the police at our church!

UPDATED: 5/4/2005 11:50:00 PM
was at church for a meeting this evening at 7.00pm. one of the church members told me that those ‘dark-skinned’ police personel at our church were catholics sarawakians. see, ismail all of them were catholics, no non catholics/christians. oh i guess the police beside being present for the mass to remember and give thanks on occasion of their police day, were there to pay respect to pope john paul II too.

btw, this mass i blog about was mentioned in the star paper of 4 apr., pg. 4, the bottom article, titled ‘young and old packed churches for prayers’. see the 4th paragraph from the bottom of the article, which started with ‘at the church of our lady of sorrows…’.
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the church in the diocese of penang (see bottom **) is celebrating its golden jubilee this year. in line of this, many events/activities had been planned. one of this activity is our bishop’s pastoral visit to all the parishes in the diocese. yesterday was his turn to visit our parish and he’ll be at our parish for 3 days.

penang bishop, rt. rev. antony s. celebrating mass at our church.

the first day he came, on 3 april, he started off by celebrating mass with us. we had planned for this mass since a month ago. then it so happened that, as on 25 march the police celebrated their 198th anniversary (police day), they decided to attend the mass on 3 april at our church as thanksgiving to god. and in the morning of the day itself, we learned of our holy father’s death early Sunday (3rd) morning, we added in a special prayer for him. so it was kind of like 3-in-1 mass – bishop’s pastoral visit/golden jubilee, police day and pray for holy father.

the penang state chief, datuk christopher wan soo kee, DCP, bought along about 20 of his police personnel to attend the mass. in our introduction, we informed the people about the police’s 198 anniversary and in our prayer intention, we add in the following prayer for the police:

we pray for members of the police force; that as they celebrate their 198th anniversary of police day, the lord will bless and protect them as they keep law and order and preserve peace and security in our country.

front row, left is deputy commissioner of police (DCP), datuk christopher wan; with his police personnel inside the church for mass.

it’s good to learn that the police, on occasion of its anniversary celebration, did not forget to give thanks to god by attending mass as a community (since many of them came together and all in uniform). as the prayer suggest, we pray for them too that the lord will protect them in their course of their duties.

** the diocese of penang website is in it’s ‘infancy’ stage. there are lots of things that need to be done/put up on the site, and it might need some ‘refurbishment’ too… and guess who is the administrator of the site – me! slowly i will update the site, especially to put up information on our golden jubilee celebration.