Many parish communities gather each year to mark the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady on August 15th. They meet at roadside grottos, at shrines, Mass rocks and holy wells.
This year saw the 75th annual Mass and devotions at the Holy Rosary Shrine on the Lee Road in Cork. Bishop Fintan Gavin was the principal concelbrant.
In his homily, Bishop Fintan noted that many of those who gathered and prayed at the grotto in the early years have long since gone home to God.
“Others continued the tradition. Parents brought children; grandparents brought grandchildren. People have come quietly to pray the Rosary and to entrust their lives and the lives of those they loved to God through the intercession of Mary.”
One of the prayers at the Mass describes Mary as “a sign of sure hope and comfort to your pilgrim people.”
“Perhaps we particularly need that hope today. The Church in Ireland and here in Cork and Ross is very different from the Church in which these devotions began 75 years ago. We are living through a time of great change, but also a time of new possibility. We cannot simply recreate the Church of the past, nor are we called to do so. We are called to discover how the Lord is asking us to live and share the Gospel today.”
Bishop Fintan Gavin withy concelebrating priests, L to R., Fr Silvester O’Flynn OFM Cap., Fr Aidan Vaughan OFm Cap, Fr Tijo John, Fr Ken Cooney SMA, Fr Frasad Rad, Fr Dermot Lynch OFM Cap, Fr Declan Mansfield and Fr. Sean O’Sullivan. . Photo: Tony O’Connell.
The choir who sang at the Mass..
The bishop noted that in recent years when people were asked to reflect on and discuss the future of the Church, we heard a lot of hope.
“We heard a real hunger among people to grow more deeply in faith — a hunger for prayer, for meaning, for belonging and ultimately for a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ, especially in the Sunday Eucharist.”
Bishop Fintan said that this hunger is something we must continue to respond to.
“Over this coming year, I hope that, as a Diocese and in each of our parishes, we can help one another to discover more deeply that a living relationship with Jesus Christ is possible — not only for priests or religious, but for every one of us.
“Mary shows us what it means to be a missionary disciple:- to encounter Christ, to allow him to change our lives, and then to carry his presence, his hope and his love to others.”
“Perhaps that is also what this shrine has been doing quietly for seventy-five years. The people who have come here to pray simply lived their faith and handed on what they themselves had received.”
At the Lee Road Shrine for the Concelebrated Mass for the Feast Day of Our Lady of the Assumption. Paddy O’Brien with Fr Dermot Lynch OFM CAP. Photo: Tony O’Connell.
