Fr Eamonn F. Byrne

(23 July 1929 – 12 December 2015)

Fr Eamonn Byrne died in St Columban’s Nursing Home, Dalgan Park, Navan, Ireland, on 12 December 2015.  Born in Crumlin, Dublin on 23 July 1929, he was educated at Rialto National School and Synge St Christian Brothers’ School, Dublin, and entered the Columban seminary in Dalgan Park in 1947. He was ordained priest there on 21 December 1953.

Synge Street CBS logo [Wikipedia]

Appointed to the Philippines in 1954, he was assigned to St Isidore the Farmer Parish, Labrador, Pangasinan, for three years.

St Isidore the Farmer Church, Labrador [Wikipedia]

From 1957 to 1964 he was Chaplain at University of the East, Manila, and later at Far Eastern University, Manila. He spent periods as Director of Student Catholic Action in Manila, and many years later, in retirement, he published a history of that dynamic movement under the title, Columbans in Student Catholic Action, Philippines 1937-2007.

Logo of Student Catholic Action Philippines [Wikipedia]

From 1974 till 1977 Fr Byrne worked to develop the Columban apostolate to the Filipino community in the USA. Then, it was back to Pangasinan, to the parishes of Lingayen, Naguelguel, Labrador and Sual until 1988 when he was assigned to the Columban Formation Program for college students in Cebu City for a brief period. Subsequently he served for six years as Director of Vocations in Luzon, and a further six years on Mission Awareness in that area. His last appointment in the Philippines was to Our Lady of Remedies Parish, Malate, Manila, where he served from 2000 to 2007, when he returned to the Retirement Home at St Columbanʼs, Navan.

Epiphany of the Lord Co-Cathedral, Lingayen [Wikipedia]

A man of great charm and good humour, he was a popular pastor and worked very well with young people. As long as his health permitted, he was an enthusiastic member of the retired Columbans in Dalgan, ever willing to lend his support and encouragement to any new initiative.

May he rest in peace.

St Columban’s Cemetery, Dalgan Park

Obituary by Fr Cyril Lovett

Grafton Street, Dublin [Wikipedia]

‘Grafton Street’s a wonderland . . .’

Fr Patrick Raleigh, Regional Director of the Columbans in Ireland, wrote in an email: Fr Eugene Ryan, a classmate, recited the Prayers at the Cemetery. After lunch in the College there was an impromptu sing-song and very fittingly some of the songs were Dublin songs.

Very likely one of those songs was The Dublin Saunter, written by Dubliner Leo Maguire for another Dubliner, Noel Purcell, who sings it here. Noel (1900 – 1985) was an internationally-known film, TV and stage actor and, like Father Eamonn, was educated at Synge Street CBS.

St Stephen’s Green, Dublin [Wikipedia]

‘And a stroll in Stephen’s Green’

St John the Baptist Preaching 

Baciccio, c.1690, Musée du Louvre, Paris [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 Luke 3:10-18 (New Revised Standard Version – Catholic Edition, Canada) 

And the crowds asked John, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

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.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say, Rejoice.
Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord (Phil 4:4, 7; Authorized [King James[ Version).

I came across the setting above by George Rathbone of the first and last verses of today’s Second Reading while preparing this week’sSunday Reflections. It emphasises a basic theme of Advent: Joy. And today the Church focuses on that. We call the Third Sunday of Advent ‘Gaudete Sunday’ from the Latin opening word of the Entrance Antiphon, ‘Gaudete in Domino semper,’ ‘Rejoice in the Lord always’.

The First Reading begins with the same theme: Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! (Zephaniah 3:14).

‘Ligaya‘ is the Tagalog word for ‘joy’ and is a common enough name for girls in the Philippines. It is the name used for the girl at the heart of the story below, though not her real name, which was a particularly beautiful one. St Joseph is one of the central figures in the gospels read at Mass as we approach Christmas and is highlighted in the gospel for Thursday, 17 December, Matthew 1:1-17, and in the gospel for Friday, 18 December, Matthew 1:16-24. It was through St Joseph, the Husband of Mary, that Jesus was born of the line of David, as God had promised. And by naming Jesus, as the angel asked him to do, St Joseph became the legal father of Jesus.

This story is in the current issue of MISYONonline.com and has appeared there before. It is a story that shows the joy that only God can give, a joy that usually comes from within a very painful situation, a situation that may well be the result of a great sin.

I MET ST JOSEPH IN MANILA

By Columba Chang Eun-Yeal

 
Columba Chang, 2012

We first published this article in the November-December 2003 issue of MISYON. It is a story that can be told and re-told over and over again. The author, a Columban Lay Missionary from Korea who was assigned to the Philippines for many years, is now based in Myanmar.

There may be as many as seven million Filipino overseas workers spread all over the world. [This figure is probably higher now, 2015.] They greatly help our country’s economy by the money they send home. However sometimes we seem to take them for granted, thinking that they have an easy life abroad. Read Aling Maria’s story below and find out the dangers our OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) face and the abuses they experience. We thank ‘Mang Pepe’ for his help in writing this article in which we’ve changed the names.

‘Mang’ and ‘Aling’ are Tagalog honorifics for a man and woman, respectively, older than oneself. ‘Tatay’ is the equivalent of ‘Papa’ and ‘Daddy’.

I met Mang Pepe and his daughter Ligaya through my work with Caritas Manila. I visit the family regularly. They live in a poor part of the city and Mang Pepe makes a living by doing odd jobs. My work takes me to families affected by HIV/AIDS. I knew Mang Pepe’s story before he shared it with the congregation at the Saturday evening Mass in Baclaran Church on 7 December 2002 at the end of a celebration organized by Caritas Manila for World AIDS Day.

Baclaran Church [Wikipedia]

A Greener Pasture

Mang Pepe and his wife Aling Maria were having difficulties putting their five children through school. This sometimes led to arguments. Eventually Aling Maria decided to work in the Middle East. She felt happy when accepted as a nursing aide with a two-year contract in the UAE. She prepared her documents. She and Pepe sold their house and lot for her fare and placement fee. She flew out on 5 February 1989, full of hope for her family’s future financial stability.

Aling Maria soon discovered that her contract as a nursing aid was terminated just a few months after she arrived, without any hope of renewal. But she didn’t want to go back to the Philippines with an empty pocket. She decided to take the ‘TNT’ route. She managed to find a series of jobs as a saleslady, cashier and office worker.

Columba Chang, left, with friend in Manila

Hope turns into a nightmare

As an illegal worker, she was often subjected to different abuses like underpayment, long hours of working without a day off and so on. But the worst thing was when one of Aling Maria’s employers took advantage of her and made her pregnant. When she came home to the Philippines in October 1993 Mang Pepe and the family were very shocked to learn that Aling Maria carried a child in her womb. She hadn’t mentioned anything about this before. However, despite this they still welcomed her and the child with joy . . . but deep in their hearts there was a shadow of sadness, fear and uncertainty.

After a few days the tabloids reported that three Filipino overseas workers had been sent home because of being infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS – and that one of them was Aling Maria. These stories, and the rumors they spawned, continued for a month. Some relatives, neighbors and friends rejected Aling Maria. The children of Mang Pepe and Aling Maria were torn apart. Some wanted to quit school and leave the area. The family suffered greatly because of the stigma.

Interior of Baclaran Church [Wikipedia]

Confirmed HIV

Aling Maria and Mang Pepe went to the Department of Health (DOH) for a series of blood tests. The tests confirmed what Aling Maria knew already, that she and her ‘little mercy child,’ as Mang Pepe called his wife’s daughter had HIV. The doctor gave them counseling and advice and information about HIV/AIDS.

Ligaya is born

Aling Maria decided not to stay in the hospital and continued to work as a pension plan insurance agent. In time she gave birth to a baby girl whom they named Ligaya. Gradually, however, Mang Pepe saw his dear wife turning into a picture of misery as she suffered from constant headaches and flu. Aling Maria was hoping for a miracle that would ease her agony. It was not to be. The HIV developed into full-blown AIDS. Her appetite disappeared until she couldn’t eat anymore. Mang Pepe and the children saw Aling Maria slowly dying. He prepared the family to accept her death as the will of God. She died on 15 December 1997, aged 46.

Like everyone else in Baclaran Church, I was deeply touched by Mang Pepe’s story, even though he had told it to me many times. I was touched by the great love of this simple man who accepted as his own a daughter who was the fruit of the brutal violation of his wife. Mang Pepe is ‘Tatay’ to Ligaya. Her schoolmates sometimes tease her because her features clearly show her Middle Eastern origins. But her Tatay stands by her, as do her brothers and sisters.

Rest During the Flight into Egypt 

Francesco Mancini, Pinacoteca, Vatican City [Web Gallery of Art]

Proud to be her Tatay

Tatay Pepe is proud of Ligaya’s singing ability and smiled as she sang at the celebration in Baclaran. Ligaya is very proud of her Tatay and knows the depth of his love as a father. She has very uncertain health and is often in the hospital. The shadow of AIDS hangs over her.

St Joseph named Jesus, the Son of Mary, and thereby became his legal father. He loved Mary, his wife, and raised Jesus as his own son. Mang Pepe has gone through the agony of knowing that his wife was violated overseas, after dishonest employers had taken advantage of her in other ways. When she brought home a child who was not his, he made her his own. This latter-day St Joseph in Manila has given much joy to his daughter Ligaya as she has given much joy to him and others, like myself, who have come to know and love her.

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‘Ligaya’ died in the latter part of 2004. Your editor was in Baclaran Church that day at the invitation of Columba and came to know ‘Ligaya’ as a friend. Shortly before she died he had the privilege of talking to her on Columba’s cellphone. She was a delightful child. The light of heaven upon her.

Columban Missionaries, Banmaw, Myanmar, 2011
L to R: Sr Ashwena Apao (Philippines), Arlenne Villahermosa (Philippines), Sr Mary Dillon (Ireland) and Columba Chang (Korea)

Antiphona ad introitum Entrance Antiphon Phil 4:4-5

Gaudéte in Dómino semper:íterum díco, gaudéte:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.

Dóminus prope est.

The Lord is near.

Ps 84 [85]:2 Modéstia véstra nóta sit ómnibus homínibus:

Let your forbearance be known to all men.

Nihil sollíciti sítis:

Do not be anxious over anything;

sed in ómni oratione

but in all manner of prayer,

petitiónes véstrae innotéscant apud Déum. 

let your requests be made known unto God.

Benedixísti, Dómine, térram túam:

Lord, you have blessed your land;

avertísti captivitátem Jácob.

you have put an end to Jacob’s captivity.

Glória Patri, et Fílio, et Spirítui Sancto.

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

Sicut erat in princípio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculórum. Amen.

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

Gaudéte in Dómino semper:íterum díco, gaudéte:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.

Dóminus prope est.

The Lord is near.

The text in bold is used in Masses in the Ordinary Form. The longer version is used in Masses in the Extraordinary Form but may be used in the Ordinary Form.

Linaoli Tabernacle, St John the Baptist, Fra Angelico, c.1433

Museo di San Marco, Florence [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 Luke 3:1-6 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada) 

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;

and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

Charles Kuralt was an American journalist who worked for many years on the CBS TV network in the USA. He was especially noted for his ‘On the Road’ features on the CBS Evening News. These started in 1967, the year I was ordained, and I became familiar with them when I went to study in the USA the following year.

I vividly remember one particular story – they were never from the highways but from the byways of the United States – about a man somewhat on the older side who lived in a small town somewhere in the heartland of the country. I forget the particular state. The nearest town was only a few kilometres away but there was no road connecting the two. People had to take a very long way around to get from one to the other.

The residents of both houses tried for years to persuade their politicians to build a road between the towns, without success. So this particular elderly citizen decided he’d start to build a road himself, using planks. When Charles Kuralt caught up with him he hadn’t got very far – but he had started.

Setting for a meeting of the Legion of Mary

This man was engaged in what the Handbook of the Legion of Mary calls Symbolic Action. The Handbook was written almost entirely by Frank Duff, the founder of the Legion.

The Handbook says, It is a fundamental Legion principle that into every work should be thrown the best that we can give. simple or difficult, it must be done in the spirit of Mary . . . 

But sometimes we are faced with works which are really impossible, that is to say, beyond human effort . . .

‘Every impossibility is divisible into thirty-nine steps, of which each step is possible’ – declares a legionary slogan . . .

Observe: the stress is set on action. No matter what may be the degree of the difficulty, a step must be taken. Of course, the step should be as effective as it can be. But if an effective step is not in view, then we must take a less effective one. And if the latter be not available, then some active gesture (that is, not merely a prayer) must be made which, though of no apparent practical value, at least tends towards or has some relation to the objective. This final challenging gesture is what the Legion has been calling ‘Symbolic Action.’ Recourse to it will explode the impossibility which is of our own imagining. And, on the other hand, it enters in the spirit of faith into dramatic conflict with the genuine impossibility.

The sequel may be the collapse of the walls of that Jericho.

I saw Charles Kuralt’s broadcast some time between 1968 and 1971. In the autumn of 1982 I was working in a hospital in Minneapolis as a chaplain on a three-month Clinical Pastoral Education programme. Charles Kuralt came to town while I was there to give a lunchtime lecture in an auditorium near the hospital and I went along to hear him. When he invited questions from the very large audience someone asked him, What happened to that road the old man began to build? So I wasn’t the only one who remembered the story.

Mr Kuralt told us that the man had since died – but that the road between the two towns had finally been built by the authorities.

The chances are that the man featured in Charles Kuralt’s story, since he was from the heartland of the USA, was familiar with today’s gospel. St John the Baptist is quoting the Prophet Isaiah and asking each of us to Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. He assures us that Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth;  and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

Jesus asks for our cooperation. When he was faced with the hungry crowds he asked the Apostles what food they had and then told them to feed the people. Their cooperation with their feeble resources enabled him to show God’s bounty in a way they could not have imagined. At Cana Jesus told the servants to fill the water containers – and changed the water into the equivalent of about 600 bottles of the very best wine. (I once read a commentary that advised the reader to take that in a symbolic sense. I really don’t see why we should diminish God’s bounty! What Jesus did is indeed a symbol of God’s bounty precisely because it was an ct of that bounty in a specific situation.)

Linaoli Tabernacle, Fra Angelico, c.1433

Museo di San Marco, Florence [Web Gallery of Art]

We have no idea what God can do with a seemingly insignificant or purely personal action. When the young St Anthony of the Abbot went of to live as a hermit in the desert, rather like St John the Baptist,  he had no idea that it would lead to the foundation of monasteries of contemplatives around the world.

When in 1964 Jean Vanier, a former officer in the Royal Canadian Navy and a professor of philosophy, bought an old cottage in France, rebuilt it and invited Raphael Simi and Philippe Seux, two men with learning disabilities who were living in institutions, to live with him he had no idea that this would lead toL’Arche communities around the world. These are communities where persons with learning disabilities live with others like a family and are able to develop their abilities, sometimes to the extent of leaving and living on their own. Raphael or Philippe, I forget which one, was able to make such a decision after .
Jesus, through the words of Isaiah repeated by St John the Baptist is calling us to actively prepare for his coming, in so many unexpected ways in our daily lives, through joys and sorrows, through the Mass and the sacraments, and in glory at the end of time. We are also preparing to celebrate the birthday of Jesus. However, that First Coming in the flesh has already taken place.

St John of the Cross Shrine and Reliquary, Segovia[Wikipedia]

St John of the Cross wrote in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, When he (God) gave us, as he did, his Son, who is his one Word, he spoke everything to us, once and for all in that one Word. There is nothing further for him to say. This is part of the Second Reading in the Office of Readings for Monday in Week 2 of Advent.

There is nothing further for him to say.

St John of the Cross goes on to write in the same passage, Consequently, anyone who today would want to ask God questions or desire some vision or revelation, would not only be acting foolishly but would commit an offence against God by not fixing his eyes entirely on Christ, without wanting something new or something besides him.

God might give him this answer, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’ I have already told you all things in my Word. Fix your eyes on him alone, because in him I have spoken and revealed all. Moreover, in him you will find more than you ask or desire.

The writings of St John of the Cross and of other great theologians do not reveal to us anything new but rather bring us into a deeper understanding of the Word. Likewise, the messages that the Church recognises as having been received in such places as Lourdes, for example, do not reveal to us anything new but rather emphasise some aspect of the Word, usually a call to penance and to prayer, in other words, Prepare the way of the Lord.

God asks us to look to the future in active, sometimes symbolically active, hope like the old man in Charles Kuralt’s story. Be ready to meet Jesus in whatever guise he comes and whenever he comes, each day, at the hour of our death, at the end of time.

From The Gospel of John (2003) Directed by Philip Saville. Jesus played by Henry Ian Cusick; narrator, Christopher Plummer. [John 18:33-37, today’s Gospel]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

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

Gospel John 18:33B-37 (New Revised Standard Version, CatholicEdition, Canada) 

Pilate said to Jesus: “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Christ Before Pilate, Tintoretto, 1566-67

[Thanks to Renae Gentile and Elizabeth Moran of St Christopher’s Primary School for this video]

The Kingdom of Terrorism, the Kingdom of Satan, is international. The Kingdom of Christ is Universal. The children and teachers in Manuel Duato in Lima, Peru, and those in St Christopher’s, Airport West, Victoria, not far from the Columban central house in Australia, are building the Kingdom of Christ and at the same time growing in the values of that Kingdom.

Jesus tells us, Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs (Mark 10: 14). May we learn from the children of Manuel Duato and the children of St Christopher’s where the Kingdom of God is present among us, that Manuel Duato es Amor, ‘Manuel Duato is love’. Our broken world needs the hope and healing that Christ the King gives through such as ‘Team Duato: Two Schools, One Family’.

This is a very special weekend for all Columban missionaries. Here in the Philippines the Reverend Kurt Zion Valdemoza Pala will be ordained to the priesthood. Among those present will be Fr Michael Cuddigan, a Columban now based in Hong Kong but who spent many years in the Philippines, who officiated at the wedding of Father Kurt’s parents. And Father Michael himself is a link with the beginning of the Columban mission in the Philippines as his uncle, also Fr Michael Cuddigan, was the very first Columban to arrive in Manila in 1929 when the Columbans took over Our Lady of Remedies Parish, Malate, Manila, where we still work. Father Kurt has spent time there as a deacon and will spend some time there as a priest before leaving for his mission in Myanmar in 2016. He has already spent two years in Fiji as a seminarian on First Mission Assignment.

Monday 23 November is the Feast of St Columban and also the 1,400th Anniversary of his death in Bobbio, northern Italy. The stamp above was issued by An Post in Ireland to mark the occasion. Australian Columban Fr Ray Scanlon reflects on a pilgrimage in the footsteps of our patron in St Columban, My Brother. Please keep all Columban missionaries in your prayers. Thank you.

Tomb of St Columban, Bobbio

 

Christi simus, non nostri – Go mba le Críost sinn agus nach linn féin – Let us be of Christ, not of ourselves (St Columban)

Responsorial Psalm [Philippines, USA]

Christ Healing the Blind, Nicolas Colombel, 1682

Art Museum, St Louis, Missouri, USA [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 Mark 10:46-52 (New Revised Standard Version, CatholicEdition, Canada) 

They came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus.  Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

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Fr John Burger is an American Columban served as a member of the Columban General Council from 2006 until 2012. He spent the early years of his priesthood in Japan and tells a wonderful story about a blind man who was a member of a prayer group in a parish where he served. Each week the group met to share on the following Sunday’s gospel and to pray. Father John was a little nervous when this Sunday’s gospel came up, wondering how his blind friend would respond.

He and the others were astonished when the man shared that this was one of his favourite passages in the gospels. Why? Because Jesus asked Bartimaeus, What do you want me to do for you? The blind parishioner went on to say that he was quite happy as he was. He had his own apartment and he knew his way around. But if the Lord were to ask him directly, What do you want me to do for you? He would tell him that there were parts of his life where he would like Jesus to shed his light, even though he would hesitate to ask him to do so.

 Probably the blind Japanese man had experienced people, with every good intention, wanting to help him when he needed no help. On a pilgrimage to Lourdes in Easter Week 1991 with a group of persons with physical disabilities I shared a room with our leader, Joe, able-bodied, like myself, and Tony and Tom who weren’t. Both needed help in some very personal matters. However, I learned very quickly from Tom not to do something for him when he could do it himself. That was a very good lesson for me.

Jesus didn’t presume that Bartimaeus wanted his sight back. He asked him, What do you want me to do for you? The blind man, who had shouted Jesus, Son of David, a title indicating he was the Messiah, answered, My teacher, let me see again.

Do I allow Jesus to ask me, What do you want me to do for you? And if I allow him do I have the faith of Bartimaeus to tell him what I want him to do for me? Jesus responded to the faith of the blind man: Go; your faith has made you well. And the blind beggar’s response to this was a further expression of his faith: And immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

On 11 October 2012 in his homily at the Mass marking the opening of the Year of Faith and the 5oth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council Pope Benedict said, The Year of Faith which we launch today is linked harmoniously with the Church’s whole path over the last fifty years: from the Council, through the Magisterium of the Servant of God Paul VI, who proclaimed a Year of Faith in 1967, up to the Great Jubilee of the year 2000, with which Blessed John Paul II re-proposed to all humanity Jesus Christ as the one Saviour, yesterday, today and forever. Between these two Popes, Paul VI and John Paul II, there was a deep and profound convergence, precisely upon Christ as the centre of the cosmos and of history, and upon the apostolic eagerness to announce him to the world. Jesus is the centre of the Christian faith. The Christian believes in God whose face was revealed by Jesus Christ. He is the fulfilment of the Scriptures and their definitive interpreter. Jesus Christ is not only the object of the faith but, as it says in the Letter to the Hebrews, he is “the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith” (12:2).

Bartimaeus seemed to have grasped something of this, calling Jesus by a Messianic title, Son of David, putting his faith in him and following him on the way.

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Father Cyril Axelrod CSsR  is the only deaf-blind priest in the world. He was born profoundly deaf but became blind more than thirteen years ago from Usher Syndrome. He ministers to people who are deafblind and to people who are deaf. You can read about himhere. In this video Father Cyril speaks to seminarians.

When I was in secondary school we studied some of the poetry of John Milton, most of which I disliked. But his sonnet On His Blindness was an exception.

Call of the Sons of Zebedee, Marco Basaiti, 1510
Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice [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 Mark 10:35-45 (New Revised Standard Version, CatholicEdition, Canada) 

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?”  And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop, Georges de la Tour, 1645

Musée du Louvre, Paris [Web Gallery of Art] 

In May 2008 I unexpectedly received an email from Michael in Australia whom I hadn’t met or heard from since the summer of 1967 when we were working together on a building (construction) site in Dublin. I had just been ordained subdeacon and was to be ordained priest in December of that year. The general foreman on the site was my father.

In a later email Michael said, Your father was a great role model for me to try and emulate. I remember the first job that I met your father on, as he was the general foreman. It was the first job for me as a journeyman carpenter and it was a pleasant experience coming to work with such a pleasant gentleman giving the instructions.

My father, a week before his sudden death in 1987

I wasn’t at all surprised at Michael’s words as I had heard others who had worked with my father, John, say similar things. And when I worked under him myself that summer I could see what I had known before: he led by example. He never swore, never shouted at anyone and was most helpful to young workers and to young architects. He sometimes would laugh at home at the lack of experience of the latter in practical matter. But he also knew that you can only learn through experience – and with the help of mentors. And he was a real mentor to the same young architects.

Many times before I took an important examination or was about to do something for the first time Dad would say, The experience will be good for you. There was never the hint of a demanding expectation. And I have found his words to have been true.

But I often heard him speak with gratitude, respect and affection of general foremen under whom he had worked as an apprentice and as a young carpenter. One was Mr Grace, whom I never met. Two of his sons became Capuchin priests and two of his daughters religious sisters. Another was Mr Boyle, whom I did know and who with his wife in their old age were a handsome couple.

Dad was the same at home as he was on the construction site. He never raised his voice to his two sons or to our mother. He was courteous with everyone he met and was just himself in every situation.

His authority came from within. He was responsible and loving in everything he did. Every morning, after returning from a very early Mass, he prepared my mother’s breakfast before heading for work. He started work on time and ended on time. But he wasn’t a slave to the clock.

Jean Vanier, right, with John| Smeltzer

L’Arche Daybreak Community, Toronto, 2008 [Wikipedia]

The men who have most influenced me and whom I have most admired are men who are gentle but strong, firm and responsible. One example is Jean Vanier, under whom I have twice made retreats here in the Philippines, in Cebu City in 1991 and in Quezon City in 1996. Now 87, he is the founder of L’Arche and, with Marie-Hélène Mathieu, co-founder of Faith and Light. Jean gave up a career as a university professor of philosophy to devote his life to persons with learning disabilities. He leads by example, showing the deepest respect to those considered unimportant, gentle but firm.

When I was 16 and still at school I spent nearly a year as a member of Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil (Local Defence Force), known as the FCA and now called the Irish Army Reserve. We used to train on Sundays. There was one particular corporal, just a few years older than us, who used to roar at us continually with a wide range of unoriginal swear words. Nobody respected him. We had a sergeant whose strongest expression was ‘damn’, which is considered a very mild expletive in English. He got both our respect and our cooperation. He had a sense of rightful pride in what he and we were doing.

Men like my father, Jean Vanier and my sergeant in the FCA are men in whose lives I have seen the words of Jesus in today’s gospel lived out: You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them . . . but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant. . .

First Columban Centenarian

Fr Bernard Toal, born 15 October 1915

Fr Bernard Toal, the first Columban to reach the age of 100, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, on 17 october 1915 but grew up in nearby Gloucester, New Jersey. He was ordained in Buffalo, New York, on 18 December 1943. Because of World War II he spent the early years of his priesthood in the USA.

From 1947 to 1951 he was based in Ozamiz City, Misamis Occidental, Philippines where he taught in Immaculate Conception College, now La Salle University Ozamiz. From 1951 until 1969 he was in St Columban’s, Bristol, Rhode Island, USA, most of that time as Director of Probationers, Columban seminarians on a year of intense spiritual formation.

Fr Toal worked in Peru from 1968 till 1979 when he was reassigned to the USA where he worked in parishes in New Mexico, Texas and California, the last being St Mary’s, Fontana, California, where he worked from 2001 until he retired to St Columban’s,Bristol, RI, in 2011.

We thank God for Father Bernard’s long life and for his faithful service as a Columban missionary priest. Ad multos annos!

Fr Toal, right, on 29 September 2015

From Jesus of Nazareth, Franco Zeffirelli’s TV mini-series of 1977.

Readings(New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

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

Gospel Mark 10:17-30 (New Revised Standard Version – Catholic Edition, Canada)

As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.  You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”  They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?”  Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”

Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.”  Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news,  who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.”

+++

This incident is also recounted in the gospels of St Matthew and St Luke. It is Matthew who tells us that the man who approached Jesus was young. Luke describes him as a ruler or aristocrat, depending on the translation. But it is only Mark who writes, Jesus, looking at him, loved him . . .

John Profumo (1915 – 2006) [Wikipedia]

During my second summer vacation after entering the seminary, the summer of 1963, the biggest story in Britain and Ireland was that of a senior member of the Conservative Party and of the British government, John Profumo.He had served with distinction in the British army in World War II, reaching the rank of Brigadier (General). He was independently wealthy. He became involved with a prostitute, Christine Keeler, who also had relations with  the senior Soviet naval attaché in London. Profumo denied in parliament that he had an improper relationship with Keeler. This was later shown to be untrue. He was later forced to resign for having lied to parliament. Before resigning from all his positions he confessed to his wife, Valerie Hobson, and she stood by him.

John Profumo disappeared from public life and spent many years as a volunteer cleaning toilets in a place called Toynbee Hall, a charity in the East End of London. I do not know anything about the faith of John Profumo, whose paternal ancestors were Italian aristocrats. He had the inherited title ‘Fifth Baron Profumo’, though he didn’t use it. But Lord Longford (1905 – 2001), a Labour politician and social reform campaigner whose Catholic faith – he was a convert from Anglicanism – was the bedrock of everything he did, was quoted as saying that he, felt more admiration [for Profumo] than [for] all the men I’ve known in my lifetime’.

Unlike the man in the gospel, John Profumo had sinned. He lost his reputation but regained it as years later people came to know what he had been doing.

Blessed Charles de Foucauld (1858 – 1916) [Wikipedia]

Fr Charles de Foucauld was assassinated in the Sahara on 1 December 1916 when John Profumo was almost two. Like Profumo, he was born into wealth. Unlike the man in the gospel, he became a notorious playboy and was thrown out of the French army because of his behaviour. He went through a conversion experience at 28 and, again unlike the man in today’s gospel, gave up everything. His subsequent journey in the Catholic faith led him to the priesthood and to the Sahara to live the life of Nazareth as he understood it.

Hermitage of Blessed Charles de Foucauld in southern Algeria

Brother Charles, as he was known, died alone. He had drawn up a rule for a religious congregation to live the life of Nazareth in the desert. I think that one person joined him for a short while. But in the 1920s his life and writings led to the founding of two religious congregations, the Little Brothers of Jesus and the Little Sisters of Jesus, both of which are here in the Philippines. There are a number of other congregations that adapted the rule that Brother Charles wrote.

The Little Brothers and the Little Sisters live among the poor, support themselves by taking manual jobs. The January-February 2005 issue of Misyon carried an article, Working Sisters, in which Little Sister Goneswary Subramaniam LSJ from Sri Lanka writes about working as a sewer in a garment factory in Quezon City, Metro Manila, and Little Sister Annarita Zamboni LSJ from Italy about working as a lavandera, a laundry woman. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is at the heart of the life of each community of the Little Brothers, some of whom are priests, and of the Little Sisters and neighbours are invited to join.

Abbé Henri Huvelin (1830 – 1910)

Blessed Charles was a diocesan priest, though definitely not a conventional one. But a more conventional diocesan priest, played a central role in his conversion, Fr Henri Huvelin.

Among the groups inspired by Blessed Charles is the Jesus Caritas Fraternity of Priests, a movement that adapts his spirituality to the lives of pastoral priests, mainly diocesan, though not exclusively. [That website has links to other branches of the De Foucauld family, including the Little Brothers and the Little Sisters.]

Peter, troubled by the words of Jesus, said, Look, we have left everything and followed you. Jesus replied, Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news,  who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.

Charles de Foucauld experienced the joy of doing God’s will, with persecutions in his violent death, but the houses and brothers and sisters . . . didn’t come till some years after his death. And when Cardinal José Saraiva Martins beatified Brother Charles in Rome on 13 November 2005 the Church confirmed that he had indeed attained eternal life from the moment of his death and that he was a model of holiness who could guide us as we try to follow Jesus.

Blessed Charles saw clearly what the young man in the gospel, who didn’t sin but had no idea of the riches he was spurning, didn’t see – that Jesus was looking upon him and loved him.

1959 French stamp in honour of Charles de Foucauld [Wikipedia]

Prayer of Abandonment of Blessed Charles de Foucauld

Father,

I abandon myself into your hands;

do with me what you will.

Whatever you may do, I thank you:

I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,

and in all your creatures –

I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:

I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,

for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,

to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,

and with boundless confidence,

for you are my Father.

This coming 19-23 October, the members of the Jesus Caritas Fraternity of Priests  in the Philippines will have their annual gathering in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental. Unfortunately, I’ll be unable to attend as I’m having a cataract removed that week. (I must confess that I have been a ‘lapsed’ member in recent years.) Please keep the members in your prayers.

A friend of mine in Cebu City, Simeon Dumdum Jr, a married man with adult children and a judge who has written a number of books of poetry and beautiful prose, had a column some time ago in the Cebu Daily News on the spirituality of Blessed Charles, Desert. It is well worth reading.

XIV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family

4-25 October 2015

On Saturday 3 October, at the Vigil before the opening of the ongoing Synod on the Family, Pope Francis referred to Brother Charles: Charles de Foucauld, perhaps like few others, grasped the import of the spirituality which radiates from Nazareth . . . To understand the family today, we too need to enter – like Charles de Foucauld – into the mystery of the family of Nazareth, into its quiet daily life, not unlike that of most families, with their problems and their simple joys, a life marked by serene patience amid adversity, respect for others, a humility which is freeing and which flowers in service, a life of fraternity rooted in the sense that we are all members of one body.

Holy Family (Barberini), Andrea del Sarto, c.1528

Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, Rome [Web Gallery of Art]

Prayer of Pope Francis for the Synod

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.

Pope Benedict with young friends

Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs (Mark 10:14).

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

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

Gospel Mark 10:2-16 [or 2-12] (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada) 

Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”

[People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.]

Pope Benedict answers questions of children

About ten years ago we in Worldwide Marriage Encounter in Bacolod City held a family day. One of the last activities was for the pre-teen children. They were asked to share what they loved most about their parents. One boy, aged about ten or eleven, told us that what he loved most about his parents was that they were always together.

He didn’t mean, of course, that they were tied to each other 24/7. But he saw that for his father and mother the most important reality in their lives was to be husband and wife. And he felt drawn into the love that they had for each other. ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ In today’s gospel Jesus is quoting from the First Reading, Genesis 2:18-24.

In my closing remarks at the family day I picked up on what the boy had said and pointed out that he had articulated that the foundation of the family is the relationship between husband and wife. If that relationship is sound the other relationships in the family will normally be sound too. Children won’t feel left out but rather drawn into the love their parents have for each other, the very love that brought them into life in the first place. In God’s plan, it is as husband and wife that a man and a woman are called to become father and mother. It is God’s plan that their children be drawn into the love they have for one another. This is the foundation of the family. And perhaps this can give us some idea of the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity where the Father, Son and Holy Spirit draw us into the circle of their life, having given us life through our parents.

A young journalist, a single man, happened to be present at our family day that afternoon and approached me afterwards. He had never heard marriage being described that way before and really wanted to know more. It was truly an experience of hearing the Good News for him.

It is God who joins together a man and a woman when they exchange their marriage vows. In the Sacrament of Matrimony they are giving Jesus Christ himself to each other. This is far more than a ‘blessing by the priest’, as so many misunderstand the Sacrament. It is the bride and groom who confer the sacrament on each other, who give Jesus himself to each other. This is such a profound and sacred union, as Jesus teaches us so clearly today: Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.

So often in visiting Catholic schools here in the Philippines I have been struck by the fact that so many students in their teens know by heart the words that the bride and groom exchange: For better, for worse; for richer . . . These words, etched into their hearts, express their deep-down sense of the words of Jesus in the gospel today, ‘God made them male and female’ . . . so they are no longer two but one flesh. They also express their dreams and aspirations for their own future, dreams and aspirations that have been placed in their hearts by God himself. It is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.

Prayer Before a Meal, Adriaen van Ostade, 1653

British Museum, London [Web Gallery of Art]

Enrico and Chiara: 

loving spouses and parents, witnesses to joy

Enrico and Chiara Corbella

I am grateful to Worldwide Marriage Encounter Philippines for this inspiring story. It was written by  Marie Meaney and appeared originally in Crisis Magazine.

In worldly terms, Chiara Corbella’s life (1984 – 2012) was not a success story: two children dying shortly after birth, herself ravaged by an aggressive cancer, which killed her at the young age of 28, leaving a beloved husband and a small son behind. This is not the kind of material dreams are made of. Yet when one listens to the testimonies of her friends, husband, and spiritual director, and hears more about her story and looks at her radiating, beautiful face on photographs and in video clips, one can’t help but feel that hers was an extraordinary life. Each saint has a special charisma, a particular theme, some facet of God, which he reflects, due to his particular character, call and story. Hers, I’d say, is to be a witness to joy in the face of great adversity, the kind which makes the heart overflow despite the sorrow over loss and death.

The full article on Enrico and Chiara and their children is here.  Google ‘Chiara Corbello’ or ‘Chiara Corbello Petrillo’ to discover much more about God’s love for all of us through couples like Enrico and Chiara.

First Steps, Van Gogh, 1890

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York [Web Gallery of Art]

Let the little children come to me.

XIV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Family
4-25 October 2015


The Holy Family, Jan de Bray
Private Collection [Web Gallery of Art]

Prayer of Pope Francis for the Synod

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.

St John the Evangelist, El Greco, painted 1610-14 

Museo de El Greco, Toledo, Spain [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 Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48 (New Revised Standard Version – Catholic Edition, Canada)

John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not forbid him; for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ, will by no means lose his reward.

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea.

And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched”.

Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity, Utah

In August 1982, after a year’s study in Toronto and before three months of Clinical Pastoral Education in Minneapolis, I supplied in a number of parishes for short periods in the Diocese of Boise, which covers the whole of the state of Idaho in the western USA. One of my purposes for this was to visit the Abbey of Our Lady of the HolyTrinity, Huntsville, Idaho, where I had spent ten days or so in August 1970. There I had met some of the monks who were to be part of the team that would open the first Trappist foundation in the Philippines, in Guimaras island, now the Abbey of Our Lady of the Philippines.

I spent a week in one parish where the parish priest was from India, there were  reservations of two different Native American tribes, many Spanish-speaking immigrants working on farms in the area and a majority of the people in the town proper of the Mormon faith. The local newspaper carried photos of young Mormons going on mission to other countries.

Just after lunch one day the doorbell rang. A young woman asked me to go to the hospital where an old woman, a Catholic and a relative of hers, had been in a coma for a long time, and was dying. I immediately went to the hospital and, to my surprise, the patient was fully awake and participated joyfully in the Last Sacraments, including viaticum, as I had brought the Blessed Sacrament with me. I learned later that she died about twenty minutes after I left.

The young woman who had asked me to go to the hospital was a Mormon.

When I was a child we lived in a street of terraced houses in Dublin where no one had a telephone. One time one of our neighbours, Jem Norris, got gravely ill in the middle of the night. Charlie Brooks who lived across the road went for the priest, whose house was about a kilometre away.

Charlie was a Protestant.

I have posted in Sunday Reflections before about a Mass in Belsen concentration camp, Germany, shortly after it was liberated in 1945. The account, published in 2004 in The Daily Telegraph (London) is by James Molyneaux, then a young officer in the British Army and later leader of the Ulster Unionist Party in Northern Ireland and now a member of the House of Lords. He wrote:

The most moving experience came on the second morning as I was walking from what had been the luxury SS barracks which our troops had transformed into a hospital. My attention was drawn to two packing cases covered by a worn red curtain. A young Polish priest was clinging to this makeshift altar with one hand, while celebrating Mass. Between his feet lay the body of another priest who probably died during the night. No one had had the energy to move the body.

I had no difficulty in following the old Latin Mass, having been educated at St James’s Roman Catholic School in County Antrim, and, although an Anglican, I had gained a working knowledge of all the rituals. Still supporting himself against the altar, the young priest did his best to distribute the consecrated elements (editor’s note: the Body of Christ). Some recipients were able to stumble over the rough, scrubby heathland. Others crawled forward to receive the tokens (editor’s note: to receive the Body of Christ) and then crawled back to share them with others unable to move. Some almost certainly passed on to another – probably better – world before sunset. Whatever one’s race or religion one can only be uplifted and impressed by that truly remarkable proof of the ultimate triumph of good over evil.

When I first read this article I was deeply moved in a number of ways. I was surprised to discover that the author had gone to a Catholic school in a community where, at least since the latter 1800s, there has been a deep divide between Catholics and Protestants, for historical reasons that are not entirely theological. But here was an Anglican from that background giving a powerful testimony to the Mass as the Holy Sacrifice. And he noticed how those who were barely able to crawl shared the Body of Christ with those who couldn’t move at all.

I find in the three stories above an illustration of the response of Jesus to the complaint of St John, Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he was not following us. Jesus says, For he that is not against us is for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ, will by no means lose his reward.
St John’s complaint reflects that of Joshua to Moses in the First Reading. the response of Jesus reflects that of Moses: Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, that the LORD would put his spirit upon them! (Numbers 11:29).

A memorial stone erected near the ramps where prisoners for Belsen were unloaded from goods trains

James Molyneaux’s article also illustrates the reality of hell that Jesus speaks about today. He writes:

On arrival at Tactical Headquarters, we had been briefed on the discovery of the Belsen prison camp nearby. In company with our RAF medical unit and the two 2nd Army Field hospitals, we wasted no time. Briefed though we were, the shock excelled all the horrors of the battles of the 12 months since Normandy.

As we passed through the camp gates, the Royal Military Police requested us to drive very slowly to avoid the numerous disoriented prisoners. We were handed adhesive tape to put over the vehicle horns in order to prevent them going off accidentally, lest the shock would cause still more deaths. [This little detail is surely telling.]

The British liberators were staggered and shocked by the inhuman behaviour of some of the former guards, who continued to abuse and torment prisoners nearing death when they assumed we were looking the other way. I confess that on such occasions I may have breached the Geneva Convention to prevent further ill treatment of helpless victims. Their behaviour after we had arrived contradicted the excuse that the SS had forced them to carry out orders. Our new orders to them were “Stop acting like savages”.

The ‘Thousand Year Reich’ of Hitler was in ruins after twelve years, and millions dead all over the world. These deaths, like countless deaths since, were caused by persons who chose evil over good. Each choice we make for sin is not at the level of choosing the evil of Belsen but it moves us towards that. Other dictators have tried their hand at their own version of Hitler’s distorted vision and people have gone along with them.

Each of us likes to have power. We may not be conscious of this and in many instances there’s no sin at all. I remember once  seeing in a Catholic magazine a cartoon  of people assembled for Mass where you were asked to ‘spot the errors’. One was the proverbial ‘little old lady’ kneeling in the middle of a pew instead of blocking it at one end. There are times, especially as I grow older, when I can see the ‘little old lady’ in myself, trying to subtly ensure that things are done my way. Indeed, in the parish in Idaho where that kind young Mormon woman asked me to go to the dying elderly woman, the housekeeper asked me what time I’d like to have dinner at each day. I told her – but she always served it thirty minutes earlier.

But if I am a spouse, a parent, a teacher, a boss, a priest who doesn’t listen to the other, who rules my little domain with a heavy hand, the words of Jesus are directed at me.

What is the ‘hand’, the ‘foot’, the ‘eye’ that causes me to sin, especially in the use of power?

World Maritime Day

Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast, Ludolf Backhuysen, 1617 

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC [Web Gallery of Art]

World Maritime Day was observed this week on Thursday, 24 September, but this Sunday is National Seafarers’ Day in the Church in the Philippines.

Evangelizing Filipino Seafarers

A huge percentage of the world’s international seafarers are Filipinos. MISYONonline.com, the Columban magazine in the Philippines that I edit, carried a story about some of them in the November-December 2007 issue, Christmas in Teesport. In September-October 2006 Misyon published Evangelizing Seafarers, a title that can be understood in two different ways. The opening paragraph expresses one of those:

Father Arsenio ‘Dodo’ Redulla from Bohol, Philippines, now a priest of the Diocese of Lubbock, Texas, USA, worked for some years with the Columbans in Ireland. Early one Sunday morning he was driving out of the small southeastern port city of Waterford to celebrate Mass in a nearby town and to speak about the work of the Columbans. As we say in Ireland, ‘There wasn’t a sinner to be seen’ – the Irish aren’t early risers on Sunday morning – except for a young Filipino thumbing a lift. At the time there were very few Filipinos in the country and Father ‘Dodo’ was the only Filipino priest there. Of course, he stopped. To his amazement the young man said, ‘I was hoping someone would take me to a church for Mass.’ His ship had just docked and he had never been in Ireland before.

Please remember all seafarers in your prayers.

One of my favourite poems in school was John Masefield’s Sea-Fever. Here it is read by Fred Proud. There is some controversy as to whether the first line in each stanza should read ‘I must down . . .’ or ‘I must go down . . .’ Fred Proud opts for the former. John Masefield himself uses the latter here.

I must down to the seas again,
to the lonely sea and the sky,
and all I ask is a tall ship
and a star to steer her by,
and the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song
and the white sail’s shaking,
and a grey mist on the sea’s face
and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again,
for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call
that may not be denied;
and all I ask is a windy day
with the white clouds flying,
and the flung spray and the blown spume,
and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again
to the vagrant gypsy life.
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way
where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
and all I ask is a merry yarn
from a laughing fellow-rover,
and a quiet sleep and a sweet dream
when the long trick’s over.

John Ireland’s setting of the poem, sung here by Michael Lampard, opts for ‘I must go down . . .’