St. Matthew’s Church Ballyfermot PARISH NEWSLETTER

25 Feb (2nd Sunday of Lent)

PLEASE TAKE THIS HOME WITH YOU TO SPREAD THE WORD

World Meeting of Families Collection

will be made at all Masses this weekend

It will replace the usual Share Collection.

NNovena of Grace March 4 - 12

Mass Times: Opening Sunday 12.00 Mon Tue Wed Thurs Fri

Morning: 10.00am Evening: 7.00pm

Sat 10.00am, 6.30pm Sun 10.30am

Closing Monday: 10.00am and 07.00pm

Second Sunday of

L e n t

Please take a Trócaire Box For Lent

Mass Times Weekdays: Saturday: Vigil Mass 6.30 Tuesday Sunday: 10.00 Prayer Service 09.00, 09.45 (Convent) Masses

10.30,12.00 Wed: 7.00pm only Mon, Thur, Fri: 10.00

FAITH MOMENT Prayer stands at the heart of our relationship with God. In prayer, a believer humbly seeks to grow in union with God, revealed in Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Prayer is a response of faith to God and reveals a divine - human dialogue of love, forgiveness, mercy and grace.

Weekly Collections Feb 11 First Collection € 915 Share Collection € 650 Family Offering €1085

Parish Centre or Sacristy: Phone: 626 56 95 Monday to Friday 10.00am to 1.00pm

NOVENA OF GRACE MARCH 4th-12th

SPECIAL PREACHER FOR OUR NOVENA OF GRACE

We here in St. Matthew's are delighted to welcome the well known Vincentian priest, Rev. Fr Pat Collins, M.A. STL. as our special preacher for our upcoming Novena of Grace. Fr. Pat, a long time member of the Charismatic Renewal, is well known in Ireland and abroad as a speaker, broadcaster, ecumenist and the author of hundreds of articles and about twenty five books. For many years Fr. Pat lectured on spirituality and also the psychology of religion in Dublin. He is a founder member of Alpha and the New Springtime Community, which is devoted to evangelising and training evangelisers.

St. Vincent De Paul Monthly Church Gate Collection takes place after all the Masses

this weekend

Mass Intentions 6.30 Sat 24 Feb Mary, Mick Whelan, Miyela Wilkes, Una Clarke, Ann Kavanagh

12.00 Sun 25 Feb Camillus Murray, William Canning, Catherine Whelan

Confirmation: St. Louise’s Girls: 1st March @ 11.00

Gospel Readings for the Week Ahead Mon 26/02 Lk 6: 36 - 38 ‘a full measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over’ Tue 27/02 Mt 23: 1 - 12 ‘For you have only one Teacher, the Christ.’ Wed 28/02 Mt 20: 17 - 28 ‘Anyone who wants to be great among you, must be your servant’ Thu 01/03 Lk 16: 19 – 31 FEAST OF ST. DAVID, BISHOP AND ABBOT, ‘they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead’ Fri 02/03 Mt 21: 33 - 43, 45 - 46‘ They would like to have arrested him but they were afraid of the crowds, who looked on him as a prophet.’ Sat 03/03 Lk 15: 1 - 3, 11 - 32 ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them’

FRIDAYS IN LENT As part of our Lenten journey here in St. Matthew's we have a special prayer format for Friday mornings during Lent.

9.30am Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament 10.00am Mass

10.30am Talk by Fr Joe on Jesus, Lent and Our Pilgrim Path 11.00am Tea/Coffee

11.30am Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament 12 noon Stations of the Cross

12.30pm Special Lenten Broth, (Made by Fr Joe!)

BOOK OF THE WEEK RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON:

A STORY OF HOMECOMING HENRI J.M. NOUWEN

IMAGE BOOKS LONDON 1994 Pp 160 The Pope over the past few days has reminded us that Lent is a beautiful time to come home. I was reminded of this lovely book by Henri Nouen. Whilst it is now quite dated it has managed to avoid becoming stale. Given all we know now about Nouwen and especially his at times painful, loyalty to Priesthood, this book is well worth a revisit. This spiritual gem was inspired by a chance encounter with Rembrandt’s famous painting and is a very moving spiritual journey to that place within where God has chosen to dwell. A fitting book for Lent.

EUCHARISTIC ADORATION This week sees the launch, or perhaps more accurately the re - launch of the Eucharistic Adoration programme here in St. Matthew's. This is an old but very beautiful way of praying. Sacred silent time alone in the presence of the Lord.

COULD YOU POSSIBLY GIVE ONE HOUR A WEEK?

Our thanks to Joe Varley and his team who are with us this weekend. We thank them for sharing with us their experience and commitment to Eucharistic Adoration.

Recent Funerals Marion O’Toole, Patrick Kilty

Matthew Garrigan, Elizabeth Pollard May They Rest in Peace

THE BURDEN OF JESUS

Lent seems an opportune moment to explore the burden of Jesus. The Pope said recently that Lent was a great time to come home. I think this was what got me thinking. The idea of coming home, of returning to what is important, to re - focus is of course very much part of the Lenten journey. Apart from the specifics of giving up something or doing something special for Lenten, my overall hope is that by the time I get to that beautiful and sacred moment of the Washing of the Feet on Holy Thursday night I will be that little bit closer to Jesus. Essentially my hope is that my Lenten journey will bring me into a new place. I mean a new place for my soul. This new ‘soul place’ would be characterised by at least a slightly deeper knowledge, understanding, and love of Jesus.

Recently as a result of some prayerful reflection I found myself thinking of the suffering of Jesus. It struck me that we tend to focus on the big dramatic moments of the Passion: the Carrying of the Cross, the Crowning with Thorns, the Scourging at the Pillar and the Crucifixion itself. I found myself drawn to other aspects of the suffering of Jesus. Perhaps the agony in the garden was the most immediate or obvious of these. However I soon realised that both the Cross and the Garden were avenues into other aspects of the burden of Jesus. For the purpose of this short piece I mean that the Cross led me to meditate on the physical sufferings of Christ and the Garden more towards his psychological suffering. I appreciate this is a gross oversimplification. However they do provide us with at least the desire to explore the notion of the burden of Jesus.

Let me stay with the garden for a moment. Sometimes a garden can become a wilderness. Sometimes even the most beautiful of gardens can have a bit of a wilderness at the bottom or in the corner. There is a connection between garden and wilderness. Maybe you would not mind visitors to your garden but you may be less comfortable with them in your wilderness. Even in the case of Jesus there is a connection between his garden, Gethsemane, and the wilderness that he was ‘driven’ into. This is the wilderness that Jesus inhabited with Satan, wild beasts and angels. The torment and strain of these forty days is something which can be easily missed. Jesus was tempted repeatedly. This is another example of the burden of Jesus that we can easily take for granted. Do we ever take time to consider that Jesus was burdened by the human condition. In something like the Passion we see as it were in technicolor and hear in Dolby stereo the enormity of the ‘big suffering’ of Jesus. Surely though if we only encounter this we miss a lot of what constitutes the ‘burden of Jesus’?

Is your burden a big difficult moment? Clearly sometimes it is. It can be a moment of madness that fills us with regret. It can be that moment in which our life changed. That said, is it not the case that for most of us the burden we carry is less dramatic. Our burden, whilst difficult, is more mundane. Our burden is less a splash of the spectacular and more often than not almost more boring than that. Our burden is not so often a crazy wave of sharp pain but more often in the realm of the dull nauseous ache. Our burden tends to be more constant than the one off. Our burden tends to be more in the area of personality, and sexuality and the cultural and social context that has shaped us. At least some of our burden is not so much the external of what happens us but perhaps what we carry within us, or at least what we do with what happens to us externally. Is it possible that this is also true of Jesus?

Did the baby Jesus suffer teething? Did the adolescent Jesus have spots? If you say no, why not? Do you say no to these questions and a myriad of others like them

because you have a particular understanding of who Jesus was? What does it mean to claim that Jesus was both God and Man? How do we avoid diluting, or over stating, either his humanity or divinity to the detriment of the other? Could it be that Jesus carried much more than we realise? Could it be that long before he gets near Gethsemane or Golgotha, he is burdened by the humanity that he has undertaken? Certainly long before the Via Dolorosa he lives in the shadow of death with the constant threat of violence hanging over him. Surely we do not think that his temptations were confined to the wilderness? Surely we do not think that his battle with Satan was restricted to forty days? The reality of the burden of Jesus is that it was more subtle, more all pervasive and more constant than we might imagine.

J MC DONALD. 18. 02. 18

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