This week we celebrated the feast of St Oliver Plunkett, who when canonized in 1975, became the first Irish saint for almost 700 years, as well as the first of the Irish martyrs to be beatified. It was an honour that he had paid for dearly – with a life on the run filled with… Read More
Tag: Blog
Unsung Heroes- Carers
Following the huge success of the High Hopes Choir and Choir of Age, David Brophy assembled a choir from among Ireland’s 355,000 family carers. He wanted their involvement in the choir to be therapeutic and fun. In a two-part documentary for RTE, the viewers hear the various different stories as they watched the participants prepare… Read More
Love Thy Neighbour?
Within the last two weeks the usual headlines regarding Covid-19 have been replaced by another huge news item; sadly not a good one. What should have been a minor incident in Minnesota turned into a world news story, leading to scenes of mass protests and demonstrations across the United States. On May 26, George Floyd… Read More
Nursing at the Front Line
All of us in Ireland and the rest of the world have been affected by the crisis of Covid-19, none more so than the people working on the front line. One such group is, of course, the nurses, those dedicated women, and men, many of whom have lost their lives, in the fight against this… Read More
Renew the Face of the Earth
Every year on April 22, Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. Its aim is to raise awareness of the negative impact our actions as human beings have on the environment and the earth as a whole. Since it began in 1970, Earth Day has continued to… Read More
We are an Easter People
This week we are preparing for Easter Sunday, the highest point in the Liturgical Calendar of the Church. This is the culmination of the Lenten journey and the day that makes sense of all that went before, some of it dark and terrible. In the Exsultet we are told ‘This is the night that expels… Read More
Living in Troubled Times: Coronavirus
As I write this our country, and indeed the rest of the world, is experiencing a set of circumstances, the like of which has not been seen since World War II. Some of those among us, who are old enough to remember those years, have said that the limitations we are undergoing now are actually… Read More
Dealing with Cancer
Cancer, the very word in itself is enough to strike fear in the hearts of us all. Almost every one of us, at some point or another, will be affected by it and even if we have not had it ourselves we will know a friend or family member who are battling with the disease. … Read More
Stay Connected
Just last week when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced that they would be taking a “step back” from the royal family and its duties they did so on an Instagram post. The BBC posted via Twitter that the royal family was not made aware of Harry and Meghan’s decision before they posted the news… Read More
Little Women and Wise Men
On January 6th we celebrate both Little Women and Wise Men and by that I mean Nollaig na mBan and the coming of the Magi to Bethlehem. The latter, of course, is a well-known event in the Christian story of Christmas, but the former is a particular Irish tradition. I must confess that it did… Read More
The People We Look Up To
Who are the people we look up to? In life who are the people we look up to and who influence us the most? Perhaps that is something we need to examine more closely. At the beginning of this week, the main story in the media and on everybody’s lips was the death of the… Read More
The Day For All Saints
November 1st – All Saints Day All Saints Day, celebrated on November 1st commemorates all the saints of the church, both known and unknown, who have attained Heaven. For Catholics, it is a holy day of obligation. The first evidence for the November 1st date of celebration occurred during the reign of Pope Gregory III (731-741)… Read More