Author: Father Sean Coyle

Tacloban, one year later. Fr Shay Cullen’s Reflections, 10 November 2014

Tacloban, one year later

by Fr Shay Cullen

It was a painful and difficult story for Josephine, 15 years old, and her father Jose to tell. I sat on a small plastic chair in their small, one-roomed house that they built from the wreckage of Haiyan (Yolanda), the greatest typhoon ever to hit land. Josephine sat close to her father who was aged beyond his years. When I arrived in their little home made of plywood sheets with Francis Bermido Jr., the Preda executive director, Jose was repairing an electric motor. It was his only source of livelihood for his surviving children.
 
We were in Tacloban to meet some of the 88 orphans we are supporting with the help of generous donors from the UK, US, Ireland and elsewhere and who had lost one or both parents. Josephine (not her real name) is one of them
Jose’s two other children emerged sad-faced from a cubicle and joined their father and Josephine as he was telling us how his wife and their three daughters died
“We heard the warning on the radio,” he said. “We left our house and went to the second floor of the barangay center nearby with dozens of other neighbors. We thought we would be safe on the second floor. But the winds grew so strong the roof could not withstand it and it was ripped off and flew away into the darkness. The rain and wind rushed in and the crowd of people panicked and we rushed down the stairs to the ground floor but Josephine stayed on the upper floor.”
“Suddenly at that very moment as we got to the ground floor with many people, the great tidal wave came roaring in on top of us. We were very frightened and the children were crying and calling for their mama. The wave was as high as the barangay hall, they told me later. Everyone on the ground floor was trapped, the water formed a whirlpool and I could not hold the children and my wife. One daughter tried to go back up to where Josephine was but all three daughters and my wife drowned and these three survived.”
He lapsed into solemn silence, his face was wrinkled and a great sadness weighed on him. Later he told he felt better for telling us about his ordeal and loss.
Josephine took up the story. “I was on the  second floor. I saw my sister trying to come up to me. I grabbed her arm but I could not hold her against the strong pull of the gushing water of the tidal wave. She was swallowed up by the water. I feel sad and think if only I could have saved her,” she said .
“But I will finish my studies.” she said, and then walked over to the radio and from underneath pulled out an ATM card and proudly showed us. It was the Preda Foundation’s payment card through which she gets her cash allowance for her studies and support.
The Tacloban and Palo city businesses of the rich and wealthy are up and running. The big houses are repaired but the hovels are rebuilt also and are still hovels. The city is cleaned up, the devastation in the lives of the poor remains and is even worse. They are poorer than ever.
We went to Barangay 76, along the shore line where the big ships were thrown up and crushed the whole community where hundreds died and were swept out to sea by the tidal wave. There is no improvement and the same shanties and hovels made with scrap materials and plastic sheets still line the shoreline. The big ships are still there and one is being cut up for scrap. Its great diesel engine sits in a filthy garbage-strewn strip of sea shore. The bacteria infested pools of green water pollute the place and two huge pigs are lying in the filth. The people tell us, “Nothing has changed, we are just poorer than ever,” said one man.
We went to join the Preda community workers who were giving seminars to adults and children using pictures and a lively music puppet show to thrill, cheer and educate them on the hope of a better life and to teach them how to stay safe from human traffickers and child abusers.
These criminals roam about promising jobs and masquerading as relief workers but are trying to win over teenagers and their parents, if they have any, with promises of well-paid jobs in the big city of Manila and Cebu. They are the vultures preying on the poor and exploiting the sadness and pain of poverty of those left behind and living in tents and bunkhouses.
The World Health Organization has reported that as many as 800,000 people still suffer from post-typhoon trauma, depression and hopelessness. Considering that as many 11.5 million people were adversely affected by that greatest of storms, it’s no wonder many have not received aid or government funding of any kind.
Yet the government says it has spent 52 billion pesos, just over one billion Euro on recovery efforts. One wonders where all that donated money went and who really benefited from it. Given the level of corruption in the Philippines one cannot but think the bad politicians got most of it.
Thousands of people were killed and the counting apparently stopped at 6000 but Congress is being challenged to investigate and find the truth and some representatives have suggested that as many as 18,000 could have died. Mass graves were dug and hundreds of bodies lie in unmarked graves.
We then went to the church grounds where the Preda community workers were in a tent holding a therapeutic group dynamic session for adults and children to help them with psycho-social relief. Nearby lay the graves of as many as hundred victims. I prayed for the all the living and those who had been killed. I stood by the tiny graves of little children and nearby workmen were constructing a monument to all who had their lives taken away.
The printed posters by the graves had the pictures of the lost ones and invariably carried the message, “We will miss you, we will miss you” over and over. shaycullen@preda.org
End


 

Tacloban after Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, 8 November 2013 [Wikipedia]

 

It was a painful and difficult story for Josephine, 15 years old, and her father Jose to tell. I sat on a small plastic chair in their small, one-roomed house that they built from the wreckage of Haiyan (Yolanda), the greatest typhoon ever to hit land. Josephine sat close to her father who was aged beyond his years. When I arrived in their little home made of plywood sheets with Francis Bermido Jr, the Preda executive director, Jose was repairing an electric motor. It was his only source of livelihood for his surviving children.

 We were in Tacloban to meet some of the 88 orphans we are supporting with the help of generous donors from the UK, USA, Ireland and elsewhere and who had lost one or both parents. Josephine (not her real name) is one of them.

 Jose’s two other children emerged sad-faced from a cubicle and joined their father and Josephine as he was telling us how his wife and their three daughters died.

‘We heard the warning on the radio’, he said. ‘We left our house and went to the second floor of the barangay center nearby with dozens of other neighbors. We thought we would be safe on the second floor. But the winds grew so strong the roof could not withstand it and it was ripped off and flew away into the darkness. The rain and wind rushed in and the crowd of people panicked and we rushed down the stairs to the ground floor but Josephine stayed on the upper floor.

‘Suddenly at that very moment as we got to the ground floor with many people, the great tidal wave came roaring in on top of us. We were very frightened and the children were crying and calling for their mama. The wave was as high as the barangay hall, they told me later. Everyone on the ground floor was trapped, the water formed a whirlpool and I could not hold the children and my wife. One daughter tried to go back up to where Josephine was but all three daughters and my wife drowned and these three survived.’

He lapsed into solemn silence, his face was wrinkled and a great sadness weighed on him. Later he told he felt better for telling us about his ordeal and loss.

Josephine took up the story. ‘I was on the  second floor. I saw my sister trying to come up to me. I grabbed her arm but I could not hold her against the strong pull of the gushing water of the tidal wave. She was swallowed up by the water. I feel sad and think if only I could have saved her’, she said.

‘But I will finish my studies’. she said, and then walked over to the radio and from underneath pulled out an ATM card and proudly showed it tous. It was the Preda Foundation’s payment card through which she gets her cash allowance for her studies and support.

Survivors in Guian, Eastern Samar, gather around a US Navy helicopter [Wikipedia]

The Tacloban City and Palo businesses of the rich and wealthy are up and running. The big houses are repaired but the hovels are rebuilt also and are still hovels. The city is cleaned up, the devastation in the lives of the poor remains and is even worse. They are poorer than ever.

We went to Barangay 76, along the shore line where the big ships were thrown up and crushed the whole community where hundreds died and were swept out to sea by the tidal wave. There is no improvement and the same shanties and hovels made with scrap materials and plastic sheets still line the shoreline. The big ships are still there and one is being cut up for scrap. Its great diesel engine sits in a filthy garbage-strewn strip of seashore. The bacteria-infested pools of green water pollute the place and two huge pigs are lying in the filth. The people tell us, ‘Nothing has changed, we are just poorer than ever’, said one man.

We went to join the Preda community workers who were giving seminars to adults and children using pictures and a lively music puppet show to thrill, cheer and educate them on the hope of a better life and to teach them how to stay safe from human traffickers and child abusers.

These criminals roam about promising jobs and masquerading as relief workers but are trying to win over teenagers and their parents, if they have any, with promises of well-paid jobs in the big cities of Manila and Cebu. They are the vultures preying on the poor and exploiting the sadness and pain of poverty of those left behind and living in tents and bunkhouses.

The World Health Organization has reported that as many as 800,000 people still suffer from post-typhoon trauma, depression and hopelessness. Considering that as many 11.5 million people were adversely affected by that greatest of storms, it’s no wonder many have not received aid or government funding of any kind.

Yet the government says it has spent 52 billion pesos, just over one billion Euro, on recovery efforts. One wonders where all that donated money went and who really benefited from it. Given the level of corruption in the Philippines one cannot but think that bad politicians got most of it.

Thousands of people were killed and the counting apparently stopped at 6,000 but Congress is being challenged to investigate and find the truth and some representatives have suggested that as many as 18,000 could have died. Mass graves were dug and hundreds of bodies lie in unmarked graves.

We then went to the church grounds where the Preda community workers were in a tent holding a therapeutic group dynamic session for adults and children to help them with psycho-social relief. Nearby lay the graves of as many as hundred victims. I prayed for the all the living and those who had been killed. I stood by the tiny graves of little children and nearby workmen were constructing a monument to all who had their lives taken away.

The printed posters by the graves had the pictures of the lost ones and invariably carried the message, ‘We will miss you, we will miss you’ over and over. shaycullen@preda.org

 

 

Recent articles by Fr Shay Cullen

The Values ‘Down Under’ (5 November 2014).

Family makes us, loved as we are, Part 2 (31 October 2014)

Family makes us, loved as we are, Part 1 (11 October 2014).

Children of the Sex Trade (4 October 2014).

‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ Sunday Reflections, Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome

Archbasilica of St John Lateran [Wikipedia]
 

The full name of the church is: Archbasilica of the Most Holy Saviour and Saints John the Baptist and the Evangelist at the Lateran. It is the Cathedral of the Diocese of Rome.

 
The Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basicila takes precedence over the 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time.


Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa) 

Gospel John 2:13-22  (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada) 

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”  His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Christ driving the money-changers from the Temple, Rembrandt, c.1626

Pushkin Museum, Moscow [Web Gallery of Art] 

 

We are not isolated and we are not Christians on an individual basis, each one on his or her own, no, our Christian identity is to belong! We are Christians because we belong to the Church.

 

Pope Francis spoke these words at his General Audience on Wednesday 25 June this year. He went on to say:
The Christian belongs to a people called the Church and this Church is what makes him or her Christian, on the day of Baptism, and then in the course of catechesis, and so on. But no one, no one becomes Christian on his or her own. If we believe, if we know how to pray, if we acknowledge the Lord and can listen to his Word, if we feel him close to us and recognize him in our brothers and sisters, it is because others, before us, lived the faith and then transmitted it to us. We have received the faith from our fathers, from our ancestors, and they have instructed us in it . . . So, this is the Church: one great family, where we are welcomed and learn to live as believers and disciples of the Lord Jesus.
A few weeks earlier in his homily at Mass in St Martha’s on 15 May the Bishop of Rome spoke in similar words:
But you cannot understand a Christian alone, just like you cannot understand Jesus Christ alone. Jesus Christ did not fall from the sky like a superhero who comes to save us. No. Jesus Christ has a history. And we can say, and it is true, that God has a history because He wanted to walk with us. And you cannot understand Jesus Christ without His history. So a Christian without history, without a Christian nation, a Christian without the Church is incomprehensible. It is a thing of the laboratory, an artificial thing, a thing that cannot give life.
This Sunday we celebrate the dedication of the Cathedral of Rome. In a real sense it is the Mother Church for Catholics.
In his homily in St Martha’s Pope Francis said:
Looking back the Christian is a person who remembers: Let us seek the grace of memory, always. Looking forward, the Christian is a man, a woman of hope.
The feast of the dedication of any church is a feast of the Lord and takes precedence over a Sunday in Ordinary Time. And because St John the Baptist is one of the patrons of the Lateran Basilica the Mass has baptismal overtones, especially the First Reading.
I felt myself drawn by this feast to be a person who remembers, to accept the grace of memory from God and look back at some of the churches in my native Dublin in which I became a Christian and grew in the faith. Before the Holy Week liturgies were changed from the morning to the afternoon or evening by Pope Pius XII in 1955 my mother used to take my brother and me to visit seven churches on the afternoon of Holy Thursday to spend some time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in each. This practice seems to have died out in Dublin but it is very much alive here in the larger cities in the Philippines where it is known by the Spanish term visita iglesia. And I have just discovered that this practice originated in Rome, with the Archbasilica of St John Lateran top of the list.

Here I ‘visit’ a number of churches in Dublin that played a significant part in my becoming a member of the Church and in my growth in the faith. I invite each reader to make a similar pilgrimage of thanksgiving to God for the gift of our faith, for the gift of our Church and for those who have passed on the faith to us and nurtured us in it. The Church is a community of persons, God the Father’s sons and daughters by virtue of our baptism, just as a family is a community of persons. And just as a family normally lives in a home – we describe persons living in extreme poverty as ‘homeless’ – so does the Christian family normally gather in its parish church.

Pope Francis describes the parish in Evangelii Gaudium No 28, in these words: The parish is the presence of the Church in a given territory, an environment for hearing God’s word, for growth in the Christian life, for dialogue, proclamation, charitable outreach, worship and celebration.

St Joseph’s Church, Berkeley Road, Dublin [Wikipedia]
 
I was born in  small nursing home nearly opposite the church above on 20 April 193, Tuesday of Holy Week, the last time that Easter fell on the latest date possible, 25 April. A few days later, probably on Holy Saturday, I was baptised in that church, which wasn’t our parish church as we lived on the other side of the city.
About five years ago I celebrated Mass for the first time in St Joseph’s. The parish is now run by the Discalced Carmelites. The congregation on the Sunday I celebrated Mass was very different from what it would have been at the time of my birth. There were many Filipinos in the congregation, most of them nurses in the nearby Mater Hospital. And the servers were two girls aged about 12. One was white, from one of the oldest parts of the city, and the other was black, of Nigerian parentage. I was amused by the fact that the white girl would not acknowledge that she was from the inner city of Dublin while her companion was very proud to be a Dubliner! I met their mothers after Mass and they laughed when I told them this.
When I entered the Columban seminary in 1961 I could not have imagined such a congregation in any parish in Dublin, much less an altar-server whose parents were immigrants from Nigeria.
Our Lady Help of Christians Church, Drimnagh, Dublin
 
On a Christmas weekday a few months before I turned three I was thrown out of the church above, along with my pregnant mother, for shouting ‘Ba’ at the Infant in the crib.It was a traumatic experience for my mother. But whenever she would recall the event she would always add that the priest who ordered us out could not have done more for her sister, my Auntie Madge, who died four years later, in another parish.
In 1991, while at home in Dublin, I was asked by the Columbans to preach at all the Masses in that church on a Sunday in Lent when students from their final year in secondary school were observing a 24-hour fast to raise funds for Trócaire, the development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland. I’ve never had a more attention-grabbing opening to a homily than I did that day: I was thrown out of this church. But by the time I had preached for the fourth time I felt a vicarious healing on behalf of my mother, who died in 1970. That was a real grace.
 
St Saviour’s Church, Dominic St, Dublin [Wikipedia]
 

In the old days churches belonging to religious orders in Dublin usually had High Mass on such days as Easter Monday and Whit (Pentecost) Monday and my father would bring me to one or other of them on those occasions. I distinctly recall that when I was maybe seven or eight being particularly attracted by the habit of the Dominican friars. I didn’t recognise then the beginnings of being called by God to be a priest but I see it now as such, even though I subsequently never considered becoming a Dominican.
St Dominic at Prayer, El Greco, 1600-02
Private Collection [Web Gallery of Art]
I must confess that I wasn’t an entirely enthusiastic pilgrim when my father took me to High Mass or when my mother brought my brother and me to seven churches on Holy Thursday. I can see a reflection of my father in these words of Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium, No 167: Proclaiming Christ means showing that to believe in and to follow him is not only something right and true, but also something beautiful, capable of filling life with new splendour and profound joy, even in the midst of difficulties.Every expression of true beauty can thus be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus. My father seldom spoke about his faith but I could see even then, and more clearly later, how his faith permeated his whole life and how he felt uplifted by the beauty of the High Mass.

St Agatha’s Church, North William St, Dublin [parish website]

 
It was in St Agatha’s Church that I was confirmed by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin in March 1954, along with my classmates from O’Connell Schools, which was located in the parish. St Agatha’s didn’t play any other part in my young life but its most illustrious parishioner, the Venerable Matt Talbot, has always been part of my life. Sometimes when walking ‘into town’ with my mother – her way of describing going into the city centre – we would go through Granby Lane, behind the Dominican church, where Matt died suddenly on his way to Mass there on Trinity Sunday 1925, and say a prayer at the simple shrine that marked the spot. Matt, a simple working man, overcame, with God’s grace, his addiction to alcohol and lived a life of extraordinary asceticism that was known during his lifetime only to his spiritual director. Without being aware of it, my mother was strengthening my faith.
 
Holy Family Church, Aughrim St, Dublin [Facebook]

It was above all in Aughrim Street Church – Dubliners rarely refer to a church by its patronal name but by the street its on – that my faith grew. That faith was strengthened by the ‘communal cough’ after the second elevation, that of the chalice with the Precious Blood, that to me was a far deeper expression of faith than the perfunctory ‘Christ has died . . .’ introduced in 1969. It was the release of the sense of awe that people had, knowing that the bread and wine had become the Body and Blood of Christ. The church thronged with people young and old, most getting ready to go to work or to school, at the early morning Mass on the weekdays of Lent was also part of my growth in our faith.
I never became and altar-boy in our parish church, though I had enlisted as a trainee shortly after my First Holy Communion in 1950 at St Mary of the Angels, Church Street, the church of the Capuchin Friars (in video above), where my father used to take me some times for High Mass and where my mother took me the Sunday when St Maria Goretti was canonised in 1950. Alessandro Serenelli, who murdered the saint, spent the latter years of his life after being released from prison in a Capuchin friary in Italy, hence the connection with the Capuchin church in Dublin. What I remember is how long it took to say the fifteen decades of the Rosary that day in the church when I was a very unwilling participant!
It was in Aughrim Street church that I celebrated my First Mass on 21 December 1967, the old feast of St Thomas the Apostle, the day after my ordination in St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin.
St Mary’s Pro-cathedral, Dublin [Wikipedia]

Our class was to have been ordained in the seminary chapel in St Columban’s College, Dalgan Park, Navan, about 35 kms north-west of Dublin, but had to be transferred at the last minute – we were informed about three days before 20 December – due to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain. Four opted to be ordained in Derry Cathedral, one in his native Glasgow on the 21st, with the remaining 14 to be ordained in the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin.

During our ordination ceremony

 

With Bishop Patrick Cleary who ordained us.

 
Bishop Cleary was one of the first Columbans and the first – and only, I think – Bishop of Nancheng, China, from which he was expelled in 1962.
When I was around 8 and 9 I was a member of the Palestrina Choir in the Pro-Cathedral and occasionally dropped in to pray there on my way home from school. But I have celebrated Mass there only twice – at my ordination and in November 2011 when I concelebrated in the annual Mass on the occasion of the death anniversary of Frank Duff, founder of the Legion of Mary, who died on 7 November 1980.
I realise that in these Sunday Reflections I have ‘visited’ seven churches in my native city and diocese. There are more, all of them places of God’s very special presence, above all in the celebration of Mass and in the Blessed Sacrament, the latter inviting us into a deep intimacy with Jesus our Risen Lord.
Today’s feast calls us to have a profound sense of thanksgiving to God for the gift of faith,  for his abiding presence among us, in our daily lives and in the special buildings in which we gather each Sunday and often on other days to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And as we celebrate the Dedication of the Cathedral of Rome It is truly right and just that we pray for Pope Francis, who emphasises that he is Bishop of Rome, and for the People of God in that diocese

 

 

The papal cathedra in St John Lateran [Wikipedia]

The Latin word cathedra means a chair with armrests, used as a throne. As the throne of the bishop, form which he teaches, it is the root of the word ‘cathedral’.

‘.

Art historian Elizabeth Lev speaks about the Cathedral of Rome

Columban Fr Brian Gallagher RIP

Fr Brian Gallagher
8 December 1926 – 5 November 2014

Fr Brian A. Gallagher died on November 5 in Crestwood Nursing Home, Bristol, Rhode Island, USA, having suffered declining health for several months.

Downings [Wikipedia]

Father Brian was born 8 December 1926, at Derryhassen,
Downings, County Donegal, Ireland, in the Diocese of Raphoe, to Patrick and Fanny Gallagher. Educated at St Enda’s College, Galway, 1941-43, and St. Eunan’s College, Letterkenny, 1943-46, he then entered St Columban’s College, Dalgan Park, Navan, the Colubman seminary in Ireland, in 1946.  He was ordained on December 21, 1952.

St Eunan’s College [Wikipedia]

He arrived in Japan, December 25, 1953 and attended the Franciscan Language School. He served in Ryujin, in the Osaka Diocese; St Columban’s, Chiba City, in the Tokyo Archdiocese; in four parishes of Kumamoto. He and Fr James Norris started youth clubs with great success.  In Shimasaki, in the Fukuoka Diocese, he was responsible for the building of a unique church shaped like a chalice and dedicated to St Thérèse.

 St Thérèse Church, Shimasaki [Daughters of St Paul]

In March 1973 he was assigned to the US Region for promotion work in Milton, MA. Soon after he was appointed superior of the Milton house. He continued with promotion/mission education work in Chicago in 1978 and also in Los Angeles in 1983.


Starting 1 September 1989 he served as Superior at the Edgemont House, near Philadelphia. There he also became chaplain of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association (emblem above) in Philadelphia. In 1993, when the Edgemont House was closed, Father Brian moved to St Philomena’s parish where he helped out and continued with his Columban commitments to mission education and promotion.

He retired in July 1994 and initially went back to Ireland, but in March of 1995 he moved to the Bristol Retirement Home in RI. A priest of dedicated commitment to Columban Mission, he was also known and appreciated for his cooking of sukiyaki and loved to entertain people by playing the accordion.

 

Not Father Brian, but another Donegal man, John McArrigle

Father Brian’s funeral will take place at the Columban retirement home in Bristol on Monday, 10 November 10. Burial will take place immediately afterwards in the cemetery attached to St Mary’s Church, Bristol. May he rest in peace.


. St Columban’s, Bristol, RI, USA

 

Prayer Intentions of Pope Francis November 2014: Lonely people; Mentors of seminarians and religious

Apostleship of Prayer

Pope Francis preaching [Wikipedia]

 
Universal Intention – Lonely people

That all who suffer loneliness may experience the closeness of God and the support of others. 

Evangelization Intention – Mentors of seminarians and religious

That young seminarians and religious may have wise and well-formed mentors. 

 Videos from website of Apostleship of Prayer, Milwaukee, USA.

‘Blessed are those who mourn . . .’ Sunday Reflections, Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed.

There are no fixed readings for the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls’ Day). Below are links to selections of readings.

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa) 

In England and Wales this year the Solemnity of All Saints will be celebrated on Sunday 2 November and All Souls’ Day will be observed on Monday 3 November.

Readings for All Saints’ Day (England and Wales, Jerusalem Bible)

Fr Edward McNamara LC of Zenit responds here to a reader’s query about the celebration this year of the Solemnity of All Saints and the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed. One can truthfully say that there are reasons for confusion!

 

S

Synaxis of All Saints, Unknown Icon Artist, early 17th century

Musei Vaticani, Vatican [Web Gallery of Art]

 
The following gospel is that for All Saints’ Day and may be used on All Souls’ Day and in any Mass for the Dead.

Gospel Matthew 5:1-12  (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada) 

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.  Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.“

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

The video above is a production of Jesuit Communications, Ateneo de Manila University, Loyola Heights, Quezon City, Philippines. The speaker is Luis Antionio Cardinal Tagle, Archbishop of Manila.

 

The video above was produced by the L’Arche Community, Bognor Regis, England.


 

Antiphona ad communionem  Communion Antiphon  Cf. 4 Esdras [Ezra] 2:34-35 

Lux ætérna lúceat eis, Dómine,
Let perpetual light shine upon them

 cum Sanctis tuis in ætérnum, quia pius es.

 with your Saints for ever, for you are merciful. 

 Réquiem ætérnam dona eis, Dómine,

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,

et lux perpétua lúceat eis, 

and let perpetual light shine upon them,

cum Sanctis tuis in ætérnum, quia pius es. 

with your Siants for ever for you are merciful.

 

The first part above is the Communion Antiphon in the second Mass formulary for All Souls’s Day. The whole is used as the Communion Antiphon in the first formularu for funeral Masses outside Easter time.

‘You shall love the Lord your God . . .you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Sunday Reflections. 30th Sunday in Ordinary Ti

St Matthew and the Angel, Vincenzo Campi, 1588

 San Francesco d’Assis, Pavia, Italy [Web Gallery of Art]

 
Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel Matthew 22:34-40 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition: Canada) 
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment.  And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

In reparation for the visit of Pope Francis to the Philippines in January 2015 Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, Archbishop of Manila, reflects on today’s gospel.

The first of the three videos in this series has the theme The Works of Mercy. In the second Cardinal Tagle looks at The Beatitudes. 

Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan, Archbishop of Seoul (1922 – 2009)

 
I’m in Korea at the moment, partly because of the ordination to the priesthood on 1 November of revered Lee Jehoon Augustine, a Columban who spent two years working in the Manila area as part of his preparation for the priesthood.

Yesterday, Friday, I went with two Columban priests, Fr Liam O’Keeffe, a classmate from County Clare, Ireland,, Fr Con Murphy from County Cork, Ireland, who has been here in Korea for more than 50 years, and a woman named Pia to visit the graves of five Columbans in a cemetery owned by the Archdiocese of Seoul, but outside both the city and the archdiocese.  One of the five Columbans buried there, Fr Mortimer Kelly from Gort, County Galway, was a classmate of Father Liam and myself. Pia had known Fr John Nyhan, from Kilkenny, Ireland, since her childhood.

The cemetery is on hillsides, as is the Korean custom. A little higher on the hill where my companions are buried is the grave of Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan, a man who was revered in Korea, not only by Catholics but by nearly all South Koreans.

While we were there Father Con told me of a homily that Cardinal Kim once preached at a Mass in a Catholic university. He took out two daily newspapers and began to speak in such a quiet voice that those present had to strain forward and ‘eavesdrop’. Cardinal Kim was flipping over the pages of both newspapers and some were thinking he was unprepared. Then he came to a particular story about young women working on the railways who collected fares of last-minute passengers and helped ‘push’ people into trains at rush hour.

The report in both papers was about accusations by higher authorities that some of these young women were perhaps pocketing some of the fares. Cardinal Kim’s voice grew stronger as he spoke about this. Then he began to remind the students of how privileged they were, getting higher education and an opportunity to find better jobs than the young women working for the rail company who were at the bottom of the heap.

Cardinal Kim, who was noted for his love for the poor and who knew many poor people, now speaking in a very strong voice, asked the students if they were going to treat others with the contempt that some showed towards the young women in a menial job or if they were going to use their professional qualifications in the service of others.


Cardinal Kim

 
In that homily the late Archbishop of Seoul was bringing together the two Great Commandments that Jesus gives us in today’s gospel and between which there is no conflict. In the First Reading, to which the Gospel is linked by theme, God reminds the Hebrew people of how they are to treat those who are poor or different – aliens, widows, orphans. If you take your neighbor’s cloak in pawn, you shall restore it before the sun goes down. That cloak was what a person, especially a poor person, slept in.

In other words, Jesus is asking us to see each person through his eyes. GK Chesterton in one of his biographies, maybe that of St Francis of Assisi or of St Thomas Aquinas, has a wonderful image of a huge crowd looking up at God on a balcony, rather as in St Peter’s Square when the Pope is on the balcony there or at his window for the Sunday Angelus. However, Chesterton didn’t see himself among the crowd but with God on the balcony, looking down on the people and seeing them as God sees them.

Cardinal Kim was doing something similar. He was looking at both the university students and the railway workers through the eyes of God. Rank means nothing to God as he looks on his children. As Psalm 149 so beautifully expresses it, God takes delight in his people [Grail translation].

I don’t have my copy of the Handbook of the Legion of Mary with me but in it members are told to look upon each person they meet as higher than themselves. The Legion was born in the slums of Dublin in 1921 and to this day is involved to a large degree in serving people who have little or nothing.

God is constantly blessing the Church and the world through persons who embody the Gospel in their lives. I know from my friends in Korea in particular that Cardinal Kim was an embodiment of the Two Great Commandments, an embodiment of what each of us is called to be in virtue of our baptism in the different situations in which we find ourselves.

Cardinal Kim’s grave [AsiaNews.it]

A Columban colleague who has taught at university here in Seoul, Fr Kevin O’Rourke, captured something of the grace that Cardinal Kim was and still is, not only to the Church in Korea, but to the Church throughout the world, in a poem he wrote after the death of the Cardinal. [Korean personal names may be spelled in different ways when Roman letters are used. Fr Donal O’Keeffe uses ‘Sou-whan’ for the Cardinal’s name while Fr O’Rourke uses ‘Suwhan’.]

 

In Memory of Cardinal Kim Suwhan

Dust of snow,
a wind that chills to the bone,
pinched mourning faces,
collars raised, hats pulled low,
the shiver of death everywhere.
Cardinal Kim Suhwan
is lowered to his final resting place.

 

He brought forth simplicity,
a water simplicity that quickened
every root it touched.
He brought forth patience,
a medicament patience that salved
the wounds of the poor.
He brought forth compassion,
a loving compassion that embraced the world.
Simplicity, patience, compassion,
these three:
timber for a master carpenter,
clay for a master potter,
the hub of a master priest’s wheel.
“If you bring forth what is inside,
what you bring forth will save.”

 


Antiphona ad introitum  Entrance Antiphon  Cf Ps 104 [105]:3-4

Laetetur cor quaerentium Dominum.

Quaerite Dominum et confirmamini, quaerite faciem eius semper.


Let the hearts that seek the Lord rejoice;

Turn to the Lord and his strength, constantly seek his face.

[Confitemini Domino, et invocate nomen eius: annuntiate inter gentes opera eius.

Give glory to the Lord, and call upon his name: declare his deeds among the Gentiles.

Laetetur cor quaerentium Dominum.
Quaerite Dominum, et confirmamini, quaerite faciem eius semper.

Let the hearts that seek the Lord rejoice;
Turn to the Lord and his strength, constantly seek his face.]


[The text in bold is used in the Ordinary Form of the Mass while the rest is included in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.]

‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ Sunday Reflections, 29th Sunday

‘I die His Majesty’s good servant – but God’s first.’ St Thomas More

A Man for all Seasons

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel Matthew 22:15-21 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition: Canada) 

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’ But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, ‘Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.’ And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’


A denarius from 44 BC showing the head of Julius Caesar and the goddess Venus [Wikipedia]

 In the time of Jesus a denarius was a day’s wage for an ordinary working man.

 
I spent three months in the latter part of 1982 working in a hospital in Minneapolis as a chaplain. I was one of seven doing a ‘quarter’ of Clinical Pastoral Education. One day I had to go to a bank and got chatting with an employee at the information desk. When he heard I was based in the Philippines he told me that in the previous elections in the USA he had considered, among other things, what impact his vote would have on the lives of Filipinos and others outside the USA.

I was very struck by his attitude. We never got into partisan politics nor did we discuss religion. The man was almost certainly a Christian, probably a Lutheran if he was from Minneapolis or a Catholic if from St Paul, the other ‘Twin City’. I saw in him a person reflecting the teaching of Vatican II.

One of the major documents of that Council, Gaudium et Spes, addresses the political life of society. No 75 says: All citizens, therefore, should be mindful of the right and also the duty to use their free vote to further the common good. The Church praises and esteems the work of those who for the good of men devote themselves to the service of the state and take on the burdens of this office . . . 

All Christians must be aware of their own specific vocation within the political community. It is for them to give an example by their sense of responsibility and their service of the common good. In this way they are to demonstrate concretely how authority can be compatible with freedom, personal initiative with the solidarity of the whole social organism, and the advantages of unity with fruitful diversity. They must recognize the legitimacy of different opinions with regard to temporal solutions, and respect citizens, who, even as a group, defend their points of view by honest methods. Political parties, for their part, must promote those things which in their judgement are required for the common good; it is never allowable to give their interests priority over the common good.

Robert Schuman (1886 – 1963) [Wikipedia]


A politician of the last century who may be beatified one day is the Servant of God Robert Schuman, one of the founders of what is now the European Union. His politics of reconciliation in post-World War II Europe flowed from his deep Catholic Christian faith. Yet he was never an ‘agent’ of the Catholic Church. He was an embodiment of the vision ofGaudium et Spes, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in December 1965.

Incidentally, Robert Schuman, when Foreign Minister of France – he had been Prime Minister in 1947-48 despite having been born a German citizen in Luxembourg – said at a congress in 1950 to mark the 1,400th anniversary of the birth of Ireland’s greatest missionary saint: St Columban, this illustrious Irishman who left his own country for voluntary exile, willed and achieved a spiritual union between the principal European countries of his time. He is the patron saint of all those who now seek to build a United Europe.

Robert Schuman’s deepest identity was as a Christian. It was as such that he became a patriotic Frenchman and a visionary European. St Thomas More was one of the greatest Englishmen in the history of his country. However, he was His Majesty’s good servant – but God’s first. In 2000 St John Paul II proclaimed him patron saint of politicians and statesmen.

Jesus doesn’t give us any detailed way of being involved in the political life of whatever country we belong to. But he gives us the values to live by. We cannot leave those values at the entrance to the polling booth or at the entrance to the legislative chamber if we happen to be elected to public office. Nor can we leave them at the door of the church after Mass on Sunday.

As voters and politicians Catholic Christians may have very different views on most matters of policy. But there are certain issues on which we must all take a Gospel stand. We may never advocate abortion or support the very new idea of ‘marriage’ between two persons of the same sex.

Last year a member of the Irish parliament who voted in favour of legalising abortion in certain circumstances was aggrieved when his parish priest told him that he could no longer be an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion. It is far more important to try to live as Gaudium et Spes teaches – All Christians must be aware of their own specific vocation within the political community – than to be an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion or a lector, important though these roles may sometimes be. But they are simply roles. No one has a ‘vocation’ to be either of these or to take on similar roles. But the Council tells us that each of us has a specific vocation within the political community.

Robert Schuman lived that vocation to the full. St Thomas More was martyred because he lived that vocation to the full.


St Thomas More, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1527

 Frick Collection, New York [Web Gallery of Art]

The words of today’s alternative Communion Antiphon were sung as the Alleluia verse at the canonisation of St Pedro Calungsod and others, 21 October 2012.

 
Antiphona ad communionem  Communion Antiphon Mt10:45

Ritus hominis venit,

 ut daret animan suam redemptionem pro multis.


The Son of Man has come

to give his life as a ransom for many.


World Mission Day

 
This Sunday is World Mission Day. You may wish to read the Message of Pope Francis for World Mission Day 2014. The opening sentence is a start reminder to us:Today vast numbers of people still do not know Jesus Christ.

RTÉ, Ireland’s national radio and television service, interviews three older Irish missionaries, including Columban Fr Bobby Gilmore, in the context of World Mission Day in Nationwide, broadcast 17 October. It will be available for viewing here for 21 days. Fr Gilmore spent many years in the Philippines and later worked in Jamaica. He also worked for some years with Irish migrants in England and is now involved with immigrants to Ireland through the Migrants Rights Centre Ireland of which he is a founder.

[Editor’s note: Giving the link to Nationwide does not imply agreement with all the views expressed on the program.]

Fr PJ McGlinchey

 
Though not specifically in the context of World Mission Day, Columban Fr PJ McGlinchey, who has spent most of his life as missionary priest in Jeju Island, Republic of Korea, has the been named as one of the recipients of a Presidential Distinguished Service Award for 2014 in Ireland.

Irish Presidential Distinguished Service Award for Columban Fr PJ McGlinchey

 

 

It has just been announced that Columban Fr PJ McGlinchey has been named as one of the recipients of a Presidential Distinguished Service Award for 2014 . He will be presented with the award by Irish President Michael D Higgins at a ceremony later this year. Fr McGlinchey’s baptismal names are Patrick James but he is known to everyone as ‘PJ’.

Fr McGlinchey, a native of County Donegal, Ireland, has spent his missionary life on Jeju [formerly ‘Cheju’] Island about 139 kms off the southern coast of South Korea. The citation for his award reads:


Arriving in Jeju, Korea in 1954 Fr McGlinchey, a priest with the Missionary Society of St Columban, was faced with a society that was deeply traumatised and ravished by poverty. Lead by his faith and knowledge in agriculture he set about helping to pull thousands of Jeju citizens out of poverty.


His model of development and profitable farming encouraged use of underused farm land and new farming methods. St Isidore farm was founded to include pigs, sheep, cows and now a stud.

 

Fr McGlinchey with a sick person in Korea

 

A textile factory, employed up to 1,700 Jeju women in a time when jobs on the island were scarce. His forming of a credit union changed the economy of the island and helped the citizens emerge from poverty.


Fr Mc Glinchey never forgot the island people setting up Isidore Nursing home, hospice, kindergarten and a youth centre which for over 18,000 young people from all over Korea. These welfare activities, some funded completely from donations and profits from the farm, take care of Jeju’s most vulnerable.


For 60 years, his extraordinary drive, dedication and vision has changed the lives of those on Jeju and Ireland is now associated with this great island. His tireless dedication gave them not just hope but a belief in what they could achieve themselves.


You can read more about the work of Fr McGlinchey here.

President Ramon Magsaysay 

(31 August 1907 – 17 March 1957) [Wikipedia]


In 1975 Fr McGlinchey was one of the Ramon Magsaysay awardees in Manila. His award was for Rural Development. The website of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation has a biographical page on the priest here. The foundation was set up to honour President Ramon Magsaysay of the Philippines who died in a plane crash in the Philippines on St Patrick’s Day, 17 March 1957. 


The website of the Isidore Farm founded by Fr McGlinchey is here. It is named after St Isidore the Farmer, widely venerated in the Philippines as San Isidro Labrador or simply, San Isidro.

 

San Isidro (c.1070 – 15 May 1130) and his wife Blessed Maria Torribia

Source of report: Website of Columbans, Ireland.

Opening of the Jubilee Year to mark the 1400th anniversary of the death of Saint Columbanus

Statue of St Columbanus in Luxeuil, France

Yesterday morning, 12 October, Cardinal Seán Brady, retired archbishop of Armagh, Ireland, was the Principal Celebrant at Mass at the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome, at the opening of the Jubilee Year to mark the 1400th anniversary of the death of Saint Columbanus. The Irish missionary saint, also known as ‘Columban’, died in Bobbio in northern Italy, on 23 November 1615. He is the patron saint of the Missionary Society of St Columban, formally established in 1918.

Cardinal Seán Brady [Wikipedia]

Pope Francis greeted the pilgrim group marking the centenary at the end of his address today after praying the Angelus.

Interior of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome [Wikipedia]

Here is the homily of Cardinal Brady, published in Zenit. 

I am very pleased to see you all here in Rome, in this beautiful Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.  We are here to celebrate the opening of the Jubilee Year of Saint Columbanus. The Jubilee Year commemorates the 1400th anniversary of the death of that great monk and missionary, who died in Bobbio in AD615. 

The Jubilee Year was opened yesterday in the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, after the arrival and solemn reception of the relics of the saint from Bobbio, followed by a Mass, celebrated by Cardinal Vallini, Vicar General of Pope Francis for the Diocese of Rome. 


Monastery ruins at Annegray, France [Wikipedia]

In a sense, the ceremony brought closure finally to the earthly pilgrimage of Columbanus who ardently desired to reach Rome, but failed to do so since he died at Bobbio – a diocese and a city which not only preserves his mortal remains, but admirably keeps alive his memory, example and spirit to this day.

In fact, we Irish are profoundly touched by the fact that so many parishes in Italy and elsewhere, so reverently keep alive the memory of Columbanus – an outstanding monk and missionary and saint.

Basilica of San Colombano, Bobbio, Italy [Wikipedia]

I remember the first time I visited Bobbio – some 50 years ago and the warm welcome we received – simply because we were Irish.  I remember the bunch of fresh flowers placed on his tomb – clear proof that someone, with a grateful heart, after all the centuries, had remembered the poor abbot – come from a distance to announce the Good News. 

But what has Columbanus to say to us – citizens of the third millennium – after fourteen centuries?  Sure, Columbanus is far distant from us in time and space, but the relevance of his thought and spirituality is extraordinary.  This was underlined by Saint John Paul II in a message to the people of Luxeuil in 1990 to commemorate the foundation of the monastery there by Columbanus fourteen hundred years earlier when the Holy Father wrote: 

You are recalling a past that is still alive and recognising the gift, given by God, to the Church, in the person of great pioneers like Saint Columbanus.  For the Lord has marvellously combined in Saint Columbanus, love of evangelisation, devotion to monastic life and the fullness of human dignity.

Abbatial Palace, Luxeuil, France [Wikipedia]

In this Mass of Thanksgiving, we too express our gratitude to God for the gift of the faith and for the goodness of all those who played any part in handing onto to us the Good News.

To help us to do so better, we recall the example of Columbanus.  During the long years of being a monk in the monastery of Bangor and earlier in Cleenish – it obviously became clear to him that, in every age, the Church is called to make all its members disciples and missionaries of Christ – Christ who is the way – the truth and the life.  So he sought the permission of his Abbot – the renowned Comgal – to leave the Monastery of Bangor and to set out as a pilgrim for Christ.  Abbot Comgall eventually agreed and so it was that Columbanus set out, on his missionary journey, accompanied by twelve brothers from the community.  So there began the long journey which would take them first to present-day France, then Germany, Switzerland, Austria and finally to Bobbio in Italy.  It was the summer of 592 – Columbanus would have been fifty years of age and rather old for such an adventure in conditions of those days. 

St Columbanus, stained glass window, Bobbio Abbey crypt [Wikipedia]

Over the next twenty years he founded a number of monasteries:  Annagray and Luxeuil, in France; Bregenz in Austria and Bobbio here in Italy.

Saint John Paul II often called for a new evangelisation of Europe after the decline in faith of recent decades.  Saint Columbanus could be seen as a model and a patron of this new evangelisation.  His missionary work could also be described as a second, and new, announcing of the Good News after the damage inflicted by the invasions from abroad and by the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.  Columbanus and his monks brought the light of faith to people who, themselves, in turn became evangelisers until Europe became, once more, a Christian continent. 

Everywhere he went, Columbanus remained devoted to the monastic way of life.  He founded monasteries; he wrote his own Monastic Rule.  It can be truly said that the ways opened up through Europe, and the monasteries founded by him, were often the places where, later on, the Benedictine rule would flourish.  With Saint Benedict, he helped to lay the basis for the European Monasticism of the Middle Ages.

The rule of Columbanus recommended that the monks should confess privately, and often, to one particular confessor. It was an effort to address the crisis that flowed from having only public confessions which were rarely celebrated more than once in a lifetime.  Perhaps he has something to say to all of us today on that topic.

Columbanus loved the monastic life of prayer and contemplation; the silence and the solitude; the fasts and the penance.  He would have seen them not alone as the golden way to a closer union with God but also as the indispensable pre-requisite of successful conversion and the winning of hearts and minds to the following of Christ. 

It is the same spirituality that saw Saint Thérèse become the Patroness of the Missions because of her prayers and sacrifices on behalf of the missions.  There can be no renewal of faith that is not preceded by a renewal of prayer because to evangelise is to transmit life and is the fruit of holiness.

Bregenz, Austria [Wikipedia]

 

In Saint Peter’s Basilica there is a mosaic dedicated to Saint Columbanus.  It bears the inscription – If you take away freedom you take away dignity.  The phrase is taken from one of the letters of Columbanus.  Indeed it is something that could have been written, not only by a seventh century missionary, but also by a citizen of today’s world, where so many people live in terrible conditions of slavery, fear and oppression.  In addition to the ancient forms of oppression such as war, poverty, loneliness, violence and exile, the modern world has new forms of slavery such as drug and alcohol addition, which are particularly destructive of human dignity.

The glory of God is the human person – fully alive.  Columbanus succeeded in uniting faith with human dignity and freedom.  These are the values on which, for centuries, the identity of Europe was founded and without which the Europe of today risks failing to have a future. May the jubilee year of Saint Columbanus, as well as his life and his writings, inspire all of us to strive for the defence of basic human rights for all.

We make our own the prayer of Saint John Paul II who, writing to the people of Luxeuil, expressed the hope that all who would commemorate the great founder of their famous abbey would be spurred to even greater fidelity to Christ and enthusiasm for His Kingdom.

My hope and prayer is: that by participating in this pilgrimage and Jubilee celebrations, and through the intercession of Saint Columbanus, we may all draw closer to Christ – the way, the truth and the life.                           

AMEN

‘Go . . . and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Sunday Reflections, 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

 

The Inspiration of St Matthew, Caravaggio, 1602

Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome [Web Gallery of Art]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel Matthew 22:1-14 [or 22:1-10] (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition: Canada) 

Jesus said to the chief priest and the elders of the people:

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, ‘Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.’ But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, ‘The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.’ Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

[“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.”]

Antiphona ad introitum     Entrance Antiphon  Ps 129 [130]:3-4

Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine, Domine, quis sustinebit?

Quia apud te propitiatio est, Deus Israel.

De profundis clamavi ad te Domine: Domine exaudi vocem meam.

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto; sicut erat in principio, et nunc et semper. Amen.

Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine, Domine, quis sustinebit?

Quia apud te propitiatio est, Deus Israel.

 

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?

But with you is found forgiveness, O God of Israel.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice!

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit;

as it was in the beginning, is now and will be for ever. Amen.

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?

But with you is found forgiveness, O God of Israel.

[The longer form is used when Mass is celebrated in the Extraordinary Form, using the 1962 Missal.]


A swing made from tires in East Timor

A friend of mine who has three young daughters and a fourth child on the way and who now lives in California posted on her Facebook the other day that the authorities in some school are removing the swings from its playground because they are ‘dangerous’ for children. I wonder if the committee in the Vatican who drew up the Lectionary we have been using since 1969 thought that some of the words of Jesus might be ‘dangerous’ for us since they have given us the option today of leaving out the last four verses of the Gospel [in square brackets above].

In Matthew 3:7 Jesus addresses some Pharisees and Sadducees with the words, You brood of vipers!, which he repeats in 12:34 and in 23:34 he’s even more scathing: You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?

The words of Jesus aren’t always ‘nice’. And not all the words in the homily of Pope Francis last Sunday at the Holy Mass for the opening of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family were ‘nice’. Addressing the assembled participants, mostly bishops, he said, And to satisfy this greed, evil pastors lay intolerable burdens on the shoulders of others . . . We are all sinners and can also be tempted to ‘take over’ the vineyard, because of that greed which is always present in us human beings. God’s dream always clashes with the hypocrisy of some of his servants. We can ‘thwart’ God’s dream if we fail to let ourselves be guided by the Holy Spirit. 


Still-life, Floris, Claesz van Dijck, 1610

Private collection [Web Gallery of Art]

The First Reading and the Gospel speak clearly of God’s desire for all of us to be with him, sharing in the abundance of his riches, symbolized in both readings by a lavish banquet.


President Ramon Magsaysay (died 1957) of the Philippines wearing a barong Tagalog [Wikipedia]

Nearly 30 years ago I officiated at a wedding in Sacred Heart Church, Cebu City. The reception was held next door at a centre attached to the church, which belongs to the Jesuits. At the reception I noticed an elderly man wearing a barong Tagalog, which is formal dress for men in the Philippines, especially at weddings. But it turned out that nobody knew him. He wasn’t a guest, but had invited himself along. As there were weddings almost every day at Sacred Heart Church I figured that maybe he invited himself along whenever the reception was held at the adjacent centre.

But nobody minded. Filipinos are hospitable and nobody is ever turned away. Many of us were amused and I had noticed the man at Mass. In other words, he wasn’t a freeloader but participated in the wedding ceremony, something that many invited to weddings an baptisms don’t do. They just turn up for the meal.

The harsh words of Jesus, which I suspect many priests won’t read at Mass, jolt us out of our complacency. The man who turned up at the banquet without bothering to dress for the occasion clearly thought that cultural norms and good manners didn’t apply to him. It’s not a crime to turn up at a wedding or some similar event dressed casually but to do so shows a lack of respect for the celebrants and for oneself.

However, in the parable, Jesus isn’t telling us to be ‘nice’ and well-mannered. He’s telling us forcefully that in order to share in the ‘dream’ that he and our heavenly Father have for us we have to do the Father’s will. Pope Francis referred to this in the closing words of his homily: My Synod brothers, to do a good job of nurturing and tending the vineyard, our hearts and our minds must be kept in Jesus Christ by ‘the peace of God which passes all understanding’ (Phil 4:7). In this way our thoughts and plans will correspond to God’s dream: to form a holy people who are his own and produce the fruits of the kingdom of God (cf. Mt 21:43).

We have to make choices. We often choose to sin. God is merciful, bending down to welcome us back, to acknowledge our sins and to ask for and receive his forgiveness. Jesus has given the Church the wonderful Sacrament of Reconciliation/Confession/Penance, precisely so that he can meet us in our sinfulness, forgive and heal us. And the Church teaches us clearly that when we have committed a grave sin we must avail of that sacrament. By the same token, he wants us priests to be available for penitents and to go to confession  regularly ourselves.

When God gave us the gift of freedom he also placed some ‘swings’ in our ‘playground’, knowing that we would sometimes fall and ‘graze our knees’ or even hurt ourselves more seriously. He didn’t protect us from all possible eventualities. Had he done so he would have made prisoners of us. He invites us to his heavenly banquet, paid for by the sacrifice of his Son on Calvary.

In the parable the king’s servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. Both good and bad had a sense of being blessed and honored by the invitation, except for one – we don’t know if he was one of the ‘good’ or one of the ‘bad’ – with an insolent sense of entitlement rather than a wondrous sense of being graced.

The Two Trinities, Murillo, 1675-82

National Gallery, London [Web Gallery of Art]

Prayer of Pope Francis for the Synod on the Family

Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
in you we contemplate
the splendor of true love,
to you we turn with trust. 

Holy Family of Nazareth,
grant that our families too
may be places of communion and prayer,
authentic schools of the Gospel
and small domestic Churches.

Holy Family of Nazareth,
may families never again
experience violence, rejection and division:
may all who have been hurt or scandalized
find ready comfort and healing. 

Holy Family of Nazareth,
may the approaching Synod of Bishops
make us once more mindful
of the sacredness and inviolability of the family,
and its beauty in God’s plan. 

Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
graciously hear our prayer.