Breaks in weather when it mattered bordered on the miraculous

IT won’t even be considered for miracle status but it’s bordering on the miraculous that two outdoor, religious ceremonies over the Easter weekend were graced with the kind of weather for which the organisers could have only wished but, no doubt, prayed for.

On Good Friday afternoon as the long hand on the clock turned into the home straight for the historically celebrated time of 3pm, a long narrow, footpath-confined procession made its way from the local presbytery to Castleisland’s parish church.

The weather the participants, led by the cross-bearing Jerome Sheehy, got for the duration of their important journey was nothing short of ideal – remarkable even.

Even more so taken in the context of the prolonged spell of outdoor event forbidding weather to which we’ve all become accustomed since the middle of last June.

The fact that the weather forecasts predicted nothing of the sort made it even more remarkable and pleasantly surprising for all involved.

So accustomed have we become to the almost constant rainfall of the last 10 months that we were delighted to get such a fine Good Friday.

We wondered where this nice, outdoor event-accommodating day came from all of a sudden as people made their way from just after 2pm out from the town for the second annual pilgrimage on the Priests’ Road – as the old people called it.

I haven’t heard it being referred to as such for a long time and the community centre and the Castleisland

Community College junction was commonly known as The Priests’ Cross.

And this Good Friday was all about the Cross of Calvary and marking one of the most celebrated and significant days of religious observance world wide.

Since he arrived in Castleisland in July 2019, Fr. Mossie Brick has put his own distinctive stamp on parish affairs and, after Covid time restrictions were lifted, Good Fridays with a difference have become one of his stand-out creations and he has brought the people with him.

For the past couple of years his parishioners here have been encouraged to gather at the presbytery at around 2.30pm for a procession of the cross from there to the parish church.

The procession is led by a cross-bearer and the Rosary is recited en route to the church for Liturgy at 3pm with a commemoration of the time that Jesus died on the Cross.

Last year, Michael Murphy of Glounsharoon was the cross bearer and this year Jerome Sheehy made himself available to lead the procession to the church.

On arrival at the church the musical bell pealed out with Were You There When They Crucified My Lord and the procession was home and dry.

On then to Easter Sunday morning and the first known Dawn Mass in Scartaglen. Here too, hope outweighed expectation in the light of the predicted weather.

But Fr. Brick and his team and the ever flocking parishioners of Scartaglen carried the event from breaking light to its place in history and safely beyond the scope of wind and weather.

He had the reconfigured local band Up in Smoke and guest artists and the ubiquitous Cllr. Charlie Farrelly was there as the sound man.

There was a squib of a shower, a squib by recent standards, at around 5am that morning but it did little more than wet the road and it cleared to cold and dry conditions when it mattered most. Dan O’Donoghue and the light brigade were able to ignite their paraffin soaked sod of turf without fear of rain as they proceeded eastward with their backs to the half moon and along the cemetery path to light the symbolic Paschal Fire with all its cultural and religious associations with Easter worldwide.

The people of Scart don’t do things by half when they go about their business. It’s an observation not based on Easter morning alone or on a figment of my imagination.

It’s from years of witnessing how the fabric of their community can draw the strands of events like this together when they put their minds to it.

Their occasions of joy and sorrow are marked by similar shows of community strength.

Thank God for the weather we got this Easter - for so many reasons, for so many people. Up Scart.