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Could I request some prayers for a project we are undertaking. We are creating a new leaflet which summerises our work, and our development objectives. Hopefully, this will help us to find small premises, and raise a bit more awareness. Pray that it will reach the right people, and get a good response.

We had a really beautiful 50th Anniversary Celebration Mass on 2nd September at St Peter’s. Thanks to Fr. Bernard and Fr. Joseph for con-celebrating- Thanks to Alice for the music, to Gus and Johnneil for the catering, and thanks to all who attended.

The Marian Action Thanksgiving Mass this year will be on Friday, 2nd September at 7.30pm, in St. Peter’s.

As this is our 50th anniversary, having started our hostel work in 1972, our Mass this year will be a special celebration- a concelebrated Mass with special blessings for the last 50 years, and we’ll have many photographs of our work throughout the years.

All are welcome to attend what should be a great evening of Thanksgiving for the graces throughout the years.

A couple more people we came across during last week’s event-

We met a Nigerian girl at the table- she arrived in Glasgow alone 2 years ago, settled in Gorbals, and went several weeks without mixing with anyone, before summoning the courage to approach Blessed John Duns Scottus Church- where the priest made her very welcome, helped her out with food, let her know about services and activities, and has continued to be a great help to her ever since. Another person we met, outside Tescos, was a former army chef, who had served various members of the Royal family in his time, and he said that Princess Margaret in particular was a very nice person.

At Partick South Church on Sunday to deliver some leaflets, one woman told me a very nice story about a former Parish Priest of St. Simon’s- she was helping with a collection there once, and she was staying in Knightswood, and she mentioned in passing that her neighbour had been taken into hospital. The neighbour later told her that the priest had taken the time to go and visit her in hospital. At the same time, we managed to get someone to remember his Catholic duties- giving one man a leaflet about our lunch, he said “I’d better remember to go to St. Peter’s for Mass tonight”- which he did!

On Monday, 13th June, we had our table out on Ashton Lane, hoping to engage with the local homeless through the bags of food, and the general public through tea and coffee, whilst also trying to promote the following day’s lunch. We did, actually, make some really interesting contacts, hopefully be able to publish more of them later on, but these are the highlights for me-

I was totally flabbergasted by 2 young homeless boys, who, while pouring out their tea, espied our bag of Miraculous Medals and finger Rosaries- and couldn’t wait to get them round their necks! They said they used to know the nuns at Merrilee well, and this brought back memories. I was totally astonished at their enthusiasm- faith in God shows in the strangest ways!

Whilst this was going on, Gus got into a very deep spiritual discussion with a cyclist, about how Jesus is our vine, and we have to be the branches in order for anything to grow. The cyclist stopped for physical refreshment through a cup of tea- and ended up with spiritual refreshment as well!

Earlier, two people said we had made their day- a girl in Ashton Lane, when we gave her a leaflet, noticed it said “Marian Action” and said, “Oh, my name’s Marian as well” and said she’d lost her father and her brother within the last year, and was grateful for the cheer we had given her. Then, John Bain was talking to a couple who were coming from the funeral of their minister- they were talking about the work that the churches do in the area, and the man said we’d made his day when we handed him one of our Bible quotes, and the first word was “Beloved”- “which is what I hope I am!”

I think sometimes the Lord makes you hear some things which make you think about how He has worked in the past, and brings back appropriate memories, making you want to thank Him more.

Two songs which are poles apart- “Make me a channel of your peace” (sung at Mass) and “In your Easter Bonnet”(heard on the radio) made me think of when we first had Easter celebrations at the hostels, and in particular our very first celebration, at the women’s hostel in Inglefield Street.

We had, of course, always done Christmas dinners(and no doubt nearer the festive time we’ll have some memories of them!) but it was suggested to us in the early 90s- by a young, ideological student- okay, Kevin!) that we should maybe think about doing Easter celebrations as well.

We chose Inglefield Street on the 1st Wednesday after Easter, because the women there liked their parties, and also because one of the women, Brenda, had recently adopted “Make me a channel of your peace “as her party peace, and the other women all seemed to enjoy her rendition of it- so, if we needed a bit of religious music to mark Jesus’ Resurrection, there we had it.

On the night, Margaret Forsyth, one of our members at that time- sadly, no longer with us- and who had previously worked in catering previously- took great delight in setting up tables in the tearoom, with beautiful crisp white tablecloths, and she enlisted the help of some of the hostels’ younger residents in setting up plates of chicken, salad, finger rolls, ham- and of course, both chocolate and hard boiled eggs- as I said, Inglefield Street had recently become home to a number of young residents, girls in their 20s who had obviously known well the harsher side of life- and it was a great delight to see these girls totally immersed in painting these hard boiled eggs!

After the meal, Brenda gave us “Make me a channel of your peace.” and as expected, all the women were in party mood- there were some right good singers among their number, and they all gave us a turn- and of course, to finish off with, Margaret Forsyth danced all around the room with her rendition of “In your Easter bonnet.”!

We also got a chance to remember the reason for the season at the end when one of the women decided to chance it, and reminded us that 2 Mondays time was also a bank holiday, and would we be doing this again. I told her no, this was to specially celebrate Jesus’ Resurrection- and she seemed happy with that reply.

Report on our lunch event on 10/5/22, and on the people we met in the preparation-

On the previous Thursday, we collected the flyers from the printer, and after a prayer, started to distribute them among people in the Byres Road area. Started off at Chez Nous, where they always make us welcome, didn’t get to speak to any of the men as they were decorating, but left flyers with them, then talked to a girl who was outside the M+S store in Byres Road, talking to her boyfriend across the road, gave them both flyers, they both said they would come. There were a couple of sad sights at the top of Byres Road, a foreign gentleman who was completely asleep, and Louise was still begging outside Waitrose, we told her we hoped to have the table out on Monday and we should have a bag of food for her. A young man,Mark, was sitting near to where our table is, and he was saying he was fed up having to go out to beg, but he was sitting in his house with no food, and a young woman with a dog outside Tescos was talking to a male- asked if she could bring a partner- “but it’ll no be him!” We then got talking to two young men outside Greggs in Dumbarton Road- one of them said he’d been baptised in St Peter’s, and would like to go back. We gave the next leaflet to a man who was sitting smoking by himself at Partick bus station, before giving some leaflets to Avanti chip shop, who kindly said they would give them to appropriate customers and possibly put a leaflet in the window. We then got the subway to Dalhousie, and posted some leaflets through their letter-box, and then went down to George Square, hoping to meet up with the Kindness group, unfortunately they weren’t there, but we did get speaking to one man whose face lit up when we mentioned hot food and entertainment. We managed on Sunday to go along to Partick South Church’s evening cafe, and saw some familiar faces from previous lunch events, including Carol, who reminded us that she’d won the Christmas quiz back in 2019. On Monday, we decided to take out the table despite the inclement weather, and Gus very kindly allowed us to use his flat to make up the sandwiches. We started off with the Angelus, and called to mind the fact that this was a mission of mercy- we bring the message to Jesus’ Resurrection to the marginalised- even those to whom we only speak briefly would be blessed by the Risen Lord, their spirituality enhanced. John Bain then took some bags of food and headed off towards Partick subway, hoping to find some people on the streets- as it turned out, he could only give out 2- it seemed the bad weather was keeping people away. At the table, our first contacts were two wee girls, who liked the look of our Oreo chocolate eggs- Jesus himself said, “let the children come to me.” Next, two Ukrainian girls took cups of tea, and creme eggs, it turned out they were students, and they were asking John for directions to one of the university chaplancies- not the Catholic one, they knew where that was- and, despite the language barrier, they eventually got their directions, and were pleased enough to give us a £3 donation. John then spoke to a man who asked what we were about, and when John said we were a charity, the man said, “that’s nice to know- I’m a charity case.” and then we spoke to a man, George, who said he was on his way to see his boys- he took a bag of food, and one of our chocolate cakes, and said he would try to come along the next day, and he would try to invite his boys. Finally, we spoke to a man who actually mistook us for C.N.D.- he was on his way to a C.N.D. rally, and he thought our table was it- but from that, he started talking about the various churches in the Partick area, and the good work being done by St. Silas’ Church, and Partick South, and he also spoke about a memorial garden in Kelvingrove Park for a woman who was murdered in her home about a year ago, and he was impressed by how immaculate it is kept. Also impressed was a very well-dressed man who was on his way to Brel, and who told us it was a really good thing we were doing. On Tuesday, we went to St. Peter’s 10am Mass, then Gus started to take the bags of food left over into the streets, I went down to Tesco’s for the soft drinks, and Tunnock’s teacakes and caramel wafers, then set them up with the cakes, creme eggs, and lollipops. Catherine arrived at 11.50 to prepare the hot food, we said the Angelus, and prayed that the people today would see the triumphant joy of Easter. Karen arrived at 12.50, and our first customers were Betty- who had received a Facebook message- and her friend, Peter. Betty was delighted to be back- she had missed us- enjoyed the events when we did them, and would love to see them back. Talked also about Frances, one of our former regulars, but she said she’s not in as much contact with her as before. Popping out to see who was there, I came across one man who said he expected loads of people to be there. His name was Robert, and when I got him to sit beside Peter and Betty, and the pizzas and the sausage rolls started to be served, he seemed to be quite happy. Gus popped in to say he’d had some really good conversations with people on the streets, and that he would come back at 2.15, and then a group of women came in and said they weren’t sure if they were in the right place as there wasn’t a notice. So I unsuccessfully tried to sellotape one of our flyers on to the railings! But that started a really good buzz of conversation around the table- and amongst this number was the previous Christmas quiz winner, Carol, who actually knew Karen well. All seemed really pleased that the events were restarting, I told them we have a break in the summer, but hopefully we’ll have another one before then. One of them, Brenda, was starting work shortly, so we started the quiz then- for a strawberry Easter egg (called Divine!) which Betty won on a tiebreak from Carol. Carol also said that if we wanted her to help with the dishes in future, she would like to. Gus came in at this point to talk about some of the conversations he had, including one man who tried to sell him a steak- which wasn’t much good as Gus was going away on Thursday!- and also Patrick, whom he met at Partick subway, and was telling about his horrendous injuries, but also talked about the great kindness that was shown him when he got his bag of food. Gus said he was impressed by the amount of times people thanked him for the kindness, and Gus reckons we have to think about both ministries to rough sleepers (who can’t come to lunch events) and those who can come to lunch events)

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