We’re two weeks into the Easter season now, but the Good News of the season continues to reverberate in the Liturgy. Joyfully we worship God who raised our Saviour from the dead.

Even though Easter Week is now behind us, today’s liturgy still overflows with the joy of Jesus’ resurrection. We continue to celebrate that great event for the next six weeks, until Pentecost Sunday on the 20th of May, the fiftieth and final day of Easter.

This fifth Sunday of Lent, we gather to worship our compassionate God, who heals our sinfulness and challenges us to leave our sinfulness behind.

To facilitate people taking time off over Christmas, the entire set of Christmas Presiders Page has now been published, up to and including New Years Day.

We celebrate the feast of Christ the King today, acclaiming Jesus as our king, the one who died for us and rose triumphant. We offer praise and worship — and ask for the grace to live as worthy citizens of his kingdom of justice, truth, love and peace.

Today’s liturgy gives a preview of the events we will celebrate between Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday: the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. These events are also the focus of this and every Sunday celebration. We ask for God’s help in understanding their significance.

Faced with the 'lucky bag' of glossy advertising material about the world meeting of families regularly reaching most parochial houses, Seamus Ahearne pens a few thoughts, and hopes, about this upcoming event.
"We need the messed up, chaotic struggle of most ordinary and real families to be centre stage. We have to reflect the life of the family in Ireland and not some idealised version."
"I don’t dismiss or undermine anything of the mighty work being done in preparation. I am concerned that it can reflect something of what we see daily."

The text of a lecture given by Gabriel Daly OSA to a "We are Church" event on Monday, 15 January 2018.
Our sincere thanks to Gabriel and to Colm Holmes of 'We are Church Ireland' for providing the text.

Correspondence from and to the Kildare & Leighin Council of Priests concerning the ACP information Card issued at the recent AGM.
The card outlines rights priests have in civil and canon law and are taken from “Guidelines for the Care and Management of Respondents (i.e. priests) Standard 4” as outlined by the National Board for Safeguarding Children.

Seamus Ahearne reports of an interesting dialogue he had recently about the state of church and liturgy and sacraments.
"Much of Liturgy has evolved from the Monasteries. It has grown fat with the accretions of history. It has become something to endure or admire or look at. Despite all the changes of language; it can still be so passive as a Celebration. ......
The psychological reality is that there are too many words hurled at us. Any real psychology of praying is absent. There is no space for quiet; for sharing; for being still.....
Someone has to shout stop and strip off the accretions and reduce the Mass to its essentials and make space for God to speak and for us to be part of it. It is all noise and fuss and rush."