Spirit, to communicate the gospel by becoming the salt and light of the Kingdom of God, in a broken world. We will support good practice, wherever it is found, in the wider Eastbourne community.

…reconciling love…

Calvary is the sign of the divine love revealed in Christ Jesus. We have been and are being loved, so we seek to love in return. Humility recognises our own brokenness and continual need for God’s mercy and healing⁶. As we receive God’s forgiveness in Baptism and Reconciliation, so we aim to create a community where all can be reconciled to God, others and themselves.

…compassionate hope.

We commit to developing compassionate mission for all suffering poverty of mind, body or spirit. We will put our gifts in the service of “leaving this earth somehow better than we found it”⁷.

We have a God-given vocation to care and nurture the gift of creation. As a community and as individuals we will commit to “living simply that others may simply live,” following the loaf principles of buying Local, Organic, Animal-friendly and Fair Trade goods, where practically possible; and to share our resources where we can.

With the intercessions of Our Lady of Walsingham and under the patronage of Blessed John Henry Newman, we seek the grace of God to guide our mission.

  1. Cf. Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 4; Decree Unitatis redintegratio, 2.
  2. Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 1.
  3. Cf. John 17:20–21; Decree Unitatis redintegratio, 2.
  4. Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 13; Acts 2:42
  5. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 124
  6. Cf. Mark 2:17; 1 John 4:10, 19; Romans 5:8
  7. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 183