Counselling
and Support
Parish Groups
and Societies
Welcome
Page
Mass
Times
Prayer
Groups
Faith Development
and Prayer
About the
Sacraments
Parish
Schools
GIFT Programme
and Children's Liturgy
Social
Activities
Official Re-Opening of St. Patrick's Church, Bryansford
Bishop Noel Treanor officially re-opened St.Patrick's Church Bryansford on Palm Sunday 28 TH March 2010 on the occassion of his first offical visit to the Parish of Maghera. St. Patrick's Church had been closed for several months whilst a major external and internal refurbushment programme was completed.
Bishop Noel Treanor officially re-opened St.Patrick's Church Bryansford on Palm Sunday 28 TH March 2010 on the occassion of his first offical visit to the Parish of Maghera.
St. Patrick's Church had been closed for several months whilst a major external and internal refurbushment programme was completed.
Bishop Treanor's Homily
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, it is a joy to join with you in celebrating the Eucharist on this Palm Sunday, when we re-open this beautifully refurbished Church, dedicated to St Patrick at Bryansford. Many among you are familiar with the local landscape and the history of the parish. Im sure you children have visited the local Mass-rock. And if you have not been there, then in spring or summer you might put on you wellies and get friends or your parents to visit it with you. Knowing our own landscape is a keyhole to knowing the world.
My dear children, for at least 250 years our forefathers have celebrated Palm Sunday in this place. That's a long time, isnt it ? !!! According to Fr. James O'Laverty, Mass was celebrated in a bohog at Cross in the townland of Tullyree in the neighbouring parish of Kilcoo and at Burren-Rock before the erection of the old chapel at Bryansford or Ballyhafry in or around the year 1760.
Year on year over two and a half centuries the women, men, youth and children of this area have gathered here every Sunday in prayer and worship. Each year on Palm Sundays with palms in their hard-working, knowledge-laden and skilful hands they listened to and heard the gospel account of Christs triumphal entry into Jerusalem where, in stark contrast to that joyful entry, he would meet his Passion, crucifixion and death at the hands of the non-comprehending religious and political authorities and of the misled and myopic people.
On this spot in the old chapel and as of 1830 in the Church of St Patrick your kith and kin nourished their Christian faith and hope as they listened to the Word of God from the Holy Scriptures and celebrated the saving mysteries of our redemption in the Eucharist, in the sacraments and as they came and gathered here for private and parish prayer and devotion.
St Patrick's Bryansford, was made a holy place by the prayers, contributions and assemblies of the generations of men and women who have gone before us. Like all Churches it is a temple that sanctified their lives and the communities they composed.
This Church was, as it is today, a sanctuary which shaped the identity of all who built, supported and maintained it. This Church building helped to make generations holy and wholesome people. It inspired parishioners to charity, good works, solidarity, spiritual insight and qualitative citizenship. It stood, as it stands today, as a symbol of God incarnate in Jesus Christ alive in our lives and in this parish.
St Patrick's kept the flame of Christian hope alive in times of trial, famine and uncertainty, as its restoration does in this year of the Lord 2010. An earthly temple, needing regular renewal over the decades and centuries, its walls, furnishings and aura never ceased to speak of the suffering and risen God, revealed in Jesus Christ, who is the bed-rock of our identity, the assurance of divine love for each one, the guarantor of forgiveness for each human person and the source of our strength in the face of lifes sufferings and trials.
On this Palm Sunday 2010 the re-opening and blessing of the refurbished St Patricks, Bryansford, keeps Christian hope alive in the faith-testing conditions, arising from the horrific crimes and sin of the sexual and other abuse of children, minors and vulnerable persons, prevalent within our Church in Ireland and elsewhere. The work, imagination and parish support for this refurbishment project is nothing other than faith at work in concrete and measurable terms here and now. It is also an immeasurable contribution to the future of this community and parish and to the public good of society.
I congratulate the parish, the parishioners, Fr. Albert McNally and Fr Declan Mulligan, respectively your Parish Priest and Curate, on undertaking and completing this refurbishment project. I salute the work of the architect, Patrick O'Hagan, the contractor, Castledara Developments and its director, Michael OHagan, the quantity surveyor, John Heaney, the numerous sub-contractors who worked in the construction related fields listed at the end of the impressive booklet produced for this historic occasion. I congratulate all the craftsmen and women, tradesmen, workers and advisers who have re-appointed and embellished St Patricks. Your work and combined efforts are an expression of the vitality of your faith and a homage to the Christian witness of your forbears. They are a spiritual and religious gift to generations to come. This magnanimous local effort, on which we invoke Gods blessing today, stands in line with the heroic building on this site of the chapel in 1760, of the Church in 1830 and of the restorations carried out throughout its history and particularly in 1985.
My dear friends in Christ, today, Palm Sunday, we set out on the Great Week of the Christian calendar when Christians celebrate the paschal mystery of Christs life, death and resurrection in the sacred liturgy of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil. We enter this week carrying the palm of hope eternal in our hands. Holding these palms in our hands, we realise full well that life is made up of trials and difficulties. Through the years of life we learn time and again that, even as baptised women and men and as striving followers of Christ, we all carry the burden of imperfections and failure.
Even as we carry these Palms of hope and joy, there echo in our ears the chastening and salutary words from the third of the Servant Songs in Second Isaiah (Is.50. 4-7 - the first reading of todays liturgy of the Word): those words remind us that persecution, insult, spittle are not spared to the Godly, even if they are agents of conversion, renewal and reform, as were the prophets and Christ himself. These lines from the prophet Isaiah, ever pertinent to the life of each Christian, and indeed to the crucible Christian history, provide the backdrop to the Passion narrative we read from the gospel according to St Luke (Lk.22.14 - 23.56) and that sets the scene for the saving mysteries that we shall celebrate and re-live in the liturgies of this Holy Week.
Today, as we carry these palms to our homes and prepare to enter Holy Week, I pray with you that St Patricks, Bryansford, will continue to draw you together as a believing, praying community that celebrates the sacred mysteries of our redemption from sin. I pray that this Church will be a place and a centre where the beautiful and noble message of the Christian gospel will be handed on to new generations of youth and that you, young children present today, will hand on this treasure of faith in the person of Jesus to your children and grandchildren.
With you I pray too that the lifes witness of all who worship here will continue to civilise and inspire improvement in the life of society and in our ever smaller and more interdependent world bedevilled by the evils of injustice, poverty and human suffering.
May St Patrick's, Byransford, and this parish community, grow in faith in our Saviour Jesus of Nazareth, the suffering Christ of God whom God raised from the dead, the risen Christ who is our Hope eternal. Amen.
Bishop Treanor is holding the crozier which he inherited from the late Bishop Daniel Mageean and which was used at the official re-opened St. Patrick's Church following renovations in 1930.
Interior refurbishments included repainting, raising the statues of St. Joseph and Our Lady, new heating, lighting, carpets and a new presider's chair and ambo
St. Veronica depicted wiping the face of Our Lord on one of the The ornate stations of the cross were presented to the St. Patrick’s Church in August 1902 by Mrs. Mary Cowan, a descendant of William McNally
The History of St. Patrick's Church Bryansford
