Singing at the podium Mass...
The Redshirts have been doing all kinds of different things today. Different groups of Redshirts have been doing different things in different places for a lot of the day. Some went on a tour of the Accueil and others went to hotel groups and to other places. Here, a few of the redshirts talk about the day they have had…
[by Nick Emms, Andy Smyth and Ciara Fogarty]
The first thing we did this morning was get up and have breakfast. We then got down to the podium a little early so that we could move benches and help out with other things. As it turned out, there wasn’t much to do because the rain reduced the size of the Mass quite a bit. Pretty soon, the rest of the redshirts arrives (except those who were at Bartres… see below). The Redshirts led some of the music for Mass. We led ‘Taste and See’ as the communion reflection and a few gathering songs. It was good to do, but quite cold.
The weather is freezing and fairly miserable in Lourdes today, but we are still happy.
Bartres…
The family group with the Redshirts at Bartres...
A group of us spent the day in Bartres with the family group, from various hotels. We started off with a coach journey up to Bartres, which is a small town where Bernadette stayed during her childhood. During the coach journey nobody got bored at all! We sang songs for the little children and got to know them all a little bit.
The day in Bartres started as we had Mass. The children acted out the reading and we had a brief penitential service. Redshirts led the music for the Mass and encouraged the children to sing the songs as much as we could. It was really nice that the children sat up on the sanctuary with the priests.
After Mass, we were invited to be part of the family group photo. Then we had lunch and the fun began… During the next few hours we sang songs, got to know the kids a little better, had a face-paint attack launched on us, led some games. Even though the weather was miserable, we still made it a fun day. We didn’t really notice the weather after a while!
Tour of the town…
The tour of the town...
A group of us went to meet some of the pilgrims from the hotel group and we started the town tour. We followed in the footsteps of Bernadette’s life. We started off at her home which was an old mill. We soon continued to the jail, where the family lived for a while. We learned a lot there. During our time there, there was a lightning storm which made the lights go out for a while.
After the jail, we went to the parish church and saw the font where Bernadette was baptised. Each of us went to the font on our own and were left to pray for a few minutes. We then came back to the hotel.
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As well as these things there have been tours of the Accueil, which were quite hands-on and involved a few cleaning duties. This gave the redshirts an insight into what it would be like to work in the Accueil. There was a water walk today too. One of the hotel groups asked the Redshirts to accompany them on this popular part of Lourdes.
