Saturday 9 March 2024

What Do You Think of Our Church Readers?

The Irish Catholic, 22 February 2024

Feedback, we all agree, is very welcome, provided it is constructive. We can all improve, and people's well-intentioned views can help us do so (in the form, " Well done!"+ "Maybe you could etc.").  What do you think of Ossory priest Martin Delaney's approach to the subject in this recent article?  (For bettter magnification, click here.)

If anyone would like to offer his or her services as reader (and raise the standard maybe!), please contact the reader coordinator for Newcastle, Rathcoole or Saggart. (For contact details, under 'Parish Team' on the menu-bar above, scroll down to 'Parish Groups' => 'Ministers of the Word'.)

Wednesday 14 February 2024

Praying for War-Stricken Peoples during Lent

Pope Francis recalls suffering in Ukraine and Holy Land

The above is the Vatican News headline for its report on the Pope's address delivered at his General Audience earlier today, Ash Wednesday (see here ). "Today, as Lent begins," he said, "let us prepare to journey through this time as an opportunity for conversion and inner renewal, in listening to the Word of God, in caring for our brothers and sisters, who are in great need. Here, let us never forget the poor people of Ukraine, Palestine, and Israel, who suffer so much. Let us pray for these brothers and sisters who suffer from war. Let us continue our help and intensify prayer, especially to request the gift of peace in the world". 

In Ireland of old, great emphasis was placed on giving up things for Lent. In these days what comes most readily to mind is lightening the burden of those bowed down in whatever small way we can. Yes, as we consider the world around us, what we see can get us all down, so mind-numbing is it. We who have just exited our decade of centenaries bringing back all the killing of WWI, our War of Indepen- dence and our Civil War now see (if not, thankfully, at home) senseless war still raging -- even in the Holy Land. Our one prayer, then, today and for the next forty days, has to be that some way through and out of all the seemingly unstoppable killing be found and agreed on by the shaking of hands. And here I think of the play Three Sisters (1901) by that noble Russian writer -- one of the many in his country in times past -- Anton Chekhov. At the very end of a play which included gunshots and death, the sisters come to the front to utter what we could call not just their own but all of humanity's half-prayer, half-desperate cry about human affairs and where at all they are going: "If only we knew why we live, why we suffer! If only we knew!"  

Sunday 24 December 2023

Happy Christmas


The photo above shows Saggart Church as seen from near the carpark in Citywest hotel. In our churches we are about to celebrate the very joyous occasion that is Christmas every year.  But last year and this one, we in Saggart couldn't and cannot but think also of all the Ukrainian refugees spending Christmas in our local hotel. They have been torn from their families, wives from husbands, children from their fathers, far away from their homes and living togther as best they can in one room. Not so long ago, before Covid and the war, this hotel was for us all here in Saggart somewhere to relax, celebrate, have a good time. In February 2020 it was buzzing with excitement as an election count centre. The following month, Covid struck and the hotel soon became a vaccination centre. Then in February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine and the wave of refugees that followed spread as far as Ireland, with the Citywest Hotel becoming a refugee-reception centre and, later, a 'transit hub'.  All had changed utterly, yes indeed, and an unspeakable terror had been born. Whenever I bump into the elderly man I first met at the St Patrick's Day parade last year accompanied by his ever-so-brave wife pushing his wheelchair, I find I am simply lost for words. All I can do is say 'Hello' in Ukrainian, one of the very few words I know, as cheerily as I can. Thoughts like these cannot but stay with us through this festive season as will also the horror taking place at the moment in the land of Jesus's birth, another sad event threatening to drown out the joyous singing of the angels.

We wish each other, then, a Christmas as happy as can be in these circumstances. And there is  definitely something happy-making in this piece of news: we can convey a Christmas greeting to our Ukrainian guests at the same time as we do to each other, since we both, Ukrainian Orthodox and Irish Catholics, now celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December.  And so:

Happy Christmas,   Nollaig Shona,
З Різдвом Христовим 
[z rizdvom khrystovym]