Migrants Day

Migrants Day Mass

Last Saturday was Catholic Migrants Day. The migrant catholic community in the holy Land far outnumber the local catholics ... and it is these migrant catholics who keep the Church alive. The largest groups are the filipinos and indians ... and the indians are divided into different rites - some Roman rite and many more in the Syro-Malabar rite with a few Malankar rite. There are also Sri Lankans which is far smaller in number ... then there are the eastern europeans who belong to the Byzantine Catholic rite and Ethiopians/Eritreans who belong to the Geez rite. The Migrant Day Mass was presided by our Archbishop Pizzaballa with all the chaplains at St. Anthony's Church in Jaffa. The church was packed with migrant workers. It was a good occasion for the local Church to thank these migrants for their hardworking and fervent faith.Being a chaplain to these communities is a very demanding job as it requires you to travel the whole of Israel and Palestine to care for the migrants living in different cities and towns.

Armenian Catholic
church

I help out with the Ethiopic/Eritrean community whenever there is need though I have not learned the Geez language. I celebrate in english and my acolyte translates into tigrina or amharic or which ever dialect is required. And I am the regular chaplain of the Armenian catholics whenever the armenian priest is not available ... which is most of the time because he lives in Amman and serves the armenian community there. I'm still learning the language which is very difficult ... and also the liturgical prayers and hymns so by now half of the liturgy is done in armenian. Must be quite impressive because the local armenian catholic community voted me to be their chaplain in the absence of an armenian priest. With all these chaplaincy work my Sundays are occupied with pastoral work and have few private time to do my own stuff ... like cleaning my room and washing my laundry etc. Last night for example I slept only 3 hours because I had class at 4am. Being afraid I would oversleep, I got up at 2.30am and remained awake till now.

Mondays are exhausting .... I can understand Garfield the Cat