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We are Church are presenting a talk by Fr Diarmaid Ó Murchu in an on-line Zoom event on Monday 20 April, 7.30 to 9.00 p.m..

A suggested gesture in solidarity and hope …

Roy Donovan reminds us that it was “the women who stood at the foot of the Cross when the men had fled”. He asks, “Pope Francis spoke eloquently about separating colonialism from the spread of the Good News at the pan-Amazon synod. What about separating male culture from the spread of the Good News?”

Seamus Ahearne is wondering if “We may have to learn new and different ways of celebrating Rituals.    I think the official Books don’t do it. But that is very true of much of our present Liturgies.”
” If only this time of desert, (of House Arrest) stirred the hunger within, for what really is essential to living life to the full.”

Chris McDonnell writes “The choice of where to pray and when to pray has come down to us through subsequent years; for now, this Spring, we have limited options.” and he reminds us of Teilhard de Chardin who found himself in the Ordos Desert in China in 1923, unable to offer the Eucharist and wrote “Since once again, Lord I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar,
I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the real itself. I your priest will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labours and sufferings of the world.’

Gerard O’Connell and  Colleen Dulle report in americamagazine.org on the establishment by Pope Francis of a new commission to study the issue of the ordination of women deacons.

Tim Hazelwood is using the social distancing to reflect. “Now may be the opportunity for us to learn that we all are Church and that we must be Eucharist every day, of being thankful and believing that the risen Christ is with us.”

Maura O Shea writes of her perspective on the distancing, isolating, and close downs that have happened as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Brendan Hoban, in the Western People, writes about the absence of Holy Week Ceremonies this year.
“Church leaders are caught between their responsibility to give clear and appropriate guidance and the felt need of the people to celebrate the key events of the first Easter. But their (and our) moral responsibility is clear. The bottom line is that no compromise that might endanger health and life is acceptable.”

Dermod McCarthy draws our attention to an interesting webcast.

Seamus Ahearne has time to de-clutter and observe and write;
“it is the cleaners, the bin men, the shelf packers, the shop servers, the drivers of the lorries, the post people, the orderlies, the receptionists taking calls, the local nurses and doctors, the shoppers for the cocooned….. We need eyes to see and to appreciate and to be grateful….. if there is an outbreak of generosity and gratitude; Eucharist is happening.”

Suggestion – put a green branch on your door or window on Palm Sunday.