The Gaelic football season had barely begun after lockdown when one of the lads in a neighbouring club informed his senior team’s management that he had symptoms of Covid-19. All activity was halted, an upcoming match was postponed until the lad in question was tested. Thankfully the test came back negative and club activity resumed,…
I’ve been thinking a lot about vocations lately. We are all aware how many of our priests have had to cocoon during this pandemic because their age puts them in a vulnerable position. Commentators have suggested that this time has given us a glimpse of where the Church in Ireland may be in the coming…
As I suspected, returning to Mass after three and a half months was an emotional experience. I went down to the cathedral here in Letterkenny, the 8am Mass, mask on, hands sanitised, social distancing in effect. So it wasn’t like any Mass I’ve ever been involved with before but it was good to be there.…
“You don’t get to be Racist and Irish,” Imelda May reminded us in her powerful poem recently. I would be inclined to add that you don’t get to be racist and Christian either but that isn’t always clear. Whether it is Donald Trump wielding a Bible in front of St John’s Episcopal Church or a…
As parishes we will have to invest a lot of energy in community building as we emerge from this time of social isolation and cannot take it for granted that people will simply return writes Bairbre Cahill You’ve probably heard the story of the hungry caterpillar; well I’m currently feeling like the rather anxious…
The hippocampus, deep within our brain, gathers and organises short term memories, laying down the synaptic pathways for long term memories. Every time we recall a memory we travel down that synaptic pathway and the more we do so, the stronger and more lasting the memory becomes. Memories have the capacity to shape attitudes and…
Half the time I couldn’t tell you what day of the week it is. I can’t get my head around the notion that we are at the end of May but I know without doubt that this Sunday is Pentecost. Pentecost crowns Easter, bringing the liturgical season of Easter to a close and powerfully reminding…
Why is the food better during a lockdown?” my son asked. Unsure what sort of a back-handed compliment this was I simply replied, “It is not that the food is better, it is just that it’s the highlight of the day now!” And it is certainly true that food has taken on a new significance.…
Our Catholic Faith can prevent us from slipping back into old habits, writes Bairbre Cahill There has been much talk about how we will never be the same again after this Covid-19 pandemic. It seems unlikely – and indeed in many ways undesirable – that we would return to what we previously thought of…
How are your Easter Alleluias going? Is it, as Leonard Cohen would say, a holy or a broken Alleluia? It has been strange these weeks since Easter not being able to go to Mass and sing those vibrant, uplifting hymns to proclaim the resurrection. In some ways it feels as if we are still living…