This week's comment in the newsletter of The Patrons Church in Rathgar.
By Michael Commane
On Sunday I went for an afternoon swim at Seapoint. It’s a great place for a swim when the tide is in.
I arrived home close to the end of the Russia Spain game. A penalty shootout for the non-experts makes for great fun.
My eye wandered to the clock and it was 17.45. It dawned on me it was getting late and time to get up on my bicycle and get down to Rathgar church for the 18.15 Mass.
Imagine had I not looked at the clock and continued to watch the excitement at the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow?
There would have been no Sunday evening Mass in The Three Patrons.
You can see the headlines: “Two weeks in a row a priest fails to turn up for Mass in the Dublin archdiocese. Archbishop not happy.”
The previous evening the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin celebrated Mass in Mount Merrion church. His talk is available on the diocesan website. It makes perfect sense to me. If you haven’t read it then I recommend you have a look at it.
In his talk the archbishop said: "May I make one comment. If you read my statement carefully, I never said that it was inappropriate in such a situation for the community to gather in prayer. It was indeed praiseworthy. Neither did I say that in such a situation the prayer ought not to be led by a woman. This is something that happens in such situations elsewhere."
Here at The Three Patrons we have a Mass at 07.30 Monday to Friday.
It is a fitting way to start the day and at this stage I think it’s fair to say most of us know each other.
There is a sense of community about it. And that’s an important ingredient in all our prayer.
On Ash Wednesday, February 14 something happened here at The Three Patrons.
During Mass a member of the congregation spoke about their faith.
And that continued every Wednesday during Lent.
After the Lenten season it morphed into someone speaking on what message the Gospel of the day has for them.
Without exaggeration it has been a moment of real grace.
Every single person who has spoken, has added to our Eucharistic celebration.
Not that I needed convincing, but it has assured me that the future of our church lies in real and honest participation by all.
The future is in all our hands. The church is the people God. Bill Clinton may have said “it’s the economy, stupid”. We need to get it into our heads that we are the church.
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