For me it the trilogy of processions started with a Dublin one, the May Procession at St. Joseph's Church, Dublin City, Ireland on 29 May. This was very much a local event with members of the congregation and the groups that use the Church. The weather sadly was not good and so rather than traversing the local roads around the Church the procession led by Our Lady's statue, beautifully garlanded, went to the grotto where prayers were said before returning to the Church.
The next procession was that of Corpus Christi in Cork City on 26 June, one that began more than a hundred years ago. Before the procession we attended midday Mass in the Extraordinary Form in St. Peter and Paul's Church.
The procession of the Blessed Sacrament went from the North Cathedral ending in the centre of the city with Benediction. It was a much larger more formal event than the earlier one with many different groups represented. These included the Armed Forces, local councillors and dignatories, members of different groups and ethnic communities.
This was my first experience of this type of event and I was impressed by the number of people taking part and lining the streets to watch. I believe this is the biggest Corpus Christi procession in Ireland now. I was struck by the wonderful array of colours in the varied costumes of those involved which made for quite a spectacle.
At the conclusion of the March the Bishop of Kerry addressed the crowds thronging in Daunt Square for Benediction.
This procession was the first outing for the new banner I made for the Sodality of Our Lady, but more of banner making in another post!
The final procession of the trilogy was the St. Oliver Plunkett Procession, Drogheda, Co. Louth, Ireland on the 3rd of July. This marked the feast day of St Oliver Plunkett and his relic took pride of place in the procession. Again it was a large and colourful event with representatives of many groups and indeed the the number of people in costume and their vibrancy may have exceeded those in Cork! An amazing array of banners that punctuated the parade which went from Our Lady of Lourdes Church to St Peter's Church where it culminated with Bishop Gerard Clifford saying Mass.
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10 comments:
I was particularly taken by the smaller Marian procession at the start. The archwork over the statue was beautifully created. What are the orders in black and white that are in groups towards the end?
If only we had more Christian processions ... in secular Britain.
God bless.
As I was scrolling through the pictures, my heart sank as I saw, on the second storey of a beautiful layer-cake building, the Golden Flipping Arches. It's bad enough that we Americans are so culturally imperialistic ... but to have McDonald's be our big contribution to world cuisine? Pray for our souls, especially that of the late Ray Kroc.
Do u have to be part of a group or can anyone join in these procdessions? It wud b sucha honour 2b in the procession.
What beautiful pictures! What beautiful processions! In the modern, agressively secular Ireland, we need these processions to bear witness to the Faith of Our Fathers!
I think that there are more processions starting to appear. We're finally approaching the time when the rubbish of the Vatican II era is seen to be fruitless and the traditional catholic practices come into their own again. Sadly we have gone too far and most of them are so badly misunderstood that they are badly done but we have to start somewhere.
The pictures struck me. Everything is bright and sunny. This is what the Irish Catholic experience should be about.
One of the richest elements of Catholicism is the sense of movement, of pilgrimage, of progress. How strange that so much of it seems to be practiced in a static and immobile form particularly in the didactic.
I agree with Virginia that peregrinatio is a key element of the catholic faith. It is heartening to see that element alive and well in suffering Ireland.
Amazing pictures. Lovely contrast in the different processions but each is magnificent and reverent in its own way.
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