Called to Greatness: Sunday 21st January 2018
In the Gospel this morning, we find Jesus calling the apostles. I’m always amazed, by the way, that they immediately say “Yes” to their vocation, drop everything, and follow him. Was it because they had nothing to leave behind in the first place? Was it so easy for them to leave? It would seem much harder to do something like that nowadays.
Last week, I was reading an article on the shortage of priests, and the writer was saying that the shortage must be seen in the larger context of vocations in general because certain secular vocations are struggling too – areas like architecture, social work, teaching youth work, for example. The vocational crisis, in other words, is part of a wider, social picture, that reveals something of the heart of our modern society, which, as Mary McAleese has said, has become greedy, and very materialistic.
A materialistic culture places its emphasis on the right job, big money, and prestige, and, if you’re lucky, you can become a celebrity too. On the other hand, a vocational culture, is one, in which you have a sense of being called to make life better; a desire to do something worthwhile with your life, regardless of the difficulty, danger, or lack of worldly rewards.
William Bausch points out the anomaly, that our society today, without blushing, can offer a soccer star, like Wayne Rooney, £260,000 per week – which is about £1,785 per hour, - to play football. Ronaldo, of Real Madrid, earns £365,000 per week, which amounts to almost 2 million per year. Yet, a Staff Nurse, who cares every day for the elderly, gets €500 per week, which is about €16 per hour. And a Student Nurse, in training, is offered a miserable €8.24 per hour. Sad to say, in spite of their secular success, many rich people are still dissatisfied. It is common-place for some people to reach the top, and say: “Is that all there is?” There can be an aching emptiness for people who seem to have it all, when that “all” does not include the three “c’s”: which are: compassion, charity, and a challenging cause.
Yet, having said that, there is still great vocational generosity in people’s hearts today. I was reading about a female recruiter from the “Teach America Programme”, who went to a nearby university. Her job was to recruit new university graduates to give a year of their lives, to teaching children in poor townships. That day, this is what she said:
“I can tell by looking at you, that none of you will be interested in what I have to say. You are attending the best university in the land, and all of you will be successful. And here I stand, trying to recruit people for the most difficult job you will ever have in your life. I’m looking for people who will go into a burned-out class-room, and teach biology. I’m looking for somebody who will go into a little one-room school-house and teach children from 6 – 13, how to read. We had three teachers killed last year in these classrooms and I can tell, just by looking at you, that none of you wants to throw away your lives on anything like that. On the other hand, if by chance, there is somebody here who may be interested, I’ve got these brochures, and I’m going to leave them here at the front, and I will be glad to speak to anyone who is interested.”
She had hardly finished speaking, when most students rushed to the front, and started pushing and shoving to try get one of her pamphlets, dying to apply for “Teach America.” People are good, and instinctively look to something larger than themselves. They are hungry to give their lives to something more important than themselves. They want a vocation, not a resume! it is a fact of life, not only that a challenging life can cost us something, but that, in our better moments, we are even eager to pay the price.
I had a similar experience as chaplain in the university in Maynooth, when I asked the students for 12 volunteers to go to India and Kenya, and work with the poor for 2 months during the holidays. Over 100 students applied for the 12 places. Most of them came back changed – for they had seen absolute poverty; they had seen real hunger and total degradation. And when they came back to Ireland, they couldn’t stand the waste of food, and resources, that we go on with here. I remember the mother of one of the female students who had gone to India, ringing me, and saying: “Father, I sent my daughter to the university to get her doctorate in biology, and not to become a religious activist.” It was no use telling her, that sometimes, people must choose between their job and their vocation.
It was exactly so for a Japanese man, Chiune Sugihara, who was born in the same year as my father in 1901. As a boy, Sugihara cherished the dream of becoming the Japanese ambassador to Russia. By the 1930’s, he was Ambassador to Lithuania, just a step away from ambassadorship to Russia. He was on his way to a successful career, a big name on the international scene, with money and prestige galore. Then, a vocation, not a job, came unexpectedly calling. What happened was, that, one morning, a huge crowd of people gathered outside his home. They turned out to be Jews, who had made their way across treacherous terrain from Poland, desperately seeking his help. They wanted Japanese visas, which would enable them to flee from eastern Europe, and escape from the Gestapo. Three times Sugihara wired Tokyo for permission to supply the visas; three times he was refused. Now came his moment of truth – his calling, so to speak, versus his job. He had to choose between the fulfilment of his dream as an ambassador, and people’s lives. He chose the latter. He dared to disobey orders. For 28 days he wrote visas by hand, barely sleeping or eating. Recalled to Berlin, he was still writing visas, and shoving them through the train window, into the hands of the refugees, who ran alongside the train. Ultimately, he saved 6 thousand lives. He lost his job, his fame, his money and his career; and he wound up humbly selling light bulbs, of all things. But he had found his calling.
This morning, let me put this straight to you. Many parents are fanatical about getting their children into the right schools. Parents give their children every possible leg-up advantage that money can buy, so that they be successful. But my question, the gospel questions this morning is this: “Where is their equally passionate concern, that their children be conscientious about our world? and be visionary? and follow a calling, rather than a career?”
Look all that I have said so far, is but a variation on today’s gospel, which is a call to the vocation of discipleship – a call to become spreaders of light in a dark world. For the vision of the gospel declares: “The people who sat in darkness, have seen a great light; and for those who sat in the shadow of death, light has dawned.”
In our parish here, we are a faith community, with a sense of being tapped into by God. Each of us has been given a vocation. We have been recruited by Jesus to be bearers of light and love.
There is something we have to be; there is something we have to do before we die, no matter how small, that would lift us above ourselves. and there is an urgency, no matter how deeply we have buried it, to answer that call. The gospel simply asks: “Can you hear it? Can you answer it? I want to finish with the blessing: “For a new beginning”, by John O’Donoghue:
In out of the way places of the heart
Where your thoughts never think to wander
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire
Feeling the emptiness grow inside you
Noticing how you willed yourself on
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
AMEN.
In the Gospel this morning, we find Jesus calling the apostles. I’m always amazed, by the way, that they immediately say “Yes” to their vocation, drop everything, and follow him. Was it because they had nothing to leave behind in the first place? Was it so easy for them to leave? It would seem much harder to do something like that nowadays.
Last week, I was reading an article on the shortage of priests, and the writer was saying that the shortage must be seen in the larger context of vocations in general because certain secular vocations are struggling too – areas like architecture, social work, teaching youth work, for example. The vocational crisis, in other words, is part of a wider, social picture, that reveals something of the heart of our modern society, which, as Mary McAleese has said, has become greedy, and very materialistic.
A materialistic culture places its emphasis on the right job, big money, and prestige, and, if you’re lucky, you can become a celebrity too. On the other hand, a vocational culture, is one, in which you have a sense of being called to make life better; a desire to do something worthwhile with your life, regardless of the difficulty, danger, or lack of worldly rewards.
William Bausch points out the anomaly, that our society today, without blushing, can offer a soccer star, like Wayne Rooney, £260,000 per week – which is about £1,785 per hour, - to play football. Ronaldo, of Real Madrid, earns £365,000 per week, which amounts to almost 2 million per year. Yet, a Staff Nurse, who cares every day for the elderly, gets €500 per week, which is about €16 per hour. And a Student Nurse, in training, is offered a miserable €8.24 per hour. Sad to say, in spite of their secular success, many rich people are still dissatisfied. It is common-place for some people to reach the top, and say: “Is that all there is?” There can be an aching emptiness for people who seem to have it all, when that “all” does not include the three “c’s”: which are: compassion, charity, and a challenging cause.
Yet, having said that, there is still great vocational generosity in people’s hearts today. I was reading about a female recruiter from the “Teach America Programme”, who went to a nearby university. Her job was to recruit new university graduates to give a year of their lives, to teaching children in poor townships. That day, this is what she said:
“I can tell by looking at you, that none of you will be interested in what I have to say. You are attending the best university in the land, and all of you will be successful. And here I stand, trying to recruit people for the most difficult job you will ever have in your life. I’m looking for people who will go into a burned-out class-room, and teach biology. I’m looking for somebody who will go into a little one-room school-house and teach children from 6 – 13, how to read. We had three teachers killed last year in these classrooms and I can tell, just by looking at you, that none of you wants to throw away your lives on anything like that. On the other hand, if by chance, there is somebody here who may be interested, I’ve got these brochures, and I’m going to leave them here at the front, and I will be glad to speak to anyone who is interested.”
She had hardly finished speaking, when most students rushed to the front, and started pushing and shoving to try get one of her pamphlets, dying to apply for “Teach America.” People are good, and instinctively look to something larger than themselves. They are hungry to give their lives to something more important than themselves. They want a vocation, not a resume! it is a fact of life, not only that a challenging life can cost us something, but that, in our better moments, we are even eager to pay the price.
I had a similar experience as chaplain in the university in Maynooth, when I asked the students for 12 volunteers to go to India and Kenya, and work with the poor for 2 months during the holidays. Over 100 students applied for the 12 places. Most of them came back changed – for they had seen absolute poverty; they had seen real hunger and total degradation. And when they came back to Ireland, they couldn’t stand the waste of food, and resources, that we go on with here. I remember the mother of one of the female students who had gone to India, ringing me, and saying: “Father, I sent my daughter to the university to get her doctorate in biology, and not to become a religious activist.” It was no use telling her, that sometimes, people must choose between their job and their vocation.
It was exactly so for a Japanese man, Chiune Sugihara, who was born in the same year as my father in 1901. As a boy, Sugihara cherished the dream of becoming the Japanese ambassador to Russia. By the 1930’s, he was Ambassador to Lithuania, just a step away from ambassadorship to Russia. He was on his way to a successful career, a big name on the international scene, with money and prestige galore. Then, a vocation, not a job, came unexpectedly calling. What happened was, that, one morning, a huge crowd of people gathered outside his home. They turned out to be Jews, who had made their way across treacherous terrain from Poland, desperately seeking his help. They wanted Japanese visas, which would enable them to flee from eastern Europe, and escape from the Gestapo. Three times Sugihara wired Tokyo for permission to supply the visas; three times he was refused. Now came his moment of truth – his calling, so to speak, versus his job. He had to choose between the fulfilment of his dream as an ambassador, and people’s lives. He chose the latter. He dared to disobey orders. For 28 days he wrote visas by hand, barely sleeping or eating. Recalled to Berlin, he was still writing visas, and shoving them through the train window, into the hands of the refugees, who ran alongside the train. Ultimately, he saved 6 thousand lives. He lost his job, his fame, his money and his career; and he wound up humbly selling light bulbs, of all things. But he had found his calling.
This morning, let me put this straight to you. Many parents are fanatical about getting their children into the right schools. Parents give their children every possible leg-up advantage that money can buy, so that they be successful. But my question, the gospel questions this morning is this: “Where is their equally passionate concern, that their children be conscientious about our world? and be visionary? and follow a calling, rather than a career?”
Look all that I have said so far, is but a variation on today’s gospel, which is a call to the vocation of discipleship – a call to become spreaders of light in a dark world. For the vision of the gospel declares: “The people who sat in darkness, have seen a great light; and for those who sat in the shadow of death, light has dawned.”
In our parish here, we are a faith community, with a sense of being tapped into by God. Each of us has been given a vocation. We have been recruited by Jesus to be bearers of light and love.
There is something we have to be; there is something we have to do before we die, no matter how small, that would lift us above ourselves. and there is an urgency, no matter how deeply we have buried it, to answer that call. The gospel simply asks: “Can you hear it? Can you answer it? I want to finish with the blessing: “For a new beginning”, by John O’Donoghue:
In out of the way places of the heart
Where your thoughts never think to wander
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire
Feeling the emptiness grow inside you
Noticing how you willed yourself on
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
AMEN.
New Year's Resolutions
“Look, look; there is the Lamb of God.” John 1:36
When I was a boy, if either I or one of my brothers or sisters stared at, or worse still pointed at something, or someone, my mum would always say: “Don’t point” Pointing or staring were considered bad manners at that time, at least for children There are times, of course, when pointing is considered appropriate. If I am giving someone directions, or showing someone the way, it can be very helpful to point, and it can also save a life, by pointing out a danger.
In today’s gospel, we have John pointing: “Look, look, there is the lamb of God”, he says, pointing out Jesus. And then you have Andrew pointing out Jesus to his brother Simon, and bringing Simon to meet him. And I love today’s first reading, where the little boy Samuel is being called by the Lord, and the old man, Eli, points him in the right direction to meet the Lord.
We can all think of people who pointed us in the right direction, in the course of our lives. We all need good guides from time to time. We need people who can keep us right, and point out the way for us. Today, we give thanks for the people who have helped us find our way, in the course of our lives. I think of parents; and I think of teachers; and spouses and partners; and good friends; and clerics; those people who said the right word at the right time, which saved us from a lot of trouble.
In thanking God for such people, we also acknowledge that the Lord calls us also to become a pointer to others – particularly in the central mission of passing on the faith – especially to our children.
I have become much more hopeful about the growth of faith in our world, after reading an article by John Wheeler, in the “New York Times”. In it, he said: “Since 9 /11, 69 percent of people questioned in the USA believe in God as a positive, active, spiritual force, and 40 percent reported that they had become more spiritual in the last 10 years.” And the writer is backed up by the polls, which say that 54 percent of adults in the USA think that religion is very important; 34 percent think that religion is important – this means that, overall, 85 percent feel that religion and faith in God are important.
So, he’s right. There is a measurable return. People are reacting to the void, to the materialism, to some of the horrors of the past couple of decades, with the drug culture, and the divorce culture; and pornography; and the horrible abuse of women and children. All these things have so much darkness and brokenness in them, they’re saying, that there’s got to be a return to faith in God. Many people think that the demise of our Celtic Tiger, and the horrible recession which we all went through, and the awful way in which so many are still suffering, may also have some sort of positive side to it. They feel it may spark a rejection of materialism, and a re-enkindling of a hunger for the spiritual.
In the light of this, I want to suggest two new year’s resolutions to you for 2018. The first is: “To stay positive about the future.” Some of you have known losses in the past year. You’ve lost a spouse; you’ve lost a child; you’ve lost health; you’ve lost relationships; you’ve lost your job; you’ve lost your house or part of your pension - all sorts of losses. But you do have a choice about these losses. Your choice is either you turn in on yourself, and become depressed about it, or you can follow the example of others, who have turned tragedy into a positive thing. I think, for example, of that little Japanese girl, whom you may have heard about, Sadaku. She was one of the children caught up in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. She saw her mother and father and family dead; she herself had severe radiation burns. She was in hospital, waiting to die – and she knew she didn’t have long. But instead of bemoaning the tragedy, she said: “This can never happen again to people. People cannot be this cruel to each other again. So, each day, I’m going to cut out and make a white dove, and I’m going to send it to somebody, and ask them to be a disciple of peace.” Well she did that for 683 days - and then she died. And those who knew this little girl followed what she started. They made the 684th white dove – and the 685th – and now there are millions of these little white doves going throughout the world, saying that life can be better. Will you resolve with me to help, or join, organisations that are trying to make the world better - like the Society of St Vincent de Paul, friends of Milford Hospice, and so on? This is what I mean: do something to make life better. We can say “No” to drugs; say “No” to pornography; we can say “Yes” to what is just, and true, and decent for 2018. Make a resolution like that “to stay positive about the future.”
My second resolution is this: “This year, show someone what God is like.” It was the black American writer, Maya Angelou, who said: “People will forget what you said; and people will forget what you did; but people will never forget the way you made them feel.” I was thinking of this, when I was recalling a simple story told by William Bausch. He said: “In one seat of a bus, an old grey-headed man sat, holding a bunch of beautiful fresh flowers. Across the aisle, was a young girl, whose eyes came back, again and again, to the old man’s flowers. The time came for the old man to get off. Impulsively, he handed the bunch of flowers to the young girl. “I can see you love the flowers,” he explained, “and I think my wife would like you to have them. I’ll tell her I gave them to you.” The young girl was delighted – and was even more deeply touched when she watched the old man get off the bus, and walk through the gate of a small cemetery.”
People learn about God – not because they figure out the Trinity – or because they know the words of the Nicene Creed - not because they’re great theologians, not because they understand Greek. No, people learn about God from God-like people, who make us feel good about ourselves. You know, even people who have done bad things in their lives, even people who have messy corners that they’re dealing with, they too can mirror the goodness of God and you and me. We can always share what we have; we can share the flowers, the friendship, our warmth, our food, with someone who has none. You can be God to some people, who will remember what God is like, because they remember what you did, or what you said; but especially how you made them feel.
So those are my two new year resolutions. You too can become a pointer for others; you too can become God-like, as experienced by others. For, in spite of all our individual and collective failings, there is a beauty deep within us. There is a goodness that lies at the heart of every man, woman and child. So, in the coming year, stay positive about the future – you can make a difference and show somebody this year what God is like. And even if we only half keep these two resolutions, then, the coming year will be a new and happy one. I’ll finish with two verses from “Ring out, wild bells” by Alfred Lord Tennyson:
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
“Look, look; there is the Lamb of God.” John 1:36
When I was a boy, if either I or one of my brothers or sisters stared at, or worse still pointed at something, or someone, my mum would always say: “Don’t point” Pointing or staring were considered bad manners at that time, at least for children There are times, of course, when pointing is considered appropriate. If I am giving someone directions, or showing someone the way, it can be very helpful to point, and it can also save a life, by pointing out a danger.
In today’s gospel, we have John pointing: “Look, look, there is the lamb of God”, he says, pointing out Jesus. And then you have Andrew pointing out Jesus to his brother Simon, and bringing Simon to meet him. And I love today’s first reading, where the little boy Samuel is being called by the Lord, and the old man, Eli, points him in the right direction to meet the Lord.
We can all think of people who pointed us in the right direction, in the course of our lives. We all need good guides from time to time. We need people who can keep us right, and point out the way for us. Today, we give thanks for the people who have helped us find our way, in the course of our lives. I think of parents; and I think of teachers; and spouses and partners; and good friends; and clerics; those people who said the right word at the right time, which saved us from a lot of trouble.
In thanking God for such people, we also acknowledge that the Lord calls us also to become a pointer to others – particularly in the central mission of passing on the faith – especially to our children.
I have become much more hopeful about the growth of faith in our world, after reading an article by John Wheeler, in the “New York Times”. In it, he said: “Since 9 /11, 69 percent of people questioned in the USA believe in God as a positive, active, spiritual force, and 40 percent reported that they had become more spiritual in the last 10 years.” And the writer is backed up by the polls, which say that 54 percent of adults in the USA think that religion is very important; 34 percent think that religion is important – this means that, overall, 85 percent feel that religion and faith in God are important.
So, he’s right. There is a measurable return. People are reacting to the void, to the materialism, to some of the horrors of the past couple of decades, with the drug culture, and the divorce culture; and pornography; and the horrible abuse of women and children. All these things have so much darkness and brokenness in them, they’re saying, that there’s got to be a return to faith in God. Many people think that the demise of our Celtic Tiger, and the horrible recession which we all went through, and the awful way in which so many are still suffering, may also have some sort of positive side to it. They feel it may spark a rejection of materialism, and a re-enkindling of a hunger for the spiritual.
In the light of this, I want to suggest two new year’s resolutions to you for 2018. The first is: “To stay positive about the future.” Some of you have known losses in the past year. You’ve lost a spouse; you’ve lost a child; you’ve lost health; you’ve lost relationships; you’ve lost your job; you’ve lost your house or part of your pension - all sorts of losses. But you do have a choice about these losses. Your choice is either you turn in on yourself, and become depressed about it, or you can follow the example of others, who have turned tragedy into a positive thing. I think, for example, of that little Japanese girl, whom you may have heard about, Sadaku. She was one of the children caught up in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. She saw her mother and father and family dead; she herself had severe radiation burns. She was in hospital, waiting to die – and she knew she didn’t have long. But instead of bemoaning the tragedy, she said: “This can never happen again to people. People cannot be this cruel to each other again. So, each day, I’m going to cut out and make a white dove, and I’m going to send it to somebody, and ask them to be a disciple of peace.” Well she did that for 683 days - and then she died. And those who knew this little girl followed what she started. They made the 684th white dove – and the 685th – and now there are millions of these little white doves going throughout the world, saying that life can be better. Will you resolve with me to help, or join, organisations that are trying to make the world better - like the Society of St Vincent de Paul, friends of Milford Hospice, and so on? This is what I mean: do something to make life better. We can say “No” to drugs; say “No” to pornography; we can say “Yes” to what is just, and true, and decent for 2018. Make a resolution like that “to stay positive about the future.”
My second resolution is this: “This year, show someone what God is like.” It was the black American writer, Maya Angelou, who said: “People will forget what you said; and people will forget what you did; but people will never forget the way you made them feel.” I was thinking of this, when I was recalling a simple story told by William Bausch. He said: “In one seat of a bus, an old grey-headed man sat, holding a bunch of beautiful fresh flowers. Across the aisle, was a young girl, whose eyes came back, again and again, to the old man’s flowers. The time came for the old man to get off. Impulsively, he handed the bunch of flowers to the young girl. “I can see you love the flowers,” he explained, “and I think my wife would like you to have them. I’ll tell her I gave them to you.” The young girl was delighted – and was even more deeply touched when she watched the old man get off the bus, and walk through the gate of a small cemetery.”
People learn about God – not because they figure out the Trinity – or because they know the words of the Nicene Creed - not because they’re great theologians, not because they understand Greek. No, people learn about God from God-like people, who make us feel good about ourselves. You know, even people who have done bad things in their lives, even people who have messy corners that they’re dealing with, they too can mirror the goodness of God and you and me. We can always share what we have; we can share the flowers, the friendship, our warmth, our food, with someone who has none. You can be God to some people, who will remember what God is like, because they remember what you did, or what you said; but especially how you made them feel.
So those are my two new year resolutions. You too can become a pointer for others; you too can become God-like, as experienced by others. For, in spite of all our individual and collective failings, there is a beauty deep within us. There is a goodness that lies at the heart of every man, woman and child. So, in the coming year, stay positive about the future – you can make a difference and show somebody this year what God is like. And even if we only half keep these two resolutions, then, the coming year will be a new and happy one. I’ll finish with two verses from “Ring out, wild bells” by Alfred Lord Tennyson:
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Feast of the Baptism of the Lord: 7th January 2018
Most times, when I’m baptising a child in the church here, I invite all the people to come back to the door of the church. I do that for one reason, and one reason only, to show that baptism is the door of the church, – it’s the threshold of becoming a ‘child of God’. For baptism is the sacrament of entry, or initiation. And the little child I’m baptising isn’t just coming into the church building. The child is coming into the church as community. It’s then that I invite the parents, and the God-parents, and everyone there, to trace a little cross on the child’s forehead, to mark the fact that this child is to be another member of Christ’s body. This child is a child of God – and that is her identity.
Archbishop Tutu, the Anglican bishop in South Africa, says that, when he preaches, especially at baptisms, he always preaches one message to his African congregations. His message is simple, and he repeats it, over and over again. It is this: “God loves you. You are a child of God.” “I tell them that”, he says, “because the entire culture tells them, that they are unlovable. And I have to give them the message of who they really are, children of God, and that God loves them. That is their identity.”
On this feast of the baptism of Jesus, it might be well to remember that that is our identity too! We are children of God, and God loves us.In our baptism, we too have been
signed with the mark of Jesus. It’s also good to recall that baptism, like membership of any group, carries with it its privileges, its obligations and also its expectations.
I want to tell you the true story of a good priest, Fr. Joe Puglisi, an Italian, who always had the love, respect, and trust of his people. Fr. Joe is already recognised as a saint by the people in his native home of Palermo, in Sicily. Fr. Joe was ordained as a young man, and was sent as parish priest to St. James’s, a very poor parish in Palermo. The church was an old 18th century building, with the roof falling in. His parishioners numbered 115, in an area with a population of 8,000! Fr Joe was a good preacher. He also taught in the local school. What distinguished Fr. Joe as a priest was his heroic and fearless opposition to the Mafia. He refused to accept Mafia donations for feast-day celebrations in his church. From the
pulpit, he denounced those who gave, or accepted bribes. He exhorted the people: “Take responsibility for your life and for society! Resist the values of the Mafia! Refuse to collaborate in their criminality! Say no to contraband goods, to stolen motor-bikes! Say no to drugs!” But his heroic stand had a price. On his 46th birthday, returning from a small birthday party, Fr. Joe Puglisi stepped out of his car. A man approached him, and shot him in the head. He died instantly. His assailant was caught four years later. He had been hired by the Mafia. He reported that, when Fr. Joe saw him approaching with the gun, the priest had said quietly to him: “I was expecting you.”
What a beautiful man. I was deeply struck by his last words on earth: “I was expecting you.” I was struck by them, because they describe what the sacrament of baptism is all about. Because it means that when you’re initiated into the Christ-way of living and loving, and you take it seriously, there are certain expectations. When you stand up for certain values, you must expect opposition, and criticism. Today, these expectations can work like this:
That’s the way it works. Sign yourself with the baptismal cross, and you’ll automatically get the sacrificial cross also! Of course, you can hide it, and erase the sign, so that nobody knows you’re a Christian. You can be exactly like everybody else, with media values, and modern-day life-style. It’s much easier that way. Maybe,we never expected it to be so difficult!
Today, during the Eucharist, we must remember our identity – our identity as children of God – that we are loved, that we are marked with the sign of faith, that in this Eucharist, we have power to join others in creating a better world; to stand for what is true; for what is decent; for what is fair and right. Yes! to live those beautiful values of justice, equality, peace and love - and try to build up the kingdom of Jesus’Father around us.
I’ll finish with the small poem:
As a baby, as is our wont,
Carried to the baptismal font,
A child of God I now am sent!
God’s spirit within me.
So, I grow, and life goes in;
My faith never wearing thin;
And his light will not grow dim!
God’s spirit sustains me.
I stand for truth and love,
God strengthens me from above;
To build a world of peace and love,
God’s spirit around me.
Amen.
Most times, when I’m baptising a child in the church here, I invite all the people to come back to the door of the church. I do that for one reason, and one reason only, to show that baptism is the door of the church, – it’s the threshold of becoming a ‘child of God’. For baptism is the sacrament of entry, or initiation. And the little child I’m baptising isn’t just coming into the church building. The child is coming into the church as community. It’s then that I invite the parents, and the God-parents, and everyone there, to trace a little cross on the child’s forehead, to mark the fact that this child is to be another member of Christ’s body. This child is a child of God – and that is her identity.
Archbishop Tutu, the Anglican bishop in South Africa, says that, when he preaches, especially at baptisms, he always preaches one message to his African congregations. His message is simple, and he repeats it, over and over again. It is this: “God loves you. You are a child of God.” “I tell them that”, he says, “because the entire culture tells them, that they are unlovable. And I have to give them the message of who they really are, children of God, and that God loves them. That is their identity.”
On this feast of the baptism of Jesus, it might be well to remember that that is our identity too! We are children of God, and God loves us.In our baptism, we too have been
signed with the mark of Jesus. It’s also good to recall that baptism, like membership of any group, carries with it its privileges, its obligations and also its expectations.
I want to tell you the true story of a good priest, Fr. Joe Puglisi, an Italian, who always had the love, respect, and trust of his people. Fr. Joe is already recognised as a saint by the people in his native home of Palermo, in Sicily. Fr. Joe was ordained as a young man, and was sent as parish priest to St. James’s, a very poor parish in Palermo. The church was an old 18th century building, with the roof falling in. His parishioners numbered 115, in an area with a population of 8,000! Fr Joe was a good preacher. He also taught in the local school. What distinguished Fr. Joe as a priest was his heroic and fearless opposition to the Mafia. He refused to accept Mafia donations for feast-day celebrations in his church. From the
pulpit, he denounced those who gave, or accepted bribes. He exhorted the people: “Take responsibility for your life and for society! Resist the values of the Mafia! Refuse to collaborate in their criminality! Say no to contraband goods, to stolen motor-bikes! Say no to drugs!” But his heroic stand had a price. On his 46th birthday, returning from a small birthday party, Fr. Joe Puglisi stepped out of his car. A man approached him, and shot him in the head. He died instantly. His assailant was caught four years later. He had been hired by the Mafia. He reported that, when Fr. Joe saw him approaching with the gun, the priest had said quietly to him: “I was expecting you.”
What a beautiful man. I was deeply struck by his last words on earth: “I was expecting you.” I was struck by them, because they describe what the sacrament of baptism is all about. Because it means that when you’re initiated into the Christ-way of living and loving, and you take it seriously, there are certain expectations. When you stand up for certain values, you must expect opposition, and criticism. Today, these expectations can work like this:
- “Ok. if we cut a few corners here and there, you can have the building job! I know it’s a rip-off. But what’s the big deal? Otherwise, we’ll get someone else!” A voice inside you says: “I was expecting you. Sorry, I can’t take it.
- “You’re a fool. Why don’t you take the money? All you have to do, is to keep watch for us, while we go in!” A whisper inside of you says: “I was expecting you. No! I won’t do it!”
- “Listen, nobody declares their full income to the tax man! Why don’t you write the extras into this second book?” “You’re very naïve and foolish!” Can you hear it: “I was expecting you? I won’t take your advice!”
- “This party is not for you! You’re too prudish! There’ll be drink, and drugs, and hostesses there – you’re not invited. You wouldn’t fit in.” A whisper comes to you: “I was expecting that.”
- “After all these years, I can’t do that to him!” “But we won’t tell him. We can make up a story.” “I can’t do it.” “You fool! this opportunity will never come again!” A little voice says: “I was expecting that! But I won’t do it!"
That’s the way it works. Sign yourself with the baptismal cross, and you’ll automatically get the sacrificial cross also! Of course, you can hide it, and erase the sign, so that nobody knows you’re a Christian. You can be exactly like everybody else, with media values, and modern-day life-style. It’s much easier that way. Maybe,we never expected it to be so difficult!
Today, during the Eucharist, we must remember our identity – our identity as children of God – that we are loved, that we are marked with the sign of faith, that in this Eucharist, we have power to join others in creating a better world; to stand for what is true; for what is decent; for what is fair and right. Yes! to live those beautiful values of justice, equality, peace and love - and try to build up the kingdom of Jesus’Father around us.
I’ll finish with the small poem:
As a baby, as is our wont,
Carried to the baptismal font,
A child of God I now am sent!
God’s spirit within me.
So, I grow, and life goes in;
My faith never wearing thin;
And his light will not grow dim!
God’s spirit sustains me.
I stand for truth and love,
God strengthens me from above;
To build a world of peace and love,
God’s spirit around me.
Amen.
Feast of the Holy Family. 31st December 2017
In the middle of the night, a young boy wakes up in a hospital bed. He feels very frightened and very alone. He is suffering intense pain: burns cover 40 per cent of his body. Someone had doused him with alcohol, and then had set him on fire. He starts crying out for his mother. The nurse leaves her night-post to comfort him. She holds him very gently; hugs him; whispers to him that the pain will go away sooner than he thinks. However, nothing that the nurse does, seems to lessen the boy’s pain. He still cries for his mother. And the nurse becomes confused and even irritated. Because it was his mother who had set him on fire
It seems that the young boy’s pain at being separated from his mother, even though she had inflicted such cruelty on him, was greater than the pain of his burns. This deep attachment to the mother makes separation from her the worst experience a child can undergo. Indeed, the psychoanalyst, Anna Freud, noted that: “It is a known fact, that children will cling, even to mothers who are continually cross, and sometimes cruel to them.”
When children are growing up, the regular presence of parents is a constant assurance of safety for every young child. The family, no matter what its shortcomings, is the basic human connection. Parents are the first teachers of love. It is from the parents that love is taught, or caught. Their attachment to the child shows the child that he is worthy of love. And it also shows the child how to love. But, as you know, there are flaws in every human connection, and in our human nature.
We keep the feast of the Holy Family today – Mary, Joseph and Jesus as a family. I remember the old parish priest at home, when preaching about the Holy Family, and the death of Joseph, got mixed up, and said: “How wonderful it must have been for St. Joseph, to die in the arms of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.” However, this Holy Family, seemed to live in the shadow of pain, all their lives long. This Holy Family was not a plaster-cast family. They experienced all the difficulties, and trials, that human beings are heir to.
One thing I can say with certainty, is that there isn’t a family in this parish, or on the island of Ireland, that doesn’t have trouble. The Chinese have a proverb which states: “Nobody’s family can hang out a sign that says”: ‘Nothing is the matter here.’” I used to think, when I was growing up at home, that we were the only family with problems. After years in the priesthood, I don’t think I know even one family that has escaped. You see, trouble and suffering can take different forms, and at some time or another, they sleep under every door.
I don’t know what form your family trouble takes, but there is a way that the Holy Family can support and serve you in your trouble. And that way is the way in which they loved one another. Joseph was faithful to Mary, even though the child she carried was not his. Mary was faithful to her son Jesus, through all his pain, even to the foot of the cross. You remember that one of the things that most concerned Jesus, as he hung on the cross, was that there would be somebody, like John, to take care of his mother after he was gone.
On this feast of the Holy Family, there’s only one message I’d like to give you. “Be loyal to your family.” Give them the support, the understanding, and the love that they need. It’s true that you can let yourself go in your own house, in a way that you wouldn’t outside. You can be crankier, or moodier, or sleepier than you would be elsewhere. A belch in your own house is only a noise. In another person’s house, it could be looked on as an insult. But don’t let the freedom you enjoy in your own home become a licence for ill-treatment or neglect.
My mother used to talk about a man who was a “street angel” but a “house devil” – he was lovely to neighbours and strangers, but horrible to his own family. No, reserve your deepest kindness for your own home. You know the faults of your family members better that anybody else, but don’t forget their virtues, or all the things they’ve done for you in the past. And, if you have fallen out with someone, will you see if there is some way to mend it - before it’s too late?
This story was told to me by an old man who lives near Limerick, about how he fell out with his mother over business. He was filled with resentment towards her. For years, he drove past her every morning, as she walked into Limerick, never stopping, or offering her a lift, even in the rain. Years passed, and his mother wasn’t walking any more. One day, filled with remorse, he decided to go back, and make it up with his mother. He drove the van into the yard, and walked into the house. Oh, she was there alright but as he approached her, she stared at him vacantly and said: “Who are you?” She had got Alzheimer’s and didn’t recognise her own son any more. And that old man telling me that story, struck the table beside me, in tears, saying: “I was too late. I was too late.”
It makes sense to try to mend broken relationships in the family soon. And if you’ve done some member of your family an injustice – a husband – or a wife – or partner or child – try to make up for it, by continuous kindness. Or, if you continue to do an injustice, because of some personal weakness, or addiction, then, in God’s name, have the humility to seek help from outside.
Like the Holy Family, every family has its times of happiness and joy, and, at some stage, its time of suffering. Try to enter the happiness and celebration when it’s there. And if some member of your family is suffering – rally round. Carry the cross together as best you can. And if the going gets tough, then pray to the Holy Family for inspiration and support.
May God bless you, and your family, in the coming year. May you enjoy, above all, harmony and health. And may you, as a united and supportive family, have the grace and the strength to cope with the inevitable troubles that lie ahead.
I’ll finish with this family blessing:
May God bless you and your family.
May God strengthen you, together;
May God dwell in your hearts.
May God inspire you
to share his love with one another;
May God hold you, and your family,
in his arms of LOVE.
AMEN.
Christmas Mess! 25th December 2017
Good morning to you all. And a Happy Christmas to you.
The other day, I came across a delightful piece, written by Jesuit writer Richard Leonard, telling about a Nativity play he attended last year, in a Primary School somewhere in his native Australia. Before it began, the Sister-in-charge told him that rehearsals had been difficult. The Inn-keeper was not a happy camper because he had wanted to play the part of Joseph; but Sister felt, in her wisdom that, as Ahmed was a Muslim, it would be more appropriate to have a young Christian as Joseph.
Anyway, all was right on the night, until the moment when Mary and Joseph arrived at the Inn. Joseph knocked on the door, and the Inn-keeper gruffly shouted: “Who’s there?” “I am Joseph”, came the reply, “and this is Mary, my wife. We have nowhere to stay, and she’s going to have a baby!” Silence. The Inn-keeper didn’t budge! Eventually, Sister, standing in the wings, whispered loudly: “Ahmed, you know what to do. Open the door and make your lovely speech.”
But Ahmed wasn’t moving. So, Sister told Joseph to knock again. The Inn-keeper barked more angrily: “Who’s there?” So, Joseph said his piece again, but the Inn-keeper was having none of it. So, Sister lent forward once more and said: “Ahmed, your Mom and Dad are here, and they’ll be so proud of you!” And with that, Sister asked Joseph to knock a third time.
Suddenly, a loud bass voice boomed from the back: “Ahmed, open the door, or I’ll belt your backside!” and with that, a big burly African in ceremonial kaftan, Ahmed’s father, was making his way up the aisle. The tension in the room rose, with everyone desperately hoping and praying that Ahmed would open that door, and avoid a scene. And lo and behold, Ahmed opened the door and meekly said to Mary: “You can come in, now. “But you”, he shouted at Joseph: “You can feck off!” Poor Joseph burst into tears; the shepherds and the angels went for the Inn-keeper, hitting him, because, ‘quote unquote’, “He said a bad word!” The classmates in the audience were on their feet, chanting: “Fight! fight!” Total bedlam.
Sister had to get up and calm them all down. It took ten minutes to restore peace on earth, in that little corner of the world. And Sister apologetically assured the audience that this Is not what they had rehearsed. Things had not gone according to plan. Obviously!
So now you’re probably wonderIng why am I telling you this rather irreverent rendition of the nativity? Because I think it Illustrates something truly profound: that God comes to us in the middle of the mess of our lives!
We have a particularly beautiful crib in our church this year. I like it! I really do. But, in one way, it creates too pretty a picture of what must have been a messy business. As in any human birth: there’s a straining, and bleeding, and crying out! Let’s not Imagine the birth of Jesus was any different. God took on a human body, human flesh just like ours, with all that goes with it. This Is the extraordinary, mind-boggling mystery of Christmas. And, for good measure, the stable, or cave, was as rough a setting for giving birth as you can imagine, with animals snorting, and dunging in the background. Yes. Jesus was born into a messy place. And I’m not just talking about that place on the outskirts of Bethlehem. No. It was a whole world of division, and oppression, and warfare; a world of broken humanity; a world of mess. And the mess is still a reality today. Not just in far-flung places of strife – such as Syria, or Afghanistan, or the challenges of migration on the continent; or the on-going gang-land violence closer to home. There’s mess all over.
Also, I would suggest, within and around each one of us: the hurts we carry; the tensions we experience; the uncertainties that we fear; the difficulties and demons we struggle with every day; times, as in that little Nativity play, when things do not turn out as planned; where there is chaos, and mess all round.
On this Christmas morning, we recall that God has a huge desire to be with us – to be part of the human condition; part of the messiness, our losses, our disappointments; our fractured relationships; the deaths we have had in the past year; the difficulties; the addictions; the Illness; the betrayals; things in life that turn us upside-down and inside-out – the things that break our hearts. In all our entire human condition, the Christmas message Is: “God won’t leave us alone!” He disregards our messiness, and our brokenness – and with the loving little arms of the baby in the crib, reaching out - he embraces us messy people, with our messy lives, our hurts, and our torn relationships and our broken hearts; and our sins. For, it is into that very messiness, our mess, that Jesus wants to be born again – today – bringing his healing, his love, his mercy, his peace. Notwithstanding our mess, his gaze upon us is one of extraordinary and tender love, a gaze that invites a response in love, as only the gaze of an infant can. Today, we open our hearts to this defenceless baby who joins us, and who shows us the way out of our own mess, and leads us to a fuller life in this world, and in the next.
I finish with the lines of that well-known Christmas carol:
“Once in royal David’s city,
Stood a lonely cattle shed,
Where a mother laid her baby
In a manger for his bed.
Mary was that mother mild,
Jesus Christ her little child.”
Happy Christmas.
Good morning to you all. And a Happy Christmas to you.
The other day, I came across a delightful piece, written by Jesuit writer Richard Leonard, telling about a Nativity play he attended last year, in a Primary School somewhere in his native Australia. Before it began, the Sister-in-charge told him that rehearsals had been difficult. The Inn-keeper was not a happy camper because he had wanted to play the part of Joseph; but Sister felt, in her wisdom that, as Ahmed was a Muslim, it would be more appropriate to have a young Christian as Joseph.
Anyway, all was right on the night, until the moment when Mary and Joseph arrived at the Inn. Joseph knocked on the door, and the Inn-keeper gruffly shouted: “Who’s there?” “I am Joseph”, came the reply, “and this is Mary, my wife. We have nowhere to stay, and she’s going to have a baby!” Silence. The Inn-keeper didn’t budge! Eventually, Sister, standing in the wings, whispered loudly: “Ahmed, you know what to do. Open the door and make your lovely speech.”
But Ahmed wasn’t moving. So, Sister told Joseph to knock again. The Inn-keeper barked more angrily: “Who’s there?” So, Joseph said his piece again, but the Inn-keeper was having none of it. So, Sister lent forward once more and said: “Ahmed, your Mom and Dad are here, and they’ll be so proud of you!” And with that, Sister asked Joseph to knock a third time.
Suddenly, a loud bass voice boomed from the back: “Ahmed, open the door, or I’ll belt your backside!” and with that, a big burly African in ceremonial kaftan, Ahmed’s father, was making his way up the aisle. The tension in the room rose, with everyone desperately hoping and praying that Ahmed would open that door, and avoid a scene. And lo and behold, Ahmed opened the door and meekly said to Mary: “You can come in, now. “But you”, he shouted at Joseph: “You can feck off!” Poor Joseph burst into tears; the shepherds and the angels went for the Inn-keeper, hitting him, because, ‘quote unquote’, “He said a bad word!” The classmates in the audience were on their feet, chanting: “Fight! fight!” Total bedlam.
Sister had to get up and calm them all down. It took ten minutes to restore peace on earth, in that little corner of the world. And Sister apologetically assured the audience that this Is not what they had rehearsed. Things had not gone according to plan. Obviously!
So now you’re probably wonderIng why am I telling you this rather irreverent rendition of the nativity? Because I think it Illustrates something truly profound: that God comes to us in the middle of the mess of our lives!
We have a particularly beautiful crib in our church this year. I like it! I really do. But, in one way, it creates too pretty a picture of what must have been a messy business. As in any human birth: there’s a straining, and bleeding, and crying out! Let’s not Imagine the birth of Jesus was any different. God took on a human body, human flesh just like ours, with all that goes with it. This Is the extraordinary, mind-boggling mystery of Christmas. And, for good measure, the stable, or cave, was as rough a setting for giving birth as you can imagine, with animals snorting, and dunging in the background. Yes. Jesus was born into a messy place. And I’m not just talking about that place on the outskirts of Bethlehem. No. It was a whole world of division, and oppression, and warfare; a world of broken humanity; a world of mess. And the mess is still a reality today. Not just in far-flung places of strife – such as Syria, or Afghanistan, or the challenges of migration on the continent; or the on-going gang-land violence closer to home. There’s mess all over.
Also, I would suggest, within and around each one of us: the hurts we carry; the tensions we experience; the uncertainties that we fear; the difficulties and demons we struggle with every day; times, as in that little Nativity play, when things do not turn out as planned; where there is chaos, and mess all round.
On this Christmas morning, we recall that God has a huge desire to be with us – to be part of the human condition; part of the messiness, our losses, our disappointments; our fractured relationships; the deaths we have had in the past year; the difficulties; the addictions; the Illness; the betrayals; things in life that turn us upside-down and inside-out – the things that break our hearts. In all our entire human condition, the Christmas message Is: “God won’t leave us alone!” He disregards our messiness, and our brokenness – and with the loving little arms of the baby in the crib, reaching out - he embraces us messy people, with our messy lives, our hurts, and our torn relationships and our broken hearts; and our sins. For, it is into that very messiness, our mess, that Jesus wants to be born again – today – bringing his healing, his love, his mercy, his peace. Notwithstanding our mess, his gaze upon us is one of extraordinary and tender love, a gaze that invites a response in love, as only the gaze of an infant can. Today, we open our hearts to this defenceless baby who joins us, and who shows us the way out of our own mess, and leads us to a fuller life in this world, and in the next.
I finish with the lines of that well-known Christmas carol:
“Once in royal David’s city,
Stood a lonely cattle shed,
Where a mother laid her baby
In a manger for his bed.
Mary was that mother mild,
Jesus Christ her little child.”
Happy Christmas.
Sunday, 17th December: 3rd Sunday in Advent: Gaudete - Spreaders of Light
There is a man lurking in the shadows, silently watching and waiting, as the car is being loaded. The family is pulling out of the driveway going on their holiday. When the car has gone, the man comes out of shadows, and goes to the front door. He rings the door-bell and, of course, there is no answer. He is a seasoned burglar, and he quickly picks the lock, and opens the front door. As a precaution, he calls out in the darkness: ‘Is anyone home?’ and he is stunned when he hears a voice reply: “I see you. And Jesus sees you.” Terrified, the burglar calls out: “Who’s there?” Again, the answer comes: “I see you, and Jesus sees you”. The burglar switches on his flash-light – and he sees a caged parrot in the corner. Laughing to himself, he switches on the wall-switch. Then, he sees it - a huge black Doberman Pinscher dog, lying under the cage. Then the parrot says: “Get him, Jesus, get him.”
It’s good to laugh, and to laugh out loud, because this Sunday is called “Rejoice Sunday’, or Gaudete Sunday. And even though there is a lot of darkness about with terrorism, and Kim in North Korea; in our own very violent society; in our traditional struggles with alcohol, and the growing use of drugs; and a whole litany of troubles in our lives, we are, never-the-less, invited on this third Sunday of Advent, to laugh a little, and rejoice, because Christmas, Jesus’s coming, is near. We lit the rose-colored candle this morning. It tells us that the waiting of Advent is giving way to the promise of Christmas.
Perhaps your personal mood doesn’t match the joy that the liturgy proclaims today. Maybe the last few months, or the previous year has been a difficult one for you. I also know there are some people who dislike Christmas, and wish it were over. My mother was one of those. Some admit to feeling very alone at this time. The poet Paul Durcan has called ‘Christmas Day’, “The Feast of St. Loneliness.” It’s a great pity if that happens to be the case, because the messages in today’s readings tell us that Christ is our light; that of all Christmas lights, he’s the one that really matters. They tell us that there’s still a fierce amount of goodness, a fierce amount of light, shining in the darkness of our world. And even though there is the dark and the murderous in our world, there is also the marvelous.
In our Gospel, we just heard about John. He humbly admits he is not the Messiah. But John had a great spirit in him. And, as you know, he ended up in prison, because he confronted Herod about his marriage, and, in the end, he was beheaded. But nothing seemed to be able to break John’s spirit.
It’s wonderful that there are so many who remain marvelously spirited people, even in the face of violence or degradation. I think of Elie Wiesel. In his book called “Night”, he portrays a world of cruelty in Auschwitz. He writes mostly about his Polish friend, Juliek; poor gentle Juliek, who only loved to play the violin. Wiesel recalls how both of them were thrown into a darkened shed full of dead and dying men. Poor Juliek was very ill. That night, Wiesel woke up to the sound of a violin, in that dreadful hell. He found Juliek playing beautiful music from Beethoven’s concerto. He was really saying ‘Farewell’ on his violin; ‘Farewell’ to an audience of dying men. Elie Wiesel was overcome with sleep. He woke in the daylight, to find the dead body of Juliek, slumped over - and near him was his broken violin. Even to the end, Juliek brought light into a dark shed.
You know, in every violent society, there are remarkable stories of soul-courage, of people who bring light, even in the face of intimidation and death. I think of the Protestant man, gripping the hand of a Catholic man who feared that he was going to be shot by Protestant paramilitaries, after they had been lined up against a minibus in January 1976. That little but profound gesture is the light of the soul in the face of death. It is a reminder, as Seamus Heaney remarked in his Nobel lecture in 1995, that we must make space for the marvelous and the light, as well as the murderous and the dark, in our world. We may never be faced with such a life and death dilemma. But in this time of Advent, we are called to remove all barriers to God’s light, and to God’s spirit within us. And yes, we do have that great soul; we do have that great spirit in us; that spirit that Juliek had, that John the Baptist had, that Jesus had. We may be broken – we may have failed – we may be sinful – yes. But Jesus has time for failure, he has time for the wounded heart, and the bruised soul; – and he will heal us, and lift our spirits. This Advent, we too can be disciples of the light and of the marvelous, by being sources of laughter, of comfort, of encouragement and compassion to the people we meet, especially to those who are broken.
So, this morning, let us rejoice, because Christ our light is near – and he lifts our spirits with his coming. He tells us to rejoice, and that we too can help to make the darkness round us make way for the marvelous light.
I finish with the old, anonymous poem, “God’s Light”:
“May you see God’s light on the road ahead
When the road you walk is dark
May you always hear
Even in your hour of sorrow.
The gentle singing of the lark
In hard times
May the darkness never turn your heart to stone
May you always remember, in the darkest day
You do not walk alone.”
Amen.
There is a man lurking in the shadows, silently watching and waiting, as the car is being loaded. The family is pulling out of the driveway going on their holiday. When the car has gone, the man comes out of shadows, and goes to the front door. He rings the door-bell and, of course, there is no answer. He is a seasoned burglar, and he quickly picks the lock, and opens the front door. As a precaution, he calls out in the darkness: ‘Is anyone home?’ and he is stunned when he hears a voice reply: “I see you. And Jesus sees you.” Terrified, the burglar calls out: “Who’s there?” Again, the answer comes: “I see you, and Jesus sees you”. The burglar switches on his flash-light – and he sees a caged parrot in the corner. Laughing to himself, he switches on the wall-switch. Then, he sees it - a huge black Doberman Pinscher dog, lying under the cage. Then the parrot says: “Get him, Jesus, get him.”
It’s good to laugh, and to laugh out loud, because this Sunday is called “Rejoice Sunday’, or Gaudete Sunday. And even though there is a lot of darkness about with terrorism, and Kim in North Korea; in our own very violent society; in our traditional struggles with alcohol, and the growing use of drugs; and a whole litany of troubles in our lives, we are, never-the-less, invited on this third Sunday of Advent, to laugh a little, and rejoice, because Christmas, Jesus’s coming, is near. We lit the rose-colored candle this morning. It tells us that the waiting of Advent is giving way to the promise of Christmas.
Perhaps your personal mood doesn’t match the joy that the liturgy proclaims today. Maybe the last few months, or the previous year has been a difficult one for you. I also know there are some people who dislike Christmas, and wish it were over. My mother was one of those. Some admit to feeling very alone at this time. The poet Paul Durcan has called ‘Christmas Day’, “The Feast of St. Loneliness.” It’s a great pity if that happens to be the case, because the messages in today’s readings tell us that Christ is our light; that of all Christmas lights, he’s the one that really matters. They tell us that there’s still a fierce amount of goodness, a fierce amount of light, shining in the darkness of our world. And even though there is the dark and the murderous in our world, there is also the marvelous.
In our Gospel, we just heard about John. He humbly admits he is not the Messiah. But John had a great spirit in him. And, as you know, he ended up in prison, because he confronted Herod about his marriage, and, in the end, he was beheaded. But nothing seemed to be able to break John’s spirit.
It’s wonderful that there are so many who remain marvelously spirited people, even in the face of violence or degradation. I think of Elie Wiesel. In his book called “Night”, he portrays a world of cruelty in Auschwitz. He writes mostly about his Polish friend, Juliek; poor gentle Juliek, who only loved to play the violin. Wiesel recalls how both of them were thrown into a darkened shed full of dead and dying men. Poor Juliek was very ill. That night, Wiesel woke up to the sound of a violin, in that dreadful hell. He found Juliek playing beautiful music from Beethoven’s concerto. He was really saying ‘Farewell’ on his violin; ‘Farewell’ to an audience of dying men. Elie Wiesel was overcome with sleep. He woke in the daylight, to find the dead body of Juliek, slumped over - and near him was his broken violin. Even to the end, Juliek brought light into a dark shed.
You know, in every violent society, there are remarkable stories of soul-courage, of people who bring light, even in the face of intimidation and death. I think of the Protestant man, gripping the hand of a Catholic man who feared that he was going to be shot by Protestant paramilitaries, after they had been lined up against a minibus in January 1976. That little but profound gesture is the light of the soul in the face of death. It is a reminder, as Seamus Heaney remarked in his Nobel lecture in 1995, that we must make space for the marvelous and the light, as well as the murderous and the dark, in our world. We may never be faced with such a life and death dilemma. But in this time of Advent, we are called to remove all barriers to God’s light, and to God’s spirit within us. And yes, we do have that great soul; we do have that great spirit in us; that spirit that Juliek had, that John the Baptist had, that Jesus had. We may be broken – we may have failed – we may be sinful – yes. But Jesus has time for failure, he has time for the wounded heart, and the bruised soul; – and he will heal us, and lift our spirits. This Advent, we too can be disciples of the light and of the marvelous, by being sources of laughter, of comfort, of encouragement and compassion to the people we meet, especially to those who are broken.
So, this morning, let us rejoice, because Christ our light is near – and he lifts our spirits with his coming. He tells us to rejoice, and that we too can help to make the darkness round us make way for the marvelous light.
I finish with the old, anonymous poem, “God’s Light”:
“May you see God’s light on the road ahead
When the road you walk is dark
May you always hear
Even in your hour of sorrow.
The gentle singing of the lark
In hard times
May the darkness never turn your heart to stone
May you always remember, in the darkest day
You do not walk alone.”
Amen.
Ist Advent 3 Dec 17
"Stay alert. Be watchful. Stay awake.” Mark 13: 33 – 37.
There is a story I love, told by Joseph Cassidy, and here it is:
“When I was growing up, the preparations were intense whenever Aunt Lil came to visit. they had to be. You see, every house has its share of junk, which we all hide away - behind wardrobes, or under beds, or behind the door.
Well, if there was any such junk around, Aunt Lil was sure to find it. She was a kind and a generous person, but she had an unerring eye for the crooked picture. She might even find a cobweb, where spiders had never been! For weeks before her arrival, the house was turned upside down. Floors were scrubbed, sheets washed, brasses polished. With regard to the rug beside her bed in the best room (mostly meant for her benefit and comfort): as children, we used to hope that, maybe, just maybe, with all that polish, there might be a chance she’d slip on that mat, go sliding across the linoleum, and break, if not a leg, at least her resolution.”
At first sight, there seems to be no connection between Advent and Aunt Lil. In fact, there is. The link idea is the idea of preparation. The word Advent means ‘coming’. We prepare for two things: Christ’s coming at Christmas, and his second coming at the end of time.
In these early days of Advent, we are awake, and watching and waiting, and we try to clear out all the inner junk , all the rubbish, not simply by hiding it away, but by clearing it out – so that Jesus’s arrival into our hearts will not be blocked. We try to prepare ourselves thoroughly but sincerely, to give the warmest of welcomes to Jesus at Christmas.
In these times, we have to admit that Jesus seems to be coming into a darker world this Christmas than before. I was talking to a man the other day, and he was despairing at the amount of darkness around us: – the suicide bombings, the terrorism, the constant shootings in America, the ongoing war in Syria, the cheap taking of life in Dublin, the rising tide of young male suicides, the amount of drugs, the robbing and attacks on old people, the ongoing greed, the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Myanmar, the 57 billion-dollar pornography industry. And, he added, if that is not enough, we have the fear of global warming. He said he would actually welcome the second coming of Jesus, so to end it all He really had it bad, didn’t he?
I tried to suggest to him that maybe we have misunderstood? Maybe, despite all the fearful troubles of the world, when Jesus is referring to his second coming, he is not referring to his sudden coming in a few weeks , or next year, – but to his coming right now, his presence here – today – quietly seeding love, and slowly pushing back the darkness. Maybe it is that we should be watching out for.
There are some people who give us a hint of Jesus’s daily presence, people who give us encouragement and hope. Let me tell you about Ronan. Ronan recalls that when he was growing up in Dublin, his mother, who was a nurse, had a real thing about cleanliness. From an early age, Ronan was taught that when he went through a ‘push’ door, he was to shove it open with his closed fist. If the door had a handle, he was to pull it open with his little finger. if he did what his mother instructed, he would not get germs on his hands. Ronan never forgot his mother’s teaching. “At the age of 19,” he said, “i probably had the strongest little-finger in Ireland.”
Well, one day, Ronan was helping to serve hot meals in the Star of the Sea men’s hostel, on the quays in Dublin. The meal was Irish stew, and two slices of buttered bread. A man was standing in the line who looked even more scruffy and broken than the others. Ronan could smell the stench coming from him. “Like the pull of a magnet”, Ronan recalls, “my gaze went to the dirt and dried blood on his hands.” Then, before Ronan realised what was happening, the man clasped Ronan’s hands in his own. “Ah, thanks, son”, he said, “you’re the heart of the roll. Ah, God bless you, son.” Ronan froze for a second - but then he managed to smile at the man, who shuffled over to one of the tables with his meal.
It was a moment of revelation for Ronan. “in a moment” he said, “the light of awareness changed my vision. No longer was Jesus only the handsome man I had pictured in my mind, and seen in paintings. Now, he had a scarred, stubbly face, with fingers stained yellow. He was dirty and smelly, and wore a muddy track-suit bottom. I had just served Jesus with Irish stew and bread.” This is the true Advent man, who was alert and watching. He recognised the Lord, here and now, in the midst of the world’s poverty and uncleanliness.
I recall picking up someone at Shannon airport last summer. There was a mother and child waiting there. The child was eating an ice-cream cone, and her face was covered with it. The next minute, a well-dressed man came out of the arrivals door, and was waving at the mother and child. He was sharp, and neat, in a nice suit, shirt and tie, and carrying a brief-case. I thought: “no way is he going near that messy child. He’ll keep his distance, peck his wife on the cheek, and stay the other side of her, away from this child.” Of course, he didn’t do any of that. He ran up and kissed the lady, and then went straight over to the messy child; he held her against his white shirt, and whispered into her ear. All the way across the lounge and out the exit door, he never stopped hugging and kissing the child, and stroking her hair. Surely, I thought, this is a reminder of God embracing the messy sinner. This the Advent story told again, in modern dress, giving us a hint of his presence, in the here and now.
Yes, there are terrible things going on in our world, but people like Ronan and an arms-open father remind us that the hidden Lord is among us: unsung, unannounced, unreported by the media, but here. We need to prepare our hearts, not for the coming of Aunt Lil, but for him. look. Isn’t he already among us? So, stay awake, be alert, and watch out for him. That is our Advent challenge.
I’ll finish now, with the words of the 11th century Persian Sufi, Khajah Abdullah Ansari:
“My God, I left the whole world behind to search for you,
but you are the whole world, and I still couldn’t see you,
help me to stay awake, and see you, here.”
Amen.
"Stay alert. Be watchful. Stay awake.” Mark 13: 33 – 37.
There is a story I love, told by Joseph Cassidy, and here it is:
“When I was growing up, the preparations were intense whenever Aunt Lil came to visit. they had to be. You see, every house has its share of junk, which we all hide away - behind wardrobes, or under beds, or behind the door.
Well, if there was any such junk around, Aunt Lil was sure to find it. She was a kind and a generous person, but she had an unerring eye for the crooked picture. She might even find a cobweb, where spiders had never been! For weeks before her arrival, the house was turned upside down. Floors were scrubbed, sheets washed, brasses polished. With regard to the rug beside her bed in the best room (mostly meant for her benefit and comfort): as children, we used to hope that, maybe, just maybe, with all that polish, there might be a chance she’d slip on that mat, go sliding across the linoleum, and break, if not a leg, at least her resolution.”
At first sight, there seems to be no connection between Advent and Aunt Lil. In fact, there is. The link idea is the idea of preparation. The word Advent means ‘coming’. We prepare for two things: Christ’s coming at Christmas, and his second coming at the end of time.
In these early days of Advent, we are awake, and watching and waiting, and we try to clear out all the inner junk , all the rubbish, not simply by hiding it away, but by clearing it out – so that Jesus’s arrival into our hearts will not be blocked. We try to prepare ourselves thoroughly but sincerely, to give the warmest of welcomes to Jesus at Christmas.
In these times, we have to admit that Jesus seems to be coming into a darker world this Christmas than before. I was talking to a man the other day, and he was despairing at the amount of darkness around us: – the suicide bombings, the terrorism, the constant shootings in America, the ongoing war in Syria, the cheap taking of life in Dublin, the rising tide of young male suicides, the amount of drugs, the robbing and attacks on old people, the ongoing greed, the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Myanmar, the 57 billion-dollar pornography industry. And, he added, if that is not enough, we have the fear of global warming. He said he would actually welcome the second coming of Jesus, so to end it all He really had it bad, didn’t he?
I tried to suggest to him that maybe we have misunderstood? Maybe, despite all the fearful troubles of the world, when Jesus is referring to his second coming, he is not referring to his sudden coming in a few weeks , or next year, – but to his coming right now, his presence here – today – quietly seeding love, and slowly pushing back the darkness. Maybe it is that we should be watching out for.
There are some people who give us a hint of Jesus’s daily presence, people who give us encouragement and hope. Let me tell you about Ronan. Ronan recalls that when he was growing up in Dublin, his mother, who was a nurse, had a real thing about cleanliness. From an early age, Ronan was taught that when he went through a ‘push’ door, he was to shove it open with his closed fist. If the door had a handle, he was to pull it open with his little finger. if he did what his mother instructed, he would not get germs on his hands. Ronan never forgot his mother’s teaching. “At the age of 19,” he said, “i probably had the strongest little-finger in Ireland.”
Well, one day, Ronan was helping to serve hot meals in the Star of the Sea men’s hostel, on the quays in Dublin. The meal was Irish stew, and two slices of buttered bread. A man was standing in the line who looked even more scruffy and broken than the others. Ronan could smell the stench coming from him. “Like the pull of a magnet”, Ronan recalls, “my gaze went to the dirt and dried blood on his hands.” Then, before Ronan realised what was happening, the man clasped Ronan’s hands in his own. “Ah, thanks, son”, he said, “you’re the heart of the roll. Ah, God bless you, son.” Ronan froze for a second - but then he managed to smile at the man, who shuffled over to one of the tables with his meal.
It was a moment of revelation for Ronan. “in a moment” he said, “the light of awareness changed my vision. No longer was Jesus only the handsome man I had pictured in my mind, and seen in paintings. Now, he had a scarred, stubbly face, with fingers stained yellow. He was dirty and smelly, and wore a muddy track-suit bottom. I had just served Jesus with Irish stew and bread.” This is the true Advent man, who was alert and watching. He recognised the Lord, here and now, in the midst of the world’s poverty and uncleanliness.
I recall picking up someone at Shannon airport last summer. There was a mother and child waiting there. The child was eating an ice-cream cone, and her face was covered with it. The next minute, a well-dressed man came out of the arrivals door, and was waving at the mother and child. He was sharp, and neat, in a nice suit, shirt and tie, and carrying a brief-case. I thought: “no way is he going near that messy child. He’ll keep his distance, peck his wife on the cheek, and stay the other side of her, away from this child.” Of course, he didn’t do any of that. He ran up and kissed the lady, and then went straight over to the messy child; he held her against his white shirt, and whispered into her ear. All the way across the lounge and out the exit door, he never stopped hugging and kissing the child, and stroking her hair. Surely, I thought, this is a reminder of God embracing the messy sinner. This the Advent story told again, in modern dress, giving us a hint of his presence, in the here and now.
Yes, there are terrible things going on in our world, but people like Ronan and an arms-open father remind us that the hidden Lord is among us: unsung, unannounced, unreported by the media, but here. We need to prepare our hearts, not for the coming of Aunt Lil, but for him. look. Isn’t he already among us? So, stay awake, be alert, and watch out for him. That is our Advent challenge.
I’ll finish now, with the words of the 11th century Persian Sufi, Khajah Abdullah Ansari:
“My God, I left the whole world behind to search for you,
but you are the whole world, and I still couldn’t see you,
help me to stay awake, and see you, here.”
Amen.
26 Nov 17: Christ the King
“He will take his seat on the throne of glory……” Mt. 25: 31
Today is the Feast of Christ the King. Kings are not a very popular breed today. Back in the 1960s, King Farouk of Egypt said: “Soon, there will be only FIVE Kings left in the world: – the King of spades, the King of clubs, the King of hearts, the King of diamonds, and the King of England.” We Irish are not all that fond of Kings, ever since we let two foreign Kings, William of Orange and King James II, do battle at the Boyne in 1690. It has haunted our history ever since.
Some people are amused by royalty, rather than impressed. Do you remember in that stunning movie, “The Queen”, played marvellously by Helen Mirren, when Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife are instructed by the protocol office, on how to leave the queen? They are to back out of the room, never showing their backs to the queen?It was funny to watch both a distinguished head of government, Tony Blair, and his wife Cheri, no friend of royalty, walking awkwardly backways out of the room, while the queen gazed imperiously at their stumbling departure.
Kings and queens are really not for us, and we only save those titles for our adored celebrities: Good ‘King’ Wenceslaus would brighten our Christmas; old ‘King’ Cole was a merry old soul; Clarke Gable was Hollywood’s ‘King’; – to be followed by Elvis, the ‘King’ of Rock and Roll; then there were the soft melodies of Nat ‘King’ Cole, not to mention the most formidable King of them all – ‘King’ Kong. So, the concept “King” has a lot going for it.
Go back now to the year 1925. It’s several years after the end of the First World War, – a war in which so many young Irish men and women died. Pope Pius XI is sitting in the Vatican, looking around Europe, and he is worried at what he sees. Mussolini is parading around Italy with arrogance. A young man named Hitler in Germany has just been released from jail, and his scary Nazi party is gaining strength. People everywhere seem to be losing faith and perspective. The Pope feels he must come up with some sign, some symbol, to remind people of what life is about, and to whom they truly belong.
What did he choose? He finally hits on a popular, symbolic term, ‘King’. He saw it as a reminder to whom we as subjects should pay our respect; whose commands we should follow, Christ the King, King of our hearts, our souls and our lives. The pope was saying that ‘Christ the King’ is the ultimate person to whom we give our allegiance.
Today is that feast of Christ the King. It has nothing to do with crowns, palaces or robes. This feast gives us a different view of what it means to be ‘King’:
- He did not have people bowing backward from his presence, but he himself bowed, and washed their feet
- He had no army; he only had his disciples
- He wore no crown of gold, but one of thorns
- He set no boundaries, but included tax collectors, foreigners, prostitutes, and thieves into his Kingdom
- He did not force his subjects, he invited them
And this morning he calls us, invites us to be his subjects. Michael Gehrling, in his challenging “A Poem
for Christ the King”, asks:
“Can you hear him? Can you hear the voice of the Shepherd?
Can you hear His call to eternal life? Can you hear Him, scattered flock?
Beyond the noise of chit chat…Beyond the noise of iPods and radios
Beyond the noise of engines and horns
The Shepherd is calling. Can you hear him? Do you recognize his voice?His sheep know his voice
Can you hear his voice?…calling from a distant land…around the world
the voice of a child, malnourished and hungry.
The King who once put on human flesh now hidden…in frail, naked bodies
with starved, bloated stomachs….Can you hear his voice?”
One of his subjects, Ann Lamott, did hear his voice. Ann is a modern writer who has influenced many people. In her book, “Travelling Mercies”, she describes her very unwilling encounter with Christ, the King. She grew up in a household in California – a household that provided no boundaries for her. She did what she liked. Her parents occasionally went to church for show – but both were atheists. She learned a bit of the Bble from the mother of a girlfriend, who read bible stories when Ann was there for a sleep-over. Anyway, Ann became a writer, and she adopted the hippie life-style – which means she used cocaine, became addicted to alcohol and she slept around a lot. Now-and-then she “sort of” attended a small Presbyterian church. I say “kind-of”, because she would go shopping to the flea-market on Sundays, and there she could hear lovely singing coming out of a little church. She would go over, and mostly stand in the doorway at the back, and listen to the choir. But sometimes, in spite of herself, she heard something more than sweet music, something as low and persistent as a heart-beat. But she shook it off, and always left before the sermon.
However, try as she might, she could not shake the feeling that Jesus was following her, stalking her, as it were, “like a little cat”, as she put it. She wrote, “It was as if God wanted me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door, and let it in. But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and it stays forever”. Well, one night, after running home from the service, she opened the door of her house, stood there for a minute and said: “All right. All right. You can come in.” “This”, she wrote, “was the beautiful moment of my conversion.” She had said “Yes” to the King, who gently and relentlessly was following her.
This morning, Christ the King is calling to us too, to surrender, and open the door of our hearts to Christ. In our present culture. This is not easy. It will mean living up to an unpopular way of life: We are to choose honesty and fidelity, instead of lies and deceit; we are to choose forgiveness, rather than revenge; we must protect our children in their ‘online’ lives, and from bullying and abuse. from alcohol & drugs; to stand up for the dignity of women; to confront racism; to take our eyes off riches and possessions, and to have a heart for the poor.
Today, is also an ‘ending’. For this feast of Christ the King, completes our church’s year. Next Sunday is the beginning of Advent and our preparation for Christmas. For fifty-one Sundays we have heard the good news of Christ among us, declaring over and over again, his unconditional love for us. We have heard how far he will go, to both embrace and chase after us, even when we withdraw or hide. So, let us assure him this morning of our love and fidelity, and that we do accept his invitation to serve him, our King, in the spreading of his Father’s Kingdom. And when we approach to receive him in Communion, we can say: “Lord Jesus, servant King, I welcome you into my heart and into my life this day. Bless me and my family with your grace, and your love.”
I’ll finish with a few more lines from Michael Gehrling’s poem for ‘Christ the King’:
“And we fall into crevices of
to-do lists and
consumer debt and
desires for power…
finally we hear the Shepher's call
'Come, you who are blessed by my Father.'
And we are led back to still waters
and back to the Shepherd's house
where we will dwell
forever". With Christ our King.
Amen.
19 Nov 17: the Talents
To some he gave ten talents, to some five, to some, one... Mt 25: 1 -13.
Psychologists tell us that we only use one-tenth of our gifts. Even geniuses, they say, use only two-tenths. The fact is that when we choose one thing in life, we necessarily have to exclude other things. To develop one gift, we may have to let other ones go. For example, I won’t get much credit as a priest, if I concentrate on being a top snooker player, or a scratch golfer. Could Mother Teresa play the concert piano? I don’t think so, but I know what she did do. We cannot develop all of our gifts. I know some people who regret that they didn’t let their talents develop in a different direction to what they did.
While we are all equal in the eyes of God, and while we are all guaranteed equal rights under the constitution and in an election, our votes are all equal. However, when it comes to abilities, we can be very different. Even the children in the one family, with the same parents and same environment, can turn out to be so different. We are simply not all made the same. However, I sometimes think that we are too quick in judging a child’s abilities and talents. In Northern Ireland, for example, they used to have an exam for primary school children, called the Eleven Plus. Children who passed this exam were given grants, and entrance to the best schools, while children who failed that exam were sent to the comprehensive, or tech colleges - or they stopped school altogether at 16. There was no chance given to hidden talent, or to late developers.
Let me tell you the story of Thomas Edison. Thomas was born in Ohio in 1830, as the youngest child of seven. He got scarlet fever as a child, and developed a hearing problem. When he went to school, his teacher reported him as ‘slow’ and ‘addled’ and ‘stupid’. He was asked to leave the school. He was then taught at home by his mother. But when Thomas Edison grew up, this lad, who was branded as ‘stupid’, became one of the greatest inventors of all time. He invented the light bulb, the record-player and the motion-picture camera - and others. It is always dangerous to try to sum-up anyone, especially a child.
And what about little Mary Bird? Little Mary was born with a cleft palate, and what we used to call a ‘harelip’, which left an awful scar on her upper lip. When she went to school, the children would ask her: “What happened to your lip?” And she would make an excuse and say: “When I was small, I fell on a bottle.” She was also very deaf in her right ear. In those days, there was a primitive hearing test given to the children by the teacher, a Mrs. Leonard. The child would come forward and put a hand over one ear, and the teacher would whisper something into the child’s other ear, which the child had to repeat: things like: “the sky is blue”; “I like chocolate”; “it will be lunch-time soon.” Little Mary Bird came forward, and, that day, Mrs Leonard whispered seven words into little Mary’s good ear, words which changed her life. For what Mrs. Leonard whispered was: “I wish you were my little girl”. Those seven words were to change little Mary’s life forever. She was very good at writing, and became one of Americas best story-book writers. Isn’t it amazing how a little encouragement can unearth a child’s confidence and talents?
The important thing in the Gospel story this morning is to remember that each servant is given something. No one is overlooked, or left out. I may not be a 5-talent person. There are very few 5-talent people around. I may not be able to shoot like Ronaldo or James McClean; I may not be able to sing like Whitney Houston, or Nathan Carter; or play the flute like James Galway; or play snooker like Ronnie O’Sullivan, or play rugby like Johnny Sexton, or Connor Murray. But we all have our own talent; and the great challenge is to try to keep developing that talent.
I remember Alex Higgins, after he won the world championship in snooker, being asked: “Alex, how many hours a day did you practice?” And Alex said: “I practiced nine hours every day.” You see, most times, to develop any talent demands fierce effort and commitment. However, it’s also good to remember that the most talented people are often not the happiest people.
Ashleigh Brilliant has a cartoon, with shows two big eyes looking out of the darkness of a stone vault. Underneath, the caption reads: “If you’re careful enough, nothing bad, or good, will ever happen to you.” That, my dear friends, can never be a portrait of us.
We may have been gifted with five talents, or two, or maybe even one. What a shame it would be, if, like the man in the Gospel today who was given one talent, we didn’t try to use it – but we just buried it. And what about the great gifts we have all been freely given: the gift of our life; and of our health; and the gift of love, and the great gift of faith? At this Eucharist this morning, let us risk gifting ourselves back to Jesus, with all we have, and with all our talents.
I’ll finish with a sonnet, "On his Blindness" written by John Milton. John was a great poet, but near the end of his life, he became blind. He tells God, that even when all our talents are gone, we can still serve him by simply ‘waiting’:
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Amen.
To some he gave ten talents, to some five, to some, one... Mt 25: 1 -13.
Psychologists tell us that we only use one-tenth of our gifts. Even geniuses, they say, use only two-tenths. The fact is that when we choose one thing in life, we necessarily have to exclude other things. To develop one gift, we may have to let other ones go. For example, I won’t get much credit as a priest, if I concentrate on being a top snooker player, or a scratch golfer. Could Mother Teresa play the concert piano? I don’t think so, but I know what she did do. We cannot develop all of our gifts. I know some people who regret that they didn’t let their talents develop in a different direction to what they did.
While we are all equal in the eyes of God, and while we are all guaranteed equal rights under the constitution and in an election, our votes are all equal. However, when it comes to abilities, we can be very different. Even the children in the one family, with the same parents and same environment, can turn out to be so different. We are simply not all made the same. However, I sometimes think that we are too quick in judging a child’s abilities and talents. In Northern Ireland, for example, they used to have an exam for primary school children, called the Eleven Plus. Children who passed this exam were given grants, and entrance to the best schools, while children who failed that exam were sent to the comprehensive, or tech colleges - or they stopped school altogether at 16. There was no chance given to hidden talent, or to late developers.
Let me tell you the story of Thomas Edison. Thomas was born in Ohio in 1830, as the youngest child of seven. He got scarlet fever as a child, and developed a hearing problem. When he went to school, his teacher reported him as ‘slow’ and ‘addled’ and ‘stupid’. He was asked to leave the school. He was then taught at home by his mother. But when Thomas Edison grew up, this lad, who was branded as ‘stupid’, became one of the greatest inventors of all time. He invented the light bulb, the record-player and the motion-picture camera - and others. It is always dangerous to try to sum-up anyone, especially a child.
And what about little Mary Bird? Little Mary was born with a cleft palate, and what we used to call a ‘harelip’, which left an awful scar on her upper lip. When she went to school, the children would ask her: “What happened to your lip?” And she would make an excuse and say: “When I was small, I fell on a bottle.” She was also very deaf in her right ear. In those days, there was a primitive hearing test given to the children by the teacher, a Mrs. Leonard. The child would come forward and put a hand over one ear, and the teacher would whisper something into the child’s other ear, which the child had to repeat: things like: “the sky is blue”; “I like chocolate”; “it will be lunch-time soon.” Little Mary Bird came forward, and, that day, Mrs Leonard whispered seven words into little Mary’s good ear, words which changed her life. For what Mrs. Leonard whispered was: “I wish you were my little girl”. Those seven words were to change little Mary’s life forever. She was very good at writing, and became one of Americas best story-book writers. Isn’t it amazing how a little encouragement can unearth a child’s confidence and talents?
The important thing in the Gospel story this morning is to remember that each servant is given something. No one is overlooked, or left out. I may not be a 5-talent person. There are very few 5-talent people around. I may not be able to shoot like Ronaldo or James McClean; I may not be able to sing like Whitney Houston, or Nathan Carter; or play the flute like James Galway; or play snooker like Ronnie O’Sullivan, or play rugby like Johnny Sexton, or Connor Murray. But we all have our own talent; and the great challenge is to try to keep developing that talent.
I remember Alex Higgins, after he won the world championship in snooker, being asked: “Alex, how many hours a day did you practice?” And Alex said: “I practiced nine hours every day.” You see, most times, to develop any talent demands fierce effort and commitment. However, it’s also good to remember that the most talented people are often not the happiest people.
Ashleigh Brilliant has a cartoon, with shows two big eyes looking out of the darkness of a stone vault. Underneath, the caption reads: “If you’re careful enough, nothing bad, or good, will ever happen to you.” That, my dear friends, can never be a portrait of us.
We may have been gifted with five talents, or two, or maybe even one. What a shame it would be, if, like the man in the Gospel today who was given one talent, we didn’t try to use it – but we just buried it. And what about the great gifts we have all been freely given: the gift of our life; and of our health; and the gift of love, and the great gift of faith? At this Eucharist this morning, let us risk gifting ourselves back to Jesus, with all we have, and with all our talents.
I’ll finish with a sonnet, "On his Blindness" written by John Milton. John was a great poet, but near the end of his life, he became blind. He tells God, that even when all our talents are gone, we can still serve him by simply ‘waiting’:
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Amen.
12 Nov 17: the Bridesmaids
In 1953, Samuel Beckett wrote his famous two-act play called“Waiting for Godot.” The play shows its two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting, in vain, for someone called Godot, who never arrives. John O’Donoghue tells the humorous story of an old Co. Clare man who inadvertently attends the two-hour performance of ‘Godot’ in Ennis. afterwards he said: “God help those two lads. They waited two hours up on that stage for the main actor, who didn’t bother to show up. Disgraceful, and the surprising thing for me” he said, “was, that after two hours, they gave up, and the audience clapped”.
The first Christians were in very much the same boat as the two lads – for they were waiting. They fully expected that Jesus, after his resurrection, would return again, and soon. St. Paul also totally expected Jesus’s return in Paul’s own lifetime, as did Mark and Matthew; and the rest of the first Christian authors. However, as days, weeks, months, and years went by, and Jesus didn’t show, they were eventually doomed to disappointment. Some even began to wonder if Jesus were coming back at all and, if so, when? And if when, then how were they to conduct themselves in the meantime?
Matthew’s Gospel this morning, about the 10 bridesmaids, is his answer to this dilemma, for it is aimed precisely at those who are losing heart, those who are losing faith, and giving up. Matthew basically is warning his followers always to be ready, no matter what the timescale. The Lord, like the bridegroom, will indeed arrive – he will come. So, “don’t be foolish”, he says; “be prepared.” When you look at it, Christians have been preparing for over 2,000 years now and we still recite the creed every Sunday, which proclaims: “He will come again, to judge the living and the dead.”
You must know that there are people who say that they know exactly when Jesus is going to come back. You may remember, back in 1960, how some people had predicted three dark days, and then Jesus would come, and bring the end of the world. I remember, at that time, that many people bought candles for the three dark days, which never came. Then, in the millennium year of 2,000, it was predicted that all computers would crash, and the world would come to an end – and I remember that some people began to stock up on water and food. Many groups of religious people have also gone up onto the tops of mountains, expecting the Lord to come, with the end of the world, and bring them to paradise.
Nothing happened and yet, people today still listen to these sincere, but misguided prophesiers. For example, the latest warnings and timetables are to be found in the million-selling “Left behind” series, written by Tim LaHave and Jerry B Jenkins. These books sell in their millions, and are always on the “New York Times” best-seller lists, even though they are full of false and misleading readings from scripture. But ,far out as they are, their very popularity shows, that interest in Jesus’s second coming, is still very much alive and, maybe, even desired - and why not? Look around you. There is so much terrorism; so much war; ethnic cleansing; the trafficking of women; so much drug and alcohol abuse; so much pornography; so much child-abuse; so much poverty; and so much corporate greed. Couldn’t we simply yearn for Christ to come again soon – and restore basic decency, and fundamental human dignity?
However, understandable as these yearnings might be, the truth is that, like the community that Matthew is addressing in today’s Gospel, we are still living here in the “meanwhile.” And until that second coming of Jesus occurs, we are right to keep on asking: “How are we Christians supposed to live, especially in these times when the social climate in Ireland, and the media, have totally changed from a position of support of yesteryear, to one of hostility, and ridicule, and cynicism about religion. The scandals in our own church have added immense fuel to their cause. Today, it is far more difficult to believe, and far more difficult to have faith. Materialism and liberalism make it hard to be a believer, much less a public believer. For example, last Ash Wednesday, I was reading that Ted Turner, who is a big celebrity mogul in CNN news, when he saw ashes on the foreheads of some of his workers, shouted at them: “What are you, a bunch of Jesus freaks?” Ted Turner is also on record for branding Christianity as a “religion for losers.”Many young people in the universities in Ireland report a climate of secularism and atheism among the professors, and an open cynicism about all faiths. It is very hard for faith to flourish in an environment like that.
At the moment, I am reading a great spy novel by Tom Clancy. It’s called: “The Hunt for Red October.” Those of you who have read the book will know that Red October is the name of a Soviet super-submarine. The captain, Marco Remius, who has seen the brutality of the Soviets, is defecting from the Soviet Union; and he’s going to steal this super Soviet sub. All through the book, he has the Soviet navy looking for him; he has the Americans, and the English navy after him – and it gets very exciting. But early on, one of the passages in the book describes Marco’s inner thoughts, especially about his wife Natalia, who died because of the bungling of the Soviet medical system. The following little paragraph is there: “Marco Remius watched the coffin of his wife roll into the cremation chamber, to the solemn strain of a classical requiem, wishing he could pray for Natalia’s soul; hoping too that grandmother Hilda, who had had him secretly baptised as an infant, was right, that there was something beyond the steel door, and the mass of flame. Only then, did the full weight of events strike him. The state had robbed him of more than his wife. it had robbed him of a means to soften his grief with prayer. It had robbed him of hope, of ever seeing her again.”
In the times in which we live today, the flame of our faith can be easily robbed from us too; snuffed out by the present culture and by the all-pervading blanket-strength of the media. It can be a struggle to keep that flame alive in our hearts. Like some of those in the Gospel reading today, we may find ourselves crying out: “Our lamps are going out.” The flame of faith can grow weak, and we can be tempted to give up watching and waiting. In these times, we need reassurance. We need help to keep vigil. And that is why we come to Jesus in the Eucharist this morning, and ask him to give us that help; to give us some of that strength of endurance which he had. Jesus is present with us here; and his faithful presence will help us to keep our lamps burning, and continue to fan the flame of our faith.
As followers of Christ, we must try to have a faith that endures. It is the only kind of faith that is worth having. It’s the type of faith that Jesus had. And as we keep looking towards him this morning, we ask him to nurture that kind of faith in us. I want to finish with the words of the last recording, made by Johnny Cash in 2003. It’s called: “Keep your eyes on Jesus” (click here to hear it sung):
“Keep your eyes on Jesus,
When the tidal-wave round you rolls,
Keep your eyes on Jesus,
Calm the storms of life that toss your soul.
Living in a world that’s full of sorrow,
We are tried and tempted every day,
Knowing not the secrets of tomorrow,
In hard times, we watch and pray.
Yes keep your eyes on, Jesus,
When the tidal-wave round you rolls,
Keep your eyes on Jesus,
Calm the storms of life that toss your soul.”
Amen.
In 1953, Samuel Beckett wrote his famous two-act play called“Waiting for Godot.” The play shows its two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting, in vain, for someone called Godot, who never arrives. John O’Donoghue tells the humorous story of an old Co. Clare man who inadvertently attends the two-hour performance of ‘Godot’ in Ennis. afterwards he said: “God help those two lads. They waited two hours up on that stage for the main actor, who didn’t bother to show up. Disgraceful, and the surprising thing for me” he said, “was, that after two hours, they gave up, and the audience clapped”.
The first Christians were in very much the same boat as the two lads – for they were waiting. They fully expected that Jesus, after his resurrection, would return again, and soon. St. Paul also totally expected Jesus’s return in Paul’s own lifetime, as did Mark and Matthew; and the rest of the first Christian authors. However, as days, weeks, months, and years went by, and Jesus didn’t show, they were eventually doomed to disappointment. Some even began to wonder if Jesus were coming back at all and, if so, when? And if when, then how were they to conduct themselves in the meantime?
Matthew’s Gospel this morning, about the 10 bridesmaids, is his answer to this dilemma, for it is aimed precisely at those who are losing heart, those who are losing faith, and giving up. Matthew basically is warning his followers always to be ready, no matter what the timescale. The Lord, like the bridegroom, will indeed arrive – he will come. So, “don’t be foolish”, he says; “be prepared.” When you look at it, Christians have been preparing for over 2,000 years now and we still recite the creed every Sunday, which proclaims: “He will come again, to judge the living and the dead.”
You must know that there are people who say that they know exactly when Jesus is going to come back. You may remember, back in 1960, how some people had predicted three dark days, and then Jesus would come, and bring the end of the world. I remember, at that time, that many people bought candles for the three dark days, which never came. Then, in the millennium year of 2,000, it was predicted that all computers would crash, and the world would come to an end – and I remember that some people began to stock up on water and food. Many groups of religious people have also gone up onto the tops of mountains, expecting the Lord to come, with the end of the world, and bring them to paradise.
Nothing happened and yet, people today still listen to these sincere, but misguided prophesiers. For example, the latest warnings and timetables are to be found in the million-selling “Left behind” series, written by Tim LaHave and Jerry B Jenkins. These books sell in their millions, and are always on the “New York Times” best-seller lists, even though they are full of false and misleading readings from scripture. But ,far out as they are, their very popularity shows, that interest in Jesus’s second coming, is still very much alive and, maybe, even desired - and why not? Look around you. There is so much terrorism; so much war; ethnic cleansing; the trafficking of women; so much drug and alcohol abuse; so much pornography; so much child-abuse; so much poverty; and so much corporate greed. Couldn’t we simply yearn for Christ to come again soon – and restore basic decency, and fundamental human dignity?
However, understandable as these yearnings might be, the truth is that, like the community that Matthew is addressing in today’s Gospel, we are still living here in the “meanwhile.” And until that second coming of Jesus occurs, we are right to keep on asking: “How are we Christians supposed to live, especially in these times when the social climate in Ireland, and the media, have totally changed from a position of support of yesteryear, to one of hostility, and ridicule, and cynicism about religion. The scandals in our own church have added immense fuel to their cause. Today, it is far more difficult to believe, and far more difficult to have faith. Materialism and liberalism make it hard to be a believer, much less a public believer. For example, last Ash Wednesday, I was reading that Ted Turner, who is a big celebrity mogul in CNN news, when he saw ashes on the foreheads of some of his workers, shouted at them: “What are you, a bunch of Jesus freaks?” Ted Turner is also on record for branding Christianity as a “religion for losers.”Many young people in the universities in Ireland report a climate of secularism and atheism among the professors, and an open cynicism about all faiths. It is very hard for faith to flourish in an environment like that.
At the moment, I am reading a great spy novel by Tom Clancy. It’s called: “The Hunt for Red October.” Those of you who have read the book will know that Red October is the name of a Soviet super-submarine. The captain, Marco Remius, who has seen the brutality of the Soviets, is defecting from the Soviet Union; and he’s going to steal this super Soviet sub. All through the book, he has the Soviet navy looking for him; he has the Americans, and the English navy after him – and it gets very exciting. But early on, one of the passages in the book describes Marco’s inner thoughts, especially about his wife Natalia, who died because of the bungling of the Soviet medical system. The following little paragraph is there: “Marco Remius watched the coffin of his wife roll into the cremation chamber, to the solemn strain of a classical requiem, wishing he could pray for Natalia’s soul; hoping too that grandmother Hilda, who had had him secretly baptised as an infant, was right, that there was something beyond the steel door, and the mass of flame. Only then, did the full weight of events strike him. The state had robbed him of more than his wife. it had robbed him of a means to soften his grief with prayer. It had robbed him of hope, of ever seeing her again.”
In the times in which we live today, the flame of our faith can be easily robbed from us too; snuffed out by the present culture and by the all-pervading blanket-strength of the media. It can be a struggle to keep that flame alive in our hearts. Like some of those in the Gospel reading today, we may find ourselves crying out: “Our lamps are going out.” The flame of faith can grow weak, and we can be tempted to give up watching and waiting. In these times, we need reassurance. We need help to keep vigil. And that is why we come to Jesus in the Eucharist this morning, and ask him to give us that help; to give us some of that strength of endurance which he had. Jesus is present with us here; and his faithful presence will help us to keep our lamps burning, and continue to fan the flame of our faith.
As followers of Christ, we must try to have a faith that endures. It is the only kind of faith that is worth having. It’s the type of faith that Jesus had. And as we keep looking towards him this morning, we ask him to nurture that kind of faith in us. I want to finish with the words of the last recording, made by Johnny Cash in 2003. It’s called: “Keep your eyes on Jesus” (click here to hear it sung):
“Keep your eyes on Jesus,
When the tidal-wave round you rolls,
Keep your eyes on Jesus,
Calm the storms of life that toss your soul.
Living in a world that’s full of sorrow,
We are tried and tempted every day,
Knowing not the secrets of tomorrow,
In hard times, we watch and pray.
Yes keep your eyes on, Jesus,
When the tidal-wave round you rolls,
Keep your eyes on Jesus,
Calm the storms of life that toss your soul.”
Amen.
5th Nov 2017: Authenticity and Hypocrisy
In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus is highlighting the pretence of the Pharisees. They can put on a show. They can dress up the outside, giving the impression that the inside is fine too. They were only pretending to be good. In contrast, Jesus asks us to be authentic people, drawing on the goodness within us.
I have to tell you that almost all the people I have ever met have been amazingly good, both inside and outside. I remember, especially, the first sick calls I ever made as a priest. One was to a mother of eight children. She was dying of cancer at the age of sixty. Like many a person before and since, it was a fate she didn’t deserve. Some of her children, not knowing about her illness, had just come home to take her on a well-earned holiday to London. She would never see London. The second call was to a young girl of fifteen. A specialist had diagnosed a very serious heart condition. She’d be dead in a matter of weeks. That was the diagnosis. When I made my call, although the girl herself was cheerful and optimistic, the house was being quietly readied for her funeral. They both died, the woman whose life was behind her, and the girl whose life had only begun.
I was struck at the time by the absolute, genuine goodness of those people. And I do remember what the Lord meant to those two sick people, and to their heartbroken families. Although they weren’t healed or cured, somehow their inner goodness - which gave the strength and power they needed at that time - was there to support them. But, you know, when we are totally human, when we are genuine in our love, then the human spirit can be indomitable. When we are like that, we imbibe some of that spiritual power that comes from God. We all have great power within us. We are all far stronger than we think!
I think of the true story of Itzhak Perlman, the celebrated Israeli-American violinist and conductor. Itzhak Perlman was struck by polio as a child. He has braces on his legs, and walks with the aid of two crutches. He accesses the stage painfully, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin; nods to the conductor and orchestra, and begins to play the most beautiful music. On November 18, 1995 he came came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. But, just as he was playing the first few bars in that concert in New York, something went wrong. One of the strings on his violin suddenly broke. You could hear it snap. It went off like a gun-shot across the theatre. The orchestra stopped. People thought he would have to get up, put on his leg clasps again, and limp off-stage on his crutches for a new string, or a new violin – or wait until somebody brought him one.
But he didn’t. Instead, Perlman waited a moment, closed his eyes, and then signalled to the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began. And Perlman played with a passion, and a power, and a purity, such as they had never heard before. Of course, everyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work on three strings. That night, Itzhak Perlman refused to know it. You could see him modulating, changing, recomposing the piece in his head as it went along. When he finished, there was an awestruck silence in the theatre. Then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause. Everyone was on their feet, cheering and clapping – doing everything they could to show how much they appreciated what he had done. Perlman smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet the people. Then he said, in a quiet, reverent tone: “You know, sometimes it is your task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”
What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps, there is our message, when we are talking about authentic people, with the power of God’s spirit within us. Our task, in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live, is to make music - at first with all that we have. And then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left. We may be sick with cancer; we may be elderly, poor, depressed, betrayed, wronged, abused, impaired, grieving or addicted. In short, in our life, we may be stuck with three strings, or maybe even two! But the challenge is to do good with what we have left. Maybe we have squandered our gifts – maybe we have become closed in on ourselves? But this morning, the call comes to us to be real, authentic, loving people. And we must resolve to be open to God’s power, and the power that we already have within us. It’s as simple as that.
Closer to home, I think of a priest-friend of mine who has just celebrated twenty-four years of sobriety. He had been an alcoholic, and now has helped many other addicts, God bless him! I’m thinking of the blind nun in Derry, who has turned out to be a wonderful spiritual director. I think of the artist Renoir, painting masterpieces with painful, arthritic hands, and saying to his apprentices: “The pain only lasts for now; but the beauty is for ever!” I think of those parents, Liz and Paddy from Naas, who lost a daughter through suicide, and who started a ‘Compassionate Friends Group’ for others who have experienced that keen loss.
The point is, we have the power within us all to be authentic, to be human, and have the power of God’s love within us. We have our weaknesses, sure, but, this morning, we are still being challenged to live, and to demonstrate the power of God’s love within us. Resolve this morning, no matter what your circumstances, to utilise that power, and the authentic music of God’s spirit within you. And when you come to receive the body of Jesus in communion, ask him:
“Lord, help me to use everything within me for good! Help me to get beyond self-pity, or being closed in on
myself. My time is short enough, help me to be authentic, and to love as much as I can, with what is left to me”.
I would like to finish with the blessing of St Brigid:
May the resolve of Brigid be like a strong oak tree of courage within you.
May you carry graciousness in the earthen vessel of yourself,
And may the music of love dance in your veins this day,
That you may be a beacon of light and joy for those around you.
And may God bless you, and keep you.
Amen.
In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus is highlighting the pretence of the Pharisees. They can put on a show. They can dress up the outside, giving the impression that the inside is fine too. They were only pretending to be good. In contrast, Jesus asks us to be authentic people, drawing on the goodness within us.
I have to tell you that almost all the people I have ever met have been amazingly good, both inside and outside. I remember, especially, the first sick calls I ever made as a priest. One was to a mother of eight children. She was dying of cancer at the age of sixty. Like many a person before and since, it was a fate she didn’t deserve. Some of her children, not knowing about her illness, had just come home to take her on a well-earned holiday to London. She would never see London. The second call was to a young girl of fifteen. A specialist had diagnosed a very serious heart condition. She’d be dead in a matter of weeks. That was the diagnosis. When I made my call, although the girl herself was cheerful and optimistic, the house was being quietly readied for her funeral. They both died, the woman whose life was behind her, and the girl whose life had only begun.
I was struck at the time by the absolute, genuine goodness of those people. And I do remember what the Lord meant to those two sick people, and to their heartbroken families. Although they weren’t healed or cured, somehow their inner goodness - which gave the strength and power they needed at that time - was there to support them. But, you know, when we are totally human, when we are genuine in our love, then the human spirit can be indomitable. When we are like that, we imbibe some of that spiritual power that comes from God. We all have great power within us. We are all far stronger than we think!
I think of the true story of Itzhak Perlman, the celebrated Israeli-American violinist and conductor. Itzhak Perlman was struck by polio as a child. He has braces on his legs, and walks with the aid of two crutches. He accesses the stage painfully, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin; nods to the conductor and orchestra, and begins to play the most beautiful music. On November 18, 1995 he came came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. But, just as he was playing the first few bars in that concert in New York, something went wrong. One of the strings on his violin suddenly broke. You could hear it snap. It went off like a gun-shot across the theatre. The orchestra stopped. People thought he would have to get up, put on his leg clasps again, and limp off-stage on his crutches for a new string, or a new violin – or wait until somebody brought him one.
But he didn’t. Instead, Perlman waited a moment, closed his eyes, and then signalled to the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began. And Perlman played with a passion, and a power, and a purity, such as they had never heard before. Of course, everyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work on three strings. That night, Itzhak Perlman refused to know it. You could see him modulating, changing, recomposing the piece in his head as it went along. When he finished, there was an awestruck silence in the theatre. Then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause. Everyone was on their feet, cheering and clapping – doing everything they could to show how much they appreciated what he had done. Perlman smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet the people. Then he said, in a quiet, reverent tone: “You know, sometimes it is your task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”
What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps, there is our message, when we are talking about authentic people, with the power of God’s spirit within us. Our task, in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live, is to make music - at first with all that we have. And then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left. We may be sick with cancer; we may be elderly, poor, depressed, betrayed, wronged, abused, impaired, grieving or addicted. In short, in our life, we may be stuck with three strings, or maybe even two! But the challenge is to do good with what we have left. Maybe we have squandered our gifts – maybe we have become closed in on ourselves? But this morning, the call comes to us to be real, authentic, loving people. And we must resolve to be open to God’s power, and the power that we already have within us. It’s as simple as that.
Closer to home, I think of a priest-friend of mine who has just celebrated twenty-four years of sobriety. He had been an alcoholic, and now has helped many other addicts, God bless him! I’m thinking of the blind nun in Derry, who has turned out to be a wonderful spiritual director. I think of the artist Renoir, painting masterpieces with painful, arthritic hands, and saying to his apprentices: “The pain only lasts for now; but the beauty is for ever!” I think of those parents, Liz and Paddy from Naas, who lost a daughter through suicide, and who started a ‘Compassionate Friends Group’ for others who have experienced that keen loss.
The point is, we have the power within us all to be authentic, to be human, and have the power of God’s love within us. We have our weaknesses, sure, but, this morning, we are still being challenged to live, and to demonstrate the power of God’s love within us. Resolve this morning, no matter what your circumstances, to utilise that power, and the authentic music of God’s spirit within you. And when you come to receive the body of Jesus in communion, ask him:
“Lord, help me to use everything within me for good! Help me to get beyond self-pity, or being closed in on
myself. My time is short enough, help me to be authentic, and to love as much as I can, with what is left to me”.
I would like to finish with the blessing of St Brigid:
May the resolve of Brigid be like a strong oak tree of courage within you.
May you carry graciousness in the earthen vessel of yourself,
And may the music of love dance in your veins this day,
That you may be a beacon of light and joy for those around you.
And may God bless you, and keep you.
Amen.
22nd October 17: Mission Sunday
Dear friends, we have to admit that we live in a secular age, where religion is on the decline. In an article in Saturday’s Irish Independent, (13th Oct 2017), Michael Kelly states that, from the census of 2016, there are 3.73 million Catholics in Ireland. “A few decades ago”, he says, “almost nine out of ten Irish people attended Mass every week. Now, about a third of Irish people (33%), say they are weekly Mass-goers.” He comments that this is still a staggering figure, when you consider that in the Pope’s own diocese in Rome, weekly Mass attendance is only about 12%.
Sections of the media would have us believe that religion is soon to die out, and that there is only a hand-full of old, conservative, dyed-in- the-wool Catholics left, who are isolated and easily silenced. This is far from the truth. Many parishes, including our own parish here in Milford, are alive and active and vibrant. Maybe we do need to regain our voice and our confidence in ourselves and, as my mother used to say, “don’t be mealy-mouthed. Stand up for yourself.”
And on this Mission Sunday, we re-state our faith; and our belief in Jesus; and that his message, and his call to evangelisation, remain very strongly alive in the world. So, on this Mission Sunday, let me tell you the vibrant stories of faith of the two Dorothys.
You probably never heard of 74 year-old Dorothy Stang. Dorothy Stang was a little American Catholic nun, who found herself in one of the most remote places in the world. She was working in the jungle in northern Brazil, 30 miles from the nearest village. She spent more than 30 years there with the landless peasants, who eked out a living by subsistence farming in the rain-forest. These landless peasants had never had a voice to speak for them. They are vulnerable to exploitation from industrial barons. And illegal loggers and ranchers, with only greed and profit in their minds, are cutting huge swaths out of the rainforest. This is not only a long-term harm to the ecology of the entire planet, but also a destruction of the way of life for these rain-forest people, the poorest of the poor, who are being driven off their land by threats, intimidation and violence.
Dorothy refused to be silent at such injustice. She continued to teach the local peasants how to farm the land while, at the same time, mounting a campaign against illegal land-grabbing. She lobbied the Brazilian government – and even named those who were exploiting the people and the land. She knew her life was in danger, and so it was. One evening, as she walked to a meeting, along with two peasants from a nearby village, two gun-men emerged from the bushes. They asked if she had any weapons. She said that her only weapon was the Bible, which she opened and began to read: “Blessed are the peacemakers, and the poor in spirit.” A second later, one of the gunmen opened fire, shooting her once in the stomach. As Dorothy fell to the forest floor, the gunman fired four more shots into her head.
We are shocked and grieved by such brutality but, sadly, it has become so commonplace: the hundreds of murdered Mexicans routinely found in shallow graves; the murder of women and children that goes on in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and in Pakistan, and Syria; the drug-related killings that go on in Bolivia; and in Dublin; and in Limerick. Will it ever end? Will the ‘greed’ and ‘profit-only creed’ that has ruined our own country ever cease?
More to the point, will we raise up the ‘Dorothy Stangs’, people committed to the Gospel, bearing witness to the truth, who stand up, though they know the old saying that: “those who speak for God, who shine a light on corruption, must get used to the sight of their own blood”.
My second Dorothy is Dorothy Day. Dorothy Day lived in New York, as a young single woman, who lived a very dissolute bohemian life-style. She was into heavy drinking in the night-clubs, sleeping around, and often stumbling home in the light of dawn. Often, on her way home, she noticed the homeless poor of New York, sleeping on cardboard, and newspapers, in shop doorways. She also used to stop outside the doors of St. Joseph’s church on 6th Avenue; listening to the singing at the early Mass. And, one morning, as she describes in her autobiography The Long Loneliness, she felt a presence near her, the presence of Jesus.
She said it was like a little cat following her all the way back to her front door. You know what cats are like – you let them in once – and they stay for ever. She put her key in the front-door lock, turned around and said: “All right. all right, you can come in.” And this woman changed. She opened a ‘house of hospitality’ in New York, to give shelter, food and clothing to the poor who had seen sleeping out. She opened a series of small farms to give them work, and an experience of community living. Soon there were 30 independent little communities in existence. She became the champion of the poor and the down-and-outs of New York. and she herself found tremendous love and fulfilment there. After her death, John Paul II named her a “Servant of God”, and her cause for canonisation is now going ahead.
Yes, God’s missionary call is powerful and that missionary call goes out today to you and to me – and to the young adults of our land, who have energy, idealism and heroism in their hearts. Can we hear it? It is troubling that, according to the Irish Times, a new study indicates that young adults today are more self-centred, more narcissistic, than the previous generations. Some suggested causes for this are permissive parenting; increased materialism; and fascination with celebrities. Certainly, there’s the almost total immersion in the self-centred world of mobile phones; iPods; Blackberrys; iPads; and X-Boxes, and other solitary electronic games, making our new generation decidedly less interested in giving their time to others, or being part of something bigger than themselves.
I remember a Maynooth university college-student telling me that, unlike her sister Jane, who had gone to India a few years earlier, she herself would definitely not be going to India on the Maynooth mission outreach during the summer. “Why?” I asked. “Because Jane went out to Calcutta, and it totally destroyed her life. When she came back, she wasn’t the same person. She changed, and upset everybody”. Well, maybe that could be the best reason I ever heard for actually going! I mean, when Jane came back, she was horrified by the waste, and the extravagance she saw in Ireland: families with children getting up from the restaurant table, and leaving heaps of food behind, to be thrown out. Why did they order so much? You see, she had seen terrible starvation. She noticed the excesses, the obesity; the indifference; uncaring; holidays, when post-Leaving Cert students go to Spain, and blow €2,000 or more each, on booze and night clubs. For she had seen the most awful, grinding poverty. Yes, when Jane came back from India, she left the “me-alone” generation, and wanted to do something with her life, and become part of something larger. And that’s what today’s Gospel is about.
We can go on mission, not by moving, but by being! We can spread the Gospel by living it here. Could you be passionate again about the common good? About re-cycling? About the time you give to others? The care, the concern, the compassion you show? Of standing up for justice, and what is decent? At least, trying to do more good than harm in your life?
Yes, the Gospel survives and spreads, when it is lived. And all of you present here, this morning, are doing that already and you are doing it well. And let’s be challenged a bit more by goodness, by the theme of today’s Gospel. You see, our witness is important, because we may be the nearest that some people will ever come to the Gospel.
I’ll finish with Edgar Guest's “I’d rather see a sermon”:
“I’d rather see a sermon, than hear one any day,
I’d rather one should walk with me, than merely point the way.
The eye’s a better pupil, more willing than the ear;
Fine counsel is confusing, but example’s always clear;
And the lecture you deliver, may be very wise and true;
But I’d rather get my lessons from observing what you do.
For I might misunderstand you, and the high advice you give;
But there’s no misunderstanding how you act, and how you live.”
Dear friends, we have to admit that we live in a secular age, where religion is on the decline. In an article in Saturday’s Irish Independent, (13th Oct 2017), Michael Kelly states that, from the census of 2016, there are 3.73 million Catholics in Ireland. “A few decades ago”, he says, “almost nine out of ten Irish people attended Mass every week. Now, about a third of Irish people (33%), say they are weekly Mass-goers.” He comments that this is still a staggering figure, when you consider that in the Pope’s own diocese in Rome, weekly Mass attendance is only about 12%.
Sections of the media would have us believe that religion is soon to die out, and that there is only a hand-full of old, conservative, dyed-in- the-wool Catholics left, who are isolated and easily silenced. This is far from the truth. Many parishes, including our own parish here in Milford, are alive and active and vibrant. Maybe we do need to regain our voice and our confidence in ourselves and, as my mother used to say, “don’t be mealy-mouthed. Stand up for yourself.”
And on this Mission Sunday, we re-state our faith; and our belief in Jesus; and that his message, and his call to evangelisation, remain very strongly alive in the world. So, on this Mission Sunday, let me tell you the vibrant stories of faith of the two Dorothys.
You probably never heard of 74 year-old Dorothy Stang. Dorothy Stang was a little American Catholic nun, who found herself in one of the most remote places in the world. She was working in the jungle in northern Brazil, 30 miles from the nearest village. She spent more than 30 years there with the landless peasants, who eked out a living by subsistence farming in the rain-forest. These landless peasants had never had a voice to speak for them. They are vulnerable to exploitation from industrial barons. And illegal loggers and ranchers, with only greed and profit in their minds, are cutting huge swaths out of the rainforest. This is not only a long-term harm to the ecology of the entire planet, but also a destruction of the way of life for these rain-forest people, the poorest of the poor, who are being driven off their land by threats, intimidation and violence.
Dorothy refused to be silent at such injustice. She continued to teach the local peasants how to farm the land while, at the same time, mounting a campaign against illegal land-grabbing. She lobbied the Brazilian government – and even named those who were exploiting the people and the land. She knew her life was in danger, and so it was. One evening, as she walked to a meeting, along with two peasants from a nearby village, two gun-men emerged from the bushes. They asked if she had any weapons. She said that her only weapon was the Bible, which she opened and began to read: “Blessed are the peacemakers, and the poor in spirit.” A second later, one of the gunmen opened fire, shooting her once in the stomach. As Dorothy fell to the forest floor, the gunman fired four more shots into her head.
We are shocked and grieved by such brutality but, sadly, it has become so commonplace: the hundreds of murdered Mexicans routinely found in shallow graves; the murder of women and children that goes on in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and in Pakistan, and Syria; the drug-related killings that go on in Bolivia; and in Dublin; and in Limerick. Will it ever end? Will the ‘greed’ and ‘profit-only creed’ that has ruined our own country ever cease?
More to the point, will we raise up the ‘Dorothy Stangs’, people committed to the Gospel, bearing witness to the truth, who stand up, though they know the old saying that: “those who speak for God, who shine a light on corruption, must get used to the sight of their own blood”.
My second Dorothy is Dorothy Day. Dorothy Day lived in New York, as a young single woman, who lived a very dissolute bohemian life-style. She was into heavy drinking in the night-clubs, sleeping around, and often stumbling home in the light of dawn. Often, on her way home, she noticed the homeless poor of New York, sleeping on cardboard, and newspapers, in shop doorways. She also used to stop outside the doors of St. Joseph’s church on 6th Avenue; listening to the singing at the early Mass. And, one morning, as she describes in her autobiography The Long Loneliness, she felt a presence near her, the presence of Jesus.
She said it was like a little cat following her all the way back to her front door. You know what cats are like – you let them in once – and they stay for ever. She put her key in the front-door lock, turned around and said: “All right. all right, you can come in.” And this woman changed. She opened a ‘house of hospitality’ in New York, to give shelter, food and clothing to the poor who had seen sleeping out. She opened a series of small farms to give them work, and an experience of community living. Soon there were 30 independent little communities in existence. She became the champion of the poor and the down-and-outs of New York. and she herself found tremendous love and fulfilment there. After her death, John Paul II named her a “Servant of God”, and her cause for canonisation is now going ahead.
Yes, God’s missionary call is powerful and that missionary call goes out today to you and to me – and to the young adults of our land, who have energy, idealism and heroism in their hearts. Can we hear it? It is troubling that, according to the Irish Times, a new study indicates that young adults today are more self-centred, more narcissistic, than the previous generations. Some suggested causes for this are permissive parenting; increased materialism; and fascination with celebrities. Certainly, there’s the almost total immersion in the self-centred world of mobile phones; iPods; Blackberrys; iPads; and X-Boxes, and other solitary electronic games, making our new generation decidedly less interested in giving their time to others, or being part of something bigger than themselves.
I remember a Maynooth university college-student telling me that, unlike her sister Jane, who had gone to India a few years earlier, she herself would definitely not be going to India on the Maynooth mission outreach during the summer. “Why?” I asked. “Because Jane went out to Calcutta, and it totally destroyed her life. When she came back, she wasn’t the same person. She changed, and upset everybody”. Well, maybe that could be the best reason I ever heard for actually going! I mean, when Jane came back, she was horrified by the waste, and the extravagance she saw in Ireland: families with children getting up from the restaurant table, and leaving heaps of food behind, to be thrown out. Why did they order so much? You see, she had seen terrible starvation. She noticed the excesses, the obesity; the indifference; uncaring; holidays, when post-Leaving Cert students go to Spain, and blow €2,000 or more each, on booze and night clubs. For she had seen the most awful, grinding poverty. Yes, when Jane came back from India, she left the “me-alone” generation, and wanted to do something with her life, and become part of something larger. And that’s what today’s Gospel is about.
We can go on mission, not by moving, but by being! We can spread the Gospel by living it here. Could you be passionate again about the common good? About re-cycling? About the time you give to others? The care, the concern, the compassion you show? Of standing up for justice, and what is decent? At least, trying to do more good than harm in your life?
Yes, the Gospel survives and spreads, when it is lived. And all of you present here, this morning, are doing that already and you are doing it well. And let’s be challenged a bit more by goodness, by the theme of today’s Gospel. You see, our witness is important, because we may be the nearest that some people will ever come to the Gospel.
I’ll finish with Edgar Guest's “I’d rather see a sermon”:
“I’d rather see a sermon, than hear one any day,
I’d rather one should walk with me, than merely point the way.
The eye’s a better pupil, more willing than the ear;
Fine counsel is confusing, but example’s always clear;
And the lecture you deliver, may be very wise and true;
But I’d rather get my lessons from observing what you do.
For I might misunderstand you, and the high advice you give;
But there’s no misunderstanding how you act, and how you live.”
15 Oct 17 The Wedding Feast
“Invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” Mt 22:9-10.
I was listening to Joe Duffy’s radio call-in programme during the summer. He was talking about weddings – and the cost of them. One caller said she had been able to plan her wedding for under €8,000. She did this by making her own invitation cards; by getting one of her family to take the photos with a digital camera; by having a family member drive her to the church; by having a buffet meal, instead of a formal sit-down one; and by borrowing a wedding dress! Then another woman came on, and she said that her wedding was going to cost over €35,000 with a wedding organiser and all stops being pulled out; for starters, her wedding dress was costing around €4,000!
Weddings can be a stressful time. Have you ever seen the TV show “Bridezilla”, which pokes fun at the demands certain brides place on their families, and on wedding guests? Often, the bride ends up falling out with family and friends in her quest to organise the “perfect” wedding! And what about “Don’t tell the bride” – where every bride looking for the “perfect” wedding comes to have no “say” in it at all.
I wonder how you feel about weddings? Weddings are becoming very popular again – and most people, I think, like going to a wedding. However, some people dread the long wait before the meal begins; and also the long wait for the speeches to end! There’s also a trend today, where some people don’t go to the wedding proper, or to the meal, but turn up later for what they call the “afters”.
But by and large, people go to weddings, because they are occasions of joy and happiness. The gospel today is
using a lot of wedding and marriage images. Both readings speak of the “banquet”, and the “wedding feast” – with emphasis on celebration, and the presence of great love. Yes, the note that’s present in today’s readings is the note of joy and it mentions “succulent food” and “well-strained wines”.
I was recalling an old parish priest years ago, who presided at wedding dinners. Before he would say the grace before meals, he would first look around at the tables – and if the signs were good - of great food ahead, and excellent wine waiting, he would start his prayer by saying: “O bountiful and gracious Father..” But if he looked around, and the food seemed a bit sparse, with jugs of water, or orange, instead of wine, he would start his grace before meals: “O merciful Jesus…”
But definitely, as regards the images in today’s readings, we must say: “O bountiful and gracious Father” - because the joy is jumping out at you. But there is another reason for joy this morning, for we are reminded that we are a part of Christ’s “gathering” here. He is our bridegroom, and that is a reason for joy. We have the privilege of our close relationship with Jesus. It matters to us that he’s here, that he’s risen, that he makes sense of my life. There is no security like the security of true love – and Christ’s love is always there for us. He never deserts us.
There’s one other thing that Matthew is saying to us. Did you notice it at the end of the Gospel? It had to do with the man who had no wedding garment! Contrary to what we might. think, the wedding garment is not about how we are dressed. Rather, it’s about how we are driven - and I don’t mean in the long white stretch-limousine! No, it’s about our motivation, our set of values; the way we live. The wedding garment is not about externals. It’s the symbol of a good life; a life that’s lived justly, and generously and lovingly, in harmony with the world. And we are all invited to wear that wedding garment, in the banquet of life, no matter what way we are.
You may have heard the story of the old German couple who got an invite to a wedding in Ireland. On the bottom of the invite was “R.S.V.P”, which we all know is French for “Répondez s’il vous plait!” (please reply). Well, the old German couple wondered what it meant. And, in the middle of the night, the old German man sat up suddenly and cried: “Ah ha! I know vhat this R.S.V.P. means! It’s: “Remember ze vedding present!”
Yes. we have all been invited; and the Lord expects a response! And it’s not a question of RSVP before a certain date. It’s a question of RSVP for a life-time!
Being a guest at a wedding today is a costly business. There’s the cost of a gift; plus the cost of a new outfit; and maybe staying over; and the extras we might spend on a few drinks! Being a follower of Christ is a costly business too! It requires the gift of oneself – and the wearing of the wedding garment during all of our lives.
Perhaps the best description of the proper wardrobe for a Christian is given by St. Paul! If we wear the clothes that he describes, we will never be thrown out of a banquet, and not even out of the “afters”! For St Paul says: “God loves you, and you should be clothed in sincere compassion, in kindness and humility, gentleness and patience…. over all these clothes, to keep them together, and complete them, put on love” (Col:3: 12-15).
Dear friends, may we wear our wedding garment with joy and with great love. may it “see us out” into the kingdom of heaven!
I would like to finish with the words of: “love changes everything” by Michael Ball:
“Love, love changes everything,
hands and faces, earth and sky,
love, love changes everything,
how you live and how you die;
love can make the summer fly,
or a night seem like a life-time.
yes, love, love changes everything,
now I tremble at your name.
nothing in the world will ever be the same.”
Amen.
“Invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” Mt 22:9-10.
I was listening to Joe Duffy’s radio call-in programme during the summer. He was talking about weddings – and the cost of them. One caller said she had been able to plan her wedding for under €8,000. She did this by making her own invitation cards; by getting one of her family to take the photos with a digital camera; by having a family member drive her to the church; by having a buffet meal, instead of a formal sit-down one; and by borrowing a wedding dress! Then another woman came on, and she said that her wedding was going to cost over €35,000 with a wedding organiser and all stops being pulled out; for starters, her wedding dress was costing around €4,000!
Weddings can be a stressful time. Have you ever seen the TV show “Bridezilla”, which pokes fun at the demands certain brides place on their families, and on wedding guests? Often, the bride ends up falling out with family and friends in her quest to organise the “perfect” wedding! And what about “Don’t tell the bride” – where every bride looking for the “perfect” wedding comes to have no “say” in it at all.
I wonder how you feel about weddings? Weddings are becoming very popular again – and most people, I think, like going to a wedding. However, some people dread the long wait before the meal begins; and also the long wait for the speeches to end! There’s also a trend today, where some people don’t go to the wedding proper, or to the meal, but turn up later for what they call the “afters”.
But by and large, people go to weddings, because they are occasions of joy and happiness. The gospel today is
using a lot of wedding and marriage images. Both readings speak of the “banquet”, and the “wedding feast” – with emphasis on celebration, and the presence of great love. Yes, the note that’s present in today’s readings is the note of joy and it mentions “succulent food” and “well-strained wines”.
I was recalling an old parish priest years ago, who presided at wedding dinners. Before he would say the grace before meals, he would first look around at the tables – and if the signs were good - of great food ahead, and excellent wine waiting, he would start his prayer by saying: “O bountiful and gracious Father..” But if he looked around, and the food seemed a bit sparse, with jugs of water, or orange, instead of wine, he would start his grace before meals: “O merciful Jesus…”
But definitely, as regards the images in today’s readings, we must say: “O bountiful and gracious Father” - because the joy is jumping out at you. But there is another reason for joy this morning, for we are reminded that we are a part of Christ’s “gathering” here. He is our bridegroom, and that is a reason for joy. We have the privilege of our close relationship with Jesus. It matters to us that he’s here, that he’s risen, that he makes sense of my life. There is no security like the security of true love – and Christ’s love is always there for us. He never deserts us.
There’s one other thing that Matthew is saying to us. Did you notice it at the end of the Gospel? It had to do with the man who had no wedding garment! Contrary to what we might. think, the wedding garment is not about how we are dressed. Rather, it’s about how we are driven - and I don’t mean in the long white stretch-limousine! No, it’s about our motivation, our set of values; the way we live. The wedding garment is not about externals. It’s the symbol of a good life; a life that’s lived justly, and generously and lovingly, in harmony with the world. And we are all invited to wear that wedding garment, in the banquet of life, no matter what way we are.
You may have heard the story of the old German couple who got an invite to a wedding in Ireland. On the bottom of the invite was “R.S.V.P”, which we all know is French for “Répondez s’il vous plait!” (please reply). Well, the old German couple wondered what it meant. And, in the middle of the night, the old German man sat up suddenly and cried: “Ah ha! I know vhat this R.S.V.P. means! It’s: “Remember ze vedding present!”
Yes. we have all been invited; and the Lord expects a response! And it’s not a question of RSVP before a certain date. It’s a question of RSVP for a life-time!
Being a guest at a wedding today is a costly business. There’s the cost of a gift; plus the cost of a new outfit; and maybe staying over; and the extras we might spend on a few drinks! Being a follower of Christ is a costly business too! It requires the gift of oneself – and the wearing of the wedding garment during all of our lives.
Perhaps the best description of the proper wardrobe for a Christian is given by St. Paul! If we wear the clothes that he describes, we will never be thrown out of a banquet, and not even out of the “afters”! For St Paul says: “God loves you, and you should be clothed in sincere compassion, in kindness and humility, gentleness and patience…. over all these clothes, to keep them together, and complete them, put on love” (Col:3: 12-15).
Dear friends, may we wear our wedding garment with joy and with great love. may it “see us out” into the kingdom of heaven!
I would like to finish with the words of: “love changes everything” by Michael Ball:
“Love, love changes everything,
hands and faces, earth and sky,
love, love changes everything,
how you live and how you die;
love can make the summer fly,
or a night seem like a life-time.
yes, love, love changes everything,
now I tremble at your name.
nothing in the world will ever be the same.”
Amen.
1st October 17: "He thought better of it"
There’s a character in today’s Gospel story who could easily escape our notice and, if that were to happen, it would suit him down to the ground! He’s your “cross me’ heart”, “as sure as God”, “you can count on me” kind of character. He’s all promise, and no delivery. His word is anything but his bond. He’ll collect you on the dot, he tells you, and the dot will disappear into the day. He’ll start that work on your roof, first thing on Monday, and you wonder - which month? He’ll have that money back to you “in no time” – but “no time” never comes. He’s the type of unreliable and inauthentic type of person that you often meet. He’ll tell you, and promise you, anything - because he doesn’t mean a word of it.
But did you notice the other character in the Gospel story - the one who, at first, decided not to help, but then “thought better of it”, and did? He’s our authentic man, and it’s that message of “thinking better of it” that comes through to us this morning.
When you realise that you have refused to love; and have opted out of helping; and somehow realise that you need to “change your mind” in order to live more truly, then, you are getting close to this second man in the Gospel story.
What we may have done in the past, or what has happened to us in the past, are things we may need to “think better of” now. When we open the door to the past, we have to face the reality that “what is done, is done.” That’s it. What we did, you and I, the hurtful things, the heart-breaking things, the arrogant things, the unjust things – they’re done, and more often than not, they can’t be undone. The regret is there, and it can hang around us like a fog in the valley of the present.
The only way to think "better of it", is to try to forgive yourself; to ask the Lord for forgiveness and then try to let it go. And if something has happened to you in the past that you keep holding on to, so that it’s destroying your present life, maybe it is time, this morning, to think "better of it", stop living in the past,ask for healing, and try to move on.
There’s a young couple in one of Thomas Hardy’s novels, who had a little daughter called Elizabeth, and little Elizabeth died. They missed Elizabeth so much that they agreed, this couple, that if they ever had another child, and if the child turned out to be a little girl, they would name her Elizabeth. They did have another child and, yes, it turned out to be a little girl, and they named her Elizabeth. It didn’t help! They realised that they could have ten daughters, and name every one of them Elizabeth, and they would still miss little Elizabeth.
Some things in life cannot be fixed. Some things have to be taken and accepted, and we have to go on. Well-known author and pastor, Frederick Buechner, writes sadly of his mother, who died a very lonely death as an old woman. Let me read his words about his mother: “Being beautiful was her business, her art, her delight – but when she lost her beauty, she was like a millionaire who runs out of money. She took her name out of the phone book. With her looks gone, she felt she had nothing else to offer the world. So, what she did was to simply check out of the world, the way Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich checked out of it – never venturing out except in disguise. My mother holed herself up in her apartment, then in just one room of her apartment… then, in just one chair in that room, and, finally, in the bed, where one morning, a few summers ago, perhaps in her sleep, she died at last.”
How sad! After she lost her beauty and her youth, Buechner’s mother saw no other possibilities. She retired back, into the past, retreated from the present, and missed out on the future.
Don’t let this happen to you! We are, first and foremost, children of God, and temples of God’s spirit – and nothing less. We are called to an authentic life of love - for ourselves - and for other people. We value our family more than things. For if you identify yourself with success, or with your body, or your good looks – if you identify yourself with riches, and with money, what will happen to you when you lose those things?
The Gospel this morning would counsel us to get our priorities right. We are to love people and use things. If you value things more than people, then this morning’s Gospel is telling you to “think better of it”.
I want to finish with a story from years ago, about a lay-missionary in China who was under house-arrest – and had been under house-arrest for years – he, and his wife and two children. One day, a soldier came in and said: “You can all return to Ireland. But you may take only 100 kilos weight with you.” They had been there for years.100 kilos! What to take? So they got out the weighing scales - and then the arguments started: “Must have this vase, and this rug, and this type-writer - it’s almost brand new. Must have these books – must have this! Must have that! And so, they weighed everything and took it off the scales, weighed it again, and took it off, until finally, right on the dot, they got 100 kilos.
The soldier came the next day and asked: “Ready to go?” They said: “Yes”. He said: “Did you weigh everything?” They said: “Yes”! “Did you weigh the children?” “No, we didn’t!” “Weigh the children”, he said, “they are part of the 100 kilos too!” And in a moment, off went the type-writer, off went the books, off went the vase and the rug - into the rubbish bin! Yes, into the rubbish bin! Those things that clutter our lives, and often divide us – put into the rubbish bin! The most valuable of all are our children and family.
This morning, the time has come to put things into perspective. It’s our “Yes” that Jesus is seeking in today’s Gospel. When you need to leave the past behind, when you need to live now, when you have to choose in favour of your wife or your husband or your partner or your family or others you love, or the environment, the Lord is asking us to say “Yes”! “Yes” to decisions where we need to think ‘better’ of our previous ways of going! And, unlike the first fellow in the Gospel story, we do intend to carry it out!
I’ll finish with this short poem called: “Just say yes” by Zoella.
“Just say “Yes” to life;
fear can hold you no longer;
let go of worry;
and let go of anger;
live with your heart;
and side-step the danger;
just say “yes” to love;
it will grow sweeter and stronger.”
Amen.
There’s a character in today’s Gospel story who could easily escape our notice and, if that were to happen, it would suit him down to the ground! He’s your “cross me’ heart”, “as sure as God”, “you can count on me” kind of character. He’s all promise, and no delivery. His word is anything but his bond. He’ll collect you on the dot, he tells you, and the dot will disappear into the day. He’ll start that work on your roof, first thing on Monday, and you wonder - which month? He’ll have that money back to you “in no time” – but “no time” never comes. He’s the type of unreliable and inauthentic type of person that you often meet. He’ll tell you, and promise you, anything - because he doesn’t mean a word of it.
But did you notice the other character in the Gospel story - the one who, at first, decided not to help, but then “thought better of it”, and did? He’s our authentic man, and it’s that message of “thinking better of it” that comes through to us this morning.
When you realise that you have refused to love; and have opted out of helping; and somehow realise that you need to “change your mind” in order to live more truly, then, you are getting close to this second man in the Gospel story.
What we may have done in the past, or what has happened to us in the past, are things we may need to “think better of” now. When we open the door to the past, we have to face the reality that “what is done, is done.” That’s it. What we did, you and I, the hurtful things, the heart-breaking things, the arrogant things, the unjust things – they’re done, and more often than not, they can’t be undone. The regret is there, and it can hang around us like a fog in the valley of the present.
The only way to think "better of it", is to try to forgive yourself; to ask the Lord for forgiveness and then try to let it go. And if something has happened to you in the past that you keep holding on to, so that it’s destroying your present life, maybe it is time, this morning, to think "better of it", stop living in the past,ask for healing, and try to move on.
There’s a young couple in one of Thomas Hardy’s novels, who had a little daughter called Elizabeth, and little Elizabeth died. They missed Elizabeth so much that they agreed, this couple, that if they ever had another child, and if the child turned out to be a little girl, they would name her Elizabeth. They did have another child and, yes, it turned out to be a little girl, and they named her Elizabeth. It didn’t help! They realised that they could have ten daughters, and name every one of them Elizabeth, and they would still miss little Elizabeth.
Some things in life cannot be fixed. Some things have to be taken and accepted, and we have to go on. Well-known author and pastor, Frederick Buechner, writes sadly of his mother, who died a very lonely death as an old woman. Let me read his words about his mother: “Being beautiful was her business, her art, her delight – but when she lost her beauty, she was like a millionaire who runs out of money. She took her name out of the phone book. With her looks gone, she felt she had nothing else to offer the world. So, what she did was to simply check out of the world, the way Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich checked out of it – never venturing out except in disguise. My mother holed herself up in her apartment, then in just one room of her apartment… then, in just one chair in that room, and, finally, in the bed, where one morning, a few summers ago, perhaps in her sleep, she died at last.”
How sad! After she lost her beauty and her youth, Buechner’s mother saw no other possibilities. She retired back, into the past, retreated from the present, and missed out on the future.
Don’t let this happen to you! We are, first and foremost, children of God, and temples of God’s spirit – and nothing less. We are called to an authentic life of love - for ourselves - and for other people. We value our family more than things. For if you identify yourself with success, or with your body, or your good looks – if you identify yourself with riches, and with money, what will happen to you when you lose those things?
The Gospel this morning would counsel us to get our priorities right. We are to love people and use things. If you value things more than people, then this morning’s Gospel is telling you to “think better of it”.
I want to finish with a story from years ago, about a lay-missionary in China who was under house-arrest – and had been under house-arrest for years – he, and his wife and two children. One day, a soldier came in and said: “You can all return to Ireland. But you may take only 100 kilos weight with you.” They had been there for years.100 kilos! What to take? So they got out the weighing scales - and then the arguments started: “Must have this vase, and this rug, and this type-writer - it’s almost brand new. Must have these books – must have this! Must have that! And so, they weighed everything and took it off the scales, weighed it again, and took it off, until finally, right on the dot, they got 100 kilos.
The soldier came the next day and asked: “Ready to go?” They said: “Yes”. He said: “Did you weigh everything?” They said: “Yes”! “Did you weigh the children?” “No, we didn’t!” “Weigh the children”, he said, “they are part of the 100 kilos too!” And in a moment, off went the type-writer, off went the books, off went the vase and the rug - into the rubbish bin! Yes, into the rubbish bin! Those things that clutter our lives, and often divide us – put into the rubbish bin! The most valuable of all are our children and family.
This morning, the time has come to put things into perspective. It’s our “Yes” that Jesus is seeking in today’s Gospel. When you need to leave the past behind, when you need to live now, when you have to choose in favour of your wife or your husband or your partner or your family or others you love, or the environment, the Lord is asking us to say “Yes”! “Yes” to decisions where we need to think ‘better’ of our previous ways of going! And, unlike the first fellow in the Gospel story, we do intend to carry it out!
I’ll finish with this short poem called: “Just say yes” by Zoella.
“Just say “Yes” to life;
fear can hold you no longer;
let go of worry;
and let go of anger;
live with your heart;
and side-step the danger;
just say “yes” to love;
it will grow sweeter and stronger.”
Amen.
24th September 17: Latecomers
There is a story told about Paddy, who is always late. He makes a date with Mary to pick her up at her house. “I will pick you up at eight, Mary, and be ready!” Mary is ready at 7.30pm, and waits for Paddy. When the time reaches 9.30pm, Mary decides to change out of her dress and shoes, and get into her pyjamas, reconciling herself to a night in front of the telly. The door-bell rings at 10, and Mary goes out to the door. There stands Paddy, who says: “I am two hours late, and Mary, you are still not ready!”
The surprising message of the gospel this morning is that the Lord doesn’t seem to be interested in whether we are late coming to him, or not, That he loves us all of the time, before and after.
Many years ago, David Frost was interviewing the late Cardinal Heenan of Westminster on TV, and he asked the Cardinal, what part of the gospel he found most difficult to accept. The Cardinal thought for a moment, and then said that the part of the gospel he found it most difficult to accept, was that God loved him all the time, just as he is – and the sheer goodness of God in constantly loving sinners, before, and during, and after.
We can see what the Cardinal was getting at. Most of us have no problem in believing that God loves us all the time when we’re good. We find it difficult to believe that God loves us when we are lost in sin. For so much of our experience in life has been that love is conditional: “I’ll love you if... I’ll love you if you’ll do this, or say that, or give me gifts; or if you’ll b faithful; “I’ll love you when you give up the drink, when you are in time for your dinner, or whatever.”
We find it difficult to imagine that anyone could love us just as we are. And some of us, because of the way we were reared, or the sermons we had to listen to, or the attitudes we picked up from those around us - some of us would find it particularly difficult to imagine that God loves us just as we are – and that nothing we could ever do would lessen the love God has for us.
So, we saw God as a judge, waiting to hand down sentence on us. Or we saw him as a teacher, always checking us, and marking our lives, as if they were an examination paper! Or as a God, as Nancy Griffith says in her famous song, God always “watching us from a distance”. But when we read about the God in the gospels; when we look at what Jesus did and said, we find a completely different God. Not a God who says: “I’ll love you if… or when…” but a kind and caring and compassionate God, who says to us: “I’ll love you regardless….”
An American priest, some years ago, was on a walking tour of Ireland. One day he took shelter from the rain, and struck up a conversation with an old man. And for some reason the conversation turned to prayer. The old man told the priest that he often had conversations with God; he found it easy to talk to God, because, he said: “You know, God is very fond of me.”
If I had a magic wand this morning – if I had one wish that I would want to come true -my wish would be that every single one of us here this morning, would experience what that old man had obviously experienced: the fondness of God – the belief,the knowledge that God is very fond of us.
You see, when it comes to love, God doesn’t look at us like an accountant does. He doesn’t look at the obligations we have kept or broken; he doesn’t look at the amount of graces we may have built up, like some form of pension scheme; and he doesn’t seem to care whether we come early, or whether we come late, as in today’s Gospel. He loves us like he loves the others. He just loves us regardless!
I remember some years ago, we had a student who died of an epileptic seizure, in the university apartments in Maynooth. Her name was Aoife Begley. It is shattering to see a young girl like that, lying dead on the bed, and the foam still coming out of her mouth and her nose. Her mother, Mary, was a lovely woman, and a woman close to God. I remember visiting Mary, some months after the funeral. And she was telling me that she didn’t so much say her prayers, as much as she had her chats with God. The death of her daughter, Aoife, was a terrible cross for her, and I remember her saying to me: “I’ve been scolding God for what happened to Aoife.”
The word “scolding”, like “fondness”, are very Irish words that have to do with a great closeness, and that experience of closeness is what the God of today’s gospel calls us into. God is fond of us; God is close to us; God loves us, regardless of who we are, or what we’ve done.
Even if we are late-comers, he still gives us the same as those who have carried the heat and burdens of the day, or of the law. For the gospel is peopled with life’s late-comers, and with all those who find themselves slowed down with some form of disability. There are those who are physically disabled; or spiritually crippled; or emotionally stunted; or economically tethered. They are the prodigal sons and daughters; the black sheep of the family; the outcasts; the overlooked; the ones people feel they can safely ignore or shun; those who have been hurt or undone by life.
When we are like this, Jesus has a clear prejudice in our favour – because he doesn’t work from the arithmetic of the calculator, but from the fulness of his own heart. And that fulness of God’s heart is here for you this morning. Can you take it in to yourself? Can you open yourself up to this “being loved regardless”?? For the message is: that God is very fond of you, and his love is always available to you. It was available to the prodigal son; it was available to the lepers; and the paralytic; and to the sinful woman, and to the late-comers in today’s Gospel!
And it’s available, all the time, and everywhere, for me and for you. Please, please, take it into your heart!
I want to finish with the prayer of the Royalist commander, General Sir Jacob Astley on the eve of the Battle of Edgehill in 1642:
“O Lord, you know how busy I must be this day;
you know the many things I will encounter.
If I forget you, Lord,
I know that you will not forget me.
For you love me, regardless.”
Amen.
There is a story told about Paddy, who is always late. He makes a date with Mary to pick her up at her house. “I will pick you up at eight, Mary, and be ready!” Mary is ready at 7.30pm, and waits for Paddy. When the time reaches 9.30pm, Mary decides to change out of her dress and shoes, and get into her pyjamas, reconciling herself to a night in front of the telly. The door-bell rings at 10, and Mary goes out to the door. There stands Paddy, who says: “I am two hours late, and Mary, you are still not ready!”
The surprising message of the gospel this morning is that the Lord doesn’t seem to be interested in whether we are late coming to him, or not, That he loves us all of the time, before and after.
Many years ago, David Frost was interviewing the late Cardinal Heenan of Westminster on TV, and he asked the Cardinal, what part of the gospel he found most difficult to accept. The Cardinal thought for a moment, and then said that the part of the gospel he found it most difficult to accept, was that God loved him all the time, just as he is – and the sheer goodness of God in constantly loving sinners, before, and during, and after.
We can see what the Cardinal was getting at. Most of us have no problem in believing that God loves us all the time when we’re good. We find it difficult to believe that God loves us when we are lost in sin. For so much of our experience in life has been that love is conditional: “I’ll love you if... I’ll love you if you’ll do this, or say that, or give me gifts; or if you’ll b faithful; “I’ll love you when you give up the drink, when you are in time for your dinner, or whatever.”
We find it difficult to imagine that anyone could love us just as we are. And some of us, because of the way we were reared, or the sermons we had to listen to, or the attitudes we picked up from those around us - some of us would find it particularly difficult to imagine that God loves us just as we are – and that nothing we could ever do would lessen the love God has for us.
So, we saw God as a judge, waiting to hand down sentence on us. Or we saw him as a teacher, always checking us, and marking our lives, as if they were an examination paper! Or as a God, as Nancy Griffith says in her famous song, God always “watching us from a distance”. But when we read about the God in the gospels; when we look at what Jesus did and said, we find a completely different God. Not a God who says: “I’ll love you if… or when…” but a kind and caring and compassionate God, who says to us: “I’ll love you regardless….”
An American priest, some years ago, was on a walking tour of Ireland. One day he took shelter from the rain, and struck up a conversation with an old man. And for some reason the conversation turned to prayer. The old man told the priest that he often had conversations with God; he found it easy to talk to God, because, he said: “You know, God is very fond of me.”
If I had a magic wand this morning – if I had one wish that I would want to come true -my wish would be that every single one of us here this morning, would experience what that old man had obviously experienced: the fondness of God – the belief,the knowledge that God is very fond of us.
You see, when it comes to love, God doesn’t look at us like an accountant does. He doesn’t look at the obligations we have kept or broken; he doesn’t look at the amount of graces we may have built up, like some form of pension scheme; and he doesn’t seem to care whether we come early, or whether we come late, as in today’s Gospel. He loves us like he loves the others. He just loves us regardless!
I remember some years ago, we had a student who died of an epileptic seizure, in the university apartments in Maynooth. Her name was Aoife Begley. It is shattering to see a young girl like that, lying dead on the bed, and the foam still coming out of her mouth and her nose. Her mother, Mary, was a lovely woman, and a woman close to God. I remember visiting Mary, some months after the funeral. And she was telling me that she didn’t so much say her prayers, as much as she had her chats with God. The death of her daughter, Aoife, was a terrible cross for her, and I remember her saying to me: “I’ve been scolding God for what happened to Aoife.”
The word “scolding”, like “fondness”, are very Irish words that have to do with a great closeness, and that experience of closeness is what the God of today’s gospel calls us into. God is fond of us; God is close to us; God loves us, regardless of who we are, or what we’ve done.
Even if we are late-comers, he still gives us the same as those who have carried the heat and burdens of the day, or of the law. For the gospel is peopled with life’s late-comers, and with all those who find themselves slowed down with some form of disability. There are those who are physically disabled; or spiritually crippled; or emotionally stunted; or economically tethered. They are the prodigal sons and daughters; the black sheep of the family; the outcasts; the overlooked; the ones people feel they can safely ignore or shun; those who have been hurt or undone by life.
When we are like this, Jesus has a clear prejudice in our favour – because he doesn’t work from the arithmetic of the calculator, but from the fulness of his own heart. And that fulness of God’s heart is here for you this morning. Can you take it in to yourself? Can you open yourself up to this “being loved regardless”?? For the message is: that God is very fond of you, and his love is always available to you. It was available to the prodigal son; it was available to the lepers; and the paralytic; and to the sinful woman, and to the late-comers in today’s Gospel!
And it’s available, all the time, and everywhere, for me and for you. Please, please, take it into your heart!
I want to finish with the prayer of the Royalist commander, General Sir Jacob Astley on the eve of the Battle of Edgehill in 1642:
“O Lord, you know how busy I must be this day;
you know the many things I will encounter.
If I forget you, Lord,
I know that you will not forget me.
For you love me, regardless.”
Amen.
17 Sept 17: Forgiveness
“How often should I forgive my brother? Seven times?” Mt: 18: 21-22.
Dear friends, psychologists and sociologists tell us that there is far more love in people’s hearts than hate and division! And that there is far more goodness than selfishness in people’s minds and actions.
Yet, when we listen to the media these days, we would think that trouble, strife, hatred are everywhere. We hear of the cruelties of present ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people; of the drug-gang-warfare killings in Dublin; of the on-going civil-war in Syria; of the shootings and bombings in France, Spain, England by Isis; the mowing-down of innocent people with heavy lorries; and using a 9-year- old girl as a suicide-bomber.
I have to say that, as a boy, growing up in my own area in Northern Ireland, horrible things were also done in the name of nationalism. In our area in Portadown, I remember that some people actually cheered on hearing of the death of a soldier, or of a Loyalist. I also recall those people who just disappeared, quietly murdered, and buried in bogs and on beaches – and we are still only finding some of their poor bodies today. In the light of this morning’s gospel, I sometimes wonder: “What happened to our common humanity at that time?”
What happened to our Christianity? and to the message of this morning’s reading about love and forgiveness?? And here in limerick, there have been horrible inhumanities perpetrated. Im sure many people here were sickened by the deaths of two people, cruelly killed some years ago, in Southill. Their names were Breda waters and Des Kelly. They were both shot with a shotgun at close range. Can you imagine that scene? - of a young woman shot in the head and face, at close range? You know, the parish priest at that time, who was called to that house, was shocked beyond belief! Afterwards, he said: “Whoever did this, doesn’t deserve redemption!” And even though I know that this was said in a moment of horror and revulsion, still, the gospel this morning calls on us; urges us to forgive; – to love – to try to love our enemies to forgive them, and pray for those who do us wrong!
You see, once you seriously take on the teaching of Jesus, you are asked for nothing less than total commitment! We cant tell Jesus: “Ill follow you here, but I won’t follow your there”! “Ill forgive this person, but not that one!” No!! the bottom line is this: “Once I’m tagged a Christian; – once I have been given the baptismal uniform, so to speak, then I am called to try to love completely! I am called to offer forgiveness! for Jesus knows that hatred and division act like a poison! and that poison spreads, and, in the end, it creates division and hatred, and spreads death around us. I recall reading William Blake’s poem: “The Poison Tree:”
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunnèd it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
But Jesus keeps on saying: “Love your enemies. Forgive. Forgive many times! – even when you have been badly stung. Forgive even what seem unforgiveable!
Our first reading today from Ecclesiasticus states: “You must forgive your neighbour the hurt he does you” But, let me tell you a true story. There is a married man, who was very heavy on the drink, in the early years of his marriage. He became cruel, and violent, and abusive to his wife and his two daughters, and he held that home in a grip of fear. Eventually, he was forced to leave the home. Well, years later, this man is now reformed. He has faced his alcoholism, and overcome it. Now he would love to come back to his wife and daughters and say he is sorry, and make it up to them, and show them care and love. But they are too hurt! They don’t want to know him! They don’t want him near them! What is he to do? What would you do? Are there some things in life that are unforgiveable?
This morning, Jesus says: “Forgive, even your enemies,” “and pray for those who do you wrong.” And what about brothers and sisters who have fallen out with one another - over a hurt – or a misunderstanding – and haven’t talked to each other for years? I know this happens in many families, including my own. They don’t seem to notice that time is passing, and they seem intent on bringing this with them to the grave.
Maria Walsh, the Rose of Tralee from three years ago, has tattooed on her arm: “The trouble is, we think we have time!”
Dear friends, please, please resolve with me this day – no, resolve with me now! - that you will try to forgive, and be reconciled, before it’s too late! And if you feel you cannot forgive, or that in trying to do so, you would make things even worse, then pray for those who have done you wrong. If you do this, you are coming close to the heart of Jesus, and to the centre of the Gospel, and you will be building up the kingdom of Jesus’ Father here and now.
You see, Jesus tried his best to do the will of the Father, by loving and forgiving. He knows that love doesn’t transform enemies into instant friends. You must remember, that love didn’t solve all of Jesus’ problems with his enemies. In the end, he was the one who reached out in love; to heal and free others, and yet he suffered. and he got badly stung in the process. He was stung to death. but he stayed with it, trying to love and forgive to the bitter end. that’s his way!
I want to finish with this little poem called: “I’m for loving:”
Human beings, full of love, can be beautiful as doves;
But their hearts can turn to treacherous ways,
And deadly poison bring into play.
Oh, full of beauty is my bower,
Tho’ hailstones come, and break my flowers;
But I’ll keep loving, while I live,
Forgive and love; love and forgive.
What Jesus asks us, must be done,
So, keep on loving, everyone!
Amen.
10 Sept 17: Tough Love
Love cannot hurt your neighbour… Romans:13: 8 – 10.
St. Paul talks this morning about mutual love. He says that “love is the one thing that cannot hurt your neighbour!” Of course, the word “love”, as you know, has had its meaning hijacked in modern times. The advertising companies use it to sell us products that, they promise, will deliver love! Love, according to them, is to be found in a perfume, or cologne, or an after-shave; or with chocolates and roses. In media land, love is often equated with sex, as pictured in the series, and in the film, “Sex and the City”. In the magazines, it is the one with the most cosmetic surgeries, make-overs, implants, clothes, and cars who wins!
And so, it is no surprise that you get young people on TV, meeting the approved criteria of being lots of fun and laughs; being into recreational drugs; judging one another on their looks and sex-appeal; and declaring to the world that they’re “in love”. Maybe I’m getting old, or maybe I’m a confirmed, old, celibate bachelor(!), but it seems to me that a lot of love today, is on the surface, isn’t it? It’s like surface glitz, and “personality contests”! And, at times, it does seem so shallow.
On the other hand, thank God things have changed from my young days, when ‘sex’ was a forbidden word. There is much more openness today about sexuality, and it can now be seen as the beautiful thing it is. And yet, we know very well, that sex and love, are not the same thing.
This morning, St. Paul talks about a love that is not totally based on feelings. Yes - feelings are so important, and a marriage without them would be a poorer and an emptier one. As Paul sees it, love is more about the commitment of the self, like a decision of the will. He says: “the harder the decision, in spite of the feelings, the greater the love.”
That’s why the Russian writer, Dostoevsky, probably still has the best line on love. He says: “love, in action, can be a tough and dreadful thing…”. What could he mean? You remember Maximillian Kolbe, in a Nazi concentration camp, trembling in his shoes, stepping forward to die in the place of another prisoner who had a wife and family at home. That’s tough and supreme love. and this tough love can often be seen in the lives of people living around us.
I think of the young wife, who is married to a man who drinks too much.He’s a gentle sort of man, and he promises he’s going to give up the drink, but he can’t seem to do it and he drinks most of the little money they have. She loves him, and she keeps on challenging his life-style. She sticks with him, trying to get him to go for help. At last, he begins to change. He joins the AA, and struggles, until he stops drinking. She stuck with him through the hard times. That is tough love.
You may remember the case, as told by Fr Bausch, of the widower who has Alzheimer’s disease? He is being taken care of by his married daughter. It’s not easy, as many of you know. Even though she struggles a great deal, she doesn’t want to put dad into a home. She tells the priest: “I don’t know how long more I can do this. It’s awfully hard going after him. He wanders out, at all hours of the night, thinking he’s back in the city, looking for a bus. I don’t know how long more I can lift him, or take him to the bathroom. I’m getting tired. It’s very hard.” It is very hard. She is left with her father who is completely unaware of her devotion. She stays there, with tough love.
I remember reading about William Stafford, the American poet and pacifist. He was recalling, as a boy, coming home from school - how he was telling his mother that two new students had been surrounded in the playground, and taunted by the others, because they were black. “And what did you do, Billy”, asked his mother. “I went into the circle beside them, and stood up for them,” Billy said. Sick in the stomach at the thought that he too would be bullied and beaten up, Billy decided to stand up for them. That was brave! That was tough love too.
I was recalling, too, how I was officiating at the funeral of a Maynooth university student, who had died of a drugs overdose. Her best friend turns and says to me: “I loved her, Father. She was my closest friend.” Well, it was not the time nor the place for me to say that that kind of love had not helped his dead friend. He knew that she was into heavy drugs. Why didn’t he tell somebody? Get her help? I’m sure he didn’t want to squeal, or blow the whistle on his friend, but that kind of weak love was of no help to her in her situation. If he really loved her, he could have ignored his own feelings, and made the decision to get her help.
What did Dostoevsky say? “Love, in action, can be a tough and dreadful thing.” For tough love, as Thomas Aquinas reminds us, is in the mind; it’s in the will; it’s in the decisions we make. Feelings are wonderful, and necessary, and they embellish and heighten love, and life would be enormously empty without them. But they should not be fully identified with love. They should not be identified with the decision to do what is best for the beloved! Which is why parents drag their children to the dentist! And why they try to instil a bit of respect and discipline in them! Which is why the mother and father keeping on loving the awkward child at home, the one who is verbally abusive to them, and back-answering, and totally unappreciative of everything they do, or of the care and love they try to give. Or the teacher who keeps her patience with the disruptive child, that child who keeps on disturbing her class – but she sticks with it, and the child begins to respond.
I’m aware that many of you, sitting here, are people filled with love, trying to love your best every day, and willing to stick with it. We pray in this Mass, that the Lord will keep on blessing you with strength, and patience, and perseverance in your love. For he is the great lover, the great healer, who keeps on prompting us to love, and to love more deeply. For he is the one who changed the water into wine, at the wedding feast of love in Cana. Maybe the love you have has gone tired and weak; maybe it has gone watery, or turned into vinegar, and gone sour. May the Lord bless your love this morning, and change it back into the strong wine of love again.
Tina Turner sings: “What’s love got to do with it?” Well; love, tough love, has everything to do with it! For whatever way you may look at yourself, I can tell you this morning that you are loved beyond your wildest dreams. And those who have judged you, because of your looks, or your clothes, or your background, or the amount of money you have, or your sex-appeal, have all told you lies. Forget what they have said. Because the truth is: You are a child of God, and totally loved, just as you are.
I want to finish with the ‘prayer for tough love’:
When the gentleness between you hardens,
and you fall out of your belonging with each other;
when the weave of love starts to unravel,
and anger begins to sear the ground between you;
may your souls come to kiss once more!
Now is the time for one of you to be gracious;
to allow a kindness, beyond thought or hurt,
to carry you through this winter pilgrimage,
towards the gateway of a new spring of love.
Amen.
Love cannot hurt your neighbour… Romans:13: 8 – 10.
St. Paul talks this morning about mutual love. He says that “love is the one thing that cannot hurt your neighbour!” Of course, the word “love”, as you know, has had its meaning hijacked in modern times. The advertising companies use it to sell us products that, they promise, will deliver love! Love, according to them, is to be found in a perfume, or cologne, or an after-shave; or with chocolates and roses. In media land, love is often equated with sex, as pictured in the series, and in the film, “Sex and the City”. In the magazines, it is the one with the most cosmetic surgeries, make-overs, implants, clothes, and cars who wins!
And so, it is no surprise that you get young people on TV, meeting the approved criteria of being lots of fun and laughs; being into recreational drugs; judging one another on their looks and sex-appeal; and declaring to the world that they’re “in love”. Maybe I’m getting old, or maybe I’m a confirmed, old, celibate bachelor(!), but it seems to me that a lot of love today, is on the surface, isn’t it? It’s like surface glitz, and “personality contests”! And, at times, it does seem so shallow.
On the other hand, thank God things have changed from my young days, when ‘sex’ was a forbidden word. There is much more openness today about sexuality, and it can now be seen as the beautiful thing it is. And yet, we know very well, that sex and love, are not the same thing.
This morning, St. Paul talks about a love that is not totally based on feelings. Yes - feelings are so important, and a marriage without them would be a poorer and an emptier one. As Paul sees it, love is more about the commitment of the self, like a decision of the will. He says: “the harder the decision, in spite of the feelings, the greater the love.”
That’s why the Russian writer, Dostoevsky, probably still has the best line on love. He says: “love, in action, can be a tough and dreadful thing…”. What could he mean? You remember Maximillian Kolbe, in a Nazi concentration camp, trembling in his shoes, stepping forward to die in the place of another prisoner who had a wife and family at home. That’s tough and supreme love. and this tough love can often be seen in the lives of people living around us.
I think of the young wife, who is married to a man who drinks too much.He’s a gentle sort of man, and he promises he’s going to give up the drink, but he can’t seem to do it and he drinks most of the little money they have. She loves him, and she keeps on challenging his life-style. She sticks with him, trying to get him to go for help. At last, he begins to change. He joins the AA, and struggles, until he stops drinking. She stuck with him through the hard times. That is tough love.
You may remember the case, as told by Fr Bausch, of the widower who has Alzheimer’s disease? He is being taken care of by his married daughter. It’s not easy, as many of you know. Even though she struggles a great deal, she doesn’t want to put dad into a home. She tells the priest: “I don’t know how long more I can do this. It’s awfully hard going after him. He wanders out, at all hours of the night, thinking he’s back in the city, looking for a bus. I don’t know how long more I can lift him, or take him to the bathroom. I’m getting tired. It’s very hard.” It is very hard. She is left with her father who is completely unaware of her devotion. She stays there, with tough love.
I remember reading about William Stafford, the American poet and pacifist. He was recalling, as a boy, coming home from school - how he was telling his mother that two new students had been surrounded in the playground, and taunted by the others, because they were black. “And what did you do, Billy”, asked his mother. “I went into the circle beside them, and stood up for them,” Billy said. Sick in the stomach at the thought that he too would be bullied and beaten up, Billy decided to stand up for them. That was brave! That was tough love too.
I was recalling, too, how I was officiating at the funeral of a Maynooth university student, who had died of a drugs overdose. Her best friend turns and says to me: “I loved her, Father. She was my closest friend.” Well, it was not the time nor the place for me to say that that kind of love had not helped his dead friend. He knew that she was into heavy drugs. Why didn’t he tell somebody? Get her help? I’m sure he didn’t want to squeal, or blow the whistle on his friend, but that kind of weak love was of no help to her in her situation. If he really loved her, he could have ignored his own feelings, and made the decision to get her help.
What did Dostoevsky say? “Love, in action, can be a tough and dreadful thing.” For tough love, as Thomas Aquinas reminds us, is in the mind; it’s in the will; it’s in the decisions we make. Feelings are wonderful, and necessary, and they embellish and heighten love, and life would be enormously empty without them. But they should not be fully identified with love. They should not be identified with the decision to do what is best for the beloved! Which is why parents drag their children to the dentist! And why they try to instil a bit of respect and discipline in them! Which is why the mother and father keeping on loving the awkward child at home, the one who is verbally abusive to them, and back-answering, and totally unappreciative of everything they do, or of the care and love they try to give. Or the teacher who keeps her patience with the disruptive child, that child who keeps on disturbing her class – but she sticks with it, and the child begins to respond.
I’m aware that many of you, sitting here, are people filled with love, trying to love your best every day, and willing to stick with it. We pray in this Mass, that the Lord will keep on blessing you with strength, and patience, and perseverance in your love. For he is the great lover, the great healer, who keeps on prompting us to love, and to love more deeply. For he is the one who changed the water into wine, at the wedding feast of love in Cana. Maybe the love you have has gone tired and weak; maybe it has gone watery, or turned into vinegar, and gone sour. May the Lord bless your love this morning, and change it back into the strong wine of love again.
Tina Turner sings: “What’s love got to do with it?” Well; love, tough love, has everything to do with it! For whatever way you may look at yourself, I can tell you this morning that you are loved beyond your wildest dreams. And those who have judged you, because of your looks, or your clothes, or your background, or the amount of money you have, or your sex-appeal, have all told you lies. Forget what they have said. Because the truth is: You are a child of God, and totally loved, just as you are.
I want to finish with the ‘prayer for tough love’:
When the gentleness between you hardens,
and you fall out of your belonging with each other;
when the weave of love starts to unravel,
and anger begins to sear the ground between you;
may your souls come to kiss once more!
Now is the time for one of you to be gracious;
to allow a kindness, beyond thought or hurt,
to carry you through this winter pilgrimage,
towards the gateway of a new spring of love.
Amen.
27 Aug 17: Tu Es Petrus
When I was growing up, nick-names were very common. Some of these nick-names were often used to describe a person’s role. For example; the local grower of potatoes was known as “Spud Murphy”. Then the farmer, a big red-faced man who delivered the vegetables, was known as “Beetroot”. And the man who worked in the butcher’s shop, was known locally, and inelegantly, as “Kidney Judge.” That says it all.
The name that Jesus gave Simon in today’s Gospel was of the “Spud Murphy” variety. It referred to his future role. The name itself was “Cephas” or “Rock”. Imagine if our first Pope, ‘Peter’, became known as “Rocky”! And his surname was “Bar Jonah” - in our language, “John’s-son”. “Rocky Johnson”. And Jesus said: “You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my Church.”
Do you remember that text from childhood? I do. My father, who was a big Catholic man, never tired of quoting it. The words reverberated like a church-bell – or an old auntie’s promise. They rang in the mind. The words are so positive, so reassuring. Rocks are forever. They never let you down. Old castles might collapse; but the Church would never shift, or subside. It would always be there – like a lighthouse in a moving sea. And Peter, the Pope, with his feet on solid ground, his church was “steady”, and not going to be “rocky”. Who would have thought, that this so, so solid Church of my boyhood could be brought down so quickly?
It reminds me of the earthquake in Assisi in September 1997, when the beautiful frescos by Giotto – which had lasted 700 years, came crashing down from the vaulted ceiling – and lay in bits on the basilica floor. It is such a strong image of our own broken humanity, our broken economy, and our broken Church. Just think of all the headlines that have been in the newspapers over the last few years about our Church. and of what we have heard, on radio, and television.
And there has also been controversy within our official church: When we look back at Bishop Eamonn Casey; yes, who gave in to human weakness. It was a human sin, in comparison to the other horrible crimes perpetrated against children. Eamonn Casey resigned, and was sent into exile to Ecuador, and later to Sussex. When he finally came home in 2006, he wasn’t allowed to celebrate the Eucharist in public again. Was that right? Was it wrong?
Or you have the Monsignor in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, who has denied a wedding to a young groom, who has AIDS? Or the priest in Donegal, who refused a little girl her First Communion, because her parents weren’t coming to Mass? Then you have the quandary of those who are living in second relationships, who cannot approach the sacraments.
And we remember that this is the Church that gave rise to Andrew Greeley, and Fr Sean Fortune, and Mother Teresa, and Matt Talbot; and, believe it or not, Madonna and Sinead O’Connor. There is no denying that we certainly have had bad priests, like Fr Brendan Smith and Fr Eugene Greene of Raphoe. When there is bad news about a priest, there is a tendency to apply it to every priest, and to the entire Catholic Church. No wonder there has been a great slide away from religion, as seen in falling attendances at Mass, and far fewer vocations.
However, I do remember a story of Dorothy Day, who had just attended Mass with a friend in New York. The priest who had said the Mass was extremely poor; he had no reverence; he was bad-mannered and abrupt; and his sermon was extraordinarily boring. It was just a terrible experience. On the way home, the friend was wondering how Dorothy would react. After walking a bit in silence, Dorothy Day simply said: “If the Church can survive priests like that, it just goes to prove that God must be with it.”
When we talk about the Church, we tend to think of the hierarchy – the Pope, and the Bishops, and the priests. But the fact is that they are only a numerically small part of the Church. Because, after all, we are the church, all of us here who compose it. And we are not perfect.
A professor of philosophy called William Shea wrote an article in “Commonweal”, in which he explains how he feels about the Catholic Church. He says: “I am sad at her sins, as I am at my own sins. I am wary of her leaning towards intellectual and spiritual repression, as I am of my own fear of power, and my resentment of criticism. I find written large in the Church’s life, my own struggle, my own good and evil; my own truth, and my own lies.” For what we have to remember is this: with all our too human faults, which Popes, and priests, and every other member of God’s church have, there is always something more than meets the eye. Despite our faults, and our family divisions, there is a presence, and there is a reality; and there is a bonding; and there is goodness and love. We know that there is a huge number of great priests and bishops and brothers and nuns on our island.
What I’m saying, is, that for all the humanness, and mistakes, and even sinfulness of those of us who are church, we always have to have confidence, that the bottom-line reality is Jesus. Jesus is the rock, the bed-rock on which we can build and stand firm. It is he who works his grace through us – individually and collectively – imperfect and fractured as we are.
To conclude, I must tell you the end of the story about the frescos of Giotto, which had fallen down after the earthquake in Assisi in 1997. Would you believe it? They gathered up every single fragment, every smithereen of the broken frescoes from the basilica floor and, after five years of painstaking work, the restored ceiling was unveiled in 2002. Five years of patient endurance, had restored those broken fragments to their former glory.
May it be our hope this morning, and our belief, that Jesus, who loves us in our brokenness, and who built the church on the rock of Peter, may restore it into a humbler, holier, and more serving church, than it ever was before.
Let me finish with a little bit of Latin:
“Tu es Petrus, (you are Peter)
et super hanc petram, (and on this rock)
aedificabo ecclesiam meam.” (I will build my church)
Amen.
When I was growing up, nick-names were very common. Some of these nick-names were often used to describe a person’s role. For example; the local grower of potatoes was known as “Spud Murphy”. Then the farmer, a big red-faced man who delivered the vegetables, was known as “Beetroot”. And the man who worked in the butcher’s shop, was known locally, and inelegantly, as “Kidney Judge.” That says it all.
The name that Jesus gave Simon in today’s Gospel was of the “Spud Murphy” variety. It referred to his future role. The name itself was “Cephas” or “Rock”. Imagine if our first Pope, ‘Peter’, became known as “Rocky”! And his surname was “Bar Jonah” - in our language, “John’s-son”. “Rocky Johnson”. And Jesus said: “You are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my Church.”
Do you remember that text from childhood? I do. My father, who was a big Catholic man, never tired of quoting it. The words reverberated like a church-bell – or an old auntie’s promise. They rang in the mind. The words are so positive, so reassuring. Rocks are forever. They never let you down. Old castles might collapse; but the Church would never shift, or subside. It would always be there – like a lighthouse in a moving sea. And Peter, the Pope, with his feet on solid ground, his church was “steady”, and not going to be “rocky”. Who would have thought, that this so, so solid Church of my boyhood could be brought down so quickly?
It reminds me of the earthquake in Assisi in September 1997, when the beautiful frescos by Giotto – which had lasted 700 years, came crashing down from the vaulted ceiling – and lay in bits on the basilica floor. It is such a strong image of our own broken humanity, our broken economy, and our broken Church. Just think of all the headlines that have been in the newspapers over the last few years about our Church. and of what we have heard, on radio, and television.
And there has also been controversy within our official church: When we look back at Bishop Eamonn Casey; yes, who gave in to human weakness. It was a human sin, in comparison to the other horrible crimes perpetrated against children. Eamonn Casey resigned, and was sent into exile to Ecuador, and later to Sussex. When he finally came home in 2006, he wasn’t allowed to celebrate the Eucharist in public again. Was that right? Was it wrong?
Or you have the Monsignor in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, who has denied a wedding to a young groom, who has AIDS? Or the priest in Donegal, who refused a little girl her First Communion, because her parents weren’t coming to Mass? Then you have the quandary of those who are living in second relationships, who cannot approach the sacraments.
And we remember that this is the Church that gave rise to Andrew Greeley, and Fr Sean Fortune, and Mother Teresa, and Matt Talbot; and, believe it or not, Madonna and Sinead O’Connor. There is no denying that we certainly have had bad priests, like Fr Brendan Smith and Fr Eugene Greene of Raphoe. When there is bad news about a priest, there is a tendency to apply it to every priest, and to the entire Catholic Church. No wonder there has been a great slide away from religion, as seen in falling attendances at Mass, and far fewer vocations.
However, I do remember a story of Dorothy Day, who had just attended Mass with a friend in New York. The priest who had said the Mass was extremely poor; he had no reverence; he was bad-mannered and abrupt; and his sermon was extraordinarily boring. It was just a terrible experience. On the way home, the friend was wondering how Dorothy would react. After walking a bit in silence, Dorothy Day simply said: “If the Church can survive priests like that, it just goes to prove that God must be with it.”
When we talk about the Church, we tend to think of the hierarchy – the Pope, and the Bishops, and the priests. But the fact is that they are only a numerically small part of the Church. Because, after all, we are the church, all of us here who compose it. And we are not perfect.
A professor of philosophy called William Shea wrote an article in “Commonweal”, in which he explains how he feels about the Catholic Church. He says: “I am sad at her sins, as I am at my own sins. I am wary of her leaning towards intellectual and spiritual repression, as I am of my own fear of power, and my resentment of criticism. I find written large in the Church’s life, my own struggle, my own good and evil; my own truth, and my own lies.” For what we have to remember is this: with all our too human faults, which Popes, and priests, and every other member of God’s church have, there is always something more than meets the eye. Despite our faults, and our family divisions, there is a presence, and there is a reality; and there is a bonding; and there is goodness and love. We know that there is a huge number of great priests and bishops and brothers and nuns on our island.
What I’m saying, is, that for all the humanness, and mistakes, and even sinfulness of those of us who are church, we always have to have confidence, that the bottom-line reality is Jesus. Jesus is the rock, the bed-rock on which we can build and stand firm. It is he who works his grace through us – individually and collectively – imperfect and fractured as we are.
To conclude, I must tell you the end of the story about the frescos of Giotto, which had fallen down after the earthquake in Assisi in 1997. Would you believe it? They gathered up every single fragment, every smithereen of the broken frescoes from the basilica floor and, after five years of painstaking work, the restored ceiling was unveiled in 2002. Five years of patient endurance, had restored those broken fragments to their former glory.
May it be our hope this morning, and our belief, that Jesus, who loves us in our brokenness, and who built the church on the rock of Peter, may restore it into a humbler, holier, and more serving church, than it ever was before.
Let me finish with a little bit of Latin:
“Tu es Petrus, (you are Peter)
et super hanc petram, (and on this rock)
aedificabo ecclesiam meam.” (I will build my church)
Amen.
20 Aug 17: Scraps from the rich man's table
Liam Swords tells the story of the enthusiastic young man – who comes, young and bubbly, to a new job! He has energy! Others are infected by his enthusiasm. Problems seem to disappear at his touch. But, of course, what he doesn’t realise is that this is the ‘honeymoon’ period. There is such a time in everybody’s life. Most of his older colleagues smile indulgently and think: “He’ll learn! One of these fine days, he’ll cop on.” Which means that, one day, he will wake up to the inevitable futility of it all.
Sure enough, that is what happened. As the obstacles grew larger, he didn’t have the enthusiasm or energy any more. His many commitments, and over-crowded schedule, began to take their toll. Of course, time itself was against him. He was no longer the ‘new man’. So, Dermot began to cut back; he began to shed his ambitions.The great withdrawal began! Now, he finds himself on the verge of middle-age, turned in on himself. His main preoccupation now is with his comfort. His work is where he earns his salary, and he begrudges every minute he has to give to it. He has become very sour and bitter.
But of course, that is not how he sees himself. He has rationalised the whole thing. Don’t we all? As he sees it, he has been victimised by the ‘system’. It’s his favourite grudge, the ‘system’.
What does Dermot work at? You might be interested to know! In the class-room, they call him ‘teacher’; in the surgery, they call him ‘doctor’; at home, they call him “dDaddy”; put a collar round his neck, and he is your priest. In fact, you will find him in any job that lends itself to futility!
But, where did Dermot go wrong? He thought that energy and enthusiasm were enough to change the world – enough to secure love, and bring success. But they are not. The only lasting love and success goes to those men and women who are gifted with endurance. Endurance in the long term.We need that ‘staying’ power: athletes call it “stamina”, psychologists call it “resilience” or “bounce-back ability”. There was an interesting article by Sinead Moriarty in the Irish Independent on August 16th, 2017. In it, she wrote:
I recently met an old friend who is now headmaster at a large secondary school. I asked him what was the biggest change he’d seen in children in the last 20 years. Without hesitating, he said, “lack of resilience”. He went on to say that many kids nowadays have no ability to deal with difficult situations, because their parents are constantly clearing the path in front of them. “They can’t cope with any kind of failure, even the smallest thing,” he said. “Helicopter-parenting’ is not doing your child any favours”, he added.
We do need to develop resilience for the long haul. It is essential for ongoing commitment. For many things that start full of promise can end in utter disappointment. So many relationships, so many young marriages seem to end so soon. The enchantment, the infatuation can be great at the beginning, but there is no guarantee that it will last. Without strength & stamina, we cannot continue in our commitments. We do get tired and weary. As rag & bone-man sings: “I’m only human after all!”
And that’s why we come here this morning to this Eucharist; that every one of us can meet Jesus and be strengthened. Jesus excludes nobody – he brings us all in! We come here to get some of his strength, his healing, and some of his endurance. He knows our failings and our weaknesses. He includes us, and gives us his whole body, so that we might borrow his whole strength and endurance in carrying our worries and burdens. And he gives it to all of us!
I remember a man at home, who went to Holy Communion every morning. The surprising thing about this man was that, during the day, he was nearly always drunk! I was a young priest then – and I didn’t really understand or realise that he was an alcoholic. He wasn’t the type that most of us would expect to find coming to the altar to receive communion every morning. But he is the type that Jesus expects to find there and that man knew it! He pestered heaven with his pleas for help – to get the strength to stop drinking. He put me in mind of this morning’s gospel, and the way that this Canaanite woman kept nagging at Jesus to help her little girl. Her insistence was matched only by Christ’s indifference. “He did not answer her a word.” When he did speak, it was so unlike him: “it is not fair to take the children’s bread, and throw it to the dogs”, is what he said. But the woman is not diverted by this offensive rebuff. She hangs on to the reason why she is there. A child’s pain can make a mother eloquent! And the woman answered him: “even the dogs eat the crumbs, which fall from the master’s table.” It was enough: her prayer was answered. Her endurance had won the day. She stuck at it until her daughter is healed.
Like that woman, and like that alcoholic, we too need to stick at it! We too come this morning for the crumbs that fall from the masters table. And the greater our needs, the more we need to come. You remember that Jesus said: “if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way; and some of them have come a long way.” The way for all of us has been hard in these tough and challenging times. For some, the endurance has been impossibly long. In case we fall, or faint on the way, we need to take the food, the strength, the endurance in this Eucharist.
Maybe things are coming apart a bit for you; if you feel betrayed, or excluded; or degraded; if life has lost its meaning; if the future looks dark, or impossible, then, you need to come forward and eat at the table of the Eucharist. Even a few crumbs will do us. And, maybe, when you come forward to receive his body in communion, ask: “Lord, bless me and feed me with the strength and endurance that the Eucharist gives, and give me the resilience to face what needs to be faced; to keep doing what I have promised; to love what needs to be loved; and to trust in your promise, Lord, that I can have a new life, in you.”
I’ll finish with John O’ Donoghue’s “prayer for courage”:
When the light around you lessens,
And your thoughts darken;
When fear is inside you, cold as a stone;
When what you leaned on before has fallen,
And you heart is raven black;
Steady yourself, and see
That it is your own thinking,
That darkens your world.
Search, and you will find him.
Close your eyes!
Gather all the kindling, about your heart, to create one spark –
Just one enduring spark!
That’s all you need to nourish the flame.
A new resilience will come alive in you,
And will lead you to higher ground.
Amen.
Liam Swords tells the story of the enthusiastic young man – who comes, young and bubbly, to a new job! He has energy! Others are infected by his enthusiasm. Problems seem to disappear at his touch. But, of course, what he doesn’t realise is that this is the ‘honeymoon’ period. There is such a time in everybody’s life. Most of his older colleagues smile indulgently and think: “He’ll learn! One of these fine days, he’ll cop on.” Which means that, one day, he will wake up to the inevitable futility of it all.
Sure enough, that is what happened. As the obstacles grew larger, he didn’t have the enthusiasm or energy any more. His many commitments, and over-crowded schedule, began to take their toll. Of course, time itself was against him. He was no longer the ‘new man’. So, Dermot began to cut back; he began to shed his ambitions.The great withdrawal began! Now, he finds himself on the verge of middle-age, turned in on himself. His main preoccupation now is with his comfort. His work is where he earns his salary, and he begrudges every minute he has to give to it. He has become very sour and bitter.
But of course, that is not how he sees himself. He has rationalised the whole thing. Don’t we all? As he sees it, he has been victimised by the ‘system’. It’s his favourite grudge, the ‘system’.
What does Dermot work at? You might be interested to know! In the class-room, they call him ‘teacher’; in the surgery, they call him ‘doctor’; at home, they call him “dDaddy”; put a collar round his neck, and he is your priest. In fact, you will find him in any job that lends itself to futility!
But, where did Dermot go wrong? He thought that energy and enthusiasm were enough to change the world – enough to secure love, and bring success. But they are not. The only lasting love and success goes to those men and women who are gifted with endurance. Endurance in the long term.We need that ‘staying’ power: athletes call it “stamina”, psychologists call it “resilience” or “bounce-back ability”. There was an interesting article by Sinead Moriarty in the Irish Independent on August 16th, 2017. In it, she wrote:
I recently met an old friend who is now headmaster at a large secondary school. I asked him what was the biggest change he’d seen in children in the last 20 years. Without hesitating, he said, “lack of resilience”. He went on to say that many kids nowadays have no ability to deal with difficult situations, because their parents are constantly clearing the path in front of them. “They can’t cope with any kind of failure, even the smallest thing,” he said. “Helicopter-parenting’ is not doing your child any favours”, he added.
We do need to develop resilience for the long haul. It is essential for ongoing commitment. For many things that start full of promise can end in utter disappointment. So many relationships, so many young marriages seem to end so soon. The enchantment, the infatuation can be great at the beginning, but there is no guarantee that it will last. Without strength & stamina, we cannot continue in our commitments. We do get tired and weary. As rag & bone-man sings: “I’m only human after all!”
And that’s why we come here this morning to this Eucharist; that every one of us can meet Jesus and be strengthened. Jesus excludes nobody – he brings us all in! We come here to get some of his strength, his healing, and some of his endurance. He knows our failings and our weaknesses. He includes us, and gives us his whole body, so that we might borrow his whole strength and endurance in carrying our worries and burdens. And he gives it to all of us!
I remember a man at home, who went to Holy Communion every morning. The surprising thing about this man was that, during the day, he was nearly always drunk! I was a young priest then – and I didn’t really understand or realise that he was an alcoholic. He wasn’t the type that most of us would expect to find coming to the altar to receive communion every morning. But he is the type that Jesus expects to find there and that man knew it! He pestered heaven with his pleas for help – to get the strength to stop drinking. He put me in mind of this morning’s gospel, and the way that this Canaanite woman kept nagging at Jesus to help her little girl. Her insistence was matched only by Christ’s indifference. “He did not answer her a word.” When he did speak, it was so unlike him: “it is not fair to take the children’s bread, and throw it to the dogs”, is what he said. But the woman is not diverted by this offensive rebuff. She hangs on to the reason why she is there. A child’s pain can make a mother eloquent! And the woman answered him: “even the dogs eat the crumbs, which fall from the master’s table.” It was enough: her prayer was answered. Her endurance had won the day. She stuck at it until her daughter is healed.
Like that woman, and like that alcoholic, we too need to stick at it! We too come this morning for the crumbs that fall from the masters table. And the greater our needs, the more we need to come. You remember that Jesus said: “if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way; and some of them have come a long way.” The way for all of us has been hard in these tough and challenging times. For some, the endurance has been impossibly long. In case we fall, or faint on the way, we need to take the food, the strength, the endurance in this Eucharist.
Maybe things are coming apart a bit for you; if you feel betrayed, or excluded; or degraded; if life has lost its meaning; if the future looks dark, or impossible, then, you need to come forward and eat at the table of the Eucharist. Even a few crumbs will do us. And, maybe, when you come forward to receive his body in communion, ask: “Lord, bless me and feed me with the strength and endurance that the Eucharist gives, and give me the resilience to face what needs to be faced; to keep doing what I have promised; to love what needs to be loved; and to trust in your promise, Lord, that I can have a new life, in you.”
I’ll finish with John O’ Donoghue’s “prayer for courage”:
When the light around you lessens,
And your thoughts darken;
When fear is inside you, cold as a stone;
When what you leaned on before has fallen,
And you heart is raven black;
Steady yourself, and see
That it is your own thinking,
That darkens your world.
Search, and you will find him.
Close your eyes!
Gather all the kindling, about your heart, to create one spark –
Just one enduring spark!
That’s all you need to nourish the flame.
A new resilience will come alive in you,
And will lead you to higher ground.
Amen.