Author: John

This course is for any adult who wants to explore and grow their faith. Over a year, participants are offered inputs on foundational issues of faith and the impact they have on ministry and parish life. There is also time for small group sharing and the opportunity for three different retreat experiences. On completion of the course, people are presented with a certificate.

Pathways is run on a Thursday evening (during term times) at the St Patrick’s campus of DCU in Drumcondra from 7.15pm to 9.15pm. The course starts on September 24 and runs until May 13, and costs €300. Online registration is now open using the QR code or via this link.

For further details, please visit the adult faith section of www.dublindiocese.ie/missionministry or contact peter.siney@dublindiocese.ie.

The Summer Dues initiative for the support of priests launched on the weekend of 13th/14th June.

A letter to you from Archbishop Farrell about this initiative and its importance can be read by clicking this link.

Available here is a page ‘For parishioners’, with the Archbishop’s message and a note on the tax refund scheme. A poster can be accessed here. These you might make available over the course of the summer on your website, on noticeboards, at the back of the church and in the parish newsletter. Your print provider could be asked to produce some posters if you do not have the facility locally.

An envelope template, available here, includes space for the name, address, phone number and email address of the contributor, in order to record the contribution. It also provides the possibility of giving an envelope number in those parishes where this is helpful.

Enquiries about the Summer Dues collection can be directed to Funding Development Officer Patricia Clifford at patricia.clifford@dublindiocese.ie or 01 8087527.

Support and training is available for parishes from the Finance Secretariat and the Office for Financial Development on the tax on donations scheme.

The Peter’s Pence collection will take place this weekend, 27/28 June, the Sunday before the liturgical feast of Saints Peter and Paul. This special collection replaces the second collection at Mass, the Share Fund collection.

The Peter’s Pence collection supports the Holy Father Pope Leo XIV in his mission of service to the universal Church. Donations to Peter’s Pence are a gesture of communion with the Holy Father and of solidarity with his mission to bring the Gospel to the world.

To support this initiative, the Holy See has prepared a short video. It can be viewed here. The Holy See’s poster can be used in your church, parish centre, noticeboard, website and social media platforms to promote the special collection. The poster can be found here. Other materials illustrating the collection’s significance can be found on the Holy See’s website.

How does your parish lodge this special collection?

This special collection should be lodged using the giro slip in the Share Fund Giro lodgement book that is labelled Peter’s Pence Collection and is dated 28/06/2026. The last three digits of the six-digit giro number in all parishes is XXX 826. You will find this giro slip in date sequence in the Giro lodgement book. The Finance Secretariat will then transfer the income donated from your parishioners to the Peter’s Pence bank account which will then be transferred on to the Holy See.

Please note that the Tap & Go donations received on the weekend of 27/28 June will be allocated to the special collection as follows:

•              Peter’s Pence will receive the 40% that would ordinarily be transferred to the Share collection,

•              and it will receive any uplift in the Common Fund portion (60%) of the Tap & Go donations received that weekend.

St. Fintan’s Sutton 12.00 noon June 14th

Glasnevin 3.00pm June 28th

Dardistown 3.00pm July 5th

St. Margaret’s 3.00pm July 5th 

We would like to thank the Chairperson and all the members of our Parish Finance Committee for the comprehensive update they provided on the weekend of June 13th/14th. 

We thank them most sincerely for the work they do, voluntarily, to ensure that all of your donations are used wisely and efficiently to maintain our Church.

We thank our Parishioners for their generosity in supporting our Parish, both spiritually and financially.

It gives us hope and joy knowing that we can provide a place of worship for all to cone and enjoy spending time in.

Feast of St Kevin, June 3, 2026, St Mary’s Cathedral, Dublin

 Homily of Archbishop Dermot Farrell

Archbishop Dermot Farrell celebrated Mass in St Mary’s Cathedral, Dublin, on Wednesday, June 3, for the Feast of St Kevin. St Kevin of Glendalough is one of the principal patrons of the Archdiocese of Dublin. In the Archbishop’s homily, he called for the Church to recognise and encourage the gifts already present among the people of the Archdiocese for ministry, leadership and service. Using example of St Kevin, he called on people to discover the “hidden treasure” of a living relationship with God and to help others encounter that same faith.

(Also available at https://www.dublindiocese.ie/st-kevin-2026/)   

The Hidden Life of the Church

In every parish in our diocese, there are people of deep faith and profound commitment: people whose prayer is genuine and regular, for whom the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, are places of consolation and nourishment, and whose way of living is rooted in a genuine commitment to the way of living Christ puts before the world. These might not be the words they’d use to describe themselves, but they are the living Church in our parishes. They give of their gifts to parish pastoral councils, prayer groups, youth groups, sacramental preparation groups for the children, funeral ministry, finance committees; they reach out the poor and disadvantaged in their own communities and beyond. However, this life of the Church, and this is the real life of the Church, often remains somehow hidden, not only to the world, but also to the Church itself. It is a treasure that remains hidden to us. And it is on this hidden treasure that I’d like to reflect on with you on this Feast of St Kevin today.

The Sadducees and Jesus—Two Responses to What God is Doing in the World

In today’s Gospel (Mark 12:18–27), we have an encounter between Jesus and the Sadducees. The Sadducees find their way into the Gospels, not merely as witnesses to what Jesus was involved with, but because the values they embodied were also to be found in the early Church. Saint Mark is saying to the parishes that make up his community, “Do you remember that drama between Jesus and the Sadducees in the Temple? Well, what is going on among you is exactly the same thing!”

Like the Pharisees, the Sadducees were religious people. Their forebears had rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem, and they ran it in Jesus’ day. They were the custodians of the tradition, but the Sadducees understood their faith in a very worldly way. The horizon of their faith was what they could imagine, and they imagined things in a very mundane way. The evangelists tell us, again and again, that they had no belief in the resurrection (see Mark 12:18). In other words, what was real was what they saw. Today we might say, that they had no sense of mystery. They had little sense of the possibilities or horizons of God.

In the early Church, there were many people who shared that pragmatic horizon of the Sadducees, what one might call the values of the “establishment.” If God had acted, then God had acted along the way they deemed possible and would continue to act in the way they deemed important.  Their Christian ‘beliefs’ were founded on what was possible for them, not what was possible for God. Yes, they believed in Jesus, but they believed in Jesus in a very worldly way.

However, the victory of Jesus was not a victory in worldly way. The victory of Jesus was the victory of the cross. It was the victory of compassion; it was the victory of gentleness, not of brute force. It was the victory of turning the other cheek (see Matt 5:41), it was—and is—the victory of the “poor in spirit” (see Matt 5:3). It is the victory of forgiveness and patience, of littleness and simplicity, and it is costly.

Christ’s Way—Another Way of Being in the World

The victory of Christ is a victory that bears witness to another way of being in the world. The Sadducees are caught up in another victory—a victory in the past. Their forebears had returned from the exile in Babylon (597–538 BCE), rebuilt the Jerusalem temple, and in a real way, re-established the faith of their fathers, the faith of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob (see Gen 3:6, cf. Mark 12:26–27). That said, their horizon was in the past.

Today’s Gospel story is not really a theological argument about resurrection: it is far more an argument about what God can do. Jesus says the resurrection is beyond the Sadducees’ horizon, because they know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. They do not know the Scriptures—the story of God with his people, and they do not know what God can do, they cannot imagine the possibilities of God.

25th Anniversary of the Visit of the Relics of St. Therese to Ireland 2001

Introduction, how to pray the Novena, Daily Prayers and Meditation here