Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Joseph Carroll, (Anniv).
11.00: Martin & Bridgie Murray (Anniv); John Margetts (Month's Mind).
6.30: Patrick Tyrrell, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

A single, tragic topic exercised the collective mind of Galwegians this week: the brutal murder of a beautiful young Swiss woman, Manuela Riedo. People reacted with a mixture of shock, guilt and shame. Two factors combined to make this dastardly deed more poignant still: the fact that she had been among us a mere two days, and the fact that she was an only child. In robbing Manuela of her young life, the killer robbed her parents of their peace and their future.

The Augustinian was unintentionally close to those immediately affected since we were asked to facilitate a 'Service of Remembrance.' At least 400 young people attended, among them Manuela's immediate cohort of 42 students. The church was full twenty minutes before the Service began. The silence they observed was amazing, unnerving even! You could, literally, hear a pin drop throughout those twenty minutes of 'nothingness'. The only audible element was the stressed sobbing of Manuela's distraught young friends.

The congregation came from a great variety of national, ethnic and religious backgrounds. This of course presented its own challenge: how does one cross such formidable barriers as language and religion? I learned once again that the Church has within her treasury the ritual language to handle most human experiences, whether joyful or sorrowful, (if we are not paralysed by rules and regulations, that is).

In fact Catholicism employs the basic symbols that are common to all the great religions: light, darkness, water, music, silence, scriptures, poetry and prayer. And these symbols are common to the great religions precisely because they are basic to all human experience. All that is required then is a sacred space sufficiently flexible to permit relaxed interaction with these symbols.

Our church here is ideal for such a celebration. It lends itself so readily to relaxed, intimate participation. For example, central to the ritual was the construction of the Cross of Christ by the young grieving participants. The Cross was constructed with night-lights in a darkened church. When they had completed that task, the Cross of Christ lit up the tear-stained faces of the assembly, revealing in a rather dramatic way that suffering and death visit the young and the old almost arbitrarily. I guess the young congregation, of whatever persuasion, will all carry that experience with them for the rest of their days.

At the outset, I mentioned 'guilt and shame' as common ingredients in the reaction of many Galway people. Galway is widely known as a vibrant city, a city where young people feel safe. It has a third-level student population of over twenty-three thousand. It would be a terrible pity if the act of one crazed madman were to destroy parents' confidence in Galway city as a safe haven in which their adult children can 'cut their teeth' and come to maturity. It would be a greater tragedy still if events of the past week were to rob our young people of that optimistic confidence so essential to normal living. The best way to restore their faith in humanity is the early arrest of the culprit.

Unfortunately, Manuela can never be restored.

-Dick Lyng

Items of Some Interest

Our New Team

Pictured in the PDF version of the newsletter is our new panel of Altar Servers. They were of course inducted to the office at Mass on Sunday last.

On their first day, they performed their onerous duties with the optimum mixture of alacrity and decorum! They are pictured with the PP and their two senior instructors, Sam Ashmore and Georgia Ryan. Front Row: Thomas Hayes and Dominic D'Costa. 2nd Row: Amy Byrne, Lauren Margetts and John Margetts. Back Row: Sam Ashmore, Emma Beaster, Benedict D'Costa, and Georgia Ryan.

When the panel settles down and acquires the necessary experience, we will be able to draw up a manageable rota and rest some members on the odd Sunday. At least that's the way Alex Ferguson operates. And he has been our role model to date, both in our selection and our training methods!

Faith: A Reflection

Our cultural commentators today tend to dismiss faith as irrational. But to place faith and reason in opposition is surely false. For example in choosing a school, we are being asked to have faith - do we trust that the school does what it says it does; do we have faith in the inspection regime which produces the reports - are they assessing the school on the criteria we consider valuable. And my child: do I have faith in him or her to flourish in a particular environment?

Any difficult decision - having a baby, making a long term commitment to a partner - is about faith, our trust and confidence both in ourselves, and in others. Even in the most mundane parts of our lives, faith is vital: whenever we get in a car, a train or an airplane, we are expressing our faith in the responsibility and expertise of other people. Faith is a vital part of how we take risks calmly and without fear.

-Madeleine Bunting, BBC Radio 4.

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