Masses Today

6.30: Séamus Breathnach, (Anniv)
11.00: May & Christy Deacy, (Anniv)
6.30: Margaret & Michael Joe Walsh, (Anniv)





Events This Week






AS I WAS SAYING...

First of all, I wish all of you mothers out there a very enjoyable and pleasant Mothering Sunday. The feast seems to go from strength to strength annually. I wonder why? Writing about motherhood in today's world is a highly dangerous exercise! It has all the attractions (and pit-falls) of waving de Valera's Constitution at a gathering of ardent feminists! So I will launch out instead into the calmer waters of history.

I had always suspected that Mothering Sunday, like St. Valentine's Day, was a recent invention, the product of some astute commercial minds. So I embarked on a little research so that I might have my prejudices confirmed!

Some historians claim that Mothers' Day holiday has its origins in the ancient Spring festival dedicated to mother goddesses. The Greeks honoured Rhea, the mother of all gods and goddesses during their Spring festival. In Rome they honoured Cybele, another mother goddess. Ceremonies in her honour began some 250 years before the birth of Christ. This Roman religious celebration, known as Hilaria, lasted for three days: from March 15th to March 18th. The dates are suspiciously close to our modern celebration!

During the season of Lent, 1644, an Englishman named Richard Symonds made the following entry in his Diary:
"Every mid-Lent Sunday is a great day at Worcester, when all the children and god-children meet at the head of the family and have a feast. They call it Mothering-day."

So in medieval England Mothering Sunday fell on the fourth Sunday of Lent, just as it does in our day. But many Church historians believe that the medieval Mothering Feast had an ecclesiastical foundation. Apprentices, farm labourers, serfs of various kinds, and girls in service all worked away from their own homes, obviously. (It was quite common in those days for children to leave home for work once they were ten years old.) So throughout the year they worshipped at their nearest parish or "daughter church". Once a year they were expected to return to their home or "mother" church. So each year in the middle of Lent, everyone would visit their "mother" church, or the main church or Cathedral of the area. Inevitably the return to the "mother" church became an occasion for family reunions when children who were working away returned home. And most historians think that it was the return to the "Mother" church which led to the tradition of children, particularly those working as domestic servants, or as apprentices, being given the day off to visit their mother and family.

The American version, "Mother's Day", had quite a separate and a far more recent beginning. (It is also celebrated on a different day, the second Sunday of May). It was initiated by a neurotic Methodist teacher, Anna M. Jarvis, who seems to have been guilt-ridden and grief-stricken at the death of her mother in 1905. She launched a campaign in 1907 to have Mother's Day recognised as a 'national holiday'. But it only gained general popularity after World War II. A mid-Lent Mothers' Day didn't feature in Irish tradition at all. (But perhaps January 6th, 'Nollaig na mBan', 'Women's Christmas', served a similar function?)

While Mothering Sunday did indeed predate modern commercialism, commerce is no doubt responsible for merging three distinctive 'mothering elements' (pagan, christian and pathological) into one western celebration. Regardless of its origins, have a lovely, lazy Mothering Sunday!

-Dick Lyng.




AUGUSTINIAN HUNGER AWARENESS CAMPAIGN

FIGHT HUNGER BY CHANGING YOUR LIFESTYLE

"God does not demand much of you. He asks back what he gave you. From him you take what is enough for you. When your possess surplus, you possess what belongs to others."

-St. Augustine.

There are more Trócaire Boxes now available. Take them to your homes, fill them during the course of Lent, and return them to the Church during the Easter Triduum.






HOLY WEEK AND EASTER, 2004

CONFESSIONS:
Thursday: 11.00-12.30; 4.00-6.00
Friday: 11.00-12.00 ; 6.30-8.00
Saturday: 11.00-1.00; 2.30-3.30; 5.00-6.00
PENITENTIAL SERVICES:
Wednesday: 8.00
Saturday: 4.00
EASTER SERVICES:
Holy Thursday: 8.00: Mass of the Lord' s Supper
9.00-11.00: Eucharistic Adoration
Good Friday: 12.00: Stations of the Cross.
3.00: The Lord's Passion.
8.00: Galway Gospel Singers.
Holy Saturday: 9.00: Easter Vigil.
Easter Sunday: Usual Sunday programme.





GATHER MUSIC PROJECTS PRESENTS "FEAST OF LIFE"

A Christian Musical by Marty Haughen
Back by popular demand after 'Agape' success last year
BLACK BOX THEATRE, GALWAY
MARCH 24th, 25th, 26th at 8.00pm nightly.
Tickets available (€15/€10) from Box Office, Ph. 569777.




FOR MOTHERING SUNDAY

In Memoriam M.K.Heaney, 1911-1984
When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives-
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

* * * * * * * * *

In the last minutes he said more to her
Almost than in all their life together.
'You'll be in New Row on Monday night
And I'll come up for you and you'll be glad
When I walk in the door. . . Isn' t that right?'
His head was bent down to her propped-up head.
She could not hear but we were overjoyed.
He called her good and girl. Then she was dead,
The searching for a pulsebeat was abandoned
And we all knew one thing by being there.
The space we stood around had been emptied
Into us to keep, it penetrated
Clearances that suddenly stood open.
High cries were felled and a pure change happened.

--Seamus Heaney (extracts from 'Clearance').






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