St Andrew's RC Church Bearsden - Latest

Monday 10th August 2020

10/8/2020

A few words....

Hope all’s well.

Teachers are returning to school today after a long time at working at home, and I know this will be challenging. Thoughts and prayers are with them and with the pupils who start back this week.

Great that we can begin to get First Confessions & First Communions arranged. We hope to have more details about these soon. Still no information yet about Confirmations.

There has been a steady increase each week in bookings for weekend Masses, which has been good to see. Our upper hall overflow area with the big screen needed to be used at all the Masses this weekend, and it’s great having our 10am daily Mass live streamed.

I am very grateful to all who have volunteered to be part of a media ministry team to operate live streaming, and training for this ministry will begin this week.

Without the good work of all the volunteers, we would not be able to have a full schedule of Masses. Sincere thanks to them all. For weekday Masses, there is no booking required. Just turn up.

As our private prayer time on Wednesdays 2pm - 3pm has had so few folk over the past weeks, we may need to review this.

A couple of notices to bring to your attention.

Solemnity of the Assumption: Although this coming Saturday, 15th August would normally be the Solemnity of the Assumption of Our Lady, the Bishops of Scotland last year altered the rules for Feasts and Holy Days of Obligation. Because of this, the 15th is an ordinary day and the Assumption is celebrated this year on the 16th at all our Sunday Masses.

Confessions : Many of you have been asking about the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The current rules, unfortunately, prevent us from using the Confessional. We are looking, though, at making arrangements for Confessions in the main church, especially for Primary 3’s First Confessions. In the meantime, if you require the Sacrament, please phone or email in advance and arrange a suitable time for this to take place.

Elvis’ anniversary this Sunday.

If you have a favourite gospel song of his that would be good and spiritually uplifting for us in these times, send it in and we’ll be happy to post it on our social media.

Take care, and have a good week

Fr Mackle

Latest Update from the Archdiocesan Coronavirus Coordinator, Canon Gargaro

8/8/2020

Halls

Our advice just now remains that halls should not be used (except for the limited purposes previously allowed). Many activities – dancing, exercise classes, bingo, etc. remain prohibited – and even those things that are permitted risk distracting our volunteers from the ongoing work of keeping churches open in accordance with the cleaning regime. The Government previously stated their plan to allow some more activities later this month – although whether recent events will change that remains to be seen. We would hope to update parishes further on the possibilities of using halls later this month, if the Government goes ahead with loosening these restrictions.

Schools

Some schools have approached parishes to ask about the First Confessions and First Communions cancelled from earlier this year. These can go ahead at any time as long as the children are suitably prepared. All the same precautions that apply at Sunday Mass apply for these celebrations (social distancing, face masks, hand sanitising, cleaning afterwards etc). Enforcing the 50 limit is essential, which might prove challenging especially at First Communions, and so these celebrations can only go ahead if the parish priest is sure that they can be done in full compliance with the Guidance for celebrating Mass.

There is no update yet on Confirmations.

New Government Restrictions

The First Minister announced a number of steps today:

Visors will no longer be considered as sufficient face coverings, and people who have hitherto worn visors must now wear a facemask as well or instead.

Face coverings will become mandatory from August 8 in church (and in many other places). We have, of course, already required this in our own Guidance, but from August 8 it will become a criminal offence not to comply (apart from those who are exempt from wearing face coverings – the rules on exemption have not changed). As previously explained in our Guidance, priests (or other persons leading services) do not need to wear face coverings except for times when they must come within 2m of others (principally Communion time, but perhaps also other times such as entrance/exit processions, doing baptisms, etc.). Again, from August 8 it will be a criminal offence for a priest not to wear a mask if coming within 2m of other people inside church (unless there is a solid partition between the priest and the other people).

Social Distancing from August 8 it will be a criminal offence for a “person responsible for a place of worship” (i.e. the parish priest) not to take measures to enforce the 2m distance between individuals/households, both inside church and whilst queueing outside. This should, of course, already be in place under the earlier guidance.

We have seen the condemnation rightly being faced by certain pubs in Aberdeen and by Aberdeen FC and we need to do all we can to make sure that no-one can fault our adherence to best practice in keeping our churches safe. The introduction of these new criminal offences should not affect us, because we should be diligently taking these steps already, but it does highlight the importance that the Government places on these measures to help protect us and our communities.

With best wishes,

Canon Paul Gargaro

Diocesan Coordinator

Flourish August 2020

8/8/2020

The new August edition of Flourish is now online.

In this month’s copy – which is free to download and read – you can catch up on:

The re-opening of parishes round the Archdiocese for public Masses.
The final chapter in the story of St Peter’s Seminary, Cardross,
Why the Archbishop is encouraging us to write to our MSPs to protect freedom of speech
The amazing wartime memories of the late Mgr Gaetano Rossi which explain the background to the much-loved Italian Cloister Garden adjacent to St Andrew’s Cathedral.
The new John L Allen column from Rome
Art of the Month
The latest news from parishes across the city and beyond.

Click here to read https://www.flourishnewspaper.co.uk/downloads/Flourish-August-2020.pdf

Catholic Social Teaching Thought for the Week - 9 August

8/8/2020

"If the consciousness of universal brotherhood truly penetrates into the hearts of men, will they still need to arm themselves to the point of becoming blind and fanatic killers of their brethren who in themselves are innocent, and of perpetrating, as a contribution to Peace, butchery of untold magnitude, as at Hiroshima on 6 August 1945?"

Blessed Pope Paul VI, Message for World Day of Peace, 1967

The remembrances of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August 1945 respectively take place each year. These remain the first, and thus far only uses of nuclear weapons in war.

Archbishop Tartaglia's Personal Letter August 2020

5/8/2020

To mark the Feast of St John Vianney, Patron Saint of Parish Priests, Archbishop Tartaglia has written a personal letter to each of the priests in the Archdiocese, thanking them for their devotion.

My dear brothers in the priesthood,

I thought to send you special greetings today on the Memorial of St John Mary Vianney, the blessed Curé of Ars, who has long been honoured as the Patron Saint of priests.

Let me praise the priestly holiness of St. John Mary Vianney as an example for priests today. I note especially the saint’s devotion to prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, his faithfulness to the ministry of the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, and his outstanding ability to touch the hearts and transform the lives of so many people.

In order to aspire to such holiness, we need to focus our gaze firmly on Jesus Christ. Christ is the only sure point of reference for us priests. Let me commend to you, therefore, the rich theology of the priesthood and of priestly ministry in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and in the post-conciliar Magisterium of the Popes. This teaching draws upon the continuous Tradition of Catholic faith, and presents the priest in bold lines as standing along with and in the forefront of the People of God in the person of Christ the Head and Shepherd of his Church.

I firmly believe that we priests need to be convinced that our ordination has conferred on us the gift of a unique configuration to Christ. This unique configuration to Christ does not make of us a clerical caste, but an order and a brotherhood of priests whose lives of prayer, obedience, celibacy and service, and whose ministry of word and sacrament, are the foundation and expression of our spiritual fatherhood of our people and of effective evangelisation.

I hope that in these strange days of the Covid-19 pandemic, this brief reflection may help to inspire you to continue to dedicate yourself to your priestly ministry. For the sacrifice of your life for Christ and his Church, I thank you from my heart.

Yours devotedly in Christ
+Philip Tartaglia
Archbishop of Glasgow

Update to Parish Priests and Parish Infection Control Coordinators from Canon Gargaro, Coronavirus Diocesan Coordinator

5/8/2020

I hope that everything is going well and the plans are being implemented without problem.

Continuing with the Restrictions

As you may know, the First Minister announced last week that there will be no immediate changes to current restrictions, so the Guidelines we have in place just now will remain in force for at least the next three weeks. You will be aware of localised lockdowns in parts of England, and that the UK Government is tightening the restrictions on churches by requiring face-coverings. This is, of course, already the case here in Scotland, but it highlights that the restrictions we face can be tightened as well as loosened. To try and avoid tightening of restrictions on places of worship in Scotland we need to make sure that we are consistently applying the current Guidelines, and that we can keep doing so over the longer term. It’s easy to get fed up with them, especially when they cause real pastoral difficulties (as with the 20 limit on funerals and weddings), or complacent about them, but we need to keep on following them to protect our communities. There have already been a couple of clusters in the West of Scotland, and we want to make sure, in so far as we can, that none of them affect us or our fellow parishioners.

Shielding

Shielding has now been suspended, so those who are shielding can attend Mass or other acts of public worship. The Government has asked that we give special consideration to the shielding to make sure that they feel safe attending communal worship again. Those who were shielding, and are housebound, can also now receive Holy Communion at home, following the Guidance on the care for the sick that was previously issued. (Hospital chaplaincy is also now returning to normal).

Thanks again for all that you are doing.

With best wishes,

Canon Paul Gargaro

Diocesan Coordinator

Welcome Louie Walton 1st August 2020

1/8/2020

Congratulations to Louie Walton, baptised today, 1st August 2020.

Welcome to God’s family in the Church.

Friday 31st July 2020

31/7/2020

A few words...

Hope all’s well.

So it looks like no changes to numbers at our Masses and liturgies, or our halls reopening until possibly mid September?

Still 50 maximum in our church for Mass, 50 for baptisms, 20 for funerals and 20 for weddings.

We are very fortunate, though, to have our two halls rigged up with large screen TVs which allow us to have up to an extra 50 for our weekend Masses. Plus, 10am Mass is live streamed daily, and we’re currently forming a media ministry team to operate our live streamed Masses.

Louie Walton’s baptism tomorrow, thankfully, will be the first of our baptisms since lockdown.

Instead of Sundays, when the church will now be getting sanitised after the 12 noon Mass, baptisms will, for the foreseeable future, be celebrated on Saturdays.

Through to mid October, as we cannot celebrate more than one baptism at a time, there will be a celebration of a baptism almost every week. Great the signs of parish life again as we move into this post lockdown new normal.

The greatness of God is all around us. That’s a gospel message we can take from today’s Mass.

When the people of Christ’s hometown heard him talk, they were taken by what he had to say, but the fact that he was one of their own didn’t allow them to take him seriously.

They had Jesus in front of their very eyes. They had the one true God in their midst, and they couldn’t see it. In the ordinariness of the situation, God was there, but they couldn’t appreciate that truth.

The truth is that the greatness of God is all around us in the here and now situation, in the ordinariness of our lives.

The challenge is for us to see that and to appreciate that truth with faith.

Today is the final day of the daily A few words...but not the final A few words...., as I do hope to be penning A few words... occasionally.

Hope you have a safe and happy weekend.

Fr Mackle

Thursday 30th July 2020

30/7/2020

A few words...

Hope all’s well.

Phase 3 is being reviewed today, I understand. Just need to wait and see if there will be further easing of measures regarding numbers at liturgies.

The message from the prophet Jeremiah (First reading for today’s Mass) is not too dissimilar from last Sunday’s message with St Paul to the Romans.

God can bring good out of things unwanted, out of brokenness in life. He can bring good out of our pain and our suffering.

Jeremiah’s image of God as potter is a very comforting reminder that God can take what comes out wrong in our lives and reshape, remodel it into something good - if we let him, if we trust him to do so.

God can turn everything to the benefit of those who trust in him.
The cracked vase might no longer hold water, but place a candle in it and it can let the light shine through.

Remember the lockdown snake queues? I was doing a bit of shopping yesterday and I thought ‘gosh they are all no more’. The masks seem to have put paid to them. Again, more of the new normal.

Talking of new normal, with Sunday and weekday public Masses having resumed, thankfully, and with 10am Mass each day now being live streamed, I have decided that the lockdown A few words...will move from being daily to become occasional.

I have to say, I have really enjoyed writing A few words...daily over the four months lockdown period, and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them.

Tomorrow will therefore be the last of the daily A few words...

Hope you have a good day

Take care.
Fr Mackle

Little Sisters of the Poor Robroyston, Glasgow

30/7/2020

Donate to the Little Sisters of the Poor

Dear Reverend Father,

I hope this email finds you well and that you are getting back to some normality. It is a great blessing to have our Churches open once again despite the constraints.

Here at Saint Joseph's Home we continue to do all we can to ensure our Residents are receiving the best possible care.

I would like to thank you first of all for putting our justgiving page on your bulletin.
We are doing very well although we have not yet hit our target. But we are so grateful to all who have donated. It has been a huge help during this very challenging time.

I am coming to you once again with a small request for help. Would it be possible please to post our attached short advert for staff on your parish bulletin if it's not too much trouble.
(Posted below this window.)

We have been struggling for quite some time now to get nurses and carers and there may be someone in one of the Parishes that might feel this is an opportunity for them.

We have already advertised in the usual places for these posts but are getting nothing back whatsoever, especially for nurses.

Thank you so much for your help with this Father. We are most grateful to you.

Assuring you of our prayers for all your intentions and for those of your Parishioners.

Yours in Christ.

Sr. Marie Claire

Little Sisters of the Poor
14 Cumnock Road
Glasgow
G33 1QT

JOB VACANCIES:

ST JOSEPH’S CARE HOME, ROBROYSTON
Run by Little Sisters of the Poor

QUALIFIED NURSING STAFF
CARE STAFF

Various shift patterns available.

If you would like to apply for above posts and join our dedicated staff please contact:

Jacquie Moeller, HR Manager on:
T: 0141 558 5114 ext. 400
E: Jacquie.moeller@lspscotland.com

Donate to the Little Sisters of the Poor

These St Andrew's Bearsden Live Streamed Masses on this link.

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St Andrew's RC Church
29 Roman Road
Bearsden
Glasgow
G61 2SN
Telephone : 0141 942 4635
Email : standrew@rcag.org.uk

A Parish of the Archdiocese of Glasgow a Registered Scottish Charity No SC018140

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