Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)
GospelLuke 1:1-4; 4:14-21 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada)
Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.
Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, St Luke tells us. Thirty-three years ago in the Diocese of Bacolod on the island of Negros where I now live in the Philippines the Spirit led nine men to jail, three priests and six laymen, all falsely charged with multiple murder. Fourteen months were to pass before the nine were released.
Two of the priests were Columbans, Fr Brian Gore from Australia and the late Fr Niall O’Brien from Ireland. The third was a diocesan priest, Fr Vicente Dangan, now deceased.
The six laymen, all working for the Church during the very difficult Martial Law years in the Philippines, were Jesus S. Arzaga, Peter Cuales, Lydio J. Mangao, Conrado Muhal (RIP), Geronimo T. Perez (RIP) and Ernesto Tajones. They became known as The Negros Nine and you can find their photos here.
While the Negros Nine were in jail in Bacolod City the late Bishop Antonio Y. Fortich appointed the three priests as chaplains there. The vast majority of prisoners were from poor backgrounds and their cases were being constantly put back. The three priests, as well as ministering to the spiritual needs of the prisoners were able to get lawyer-friends to follow up on the cases of many of those languishing, wondering if they would ever get out.
As a result of this, many of them did. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives . . . to let the oppressed go free . . .
The Negros Nine in prison, 1983-84
L to R: Lydio Mangao, Peter Cuales, Jesus Arzaga, Fr Vicente Dangan(+), Geronimo Perez(+), Fr Brian Gore, Conrado Muhal(+), Fr Niall O’Brien(+), Ernesto Tajones
I’m writing this on 21 January. Tomorrow the 43rd annual March for Life will take place in Washington DC. According to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute in a July 2014 report, From 1973 through 2011, nearly 53 million legal abortions occurred. This is the consequence of the infamous Roe v Wade decision in 1973 by the US Supreme Court.
A charge that is often made is that those who are pro-life when it comes to the unborn and abortion are really only ‘pro-birth’ and not interested in the lives of children once they are born.
My friend Lala and her friend Jordan, whom I also know, might dispute this if they had the ability to express themselves in such a way. Lala was left in a garbage bin after birth and raised by the Daughters of Charity in Cebu City. Lala was born with Trisomy 21 (Down’s Syndrome) and Jordan with intellectual and physical disabilities. They now live in the L’Arche community in Cainta, Rizal, part of the Manila urban sprawl. Over the years those who have chosen to live with Lala, Jordan and others for long periods, enabling them to live normal lives, have come from as far away as Germany and Japan.
Lala feeding Jordan
The late King Baudouin of the Belgians, about whom I’ve written in the two previous Sunday Reflections wrote in a letter to a young mother about a children’s party that he and Queen Fabiola had hosted:
In one corner there was a group of handicapped children, several of them with Down’s Syndrome. I brought a plateful of toffees to a little girl who had scarcely any manual control. With great difficulty, she succeeded in taking a toffee but, to my astonishment, she gave it to another child. then for a long time, without ever keeping one for herself, she distributed these sweets to all the healthy children who could not believe their eyes. What a depth of love there is in these physically handicapped bodies . . .
Lala and the little girl who astonished King Baudouin are truly sisters in Christ. He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. King Baudouin and the able-bodied children with whom the little girl with the disabilities shared her toffees were poor in spirit in the sense that St Matthew means in the first of the Beatitudes, ie, they knew their need of God. They recognised God’s presence at the party, just as those who know Lala, especially those who live in L’Arche with her, recognise that the scripture has been fulfilled in their presence and is being fulfilled each day.
The Negros Nine were involved in organizing Christian Communities where people would work together for the peace and justice that the Gospel demands in an area of awful poverty for many, poverty caused by greed. They suffered with the people because of the demands of the Gospel. Those of the Negros Nine who remain continue to work for justice and peace through the Negros Nine Human Development Foundation. Among other things the foundation is involved in trying to prevent the trafficking of women and minors. To set at liberty those who are oppressed . . .
While looking for a musical setting of the Entrance Antiphon I discovered Cantate Domino in B-flat, a setting of part of Psalm 96 (95) in Latin from which the Antiphon is taken, by Japanese composer Ko Matsushita. This came out of the Sing for Japan Choir Project, an international response to the earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011. I had not heard of Ko Matsushita nor had I heard of the Sing for Japan Choir Project. I discovered quite a few videos of Cantate Domino and finally settled on one featuring the Kaohsiung Chamber Choir from southern Taiwan.
The Entrance Antiphon is taken from Psalm 95 (96) 1, 6. The above is Cantate Domino in B-flat, a setting of verses 1, 2, 4, 5 ,6, 11 by Japanese composer Ko Matsushita. Verses 1 and 6 are highlighted.
Cantate Domino canticum novum,
cantate Domino omnis terra.
Cantate Domino benedicite nomini eius,
adnuntiate diem de die salutare eius;
quoniam magnus Dominus et laudabilis valde
terribilis est super omnes deos;
quoniam omnes dii gentium daemonia
at vero Dominus caelos fecit. Confessio et pulchritudo in conspectu eius,
sanctimonia et magnificentia in sanctificatione eius.
Laetentur caeli et exultet terra
commoveatur mare et plenitudo eius.
Entrance Antiphon Cf Psalm 95:1,6
O sing a new song to the Lord,
sing to the Lord, all the earth.
In his presence are majesty and splendour,
strength and honour in his holy place.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor . . .
And in so many ways, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we can say with Jesus, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
51st International Eucharistic Congress, Cebu, Philippines
[15 January 2016] “Houses of Horror” is how one visitor described the centers where children are held illegally behind bars or in cages.
Senior Philippine officials responsible for the protection of Filipino children at risk made spot inspections of four child detention centers around Metro Manila this week on the orders of Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman following reports in the foreign media. The officials representing various government agencies were shocked and greatly disturbed when they saw the terrible conditions of the jailed children behind bars in these detention centers run by local government units. The national government has limited jurisdiction over them.
In one center, children are held in these conditions from three months to over one year and nine months. The cells for boys are overcrowded. In another detention center, there is only one social worker to handle the 43 cases. In three centers, the children were in prison cells behind bars. In one jail, a child looked as young as 6 years old.
All the children in another center were barefooted walking on wet floors. One little girl had swollen feet. The children interviewed told the team that they just do cleaning and food preparation all day. Some of the children were mentally challenged and in need of special care. A mentally challenged old lady was in with the children in one center.
Columban Fr John A. Keenan (in photos above and below) wrote about one center in Manila in the March-April 2012 issue of MISYONonllne.com. You will find his article here.
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)
GospelJohn 2:1-11 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada)
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.”And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it.When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroomand said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.”Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
On the third Sunday of January the Church in the Philippines celebrates the Feast of the Sto Niño, the Holy Child. These Sunday Reflections focus on the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C. You will find Sunday Reflections for the Feast of the Sto Niño here.
I used this material for the same Sunday three years ago. I have made one or two small changes here. I do believe that the lives of King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola can speak to all Christians no matter what their state of life or social positions are.
Last Sunday I featured the late King Baudouin of the Belgians. This week I feature him again, with Queen Fabiola, who died on 5 December 2014. The King died suddenly on 31 July 1993. The story of how they met is quite remarkable and the late Cardinal Suenens tells the story in his biography of the King, Baudouin, King of the Belgians, The Hidden Life.
The video above has as background music an Irish song that I learned in Grade Three, The Dawning of the Day, in Irish Gaelic Fáinne Geal an Lae, the version I learned. (The singer in the video is Mary Fahl). An Irish song is not at all inappropriate as the matchmaker of the marriage of Baudouin and Fabiola was an Irish woman, Veronica O’Brien.
Veronica was envoy of the Legion of Mary to France and some other European countries. Much ‘cloak and dagger’ work was involved in finding a wife and queen for the young king. Much more importantly, much prayer was involved too, prayer that was basically a searching for God’s will. They became formally engaged in Lourdes, France, King Baudouin travelling incognito, as he always did when he went there. (There are references online in obituaries of the King and elsewhere to Veronica O’Brien as ‘Sister Veronica’. She was not a religious but a lay person. Members of the Legion of Mary address each other as ‘Brother’ and ‘Sister’ only during Legion meetings, not elsewhere).
The couple were married in Brussels on 15 December 1960. The video shows photos of both the civil and church ceremonies. In a number of European countries a separate civil ceremony is required by law and takes place before the church celebration. The King wrote in his spiritual diary for that day: Normally we are awake by day and dream at night, but this time it’s as if I’m in a dream all day.
On 8 July 1978 Baudouin wrote in his diary: My God, I thank you for having led us by the hand to the feet of Mary, and every day since then, I thank you, Lord, that we have been able to love each other in your Love, and that that love has brown each day.
And Queen Fabiola wrote to Veronica: I knew Our Blessed Lady was a Queen and a Mother, and all sort of other things, but I never knew that she was a Matchmaker!
Quoting the Queen led Cardinal Suenens to quote a Spanish verse:
Cristo dijo a su Madre
el dia de la Asunción
no te vaya de este mundo
sin pasar por Aragón.
Christ said to his Mother
on the day of the Assumption:
do not leave this world
without passing through Aragón.
Before her marriage the Queen was Doña Fabiola de Mora y Aragón.
The Cardinal quotes freely from Baudouin’s diary about Queen Fabiola.
Fill Fabiola with your holiness. May she live her life in your joy and your peace. Teach me to love her with your own tenderness . . .
Fabiola is so loving; she warms my heart. Her silent, yet active presence is a source of great joy to me. My God, how you have spoiled me!
Thank you, Jesus, for having nurtured in me an immense love for my wife. Thank you for having given me a spouse whose love for me is second only to her love for You. May we both grow in you, Lord.
When Veronica O’Brien met Fabiola in Spain she asked the young woman, who had no idea why where things were leading, why she had never married. She replied, What can I say? I have never fallen in love up to now. I have put my life into the hands of God. I abandon myself to Him, maybe he is preparing something for me.
Veronicarecounted all of this in a letter to the King and concluded, It was utterly astounding, because I knew exactly what God was preparing for her.
Thirty years later the King wrote in his spiritual diary: Mary, show me what I should do so as not to miss an opportunity of loving, of denying myself for your sake, of living the present moment to the full, as if it were my last, and of loving my darling Fabiola infinitely more. yes, Mother, teach me to love her with tenderness, gentleness, thoughtfulness, respect, and teach me to have faith in here . . .
And Baudouin, addressing the Lord, wrote, Teach me too to respect her personality with its differences and its inconsistencies. Jesus, I thank you for having given me this wonderful treasure.
Both King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola in these extracts reflect the spirituality of a book that Cardinal Suenens had given the King before he met his future queen and wife,Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean-Pierre de Caussade SJ. One English translation of this masterpiece has the title The Sacrament of the Present Moment, which captures the essence of the book, that God’s will is in the present moment.
Shortly before he left for Motril, Spain, in 1993, where he died suddenly, King Baudouin confided to Cardinal Suenens and Veronica, I love Fabiola more and more each day: what an inspiration she is to me!
This led the Cardinal to quote Jean Guitton, the first lay person to be invited to Vatican II as an observer, Love is always fruitful, were it only because it transforms those who love.
One of the great sorrows in the life of Baudouin and Fabiola as a married couple was that they had no children. The Queen had five miscarriages. Reflecting on this, the King said to a group visiting the Palace, We have pondered on the meaning of this suffering and, bit by bit, we have come to see that it meant that our heart was freer to love all children, absolutely all children.
In a letter to a young mother the King wrote about a children’s party that he and the Queen had hosted at the Palace: In one corner there was a group of handicapped children, several of them with Down’s syndrome. I brought over a plateful of toffees to a little girl who had scarcely any manual control. with great difficulty, she succeed in taking a toffee but, to my astonishment, she gave it to another child. then for a long time, without ever keeping one for herself, she distributed these sweets (candies) to all the healthy children who could not believe their eyes. What a depth of love there is in those physically handicapped bodies . . .
One by one the children left. We really felt as if they had become in some sense our children. I think they felt it too. It was a very special afternoon; the presence of the Lord was really tangible. There was such peace and joy. that was pure gift!
I have read Baudouin, King of the Belgians, The Hidden Life, a number of times and each time I am moved by it. I see in it a reflection of what’s in today’s gospel: his gratitude to God, like the gratitude of all at the wedding feast, not mentioned explicitly but clearly there; his and Fabiola’s submission to God’s will through Mary: Do whatever he tells you; and the extraordinary generosity of Jesus, God and Man, turning water into the equivalent of about 500 or 600 bottles of the best wine, a generosity that led Baudouin and Fabiola, who couldn’t have children of their own, to see that our heart was freer to love all children, absolutely all children.
When we allow him, Jesus can turn the very ordinary in our lives into the extraordinary, just as a little girl with physical and mental disabilities revealed the presence of God to the King of the Belgians, just as Fabiola, his wife and queen, was a daily revelation of God’s loving presence to him.
God has the same desire to reveal himself to each of us every day, specifically in the present moment. And He has given us his Mother, who is our Mother also, to guide us with her words of absolute faith, do whatever he tells you.
Each year the parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up according to festival custom.After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looked for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.” And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”But they did not understand what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them; and his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced [in] wisdom and age and favor before God and man.
This first appeared in Cebu Daily News three years ago. It is used here with permission. Simeon Dumdum, Jr, known to his friends as ‘Jun’, is a retired Regional Trial Court judge, a writer and a poet.
Not too long ago, a couple gifted us with a wood carving of the Child Jesus. It has the size, curls and royal garments of the Santo Niño of Cebu, as well as its crown, globe and scepter. Except that the globe lies on a seat and the figure reclines on it, sleeping – the scepter resting on a leg.
The statue, which has apparently gained popularity, goes by the name Sleeping Santo Niño.
In the house we give pride of place to a copy of the standard, the official representation enshrined in the basilica. It occupies the center of a table that serves as altar, together with the crucifix and the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. But I am unsure as to where to put the Sleeping Santo Niño. My decision on the matter would almost certainly depend on whether it is a holy object or a mere artistic item – an objet d’art. I have since been inclined to the latter, having dragged my feet towards having it blessed (terrified of the priest’s refusal or ridicule), and for the moment having installed the statue above a console together with a paper weight portraying the head of a plumpish baby angel.
How did the first Sleeping Santo Niño come about? Did the one who carved it, true to his restless, artistic soul, make it purely for the purpose of creating something different, just as others have come up with their own different versions of the Holy Child, many of them clearly out of character, such as a Santo Niño holding a saw, a sight that would have terrified good St. Joseph himself.
Did the carver want to make such a statement? By the way, the official statement of the official representation of the Santo Niño is of the universal Kingship of Jesus, who is God, who became man, and is shown as a child to stress the need in the kingdom for the childlike virtues –dependence, trust, simplicity.
Someone, who apparently was losing in his grapple with faith, wrote about the Sleeping Santo Niño being a revelation of the “real” character of God – detached, indifferent, unconcerned with human problems.
This was exactly what the disciples felt when, while aboard a boat on the lake, a storm arose and the waves began swamping them, and Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. Mark tells us that they woke Jesus up, saying, “Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to die?”
Jesus got up and rebuked the wind, commanded it to stop, and then turned towards the disciples to chide them, “Why are you cowardly? Do you still not have faith?”
I doubt that the originator of the Sleeping Santo Niño had this episode in mind when applying chisel to wood. Likely as not, he thought of a tender human scene – Baby Jesus, like any infant elaborately dressed up by its parents for a pageant and unmindful of adult concerns, succumbing to sleep, the thing that infants most need and yield to no matter the occasion.
But subconsciously the carver has conveyed to me the message that Mark gives in the incident about the storm on the lake. It was not accidental that Jesus slept on a cushion at the stern (neither was it inconceivable – it was evening, and as usual Jesus must have had a full day). His rebuke being proof, he gave the disciples a lesson on faith – of reliance on the protection of the Father so complete that like him they should have slept the storm away, as well as that his mere presence among them should have been assurance enough of safety. After all, he had power at any time to tell off the wind and the waves.People who complain that God does not intervene enough in human affairs really want Him to do the work for them. But really with full faith in God they should first act, carry out their roles, let the play of their lives unfold, and not always whine for the Author to appear. Incidentally, C. S. Lewis tells us, “When the author walks on the stage, the play is over.”Perhaps the Sleeping Santo Niño deserves a second look. It does no more than remind, not of a divine pastime, but of the proper human attitude – trust. The God who appears to sleep is really an unsleeping God – as watchful as a parent is of an infant that is learning to walk, and coming to its aid only when necessary.
+++
I love Jun’s reference to the sight of the Child Jesus holding a saw as something that ‘would have terrified good St Joseph’! As the son of a carpenter named Joseph myself I felt embarrassed the first time I tried to use a saw and didn’t have a clue. I still don’t!
Pope Francis in Manila speaking about his statue of the sleeping St Joseph.
CHRIST IN YOU, OUR HOPE OF GLORY
Colossians 1:27
51st International Eucharistic Congress, Cebu, Philippines
[8 January 2016] This was a very happy Christmas and New Year celebration for the 70 children, boys and girls IN THE PREDA children’s homes in Zambales. They are recovering and finding a new life.
The boys are aged from nine to 15 and have been rescued from terrible sub-human jail conditions. The girls have been rescued from rapists and sex bars; some are victims of human trafficking and sex slavery. Other are rescued from abusive parents.
The greatest moment for the children is to be to be rescued from cages and prison cells or saved from brothels and rapists. To be rescued and to be brought to a place that is in a beautiful location in the countryside surrounded by nature and to feel safe from abusers is what the children tell is their greatest joy .
The first thing a child will experience in the Preda children’s home is freedom, respect and a feeling that they are wanted and belong to a family.
It is the community spirit of affirmation, support, encouragement, respect and dignity that the children love. They are taught their rights and human dignity and receive therapy and values formation and education.
They soon learn that the abuse done to them is a heinous crime, that it is always wrong for the adult and the children are not to blame. Usually the adult will claim that the child seduced them and the child gave consent.
This cannot be upheld anywhere.
The case of Marianne, is a case of abduction and human trafficking of a deft mute child who had no way to cry out and defend herself or even to make a complaint. A woman using sign language offered her snacks and food in a 7/11 store in the next town. There she was introduced to two men and they brought her to a hotel and raped her continually for almost 24 hours.
Her sister was looking for her and traced her to the hotel and called the police.The rapists were arrested and Marianne was rescued. But her two sisters took her home but blamed her and shaved off her hair as a punishment as if she had been responsible for her own abduction.
[2 January 2016] The New Year has begun and the road ahead will be filled with the challenges of Elections in several countries; in Ireland, the United States and the Philippines among many. And what are elections in a democratic system of governance but the selection and election of the leaders who are appointed by the citizens to take command of a nation .
They will be given the power and authority to craft its laws, raise it’s wealth to be spent for the common good and to direct its course and the welfare and safety of the people they represent.
In the selection process the personal and moral values and way of life of the candidates are scrutinized and examined. Because it will be these values or the lack of them that will determine if that person who is elected president or leader has the qualification and the ability to lead the nation along a path of peace and prosperity.
It will be his or her vision, moral courage and determination to do what is true, right and just that will greatly effect the lives and well being of every man, woman and child in the nation.
The task of the leader is to listen to the needs of the people and to respond with concern and the resources, human and material at his or her disposal to improve the lot of the people especially the poor and the excluded. That is among other things the way it should be.
In the Philippines the population is more than a hundred million and the wealth of the nation is in the hands of about 1% or less of the population.
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)
Note: In each of the above you will find an alternative First Reading, Responsorial Psalm and Second Reading that may be used in Year C. The Gospel below is always used in Year C.
GospelLuke 3:15-16, 21-22 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada)
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
A friend of my brother was asked about 25 years ago if he would mind playing a round of golf on a course near Belfast with a visitor from the European Continent. He agreed and the visitor was introduced as ‘Monsieur So-and-so’. Naturally, the two men got chatting and the Irishman asked his companion, ‘What do you do for a living?’ ‘Monsieur So-and-so’ smiled and said, ‘I’m the King of the Belgians’. It was indeed the late King Baudouin.
King Baudouin, a saintly man, often travelled incognito, as Leo Cardinal Suenens, the late Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, tells in his biography of the King, Baudouin, King of the Belgians, The Hidden Life. They sometimes went on pilgrimage to Lourdes together, the King driving. On one such occasion, the Cardinal recalled, they passed a wayside shrine of the Blessed Mother that had been vandalized. King Baudouin stopped the car and fixed the shrine.
While the video above, from Franco Zeffirelli’s 1977 TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth, doesn’t follow St Luke’s gospel word for word, it does highlight one remarkable aspect of the baptism of Jesus – he lined up with sinners who wouldn’t have known who he was. He is God who became Man, utterly sinless, and yet he asks for baptism, which for John the Baptist was a sign of repentance. Let the same mind be in you that wasin Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God,did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross (Philippians 2:5-8). In the video St John the Baptist speaks the beautiful words of the Father to Jesus, You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. And when each of us was baptized the Father spoke the same words to each of us, his beloved sons and daughters. On one of the weekdays after Epiphany we hear at Mass these powerful words of St John: God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:9-10).
There at his baptism in the Jordan God’s love was revealed among us. What greater assurance can we have of God’s love?
King Baudouin wrote a letter in 1984 in response to one he had received from ‘someone who had written to him full or rebellion and indignation against everything that is even remotely related to religious or accepted ways of behaving’, as Cardinal Suenens put it. Here are some extracts from the King’s reply to this person.
When I was still a teenager, I discovered that God, in the person of Jesus, loved us and loved me with a love that is foolish, but very real. He suffered the most excruciating torture in order to save us, to save me, to save each one of us personally from the grip of evil, and to enable us to share, if we so will, in his divine life. That, if we accept him, his Father will become our Father, my Father. That Mary, his mother, will also become my mother, our mother. From that day on my life changed. by that I mean my way of looking at things, because I’m afraid I’m still the same poor chap, with the same faults as before. but my weaknesses don’t discourage me any longer: on the contrary, they provide me with a reason for trusting totally in the all-powerful strength of my Father who is also your Father.
This is a king writing to one of his people, an angry young person who trusted him enough to write him. King Baudouin is taking the words of St John to heart: In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. And in recognizing that he himself is still the same poor chap he is acknowledging that Jesus is not ashamed of him, no more than he was ashamed of the sinners he lined up with to be baptized by John, even if he himself was utterly sinless.
King Baudouin wasn’t ashamed of his subjects or of those who came to his country from elsewhere. The London newspaper, The Independent, carried an astonishing story about his funeral (I’ve highlighted some parts):
A former prostitute paid an emotional homage to King Baudouin at the funeral Mass. One of a handful of people chosen to deliver orations, Luz Oral, a Filipino, praised the King for his fight against the international sex trade. She stood in silence as a writer, Chris de Stoop, read aloud the words she had written. Ms Oral had met the King when he paid a highly-publicised visit to a brothel in Antwerp, and De Stoop said both the King and Queen had wanted her to address the funeral. This was her homage.
Now my friend passed away, who else can help us? I come from Manila. My family is very poor. I was promised a nice job in Europe. But Belgian men put us in a sex club. Belgian men put us in prostitution. We cried and we refused. But nobody could help us. We were forced. We were treated like slaves. When I could run away, I was arrested by police. I had many problems.
Last year the King came to see us in Antwerp. We were five girls there. We cried again but it was different tears. The King was holding my arm. He listened to me. Only the King listened to us. He was shocked. There are too many victims here. From Manila. From Bangkok. From Santo Domingo. From Budapest. From eastern Europe. All looking for a better life in the West. All pushed into prostitution. The King was fighting against this sex trade. He was standing up for us. He was a real king. I called him my friend.
The first part of the video shows Luz Oral at the funeral of the King, the words she wrote being read by Chris de Stoop, a writer.This note comes with the video: ‘This is a small portion of the funeral of King Baudouin I of the Belgians from August 1993. It contains an interview of Journalist-author Chris De Stoop. He discusses the impact of Philippine, Luz Oral, a subject of De Stoop’s book about the trafficking of women into Belgium and the work done by King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola to help these women escape their sexual slavery bonds. Luz Oral writes a small eulogy of King Baudouin I/Boudewijn I and De Stoop reads the address at King Baudouin’s funeral. This small speech is in English while the other portions are in Dutch and French.’
King Baudouin, living his faith in Jesus Christ, brought hope into the lives of people on the margins, the hope that Jesus brought into the world by standing with us sinners in the River Jordan. The King himself had suffered much in his lifetime. His mother, Princess Astrid of Sweden, died in a car accident when he was only five. He, his sister and brother, with their father King Leopold III were under house arrest during World War II and spent part of it in Germany. In 1951 Leopold, a cause of bitter division in Belgium because of his surrender to Nazi Germany in 1940, abdicated and his elder son took over, not yet 21.
In 1960 the young king married Doña Fabiola de Mora y Aragón from Spain. To their great sorrow, they had no children. Queen Fabiola had five miscarriages.
In 1990 King Baudouin asked the government to declare him temporarily unable to reign so that he wouldn’t have to sign a bill legalising abortion. The government agreed. The King’s stand was one of principle, though he was unable to stop the law coming into force.
King Baudouin went to Mass every day and to confession regularly. The baptism of Jesus by St John the Baptist might spur each of us on to avail of the sacrament of reconciliation often and to us priests to make ourselves available for it. The King would write a ‘thought for the day’ in his pocket diary, a text from the Mass.
And in that diary, after his death, this prayer was found:
Lord, make us suffer with the suffering of others.
Lord, let us never again keep our happiness to ourselves.
Make us share the agony of all suffering humanity.
And deliver us from ourselves, if that is in accordance with your will.
Fr Geoffrey (Geoff) Revatto was born on 15 October 1925 at Guileen, Whitegate, County Cork, Ireland. He was educated at Guileen National School and at St Colmanʼs College, Fermoy, County Cork. He came to St Columban’s, Dalgan Park, Navan, in 1943 and was ordained priest there on 21 December 1949.
He was assigned to the Philippines and to the the Diocese of Bacolod on the island of Negros, Philippines. At the time the diocese covered the whole of the province of Negros Occidental. He spent the next twenty-seven years in various assignments on Negros, including La Castellaña, Sipalay, Ma-ao Central, Dancalan, Binalbagan and Biscom. Biscom is a large sugar mill located in Binalbagan and had its own priest for many years.
Father Geoff served for three years on mission promotion in Ireland from 1978 to 1980. Then he was once again assigned to Negros where he served as Bursar in Batang, Himamaylan, the central house for the Columban District of Negros, for five years and then as Pastor in Cauayan in the Diocese of Bacolod.
Mt Kanlaon dominates much of northern Negros. La Castellaña, one of the parishes where Father Geoff served, is at its base.
In 1988 he was appointed back to Ireland, where he took up various tasks in the Far East offices. (Far East is the the Columban magazine for Ireland and Britain). Even as he gradually lost the use of his legs, he continued to drive in a specially modified car and to faithfully put in a dayʼs work in the offices. By the year 2000 he had to give up that activity also.
Father Geoff was a quiet, dedicated, patient man who rarely complained as his health deteriorated and even the simplest activities demanded huge effort. He enjoyed a joke, the company of fellow-Columbans and always found ways of contributing to the life of the community. He died peacefully in the Columban Nursing Home, Dalgan Park on 28th December 2015.
Fr Thomas Revatto, also a Columban, spoke briefly at the funeral Mass. Father Tom was ordained one year before his brother.
May he rest in peace.
St Columban’s Cemetery, Dalgan Park
Homily at Fr Geoff Revatto’s Funeral Mass
St Columban’s, Dalgan Park, 31 December 2015
by Fr Donal Hogan
I was one of a group of Columbans who arrived in the late 1960s in Negros. Geoff, Tom (his brother) and so many of the pioneers on the island since 1950 were so supportive of us young ones. Their experience, friendship and sound advice helped us greatly during those first years. In fact, I see one of the last group of Columbans to be assigned in Negros in the early 1970s is with us today – Jim Martin, and I know that for him, too, the friendship of Geoff and Tom were a great source of encouragement and support.
I often wondered how on earth these pioneers managed without older Columbans to guide them when they first arrived. No doubt it was by the grace of God and the support of one another.
Geoff is now at peace with the Lord. He has been received into the loving embrace of his heavenly Father in the company of his parents, sister Mary and many Columban confreres, especially his friends from Negros – Mark Kavanagh, Des Quinn, Sean Holloway and so many others.
In the Gospel Jesus says, ‘Come to me . . .’ the final call of the Lord to Geoff . . . ‘and I will give you rest.’ In another place the Lord says ‘Come , my beloved . . . winter is past . . . darkness is over and the light has come.’ Geoff has now been welcomed into the light of God’s presence.
In the first reading we heard, ‘It is good to wait in silence for the Lord to save’. This echoes the psalmist, ‘Be still before the Lord and wait in patience.’ Observing Geoff during these last years he lived these scriptures. He was so patient in accepting the limitations his failing health brought to him. He maintained his good humour, courtesy and kindness. There was a calmness and contentment about him. Clearly his prayer was ‘Not my will but thy will be done.’ His presence was a blessing for us all.
The second reading says: ‘The life and death of each of us has its influence on others.’ Geoff touched the lives of so many people – especially the poor in Negros, I think in particular of the parish of Sipalay which had been without a resident priest for 50 years till Geoff arrived in the early 1950s. His presbytery was a simple nipa house. In the dry season the parish could be reached by road but in the rainy season only by boat.
The people in the photo are exercising ‘Bayanihan’, an expression of a Philippine communal value very similar to that of the Irish ‘Meitheal’.
For recreation Geoff played bridge and golf when the opportunity arose.
Regarding the golf when I arrived in Negros in 1969, Tom and his brother Geoff, together with Mark Kavanagh and Jack Hynes (both deceased) had a regular four-ball with all competing fiercely. Then I arrived – the new kid on the block. One week Geoff challenged me to a game. As Noel said last night, I had a feeling I was walking into an ambush. On the first tee Geoff said ‘We’ll play strokes’ I was a bit surprised as usually it would have been match play – where it’s hole by hole. But he knew what he was about. He was short and straight I hit longer but wilder – the ball could end up anywhere! We went along till 10th hole – he was one stroke up. Then I chalked up 10 strokes to his 4 on the 10thand never recovered after!
In more recent times when Geoff was confined to the wheel chair, I remember at lunch complaining about the terrible day’s golf. Geoff smiled and said to me, ‘Any day you can play golf is a “Good Day!”‘ It was so true and made me realise how much I take for granted in life.
In the 1970s Geoff was assigned on Mission Promotion in Ireland and spent some time in the Cathedral Parish in Waterford and in Gort, County Galway. He is fondly remembered by the local clergy and the people. He had wide interests – he was a good golfer and bridge player and enjoyed the horses.
One day in 1981 he received a phone call from superior in Negros asking him if he would come back and take up the position of Bursar in our central house in Negros. Without hesitation he accepted and again in the central house his kindly and always supportive presence was much appreciated by Columbans young and old, especially as that time was a stressful time with Niall O’Brien having been jailed with the other members of what became known as the Negros Nine. Geoff was regularly in the courtroom to give support to those falsely accused.
A psalm Geoff often recited that is also a favourite of some family members is ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, there is nothing I shall want’. The last few verses are so appropriate for this occasion: ‘You have prepared a banquet for me in the sight of my foes. My head you have anointed with oil, my cup is overflowing.’ Indeed the final verse sums up Geoff’s life, ‘Surely goodness and kindness shall follow me all the days of my life. In the Lord’s own house shall I dwell forever and ever.’
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam uasal – May his noble soul rest in peace.
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)
The readings above are used both at the Vigil Mass and at the Mass during the Day. Each Mass has its own set of prayers and antiphons.
In countries where the Epiphany is observed as a Holyday of Obligation on 6 January, eg, Ireland, the Mass of the Second Sunday after the Nativity is celebrated. The same readings are used in Years A, B, C:
The same text (cf. Matthew 2:2), without ‘Alleluia, alleluia,’ is used as the Communion Antiphon at the Mass during the Day.
GospelMatthew 2:1-12 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada)
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising,and have come to pay him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiahwas to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:
‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
While based in Britain from 2000 till 2002 I was able to spend Christmas with my brother and his family in Dublin, a short flight from England, in 2000 and 2001. During the holiday in 2001 I saw a documentary on RTÉ, Ireland’s national broadcasting service, about Filipino nurses in Ireland. These began to arrive in 2000, initially at the invitation of the Irish government to work in government hospitals. Very quickly there was an ‘invasion’ of Filipino nurses and carers, now to be found in hospitals and nursing homes in every part of the country.
One of the nurses interviewed told how many Filipinos, knowing that the Irish celebrate Christmas on the 25th, unlike the Philippines where the culmination of the feast is on the night of the 24th, offered to work on Christmas Day so that their Irish companions could be with their families. This also helped to dull the pain of being away from their own families.
I was moved to tears at the testimony of one nurse, from Mindanao as I recall, speaking about her job and her first Christmas in Ireland in 2000. She spoke very highly of her employers, of her working conditions and of her accommodation, which she compared with that of the Holy Family on the first Christmas night. She spoke of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in this situation as if they were members of her own family, as in a very deep sense they are, or we of their family.
Here was a young woman from the East powerfully proclaiming, without being aware of it, that the Word became flesh and lived among us. The fact that she wasn’t aware of it, that she was speaking about her ‘next door neighbours’, made her proclamation of faith all the more powerful. She would have known many in her own place, and very likely knew from her own experience, something of what Joseph and Mary went through in Bethlehem. Her faith in the Word who became flesh and lived among us wasn’t something in her head but part of her very being.
For much of the last century thousands of Catholic priests, religious Sisters and Brothers left Europe and North America to preach and live the Gospel in the nations of Africa, Asia and South America. Some of the countries and regions from which they left, eg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, Quebec, have to a great extent lost or even rejected the Catholic Christian faith. The Jewish people had, in faith, awaited the coming of the Messiah for many centuries. But when He came it was uneducated shepherds who first recognised him and later Simeon and Anna, two devout and elderly Jews who spent lengthy periods in prayer in the Temple.
Today’s feast highlights wise men from the east, not ‘believers’ in the Jewish sense, led by God’s special grace to Bethlehem to bring gifts in response to that grace, explaining, We . . . have come to pay him homage.They reveal to us that God calls people from every part of the world to do the same and to bring others with them.
Will nurses from the Philippines and from Kerala in India, migrants from Korea and Vietnam, from the east, bring the gift of faith in Jesus Christ once again to the many people in Western Europe and North America who no longer know him in any real sense? Will they by the lives they lead as working immigrants gently invite those in the West who have lost the precious gift of our Catholic Christian faith to once again come to pay him homage?
The Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, is a holy day of obligation on the universal calendar of the Church. However in some countries the bishops have decided not to observe it as such. But I know for sure that in the Philippines and in the USA it is observed as a holy day of obligation. Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)
GospelLuke 2:16-21 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada)
The shepherds went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.
World Day of Peace
Today is the Church’s 49th World Day of Peace. Here is the conclusion of the message of Pope Francis for this day.
I would like to make a threefold appeal to the leaders of nations: to refrain from drawing other peoples into conflicts or wars which destroy not only their material, cultural and social legacy, but also – and in the long term – their moral and spiritual integrity; to forgive or manage in a sustainable way the international debt of the poorer nations; and to adopt policies of cooperation which, instead of bowing before the dictatorship of certain ideologies, will respect the values of local populations and, in any case, not prove detrimental to the fundamental and inalienable right to life of the unborn.
I entrust these reflections, together with my best wishes for the New Year, to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our Mother, who cares for the needs of our human family, that she may obtain from her Son Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the granting of our prayers and the blessing of our daily efforts for a fraternal and united world.
El Greco, 1597-99, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC [Web Gallery of Art]
As he has done many times before, Pope Francis stresses the fundamental and inalienable right to life of the unborn.
I have used the video above a number of times. It’s message is not only the powerful words of the Beatitudes given us by Jesus but the dignity of those who proclaim them here. Some say, in all sincerity, that if it is known before birth that a child has a disability, especially a mental one, better that that child not be born. They are really saying that the persons in this video, whose names appear at the end, were not worthy of being born, or would have been spared a life of suffering had they been aborted. Pope Francis is speaking to those who see things in this way.
Miggy and Gee-Gee with Mikko and Mica, 2009
I have close friends whose first child, a son, was born with severe mental and physical disabilities, due to something that went wrong during his birth. Mikko lived for seven years. There is no way that his parents, Miggy and Gee-Gee, or his younger sister Mica regret his birth. His parents loved him to bits from the moment of his birth, indeed from the moment they knew their first child was on his way. And Mica loved her older brother to bits in the same way.
How often persons who are pro-life in word and in deed are taunted or dismissed as caring only for the lives of the unborn! Miggy and Gee-Gee took care of Mikko, with professional help, 24/7. That included many days in the ICU over the years of his life, including one Christmas. There are countless others caring with all their hearts for those in need.
The words of Pope Francis are a message of hope to the many who lovingly care for persons with special needs at whatever stage of life and he is telling them that they are truly peacemakers. He is also quietly challenging those who see things differently.
