Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group parish notes in ‘Newslink’ February 2021

Chalking the church door in Askeaton at the traditional Epiphany blessing (Photograph: Barbara Comerford)

Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes

Rathkeale, Askeaton, Castletown and Kilnaughtin

Priest-in-Charge: Revd Canon Patrick Comerford,
The Rectory, Askeaton, Co Limerick.

Parish Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RathkealeGroup/

The decision to cancel Christmas services came just after the four churches had been decorated, the cribs put in place, and after the school carol service in Rathkeale and traditional carol service in Askeaton.

The Community Crib remained in the open space in front Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton, and the three wise men arrived on time on the Feast of the Epiphany on 6 January, which was also marked with the traditional blessing and chalking of the church door and rectory doors.

The present Covid-19 pandemic restrictions make it difficult to know when Church services with congregations are going to resume. Should restrictions ease, these are the times of planned services.

Sunday 7 February (2 Before Lent):

9.30, Askeaton, Parish Eucharist (Holy Communion 2); 11.30, Kilnaughtin (Tarbert), Morning Prayer.

Sunday 14 February (Sunday before Lent, Transfiguration Sunday):

9.30, Castletown, Parish Eucharist (HC 2); 11.30, Rathkeale, Morning Prayer.

Wednesday 17 February (Ash Wednesday):

11, Askeaton, Holy Communion with the Ash Wednesday prayers.

Sunday 21 February (Lent 1):

9.30, Askeaton, Morning Prayer; 11.30, Kilnaughtin (Tarbert), Parish Eucharist (HC 2).

Sunday 28 February (Lent 2):

9.30, Castletown, Morning Prayer; 11.30, Rathkeale, Parish Eucharist (HC 2).

Feast Days and Saints’ Days in February:

1, Saint Brigid; 2, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple

Funeral of Alan Fitzell:

Alan Fitzell of Glencullare, who died on Christmas Eve, was buried at Saint Brendan’s Church, Tarbert, on 27 December. Alan was born in Tarbert in 1941, and worked for many years with the ESB at the Great Island, Marina and Tarbert Power Station at commissioning and as a shift supervisor until he took early retirement in 1994.

Alan built 20 to 30 currachs in his 20s and 30s, built his first cruiser in the early 1970s – a 21 ft clinker – and built a 30 ft motor cruiser (Pegasus) that was his greatest pride. He also organised countless regattas. In Church life, he was a churchwarden for countless years, a member of the Select Vestry, the Diocesan Synod, and a board member of Saint John’s, Listowel (2000-2018).

Alan is survived by his wife Margaret, their sons Nigel and Brian, daughters-in-law Rachel and June, grandchildren Lucy, Mollie, Daniel, Gemma and Edie, and their extended family.

Christmas cards:

Congratulations to Jackie Gardiner on achieving ‘Highly Commended’ in the ‘All-Ireland Mothers’ Union Christmas Card Competition, ‘A Christmas Card for a Child.’

On-line sermons:

During the lockdown, when church buildings are closed, the Parish Eucharist continues to be celebrated, and the Sunday sermon and the intercessions go online through the Parish Facebook page and through Patrick’s blog (www.patrickcomerford.com). The sermons are also made available on YouTube.

The three wise men arrived at community crib in Askeaton in time for the Epiphany (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This is an edited version of the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group parish notes in the February 2021 edition of ‘Newslink,’ the Limerick and Killaloe diocesan magazine.

‘We stand before you … seeking only to understand your will and do it with a whole heart’

Shabbat Shalom … Alex Levin

Patrick Comerford

Rabbi Rachel S Mikva is the Herman Schaalman Professor in Jewish Studies and Senior Faculty Fellow of the InterReligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary.

She speaks regularly about ‘dangerous religious ideas.’ Indeed, her most recent book is Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Penguin, 2020).

She says the pursuit of justice is essential, but the equally compelling call to mercy sometimes (gently) pushes justice aside. Freedom is a God-given right, but freedom without commitment and purpose leaves us rootless. Peace is our perpetual desire, even as we sometimes decide we must fight. We also live with the breath-taking and terrifying knowledge that religious passion is a catalyst for great good, but all too often is wielded as a weapon.

In a recent Opinion column for USA Today, she argues that ‘Religion is a dangerous business.’ In the wake of the Capitol insurrection in Washington last month, and the persistent, continuing refusal of Trump and his supporters to accept the results of democracy, she looks at the people in the Christian right who promote the false belief that the presidential election was stolen.

Rabbi Mikva tries to go beyond the revulsion all of us must feel when white Christian nationalism turns violent, and draws attention to the ‘substantial number of Christians who plan to take the country for Jesus another way.’

She looks at ‘dominion theology,’ the ‘Christian Reconstructionist movement,’ Project Blitz, the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation and allied systems of beliefs that include ‘assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism. It is as ethnic and political as it is religious.

The Christian right is ‘distorting the very meaning of religious freedom,’ she writes. She believes there are Christian nationalists embedded throughout the governing institutions in the US – courts, military, legislatures, agencies and the police: ‘Distracted by those ready to bring on the apocalypse, we have not adequately exposed this more resilient threat to religious pluralism in the United States.’

She argues cogently for the need for ‘consciousness of the vital self-critical dimensions of faith,’ and says: ‘Whatever one’s spiritual life stance, we are choosing in every moment whether its power will be wielded for harm or for blessing.’

For my prayer this Friday evening, I turn to the prayer Rabbi Rachel S Mikva offered when she was the guest chaplain in the House of Representatives in 1995:

‘For the sake of Heaven.’

The rabbis taught:
‘Any argument conducted for the sake of Heaven will bear fruit.
If not for the sake of Heaven, it yields nothing.’

God,
Source of knowledge and insight,
what does it mean: ‘For the sake of Heaven?’

That each of us has the courage to face and to speak the truth?
And still, and still however, passionately we may cling to our vision of truth,
we must never fail to recognise Your image, God,
reflected in the face of the other.

‘For the sake of Heaven.’

That we are always mindful before whom we stand?
Committed to serve constituents,
the Nation,
the people of the world,
ultimately, we stand before You,
naked of power or possessions,
seeking only to understand Your will
and do it with a whole heart.

‘For the sake of Heaven.’

God,
we pray that our words and our deeds
may be for Your sake,
bringing healing to our world
and wholeness to all those whose lives we touch.

Amen. אָמֵן׃

Shabbat Shalom