Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Michael & Annie Joyce, (Anniv).
11.00: Coleman & Sabina Cooke, (Anniv).
6.30: James Tully, & Agnes Kilkelly, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

The Summer is well and truly over. Water, both from the skies and the lakes, obsessed us throughout. So plentiful, and yet so scarce! However, some great memories linger on. For example, the Galway Arts Festival and the Galway Races either dodged or defied the weather and brightened our Summer once more.

I presume many of you, together with your families, sought solace in sunnier places. For those who can afford it, - and, thanks in no small way to Ryanair, most people now can - there is great virtue in 'getting away from it all'. Not only do we get a break from our own routine existence, together with a bit of sunshine; but we also get a new perspective on life and living.

Our way of doing things is not the only way, or even necessarily the best way! That general lesson could be applied to every dimension of our human experience: work, recreation, socialising, family life, religion, and so on.

I spent the last couple of weeks in Rome. What a wonderful city with its incomparable artistic and archaeological treasures. Those who depict the contribution of Catholicism to society as entirely negative should really visit Rome sometime. The artistic and architectural legacy of Catholicism is truly stunning.

Now I am aware that there is another school of thought, that the Church's primary function is not that of a museum curator. This can be characterised as the : 'Sell the Last Supper and feed Africa' school! It is my guess that, had that line been followed, Rome would now be an empty quarry and Africa would still be starving. Corrupt structures are not changed through selling off valuable works of art.

However, I believe that it is from the Italian peoples themselves, rather than from their wonderful artistic treasures, that we Irish people have most to learn today. Rome has a resident population of 3 million. Its narrow streets are teeming with people for 18 hours of the day. Yet, during my recent stay there, I never once saw a person drunk, or a row, or anti-social behaviour of any kind. Of course the Italians are not saints, but the pot-bellied, beer-swilling yob, so emblematic today of Europe, has never taken root there.

The Italians have created down the years a very family-friendly, hospitable and humane culture that has inoculated them against this particularly nasty infection. And, just as with their art and architecture, Catholicism has contributed enormously to their social culture.

The Summer will soon be a mere memory. The last swallows have parted - wearing fastened overcoats! The last of the Summer exam results have been harvested and the schools have opened again. Parish life, also on hold for the Summer, has now fully resumed. And, of course, lest we forget, the McCarthy Cup is back in its natural position by the Nore (!), while Sam Maguire will head southwest again this afternoon. Normality has regained its boring grip!

-Dick Lyng

Items of Some Interest

Table d'Hote: a reflection

It's not that I'm a la carte, a bread and wine man. The Lord is my portion and my cup. Even in the depleted form of the sign that my tradition persists in performing, offering bread without wine to the worshipping community, the sacrificial meal is at the centre of my life. It is the cool silence of the airport church in the raucous bustle of my comings and goings, refreshing me and returning me to a world that the Lord saw was very good indeed.

But precisely because the quiet hospitality of the sacrament mirrors the hospitality of Christ toward the whole of creation, I know that the Eucharist is made for man and not man for the Eucharist. It is not only the earthly summit of Christian liturgy for which we all strive. It is also the earthly source of Christian living in which we all try to survive. There is eating and drinking in it, or should be. There can also be what you might call Mass hysteria. I speak as a member of a tradition that utterly neglects non-eucharistic services in parish worship.

-AIDAN MATHEWS, In The Poorer Quarters, p. 490.

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