Dec 20, 2022
Throughout the month of November, MSC Missions in the Philippines responded to the urgent needs of families and communities directly affected by Tropical Storm Paeng (or Tropical Storm Nalgae), which made landfall at the very end of October 2022. Over 100 deaths were confirmed in the Philippines in the aftermath of the storm, with more people reported missing, and severe damage done to homes, farms, and businesses.
The MSC Mission Office Philippines, Inc., working together with the MSC Centre for the Poor, issued an immediate call for help, and undertook an emergency response programme across Mindanao, providing essential items to communities in Maguindanao and Cotabato who were left reeling by the effects of the storm. Relief packs included basic food provisions and essentials, and were distributed to more than 200 families in regions of significant storm destruction.
    
On November 9th, 219 families received emergency aid packs through the relief operation in Barangay Tapian, Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao, as part of the ongoing mission response project in the Philippines, which aims to provide direct assistance to communities affected by natural disasters. In a country that is greatly impacted by typhoons, this mission response programme undertaken by the MSC Philippine Province is a true lifeline to families and communities who live under a constant threat of flooding and serious danger to both lives and livelihoods.
    
“We would like to thank all our Mission Partners and donors for your kindness and generosity,” wrote the MSC Mission Office Philippines, Inc. on their Facebook page. “We also thank the MSC – CFP [MSC Centre for the Poor] Butuan led by Fr. Richie Gomez & Bro. Franz Pelare, MSC for spearheading the project and to all our supporters & volunteers.”
As we approach the end of the year, we keep our MSC brothers and the communities they serve in the Philippines in our prayers, particularly those families in Mindanao who are rebuilding and restoring in the aftermath of the storm.
Images via the Facebook page for the MSC Mission Office Philippines, Inc.
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Dec 16, 2022
MSC CHRISTMAS RAFFLE 2022
🌟🎄 Christmas Raffle Prize Winners:🎄 🌟
1st Prize: Shopping voucher to the value of €1,000
M Maher,
Tipperary,
Co. Tipperary.
2nd Prize: Jingle Bells & Whistles Luxury Hamper value €500
E Dinet,
Dublin,
Co. Dublin.
3rd Prize: All I want for Christmas Hamper value €400
A & E Durkin,
Mullingar,
Co. Westmeath.
4th Prize: Festive Feast Christmas Hamper value €300
P Vahey,
Tuam,
Co. Galway.
5th Prize: Christmas Eve Luxury Hamper value €200
K Henry,
Swinford,
Co. Mayo.
6th Prize: Christmas Eve Luxury Hamper value €200
A O’Grady,
Douglas,
Co. Cork.
7th Prize: Christmas Eve Luxury Hamper value €200
N Timoney,
Strabane,
Co.Tyrone.
8th Prize: Christmas Eve Luxury Hamper value €200
K Mc Carthy,
Ovens,
Co. Cork.
9th Prize: Christmas Eve Luxury Hamper value €200
P Murphy,
Dunmanway,
Co. Cork.
10th Prize: Christmas Eve Luxury Hamper value €200
J Scanlon
Knocknaheeney,
Co. Cork.
Special Seller’s Prize: Christmas Eve Luxury Hamper value €200
N Hourihane,
Skibbereen,
Co. Cork.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
This year’s Christmas Draw took place on Friday, December 16th 2022.
We would like to extend a sincere thank you to everyone for taking part.Â
Click here to read a special Christmas message from Fr John
Please note that the MSC Missions Office will be closed over the Christmas period,
from 4.00pm on December 23rd to 9.00am on January 3rd.
With warm wishes to our mission friends everywhere for a happy, healthy, and safe Christmas season.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Dec 14, 2022
Please note that the MSC Missions Office will be closed over the Christmas period,
from 4.00pm on Friday, December 23rd to 9.00am on Tuesday, January 3rd.
With warm wishes to our mission friends everywhere for a happy, healthy, and safe Christmas season.
Nollaig Shona dhaoibh go léir – Christmas greetings to you and yours! What a great blessing it is to write to you this Christmas, as we reflect on the challenges and triumphs of the year gone by, and look with hope to the new year to come.
2022 has been a special year for me, my first as Director of the MSC Missions Office. It is a particular privilege to be in this position and to witness first-hand the kindness and generosity of spirit of our mission friends and benefactors at home and abroad. The sense of unity and community is immensely powerful, particularly when extending to people at the other side of the world, to friends you will never meet, but whose lives have been and will be changed immeasurably because of the compassion of strangers in name, but not in spirit.
It goes without saying that recent times have been turbulent, and we all continue to face our own challenges, in our homes and as a society. Our organisation is no different; with each year that passes, we’re trying to do more with less, at a time when finances are tight for everyone and the people that need us, need us more than ever. It is a difficult balance to strike at the best of times, and with the current issues troubling our world, we are often facing an uphill battle. Nonetheless, it is thanks to you, our great mission friends, that we can continue to climb that hill and continue to do our best to help those in need. Without the slightest exaggeration, your support transforms lives, and because of you, many, many communities and families have hope where before there was none. Together, we can continue to make a difference.
Of course, Christmas can be a difficult time for many people; this year, it may be you, or someone close to you, who is dealing with loss, illness, financial difficulties, or personal challenges. To all who find themselves struggling for any reason this Christmas – my prayers are with you, and you will be in the prayers of our MSCs everywhere throughout the Christmas season.
May the spirit of peace, goodwill, and the Lord’s love fill your heart and your home this Christmas, and may God bless and protect you and your loved ones as we approach a new year. On behalf of our MSC community at home and abroad, I thank you once again for your friendship, and I pray that you will have a safe and peaceful Christmas, with an abundance of blessings to come in the year ahead.
Wishing you a happy and holy Christmas,
Fr John Fitzgerald MSC
Dec 13, 2022
Advent is well underway at Croi Nua, our MSC spirituality centre in Co. Galway, with a three-day Christmas retreat taking place from Thursday, December 15th to Saturday, December 17th.
The Christmas retreat will be led by Fr Patsy Kelly MSC, in preparation for the celebration of the birth of Christ. This special time of reflection will take place at 7.30pm to 9.30pm each evening from December 15th to 17th.
The retreat session will take place in person in Croi Nua Spirituality Centre, while a Zoom facility is also available for anybody who would like to take part remotely.
In addition, all are welcome to join what promises to be a beautiful Service of Reconciliation, which will take place on Wednesday, December 21st, at 7.30pm.
For more information, please contact Croi Nua Spirituality Centre:
Phone: 085 782 9855
Email: croinuacentre@gmail.com
Website: www.croinua.com
If you would like to join the Christmas celebrations online via Zoom,
please email croinuacentre@gmail.com to get the video link.
Dec 2, 2022
It’s Advent in South Sudan, which means that everybody is busy with endings and beginnings. It is a beautiful time here right now, as the rains ended in October and the land is still green. We have been enjoying a time of relative security for the last few months, which has allowed us to harvest the groundnut crop in peace.
This week in Loreto Secondary School is taken up with the end of term exams, so all of students are diligently going over their class notes, working in study groups, and preparing as best they can. I usually go for a walk around 6:00am, as the sun comes up and before the heat of the day sets in. Already, there are students sitting under trees or in classrooms getting ready. However, this is nothing unusual. It happens right throughout the year. The girls know that education is their best way of ensuring they and their family have a better future. School is serious business.
It’s not so serious though that they can’t take time to have fun or get involved in important extracurricular activities. Last Friday, a group participated in a local government project around the rights of women. On Saturday, our Peace Club staged a roadside play in the local village. Before a group of the chiefs, families, and school children, they debuted their new drama on the need for peace in South Sudan. There was also poetry, traditional dance, some speeches, and plenty of laughter. It was the first time that they, as a group of young women, addressed the chiefs about their hopes for the future. The Benydit, or head chief, was delighted with the work and encouraged them to continue.
   
In the Primary School the kids have been busy too. Last week, we had a fancy dress competition, where kids created wonderful papier mâché lions and cows, along with weather conditions, mathematical symbols and shapes, fruits and vegetables, and traditional costumes. On Thursday, the focus was on arts and crafts, again related to their studies. They drew pictures of insects for biology, model villages and farms for citizenship, and the water cycle for general science. Everything was made from scrap paper and reused cardboard. Their creativity was extraordinary.
   
While things are winding down for Christmas in the schools, we are only getting started in the Rumbek Campus of the Catholic University of South Sudan. We have had a new intake of students for our degree programmes in English and English literature and in business administration. Right now, they are taking part in an intensive six-week course in English and maths to improve their basic standard and prepare them to begin their classes at the end of January.
It is an exciting time, because it is hoped that from this group we will have a new generation of well-trained secondary school teachers and business leaders. We are carrying on with our partial scholarship for women to encourage greater participation. We already have quite a few enrolled and a number of these are mothers who are returning to education, something that rarely happens here.
In addition, we are refurbishing our library and student centre. Previously, the building we used was dilapidated and bats were in the process of eating through the ceiling. The entire power supply came from an old solar unit and a couple of second-hand car batteries. The floor was cracked and pockmarked, although potholed might be a better description. As I write, the builders are putting in a new ceiling. Once that is finished, they will plaster the walls properly and we have sourced a durable, but inexpensive, tile for the floor.
   
Some may argue whether this is the most urgent need. However, education is the essential foundation of a country that, if done properly, will ensure development that is sustainable for everyone. It is about giving someone a rod, instead of offering them fish year after year. Our students make real sacrifices to be here, whether they are in primary, secondary, or third level, but with their energy, vision, and commitment the future is bright indeed.
Ben Nhialic areer kek a yin,
Fr Alan
Read more from Fr Alan’s missionary journey in South Sudan:
PLEASE HELP US TO TRANSFORM LIVES IN SOUTH SUDAN
Nov 30, 2022
Now in its ninth year, our annual Light Up a Memory Mass has become a much-loved and highly anticipated tradition each year, since the first ceremony took place in November of 2014. This year’s candlelight memorial Mass took place on the evening of Saturday, November 26th at the Sacred Heart Church on the Western Road, Cork, and was another beautiful evening of reflection and prayer in honour of those we love who have gone to their eternal rest in the Lord’s embrace.
Fr John Fitzgerald, director of the MSC Missions Office, celebrated this year’s Mass with Fr Con Doherty, new parish priest at the Sacred Heart Church. Despite stormy skies and November weather, the church was filled with mission friends gathered together in prayer; “there are more than two or three,” said Fr John, “and where two or three are gathered, the Lord is.” Fr John also welcomed everybody who took part in the ceremony by watching our live stream, which saw almost 700 people joining us in prayer in everywhere from Ireland, the UK, and Europe, to South Africa, New Zealand, and the United States.
“We are living in hope tonight.”
“Tonight is all about memory,” reflected Fr John. “It is about lighting up something in our hearts… To pray and to pray well, to pay our respects, to honour our dead, to remember their lives, to mark their death, and to mark the saving power of the Lord.”
“We are living in hope tonight,” he continued. “This isn’t a remembrance around a tree or by the sea or anything, it is here, on this extended altar tonight, where we remember the soul or the spirit that sheds its earthly body as a tree sheds its leaves. But death is not the end of existence, it is the cessation in this place, and we believe in the life hereafter.”
  
As the weekend of our Light Up a Memory Mass coincided with the first weekend of Advent, Fr Con took the time to light the first candle on the Advent wreath during the ceremony, as Fr John prayed that the light of Christ would light up our hearts and our lives throughout the Winter months, and that bridge of time between this and Christmas.
Reflecting on the inevitable changes that death brings to each of our lives, Fr John said, “I think that, heavier than shouldering any coffin, is the weight that the death of a loved one presses on us, or impresses on us – we miss them… We’re lost without them for a while… At times, we suddenly realise they’re not sharing a bed with us, they’re not sharing a table, they’re not sharing a kitchen, and that they won’t walk in the door any more. And that is so natural, but it is so painful, and that is what our prayer here tonight is – we’re lighting up a memory light here for healing, not to rush the healing or anything like that, or to get it away so that we can go back into driving down the dual carriageway in life without thoughts of them, but just stepping through life with them.”
“Lord, as we walk from this place, let us walk gently, knowing that you are with us.”
This year’s Mass once again featured a wonderful musical accompaniment from Gerry and Deirdre Tuohy, while Fr John’s homily incorporated a selection of poems and prayers, from Patrick Kavanagh to Seamus Heaney, each one a fitting reminder of the power of grief, of faith, and of love everlasting as he prayed for those we have loved and lost, and for those who have nobody to remember them at all.
Bringing the ceremony to an end, Fr John prayed for protection, grace, and hope on this sacred night: “Look kindly upon us here tonight, Lord, as we remember our dead. We pray especially for all our benefactors who contacted us through the Missions Office, who gave in lists of their dead friends and relations; we pray for them tonight. For the people here, Lord, who are the living voice of your word, who are takers of the word tonight back through the arteries of the county here, and through the arteries of the street… Lord, as we walk from this place, let us walk gently, knowing that you are with us.”
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to all who took part in this year’s Light Up a Memory celebrations, in the Sacred Heart Church and beyond. None of us have been untouched by the challenges of recent years, and the grief that has accompanied us through these times, in one form or another. Our 2022 Light Up a Memory Mass was a very moving way for us to commemorate treasured memories of those we hold dear, while praying for healing and hope in our hearts as we navigate life without them. Sincere thanks to all who took part in this truly special evening of prayer, reflection, and fond remembrance.
Click here to watch a recording of our 2022 Light Up a Memory Mass
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