Carmel O’Neill sent us this report:
The annnual mass of Harvest Thanksgiving took place in Lacken church on Sat Oct 25th.
The Harvest celebration is a long held tradition . After months of work in the fields, families and communities would gather together to enjoy the fruits of their labour. It was a time to give thanks for abundance, to share with neighbours and to look ahead to the challenges of winter with hope and community spirit.
This year our farming community had much to be thankful for, a good summer and the dry weather in August allowed for the harvest to proceed as normal and we were not faced with the challenge of crops lying waterlogged in the fields. We had so much to be thankful for.
The children from Lacken school who are preparing for First Holy Communion took part in the procession of gifts and prayers of the faithful while older children sang harvest hymns.
Parents and parishioners donated delicious home bakes and fresh garden produce. The proceeds from the sale of the produce raised €750 the highest sum raised at our Harvest mass. Each year we return the blessing of the harvest to a school in Rumbek South Sudan run by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. The school provides a meal daily for the students and currently they are champions of education for girls. Only 40% of girls receive an education and many are married by the time they are 18. We were very happy to donate € 450 to Fr Alan Neville and his team, who through their initiatives are bringing hope in to the lives of young people in Sudan.
In the week leading up to the Harvest mass, our newly appointed Parish priest availed of the opportunity to get to know his parishioners in Lacken and carried out the annual blessing of the stock. This blessing is greatly appreciated by our farming community as climate change is making the future uncertain for grass growth with unusual weather patterns.
An ecumenical blessing for the harvest took place in our local gaelscoil in Blessington.
The school principal invited Rev Niall Stratford, Fr Gerry Keane and members of the pastoral council to the ceremony. Each class in the school are assigned a vegetable plot and a fruit tree which they tend to in the growing season. This year brought an abundance of apples and we were gifted with jars of apple and cinnamon jelly from the school garden.
(Permission given for the above photo)
The readings and prayers were read as Gaeilge while each class sang a harvest hymn. The ceremony took place on Thurs Oct 24th in late Autumn sunshine and their lovely display of Artwork mirrored the myriad of Autumn colours in the school garden.
This year our parish took part in the annual Christmas Shoebox appeal. This appeal delivers gifts straight into the hands of children affected by poverty and war. Last year almost 27,000 children in Ukraine were the beneficiaries of a shoe box and each year the number of donations are increasing. This was reflected in our own parish of Blessington where a total of 150 shoeboxes will be delivered to vulnerable children across the world. At a time of rising costs in food and heating, the generosity of people is so uplifting.
