- Homily 18th August 2024
- Homily 11th August 2024
- Homily 28th July 2024
- Homily 21st July 2024
- Homily 14th July 2024
Homily,
Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Year B 2024
My physiotherapist is a member of the Anglican Communion and on the last occasion I visited she asked me an interesting question. She said in her Church we have Baptism Confirmation, then Eucharist but in your Church its Baptism, Eucharist, Confirmation and in her characteristic bluntness she said why’s that and who is right? It might have been a bit of pride that made me slow to answer because in actual fact the protestants have it in the right order. It should be Baptism, Confirmation and then Eucharist. However, the why is very interesting.
Some people who are older among us may remember when people left school at the end of primary education if not beforehand. Secondary school then was equivalent to a University now – people just couldn’t afford to go and it wasn’t just that they couldn’t afford it. It was more the case that they had to go out to work to earn money for their families. My own father, after his father’s death at a young age had no choice but to get out and earn a crust to keep a roof over the heads of the family and food on the table. If we go back a little further in history there was a time when young boys were put to work at ten years of age.
James Plunkett’s short story, Janey Mary gives us an insight into what life was like in apst days. She had to go out to beg to feed the family.
‘Those who did answer her had been dour. They poked cross and harassed faces around half-open doors. Tell her mammy, they said, it’s at school she should have her, and not out worrying poor people the likes of them. They had the mouths of their own to feed and the bellies of their own to fill, and God knows that took doing’
They were put climbing up chimneys, down coal mines and put to all sorts of other work that demeaned them. Girls were put into service at those young ages too often facing situations of abuse and exploitation. Indeed the celebration of Hogmany in Scotland was created so those in service, who worked over Christmas, could have a n opportunity to spend time with their own families rather that looking after those they worked for. Days were long and were not restricted to eight hours. There was no sick benefits, little holidays and extremely unhealthy working conditions for the large part. Those who were making the money were turning a blind eye to things.
“First of all, you see our smoke. That’s meat and drink to us. It’s the healthiest thing in the world in all respects, and particularly for the lungs.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times
Pope Leo XIII wrote about the impact of the these conditions and the broader impact of the Industrial Revolution on people. Though it created great wealth, it was at a high price for many who did not reap any financial benefits for those who slaved on the front line. After pope Leo came Pope Pius X. His concern was for the loss of dignity of people in this setting. The fact that many people left school early meant they were deprived of preparation for their ‘First Communion’. So he brought the age of Frist Communion forward so the young would not miss the opportunity of grace. He was establishing the principle that Eucharist was a right rather than a reward.
He was also taking on a heresy that abounded then. It was called Jansenism which was started in France but took on extreme forms in Ireland and its was basically the heresy that all bodily things were dangerous and sinful. One author said of the times ‘the heart and the spirit gave way toa sort of terrorism before the priest. In his days of dominance, he did much to make Irish life a dreary desert’.
So this is why we have Communion before Confirmation – in the wrong order yes but the intention of Pius X cannot be questioned. But what can be questioned is how we perceive Eucharist. Blessed Carlo’s insights on Eucharist were amazing. He didn’t doubt that the Eucharist was the real presence of Christ and he set up a website to show this incredible mystery and gift to us. Many lives today are a dreary desert and it’s not because of Jansenism and hopefully not because of the terrorism of the priest…it’s more because we. Are lured into thinking that things other than the soul are more important and we suffer internally as a consequence.
Anyway my physiotherapists next patient was knocking on the door and she thanked me for my answer and she thought that Pope Pius X was cool! The Eucharist is a gift to us and we are good enough but like any relationship it’s not one way. However I’d like to share the words of our communion hymn with you. It’s by a lady called Lauren Daigle.
Lauren Daigle
I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I’m not enough
Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up
Am I more than just the sum of every high and every low
Remind me once again just who I am because I need to know
Ooh-oh
You say I am loved when I can’t feel a thing
You say I am strong when I think I am weak
And you say I am held when I am falling short
And when I don’t belong, oh You say I am Yours
And I believe (I)
Oh, I believe (I)
What You say of me (I)
I believe
The only thing that matters now is everything You think of me
In You I find my worth, in You I find my identity
Ooh-oh
You say I am loved when I can’t feel a thing
You say I am strong when I think I am weak
And you say I am held when I am falling short
When I don’t belong, oh You say I am Yours
And I believe (I)
Oh, I believe (I)
What You say of me (I)
Oh, I believe
Taking all I have, and now I’m laying it at Your feet
You have every failure, God, You have every victory
Ooh-oh
You say I am loved when I can’t feel a thing
You say I am strong when I think I am weak
You say I am held when I am falling short
When I don’t belong, oh You say I am Yours
And I believe (I)
Oh, I believe (I)
What You say of me (I)
I believe
Oh, I believe (I)
Yes, I believe (I)
What You say of me (I)
I believe
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Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ
June 2nd 2024 Year B
In 2000 the Olympics took place in Sydney. A huge number of Irish people were out there and many were involved in the building of the Olympic Stadium and other facilities to host the games. The numbers of young Irish there was phenomenal and I was asked by the Irish Bishop’s Commission for Emigrants to set up outreach and support services to young Irish people out there. It culminated in taking on a parish in Bondi, called Saint Patrick’s. Though nowhere is perfect I had a great time there.
Many Irish-born priests served in Australia. The last one to be still alive is a friend of my David Cremin who was an auxiliary Bishop there for many year. It was over two hundred years ago on the 3rd of May 1820 that the first two officially appointed Irish priests arrived in Sydney to look after Catholics. One was a Cork man, John Joseph Therry and the other a Monaghan man, Philip Connolly. Connolly was the senior and a good friend to officialdom. He ended up in Hobart, Tasmania where he built the first Catholic Church in the Antipodes and it was described as ‘a rude, barn-like room, unceiled, unplastered, and floored with loose boards that creaked and moved with every step’.
Connolly was overshadowed by Therry whose four year appointment ended up as 44 years in the colony. Therry didn’t build ramshackle buildings. His first Church was none other than St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney. The foundation stone was laid by governor Macquarie in 1821 and the First mass was eventually celebrated there in December 1833, twelve years later. Throughout the project, doubt was raised as to whether there’d be enough Catholics to fill St. Mary’s. Every weekend now the Cathedral is full for most masses.
Against a tough and prejudiced environment Therry was known and loved for his dedication to duty. He was pulled across rivers by rope to hear confessions of people who were dying. He always kept one spare horse saddled so that when he returned from one mission he could head out immediately to another one.
While he was initially paid by the government of the day, his lost his salary because he upset the Anglican clergy following a typing error in the Sydney Gazette. He survived without a salary as his people were willing to support him. The harsh treatment he received from the Government made him even more popular among his people.
Therry didn’t step into a vacuum though. The earliest priests were convicts, one of whom was James Dixon who in 1800 was granted permission to exercise his priestly duty. This ended following the Castle Hill rebellion in 1804. The authorities viewed Dixon’s liturgical gatherings as a cover for seditious meetings that led to these riots. His right to minister was suspended.
Between 1804 and 1820 then what happened to the Catholic Community in Sydney? Some priests came and went but people simply prayed. In one house in Kent St which runs down the centre of Sydney today people reserved the Blessed Sacrament which a priest left behind before he was deported back to Ireland. Catholic piety thrives in the absence of ecclesial structures.
It was Eucharistic devotion that kept the faith of people alive in Sydney. They never left the Eucharist unattended and it kept them strong. If you are ever in doubt about the power of the Eucharist is commend you to a website set up by none other than Blessed, soon to be Saint, Carlo Acutis. The title of the site is The Eucharistic Miracles of the World. In his short life he set about researching miraculous events that were directly related to the Eucharist across the world. He lived for fifteen years, dying of leukaemia and he was fascinated by the Eucharist to the extent that he compiled a website listing twenty countries that had accounts of extraordinary manifestations of miraculous proportion. Ireland was not one of them! There are one hundred and seven in total. To be honest many of the stories are more in the milieu of the …. and they wouldn’t be the type of this that would change my belief. Some might view the as devotional verging in superstition, manipulation or even mystical. Some of these events, especially those in the last few decades received scrutiny from medical and scientific quarters.
However what they do remind me is that we have God amongst us. God manifests himself in many different guises and he brings us back to what is important namely His presence and His love. We are among the most fortunate to be able to sit with Jesus the Christ and enjoy his benevolence and mercy. God has stepped into our world in the incarnations and remains amongst us in the Eucharist. How blest we are that a young man of in his early teens calls us to attend to this great presence. He said ‘my life plan is always to be connected to Jesus’.
Both these manifestations and the faithfulness of the Catholics in the early days of colonisation in Sydney tell us on this feast day that if we are faithful to God He is faithful to us.
Furthermore, when we meet someone we love we don’t question what they are made of. We might comment that they look well and may have lost weight but how many times do we say here comes x% of water y% of potassium z% of hydrogen – now we name, hug and welcome those who are part of our lives -so let’s not worry about what’s there let’s just welcome who’s there.
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The Ascension of the Lord
‘Hope’
Both the first reading and the Gospel today talk about been ‘taken up’ and whatever it is, even though the narratives don’t say it the image of a mountain top comes to mind! It is not unusual to have annual masses on mountain tops around Ireland be it Croagh Patrick, Mount Brandon or other such places. We are particularly familiar with ‘Reek Sunday’ when thousands of pilgrims make their way up the mountain of Patrick.
I don’t know which location it was but a story is told of one such pilgrimage day when the weather was very inclement. The wind and rain was bad enough at the outset but by the time they got up to the summit it was howling and miserable but the rather enthused local bishop decided that the show must go on so to speak. Books were getting soaked, chalices had to be held down to avoid being whipped away by the wind. At one stage, just after the consecration, the Bishop said Let Us proclaim the mystery of faith. In those days it was ‘Christ Has Died, Christ is Risen, Christ will Come Again’. In the midst of a howling wind and among a small huddle of perishing people an old man was overheard muttering from under his cap ‘Christ I’ll never Come again’.
Today recounts the ascension of Jesus to the Father. While he travels on a single ticket his intention to get us a ticket too. It is his wish to bring us with him to the Father and it is our ultimate wish and desire that we should join them. That is the purpose of our faith and our belief. We can often forget that. Faith can even become a semi political activity or a cultural practise and we lose sight of the vision that to return to God is the ultimate aim and objective of our Christian faith and practise. Building on this belief – the image of what lies ahead and what happens to us when we die informs us in the here and now. If we believe that there is nothing then why should we bother loving, caring and praying – this would be a waste of time and we could live ‘an inauthentic life of pastimes’ as the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard describes.
In many conversations about Churches and the Church in Ireland today one hears a lot of nonsense. One often listens to opinions that are often excuses not to take belief too seriously. There may have been one priest who was a bit short and it becomes justification for a life time of neglect. Most often the same person has met a rude bar attendant but it hasn’t put them off drink. A great leveller mid-way through those discussion is ‘do you believe in eternal life?’ People generally don’t know how to answer it. They don’t know what to ‘hope’ for. The Second Vatican Council says of hope that, “when people are deprived of this divine support, and lack hope in eternal life, their dignity is deeply impaired, as may so often be seen today. The problems of life and death, of guilt and suffering, remain unsolved, so that people are frequently thrown into despair”.
Ascension was celebrated on Thursday in Rome and Pope Francis announced that next year is a jubilee year that focuses on Hope. It’s title is based on Roman’s 5, SPES NON CONFUNDIT. [1]“Hope does not disappoint” (Rom 5:5). So many are disappointed today so it’s a timely document. Hi writing, which I have put on the website, is a sincere heartfelt cry to create communities of hope in our world in the midst of all the despair and pessimism that surrounds us. When Mark Zuckerberg addressed the Senate and Judiciary committee in Washington in 2018 regarding the use of social media by Russia to communicate disinformation he said, ‘My top priority has always been our social mission of connecting people, building community and bringing the world closer together’. Whatever his intention, and the numerous good uses that social media can be put to, we know from our own local experience that people misuse platforms all the time to promote fear and despair. There was never a time when we had to look at how we cultivate a genuine and lasting hope among the people of God.
Everyone knows what it is to hope. In the heart of each person, hope dwells as the desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future may bring. Even so, uncertainty about the future may at times give rise to conflicting feelings, ranging from confident trust to apprehensiveness, from serenity to anxiety, from firm conviction to hesitation and doubt[2].
There are two things I’d like to focus on from the many ideas in the letter. The first is patience. When I’d be going out to do a wedding I’d ask my mother is there many advice I could share with the couple who were about to embark on their married life she’d always say as she gave a half-scowl to my father ‘tell them to pray for patience child’. Those of you who are married get the thinking behind that! But Pope Francis highlights the quality of patience early on in his letter
In our fast-paced world, we are used to wanting everything now. We no longer have time simply to be with others; even families find it hard to get together and enjoy one another’s company. Patience has been put to flight by frenetic haste, and this has proved detrimental, since it leads to impatience, anxiety and even gratuitous violence, resulting in more unhappiness and self-centredness[3].
The second item I’d like to focus on is one Francis uses in his letter namely that of an anchor. As a church on the docks we know the power of this image.
We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul,… This hope, which transcends life’s fleeting pleasures and the achievement of our immediate goals, makes us rise above our trials and difficulties, and inspires us to keep pressing forward, never losing sight of the grandeur of the heavenly goal to which we have been called.[4]
Encouraged by these words we set about to create communities of hope…and what would this look like. Maybe something like this…that is someone comes here to visit or meets us on the road of life, having glimpsed our Christianity they might say, even form under their cap, ‘Christ I’ll come again’.
[1] Spes Non Confundit, Para 1
[2] Ibid para 1
[3] Ibid para 4
[4] Ibid para 25
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6th Sunday of Easter
There’s a very important line in today’s Gospel and one that we often miss it’s point. Jesus tells us wants his joy to be in us and ‘he wants our joy to be complete’. The purpose then of living the Christian life is to be happy. To live, love and believe as Jesus wants us to is for us to find a level of contentment and happiness that can transcend all the issues that can prevail over us. We know only too well that what we have in terms of possessions is not the key to happiness. We may know people with billions but they may not be happy and we may know others with very little and they exude happiness.
In the midst of all these challenges many comments are made indicating that we are losing our way, especially in the western world. Phrases like this capture the mood of the moment, ‘At this particular point in time we live in a kind of spiritual dark ages, created by a rationality that kills off mystery and denies its existence[1]’.
There are also those for whom joy is lost to them. An example of this is a friend of mine whose son died earlier this year, young, fit and lovable and he died suddenly while out running. Listening to my friend I just prayed he’d know a moment of joy once again while every day at the moment, the burden of grief and loss appears to be getting heavier and joy is far from him.
I read a work on the topic ‘Joy’ many years ago. The point made was that joy wasn’t any one thing. Joy comes about when everything in your life is in place. All is good and joy is the icing on the cake so to speak. It only seventy five percent of your life is in good shape joy usually eludes you until you deal with the bits that need attention and work. Joy as such is an affirming gift stating that all is well.
I read another book by a journalist who was looking at all the issues relating to mental health. His name is Joann Hari and the title of the book was ‘Lost Connections’. Just like the thesis on joy he was saying that when parts of your life are disconnected then you are in trouble – even depressed and unwell. At the time this book was written Pope Francis had written a letter to young people called ‘Christus Vivit’ so putting the two together I summarised what a healthy and unhealthy life looked like. In other words how can we have joy?
The first quality for a healthy life was belonging. A sense of being part of something and the corollary is isolation as Pope Francis says in his letter Loneliness is not merely the result of depression…it leads to depression’ and furthermore, ‘ Humans need tribes as much as bees need a hive…pre-agricultural society social connection was not imposed ..nature is connection’ The world is making us more isolated and less connected which creates feelings of alienation and despair.
The second of four items is to have meaningful values but as one psychologist tells us that like food, we have shifted from meaningful values to junk values. The challenge is intense as the Golden Rule of Our Age is – the more you think life is about having stuff and being superior the more unhappy, depressed, and anxious, you’ll be.
Thirdly, the healthy life has a great sense of freedom and a depressed or anxious life is often affected by trauma. Laurence Kirmauer, Head of Dept of Social Psychiatry in McGill University. ‘We have ended up with a grossly oversimplified picture of depression which doesn’t look at the social factors. Most people are feeling terrible because of how our societies now work’. Distress caused by the outside world and the changes in the brain occur together. If you’ve had a difficult time your brain can stay trapped in that bad space even though things may have moved on.
The fourth and final item for well-being is a hope-filled future vs an empty future. The ability to see a tomorrow is critical to well-being and to believe in a tomorrow is of significantly more importance. See what is beyond.
It is both tragic and hopeful that the needs of many people today who are suffering can be met in the well-springs of hope that faith provides. The Gospel, which literally means ‘Good News’ is a hub that creates belonging, is a fountain of meaningful values, helps us integrate our woundedness to transform our being and finally there is no other source that gives us a vivid picture of the hope that lies ahead for all who love and proclaim the name of Jesus the Christ. May His joy be ours.
[1] Tacey, David. Gods and Diseases (p. 26). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
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Homily for the Fifth Week of Easter
Rather than reading you can listen to this week’s Homily
Where the Branch Touches the Vine
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Fourth Sunday of Easter
2024 Year B 2024
Last Thursday I went to an exhibition in the EPIC Centre for Irish Emigration as it is a subject I’m interested in but also I wanted to meet old colleagues. There was one in particular whom I admire greatly. Her name may mean nothing to you, she is Breda Power. Her father may be remembered by some of you he is Billy Power. Billy was one of the Birmingham Six, Breda spent her childhood without her dad as he was locked up in Britain’s most intensive security prisons for a crime he did not commit. The bombings took place in 1974. Breda’s dad was released in 1991 having spent close to twenty years of his life incarcerated.
As a ‘lifer’ he contemplated suicide but as he said in an article written in 1990 “If we walk out of here I want to be able to hold my head up. That’s why I will not accept parole.” He wasn’t going to walk away without his named being cleared. How did he do it, how did he sustain being wronged, he says “Of course, I’ve asked myself why has this happened to me. Why me? But there is a lot of suffering in life. There are a lot of people worse off than me. I look at life from a Christian point of view, and that keeps me going. My faith keeps me holding on to my sanity. Especially when we were first imprisoned and felt so isolated”[1].
Families do the time too, as did Breda. She spent twenty years of her life without her dad, being discriminated against in every way as media and everyone else made her dad out to be one of the most hated men in Britain and if we are honest, in Ireland too. The men were found guilty on the basis of forensics. The chemical compound of the explosive known as Semtex was said to be under their fingernails. It has the same/similar chemical compound as on the plastic on a deck of playing cards. He was a painter and every lunch time, on their break, they played cards.
There are two interesting things I’d like to bring to your attention. Firstly, who were the first outside of the families and those who actually did the bombing to know categorically that these people were innocent. It wasn’t a government, it wasn’t the media. It was the other prisoners. Prisoners know the system and particularly in the case of Giuseppe Conlan, an elderly man who died four years into his sentence from TB. His plight was captured in the movie In the Name of the Father. The prisoners pleaded with the chaplains to do something and the chaplains set about creating an awareness raising exercise to campaign for their release along with many others. They set up an organisation called ICPO, Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas that supported the families of these innocent men by getting accommodation for them while they visited their parents, partners and children in prison. They also help them overcome the psychological torment of treatments such as strip searching when they visited.
The second interesting thing I deduce from this narrative is that Breda today works for that organisation giving support to families of prisoners. Now I’m not naïve enough to believe that everyone in prison is innocent or that there is no need for prisons.
This little story that I could expand on in numerous ways is littered with Good Shepherds. People who weren’t or are not hirelings people who looked after the sheep who were most lost and had no one to mind them. A shepherd doesn’t have to be ordained, in actual fact as an ordained person maybe one has less power and impact in many circumstances. The average by-stander today does not expect another person in the pub or on the bus to talk about God and sadly even less people expect to find one who is ‘A Good Shepherd’ and who watches out for people who are in need. People today are not just surprised when the find goodness they are shocked.
There is a whole other chapter that I could continue with now but time doesn’t allow it. Europe and its leaders have successfully pushed religion into Churches and into ordained ministry. That God is only to be in these places. God is everywhere and we have to believe that. The story I shared with you tells of shepherds on prison wings, in those hurt and torn by unjust imprisonment.
The author Karen Armstrong who writes a lot about things religious in a very accessible way said in one of other books
In the West, we have deliberately excluded religion from political life and regard faith as an essentially private activity. But this is a modern development, dating only to the eighteenth century, and would have been incomprehensible to both Jesus and Paul[2].
Those in power don’t want love and care, especially one that is based on spirituality to be at the forefront of policy as it shows up all the faults of society. They just want Christians who go to Church, pray privately, and keep their mouth shut. If that was the case Billy Power would never have walked free and would never have been able to spend birthdays with his children and grandchildren. Be shepherds of God.
[1] https://noreentaylorjournalist.com/portfolio/billy-power-one-of-the-birmingham-six/
[2] Armstrong, Karen. St Paul: The Misunderstood Apostle (p. 3). Atlantic Books. Kindle Edition
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Third Sunday of Easter 2021
Listen to these words
Now thank we all Our God
With hearts and hands and voices
Who wonderous things hath done
In whom this world rejoices.
This is a hymn that most of us are familiar with. We sing it on occasions of triumph. There is not an ordination that this hymn is not sung at. It is often used to conclude a mission or a pilgrimage where we feel uplifted or renewed. The words are so full of bounty that you’d think they were written by a person who won the equivalent of the lotto and didn’t have a worry in the world. Whatever ‘wonderous thing’ that happened in the authors life would make you eager to hear more about them.
It was written by a Lutheran pastor. Martin Rinkart was a pastor in Eilenberg, Saxony, the town of his birth. He’d have known everyone in the neighbourhood. It was written between 1618-1648 the period of the thirty years war. Hand in hand with the war was pestilence. People were locked in behind city walls to escape the horror of war, but when locked in, if disease struck, it struck hard. Martin’s wife died leaving him with a good number of children and he remained the only pastor in the town as the other priests and ministers were claimed by the plague. He presided over up to thirty or forty burials a day and he consoled those who were bereft.
On the surface of things there was little to give thanks for but in the midst of all this he composed that hymn.
Firstly, we need to engage in ‘relentless, uncompromising hope’. There is something at work in the world in the midst of this period of history and God will not give up until good is seen to unfold in hearts and communities. This goodness won’t be absolute but no one ever said it would be…but it’ll be all around. I often hear my mother’s words ‘God is good’ when, due to the absence of cartilage and other such coatings, she was experiencing the pain of raw bone on raw bone when her hip and her femur were in rubbing when she walked. ‘God is good’ – evidence of ‘relentless, uncompromising hope’.
O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us,
with ever joyful hearts and blessed peace to cheer us;
and keep us in God’s grace, and guide us when perplexed,
and free us from all ills in this world and the next[1].
I have many reasons not to share this hope or to be this hope but if I am to thrive as a human being, who is made in God’s image, I must begin to move in this direction or I will perish.
The second thing I learn from this hymn is to know is that when God seems to have abandoned us he is most present to us. This may not be in our awareness, we may not even want to believe it but this is the truth of our tradition and the truth of those whose story we respect and honour. It is, in summary, the Easter story this evening in our Gospel when Jesus says ‘why are you so agitated, why are these doubts rising in your hearts?’ Jesus was apparently abandoned on Good Friday by God who was His Father but we know despite all appearances he wasn’t.
Thirdly, and finally, biblical chaos are always accompanied by a reordering or relationships. Everything is changing and we too change. It may even look like everything is staying the same but it’s not. There is one great reason to do this outlined in today’s gospel which tells us that in knowing God our joy is complete. Without that anchor we can get absorbed by others things that drain us of joy and that serve to reward others and serve to nourish only the superficial self.
‘God our Father to Father of our own God’ Ulric Beck
Let us conclude with these three points of reflection, let us live with Easter hope that we will dance again soon and let us be inspired by the hymn to find God in all things not just the things that look good on the surface. After all if God loved only what was on the surface well then I know for one that I wouldn’t stand a chance of engaging with his love.
who, from our mothers’ arms, hath blessed us on our way with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
[1] Brueggemann, Walter. Virus as a Summons to Faith: Biblical Reflections in a Time of Loss, Grief, and Uncertainty (p. 31). Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.
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Second Sunday of Easter
Year B 2024
There is an incredible piece of art depicting the scene in today’s Gospel. In 1601 the great artist Caravaggio finished his painting called ‘Doubting Thomas’. While working on this painting he was also working on one capturing the moment when Jesus was placed in the tomb called ‘The Entombment of Jesus’. Interestingly the same white linen shroud was in both paintings as was the wound on Christs side. In the painting ‘Entombment’, the limp body of Jesus was lifeless and obviously difficult and awkward to carry as the Apostle John and Joseph of Arimathea are perceived to be in difficulty as they clumsily lift Jesus onto the slab in the tomb. The other figures in the painting were pained and distraught.
The second painting, depicting the encounter between Jesus and Thomas is relayed in today’s Gospel and it presents a Jesus standing upright, far from lifeless. There are two disciples looking on, most likely Peter, representing the Church, and John, representing the core message of the Church namely love. Of course Thomas is in the painting. He has his finger in the wound of Christ. A flap of skin from the wound in the Lord’s side lies over his finger as he investigates this unbelievable situation. The one he doubted stands before him. As his finger touches the wound he looks not at Jesus but into the distance as he wonders what this means for him now. He ,like all of us, is challenged to face the fact that the resurrection is not merely about the reanimation of a corpse and a return to this life but it really is about a radical transformation of his being. It is about staring into our futures and seeing it differently as Thomas does in the painting.
Resurrection is not a just happy end but an invitation and a challenge to see the world differently and live differently. For Thomas his face, while looking into the distance, reflects a soul that thinks, ‘ok this has happened – what does this mean for me and my life now’ – I have to accept this reality and accept both its invitation and its challenge.
Obviously the artist was linking the two paintings as he drew them. The two probably stood beside one another in his studio. I wonder which of the two he preferred. Did he favour the picture of Jesus being placed in the tomb or the one of Jesus and Thomas or was did it depend on the day and how he was feeling? Or were the two paintings moving us from despondency to hope, from death to life?
Somehow this gospel too finds a home with us as we know only too well what it is to doubt. Whether it’s to doubt, God, the Church or people – we do doubt. We know what it is to lose the certainties that we once held dear. When we see someone we love suffer we do question and wonder. When a young person dies all the prayers we have said for their well-being appear worthless and wasted and we wonder!
In this way we know what it is to be stuck between these two Caravaggio’s. How do we become easter people, how do we move forward. How do we find the clarity that Thomas found and that God wants us to have. Let’s look to Thomas. So Thomas is not just someone we identify with, he is someone who is a light to us. In the seventh century it was pope Saint Gregory the Great who preached that;
the disbelief of Thomas has done more for our faith than the faith of all the other disciples. Indeed his doubts. The strength of faith rests on in unshakable conviction but the ability to cope with doubt and ambiguity, to bear the burden of mystery while remaining faithful and hopeful.
These paintings of Caravaggio were created at the time of the counter reformation when the Church had to get back to basics and present a believable Christ and indeed a credible Church that wasn’t lost in the trappings of bureaucracy and power grabbing. The establishment of Protestantism toppled the dominance of the Church in society but it also highlighted a Church that was far from the intention that Christ had for it. These two paintings showed a broken Christ being laid in a tomb i.e. the broken Body of Christ – the Church as it was before this new period of renewal and the future depicted by the person of Christ with Thomas who doubted and now believed. This could be an image for today. There is much that we can place in the tomb, or we can even linger in the tomb, or think that the Church is akin to a tomb but the call is to seek the Lord and let Him speak to us to alleviate our doubts and gives us a future. There is an old saying that goes as follows, ‘those who are filled with fear do not share their bread’. If the you are worried about what you are to eat tomorrow you are less likely to give something away. Worry and anxiety, which can at times be justified can leave us less willing to move forward together.
Whenever we, or the situations we are part of, are falling apart we have to revisit our spirituality. Where do we start then? Take Thomas as an example -if he was nothing else he was honest. He didn’t fall in with the crowd nor did he walk away, he looked to his soul and expressed himself well and in expressing himself the Lord response.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
(Thomas Merton)
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Homily
Easter Sunday
31st March 2024, Year B.
I couldn’t think of a nicer place in the world to be celebrating Easter. Easter is about a future and City Quay has one of the brightest futures imaginable. Easter tells us not to become prisoners of despair, denigration, denial or death. Resurrection is God’s answer to death telling us that death is not the end. This may be hard to believe especially if you are living in Gaza, Ukraine or in the Cobalt mines of Congo at present but wherever we are and whoever we are, death is not the end and it is the person of Jesus Christ whom we are privileged to know who teaches us this.
So everything we do has to preach and teach the promise of resurrection. How we celebrate liturgy, how we conduct ourselves and how we build our buildings has to shout out loud that there is hope, there is a way that looks beyond the narrowness of many world views. Though his church is in a tighter space, squashed in between large buildings it’s message can’t be squeezed lifeless. There’s enough of that happening. Even simple things like housing and health have become impossibilities to understand and enact. Government uses ‘soft-touch’ politics to evade responsibilities and the frustrated create new political alignments that are frightenedly familiar to political movements in the last century.
Many who visit this Church remark on the roof when they step inside. Similar in style to Edinburgh Castle giant beams rest on carved pieces of stone. Technically called a hammerbeam roof it has the look of the hull of a wooden ship or a boat. What better image for a Church!
I’ve been reading a book recently by a European theologian. He looks back on the last century and he reminisces on changes using the image of ships and boats. He talks about the great ship called Christianity that ruled the waves for many years and centuries. It was strong and full of sail and one couldn’t help but notice it and be impacted by its wake – for the large part there was nothing else on the water. It was basic, rugged and at times uncomfortable. However, it fell behind as, with the aid of technical advances, the more comfortable ship of modernity ruled the waves. The good ship Christianity became frayed at the edges and people chose to spend time and money with the newer model rather than keeping the older sturdy model in place.
This, in its turn, was overtaken by the good ship post-modernity with its relativisms, political correctness and commodification of things that shouldn’t be bought or sold. Throughout these latter eras secularism reigned supreme leaving us with a deprived imagination and a loss of soul that manifests itself in new searches for meaning and spiritual expression. The ‘death of God’ movement which has its hold on Ireland now is to a large extent dead itself and people admit to hopelessness and disorientation like never before.
Locally our world locally has become more intolerant and polarised speeded on my unaccountability and irresponsible freedoms on social media.
So what next – or is there a next? The writer who used the images of ships that have passed and have all run around gives us direction in his writings. Looking at the River Liffey outside bears this out. Whereas once the river was home to large ships and big boats now what one sees are smaller boats. Oars cut through water now rather than heavy engines and large sails. With all our large ships gone from view we are left to find safety in the equivalent of a life boat. It may be smaller, maybe doesn’t have the luxury and comfort of the bigger boat but it will still get us there. I cannot but help to note that some of the greatest adventures in the twentieth century happened in life boats. The perilous adventure of Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean survived because of life boats. Though they didn’t reach their target, i.e. the South Pole, not one of the crew were lost despite the fact that their ship, the Endurance, was crushed in the ice. It was on the 17th of April 1916 that the three lifeboats landed on Elephant Island having traversed the wildness of the Antarctic Oceans ultimate leading to the rescue of the entire crew.
So for us on this day of Easter when we look to the Risen Lord for hope and direction all as we can see is the loss of a glorious past and little hope of a future. Well, that is the case of we want to venture back into the past. The life boat is a good image as a sturdy one will get us to the shore that God intends for us at this point in time. Remember those large hulks of the past have largely washed up on rocky shores.
There are a few questions that will help us move forward as a Church namely who travels in the boat with us? What do we bring on board? How do we negotiate with follow travellers about destinations and luggage – we can’t bring everything we want!
Today we confirm Laura as she decides to step more deeply into her Christian journey. Laura is an example of many people who listen to their heart and see the emptiness in many of the promises fo the world. Laura we are both happy and privileged to have you step into this lifeboat and journey with us to new shores. We also have room for others who need hope and belonging and the joy of knowing God’s love for the world. This church is happy to be a life boat for those who are disheartened and ship wrecked and who have been disappointed with the larger ships. The past is the past and we are not for going back. Certainly not by addicting ourselves to images of the past.
I read an article by Liz Dodd a sister of Saint Joseph of Peace who supports young refugees who have been made homeless because they are fleeing domestic abuse[1]. “It’s been a long Lent,” she says. These people can’t claim universal credit because they have no independent immigration status away from the family member – and of course they are unable to work. The city council in Nottingham where she works has announced cuts that will destroy what few lifelines remain for vulnerable women, young people, refugees and unhoused people. And yet, as Liz writes, “God keeps showing up – in the garden on Easter morning, on the shores of Lake Galilee, in my kitchen, asleep in our prayer room, in the porch of the church – asking only for love, and giving only love in return”.
I leave with words of Pope Francis that give me direction today. “The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds. … And you have to start from the ground up”.[2]
[1] https://www.thetablet.co.uk/columnists/3/24185/the-hope-i-see-in-easter-is-the-god-showing-up-asking-only-for-love-and-giving-love-in-return?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Tablet%20newsletter%2028%20March%202024&utm_content=The%20Tablet%20newsletter%2028%20March%202024+CID_a03f0c5a7b7f6c21feef0a27581643db&utm_source=SxTabNews_v1&utm_term=Liz%20Dodd
[2] From “A Big Heart Open to God,” America magazine Sept. 19, 2013.
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Good Friday
Celebration of the Lord’s Passion 2024 Year B
A member of the 8 am congregation came to me two weeks ago and asked for permission to have a collection for work she is hoping to do over the summer with schools in Rwanda. It brought me back to a visit I made there a few years ago. The purpose of the visit was to examine how religious faith was shaped and changed by the experiences of people and how they recovered from such devastation.
A knock came to the door late at night. ‘Who is there?’ asked one of the sisters. ‘Jeanne’, was the reply. ‘How could this be?’ said the sister to herself – only the day before Jeanne had been killed along with five other girls. The soldiers came to the convent and the militia beat the girls to death with rocks. This happened on May 18, 1994, over a month since the genocide started. The next day the soldiers came back and they instructed the militia to bury the girls’ remains.
The sister who opened the door thought she was dreaming. Jeanne was dead as far as everyone was concerned. What’s more, she had been buried. Obviously the wounds had left her heavily concussed. Her hair was matted with clay and she collapsed as soon as she entered the room. More than likely, her body had been thrown on top of the others in the makeshift grave. Maybe the rain had washed away the soil or maybe even the convent dog who had been behaving mysteriously trying to attract attention had scraped away at the soil freeing Jeanne from the weight of inevitable death.
Her head was gashed and her left arm was badly damaged from the beatings. A trip to the hospital was out of the question; every day the soldiers and the militia called by to ‘finish off’ those who were still alive. The sisters brought Jeanne to a safe place. They cleaned her wounds with sterilised water, this was the only First Aid equipment available.
Jeanne and the sisters meet every year on the anniversary of the day she climbed or crawled from the grave. She leads the prayer and her invocation every year and indeed every day of her life, is, ‘Wherever you go, you are with God’.
Thirty years on the story of Rwanda is also a challenge to the Church at large and it is also a challenge to individual faith and belief as are the horrors of Gaza and the continuing conflict in Ukraine. Those whom I met among the survivors speak of a faith based on the word of God; they speak of the power of community and they shy away from association with the institutional Church. The experience of survivors begs for a Church that is more in tune with the prophetic, imaginative mind of God releasing them from prevailing political narratives that imprison our minds, hearts and souls. They know the importance of this as they live with a God who is not remote but a God who was at one with them in their suffering and continues to be at one with them now. Their God emerged from the deep, deep silence of chaos, death, and despair, a scenario which is very similar to the one faced by the friends of Jesus when his body was placed in the tomb.
The words of Jeanne ‘Wherever you go, you are with God’ stay with me to this day. Particularly when I start blaming God for things that befall me. Sometimes I think he’s more like a bouncer and should be keeping trouble form my door. However I’ve learnt from those I’ve met in life that ‘Wherever you go, you are with God’.
On this Good Friday this story has a deep relevance to us who believe. It’s not just that we are inspired by it and maybe encouraged to believe more it is something more wonderful. Today we remember that Jesus himself, our God, had to face the depth of abandonment, the inarticulation of doubt, the horror of abandonment and found that ‘wherever you go you are with God. Our God is not just a teacher, he is one of us. He shared the worst aspects of the human condition only to show us that the love of God triumphs.
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Palm Sunday 2024
In 1991 I spent time in the Australian Outback. Travelling through Alice Springs, climbing Ayres Rock (when one could do so) and spending time in Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks was an experience that stands to me today. I must admit though, that as atourist, I was deeply unappreciative of the depth of spirituality and connectedness that surrounded me. However, for me it was a deeply spiritual experience and I wanted to understand what the land was doing to my soul. I set about reading a lot about what one terms ‘aboriginal spirituality’and found to my amazement that their story-time did not oppose Christianity or colonialism but saw it rather as part of their unfolding story in the their larger story within thecosmos.Unlike Ireland one could not ignore the moods, the hostility, the beauty, the changing colours and the ever-permanent landscape that proved to be only a back-drop for an understanding of theology and God that I never could have imagined. I arrived a tourist, I left a pilgrim! What sustains the aboriginal communities is their sense of story and being part of the bigger story of the cosmos as it unfolds. When Pope John Paul visited Alice Springs in 1986 he said:Some of the stories from your Dreamtime legends speak powerfully of the great mysteries of human life, its frailty, its need for help, its closeness to spiritual powers and the value of the human person. They are not unlike some of the great inspired lessons from the people among whom Jesus himself was born.And here is an example of how this culture, that is over forty thousand years old, understands Jesus who is only a part of their story for the last two hundred and fifty years. Here are words from one of those communities simply entitled:Christ
To those who know him
And love himHe is the Dreaming.
His baptism in the JordonSanctified all rivers.
His drinking at the wellSanctified all waters.
He was lifted on the crossTo unite heaven and earth.
He is the Lord of the Sky WorldAnd the lord of the land.
His burial in the earth blessed the land forever.His rising from the deadSanctified the universeWe live in his story.
His sacred ritual is ours.
He is our Dreaming.
Christ told us To preach to all creatures.
His love is cosmic.
To me the most powerful line is ‘we live in his story’. It made me ask myself. ‘What story do I live in?’ I can claim to be a Christianyet live in a story that can, at times, be diametrically opposed to the Christian story. As a chaplain in a college I can be with people who have lost all sense of the story of their humanity. They can be worn out, burnt out, or stressed. There is a deep unconscious desire to be part of something that makes sense. Even part of a story that is life-giving. It is always pleasure to be part of that process.
Sometimes we can be prisoners of a story not our own or even one that is not good for us. We can be wrapped up in story of greed, or vengeance or image. Our entire story can sometimes be captured by others who sum us up in one word or category and we can become that word for instance: alcoholic, neurotic, victim, black, looser or other such words. Also we can find ourselves living through the eyes of how others see us we can be overcome with shame and lose sight of our value. Self-defeating monologues of your hopelessness, you’ll come to nothing, these words can destroy us. And ironically enough current narratives telling us we are wonderful and special can leave us vulnerable when challenges come our way.
The week that unfolds for us is a week that give us a real chance to step into a life giving story that can redeem us from any oppressive narrative we find ourselves in or encountering. We see in this Holy Week a journey of Jesus from hero to zero in human terms. We see betrayal, shame, corruption, being abandoned, isolation, suffering death and despair among other things. But we also see love, understanding, handing over, spiritual abandonment, fellowship, recognition, strength, trust. But none of these things become the whole story as what happens in the resurrection transcends every human word or category. Ultimately we find a story that transcends every human vicissitude including sickness, suffering and death. This Holy Week brings us into a way of beingthat we canonly imagine or dream about. The Easter dream when stones are rolled back are not one day events but every day events as we await for the ultimate stone to be rolled back when we leave our earthly life.
We all live within the dreaming of a single dreamer. Our lives are all stories In one great cosmic theme.So ‘what’s the story’. This week invites us to renew the sense that we are part of a cosmic and divine greatness.It is a story about transformation, belonging, light, hope and love. The reason why we cannot fully imagine this story is that this story begins and ends in the imagination of God. Let us step into the profoundest story of all time as this Holy Week walks us through it and let us rejoice that we are privileged to be part of something so amazing
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Saint Patrick’s Day
17th March 2024
I set an exam once in Ringsend Tec while teaching there. The subject matter was Saint Patrick which I thought I did a good job teaching. One of the returned scripts told me that ‘Saint Patrick got browned off on the mountain (Slemish) so he went to Dublin and took a plane back to England!’ At least he got the fact that Patrick was a migrant! Teaching is good for one’s humility!
When you look at the statues of Patrick and when you read his writings you have to admire a man that seemed to have it together. He’d been through a lot, dragged from his home, a slave minding pigs on a mountain, going home to people who were strangers to him presumably as he spent years away from them. If this was today he be keeping therapists very busy and he’d probably be on medication for post traumatic stress disorder! I’ve seen it in people who experienced difficult situations – they dig deep and find a deep inner strength to carry them forwards. Others collapse under the weight of the strain.
You could also presume that life was easy for Patrick from a faith perspective; that he came from a world that was more simple in terms of Christianity. Maybe we could think that it was a new Church full of energy and enthusiasm, uncomplicated, fraternal, supportive and unfractured. Following on from this we could say then that it was easy for him to believe – not like us today who have to put up with so many distractions, complications and conflicts.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. When you look back at his life and, apart from his own personal trauma things weren’t easy. He came to Ireland in 432. In 431 the creed we have at mass was reaffirmed at the Council of Ephesus. Why? Well there were arguments over when Jesus was just a man or if he was God. The Nicene creed was reaffirmed as an accurate expression of faith. It was like a statement of conclusions – an agreed document at the end of all their fighting. Another unfortunate legacy of that Council of Ephesus was bitterness and division. The meeting itself was said to be contentious, heated, and unfriendly. The decision to condemn certain heresies (Nestorianism) caused an immediate split in the Eastern Church, creating several splinter groups. Some of these survive today, including the Assyrian Church of the East and Chaldean Catholicism. No wonder that the poor man decided to get out of Rome where he’d been studying for many years and where he was missioned to go back to Ireland by Pope Celestine. Though the Pope did send Palladius before Patrick, he was banished by the King of Leinster. Furthermore, Rome and all its institutions after having a good run with Constantine, was brough to the ground by the Goths where, as St Jerome said, ‘Rome that was once capital of the world is now the grave of Roman people’.
The bottom line then is that if you are looking for the perfect time to follow God while on this earth is that there is no such thing. There are always hundreds of reason why one shouldn’t be a Christian, a Catholic or a mass-goer and similar reasons were on Patrick’s lap but rather than turning away he was drawn deeper into the mystery of God and the service of his kingdom. Furthermore, in the midst of all his faith he experienced a rich call of God to serve the Irish, the ones who stole his early childhood yet he willingly came back to minister to them.
The characteristics of his mission, as I see it were simply:
- He didn’t impose on people – he met them half way. He didn’t see them as atheists or pagans. He listened to their beliefs and he showed how Christianity complimented and enhanced what they already believed.
- In doing this he recognised that in every human heart there is a longing for mystery, a deeper life, somewhere to belong and connection with what lies beyond. He helped put form and shape on that. Though longing is often perceived to be a homeland it is a longing of the human heart for more. I remember reading a line from a nineteenth century medical report from the North of England where a group of doctors said that the Irish complain of a pain of the heart for which there is no medical cure.
- Thirdly in the midst of all the confusion in Rome he fixed on the person of Christ…not just Jesus as a nice human being as people often see him today but Christ – an expression of the Fathers love for the world with whom we can have a personal and deep relationship.
- Fourthly, he knew life was fragile. His prayer referred to as St. Patrick’s Breastplate sought the protection of God. From his many experiences he knew life’s vulnerability and that he was part of a bigger mystery giving him hope rather than reason to despair. Today with advances in technology and heightened individualism many think that they are untouchable yet we are vulnerable.
And so for us today in this world in which we live the story of faith is very much like Saint Patrick’s. There are many reasons why people shouldn’t or don’t believe but it comes down to choosing God and trusting his life giving story. Secondly, God doesn’t impose on us but works with us to create an unique relationship that can enhance the world and its people if we allow it to unfold. Thirdly, with all the side shows in the Church -debates about orthodoxy and Popes – just fix on the person of Christ. At the end of the day it is He who will welcome us to our reward not some dusty apologist or theologian. Fourthly, know we are not in control. We travel as fragile people in a world of challenges.
And so, with all this in mind, this prayer, written in the fifth century but maybe written for the twenty-first century, makes all the more sense –
May the Strength of God guide us.
May the Power of God preserve us.
May the Wisdom of God instruct us.
May the Hand of God protect us.
May the Way of God direct us.
May the Shield of God defend us.
May the Angels of God guard us.
– Against the snares of the evil one.
May Christ be with us!
May Christ be before us!
May Christ be in us,
Christ be over all!
May Thy Grace, Lord,
Always be ours,
This day, O Lord, and forevermore. Amen.
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5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Year B 2024
Fr. Alan Hilliard
Job is some epic. If he went to a doctor today with that mouthful about life he’d be put on Prozac immediately. Job is an amazingly insightful work which tries to understand the human condition and the possibility of God. He presents insights into friendship, family, property, money and death. Here we see him being stripped of all he owns and all he knows and is left with nothing. God and the devil had a game with the cunning devil saying if God inflicted enough on him that he tell God to get lost and believe no more. Eventually the crunch came and the devil thought he had won and Job’s reply was ‘if we take happiness from God’s hand must we not take sorrow too’. Job is an unusual book in the bible: no covenant, no law, no clear ten commandments. It’s a story laden with truth – it maybe even where Jesus got his idea for parables as carriers of truth beyond the law. Job is not even an Israelite but, rather, a God-fearing pagan who seeks the truth and will not compromise on it. Truth, we see in this epic, is the best ally of God.
I remember encountering truth in a prison cell while visiting a young man in a prison cell. He had, what was called then , the virus, and he suffered. He lost his confidence, felt a failure and now that he was off drugs, he knew how much pain and torment he caused his parents. I asked him one day when he was weakening and he knew he may not have had long left, did he believe in life after death? He said, without hesitating, and it was probably one of the most forthright answers he gave to any question I asked. He said ‘I do’ and I asked ‘why so positive with your answer?’ and he simply replied ‘there has to be something better than this’. His answer, his story and his life was Job like.
I felt sad that he had come to know God because of all his addiction, pain and hurt. It made me think of the way I had come to know God and it was through so much opportunity and goodness, kindness, example and love. I probably wouldn’t have answered as assuredly as he had. But God is bountiful and he often pours more on those who are in need.
There is no doubt that the ways of God are a mystery as Job outlines. How some come to know him and others find it difficult to even acknowledge the possibility of God can take a life time to ponder and we’d only end up stressed thinking about it. The characteristic of Job and that young man was handing it all over and trusting in the possibility of God. (It’s high time that you started letting go. Matthews song)
One of the Churches greatest, St. John of the Cross, who lived in the 16th century and had a very tough childhood. He has given me great insight into the nature of faith and belief. When he became a Carmelite he became part of the renewal of the order and this caused a lot of change and disruption which put him on the wrong side of a lot of people. Like Job he was tormented. His fellow Carmelites tried to sway him by demanding obedience, the offer of allurements and the threat of punishment. They eventually imprisoned him in a cell that was only fifty to sixty square feet with a little shaft of light entering it. The tiny room was formerly a toilet. Somehow in that place he grew in intimacy with God and felt God’s presence very closely. His writings during this times are extraordinary. On one occasion he says ‘Now that the face of evil more and more bares itself, so does the Lord bare his treasures all the more’. He escaped by tying sheets together and made his way out of an upper window and made his way to a convent where they gave him refuge. He shared his poetry composed while in prison and the nuns knew that they were hearing something sublime.
One of his greatest lines which he used continuously with his novices was ‘What we need most in order to make progress is to be silent before this great God with our appetites and with our tongue, for the language he best hears is silent love’.
These words have a particular significance these days of our Patron Brigid. Sometimes I don’t recognise her and the causes she is aligned to. The eight century writings focused on her reputed miracles which may or may not have happened. More contemporary depictions have her more associated with paganism and pre-Christian lore. The only things we can be certain of is that she existed, was a Christian, and her most notable traits were ones described by John of the Cross as ‘silent love’. She was incredibly charitable and demanded the same of her community of sisters. She understood Irish ways and incorporated them into God’s ways and helped people understand God’s ways. We pray that she will help us in these days as we struggle to name and find God in our culture. As a people of faith we have to start dreaming again and like Job trust in god’s providence and presence.
Let’s think about it, let’s pray about it and lets do something about it
Homily 4th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Year B 2024
Fr. Alan Hilliard
A number of years ago I attended a conference in Melbourne Australia. It related to World Religions and there was a specific section on Indigenous people’s. I was enthralled by an leader from the Inuit community – we often refer to them as Eskimo’s. Though they live simple lives it has it’s complexities. They are herders and nomadic so they walk with their animals, caribou, more commonly known as Reindeers as the move from feeding ground to feeding ground. He was particularly incensed about one thing that happened in to his tribe a number of years previously. Because people are herder and tribes people we often fail to give them credit for their incredible intelligence. Though many have not attended university their knowledge and understanding of the world is admirable. For instance because they are nomadic the spoke five languages so they could speak to people in the various countries they passed through while herding their deer. Their tribe has travelled the same lands for centuries, knowing where to stop, start, feed and rest. There was one spot that they crossed over the years. It was a frozen lake that was part of the trail. A few years previous as they were crossing the ice gave way and they lost hundreds of deer in a most tragic and frightening way. This had never happened before…if it did it would have been in the folk lore of his people. This was, as far as he was concerned, the impact of global warming and he was worried for his people as their leader. But he was how he spoke about his people and his role as leader that intrigued me more than anything.
Another indigenous man turned to him and spoke a little more about leadership and it’s burdens saying that he was not yet a leader and he wished he would not become one. When asked why he replied that when you are a chief you don’t own anything – if one of my people walks by me and they have no coat and it is cold I have to give them mine. I have said repeatedly, if you really want to be loved, sell ice cream—but as a leader, there will be times and situations when you have no choice but to play dentist and inflict pain[1].
We’ve come to associate leadership with power, status, influence and privilege and reward. There is much goodness among many of our leaders but across out world the important quality for leadership is the one spoken about in today’s Gospel. We are told ‘that Jesus spoke with authority’. Did he bang the pulpit, did he quote his qualifications, did he tell them how much money he had, or did he boast about the number of connections he had in Jerusalem or back in Galilee, did he tell of his pension fund? Pay brutal -benefits heavenly! His authority was unlike that which people experienced from the scribes and pharisees – his authority was his integrity and authenticity – that is what the scripture scholars tell us. Furthermore in the first reading Moses is about to hand over his mantle and is outlining the job description which is basically to stick to the things of God. So for the Christian, leadership is somehow becoming the word of God, being Christlike in our world today. It is not to seek after self – it is not to chase after power and privilege or to be empire building in a material sense. However our present world has us more venerable so we may find ourselves being nervous and anxious about these things. We have to watch this because it can do us great damage. As the psychologist Eric Fromm says; ‘Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction’. Greed over land has destroyed families and communities and it is now destroying people who live in Gaza and other parts of the world.
Christianity holds the greatest model for leadership in our world. It starts with the integrity and authenticity of those who step into power be they Inuit or world presidents.
Jesus’ inner world was manifest in his teaching and his actions. people say his inner and outer world was one and the same – this is precisely what authenticity and integrity is. The worst type of leader we can have is one whose inner world is committed to power, privilege, greed or destruction and yet their outer world present something different. They present as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth. Our own John O’Donohue says “Each one of us is the custodian of an inner world that we carry around with us. Now, other people can glimpse it from [its outer expressions]. But no one but you know what your inner world is actually like, and no one can force you to reveal it until you actually tell them about it.”
So let’s think about it, let’s pray about it and let’s do something about it.
[1] Kets de Vries, Manfred F. R.. The CEO Whisperer (The Palgrave Kets de Vries Library) (p. 146). Springer International Publishing. Kindle Edition.
3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
21st Jan 2024
Fr Alan Hilliard
The prophet Jonah would have opted for a heart attack rather than going to Nineveh to get them to change their ways. He tried everything he could to avoid taking on this task. What he had to say wasn’t popular and the was afraid they’d shoot the messenger. When he decided to adopt the task,however, he didn’t hold back on the truth. We need Jonah’s today – people who will speak what is true without fear to their own personal cost and standing. A lot of the rhetoric of journalism and politics has descended into ‘what do the people want to hear and then we will go on to tell them’. To a large extent so called investigative journalism is a farce and it tends to look at one side of any situation and doesn’t dig deep enough to find the real truth of what is going often coming back to people with populist half-truths. But it appears that the world today is happy to skim the surface of things rather than dive deeply into the important things. The culture of snorting coke is a way to keep on the surface and live superficial lives while the machines of power trundle away making mincemeat of us. Today there are Nineveh’s all about us…cities falling apart. Pope Francis, in the first few months he was made pope went to visit the bishops of Italy in Florence and his message was simple ‘our common home is falling apart’. Jonah, for a long time, chose to look the other way but there are times when reality looks us straight in the face and we are challenged to respond but it’s easier not to.
What is real and what are the myths. There is an myth going about that we are all better off that we were years ago. I wonder about that. Maybe there is more income in households but that’s probably because there are two earners in each household where one used to suffice and they are both worker harder and longer than ever before. This is not what God wants for the world or for us. The economist J.K. Galbraith said ‘Under capitalism man exploits man, under communism it’s just the opposite’.
No wonder then why it took quite a while for Jonah to do what he was asked. People didn’t want to hear what he had to say and he didn’t want to tell them! Fortunately or unfortunately his addiction to running the other way ceased and he discovered what it is to be a prophet. The best definition of prophet is ‘the passion of God’ and Jonah rediscovered his passion for God and God’s ways. Rather than looking into the distractions and escapes he looked into God, found him, became passionate about God’s message and got on with it. More importantly for us and for our learning today is that he became remarkably more content with his life and his lot. You can’t be happy if your supress that which you are passionate about. If you live a distracted life and lack a focus on what really drives us, what is deep within us – we fall apart. If you spend too much time of the superficial, neglecting the true self anxiety and depression are the order of the day. There is no doubt that part of our society’s problems is that it has lost touch with the things of God and I think part of the passion of this place is keeping this Church open that all who pass by have that chance to enter these doors and find time to develop their passionate relationship with God. Its giving a quiet opportunity in the madness and allowing people to nurture their soul and focus on things that matter.
Talking about focusing – a friend of mine said to me the other day that he had to go to the opticians as he was having fierce trouble with his eyes – he then said to me – ‘do you know who I bumped into?’ I replied ‘no’ to which he replied ‘everybody!’. Keeping in the theme of Jonah looking the other way and then looking things in the eye and becoming the passion of God here is a little reflection for you on ways we can look at our lives and the world. There are three ways of viewing life and ultimately God, these are, glaring, glancing and gazing.
Glaring is where we look with suspicion on everything. Whatever situation we are in there is someone trying to do us. It is probably nurtured by previous hurt in our lives and we live out of fear and listen to voices of fear. Many leaders or aspiring leaders play into this today. It is no accident that fear and paranoia is the theme of many political platforms today.
Glancing on the other hand is probably where most of us operate from. We live on the surface and we retain ourselves as the central reference point but it carries with it a laziness, a lack of curiosity about the world, creation and others. Those who live at this level are often ones who haven’t suffered or haven’t truly loved and lost or they haven’t integrated suffering and loss into their life’s journey. In short they will never really encounter their own depth or the depth of others.
The third way of viewing the world is called gazing -its something you fall into rather than choose. It’s as if you get out of the way of things and view the world with appreciation and gratitude…in its truest sense it is the very art and act of loving and you can love the broken side of everything and everyone. Gazing can absorb the darkness of life rather than fighting it. Gazing long enough, loving long enough turns you into the good, the true and the beautiful.
So the secret is don’t waste your life on avoidance by glaring and glancing at things – gaze at the good and be changed by it – become passionate about the gift of life that we share.
In the words of Nelson Mandela ‘may your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears’.
Let’s think about it, let’s pray about it and let’s do something about it.
Homily 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Year B 2024
Fr. Alan Hilliard
This time last year I was worried about my aunt. She was the most difficult thing about me being away. She was ninety-two, never married, was in a nursing home for nearly six years and I was minding her house as best I could. She had a beautiful nature, when I’d talk about Covid and how difficult it was she’d add ‘and the war years were tough too’. The phrase that captured her though was one that is ingrained in my heart. No matter what the doctor would say about her demise and her move away from her independence she always say ‘Thank God for so much!’ I was the only person she asked for whenever she needed anything.
She was born in 1930 and was two years older than my mother. They were inseparable. For me heading to the united States was worrying. When I landed I booked my first flight home with the primary purpose of visiting her. I wasn’t to know it but that flight coincided with her death. I sat with her for two nights and the end of the day of the 7th of February after the nursing saying she had a good few days left in her. This worried me as I was due to fly back the following Sunday. A few hours later at 11.30 pm I sat and prayed night prayer. I was working on my computer in her room. And my gut just decided to say night prayer.
I sat with her told her I was saying night prayer and added that night prayer is commending us into the night in the hope of a new dawn. We rest with God that we can rise with him. I came to the end of night prayer and the words are ‘the Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end’ When I said those words she gave her last breath. We had her funeral on the Friday and I got on my flight the following Sunday back to the US. When I was back in class the next day I told my students the story and whenever I am in touch with them they always say it was one of the profoundest things they ever heard. The picked up on the themes of hearing the voice of God and responding. The course they were doing was reflective one and they were looking at what they were called to be in life. Where they’d be happy and how they’d make the world a better place. Call and response. They and I learnt that we need to hear the voice of God and respond to His promptings – they are there for us.
Today we listen to readings about God calling. The first reading from Samuel is an interesting one but what is more interesting is what is left out. There is a line that precedes the reading in the original biblical text – you can check it out when you go home – and it is as follows ‘The boy Samuel was ministering to the lord in the presence of Eli; it was rare for the Lord to speak in those days and visions were uncommon’ The same could be said of today it is rare to hear to the voice of God and there are many vision that are drug induced but few that seem to be of God. And yet God does work but do we hear that voice and see manifestations of Him enough or are there too many distractions. Samuel heard Gods voice as too did John, Andrew and Simon. This was time too when the voice of Roman occupation was the one obscuring the voice of God yet his Son was walking the roads with him. For Samuel the Philistines were beating the drum and the people suffered. In any time in any space there are always noises to drown out what is important to us and God’s voice suffers but He still speaks.
One great disservice we’ve done is we have made the call of God a burden. Even in a parish when one talks about the need to grow and develop a place like this the priest is seeing to be looking for people to ‘do things’. The call of a vocation comes with the price of seeming loneliness in a life of celibacy or chastity. We’ve translated the call of God into something we must bear like a cross. There are times in life where we have to bear crosses and we ask for God’s help and support. This is true but not always the case. The call of God has to be to understood in its truest sense. A man who preached only a few yards from here in our neighbouring parish on St Stephens green and who is now a saint .John Henry Newman said ‘Growth is the only evidence of life’. Samuel, Andrew, John and Simon were called not to carry a burden but were at a stage in their lives where they were being called into a new and exciting space. We can stagnate. I remember man who used to smoke two hundred cigarettes and drink fifteen pints a day and then go home to his mammy for his dinner. One day he saw his life for what it was and like Samuel, Andrew, John and Simon Peter he realised his life was going no where and he moved from stagnation to life. In some ways my aunts call to enter the presence of god was the same. Her life had stagnated here. Her dementia was affecting her well-being, she was weakening and losing her dignity and the call was to new life – fully alive in God. My part and my call was to pay attention to the promptings of God and respond and be there and help her on hear her final call. It was a lesson to me to pay attention to my deepest self and to hear what Gods wants for me so that I can release myself from the feeling that what Gods call us to is burdensome. God is always calling us to a place that is more fulfilling and more life giving. That no matter what happens we can say ‘Thank God for so much’.
I read a line this week from the great mystic and monk Thomas Merton that fits with these thoughts today.
You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognise the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope’.
So let’s think about it, let’s pray about it and lets do something about it.
Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord
7th January 2024 Year B
Fr Alan Hilliard
There’s a story told of life in tenement Dublin set on a summers evening. The lads were out playing football. The jumpers were down on the path and it was 5-4 where the first to get to six were the winners. Neck and neck would be the only way to describe it. The mother of two of the lads stuck her head out the window three stories up and shouted ‘come in for yeser tea’. ‘There in a minute ma’, was the reply with little intention to act on it. Five minutes later the ma roared out the window again to which came the same reply.
The game went to 5-5 and everything was been thrown at the ball and the other players. There were bumps, bruises, scratches and blood, but the determination was steely. Eventually the mother let another roar out the window, ‘will yes for god’s sake come in for yeser rashers and sausages before they go cold’. One of the sons, despite being focused on getting the next goal and without taking his eye off the ball roared. ‘who are trying to cod ma, me or the neighbours?’
I often think of that story when I see the posts that some people put on social media. ‘who are you trying to cod, me or the neighbours or your friends’. We are being codded up to the gills these days. A world that thinks we are being connected to one another is only driving us further apart socially. I’ll never forget someone I know screaming in disbelief when he said ‘I can’t understand why only thirty people came to my 40th birthday when I have three thousand facebook friends!’
Research suggests that the Germans are the loneliest people in Europe second only to the British. According to the author and management guru Charles Handy, only 58% of people in Britain feel connected to people in their locality. One in eight has no one to call on and says that TV or a pet are their best friend. Half of people over seventy five live alone and about one million say they often go for a month without speaking to anyone, apart from people at the checkout. Funny enough medical science says it is more dangerous to be alone than to be obese. Loneliness can probably be best described and not mattering much to anyone or of going unnoticed in the world. So who is codding who? The advances in interconnectivity has never been greater but neither has loneliness.
This is the total antipathy of today’s feast. Baptism is an invitation into community. It is interesting that less are choosing to have their children baptised and maybe they are unknowingly buying into the cult of loneliness and isolation that pervades the world. Baptism tells us we need to belong, that we are worthwhile and we should never feel that we don’t matter or we are not noticed. If you walk down this quay, unless you are a regular visitor to someone’s house this is the only building you can come into and sit down without having to pay in, to buy something or use a swipe card. Importance in the world’s eyes today is not cultivated by your Christian identity in Baptism but by other indices that are created by the market place. You are important if you part with money or you are owned by somebody. Here in this Church before god you are just important. The Gospel sees Jesus being told ‘You are my beloved, my favour rests on you’. God says the same to each of us. ‘you are my beloved, my favour rests on you’. Maybe we don’t feel like that today for a variety of reasons, but if you don’t it shouldn’t matter because we, to whom you belong, hold this great truth for you when you can’t believe if for yourself. Know that the clouds will pass and you will be grateful that this community held onto it for you. Churches, not so much the buildings but its people and its presence as well as that of families can be nature’s breakdown service as well as its pool of residual love when its needed -without cost and without the need of a swipe card. These things can’t be provided on line – it takes effort on all our parts.
In the week ahead when we encounter something that makes us feel important ask ourselves what’s in it for them. In some cases it’ll be nothing but in many cases there may be an ulterior motive. Value those things that and people that reinforce our importance where there is not gain for those doing it. Like God saying to his son, those moments tell us we are beloved and God’s favour rests on us. There are times when nobody is trying to cod us…they are just letting us be who we are meant to be.
The first reading today from Isaiah tells us to live where there is life. Last year I went with a friend of mine to visit the grave of the great writer John O’Donohue. He wrote the famous book, a best seller called Anam Chara. On his grave stone were the following words:
‘May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more’
Let’s think about it…lets pray about it and lets do something about it.
Feast of the Holy Family
31st December 2023
Fr Alan Hilliard
It is a relief to know that we have passed what we call mid-winter, and the days will get longer though it is only by two minutes per day. My grandfather used to say -winter is passed there is a cock step in the day now. Mind you I’d like to press fast forward! This is my impatience and, in our Gospel, today we see two characters who are patient and are rewarded for their patience. We have Simeon, ‘an upright and devout man’ who asked not to see death until he met ‘Christ the Lord’. We also have Anna who spent her days in the Temple serving God.
Though our Churches may not be as busy as they were we still have people, who, like Simeon and Anna, come here and both bring and find God in this holy place. Though there is reason for despair at times there is always hope which lies in the those who know and serve God and who wait to see him anew and have their promises fulfilled. Both Simeon and Anna are examples to us because unlike many today their lives were not aimless. They had purpose. Many today just bob along. Both people were caught up in a mission. Every day they woke up they had a worthwhileness. They did not get lost in darkness, but they were people of the light.
I don’t know if you remember the poet, Brendan Kennelly. I would often meet Brendan on Parnell Street, while he was on his walk around Dublin. Most times he’d be wearing his long raincoat or a smart sports jacket depending on the day’s weather. His head would most often be uncovered bringing attention to his wavy curls and his endearing smile. We’d often chat about things; he loved a bit of uncomplicated banter.
The literary agent, Richard Pine, tells us that Brendan once described poetry as ‘something written by blind people groping for the light’. In this sense then, most of us are poets, as we seek light, even enlightenment on this hallowed journey we refer to quite simply as life.
However, darkness can descend on us personally in moments of despair or anxiety. It too can envelope us socially as institutions collapse leaving us fraught and frightened. Darkness can also enshroud us when a country is plunged into war or famine. Brendan tells us that if we wish to be poets that this is not achieved by being mere passive recipients of adverse situations, we can reach for the light. This involves getting up, moving, thinking, reflecting, searching even seizing – otherwise we risk remaining victims of circumstances often not our own creation. The inspiration for not remaining victims of circumstance are our two characters in the Gospel; Simeon and Anna. Indeed, daily we are reminded that even the darkest night holds a hint of the dawn.
I marvel at how Brendan found words, they are filled with hope and destiny. They are a gift of a wise man wisdom of a blind man bringing light to our darkness. Many of his words encourage us to sit up and begin again – even in those moments when we don’t feel we can.
Though we live in a world that dreams of ending
That always seems about to give in
Something that will not acknowledge conclusion,
Insists that we forever begin.
Brendan Kennelly
In the spirit of today’s Gospel let not just think of what we are doing for the New Year. Let’s find a purpose and then look at how we achieve it. Let us pray for one another that the Lord will deal kindly with us on our search this year as He did with Sarah in our first reading. Let us also have the confidence that is referred to in our second reading that God can even raise the dead so he can do much more for us.
Take time to reflect and pray and work out the purpose for our lives at this stage of our existence. Let us not be blind people groping for the light but rather people like Simeon and Anna and even Brendan who are bringers of the light in a world where even as the days get longer the world can appear to be a darker place.
Christmas Day 2023
25th December 2023
Fr Alan Hilliard
There is a great story told of a man who was after having a great night out and was left wandering home through the streets of Dublin in the early morning as the sun was beginning to reach into the darkness and the sky had a tinge of brightness. He figured that a nice pint in an early house would finish off his night perfectly and would most likely have finished him off too.
He made his way to a certain part of the city where he believed such an establishment existed. He was somewhat delighted when he saw a queue and made his way into the establishment. When he got in the door he expected to hear ‘what are you having?’ and rather unexpectedly heard someone shout to him, ‘have you found Jesus, sir?’ To which he replied, ‘I don’t know’. You see rather than queuing to get into an early house he ended up, unbeknownst to himself in a queue for a Pentecostal church that was having an early morning dawn service with a visiting American evangelist. The preacher man was rather persistent seeing the rather dishevelled state of man who had just pulled an all-nighter. ‘Come up here to find Jesus’, he said. Somewhat puzzled and need the assistance of people as he made his way to the top of the hall the preacher pushed his head down into a large vat of water in which he struggled for air and was probably half hoping it was imbued with alcohol as he hadn’t clue what was going on. When he was brought up for air, the preacher asked ‘have you found Jesus now sir?’ To which he replied with a faint and rather breathless ‘don’t think so’. He was dunked again for an even longer period and when he was pulled forth he was asked the same question; ‘have you found Jesus now sir’ to which he asked as he pointed to the rather large basin of water, ‘are you sure you lost in him in here?’
I am quite sure that, if we haven’t lost Jesus he certainly isn’t as present as he was to us as a society and a world. It’s harder, more difficult for him to find space among us just as it was difficult for him to find a place to be born. The poet Seamus Heaney put it very well when, three years before he died, he was reflecting life in Ireland, the country he loved and represented so well on the international stage. He said ‘the greatest single tragedy in my life is the loss of the sense of the transcendent and its implications for human destiny’. Over the years, as a poet, he noticed the loss of the sense of God among people and in society generally and what worried him more was the impact of this in daily interactions – that’s what he means by the ‘implications for human destiny’.
Losing the sense of God is to neglect the foundations of society. The foundations of Christian society are based on love of self, love of neighbour, mercy and equality modelled greatly on how Jesus manifested these qualities in daily interactions that we see in the Gospels. There is no other reference point for them. If they are lost to us they are replaced with characteristics such as greed, selfishness and a certain anarchy which is every person for themselves. Furthermore there are many philosophies that are based on vengeance and a model of justice that’s about justice for me and not for the other which are the basis of many of the actions in the middle East presently.
At a personal level losing the sense of God is often something to be alarmed about – it is part of our human spiritual journey. We often doubt the finest things we can even doubt love – we can wonder if someone really loves us and maybe even feel they don’t. We can also lose the ability to love others and even loose the belief that we can we loved. The more I read about the lives of saints I realise that they can lose, on occasion, the sense of God too often referred to as the dark night of the soul. But they trust and they come back into his presence.
St John of the Cross said that there are three ways of praying:
- Vocal and with words and thoughts
- Meditative when we consider ideas and concepts about God
- Contemplative where we savour love and the presence of God without words
Just look to the crib. There are the three types of prayer going on, shepherds with words and thoughts saying all the things that strangers say. Joseph maybe meditative, thinking over his dreams and how he’ll get the child and his mother to safety. And then there is Mary just contemplating this beautiful presence – savouring her child, savouring the love that exists in these moments. When we come here today who are we most like – the strangers babbling a few words, Joseph trying to work things out or like Mary bathing in love. Sometimes God disappears – he does it to help us grow up and seek him at higher levels – he wants us to stop babbling and to deepen our life with him. We want to be busy babbling and he wants us just to sit and receive. To quote John of the Cross again ‘contemplation is nothing else than a secret and peaceful and loving inflow of God’
Contemplation is not just time with God it is about being a better presence in our world. One great writer, in his book on leadership says
Contemplation helps us look out on the world with a humble attitude of accepting that we are not fully in control; that we will never have all the relevant data to make a decision or know exactly what to do in every situation; that there will always be more to see, to learn, and to experience in our lived moments of leadership. But instead of growing despondent at this awareness, we can instead use contemplation to help us focus our attention on our lived experiences in this moment[1].
This is not an early house but its open all hours! One of the greatest joys here is keeping this Church open and see how many people come in and out to say a prayer but they do more than that, sometimes without realising it. Be still before the crib, if not tonight on another day. Reflect on whether you are shepherd, are like Joseph or like Mary. Find calm, find peace and know you are loved. Find strength in the words of St John of the Cross.Have you found Jesus? If anyone is seeking God, then God is seeking that person much more. (St John of the Cross)
Let’s think about it, let’s pray about it and lets do something about it.
[1] Boland Patrick, 2023, The Contemplative Leader; Uncover the Power of Presence and Connection.
4th Sunday in Advent
Year B 2023
Rev. Alan Hilliard
Traditionally this Sunday of Advent comprises a shorter homily than usual or even the most joyous thing -no homily! This is particularly the case when you are back tomorrow or tonight for Christmas Day celebrations. Tonight/today. I want to focus on one line from our psalm. In actual fact I will dwell on the line I will sing forever of you love, O Lord.
This mass is offered for my mother and father in thanksgiving for their goodness to us. I have no doubt that they have received their heavenly reward. Mam died on the 22nd of December 2018 and dad one year later to the day at five past midnight. It was as if he chose that night to tells us all how deeply connected they were.
His last year with the little sisters of the poor was and extraordinarily gracious one. He got on well there but he was weakening and his dementia was getting worse. Often at night he’d ask, ‘where’s your mother?’ and I’d say ‘think for a minute dad’ and he puzzle for a bit and say, ‘that’s right, she died, didn’t she’ There’d be a sadness in him of course and I’d say. ‘dad the last great act of love for you is to let mam go first; what’d she be like if you died first’. He’d reply, ‘oh she’d be gone loco – through the roof’. Mam didn’t do death well – every day triggered the memory of her own mothers untimely death when mam was a teenager. I’d say to dad, ‘thank for loving her so much for letting her go first because we wouldn’t be able for her’. He’d shake my hand and say ‘thanks son’.
Love has many manifestations. Often we see it as feeling good and feeling that we have everyone’s attention. Often love often involves giving of oneself for another even at ninety two years of age. This is the mystery of Incarnation. It’s what we truly celebrate at Christmas that in the mystery we call God there was a wonderous moment of self-giving by God for each and every one of us. Many today don’t get it because many haven’t experienced the need to give of themselves -Love is only something you receive – this is one side of the coin. This evening let us think of those moments we have given of ourselves for others and let’s take time when we offer the bread and wine to think of those who have given of themselves for us. I’ll be thinking of my mother and father as will others of my family here tonight. We remember too my brother Paul, who if anything gave generously of himself for others throughout his life.
3rd Sunday in Advent Year B
City Quay Church
Fr Alan Hilliard ADM
I am fortunate to have great priest friend with whom I share many adventures. This time ten years ago we were in Rwanda with a group of researchers. I remember him sharing with me a memory of his time in El Salvador. As some of you may know this country was ravaged by a Civil War between 1975 and 1992. Awful atrocities were inflicted on the people. One such manifestation of this was that when the government forces would capture rebels they decapitated them and impaled their heads on the railings of buildings in the centre of San Salvador to discourage involvement – it had the opposite effect. Bodies were disposed of. Dan went on to tell me of a time he visited there where he met a religious sister who took it upon herself, as her ministry, to find the families of those who were slaughtered and bring their heads back to them for burial. It sounds awful but remember that for many others their children just went missing and they never knew if they were dead or alive. Having some remains meant that there was closure – closure in the midst of immense sadness and tragedy. Many people know what it is to lose a child but not to have a remains to mourn and grieve is an unending grief and the permanent thought exists that one day they could come home.
The sister went back to the family a few weeks after the funeral. The mother was at a bible meeting and she was obviously struggling with the tragic loss of her son. The sister shared the story of John the Baptist in the context of the visitation when Mary went to meet her cousin Elizabeth, John the Baptist’s mother, saying that Mary and Elizabeth were obviously very close and gave great support to one another. Why else would Mary, pregnant and distressed travel that distance. They were cousins and soul friends. Sister went on to say that John the Baptist was beheaded by Herod and that Mary most likely went to Elizabeth to support her at this time. Elizabeth faced not just the loss of her son but the reality of a horrendous death similar to what that lady in El Salvador experienced. The lady whose son had just died looked at the sister and simply said with a visible relief in her body ‘Somebody understands’.
John the Baptist wasn’t the type of man that you’d like your daughter to bring home. Neither, from the looks of things, would he be the type of guy you’d go to a restaurant with but he was sincere in his desire to serve God and let people know that God understands. He was like a two sided coin one side was immersed in a rugged humanity that showed us that God was comfortable with us and on the other side he was immersed in the life, love and energy of God in a humble fashion. These two sides joined together present to us a God who understands us as we are.
- If we struggle with our sinfulness, shame, low self-esteem, depression, God understands.
- If we are wracked with situations of exploitation, blackmail, bullying, God understands.
- If we like Mary are troubled by pregnancy or like Elizabeth, having to face the loss of a child in horrific circumstances, God understands.
- If we are broken into smithereens with grief and loss, God understands.
- If you are more worried about Christmas than welcoming it, God understands.
- If we struggle with belief and have lost touch with the divine love that’s behind it all, God understands.
- If we are struggling with addiction or recovery and are facing demons daily, God understands.
- If we are impatient and want everything fixed and right, God understands.
I’m sure that when Mary and Elizabeth met whether it be about Johns death or any other thing and embraced – they didn’t have to say ‘I understand’ – they instinctively knew it of one another. Just think of those moments in your life when you’ve had those embraces and in those moments you know that the other person ‘got it’ without you having to say anything. Think for a moment of one, or even two – I’m not going to ask you to share anything. Think of situations whereupon someone, when you were delicate, tried to tell you everything you should do and what they did when they were in the same situation. Now go back to those situations where you were just embraced and understood – without words. Which was the more life giving?
God understands – we are permanently in his embrace. Let’s now think about it , let’s just feel it.
Advent is a season of time to immerse ourselves in God’s embrace so we can celebrate the greatest event in history where God became one of us on a journey of mutual understanding. His understanding of us the spark of light in our darkness that grows stronger as we draw close to him. Some people are a testament to that fact one of whom is Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was a theologian and a Lutheran pastor. Bonhoeffer began his ministry by leading a confirmation class of forty-two rowdy boys in a working class neighbourhood in Berlin, and he ended it by giving solace and spiritual counsel to those who shared his life behind prison walls. While in prison in 1945, after being arrested by the Nazi’s for his outspokenness, he wrote a beautiful piece about Advent. Remember he was thirty nine years of age and was sitting in prison when writing this piece – lets light our candle on the wreath while we listen to this and pray for the courage to sit in God’s graceful embrace
The world lives by the blessing of God and of the righteous and thus has a future. Blessing means laying one’s hands on something and saying, despite everything, you belong to God. This is what we do with the world that inflicts such suffering on us. We do not abandon it; we do not repudiate, despise or condemn it. Instead we call it back to God, we give it hope, we lay our hand on it and say: May God’s blessing come upon you, may God renew you; be blessed, world created by God, you who belong to your Creator and Redeemer.
Let’s think about it, let’s pray about it and lets do something about it.
2nd Sunday in Advent
9th December 2023
Fr Alan Hilliard ADM
I was working in Florida once when a parishioner asked me did I ever scuba dive. I replied in the negative. He invited me to try. God bless my innocence. We headed out into the open Atlantic and I sat on the side of a boat and disappeared into the depths without much induction as they call it. Breathing, swimming ,moving, became very difficult and to crown it all off I kept going around in circles. No matter how much I moved my hands and feet I just kept going round and round. It wasn’t until I made my way back to the surface and climbed into the boat that I discovered I’d lost a flipper! So only one foot was working.
In later years I went to the Barrier Reef while working in Sydney. I went to meet two great friends who were on holidays. The Barrier Reef is stunning and of course the inevitable invitation came to scuba dive. I got flash backs to my one flipper episode in the Atlantic and was having panic attacks. However the beauty of the reef was not going to escape me. We found a small company and they told us that we wouldn’t be jumping off a boat but we’d travel to a little island, sit on the beach and venture into the water from there. We’d spend a sometime in the water and if we were comfortable we could journey on and do the long trip. We landed and ventured into the water complete with all the apparatus. Surprisingly, I headed in one direction – there was no going around in circles. It was magnificent. The fish life, the rather large fish, amazingly coloured tropical fish, huge clams were stunning and it was warm. When eventually we went back to shore I said that was great ‘when will we do the long trip’. The instructor replied ‘you’ve just done it”. I count the experience and one to the most amazing of my life. The beauty I encountered brought me into an amazingly transcendent place.
To do this I had to move on from my past and embrace the now. This is not unlike the life of faith today in. Ireland the past was troubled – the present may not be too great either but their reason why our churches are empty is because of decades of abuse and mismanagement and or course an increasingly secular world wherein God’s voice is silenced. The world of John the Baptist wasn’t perfect either but he could see that there was one among the mess that was the answer to a lot of problems. John said ‘I am not worthy to tie the straps on his sandals’. The first reading tells us that to find ‘The Way’ we have to move mountains and fill in valleys. But if we trust we’ll find a kindly shepherd who will hold us in is arms.
In the old testament when the temples collapsed shepherds always appeared. Those shepherds led people from chaos to certainty, from fear to consolation and from doubt to something a little more certain. One shepherd for me in these times is the theologian Tomáš Halík. He is Czech by birth and is a theologian and priest. He was born in 1938 and converted to Catholicism at eighteen years of age. He is a highly intelligent man and after the Velvet Revolution he became an advisor to Vaclav Havel, the new and inspiring president of the Czech Republic. Following a speech at his graduation, Halík was viewed with suspicion by the Russians and could not give lectures or teach so he became a psychotherapist. He studied for priesthood secretly and was ordained on the 21st of August 1978. For his first eleven years as a priest he said mass at kitchen tables and in other places that were not Churches. He couldn’t wear vestments. Covid reminded him of those days when as he says;
For one thing it reminded me strikingly of those eleven years when I served “clandestinely” as a secretly ordained priest at the time of communist persecution. In those days I also celebrated Easter in private homes in a circle of my closest associates, at an ordinary table with no chasuble or golden chalice, no organ or incense[1].
These years of confinement gave him some amazing insights
And for another, I experienced it as a sort of prophetic vision of warning: unless the church (and not only our “Roman Church”) does not undergo the profound reform called for by Pope Francis—not only a structural reform but above all a turning to the depths, to the very heart of the gospel—then empty and locked churches will not be the exception but rather the rule[2].
Halík, through his insights into his own persecution and that of the Church tells us that the future lies in going into the depth of the Gospel. Like the Barrier Reef you can’t see its real beauty unless you dive deeply and become a part of it. In other words coming to know Jesus and his purpose for the world. So here too as we contemplate the future if a Church is empty and locked does it matter what condition it is in. In today’s world any rebuilding of the Church has to start with a deepening of faith. The faith of the past is insufficient to meet the challenges of today. So we are on the verge of new and exciting times.
Truthfully though we may feel we are going around in circles when it comes to our faith and our spiritual life but once we have a good shepherd guiding us we can plunge great depths and be renewed and energised by their care and comfort. The journey of faith is exciting. It gives us perspective and strength that no money can buy. There is a hunger, not for the shallow pious practices of the past but for a deep faith that plunges the depths and gives life. Here is a helpful thought from Tomáš to assist our contemplation:
In my earlier reflections I reached the conclusion that faith (in the original biblical sense of the word) is not a matter of adopting specific opinions and “certainties”, but the courage to enter the domain of mystery: “Abraham went out, not knowing where he was going”.“ (Cf. Hebr.11, 8) It strikes me that the same applies to love (both love of God and love of one’s enemy): it is a risky endeavour whose outcome is never certain, a path on which we will never be sure where it is leading us.
[1] Halík, Tomáš. Touch the Wounds (p. 13). University of Notre Dame Press. Kindle Edition.
[2] Ibid pg 13
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Feast of the Immaculate Conception
8the December 2023 Year B
@therevhilliard
What does the word immaculate conjure up in your mind. It might remind you of a compliment you got when you rolled up your sleeves and cleaned your house and someone said ‘the place is immaculate’.
For me Mary’s intention was exactly that – immaculate. Though there may have been some confusion in her life but when she focused she focused. Be the occasion in a stable or on the rock of crucifixion – she focused on situations with a purity of intention. Her focus was not on politics, career, promotion but doing God’s will in every situation – in this she was pure and immaculate. She ensured that her will and God’s were one and the same – though at times I’m sure she questioned God’s ways and if not, well he had every right to.
This is a rare enough commodity today in our public space. How many times have you to ask can I trust this person or can I trust what I read. Oftentimes I have thrown books or newspapers in a bin, I’ve switched off radio or television because I could not believe what I was reading or hearing. People were trying to twist my mind and emotions to suit an agenda of their own making. The intention, as. far as I could see, was far from pure or immaculate.
What motivates people in our world of power today? Commentators today talk about right wing and left wing in the political world but the axis is beyond that today. The axis runs along a spectrum of truth and lies.
- Truth about a person – At a global leadership level there are emerging gaps between who a person’s says they are and who they really are.
- Truth is a constant battle as we ask what is actually the facts and not the populist spin in advertising and social media
- Truth about wars and what is really behind them
Sometimes you’d just love to say let’s know what really going on and we can move forward but don’t leave me guessing – don’t think I’m a fool. We know only too well what happens when truth is evaded or played around with in recent decades in the Church. This shouldn’t have us avoiding the model that Mary, Our Mother gives to us. In the minds of many the only truth of the Church is abuse and evasion – so we have to pray that people will come to know the God who lies behind all this and who longs for his people.
I’ve read a lot about leadership over the last few years and am presently reading an amazing book on the subject. Never more was leadership needed. Primarily because those who call themselves leaders in many situations globally today are lacking the necessary integrity for the role. As we reflect on Mary today we that the word immaculate can mean purity of intention. This is a good place to start. Those who can look deeply into a situation and people who are they say they are and who do as they say they will do with the purest of intention in that there is no desire of self-interest or destruction lying behind it are badly needed in our world today and may Mary be their example.
Mary for me captures the words of Richard Rohr,
‘Contemplatives are individuals who live in and return to the centre within themselves, and yet they know that they are not the centre. They are only a part, but a gracious and grateful part at that’.
Today as we pray let us return to the centre within ourselves knowing that it runs deeper than anything we ever imagined and let us be gracious and grateful.
First Sunday of Advent
Year B December 2023
Fr Alan Hilliard
Narratives are very important things. They inform our perspective on life. They can be positive and affirming or they can be negative and disruptive. There’s a story of a man who got a job on an open top tour bus in our beautiful city. He was given appropriate instructions as to how to drive the bus and was given an immersion course in Irish history and locations of interest. His common answer to most questions was ‘there’s nothing I don’t know about Dublin’. His tutors were quite excited by such a find and looked forward to his first tour. This tour was, in reality, his exam to see if he would qualify for his certificate of competency and become a driver and tour guide.
Anyway the day came and his examiners were on the bus. He set off and pulled up at where Boland’s Mills once stood and he said ‘This is Boland’s Mills Dublin where they baked the bread and where the Irish won a great victory over the English in 1916’. He then went to the Four Courts having said nothing since the last place, pulled up and said ‘This is the Four Courts Dublin, where they still hear court cases and this is where the Irish won a great victory over the English’. His examiners were getting more and more horrified. Then it was the Customs House where he regaled a similar story with the same ending and going on to say that they were heading to their last stop. At this stage the inspectors were looking around the bus to see if this was Candid Camera or if PJ Gallagher was filming for another series of comedy cons! Finally he pulled up at the GPO where he got somewhat animated and in louder tones let everyone on the bus know that ‘This was the GPO or General Post Office, Dublin where the Irish won a great victory over the English in 1916’
Before the examiners had a chance to tell him he had failed his exam an American Tourist looking rather irate got up and protested explaining that he was a professor or Irish History and he never heard such a bad guided tour in his whole life. Not only was it brief, uniformed, biased and inaccurate – it was an insult to anyone’s intelligence. He ended by saying he wanted his money back and that according to his reading of history, ‘the English so to speak won great victories over the Irish’. The driver stood to full height and looking highly indignant said with fury ‘not on my bus!’
‘Not on my bus’ no matter what this man was taught, not matter what information he was given, no matter what books he read and no matter what evidence was presented to him his narrative was one of constant Irish victory over the English. That was his dominant narrative.
Today we start Advent. There are narratives that want to take us over. Narratives like, spend, spend, spend, and shop, shop, shop. Narratives that tell us if you don’t go to the shops now everything will be gone. Narratives that children need things to make them happy and other narratives telling us to meet and have a big dinner and loads of drink. New narratives have emerged like the twelve pubs of Christmas, Christmas jumpers and other ones like keep Jesus out of the picture so we can have apolitically correct Christmas. There are hundreds and hundreds of narratives competing for our mind, hearts and souls.
What immersed me into this line of thinking was today’s first reading. We see the prophet trying to find a Godly narrative; why god did you let us wander from you – as if it was His fault! Why don’t you come down to us and let us know you are worth believing in and then the realisation that we had sinned and had let God down ending with a beautiful narrative telling us that we are just clay in his, the potter’s hands and he is shaping us through all this if we work with him.
This weekend when we start a new season and a new church year maybe it is time to examine what narratives command out lives. Then give time to considering if they are destroying us or upsetting us. If there is something that we struggle with maybe we could go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and ask God for his grace to overcome these issues.
Furthermore it is a time to find a life giving narratives that enhances our spiritual life which in tune enhances our humanity giving us a more authentic way of living. I’m going to suggest four narratives that we can adopt this Advent based on the characters that we encounter.
- The first – Mary. Let’s hold onto that line ‘Thy will be done’. It’s a line allowing us to hand over all our troubles and anxieties. Think for a moment of all the things that were going through your head as you came to Church this morning – now just sit back and say ‘They will be done. Let it be god’s time working on these things – not ours!
- Secondly, go deeper into John the Baptists Narrative of ‘Make straight a way for the Lord’. What do I need to do to make room for God. What barriers need to be removed so I can gaze upon Him again, what valleys need to be filled to lift me into his presence, what pace do I need to travel at to stick with Him and Him with me?
- Thirdly, take the words of the Father to Jesus, This is my beloved child – my favour rests on them. Maybe use these words yourself to create a narrative that bathes you in the fathers love for you. Or maybe if there is someone really causing you heartbreak say these words knowing that if you find it hard to love them that God does and that might help you.
- Fourthly, if we work better with the imagination more than words and concepts we can refer to the image in first reading and see ourselves as clay being fashioned by the Father’s hands and each and every day we can ask ourselves what shape am I in?
Don’t take all four, take one of them and let it sink into your heart and soul over Advent so that the greedy narrative of the world won’t take you over. These exercises will strengthen our spiritual journeys. They are in keeping with the great mystic Teresa of Avila who said;
For mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.
Taking ownership of tour journeys and these phrases helps us to take time and to make time with God in these chaotic weeks. John of the Cross reminds us that ‘God does not fit into an occupied heart.
So then, create a narrative that is life living rather than sticking with a lifeless stubborn one. And if anyone tempts you into the crazy stuff…you know what to say ‘Not on my bus!’
Let’s pray about it, let’s think about it and lets do something about it.
Feast of Christ the King
Sunday the 26th of November 2023 Year A
Fr Alan Hilliard
Last Thursday evening I was here in the Church with Sina Thuil recording a video for a Christmas song which asked for peace in the world. The title is Let there be Peace. I’ll play the track at communion. As we recorded, the smell of burning increased, the sirens got louder and longer and there was an eerie silence about the place. I wasn’t fully aware as to what was going on but between social media and conversations it was eminently clear that all was not right in the City of Dublin.
Something else happened during the week that made me realise that evil does exist. We can call it other things, we can think it’s not around but it does exist and it can manifest itself in lies. Well not so much lies as ‘half-truths’. Bits of information that don’t tell the whole story. Did you ever wonder why a court asks you to swear on oath to ‘tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’. The whole truth is immeasurably more important than half-truths. The whole truth sets you free, half-truths imprison minds, hearts and souls. Half-truths supports evil and it is at work in the world and we have to pray for protection from it – this was never so evident as it was last Thursday. Friday week is the feast day of this parish. It is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception – we will take the opportunity to pray for protection for this parish and for this city. Mass will be celebrated at 8 am, 12.45 pm and we’ll conclude at 7 pm in the evening. There’ll be adoration and rosary will be recited every hour, on the hour – led by the people of this parish.
Events this week brought me back to a time ten years ago next month when I was Rwanda. I was with a team of people to explore how people of faith recovered from the genocide. There is lots I can say about my visit there but there is one thing that came to mind these last few days. Speaking to a professor of sociology back then he explained that even though the genocide started on the seventh of April 1994 it was many years in the making. He believed it started thirty two years before the first bullet was fired. It started by dehumanising other people or one group of people. The Tutsi group was targeted as, over the years, the Hutus were made to believe that if the Tutsi’s were slaughtered then everything in the country would be ok. Slowly over time people came to believe this. They referred to the Tutsi’s as cockroaches so, when it came to the point, they didn’t see themselves slaughtering people, they were just killing cockroaches.
Minds can be manipulated to think that one or two groups of people are the source of all the problems in society and if we get rid of them all will be well. People who lack intelligence or discernment hear the half-truths and lies that are peddled and they believe them all too easily. However, at the same time the economic models that are creating insecurity for hard working people need to be replaced. Insecurity regarding the basic rights that are fundamental to human flourishing create unrest and it’s the seedbed for anarchy and its promoters.
Today in Dublin certain groups are the object of unjustified anger and oppression – in conflict this happens as hated and evil is often set up against skin colour, faith or creed. Fortunately, here in this church and as soon as we come in the door, then regardless of race, country, county, colour, however long our families are in this parish or we if are just here for the first time, we are all equal as children of God and that is a truth to set us free not a half-truth to imprison us. On this feast of Christ the King the question is what God do we follow? Who is our king -He that unites or one that destroys and causes mayhem.
Every one of us creates this space and in this spirit I’ll quote a few lines from Sina’s song:
So all I’m asking for,
Is let there be peace
When I find myself asking what can I do
A person so small in a world that’s so cruel
I think of a saying that I once heard
Be the change you wish to see in the world
Some of those who will be commenting on the airwaves and the newspapers about how outrageous these events are those who have helped to move this state into a wasteland. Moving us away from our Christian roots is part of the reason why things are falling apart. When you move from a situation of love and respect for others to other philosophies that promote superiority and inequality then the water is in over the wellingtons and there is no coming back from the precipice of destruction.
We celebrate Mass here today for the Feast of Christ the King. He is our King because he loves each one of us equally. He gave of Himself for us. Why did he do that? Remember when Abraham went to sacrifice his only son Isaac ; an angel intervened and said fetch that sheep in the bush. God’s culture was saying you do not have to sacrifice a human being to please Him. When Jesus went to the cross God said there is no need for any other sacrifice any more, not that of animals, birds and especially people. There is no need to sacrifice anyone in the name of God as there is no greater sacrifice than one’s own son. This is why, when Jesus came back to us his first words were ‘peace’. So no cause, no Christian cause, can justify, hurting, harming or killing anyone in the name of God. This is one of the reasons we celebrate Eucharist – we partake in the sacrifice of Jesus – the most prefect sacrifice ever made – ending the need for any other one.
We are made to exist in a delicate network of interdependence. We are sisters and brothers, whether we like it or not. To treat anyone as if they were less than human, less than a brother or a sister, no matter what they have done, is to contravene the very laws of our humanity. And those who shred the web of interconnectedness cannot escape the consequences of their actions.
(Bishop Desmond Tutu)
Homily
33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Year A 2023
Fr Alan Hilliard
I was speaking to a friend of mine a few weeks ago. She’s been having a difficult time. To put her son through college and to pay off debts she was working two jobs. She had very little support. Eventually she gave up one of the jobs as she had made financial headway. She is a musician too and she was invited to play at a funeral. She was quite nervous as she was so busy working that she was out of practise. Once she started playing though, she realised how much she missed her music. When she explained this to me I said ‘if you don’t use your gifts it can aid depression’ She got back to me and thanked me for my words.
She thought long and hard about how much she loved her music and how she had neglected it. While she blamed a lot of her anxiety and listlessness on working two jobs, she realised that this was part of the problem but not the whole story. In neglecting her music she was neglecting one of her greatest gifts that in normal circumstances bring her great joy and solace. She is back playing now and its helping her to feel alive.
I don’t want to claim that I’m a genius in the words I offered her– I was robbing someone else’s idea. The spiritual exercises of St Ignatius tell us that we have to be where are gifts are being used or where they can be used. The spiritual journey is one where we have to find how we use the gifts and talents that God gives us not because God wants us to under obedience but because it is there that we are happiest and in being happy we give glory to God. The Gospel today is telling us to use our talents and the crime, the great sin is to dig a hole and bury them in the ground. A wise person asked me once what is a rut after I was giving out that I was stuck in a rut he said a rut is a shallow grave! Boy did I jump out of it on hearing that.
Interestingly enough some of the greatest reforms in religious life were not about making things more strict – it was quite the opposite really. The reform of St Benedict came about because he realised he was too hard on the monks in his charge and he created a rule that allowed the whole person to flourish. In a similar vein St Teresa of Avila, when reforming the Carmelite’s, while insisting on deepening their spirituality, she also made sure that they had some down time too creating room of leisurely recreation – all work and no play makes whoever a dull person. It was Teresa who said ‘Be who God wants you to be and you’ll set the world on fire’. She also said of her experience in prayer “
Just these two words He spoke changed my life, “Enjoy Me” What a burden I thought I was to carry-a crucifix as did He. Love once said to me: “I know a song, would you like to hear it?” And laughter came from every brick in the street and from every pore in the sky. After a night of prayer, He changed my life when He sang “Enjoy me”
The challenge of today’s Gospel is to get out of any rut, use our talents and live happily. Here is a tip that’ll help you move in the right direction.
Firstly identity the various areas of your life.
- There is the physical part of life – are we exercising enough, am I unnecessarily stiff and sore.
- Then there is the mental part of my life – am I reading enough, doing crosswords, am I spending stupid time on the phone or computer flicking rather than dwelling on good engaging material. Am I playing my music or am I dancing or using my head in a way that is upbuilding.
- Then the emotional self…where do I love and where am I loved. The first reading is an exposé of what a good nurturing relationship can do for you. Though is tells of the perfect wife there is room for a study of the perfect husband. Regardless of the role one can feel the energy of a supportive and loving relationship in these verses. You know the energy of a good relationship when you see it or you may be privileged to feel that loving support yourself.
- Then, of course there is the spiritual self, how do we connect with God. How much time do we actually spend allowing God to catch up with us. What helps me live a meaningful life? Who is Jesus for me – is he someone I hang out of or turn to in trouble or is He someone whom I feel is walking every step of the road with me.
This exercise makes me see what bits of me are stuck in the rut – the part of us that we need to breath into to give it life. The feeling of being stuck in a rut doesn’t mean all of us in in a rut – that’s why this exercise is so good. Teresa of Avila also said “Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns; so also the mind of a person.” So take time this weekend to examine the fields of our life and identify what ones need attention. I pray for you all that you will hear God whisper into your ear ‘enjoy me’.
Homily 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A 2023
City Quay Parish
Fr. Alan Hilliard
‘Why is the wise person important? – Precisely because they don’t need to be!’ I love that statement because it makes a lot of sense. Those that utter wisdom are not trying to impress – really, really, wise people just can’t help being wise. Here is an example of wisdom. Prior to the economic crash householders were encouraged to use their property to leverage equity. People were being facilitated to use their house to buy another one and when my mother would hear about this she used a phrase that she inherited from her father, ‘never give away a slate from your roof child’. Wise people are just wise and they share their souls with us in short sentences.
This morning’s readings are filled with wisdom. The Gospel reminds me of the present day challenges of the electric car and the near paranoia about charging stations. I don’t know if you have friends who have these cars and the meticulous planning they have to do if they are making a long journey. We have it with phones too. The last few months have been hell for me as I been living between places and on occasion I’d forget my phone charger and I’d be struggling to hold onto the last few percent of a phone charge. This is particularly difficult when travelling as tickets and other important bits of information are on the phone and if the charge dies it’s as if I die with it. And yes I’d feel like a fool – giving out to myself for not taking a lead or a spare power pack. In this vein it is very easy to understand the Gospel the ladies who don’t put oil in their lamp miss the party! What is the party?
I think the party is just simply life and how to live it well. Pope Francis wrote a very interesting letter to young people many years ago called Christus Vivit (Christ is alive) He spoke a lot about wisdom in the letter. He basically discusses how difficult it is to live in today’s world and how in meeting the challenges of life you can often feel that your lamp is empty of oil.
The first reading ponders wisdom. Interestingly enough some protestant bibles leave the Book of Wisdom aside as they consider it to be uninspired. I, on the other hand, cherish wisdom literature and find it inspirational – so I know then I’m not a protestant at least. Some say it is uninspired as it doesn’t mention God directly but a brief pondering of the first reading shows how this book is infused with the divine mind and heart. Wisdom is a gift from God. It is not a body of knowledge but a disposition that life cultivates. It transcends class, sex, status and race. It is valuable but can’t be bought. Pope Francis understands this and comments: ‘The poor have a hidden wisdom and , with a few simple words, they can help us discover unexpected values’ Christus Vivit para 171.
So wisdom is insightful and it’s the oil for our lamp so we can be fulfilled in the life that we’ve been blessed with. I’ll share with you some words from Pope Francis in his letter to young people and it shows the wisdom he inculcates.
Whatever you do, do not become the sorry sight of an abandoned vehicle! Don’t be parked cars, but dream freely and make good decisions. Take risks, even if it means making mistakes. Don’t go through life anesthetized or approach the world like tourists. Make a ruckus! Cast out the fears that paralyze you, so that you don’t become young mummies’. Live! Give yourselves over to the best of life! Open the door of the cage, go out and fly! Please, don’t take an early retirement.” Para 143
See how he uses images from everyday life to speak the truth of God,. Abandoned cars, parked cars, anaesthetic, retirement all images to give us a kick in the backside and go ‘make a rukus’. He goes on encouraging people to be themselves and to be wise we have to be ourselves. The wisest leaders are people who are truly themselves – it’s a pre-requisite
You have to discover who you are and develop your own way of being holy, whatever others may say or think. Becoming a saint means becoming more fully yourself, becoming what the Lord wished to dream and create, and not a photocopy. Your life ought to be a prophetic stimulus to others and leave a mark on this world, the unique mark that only you can leave. Whereas if you simply copy someone else, you will deprive this earth, and heaven too, of something that no one else can offer. (Paragraph 162)
A few years ago I was preparing a talk on mental health and well-being I was looking at how faith and belief helps us be well. From my reading I came up with two headings which looked at what a depressive anxious life looks like and what a healthy life looks like:
| Depressive/ Anxious Life | Healthy Life |
| Isolation | Belonging |
| Junk Values | Meaningful Values |
| Trauma | Freedom |
| Empty Future | Hope Filled Future |
[1] ‘Christus Vivit’ Mental health in a disconnected age. Tallaght and Blessington Deanery. Fr Alan Hilliard
I think that’s it obvious how faith, and in particular how wisdom, help us to live a healthy life:
- The path of wisdom teaches us how to belong to one another.
- Wisdom directs us to meaningful values that inform how we live.
- Wisdom gives us freedom as knowledge alone can often be about control and manipulation.
- Wisdom gives us hope because it sees beyond the nonsense of the world.
Let pray for wisdom among us. That those who lead us may we wise in the biblical sense of the word – not for their own grandeur but for the Glory of God.
This day last year I travelled with a very good friend of mine who is druid to visit John O’Donohue’s grave. John is the author of the book Anam Cara. I’m sure you know the book but if you don’t its full of very wise sayings. I’ll leave you with this words which I took down from his headstone:
May I have the courage today to live the life that I would love
To postpone my dream no longer
But to do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more
(John O’Donohue’s epitaph on his headstone in Co Clare, Ireland).
31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A, 2023.
City Quay Church, Dublin’s Docklands.
Fr Alan Hilliard
This month of November is a month where we remember those we have lost to our earthly existence. People who we loved and who have gone to God and in remembering them we grieve. I noticed a strange thing in my grief. Not only do I grieve for my family and friends I have a grief associated with the Church I gave my life to. When I started on the journey of priesthood the Church filled every fibre of life and was central to many communities, now we exist on the edges and to a large part irrelevant when one thinks of the what it was.
I think it was the late great sociologist, Fr Andrew Greeley who said, ‘we throw everything we can at people and they still won’t go away’. He was rereferring to the resilience of the people of God in the face of so many revelations of scandal and abuse within the Church.
However, I do not despair about what it is or its future but I do grieve for what I thought it would be and I grieve for the impact of the loss of the sense of the spiritual and the transcendent on the lives of people.
The readings today focus on the loss of trust and the loss of standing and respect among those who are supposed to represent God and express the matters of faith. There is a lovely line in the first reading where the prophet relates that the purpose of position and power in a life of faith is to ‘find it in your heart to glorify my name’. That in all we do we are to give glory to God, not to ourselves, not to our wallets or our standing in peoples eyes. Though to be honest some of those things are attractive or at least pleasant.
The other night I sat in to watch the musical show celebrating one hundred years of Ireland. I knew many of the people taking part but I found it hard, because of my grief and loss about Church, to listen to all the negative narratives about the Church. The narrative is nearly one whereby we could blame the English for centuries now we blame the Irish Catholic Church for the problems of the nation. If you are still a mass goer, like you obviously are, you must get an odd comment from people who don’t go any more. I turned the program off but watched it later. I’m not trying to deny the horror of some or a lot of what happened but I know a lot of good people who did a lot of good, who loved cared and who matched the words of the second reading in their approach to people. In terms of those they served they ‘had come to love you so much, that we were eager to hand over to you not only the Good News but our whole lives as well’. I know great priests, great lay people and great religious some of whom worked with prisoners, homeless and abandoned and they did it with a love that was ‘a living power among you who believe it’.
I was greatly helped by something I happened to be reading based on the work of the neuroscientist Rick Hanson. He came up with a simple theory which was coined the Teflon and Velcro theory of self-talk. The basic principle is that good news slides off us like oil off a Teflon pan but bad news sticks like Velcro. That’s all very well and we know about it but what should we do about it? Well when someone says something nice to us or you feel good about yourself…hold onto it for fifteen seconds. Of course there are some people in our lives who are just amazing who help us see the good in ourselves and can hold the best of us in place. Some of you may be lucky enough to be in a relationship with someone like that or even married to them.
Hanson’s ideas are really tricks of psychology or accidents of good fortune. Our greatest gift to assist us to live in the light gift though is prayer. It is there where we find the greatest affirmation and where we can hold on greatly to the fact that we are loved. One great mystic said that prayer is nothing more than God looking lovingly upon us. Sometimes when we sit to pray we rush into what we want or need for ourselves or for others. Other times we get hung up on our sins or faults. Maybe when we sit to pray we can just start in future with sitting and allowing ourselves to see God looking lovingly upon us for fifteen seconds before we start to say anything. I offer you words of consolation from the great Dominican teacher of spirituality and author Fr Paul Murray OP (who attended Mass here two weeks ago while home in Dublin).
Before we ourselves can catch fire with love, we begin at first, according to John of the Cross, to sweat and smoke and sputter.
Maybe give ourselves a few seconds to sweat and smoke and sputter…just like Jesus did when he went into the desert. Then take a deep breath and let his love enfold you. Let his love be the only Velcro like thing in our lives– let it hold the core of our being that we may live with joy despite all the pain and affliction that surrounds us.
Feast of All Saints, 1st November 2023
Homily
All Saints Day
1st November 2023 Year A
I was reading a book recently about the redecoration of a Cathedral in America. The years were the early seventies, soon after the Second Vatican Council. The emphasis in the redesign of the Church aimed to get everything back to Christ so the Architects set about dismantling many of the items of devotion around the Church among them the saints. One of the days when the priest was walking around having an inspection with the building team an elderly lady who frequented the Church fairly often asked where had all the statues gone? The priest replied, ‘our focus is on Jesus now’. She quickly responded, ‘but Jesus needs his family too. We all have our families why can’t he have his?’
It’s quite an interesting way of looking at the saints – the family of Jesus. Sometimes families, when brought to mind, may not be the supportive people we need them to be, but there are always some who holds on to what is important and valuable and keeps a place of safety for us. There are always those we can go to when we are in bother.
Looking around our Church here, we have family members who are there for us too. We have St Joseph, the one who found a way forward in dreams and was also a great protector. How many today needs to be protected, how many need to find a way forward through desolation and confusion?
We have Saint Anne who nurtured Mary – there must have been times of confusion for a mother who loved her daughter and who did not have the benefit of hindsight or history the way we have as we look at Mary’s life. How many mother’s today have confusion and chaos that they need someone to journey with them through it all?
Then we have St Anthony with his abiding popularity since the 13th Century. Born in Lisbon yet associated with Padua. A man on fire with God who could preach and lead people to a knowledge and love of God in minutes and was asked by his leader St Francis to be a wandering preacher. He died at 33 years of age; probably wore out with his mission. He has become associated with the lost and found department which is probably linked to his fame as a miracle worker. I confess to owing him twenty euro recently for something very valuable which I lost but have thankfully found again.
We also host St Bernadette who patiently brought the message of Mary’s love to us in the way she responded to the her encounter with Our Lady in Lourdes. We also have an unusual collection of saints on our stained glass window at the back of our Church among whom are St William, St. Margaret of Scotland, St, Cecilia, St. Brigid and St, Columba.
Sometimes we have to remove the chalk from the saints and see their humanity if they are to speak into our experience. As Pope Francis said in his beautiful letter Gaudete et Exultate;
From being timid, morose, acerbic or melancholy, or putting on a dreary face, the saints are joyful and full of good humour. Though completely realistic, they radiate a positive and hopeful spirit. (Para 122)
He also noted that there may be saints among us who may never get canonised:
These witnesses (saints)may include our own mothers, grandmothers or other loved ones (cf. 2 Tim 1:5). Their lives may not always have been perfect, yet even amid their faults and failings they kept moving forward and proved pleasing to the Lord. (Para 3)
In the spirit of these words we think of St. Augustine, in his Confessions, who was probably the first Christian who took a good look at his own life’s story as it unfolded and saw his raw life as a spiritual text. He described his restless search and his own failures and sins, which were as much a part of the story as his eventual conversion. In the end, he saw it all as a story of grace. God was present in his life, hovering over him, even in those times when the thought of God was far from him.
Robert Ellsberg has studied many saints lives and communicates their wonder in many of his writings. I leave you wiht his words. ‘At the end of the day, the object is not to be canonized, to be called a saint. The object is to be a whole, integrated and happy person in the best sense of someone whose life is aligned with the deepest purpose for their existence. And recognizing and honouring those qualities in other people is one of the ways that opens up our own path’.[1] Robert Ellsberg All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time.
[1] https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2023/06/29/all-saints-robert-ellsberg-245549 ACCESSED 31/10/2023
30th Sunday in Ordinary, 29th October 2023, Time Year A
Homily
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A
City Quay Church
I was once in court when the infamous Judge was in session. Some young lad was up on a charge for robbing a handbag from a Lady in a building close to where the judge lived. He didn’t take too kindly to a crime being committed on his own patch. The young man was sentenced to six months in prison! As he stepped down off the stand to be led away he muttered something and the judge asked him to repeat it so he could hear what he said– the man refused to answer. The judge checked with the Garda who couldn’t make out what was said. He then checked with the clerk of the court who said that the young mad said ‘he’d do it on his ear’. The judge, who was highly annoyed that the man held the court in such contempt slammed down the gavel and roared ‘ so you’ll do it on your ear young man – well then to be fair – take six months for the other ear’
Courts and law try to hold things together. You know yourself if you have to revert to the law all else has failed. Furthermore, the law can’t fix everything – how many times do issues go to court expecting to be solved and the judge says go outside and sort it out amongst yourselves. Looking at scripture we get great insight into how law came about. The most famous legal declaration apart from the one in today’s gospel was the ten commandments. Oftentimes they are wheeled out as the perfect answer to all the world’s problems. Moses’ decrees appear to be the answer to everything even in today’s world. But lets take step back into that world.
The people had lived in slavery for many generations. Under pharaoh, and while in Egypt, they worked hard building many of the great sites that tourists flock to today. As well as working hard they surrendered all their time and decision making. When they lived in Jerusalem they lived according to prayer times and indeed religious festivals punctuated their calendar. The restfulness and order of their culture was replaced by the insatiable restlessness of the pharaoh.
We know about their escape, how they crossed the Red Sea and fled into the desert where they wandered for forty years. So they, without realising it, moved from a place where they had no control to a place of freedom which has its own challenges. Freedom can sometimes be a heavy burden that some find hard to manage. I remember taking a tour of Dachau Concentration Camp just outside Munich in Germany. When we neared the end of the tour the guide told us what happened when the German soldiers left the camp for the last time. Once the prisoners of war realised that the prison guards were not coming back, they wanted to leave Dachau. The senior officers among the detainees told them to stay in their billets and wait – and they did. The officers had the good sense to know that a group of emaciated men wandering through occupied territories were a target for those who could not tell the nationality of anyone from a distance. Eventually the allies found their way to the camp and they helped those who were imprisoned to step along the road towards a dignified freedom. You see, as I said, freedom is nearly more difficult to manage than captivity.
And the same thing happened to the people when they left slavery. There were disputes in the camp and there was no one to settle them. There were no Egyptian soldier nearby to solve disputes between people. There were no prisons to throw them into. Freedom meant they had to manage themselves and they found it difficult. I sure Moses found it very difficult to mediate between all the family factions and fights without the support of a police force or soldiers. We hear the frustration in the first reading of looking after the widow and orphan, about lending money and not leaving someone to die of the cold overnight by returning their cloak which acted as a blanket.
Of course as with every situation there were games going on and people were jostling and grappling for property, position and power. So Moses wasn’t imposing ten rules on people. Before the commandments were committed to stone he was facing the question with the people ‘how can we live together well’. How can we in this new situation get along not just better but guarantee that everyone is minded and cared for. It’s funny but that exact same question is facing people today – how can we as a country, a parish a family ‘how can we live together well?’ Before rules are made or imposed people have to accept that the wish is to create better space where people can thrive and if not thrive at least they have to get along better together. Rules set boundaries where people can know where they stand, where what is socially acceptable is reinforced and where people feel safe. That’s the ideal. Moses had to do it, Jesus reminded us why we did it and now we have to face the same questions ourselves.
Jesus got it right. However, he looked beyond the regulations to expose what’s really going on in this dynamic. Love of God and love of neighbour are the key elements of living together well. If this is not right then no amount of rules can fix the problems of society.
The most interesting aspect of the ten commandments if that they are based on honouring God. We must start with God if all this is to work. The last five commandments are all about the neighbour and treating neighbours with legitimacy and dignity and viability and especially taking care of disadvantaged neighbours – not to violate the neighbour for the sake of greed. When the values beneath our rules and laws erode things fall apart. Mark Carney – the former governor of the Central Bank of Canada and the Bank of England remind of this on one of his wise sayings.
The purpose of society can be human flourishing, to have a good life, and to build the common good. The common good should not be confused with the good of the greatest number, but it is rather the good from which no one is excluded.
Mark Carney
The love that Jesus talks about leads to decisions and decisions lead to safe structures that help us all live together well. Love of itself can be aspirational if it doesn’t have some follow up. But it has to be the foundation.
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 22nd of October 2023, Year A
Homily 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A 2023
Last Saint Patrick’s Day I was in New York. I concelebrated Mass in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. There was a lot of talk about being Irish, Irish American and about the day’s hero, Saint Patrick himself. While everyone was doused in green I couldn’t help but notice a constant trail of people to an altar on the right hand side of the Church. The people didn’t look very Irish nor did they seem to be too overawed by the shenanigans or the politicking that was going on in the main aisle of the Cathedral. Intrigued I made my way over to discover it was an altar dedicated to Our Lady. In actual fact it was dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe who, even though her apparition took place in the Mexico, she is considered to be ‘The Patroness of the Americas’.
The story is interesting in the context of Mission Sunday and todays readings. It is no harm to state that the Irish know only too well the pain of colonialism, as do the Mexican people. Indeed the troubles of the last week in Gaza have their origins in colonialism by the Ottomans in the 13th Century and in a form of partition established by the British when the ruled there between 1916 and 1937.
The apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe occurred in 1531, ten years after the great war between the colonial Spanish and the great Aztec Nation. The defeated native people were crushed and desolate and had lost even the will to live. Everything about their culture and heritage was stolen an destroyed by the foreign invaders – some of this was done in the name of God. As in the first reading, nations were subdued and the loins of kings were stripped so they could have no heir or off-spring.
In this middle of this loss, confusion and desolation, Our Lady appeared on a rural hillside to one of the defeated natives, Juan Diego, and she asked him to be her messenger. He was instructed to go to the bishop and ask that a temple be built in that place, where she could listen to the laments and remedy the afflictions of the people. Naturally, the bishop was sceptical and asked for a sign. Juan Diego went back to the hillside, again encountering Our Lady, and returned with a cloak-full of beautiful Castilian roses that had miraculously bloomed there. When he opened his cloak to show the flowers to the bishop and his assistants, there on the fabric was a life-size image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Why is Our Lady of Guadalupe so appealing?
I think there are many reasons.
To start with, she is a loving mother who continues to console us with the words she offered to Juan Diego: “You have nothing to fear; am I not here who am your mother?” Mary simply wants to be present among us, offering all her love and protection. She is the great gesture of a loving God who gave us, and continues to give us, this beautiful gift to console us in our sorrows.
Sometimes we get confused over Mary’s status in the work of faith and its transmission. Some are suspicious of her, she is so special precisely because she is not necessary for salvation; .she is simply a precious gift of the infinite love of our heavenly Father. Isn’t it true that some of the most cherished gifts you have received were not necessary but simply intimate gestures of love?’
By calling on the defeated Indian to be her trusted messenger, she uplifted the downtrodden and affirmed the dignity of the dispossessed. The person who wrote a lot about Our Lady of Guadalupe was a friend of mine Virgil Elizondo who has since passed but being a Mexican who arrived in Texas as a young migrant, who spoke no English and then became a leading theologian – he knew adversity. One of his lines was ‘Jesus was rejected by those who rejected the rejected’. The apparition in Guadalupe was to the most rejected and dispossessed and broken and in this message there was Godly hope.
On mission Sunday it is significant to talk about Mary’s visit to these defeated people. Mission is accompaniment not subjugation. Mission is sharing God’s love not imposing a Church. Mission starts with the broken and dispossessed not with those in power. Mission is God’s love. You see Caesar’s come and go. Some Caesars do immense good, others bring un wanton destruction. Bot God lives on beyond it all.
There is an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe here at the altar for those how want to pray before her after Mass. Hopefully it is a sign of welcome to those who visit our Church who have journey from the America’s. We pray too that those who visit us will be missionaries to our lazy and lapsed culture and we try to promote God’s radical love amongst the Irish people.
28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 15th October 2023, Year A
Homily 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A 2023.
Remember the days when you got a tax bill, a rent bill in January or a rates bill in the door and it frightened the life out of you. Finding the money to pay it was always a worry. Now the thing that frightens the financial life out of you is a wedding invitation. They come now with a three day invitation. You are then told that you are very lucky – you can get a room in the castle where the wedding is for a special offer of seven hundred euro a night and we’ve kept a room for you and you can pay when you get there. If you are really unfortunate the wedding is taking place in some obscure Italian village which is three ours from the nearest city and there’s no public transport but its ok the photos will be great. To contemplate going to the wedding you nearly have to consider re mortgaging the house!
Jesus uses the image of a wedding in today’s Gospel. The King, who represent the Father, wants to have our company and our attention but we are too busy so he goes out and finds other people to share his abundance with. All as God wants is our time. He wants our time so we can absorb his presence and become more like Him in life. We can forget that the purpose of creation is to reflect back the beauty and presence of God. This is particularly important to emphasize this week as we witness horrendous slaughter and tragedy in the land of the Lord’s birth yet again. Decades of torment and provocation have created another flash point creating military reactions but it is always the ordinary people who will bear the greatest weight of pain and loss on these occasions.
Remember God wants to see his own self shining through us and like the best of friendships this can only happen if we spend time with one another. Whether that time be lighting a candle, going to mass, talking to someone about God, spending a few days on retreat, reading scripture – these are all ways of being at the wedding spoken about in the Gospel today. Maybe the person without the wedding garment is someone who hadn’t spent any time with the one who loved and created them so not only did they not show respect, they didn’t know how to!
There is a painting by the South Korean artist Dong Wook Suh entitled ‘Summer Morning’. I have begun to call this work The Covid Classroom as it depicts life during the pandemic. A young person lies on their bed, the sun beams angularly across the room. The sunlight that is trying to nurture their soul is avoided. On the bed there is an open laptop, and the wall contains a socket laden with various chargers. On a nearby table one can see a mobile phone along with an open cigarette packet and a lighter.
I noticed that when we were told we could return to life post-covid that it wasn’t negotiated very well. It was presumed that we could just slot back into someone’s else’s idea of what was right and appropriate. Maybe we had gotten used to the classroom depicted in Dong Wook Suh’s painting. It was something we could switch on and off whether we were in bed or in our part-times jobs and remain partially engaged.
The Wharton Psychologist, Adam Grant has created a new post-covid category and have called it The Middle Child of Well-Being. It lies between flourishing and depression, and it is called languishing…the more colloquial expression is CBB –couldn’t be bothered. Maybe the subject in Dong Wook Suh’s painting knows that middle- child. The only way out of languishing, the experts say, is to act your way out of it…thinking about moving on doesn’t really help. It only leaves us languishing for longer. So, whatever your pursuit, don’t just languish…live!
The First reading is about abundance – to live well at every dimension of our being is our calling and yet we can languish. Many people don’t go to church because they have issues and that’s ok but many don’t come because of CBB couldn’t be bothered and it has been proven that to live well we have to allow every aspect of our selves to flourish – the physical self, our mental self, out emotional self and then there is the spiritual self.
One of the worst weddings I was ever at was one where the uncle of the bride whom I sat beside started by saying to me, referring to the Wedding Feast at Cana, ‘you know father I canna we understand how Jesus’s first miracle was associated with alcohol’. It’s sad because the wedding we are all invited to is great craic with loads of food, wine, friendship and love. This week take time to live and banish languishing! Things of life and faith that maybe we are languishing around – let’s move in the direction of the wedding…not the expensive one in the Italian Village but the one that the Lord calls us to. Accept the invite -there is no cost only that of your time.