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  PassionistsGlasgow

father frank's log...

27/10/2018

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 21st – 28th OCTOBER


I was recently asked by Father Gareth to share some of my faith story with our young adult group who meet at St. Mungo’s every Wednesday night. One of the things I was recalling was my experience of being an altar server when the Mass was in Latin and the server had a few more things to do than servers nowadays. I started on the altar when I was 5. I don’t remember everything about it, but I remember some things. We had to learn to recite the Mass in Latin of course, and answer all the responses for the priest. We wouldn’t have had a clue as to what we were saying, except that he altar servers’ cards (and also the people’s missals for those who had them) had the pages divided into two columns, with the Latin down the left-hand side, and the English translation down the right-hand side. It was a language of mystery, beautifully sounding off the tongue. There were lots of moves to learn, like transferring the missal from one side of the altar to the other, or more properly from the ‘epistle’ side to the ‘gospel’ side.  At Holy Communion we had to walk with the priest along the line of Communicants kneeling at the altar rails, holding the Communion plate beneath their chin in case a Sacred Host should fall.
 
Some things are not so different from now. For example, pouring water over the presider’s hands at the Offertory, after the bread and wine have been offered. There were three priests in our parish of St.  Simon’s in Partick, but I remember in particular the parish priest who, when I would be pouring the water over his fingers, which were held in a very precise and particular way, would raise his hands very suddenly and jerkily when I had poured enough water. The first time he did this, when I was new to it, the water cruet flew into the air and smashed on the floor. After that I was always ready for him. The ringing of the bells at strategic moments is much the same, but perhaps there were more bells back then.
 
As well as the Sunday Masses, I would often serve the early morning Weekday Masses before going to school. On these occasions I would often spend the night at my grannies who lived right across from the church. If we served at weddings and were given something by the couple, we would hand it in and it would be pooled together for the annual altar servers’ outing to the circus and carnival at the Kelvin Hall after Christmas. If we served at funerals we went to the cemetery with the priest to hold the book and the holy water. If it was a weekday funeral we had no problem getting let out of class at school to serve. We would also serve at Devotions and Benediction, usually on a Wednesday night. If the young curate was the celebrant, and there was a midweek match at Celtic Park, he would hustle us into the car after the service and get us into the second half for free.  Of course, he wouldn’t be able to do that now, but back then it was just magic. On a Friday night we would serve at the Stations of the Cross, processing around the 14 stations with the priest, bearing cross and candles. This was just the rhythm of life for a young Catholic boy, it was the very air that we breathed, and I loved it.
 
With the Feast of All saints coming up I also remember that, on Holydays of Obligation, we would be let out of class early before the other pupils in school, so as to practice serving for the Holyday Mass, to which the school would be brought; and of course, on the Feast of All Souls, we would have to serve three Masses for the same priest, one after the other, because the priest had the privilege of offering three Masses on that day. The priest still has that privilege today, but whereas now it’s not often followed, back then it was the norm and, if you weren’t careful, you might get “caught” by another priest before you left the church and be asked to serve his three Masses as well. Much as I love the Mass, six in a row was a bit much. In case you don’t know the rule, priests are generally not supposed to offer more than one Mass on a weekday and two Masses on a Sunday, with there being the possibility of offering a second on weekdays and a third on Sundays under certain conditions, such as the shortage of priests.
 
An Altar Server’s Prayer:
Oh Jesus, my King and Lord, by the grace of the heavenly Father and the power of the Holy Spirit, guide me in all righteousness as I serve You today at the Altar, so I may be always worthy of Your presence. If I happen to make an error, may it be a lesson, so my service will be perfect tomorrow.
Jesus, I love you with all my heart. Amen.



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FATHER FRANK'S LOg...

20/10/2018

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 14th – 21st OCTOBER
​
Last Tuesday I attended the Annual General Meeting of the Conference of Religious in Scotland. It took place, for the first time, in Carfin, and I was looking forward to it as I hadn’t been to Carfin since I was at school, over 50 years ago. I had decided to go by train as there was no direct bus, and recent excursions to Lanarkshire by car had gotten very confusing. I got the bus from Bishopbriggs into Buchanan Bus Station and walked down to Glasgow Central intending to get the 09.17 to Edinburgh Waverley, stopping at Carfin. This would get me there way too early and the next train would have sufficed, but I wanted to give myself time to have a walk around the Grotto area. I purchased my ticket and waited patiently for the departures board to tell me what platform to go to. Eventually Platform 5 came up, with the additional information that we were to head for the front two carriages. Off I went and boarded the train on the first carriage, then settled down to say my Morning Office. Just as I was finishing there was an announcement that this was the train to Newton. What? How did that happen? I grabbed my bits and pieces and jumped off the train, looking to find a guard, only to notice that since I had boarded this train, another train had come in front of us, and that was the train I was meant to be on. I ran along the platform and jumped on to the second carriage from the front, just seconds before the doors closed and the train pulled out.
 
Four stops later I alighted at Carfin. It was a pleasant day and I set off on my stroll. I can’t even say that it had changed a lot since I was last there as I had very little memory of my school trip, but it was obvious that there were some fairly recent additions. One that struck me was a beautiful sculpture of Pope St. John Paul II in the shrine area erected by the Polish Community. It captured that iconic image of JPII as an old and frail man, leaning on his crozier, chasuble blowing in the wind, and giving witness to the dignity of age and sickness. He is gazing over at the glass-fronted chapel of Our Lady, Maid of the Seas, where the Blessed Sacrament is often exposed, capturing his great devotion to Our Lady and to the Eucharist. This chapel is also dedicated to the victims of the Lockerbie Disaster. Lest the Lithuanians feel left out, I was also taken by their shrine area with the Wayside Crucifix flanked by statues of Our Lady of Vilnius, erected to mark the Marian Year of 1989, and St. Casimir, erected in 1990 to mark Lithuania’s regained independence from the Soviet Union. This area is next to the Assisi Garden with statues of St. Francis and St. Anthony, (also St. Claire), and having been Christened Francis Anthony I am a bit of a closet Franciscan.
 
This was appropriate as Franciscans were the first to feature in the main talk of the day which, to mark the centenary of the Catholic Education Act of 1918, was a celebration of the contribution of Religious to Education in Scotland. The speaker was Dr Francis O’Hagan who set out to highlight five Religious Orders in particular whose work had paved the way for that Act. The first of these was the Franciscans of the Immaculate Conception who came to Glasgow 1n 1847 and through whom Catholic religious life returned to the West of Scotland for the first time since the Reformation. Other orders highlighted were the Sisters of Mercy, the Marist Brothers, the Jesuits and the Sisters of Notre Dame. There were some extraordinary women and men among those groups and what they achieved was remarkable.
 
My journey home was easier. I got the train, accompanied by the latest member of the Jesuit community at St. Aloysius, an Indian by birth, who was ordained last June and Glasgow is his first appointment, teaching religion in the high school. His first question to me when I introduced myself to him as a Passionist was, “Do you know Father Gareth?” Is there anyone who doesn’t know that Welshman? It turns out they had studied together at Heythrop College in London. He also knew Brother Antony but he was only an afterthought.  Jesus is the great teacher, and after washing the disciples’ feet He spoke these words, which seem appropriate to finish: “You call me Teacher and Lord and rightly so, for that is what I am”


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father frank's log...

13/10/2018

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 7th – 14th OCTOBER
​
The 4th of October was the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, my own name saint. In the Passionists, as I am sure is the case in most religious orders, there is a tradition of celebrating the Rector’s feast day as a Gaudeamus – a day of joy, which usually means a decent meal and maybe a glass of wine. Older members of the community recall that in the past it meant two pittances, in other words two desserts. Historically, a pittance was a pious bequest to a religious house to provide extra food and wine at particular festivals, or on the anniversary of the benefactor's death, but over time it had come to mean a simple treat, such as a dessert, over and above the usual fayre. Normally, there was a pittance only on Thursdays and Sundays, but on special occasions there would be two pittances, a rare treat indeed.
 
As the 4th of October approached, and me being the Rector of St. Mungo’s, I was teasing the community as to what they were going to do for the Rector’s feast. There was a football match on television that night, beginning at 6pm, so we agreed that we would have a meal that we could bring into the sitting room and eat while watching the match together. That morning I celebrated the 10 o’clock Mass. Father Gareth was on duty and so I busied myself in the office until lunch time, after which I decided to give myself the afternoon off and go home for a rest. Brother Antony had the car and the plan was that, on the way home, we would do shopping for the meal, a simple pasta, and get petrol in the car which was beeping loudly at us and flashing a red light to let us know it was thirsty. Brother Antony, our number one cook, would then begin preparing the meal while I relaxed in my room.
 
At first everything went according to plan. We got the shopping and then filled the car with petrol at a self-service pump. The first blip was that the machine did not print out the receipt that I would need for our auditors. As Brother Antony drove me to the supermarket to find an assistant to ask about the receipt he noticed a strange sound and a pull on the car. I got out to find the front passenger side tyre as flat as a pancake. We found somewhere to park and I went in to sort out the receipt for the petrol. When I returned, Brother Antony informed me that the tyre wouldn’t take any air, so we spent the next twenty minutes or more putting on the spare tyre. I say “we”, but I really mean Brother Antony as, amazingly, I have never had to change a tyre in my life and, with a bit of a bad back, I didn’t fancy starting now.
 
We completed the journey home and took the shopping out of the car, but then, instead of me going up to rest, I took the car to get what I presumed would be a new tyre, as the old one looked beyond repair. I was told I would have to wait about 40 minutes before they could look at it, so I left it with them and walked into the village where I spent some time sitting, quietly praying in St. Matthew’s, to a backdrop of nice classical music that was being piped through the sound system. I returned just as they were starting to look at the car. As it turned out I ended up having to get two new tyres and two new springs to balance the wheels as one had snapped. I had to leave the car with them and get the bus home, returning the following afternoon to collect it and departing with my wallet a good bit lighter than when I started.
 
My Gaudeamus hadn’t turned out to be the day of joy that was intended. Brother Antony did produce a lovely meal, with a starter that we ate around the table before bringing our pasta into the sitting room; but then the match turned out to be a disaster as well, with our team producing a poor performance and being on the wrong side of a heavy defeat. I may not have received the stigmata that Francis received, but I did feel as if I had received a few wounds.
 
Stigmata Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, we praise you and adore you. Like Francis, we are amazed that you held nothing back from us in pouring yourself out for us so totally through your holy wounds on the cross. We ask you to breathe forth your Holy Spirit into us and set our hearts on fire, so that, with the Spirit’s help, we might respond more fully to you. Amen.


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Fr Frank's Log...

4/10/2018

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 30th SEPTEMBER – 7th OCTOBER
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This weekend marks the second anniversary of Father Gareth and myself arriving in St. Mungo’s to take up our roles in the parish. It’s hard to believe that two years have passed since then. In some ways the time has passed very quickly, and in other ways it seems like we’ve never been anywhere else. The warm welcome we received at the beginning has never waned and, if anything, people are even more encouraging and supportive than ever, even though Father Gareth’s jokes have never changed in all that time, so we are very grateful for that. Since then, of course, Brother Antony has arrived in the community to make a great contribution and, together with Father Lawrence and Father Justinian, that makes five of us.
 
As I’ve said before, we like our accommodation in Bishopbriggs, even though there are now five of us in a four-bedroom house, with a downstairs den having been converted into an extra en-suite, and most of the time the commute to and from St. Mungo’s is not too arduous, and, while not ideal, we are used to our meal times being a bit ad hoc, especially when we try and sit down all together. However, when Father Gary was here recently conducting the Novena to Our Lady of Sorrows, we experienced more fully the limitations of our situation. In the first instance we had no visitor’s room to give him, and so I asked a neighbouring parish priest, whose brother is married to my niece, could he put him up, to which he kindly agreed. On the day Father Gary arrived I collected him at the airport and brought him to St. Mungo’s to get a sense of the church as he would begin preaching the next day. We then went shopping to get him a few things for breakfast and for a night time snack, should he feel so inclined, and I brought him to his temporary abode to get him settled in.
 
Every morning either myself; Father Gareth or Brother Antony would go and collect Father Gary after breakfast and bring him to the church to prepare for the mid-day Novena Mass. We would then have to decide where to go and get some dinner. For the first couple of days we manged to eat out at Bishopbriggs. On the Sunday we had kindly been given two hospitality tickets for a charity match at Celtic Park and so Brother Antony and Father Gary were able to feast themselves on the buffet before and after the match. On the Monday we went to the local pub near St. Mungo’s where I ordered sausage and mash. When it came there were five big Cumberland sausages embedded on a mountain of mash – I hadn’t realised there was a Monday special that I think was intended for Desperate Dan. The others had something more manageable. We went back there on the Friday when we all had fish and chips. The other meal times were spent in various little cafes eating pasta or burgers, whatever was cheap and tasty, and we made the most of the sausage rolls at the closing buffet in the hall after the final Mass. It was a week in which we probably upheld Glasgow’s reputation for (un)healthy eating, but, in the end, we turned it into an adventure and we had some great chats and laughs together before Father Gary would have a little rest and get himself ready for the evening Novena Mass. Occasionally after the evening Mass we would indulge in an ice-cream on the way home and take time to discuss how things were going.
 
Father Gary, it has to be said, was very amenable and fully appreciated our situation and, in the end, I would say he actually enjoyed the chaos, the improvisation, the company, the encouragement, and the support. Perhaps the highlight for him though, apart from the Novena itself, in which he was genuinely fulsome in his praise of the faith of the people who attended, and the affirmation he received, was on the closing day, the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, when, in between the two sessions, he was able to fulfil a lifetime ambition and, once again accompanied by Brother Antony, take in the Celtic Park Stadium Tour.
 
Let’s finish with the Selkirk Grace: Some hae meat and canna eat, And some wad eat that want it, But we hae meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit.” (Robert Burns)


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    Picture

    FATHER FRANK KEEVINS C.P.

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