Parish Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Margaret Conneely, (Month's Mind)
12.00: Barry Skelton, (Anniv).
6.30: Ada Conboy & Peggy Roache (Anniv).

AS I WAS SAYING.....

The 'harvest celebration' this year will be unique since we are joining our Church of Ireland friends for a common celebration. We Romans are relative newcomers to this celebration, or at least to the liturgical side of it. Yet some of our older readers will be familiar with what was essentially a 'secular Harvest festival'. As those of you from a rural background will know, when the final sheaf had been saved, the celebrations began. It was a communal celebration precisely because the harvest had been a communal effort. The celebrations consisted of dinner, drinks and much barn- dancing! For some reason, the practice of celebrating it liturgically never entered the Catholic tradition in Ireland. I wonder why?

The practice of a ritualised 'harvest celebration' has deep roots in antiquity, predating even Old Testament times. The Old Testament writers, like the prophet Isaiah, associated the harvest festival with 'great rejoicing':

They rejoice before you as at harvest time,
As men make merry when dividing spoils. (9:2b).

So why this omission, this great gap in the Irish Catholic tradition? This gap is all the more surprising in a predominantly agricultural society. Yet the Church of Ireland has long had the Harvest Festival at the heart of its liturgical calendar.

But the modern Roman Missal actually does contain a 'Harvest Mass'. And this is no 'new-fangled' development. Even the old Tridentine Ritual carried a Harvest Mass! Obviously, within the Roman Catholic tradition, the Harvest Mass has always been recognised and provided for. But, in Ireland, it has never been promoted or availed of!

There are at least two possible explanations:
(1) The Harvest Festival fell victim to the good old Catholic principle: if the Protestants are promoting it, it is by definition suspect and best avoided! (Did not the scriptures fall victim to that same principle?)
(2) But the second is more plausible: the 'harvest dance' was an intrinsic feature of the Irish harvest celebration.

From the foundation of the state until the 1960s, the Irish Catholic bishops had a phobia about dancing, (or, more correctly, a phobia about post-dance activities!) In 1925, our own Bishop O'Donnell, deploring the craze for dancing among Galway women, had some helpful words for the fathers of these miscreants: "If your girls do not obey you, if they are not in at the hours appointed, lay the lash upon their backs. That was the good old system, and that should be the system today!" In this atmosphere, the bishops may have concluded that the liturgical celebration of the harvest could well be misinterpreted as an endorsement of some nefarious associated activities about which they themselves were less than enthusiastic! While the Harvest Festival would not be condemned by the bishops, they certainly would not promote it. For far too long, the Church of Ireland people have had the floor to themselves. Let's get out there this year and, with style, out-dance them. After all, why should Protestants have all the fun?!

-Dick Lyng.

By the way.......

Harvest Supper

For most, if not all Galwegians, St Nicholas' Collegiate Church is not just an Anglican church, but a church and a centre where all people, from all traditions, can feel welcome. St Nicholas' will again play this role at next week's Harvest Supper.

(The article below first appeared in the Galway Advertiser on Thursday last. We are grateful to that newspaper for their permission to use it here in the Parish Newsletter, and to Patrick for the gracious sentiments expressed therein. Indeed he has expressed well the present 'state of play' between the respective Churches regarding Eucharistic practice. Christian optimist that he is, he rightly stresses the possibilities rather than the limitations involved.)

For the past few months St Nicholas' has been shared by Protestants and Catholics as The Augustinians hold their Masses there while St Augustine's Church is being renovated. To celebrate the new links and friendship between the two churches, there will be a Harvest Supper - a Christian celebration and banquet of friendship and growth on Wednesday October 5 at 7.30pm in St Nicholas'. All are invited.

On that night, the church will become a banquet hall, with tables arranged in two long lines down its middle, and laid in waiting for worshippers and food. The church will be decorated with flowers, vegetables, and market produce. The event will be a liturgical banquet with readings from The Bible, music, prayers, and toasts to life, freedom, peace, and Jerusalem.

At the feast there will be the breaking and sharing of bread. However Catholics and Protestants have a different 'take' on the Eucharist, but Rev Patrick Towers, the rector of St Nicholas', stresses what is there in common as opposed to those who obsess over difference.

"As things stand between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland, there is no permission to share the Eucharist sacramentally," Rev Towers stated during the week. "Nonetheless we can do the things the sacrament points to - the breaking and sharing of bread and the drinking of wine - literally, just as a meal. Sharing a meal is at the centre of Christianity, so sharing a meal should be at the centre of relations between the two churches. It's thus very appropriate that such a meal takes place in the church. It will be more than just a 'good feed'."

Continuing with the theme of celebrating links between different faith traditions, the event will follow the pattern of the Jewish Seder, the meal celebrated during Pesach (Passover).

Rev Towers feels the sharing of the church has been of enormous benefit. "To have two churches living out of one building has brought us closer together," he said. "In a couple of months the Augustinians will return to their newly renovated church and we are going to feel very bereft. The relationship has become more substantial than a holiday romance."