Eaglais na hÉireann – The Church of Ireland
Diocese of Cork, Cloyne & Ross
MALLOW UNION
of Parishes
Sunday 18th April 2021
Third Sunday of Easter
WEEKLY BULLETIN
WELCOME to the Mallow Union weekly newsletter. Please do share this with others, wherever they are and whoever they are, if you think they may be interested in our life as a Christian community. You may want to think of it as a tool for outreach.
THIS WEEK
Wednesday 21st April : 10.30am ‘COFFEE BREAK’ for all who would like half an hour of friendship and conversation:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83457039316?pwd=S0VSSklPZzE4V2JFOVBkejd3T2k2QT09
Wednesday 21st April: 8.30pm-9pm Compline in the Easter Season. Short evening service to continue the hope of Easter:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81583163646?pwd=dWJHUmZvQVFlT2tRL25KRUQ1cGdqdz09 Meeting ID: 815 8316 3646 Passcode: 286285
WHILE SUNDAY WORSHIP AND OTHER EVENTS
TAKE PLACE ONLINE
During this period of Level 5 restrictions, when we cannot safely gather in our churches for worship, our Cathedral church of St Fin Barre in Cork broadcasts a weekly celebration of the Eucharist by livestream at 11.00am every Sunday. It offers an act of worship in the Cathedral, with music, that enables us to join our prayers to the worshipping life of our wider Church and Diocese. You can access it here
https://corkcathedral.webs.com/
The Church of Ireland also publishes extensive listings of full services being broadcast or taking place online each Sunday. It can be accessed here:
https://www.ireland.anglican.org/cmsfiles/pdf/news/Press/2021/Broadcast-Online-Worship-March 2021.pdf
Scripture Readings for Daily Prayer this week
The following scriptures are offered to aid daily prayer and devotion at any time of the day. Monday Laserian, abbot, Leighlin diocese (639) Psalm 115; Luke 4.14-30.
Tuesday Psalm 118; Luke 4. 31-37
Wednesday Psalm 103; Luke 4. 38-44
Thursday Psalm 139; Luke 5.1-11
Friday Psalms 113, 114; Luke 5.12-26
Saturday Psalm 116; Luke 5.27-39
COLLECT and READINGS for this SUNDAY COLLECT
Almighty Father, who in your great mercy gladdened the disciples with the sight of the risen Lord: Give us such knowledge of his presence with us, that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life and serve you continually in righteousness and truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
‘He opened their minds to understand the scriptures’
Lord Jesus Christ, risen from the dead and alive forevermore: stand among us as you stood among your frightened disciples; show us your hands and your side; speak peace to our hearts and minds; and send us out into the world as your witnesses; for the glory of your name.
John Stott (1921-2011)
Acts 3: 12-19
When Peter saw that the lame man was able to walk, he addressed the people, ‘You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you. ‘And now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. In this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah* would suffer. Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out,
Luke 24: 36b-48
While the disciples were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you. They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.
THE WISDOM OF CHRISTIAN TRADITION THROUGH THE AGES for this Sunday from Resurrection
by Rowan Williams
(b. 1950)
Easter occurs, again and again, in the opening-up of a void, the sense of absence which questions our egocentric aspirations and our longing for a ‘tidy drama’; it occurs when we find in Jesus not a dead friend but a living stranger… One of the strangest features of the resurrection narratives is precisely this theme of otherness, the un recognizability of the risen Jesus… Whatever the experiences of the disciples at Easter were, it is hard to deny that…the encounter with the risen Jesus began as an encounter with a stranger. He is not what they had thought him to be, and thus they must ‘learn’ him afresh, as if from the beginning…
THE RECTOR’S WEEKLY REFLECTION
ON THIS SUNDAY’S GOSPEL
When we read the stories about Easter in the scriptures, we’re left in no doubt that it was tough going for those who had to come to terms with it. It began in darkness. There was confusion, sorrow and grief. Three days may be all it takes for God to raise the crucified Jesus from the dead; but we all know, whether from personal experience or observing others, that it can take a very long time to readjust, let alone recover, after significant trauma.
The poet Katherine Charnley expressed it so well, in words that chime with what we have just heard from St Luke’s Gospel: Strange how grit should turn to gift, [she writes] and yet it is so.
Some resurrections are slow: not easily won but worked from difficult stone
If only the resurrection were merely the reversal of a bereavement. We thought our friend had died, we tell ourselves; but no, he’s back among us. Alleluia! Let’s party! But for those who have travelled the road of bereavement, this is not what it feels like. And so it was for the disciples of Jesus. Resurrection made no sense to them. They had journeyed with Jesus along the arduous and traumatic path of holy week. They had seen how the crowds that welcomed Jesus with their shouts of ‘hosanna’ soon began to roar ‘crucify.’ They had lived through the sights, sounds and smells of betrayal, abandonment, torture and death. They know it’s not so easy and, in fact, it’s probably neither very mature, nor spiritually very healthy, simply to flip from desperation to joy.
No wonder it all takes time to sink in. Their encounter with the risen Lord is no quick fix in a world where injustices are the stuff of daily life and human life is cheap. No wonder they were terrified when the risen Jesus appeared to them. No wonder they need to go over it all in painstaking detail, as the risen Jesus patiently reminds them of the scriptures.
In that deeply suggestive phrase, the risen Jesus ‘opened their minds to understand the scriptures.’ It took time – and the risen Jesus knows that they need his time. As anyone who has been bereaved will tell you, what is often most helpful is not a torrent of well-meaning words; but having someone who is willing to sit it out with you, to stay by your side, and see this thing through with you. Someone who claims to be able to wave a magic wand and take the pain away is no friend in these situations. You need someone with whom you can face the pain and the bewilderment.
Earlier in this chapter of Luke’s Gospel, these same disciples met Jesus on the road and asked him to do just that, as they talked about all that happened in Jerusalem over that first Easter. In the Authorized Version of the Bible, the two disciples asked the risen Lord to ‘Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.’
These words from Luke’s gospel inspired the great hymn many of us know ‘Abide with me, fast falls the eventide.’ We often sing it at funerals, precisely because it somehow reflects most truthfully what people are feeling after death has come so close. It speaks to us when raw, human experience tells us that sadness is not a feeling that comes and goes. In the same way, moving from Good Friday to Easter is not like flicking a light-switch, as if the agony of the cross is suddenly forgotten and we are unable to feel any more pain.
Our Gospel today is a timely reminder of all this. It reminds us that sadness persists. And it’s right that it does – even as we sing our alleluias and rejoice in our Easter faith and Christ’s victory over death. When we think of what goes on in our own lives, and then think of the world with all the injustices that are perpetrated every hour, along with the untold suffering of millions of our human race, we can never be content with a kind of joy from which sadness is excluded. Living life with a constant grin, telling ourselves that life is one big, never-ending party, is as obscene as it is dishonest.
And yet the Gospel doesn’t allow us to leave it there. There is more. Much more. And this is what those sad and disheartened disciples discovered as they tried to piece together what had happened to Jesus. They began to sense, however slowly, that the persistence of sadness is not the end of faith. For them, the persistence of sadness is the beginning of hope. And that hope is answered by the risen Lord and his abiding love that will never let go of us. And that’s why we sing ‘alleluia’ and celebrate the Easter Gospel.
NEWS ITEMS FOR THIS WEEK
Mallow Union of Parishes
The Church of Ireland
serving people at the ‘Crossroads of Munster’
The Reverend
MEURIG WILLIAMS
Rector of Mallow Union
(022) 21473
mllwyd@aol.com
Please contact the Rector or the churchwardens at any time if you need pastoral support – or know of anyone in our parishes who would appreciate being contacted.
We also have two Diocesan Readers in our parishes whose ministry we value – Avril Gubbins (022 24267) and Emmanuel Adebisi (0868 467464)
Parish Website
www.mallow.cloyne.anglican.org/ Follow us on social media
• Our Annual General Vestry was held on Thursday last, April 15. More information and names of all who will continue as wardens and members of the Select Vestry for 2021-2 will be published in next week’s bulletin.
• The Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross has been asked by the HSE to publicise the availability of a static Covid testing centre in the Randal Óg GAA Club in Dunmanway, West Cork (from 9am to 5pm until Tuesday afternoon, 20th April). It will offer COVID 19 testing to people without symptoms. This is a walk-in centre, offering a free test, with no appointment necessary, to those aged 16 years and over, who do not have symptoms of Covid-19 but would like to be tested, and who have not tested positive for Covid-19 in the last six months. Photo identification is required together with your PPS number and a mobile telephone number so that results can be provided.
• With the lifting of the 5km travel limit on Monday last, I have had one or two enquiries about pastoral visiting. Sadly, Level 5 restrictions remain in place, which allows only for people of two different households to meet in an outdoor, socially distanced setting (and not in private gardens). I have not yet been vaccinated and (with the possibility that I may be harbouring the virus without symptoms) I represent a risk to others who have not yet been vaccinated. Similarly, those who have been vaccinated are still capable of passing-on the virus to those who have not yet been vaccinated. The Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross has been very clear in his guidance to the clergy that, for the time being, pastoral contact must continue by telephone or Zoom until the public health guidance changes.
FOR YOUR PRAYERS
• Please remember in your prayers all who are isolated and anxious, the sick at home and in hospital (as well as the health service professionals who care for them, along with family and neighbours) and all who are grieving. We pray for all those known to us who are in need of our prayers.
• We give thanks to God for all who have received their vaccination – and pray for those waiting to be called.
• We pray, too, for those who work for An Post and other agencies who deliver our mail and on-line purchases.
• We commend to God’s mercy all who have recently died, along with those we have loved and lost whose anniversary of death occurs at this time of year.