Feast of Corpus Christi Celebration
Mass & Eucharistic Procession is set to return to Athea this year, after an absence of over 20 years. Following 7.30pm mass on Saturday June 17th, our local clergy carrying the Monstrance and consecrated Eucharist together with the Holy Communion & Confirmation Children will process down Con Colbert Street to Con Colbert Memorial Hall. The Holy Communion Children are invited once again to dress in their Holy Communion outfits and sprinkle petals during the journey to welcome the Holy Eucharist. Houses/Businesses on the Main Street/ Route are also invited to set up a Holy Altar / Display at their premises. Light refreshments will be served at the Hall following the procession. A warm welcome is extended to everyone to join the Holy Mass and Procession and help us to ‘Unite Once Again’. Many people have shared very fond memories of the Processions in Athea in the years gone by and we look forward to sharing this important and significant tradition with the younger generation on June 17th also. Anyone wishing to donate baked goods for the occasion are asked to text 087 7770375
Athea Medical Centre has moved
Athea Medical Centre has moved premises. It now operates from it’s new premises at
The Square, Athea, Co Limerick.
Eircode V94 XT7V.
Contact Numbers remain the same.
St. Bartholomew’s Church Athea
Intentions for next Saturday June 10th 7.30pm:
Patsy & Margaret Broderick (Coole East).
Ministers of the Word: Tom Denihan & Caroline Pierce.
Ministers of the Eucharist: Angela Brouder O’Byrne & Catherine Woulfe.
Weekday Masses this coming week:
Tuesday & Thursday evening 7pm – Mass on Tuesday evening for Examination Students
No Eucharistic Adoration and Devine Mercy Chaplet this week.
All masses are streamed live on https://www,churchservices.tv/athea
Baptisms on the 4th Saturday of the month at 2.30pm. Baptism course on Tues June 13th at 8pm.
Parish Office: Mon-Fri 11am-1pm. Call 087-3331459, email [email protected]
Sacristans’ collection : Siobhan & Theresa wish to thank you for your generous support to them during the recent collection.
Leaving and Junior Cert Exams: We wish all our students every success in the Leaving and Junior Cert Exams which begin this coming Wednesday.
The Way I See It
By Domhnall de Barra
The last thing I do in the morning, before I get out of bed, is listen to the news on the radio. I know immediately, by the headlines, if there is anything new or startling in the bulletin to follow but, more often than not, bad news far outweighs the good kind. The other morning I was shocked by the report of a major rail crash in India involving three trains and killing almost 300 people. Apparently one train, travelling at high speed, was diverted onto a track that was already occupied by a stationary train. This resulted in a terrible collision which was compounded by another train, on the same line, crashing into them. They are still trying to determine the cause of the accident but there is strong speculation that there was a fault in the electronic system that controls the tracks and ensures that trains avoid each other. In the early days, as I well remember, trains could only be transferred from one track to another by a railway worker physically pulling levers to shift the track connectors. These operators had a very serious job to do and they took great pride in their work. As time went on, modernisation crept in and the human operators were replaced by electronics. The new method was deemed to be much safer as it cut out what was commonly called “human error”. There had been, over the years some errors on lines that resulted in crashes and near crashes because somebody had neglected to pull the correct levers in time so we were told that the future was now a much safer place due to the new technology. We live with it every day whether it is a TV, washing machine, new car or hundreds of appliances where we depend on electronics to do the job for us. I was more than surprised when I found out that a car I was driving on a motorway refused to cross over the white line unless I had indicated my intention to do so. The same car could park itself and there are cars that are completely automatic and do not need a driver at all. In most of the factories making cars robots are doing all the assembling and welding etc. I was told that there are now robots that can perform heart surgery. They say that statistics prove that machines and robots are far more reliable than human beings. Well you know what they say about statistics and being an old stick in the mud I would prefer not to have to depend on any type of machine if my life depended on it. Like everything else, it is all right until something goes wrong, like they think happened in India with the train crash that caused such loss of life. We should not be in a big hurry to abandon tried and trusted methods and replace them with a technology that is not infallible, no matter what they tell us. There are far too many “gadgets” in modern cars at the moment and we don’t really need half of them. The more you have, the more it is likely that something will go wrong because everything has the ability to malfunction. As human beings we are not flawless but I still would prefer to depend on ourselves rather than jumbles of wires and sensors that are beyond our control.
It is great to be in the middle of a heatwave at the moment and it comes at a great time for hay, silage and turf. The grass cutting is in full sway at the moment, even though it is just the beginning of June, and many farmers will be taking advantage of the good climate to make more hay than silage. Long ago the meadows would be very thin at this time and no farmer would start cutting until the month of July. It was a different type of hay in those days with a great mixture of tall grass, thistles, wild flowers and herbs and other types of wild plants we don’t see anymore. This mixture must have been far better for the cattle than the pure grass, forced by nitrates, that is being harvested today. Again we pay the price for new ideas and methods of intensifying production but the old ways were probably better in the long run. I mentioned the weather is good for saving the turf but the old people would disagree. They maintained that sunny weather wasn’t the best because it created a crust on the outside of the sods leaving the middle raw. The best for drying turf is breezy, showery weather which keeps the pores open and allows the inside to dry. At least that is what all the good bog men told me and who am I to argue with them. I am just glad I don’t have to work in the bogs anymore. My father sold turf for a living so all my young summers were spent in the bog, footing, re-footing, drawing out and loading the lorry. Forgive me if my memories of the bog are not happy ones although I love the place now and really enjoy walking through places I once cursed as a youth. Footing turf must be the most back-breaking work of all time. The secret was to keep your head down for as long as you could because when you stood up the back muscles let you know how they were feeling. Nowadays not many people foot the turf as it is easier to turn the sods, due to the turf machine, eliminating the back-breaking work. Now that is progress I do applaud.!
How time is flying past. Seems like only yesterday we had frost in the mornings and now we are just a couple of weeks away from the turn of the year when the days start to get shorter again. It is hard to believe the County Fleadh Cheoil is over, the Munster Hurling final is on next Sunday and we will soon have the All-Ireland’s. Time was when the competitions were spaced throughout the summer with the finals in September but now everything is packed into the first few months of the year with dozens of games going on at the same time. I must admit I am not a fan of the new system where the GAA seem to want competitions completed with indecent haste. Soon we will have no matches left to look forward to and won’t that leave a void in our weekend viewing. The All-Ireland Fleadh is also earlier than it used to be but not by too much. Congratulations to all the competitors from Athea branch who were so successful in Kilfinnane last weekend. We wish them every success in the Munster and, who knows, the All-Ireland.
