9th November 2014 Dedication of

Newsletter for the Parishes of Saggart - Rathcoole - Brittas & Newcastle Parish Team Fr. Enda Cunningham PP St Mary’s Parochial House Saggart. Tel: 4589209 Mob: 087-1380695 Fr. Aidan Kieran CC 1 The Glebe Peamount Road Newcastle. Tel: 4589230 Mob: 087-6397744 Fr. Aloysius Zuribo C.C. 2 Carrigmore Place Saggart, Co. Dublin Tel. 01-4589209 Parish Pastoral Worker Mr Sean O’Rourke c/o The Parish Office St. Mary’s Parochial House Tel: 4589209 Mob:087-0540695 Fr. Michael Shortall PC 87 Beechwood Lawns Rathcoole Tel: 4587187 Mob: 087 -2861765 Fr. Michael McGowan PC 7 St. Patrick’s Crescent, Rathcoole Tel: 4589210 Parish Secretary Martina Hopkins The Parish Office St. Mary’s Parochial House Opening Hours: 9.30-1.30 Monday to Friday Tel: 4589209 www.saggartparish.com [email protected]

Eucharistic Adoration Holy Family Church Rathcoole Every Friday 7.30 – 8.30pm Items for Newsletter If you have any items for the newsletter, please contact the Parish Office or email to the addresses given below. Please indicate clearly that the items are for inclusion in the Parish Newsletter. Many thanks. [email protected] or

[email protected]

We pray for those who have died recently: Brian Burke (Newcastle) Pat Denning (Newcastle) who are recently deceased. We extend our deepest sympathies To their families and friends. Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord And let perpetual light shine upon them.

Saggart Church Renovations It’s finally happening! After far longer than could have been anticipated, the renovations to our beloved church of the Nativity of the BlessedVirgin Mary, Saggart have begun! Having inviting tenders through our architects CODA Architects Ltd., and after approval by the relevant diocesan authorities, a contract has been signed with Gowna Construction Ltd., a firm with a proven track record in conservation work. The contract includes the re-roofing and re-pointing of the exterior of the church, and repair of the internal plaster ceiling. This will secure the fabric of the church building, ensuring the treasure we have inherited from our forebears in this community of faith may be passed on to coming generations. The contract stipulates that the work will be carried out in 12 weeks, excluding a two-week window for Christmas and New Year. It should therefore be completed during February 2015. During renovations, every effort will be taken to ensure that services may be conducted as normal. Morning mass at 9.30 will continue, and work will be suspended whenever weddings or funerals need to be celebrated. The contract has been signed for the sum of €699,008.30. Including fees and allowing for contingencies, that equates to a total undertaking at this time of some €800,000 approx. The parish has secured funding from the diocese of €650,000 (one of the largest such funding in diocesan history, in recognition of the parish’s donation of a site of land which secured the building of our new school for St Mary’s by the Dept. of Education). The diocese has also facilitated our access to overdraft lending at charity rates, ensuring that the funds are at least available to us to ensure the work can commence. It does mean that as a parish we will have to undertake a significant fundraising effort, especially as it is intended that a second phase of renovations will ensure improvements to the interior of the church. While there is never a good time to try and collect money, the fundraising effort will get underway in full early in the New Year. Parishioners will be kept informed as work proceeds. For now, however, we can finally rejoice that the essential repairs are underway: alleluia!

St. Finian’s Church Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament Monday 17th November, 7.30-9.00pm NB: Please note change of time There will be adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in St. Finian’s Church, Newcastle from 7.30 - 9.00pm on Monday 17th November. The time of adoration will finish with an informal benediction. All welcome, whether you can come for ten minutes or the whole hour and a half!

The Lateran Basilica Mass Schedule Saggart: Sunday: 9 am & 11.30 am Weekday: 9.30 am Rathcoole: Saturday Vigil: 6.30 p.m. Sunday: 10 am & 12.00 pm Weekday: 9.30 am Saturday: 10.00 am Brittas: Sunday: 10.30 am Newcastle: Saturday Vigil: 7.00 p.m. Sunday: 10.30 am Weekday: 10.00am Mon, Tues, Thurs, Fri. Confession Saggart: Friday, after 9.30am Mass Rathcoole: Saturday after 10.00am Mass Newcastle: Saturday after 7.00pm Mass Baptism Saggart 2.00pm Sunday Rathcoole 4.00 pm Saturday Newcastle 2nd Saturday 4pm Last Sunday 2pm Please contact the Parish Office Marriage Please contact the Parish Office

Divine Mercy Chaplet First Fridays Saggart The Divine Mercy Chaplet is recited in Saggart Church on First Fridays after the 9.30am Mass. Our Lord said to Saint Faustina: “Encourage souls to say the Chaplet which I have given you. Whoever will recite it will receive great mercy at the hour of death.”

Team Hope (www.teamhope.ie) It's 'Love in a Shoebox' time again, Team Hope Ireland bringing hope to the children around the world. Leaflets are available throughout the village and St. Finians school Newcastle, has kindly agreed to be a drop off point. Please contact me Caroline 085 7876318 for any further information. Thank's for your continued support. TEAM HOPE is an Irish, interdenominational Christian development aid charity, working with children, and through them, into their families and communities in Eastern Europe, former Soviet Union and Africa. Beginning Experience Beginning Experience is a support group for those coping with the pain of loss of their life partner, through Death, Separation or Divorce. Do you find that you need more support than family and friends can provide? This is a healing ministry, which helps to resolve the grief that goes with the end of a marriage or relationship. Coping effectively with bereavement is a skill we can all learn. The next residential weekend will be held 14th 16th November in All Hallows, Drumcondra, Swords Co Dublin. For further information please contact 086 0877379 or email [email protected] Thanksgiving Mass for the Gift of Priesthood Westland Row, Sunday 23/11/2014 3.30pm St. Jospeh’s Young Priests Society will host a Mass of Thanksgiving for the gift of the priesthood in St. Andrew’s Church, Westland Row on Sunday 23rd November at 3.30pm. All welcome. The chief celebrant will be our own parishioner, Fr. Seamus McEntee, who was ordained to the priesthood in June of this year. Fr. Seamus has been appointed chaplain to the society. Car parking is available at the rear and in the vicinity of the church. PRAYER FOR VOCATIONS Lord Jesus, you said to your disciples: “The harvest indeed is great but the labourers are few.” We ask that we may know and follow the vocation to which you have called us. We pray for those called to serve: those whom you have called, those you are calling now, and those you will call in the future. May they be open and responsive to the call of serving your people. AMEN

Homily of Pope Francis—All Saints Day 2013 At this hour before sunset, we gather in this cemetery and think about our future, we think of all those who have departed, preceded us in life and are in the Lord. The vision of Heaven we just have heard described in the First Reading is very beautiful: the Lord God, beauty, goodness, truth, tenderness, love in its fullness. All of this awaits us. Those who have gone before us and who have died in the Lord are there. They proclaim that they have been saved not through their own works, though good works they surely did, but that they have been saved by the Lord: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev 7:10). It is he who save us, it is he who at the end of our lives takes us by the hand like a father, precisely to that Heaven where our ancestors are. One of the elders asks: “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and whence have they come?” (v. 13). Who are these righteous ones, these saints who are in Heaven? The reply is: “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (v. 14). We can enter heaven only thanks to the blood of the Lamb, thanks to the blood of Christ. Christ’s own blood has justified us, which has opened for us the gates of heaven. And if today we remember our brothers and sisters who have gone before us in life and are in Heaven, it is because they have been washed in the blood of Christ. This is our hope: the hope of Christ's blood! It is a hope that does not disappoint. If we walk with the Lord in life, he will never disappoint us! In the Second Reading, we heard what the Apostle John said to his disciples: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason the world does not know us.... We are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn 3:1-2). To see God, to be like God: this is our hope. And today, on All Saints’ Day and the first day that we commemorate the faithful departed, we need to think a little about this hope: this hope that accompanies us in life. The first Christians depicted hope with an anchor, as though life were an anchor cast on Heaven’s shores and all of us journeying to that shore, clinging to the anchor’s rope. This is a beautiful image of hope: to have our hearts anchored there, where our beloved predecessors are, where the Saints are, where Jesus is, where God is. This is the hope that does not disappoint; today and tomorrow are days of hope. Hope is a little like leaven that expands our souls. There are difficult moments in life, but with hope the soul goes forward and looks ahead to what awaits us. Today is a day of hope. Our brothers and sisters are in the presence of God and we shall also be there, through the pure grace of the Lord, if we walk along the way of Jesus. The Apostle John concludes: “every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (v. 3). Hope also purifies us, it lightens us; this purification in hope in Jesus Christ makes us go in haste, readily. Today before evening falls each one of us can think of the twilight of life: “What will my passing away be like?”. All of us will experience sundown, all of us! Do we look at it with hope? Do we look with that joy at being welcomed by the Lord? This is a Christian thought that gives us hope. Today is a day of joy; however it is serene and tranquil joy, a peaceful joy. Let us think about the passing away of so many of our brothers and sisters who have preceded us, let us think about the evening of our life, when it will come. And let us think about our hearts and ask ourselves: “Where is my heart anchored?”. If it is not firmly anchored, let us anchor it beyond, on that shore, knowing that hope does not disappoint because the Lord Jesus does not disappoint.

Bethany Bereavement Support Group: Residential Weekend A Bethany Bereavement Support Weekend will be held in Orlagh Retreat Centre, Old Court Road, D. 16. We will explore the loss of loved ones and the meaning of death from a Christian perspective through prayer, meditation, discussion, videos and sharing. Beginning on Friday 21st at 7.30pm and finishing at 4.30pm on Sunday 23rd of November. Cost is €180 per person (deposit of €50) all meals are included. To book contact Anne on 087 2050514or email: [email protected]