A site worth visiting and maybe subscribing to is the Irish Times newspaper site which is found at The Irish Times/www.ireland.com using a Google search or whatever you fancy.

Today the paper had a handout poster dated 24^th February 07 titled ’A Night to Remember’ about the Ireland England rugby match in Croke Park.

Lent is here and the Spring 2007 St Joseph’s Advocate published by Mill Hill Missionaries (e.mail: josephmhm@eircom.net) has an interesting line up.

The editorial reminds us –

We have taller buildings but shorter tempers

We have wider highways but narrower viewpoints

We buy more but enjoy it less

We have bigger homes but smaller families

We have more degrees but less common sense

We have more knowledge but less judgement

We have more medicine but less well being

We have multiplied our possessions but reduced our values

We have learned to make a living but not a life.

Elsewhere in the Advocate is featured Finis written by Sean Mac Cartain, retired

Chief Education Officer County Offaly V.E.C. It goes like this –

Finis

He praised the pure of heart

And those who watched and prayed.

Such old fashioned stuff.

They said.

He turned the Cana water

To wine that was rich and red.

It was mass hysteria.

They said

He blessed a Lenten lunch

Five thousand men were fed.

He had caches of food.

They said.

He wept for a rotting corpse

And raised it from the dead.

Collusion with friends

They said.

He walked on the turbulent sea

To a friend drowning in dread.

Better tricks in Rome

They said.

He was friend of the outcast poor

Sharing their fish and bread.

He’s a glutton and a sinner

They said.

He cured the sick and the blind

And the cripple prone on his bed.

He’s in league with the devil

They said.

He said he was Son of God

You’re a carpenter, born and bred,

A blasphemer, too

They said.

They took him and hung him high

With a thorn crown on his head.

That’s the end of him

They said.

The Sacred Heart Messenger monthly magazine

for March 2007 has a photograph of a man praying on

the back cover with a few lines from Saint Patrick’s

Breastplate that I feel the Irish rugby team may have

Used for their game on Saturday. It goes –

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me.

Find under www.jesuit.ie if you wish

To have your monthly copy posted.

Finally one for the birds.

This morning I was telling Frankie Norton

That I was topping up the bird feeders

As about fifty assorted small birds use the feeders.

Frankie says “it’s all right if I don’t get

The Bird Flu”