This week has truly been a week of beginnings and endings for the House of Brigid.
First, the beginnings:
As Nicole mentioned on Tuesday, we had our first You Shall Be My Witnesses night with the 6th class students. Emily and I have been working as administrators for the programme, alongside the parish team, and it was great to witness the first fruits of our efforts as the parents led their small groups for the first time. After prayer in the main church, we were able to ask the parent leaders and the coordinators (the small group mentors from last year who volunteered to stay on an extra year to oversee things) for their feed-back. The response was overwhelmingly positive from both groups. This coming Monday we’ll have the our first session with the students of Scoil Mhuire, and the other half of our parent leaders, and we’re hoping for the same success that we witnessed this week.
With St. Brigid’s feast day coming up, we’ve also begun to make our Brigid Crosses, slowly counting down to our 200 quota. Now, I’ve never been one for arts and crafts, so I can’t say that I am as excited as some of my cohorts at the prospect, but it does give me an excuse to watch more movies during the week as I make them. There is always a silver lining.
This week we’ve also had two endings. The first was the last teaching Mass of the year. To recap, throughout the last couple of months we’ve been working with Fr. Martin and Fr. James to plan and celebrate three “teaching” Masses for the children and parents of the First Holy Communion class. The three sessions focused on what the Mass is and the Introductory Rites, the Liturgy of the Word, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist and the Concluding Rites. While we had some rough patches here and there, overall the programme has been a great success, especially considering this is the first year the House of Brigid and the parish have ever done something like this. I think our goals and objectives for this programme were fulfilled when we heard one of the parents remark that she, “never knew how beautiful the Mass could be.”
The other ending this week has been for my radio show, “Faith Talk.” After recording my first radio show for the House of Brigid in November, I found that I enjoyed it, even though I’ve never done radio before. Wanting more experience, as well as wanting to challenge myself, I was given permission by Christian Media Trust and Molly to do a radio show in January for the Year of Faith. During the show we would play music and answer questions that people would email in. Its been a great experience, and extremely educational for myself. Now that its done, I can’t wait for when we begin to record our House of Brigid shows for Lent.
Well, that is all I have for this week. Stay tuned next week for details about a friend’s visit to House of Brigid and an initiative that Emily is taking in the parish!
