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The Easter triduum was celebrated with reverent liturgies, song and stories by the David’s Place community, based at St Canice’s Church in Kings Cross.
Bishop Daniel Meagher gathered with the mixed group including some of the city’s most marginalised people and others visiting from suburban parishes to celebrate a para-liturgy on Holy Saturday, followed by a pizza lunch.
David’s Place held ceremonies in the Blaiket parish house on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday to allow people to attend their Saturday vigil or Easter Sunday obligations in their own parishes if they wished.
This Easter the community for prayer and spirituality for marginalised people, and those who want to spend time with them, was reminiscent of the early church, facilitator Sue Buckingham told The Catholic Weekly.
Gatherings at David’s Place bring together a “motley crew of lots of different people coming with very different life experiences and points of view.”
“It’s going back to the model of the early church where the Eucharist gatherings were fairly small and people knew each other,” she said.
“For the street people it’s an opportunity to associate with people that they wouldn’t normally outside of David’s Place, and for the people coming from the suburbs it’s about discovering their own inner poverty, being able to be who they really are.
“When you’re here you don’t have the feeling that you need to live up to something or be part of a certain tribe.
“There’s this friendship and ability to forgive each other, accept each other and just be happy together, and we know that it’s Jesus who brings us together because of that I think.”
Bishop Meagher said he enjoyed gathering once again with the community of people from very different, often difficult backgrounds, to listen to the good news of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“The emphasis this time was our prayer that Easter might be a living event within us so that the healing and the light of the risen Jesus might be apparent in our midst,” he said.
“A lot of the people acknowledged the warmth that they experience in David’s Place and that it is the only place where they feel accepted and they can be themselves.
“It was a lovely gathering as always and very affirming for everyone there.”
