Healing Mass – Monday, 11 May
Join us on Monday 11 May at 2:30 pm at St John’s for our first Healing Mass of the year, including the Sacrament of the Sick. A Healing Mass is a special celebration asking for God’s grace, strength, and comfort for those in need of physical, emotional, or spiritual healing.
All are warmly welcome.
A Warm Invitation to our second Cluster Walking Pilgrimage
Saturday, 16 May
We are delighted to share that we will be having another Cluster Parish Pilgrimage after the
success of last year’s event. This year’s pilgrimage – celebrate the 800th Anniversary of the death of St Francis of
Assisi – will take place this Saturday 16 May starting at St Mary, Star of the Sea at 10.00am to
The pilgrimage will visit each of the other Parish Churches in our cluster – St Ninian’s, St John’s, St Mary
Magdalene’s and St Teresa’s – as well as Figgate Park. At each stop there will be time spent in prayer and
reflection. As St Francis is the patron saint of ecology this will be the focus of our pilgrimage.
We hope that you will be able to join us for all or some of the walk.
This year we are asking for people to bring along a packed lunch with them and time is planned
for a lunch break at St Mary Magdalene’s.
Quarant’ore/40 Hours Adoration
10-12 May
In recent years, we have come to enjoy a tradition of celebrating 40 Hours Adoration, or Quarant’ore, in this period of Eastertide. (Last year we offered a chance for all to get involved in celebrating this at the time, just before the Conclave, when the meeting of the Cardinals to choose a new pope took place.) It is a chance to sit in silence before the true presence of Christ, and quietly to pray for ourselves, our loved ones and the world around us, and especially for Peace.
We look to start after the 9.30am Mass next Sunday in St John’s and continue until 10.00pm.
Then 5.30am on Monday in St John’s (a special sort of silence usually only broken by the sound of bird song from the park next door) until 2.15pm (the Healing Mass) and from 3.45pm until 10.00pm.
Finally, from 5.30am on Tuesday till 10.00am in St John’s, 10.00am till 2.00pm in St Mary Magdalene’s, 2.00pm till 6.45pm pm in the Prayer Room in the Parish House, and 7.30pm till 10.00pm in St John’s Church
Can you offer an hour to sit before the Lord?
Can you offer a few hours to help welcome and ‘manage’ the various buildings during this time?
Please let us know. Sign-up sheets will be available after each Mass.’
An Appeal from the Justice & Peace Group
Bethany Care Van
One of the services which our two parishes has supported for a number of years is the Care Van organised by Bethany Christian Trust. This is a simple service. Basically, we – and the other church groups from in and around Edinburgh – make up sandwiches and then distribute these, along with hot drinks, from the Care Van to homeless people on the street. Some of these are rough sleepers but the majority are in B&Bs and hostels and have to fend for themselves during the day.
For this service, we provide a team of three – a driver and two people who serve the sandwiches from a hatch in the side of the van. The team meets at the Bethany depot in Leith around 11.45am to prepare the van then stops at four places where the people on the street know they will find the van, returning to the depot around 2.45pm. The service, and the contribution made by the volunteers is hugely appreciated by the people who use the service.
Our teams do every second Sunday but as we have a healthy list of volunteers, most people are on only once every two or three months. We now have some spaces on the rota so we are looking for new volunteers, either as servers or drivers. (Drivers need to have a clean licence and be under 70, for insurance purposes.) If you are interested, please contact Jim Roarty (jimroarty4@gmail.com). If you’re not sure and would like to know more, w can arrange a trip with the van as an observer.
Water for a Village Appeal – A Wonderful Response!
In December, the Justice & Peace Group invited our parishioners to contribute to the Water for a Village appeal – a SCIAF Real Gift costing £1200 which would enable SCIAF to provide badly needed clean water for drinking, washing and irrigation. There is always a degree of trepidation about a challenge like this, but our trepidation was, as usual, unjustified – we raised the wonderful sum of £2022 which the J&P Group has rounded up to £2400, twice the original target!
A huge thank you to all who donated.
Jim Roarty and the Justice and Peace Group
A Season of Giving: Parish Donations Reach Over £8,000
Our experience of the generosity of our parishioners in the last couple of months has been truly humbling and inspiring. Thanks to your generosity, in that time the J&P Group has been able to send off cheques for: £3000 to Firefly International, the wonderful Scottish-based charity helping war-traumatised children. £1440 to Bethany Christian Trust to support their work of providing overnight accommodation for homeless people. £1376 to SCIAF for their Real Gifts, contributing to their work of trying to lift people out of poverty in the
poorest parts of the world.
Adding in the Water for a Village money mentioned above means that, in the space of a few weeks, your generosity has enabled us to send off £8216 to these excellent causes. A very sincere thank you from the J&P Group and may 2026 be a happy and blessed new year for you all.
Jim Roarty and the Justice and Peace Group
Update on Monthly Charity Coffee Mornings
The March Charity Coffee Morning raised £350 for Sightsavers, which will help save the sight of many children. The April Coffee Morning will be held on Monday 20 April after Mass in St John’s Hall. Donations will be given to RNLI (lifeboats), whose crews are all volunteers and risk their lives to save others, who are in danger at sea.
Please come along and enjoy tea, coffee and home-baking with good conversation in company with other parishioners and friends.
Maria Igoe