LATEST UPDATE - MONDAY 17th NOVEMBER

Number of visitors to our site in November - 2,579

Number of visitors to our site in October - 44,654

Number of visitors to our website this year so far - 480,898

Number of visitors to our website during 2007- 351,981

Recent updates -

• The Book of the Names of the Dead
• Purgatory
• Bulletin for 31st Sunday of the Ordinary Season

•  GO and TELL –   from the Pope’s message for Mission Sunday 

• Greetings from Father Cirilo
• The Little Poor Man of Assisi
• Update from Parish pilgrimage to Cracow

The Book of the Names of the Dead

During the month of November the Church prays especially for the souls of those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith. At the beginning of the month we have the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed, which we celebrate today. 

Throughout November The Book of the Dead is displayed in  our church. It contains not only the names of those parishioners who died during the past twelve months, but also the names of the dead family and friends of the parishioners of Saint Bridget’s who have been returned on a ‘November List’ . The Book of the Dead has its origin in the Necrologies or ‘Lists of the Dead’ kept in monasteries during the Middle Ages: each day the names of the deceased members of the community, as well as the community’s deceased benefactors, were read aloud and remembered at the liturgies that day. 

For ourselves  having a parish Book of the Dead is a public expression of our Christian Faith regarding eternal life - death is nothing to be afraid of because the Lord has gone there before us. He has conquered death and promises those who die trusting in him a share in his risen life. Since nothing imperfect has a place in heaven, we believe that our prayers accompany the dead to help them as they go before God to be cleansed and renewed by his love and mercy. We ask  God to make them whole again, and grant entry into the eternal banquet of the Lamb.

If you would like your dead loved ones to be included in our Book of the Dead and to be remembered at Mass and the other liturgies and devotions that will take place at Saint Bridget’s during November, then please complete a November List and put it into the box at the back of the Church.

 Purgatory

Our souls demand purgatory, don’t they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, “It is true, my child, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you for these things, or draw away from you. Enter into joy”? Should we not reply, “Thank you, sir, but if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleansed first.” 

The practice of offering up the Holy Sacrifice for the souls in purgatory comes down from the earliest Christian times, and the Church has ever laid much stress upon this virtuous and charitable custom.

From O Blessed Purgatory by C.S. Lewis


A priest started his homily at a funeral saying: “I am going to speak about judgment.” There was dismay in the congregation. Then he went on: “Judgment is whispering into the ear of a merciful and compassionate God the story of my life which I have never been able to tell.” Many of us have a story, or part of one at any rate, about which we have never been able to speak to anyone. Fear of being misunderstood, inability to understand ourselves, ignorance of the darker side of our hidden lives, or just shame, make it very difficult for many people. Our true story is not told, or only half of it is. 

What a relief it will be to be able to whisper freely and fully into that merciful and compassionate ear. After all that is what He has always wanted. He waits for us to come home to Him. He receives us, His prodigal children, now contrite and humble, with an embrace. In that embrace we start to tell Him our story, and He begins that process of healing and preparation which we call purgatory. 
From the writings of Cardinal Basil Hume OSB

 GO and TELL –   from the Pope’s message for Mission Sunday

In this Jubilee Year dedicated to St Paul, we are reminded of the urgent need to proclaim the gospel to the ends of the world. There can be no slackening in the mission to evangelise. Today there are countless people thirsting for hope and love who are still waiting for the proclamation of the Gospel.

Paul experienced and understood that redemption and mission are the work of God and his love. The love of God for us spurs us on to missionary activity. Evangelisers must drink from the primary source, which is Christ. It is from his pierced heart that the love of God flows. Only from this source can care, tenderness, compassion, hospitality, availability and interest in people’s problems be drawn.

In the vast sea of this world, we can launch our nets without fear, confident  in the aid of Jesus.  My brother bishops, you know you can rely on the strength that comes from Him.  Like Paul, each bishop is called to reach out to those who are far away and do not yet know Christ. Priests are called to be generous pastors and enthusiastic evangelizers.  The vocation of religious has a strong missionary impetus, a commitment to bringing the proclamation of the Gospel to everyone. Laity are called by the witness of their lives to take an increasingly important share in spreading the Gospel.

May the celebration of Mission Sunday lead to a renewed awareness of the urgent need to proclaim the Gospel. I thank the Mission Societies who help so much to animate and form the People of God to be involved in missionary activity. Through them are developed closer and closer bonds linking people and their efforts in different parts of Christ’s Mystical body, the Church.

May the collection that is taken up in all parishes on Mission Sunday be a sign of communion and mutual concern between churches everywhere. May prayer, the essential spiritual means for spreading among all peoples the light of Christ, be strengthened and deepened even more among the Christian faithful. 
The full text of this message can be downloaded from the MISSIO Scotland website www.missioscotland.org.uk

Greetings from Father Cirilo

Dear Parishioners, 

I am Fr Jose Cirilo Rodrigues.  I come from Goa, from a small village called Merces which is now part of the capital city of Goa, Pnajim.  I am the second of three children; my mum and the other two brothers still live in Goa. But they have always been a great support to me on my way to the priesthood. Before I decided to offer myself for the priesthood I spent several years helping in our family poultry business and completing my B.A. and computing studies. 

I started my training for the priesthood in the Scots College in Rome in the year 2000 and I was ordained for the Diocese of Motherwell by my own bishop from Goa, Archbishop Filipe Neri Ferrao, at a special ceremonial Mass held in my own parish church, Our Lady of Merces, on 29^th June 2005. It was indeed a very happy and joyous occasion. 

For the past three years – since my ordination – St Anthony’s, Rutherglen has been my parish here in Scotland. It will always remain in my memory, and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. During this period I was also chaplain to John Ogilvie High School for over two and a half years. 

May I take this opportunity to thank Mgr John McIntyre, the parish priest, for the warm welcome I received from him. I came to know Mgr McIntyre personally some seven years ago when I came here to your parish to gain experience of parish life as a seminarian. Since then we have been good friends.  Four years ago I was privileged to have Monsignor out for my diaconal ordination in Rome.  As I thank him today for his great welcome to me in St Bridget’s I look forward to assisting him in his pastoral work. 

I also wish to thank you all for welcoming me so warmly to St Bridget’s. I look forward to serving your parish community and being part of it.  

Yours in Christ, 

Fr Jose Cirilo Rodrigues 
 

The Little Poor Man of Assisi 

The 4^th October was the feast of St Francis of Assisi, but by an oversight the patron saint of our former assistant pastor failed to get a mention in last week’s Calendar. So a few words about this most popular of saints will not come amiss.

He was born Giovanni Bernardone in 1181 into the family of a prosperous merchant in the small city-state of Assisi, but was called Francesco (‘the Frenchman’) apparently because his mother came from Provence.  As a young man he fought with the local army against Perugia, suffered imprisonment, and then gave up the idea of soldiering and began to show  a special concern for the poor and the lepers.

He later heard a voice speaking to him from a crucifix, instructing him to  ‘repair my house, which you see is ruinous’. This Francis did, partly by selling goods of his father without permission, and so began the series of events which led him take Christ’s counsel very seriously, giving all he had to the poor and living a hermit’s life dressed in a simple garment the local bishop gave him.  After a year or two begging his bread and caring for the poor and the lepers he began to attract followers who went on preaching tours with him from a centre at the Portiuncula near Assisi, following a very simple rule of prayer and poverty, and gradually beginning to wield a great spiritual influence. Their preaching was orthodox (unlike that of some other wandering teachers of the time) with strong loyalty to the Pope.  Francis’ Rule was approved in 1210 and his order continued to grow. He himself remained a deacon but felt called to convert the Saracens; after several attempts he reached the crusading armies at Acre, crossed the lines and spoke to the Sultan, who treated him kindly. Sadly, he returned from the Holy Land to an order which had lost its early simplicity, and he left its leadership to others. His great poems like the ‘Canticle of the Sun’, his invention of the Christmas crib, and the mystical experiences during which (like Saint Pio 700 years later)  he received the signs of Christ’s wounds on his body, date from these final years of his life. After much suffering he died, still only 45, at his beloved Portiuncula.                                 Fr McIntyre

Month of the Holy Rosary


The month of October each year is dedicated to the Rosary, a practice which developed towards the end of the last century, during the pontificate of Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), who probably did more than any other Pope in history to promote devotion to Our Lady, particularly through the recitation of the Rosary.

Current scholarship traces the origin and development of the Rosary to the great monasteries of the Middle Ages where it was seen as a substitute for the Divine Office for the lay brothers and devout lay people who did not know how to read. (The Divine Office or Breviary, was, and still is, the official prayer of the Church, based on psalms, readings and prayers. There are five ‘Offices’ each day: Morning, Evening and Night Prayer, the Office of Readings and Prayer During the Day. Priests and Religious are bound to pray the Divine Office each day for the good of the people of God). In the Middle Ages, instead of chanting the 150 psalms of the Old Testament, they would pray 150 ‘Our Fathers’, counting them on a ring of beads known as a ‘corona’. With the growth of devotion to Our Lady in the XII century, the 150 ‘Our Fathers’ were replaced with 150 ‘Hail Marys’. The 150 ‘Hail Marys’ were subsequently subdivided into 15 decades by the Dominicans, with each decade referring to an event in the life of Christ. The Dominican Fathers were also responsible for grouping the decades into the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious mysteries. Pope John Paul II in 2001 added another five decades called the ‘Mysteries of Light’.

The origin of the ‘Hail, Mary’ is worth underlining. The first part, ‘Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…’ is based on the angel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary, recorded St Luke’s Gospel. In the Middle Ages, the second part of the ‘Hail Mary’ took on different forms. The present text: ‘Holy Mary, mother of God…’, appeared for the first time in the Roman Breviary of 1568. Its popularity spread and it eventually became part of the official prayer.

The Rosary is recited here at 9.15am, and on the Mondays of October there will be special devotions to Our Lady, including the Rosary, at 7.30pm.