Pew Sheet – 13th April 2025

The Rector writes  ‘ Dear Sisters & Brothers in Christ, during Lent we have been preparing by works of love and self-sacrifice for the coming celebration of our Lord’s death and resurrection.  

Today we come together spiritually to begin this solemn celebration in union with the Church throughout the world.  Christ enters his own city to complete his work as our Saviour, to suffer,  to die, and to rise again. Let us go with him in faith and love, so that united with him in his sufferings, we may share his risen life.  ‘

Dates for your Diary

May

1st     Annual Vestry Meeting ‘Easter Vestry’ at 7:30pm in the     Parish Hall

4th   Cork Choral Festival Choir from Canada will join us for the 11am Service

11th  Christian Aid Service 11am St Mary’s Church, Preacher the Revd Tony Murphy

20th   Screening of the Oscar winning Documentary  ‘No Other Land’  7:30pm Parish Hall

June

1st    Sunday Club Prizegiving 11am in St Mary’s Church

8th    Confirmation Service 11am in St Mary’s Church

(no 9:30am Service that day)

meeting on Wednesday 23rd April at 3pm.

Craft afternoon with Hazel Sherlock. Should be fun and we can be as creative as we like. Do come!  Teas/ coffees as always after all that hard work. 

There will again be a box  at the back of St Mary’s Church to collect Easter Eggs for the children in Cuanlee Women’s and Children’s Refuge.  Thank you to Joy Keefe for organising this lovely initiative each year.  

14th – 16th Monday – Wednesday  of Holy Week: 

10.30am Holy Communion in St Mary’s

17th    Maundy Thursday:

12 noon   Diocesan Chrism Eucharist in St Factna’s Cathedral,      Rosscarbery.

7:30pm   Maundy Thursday Eucharist in St Mary’s, including      washing of feet

9pm until Dawn    ‘Night/Gethsemane Watch’ , in St Mary’s      Church, praying for the Environment ahead of Earth      Day on 22nd April.

18th  Good Friday:

10.30am  St John’s – Morning Prayer with Litany

12 noon   Ecumenical Stations of the Cross in St Mary’s

    Graveyard with our sister church of Our Lady & St     John

7.30pm   St Mary’s – Service of Tennebrae

19th     Saturday of Holy Week:

9pm       St Mary’s – Easter Vigil Service,

  Pascal candle lit from outside byre.

20th   Easter Day:

9.30am    St John’s – Easter Eucharist 

11am        St Mary’s – Easter Eucharist

Palm Sunday

“From Sounding the Seasons, by Malcolm Guite, CanterburyPress 2012”

Now to the gate of my Jerusalem,

The seething holy city of my heart,

The saviour comes. But will I welcome him?

Oh crowds of easy feelings make a start;

They raise their hands, get caught up in the singing,

And think the battle won. Too soon they’ll find

The challenge, the reversal he is bringing

Changes their tune. I know what lies behind

The surface flourish that so quickly fades;

Self-interest, and fearful guardedness,

The hardness of the heart, its barricades,

And at the core, the dreadful emptiness

Of a perverted temple. Jesus come

Break my resistance and make me your home.