17th March, 2024

Adamstown Parish Newsletter

Weekend of Sat 16th & Sun 17th March 2024 

Volume 24.   Number 11

ADAMSTOWN LOTTO

The next draw in the Adamstown Lotto takes place this Tuesday 19th in the Community Centre for a Jackpot of €9,000. Please leave books back in Cullen’s Gala by 8pm on draw night.  Do buy a ticket and be in with a chance.

ADAMSTOWN GAA

Boys 5 & 6 year olds Academy (Born in 2018/2019)

Adamstown GAA Astro – Starting Thursday 4th April.

Contact Vinny on 087 9673105

U-10 Girls Football  – starting 19th March at 6.30pm

Venue – Adamstown Pitch – All Welcome.

A huge congratulations to Aidan O’Brien on receiving the club person of the year award for Adamstown GAA.

Aidan has played so many roles in our club over the past 30 years, trainer, player, manager and mentor. He is hugely deserving of the accolade.

ADAMSTOWN N.S. PARENT’S ASSOCIATION

As the weather changes, so does your wardrobe. Make some space and drop off all your unwanted clothes at our clothes collection on Tuesday 19th March 9.00am-9.30am.

Drop off in car park across from the school.

All proceeds go towards the Parents Association Fund.

Pat Byrne Road Run Sun 7th April –

Shamrock Vintage Club has been kind enough to offer us the entry fees from this event and we really appreciate it.

All donations will go towards our school.

We are asking parents in the school to help us out on the day – we need stewards, people to set out and serve food before & after the run. Donations of sandwiches/cakes/buns etc. greatly appreciated.  Thanks to Leo Booth Minibus who has been kind enough to sponsor the insurance.

SHAMROCK VINTAGE CLUB ARRANGEMETS

The Pat Byrne Memorial Road Run 7th April

Starting at 1.00o’clock. Registration from 11.30am

The Route will be a distance of 15 miles. Starting from St. Abban’s Hall Car Park in Adamstown and taking in the following towns lands.

Adamstown, The Leap, Knockreigh, Oldcourt, Brocurra, Ballagh, Templenacrow, Old Ross, Moorefileds, Courthoyle, The Boola, Misterin, The Barracks and back to Adamstown for refreshments.  All vehicles must be insured and drivers hold a driver’s license. All proceeds will go to Adamstown National School. Your support would be much appreciated.

MISCHIEF AND MELODY

Join us for a night of Mischief and Melody in the Horse & Hound, Ballinaboola on Sat 23rd March 2024. A variety show full of comedy, music, song and dance with all proceeds going to Raheen Day Care Centre, ARC and Parkinson’s Ireland Wexford Branch. Doors open at 8.00pm with show staring at 8.30pm. Entry by ticket only.

Tickets costing €10 each available from Newbawn Post Office, Centra, Ballinaboola, Cullen’s Gala, Adamstown and Greene’s Daybreak, Clonroche.

ADAMSTOWN ATHLETIC CLUB

Great weekend for Adamstown AC Throwers and Race walkers in Leinster Championships in Athlone. James Prendergast 1st U-16 shot putt with a throw of 14.34 a personal best, also 2nd in the Discus.

Joe Mooney 1st Senior Leinster 3k walk setting a new Championship best of 11.58 minutes.

Ciara Mooney 1st in the Leinster Junior 3k walk 15.20 minutes. Well done to all.

BILLIARDS WIN FOR ADRIAN MORRISSEY

Well done to Adrian Morrissey who won the first tournament of the new Bree billiards and snooker club season claiming the Jimmy O’Brien Billiards Trophy on a score-line of 200-160. Adrian also claimed the highest break prize.

ADAMSTOWN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION

There will be an information evening on Defibrillator training and First Responders in Adamstown Community Centre on Wednesday 20th March at 7pm.

All are welcome to attend.

OUR CHURCH CLOCK

We are glad to have our Millennium Clock back again in working order. Thanks to Ken, who installed the clock back in 2001, during the week he replaced and repaired the workings of the clock. So hopefully it will once again ring out joyfully, calling us to Mass and Church Ceremonies and for the Angelus for many years to come.

“When as a child I laughed and wept, time crept.

When as a youth I waxed more bold, time strolled.

When I became a full-grown man, time RAN.

When older still I daily grew, time FLEW.

Soon I shall find, in passing on, time gone.

O Christ! wilt Thou have saved me then?  Amen.

(Henry Twells Quotes)

THURSDAY NIGHT CARD GAME

The Thursday night Card Game continues in the Community Centre at 8.30 each week night. Winners on Thursday 14th were: Phil Jackman, Tom Rochford, Matty Sullivan, Pat Murphy, Breda & Micksy Bolger, Leo Breen

 Michael McLoughlin.

ANNUAL PARISH ACCOUNTS

The Annual Parish Accounts for December 2023 have been compiled and a copy of these Accounts is now published on the notice board in the Church Porch as requested by the Diocese of Ferns.

If anyone would like to have a copy, please contact

Fr. Nolan who will provide one.

CHURCH NOTICES

IN MEMORIAM

Sat 16th – Peggy Grafton (née Thorpe) Newtown (A)

Sun 17th – People of the Parish

Sat 23rd – Seán, Patrick, Kathleen Doyle, Ballyvergin (A)

Sun 24th – People of the Parish.

Birthday remembrance of Paddy Connors, The Hill

Pray for Fr. Jay Galway, (A)

May they rest in peace.

THERE WILL BE NO MASS ON MONDAY 18TH.

Mass each week day morning at 9.30am

Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament every Thursday from 10.00am – 1.00pm.

READERS OF THE LITURGY

Sat 16th – Cáit Bradley.  Sun 17th – Sheelagh Delaney

Sat 23rd – Anthony McGee.  Sun – Neasa Cloney

MASS OF CHRISM ON

Tuesday 26th March 2024 at 7.30pm.

At St. Aidan’s Cathedral, Enniscorthy.

You are asked to be seated by 7.00pm

Seating will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

All Welcome!

LOURDES TICKET DRAW

We are delighted to resume the Lourdes Ticket Draw again this year following four years of missed draws.

Parish committee members and volunteers will be visiting homes in the Parish over the coming week or so. Tickets still remain at €5.00 each. If you have not been visited, and would like to purchase a ticket please inform the Parish committee or tickets will also be available after Masses on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

The draw will take place on Easter Sunday at 10.30am Mass on 31st March 2024. The Pilgrimage takes place from Thursday 16th May – Tuesday 21st May.

We thank your for your support and hopefully this year again we may be able to send a parishioner or two on this wonderful Pilgrimage.

Excerpt from Saint Patrick’s Breastplate

Christ with me Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,

Christ in the eye that sees me,

Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today, through a mighty strength,

the invocation of the Trinity,

Through a belief in the Threeness,

Through a confession of the Oneness

Of the Creator of creation.

Wishing Everyone A Happy St. Patrick’s Day

THE IRISH AND THE CHOCTAW:

There is estimated to be seventy million people around the world that claim to be Irish or of Irish descent. That’s a mammoth legacy for an island smaller than New York.

Every corner of the globe today has been touched by the Irish – be it by the man who designed the White House, or the sixth President of Israel, a Wild West outlaw, signatories of the US Constitution in 1787, the inventor of the submarine, the first captain of the All Blacks, all were Irish or born to Irish emigrants and each made their own significant mark in the world and put our people on the map forever, for the good or for the bad. Given our ability to spread our Irish roots into the smallest crevice of the world, it was a gesture of a Native American tribe that brought much-needed solace to the Irish at home in one of the darkest periods in its history. This unlikely alliance between the Choctaw tribe and the Irish was brought back into the news in 2020. At the height of the famine in 1847, a million souls that had neither the means nor opportunity to emigrate were literally starving to death. Aid was sent from many nations around the world to try to alleviate the suffering of our forebears. Even the prisoners in New York’s Sing Sing, and former slaves in the Caribbean gave what they had to help. But one particular donation came unexpectedly from the Choctaw Nation in the United States. The Choctaw had endured their own troubles some years previously, having being evicted from their ancestral land by the then President Andrew Jackson. They were forced to walk the 500 miles across the Mississippi River through harsh conditions when as many as four thousand of their people perished on what became known as the ‘Trail of Tears’. It was a member of the American military who walked with them along the ‘Trail of Tears’ who told them of the starving people in Ireland. They were moved by the suffering endured by strangers in a foreign land that they had never seen or had barely heard of. They dug deep into their pockets and raised $170 dollars to supply food for the suffering Irish. This would have been equivalent to around €4,000 today. To the present time and, in 1990, several Choctaw chiefs took part in the Doolough Famine Walk, a commemoration of the path walked by starving victims of the Famine in 1849 to plead with the leaders of the day for some meagre scraps of food or grain, only to be turned away and perish from the hunger on their way home. As a gesture of their great act of kindness a monument entitled Kindred Spirits was unveiled in 2017 in the presence of twenty Choctaw members. The six-metre high monument stands in Bailick Park in Midleton in Cork. While on a visit to the Choctaw Nation for St. Patrick’s week in 2018, then Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said that for him “the story of our two peoples symbolises the spirit of Saint Patrick better than anything else”, and that the Irish and the Choctaw have “a sacred bond, which has joined our peoples for all time”.

(Seán Ó Briain – Pioneer Magazine)

IT HAPPENED IN MARCH – 17th March 1762

New York City’s first St. Patrick’s Day parade took place, but it was by no means the oldest parade to take place in America in honour of Ireland’s patron saint. The city of Boston held its first parade in 1737, but St. Augustine in Florida lays claim to the world’s oldest St. Patrick’s Day parade, taking place in 1601.