Pope’s plans will become clear. So will he visit us?

FR JOHN CARROLL, CURATE IN BARNTOWN AND DIOCESAN SECRETARY

LOOKING TO the year 2017, my first thoughts are ones of gratitude – gratitude for the gifts of life and health; the gifts of the local parish and of home; the eager anticipation of new possibilities afforded as the year ahead opens up before us all.

At a local level, we will be launching the mayor of Barntown race on January 6. A good humoured yet competitive race, it will hopefully be very successful in terms of drawing people ever closer together within the curacy, in a spirit of solidarity and of shared location and identity.

2017 will be a year when the local parish pitch and hurling wall will be mature enough for even greater use.

Situated between a vibrant and forward-looking Community Centre and our new school, hopefully this sporting area will become the local Barntown hub, an asset that will give more and more opportunities to our younger parishioners to advance in sport and in character, putting down ‘ blue and green’ roots of loyalty and friendship that will help them over a lifetime. On a wider level, 2017 will be a year where the impending visit of the Holy Father takes shape as the plans for the International Meeting of Families in Dublin in August 2018 are rolled out. This event will be much bigger than people may yet recognise – my hope is that we here in Ferns embrace the occasion early on – and the many blessings that it is going to bring. Make sure to stay in touch with a Dublin or Northern relative or friend who has a spare room as the Holy Father crosses the border in what will be a historic moment in the island’s troubled – but vastly improved – history. Tempt your relatives and friends with an offer of similar hospitality should the Holy Father accept our invitation to make a pilgrimage to the south east!

Finally, there is the ongoing scandal of war in places not too far from us such as Aleppo.

Probably the most prominent location of inhumanity at present, it is one of many places on our planet where so many innocent – and less than innocent – die unnecessarily as a result of division and war. Add to this the millions of children who die annually from hunger or the lack of medicine.

My hope is that in 2017, we might come closer and closer to the realisation that war, famine, lack of basic medicines and shelter are ‘avoidable crimes’ – barbarous realities that constitute a very clear and pervading stain on the world’s conscience – a stain that can no longer be passed off by any of us as the responsibility of others.

In short my hope is that 2017 will be a year where we all grow in the conviction that our short lives are blessings – not burdens – and that counting our blessings daily we might face our challenges together, conscious always of a God who walks the path with us and as He has before us.