News | The Parish of the Durham Martyrs

22nd June 2025 - Thought from Fr. Colm

Jun 20

The Feast of Corpus Christi this weekend is a time to reflect on the importance of the Eucharist in our lives. It is also a time which offers me the opportunity to thank all our Eucharistic Ministers for their support and dedication especially to bringing the Eucharist to the house bound. Our Ministers will renew their commitments at all Masses this weekend.

We welcome Bishop Stephen to our parish this week for the celebration of the sacrament of confirmation on Tuesday evening. They are a great group of young people and how they have taken their preparation very seriously. We need you to maintain contact with the parish. Those who have been welcomers have been a real blessing. A special thanks to Sarah and Ciaran for being there for them, and for the many hours of hard graft, not forgetting Marjorie, the silent third member of the team.

We look forward to our Parish Picnic, our trip to Holy Island. Weather like this would be a bonus.

My mind goes back to another memorable parish trip to the West of Ireland. Most of the pilgrims will always recall our very eventful boat trip. One glowing memory for me was celebrating Mass on the island of Inisbofin.

Fr. Tony King joined us and explained the two plaques each side of the sanctuary showing the photos of young men and women from this tiny island who had left Inishbofin to become priests and nuns throughout the world. Two blood sisters in particular who went on to become Dominican nuns, and who were the first white people allowed into the townships in South Africa, and at the height of political unrest. This display with Fr Tony’s historical overview and in such beautiful surroundings made our final hymn more poignant.

That final hymn was In Christ Alone, and though small in number, we sang with gusto. But, it was the accompanying organ that rang out above everything else that remains encased in my memory. We were fortunate to have an exceptional musician with us on that trip. Geoff Foxall lifted the rafters in that historic church on that small island as I imagine it has never been lifted before.

Sadly, Geoff’s brother John, also a fine musician, died this week. With the loss of his close friend, Helen Tumilty, this has been a difficult time for Geoff. Our prayers are with you Geoff and never forget how, in your quiet humble way, you played an exceptional hymn in the most unlikely of settings.

Inishbofin on a Sunday morning.

Sunlight, turfsmoke, seagulls, boatslip, diesel.

One by one we were being handed down

Into a boat that dipped and shilly-shallied

Scaresomely every time. We sat tight

On short cross-benches, in nervous twos and threes,

Obedient, newly close, nobody speaking

Except the boatmen, as the gunwales sank

And seemed they might ship water any minute.

The sea was very calm but even so,

When the engine kicked and our ferryman

Swayed for balance, reaching for the tiller,

I panicked at the shiftiness and heft

Of the craft itself. What guaranteed us —

That quick response and buoyancy and swim —

Kept me in agony. All the time

As we went sailing evenly across

The deep, still, seeable-down-into water,

It was as if I looked from another boat

Sailing through the air, far up, and could see

How riskily we fared into the morning,

And loved in vain our bare, bowed, numbered heads.

From Seeing Things by Seamus Heaney

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