Looking to the Future
Easter joy to Spiorad readers!
This is the first time I have contributed anything to this publication so a few words of introduction might help here. I’m Patrick Burke, the deacon who has been working here in the parish during Lent. In a way all you readers along with the priests of the parish have been helping me prepare for priesthood.
Despite being from Killererin (it’s been known for there to be a bit of rivalry between this land of Tír na n-Óg and Tuam town), everybody has been most welcoming towards me since I arrived. Indeed upon my arrival in the parish in mid February, I was most impressed with the efforts being made by the parish to make liturgies as meaningful as possible, for example, procession from the door of the Cathedral at Sunday liturgies and words of welcome before Mass. This has brought home to me that parishioners are more than willing to be more involved in the life of their parish.
As I look towards the future I see much hope. The diocese is doing its fair share of planning with the Diocesan Assembly in November. It is inevitable that there will be fewer priests in the diocese in the future which will mean fewer Masses. However we are slowly learning that our faith can be sustained despite this.
Society generally accepts that all people have a spiritual need. Christianity offers a very special way of doing this. I think we will need to be creative about our faith. We will also need to encourage one another with regard to expressing our faith. Christianity offers a very special way of doing this.
To be honest I do not know what the future holds but I do know that the Catholic Church has a very interesting history. Young people today will probably live through another interesting chapter during their lives as the Church in Ireland will no doubt be different in some ways at least.
I look forward with much hope. Something which is changing is usually quite interesting. So I hope the Church of the future will be an interesting one!
Patrick Burke
