SAINT BRIDGET'S - BAILLIESTON

This year our observance of the ancient custom of a three-day celebration of Jesus truly present in the Blessed Sacrament coincided with the feast of Christ the Universal King. Exposition of the Sacrament followed the mid-day Mass on Sunday and the Morning Mass on the other days, with each night a closing ceremony including Sung Vespers. During the day parishioners were always present to pray in adoration, and Fr McIntyre & Rodrigues in this ‘year of the Priest’ made prayer for priests and the example of priests like St John Vianney the theme of their talks.

On Tuesday night members from elsewhere in the Deanery joined us for the closing service and for hospitality afterwards in the Parish Centre.

Feast of St Andrew

As has become our custom in St Bridget’s we anticipated the feast on the nearest Saturday, when we had a full Festal Mass and a celebratory breakfast afterwards for a goodly number of our parishioners. On the feast itself he St Andrew Hymn was sung lustily at a Mass for the whole school. School pupils later had a ceilidh in the Parish centre which was fast and furious.

Church Repairs

On the principle that ‘a Stitch in time saves Nine’ we have had roofers working on various problem points around the church before winter really sets in. This has meant repairing hoppers and clearing high-level gutters as well as repainting down pipes. We looked for a final solution to the terrible mess pigeons constantly make of our St Bridget statue in front of the church. The frame and mesh is not appealing to the eye, but does the job.

Throughout the month of November parishioners have been giving in to St Bridget's lists of those departed souls for whom they would particularly ask prayers. These names of family members and friends, some hundreds of them, are then recorded in a Book of Remembrance, and for the duration of November the Sacred Heart chapel in the left aisle becomes a kind of shrine where this book and its contents are suitably displayed.

During early November your parish priest had a few days break which took him to the Scots College in Rome. The dates were chosen to coincide with a visit of the Archivist for the Catholic church in Scotland, Mr Andrew Nicholl, who has recently re-boxedand re-located much of the College's historic archives. The current task which Fr Mc/ntyre helped with was transferring a thousand or so engravings which are part of the College collection to the new Archive Room (2 floors up!) and re-boxing them in a modern steel drawer-cabinet. My photograph shows Mr Nicholl at work putting an engraving in its new home, and a typical 17th-century engraving of the manufacture of sugar.