Welcome, Fáilte - Diocese of Cloyne

Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes 30th May - 4th June 2025
All bookings for the Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes should be made through Joe Walsh Tours by telephone 01-2410800, online Joe Walsh Tours or by post to 89 Harcourt Street, Dublin 2, D02WY88. No booking is definite until a non-refundable deposit payment of €350 per person (plus insurance premium where applicable) has been receipted by Joe Walsh Tours. Early booking advisable.

Pilgrims who would like to travel with the Special Assisted Section should apply to: Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes, c/o Parish Secretary, 27/28 Bank Place, Mallow, Co. Cork. Tel: 022-20276. This special assisted/sick section is accommodated at the Accueil Notre Dame. Acceptance for travel with the special section for the sick is subject to approval of the Pilgrimage Medical Board. The closing date for receipt of application is 31 March 2025.

Pilgrimages 2025

New Appointments - January 2025

Bishop Wm. Crean, due to the untimely death of Fr. Robin Morrissey P.P. of Castletownroche (R.I.P) has appointed V. Rev. Peter O’Farrell P.P. of Milford to be P.P. of Castletownroche/Ballyhooly.

V. Rev. Francis Manning P.P. of Newmarket has been appointed Administrator of Milford Parish. He will be assisted by V. Rev. Anthony Wickham P.P. of Newtownshandrum and by V. Rev. Denis Stritch P.P. of Meelin.

These appointments take effect from January 11th 2025. We are indebted to all the priests involved in facilitating these new arrangements for the pastoral care of all the parishes. This new arrangement means that each of the three priests will now have nine church communities under their care. Your understanding and support will be greatly appreciated.

+ William Crean
Bishop of Cloyne

For further information: Contact Fr. James Moore

30 October 2024

My friends,

I wish to draw your attention to the new “Light a Candle” feature on the Diocesan Website.

This is not a virtual candle. For those who wish to participate, a candle will be placed in the Cathedral in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament for your intentions.

For the month of November, the focus will be on remembering our deceased loved ones. “Indeed, the church in its pilgrim members, from the very earliest days of the Christian Religion, has honoured with great respect the memory of the dead.” (Directory on Popular Piety and the liturgy, 251)

Themes will vary during the year, following to some extent the Liturgical Calendar but also including other celebrations and occasions as they arise.

Donations received will be used for the ongoing maintenance of St Colman’s Cathedral.

With gratitude always for your support and prayer.

Yours sincerely,

+ Wm. Crean
Most Rev. William Crean, D.D.,
Bishop of Cloyne.

Light a Candle at St Colman’s Cathedral

Light a Candle at St Colman's Cathedral

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Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 3

Below is the text of the second episode in the series Desert Fathers in a Year. You can find it in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts.
Antony, Read More

Coram Fratribus

Silence

This essay was written as a preface to Monsignor Massimo Camisasca‘s book Il silenzio, just published. You can find an English version by scrolling down.
Un aspetto della vita monastica che apprezzo sempre di più con il passare del tempo è Read More

Coram Fratribus

Baptism of Christ

You can find an English version of the text by scrolling down.
Is 40.1-11: Voici votre Dieu !
Tt 2.11-14, 3.4-7: La grâce de Dieu s’est manifestée.
Lc 3.15-22: Jésus priait, le ciel s’ouvrit, l’Esprit Saint descendit.
Il y a plusieurs manières de contempler la Read More

Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 3 Below is the text of the second episode in the series Desert Fathers in a Year. You can find it in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts.
Antony, as from a shrine, came forth initiated in the mysteries and filled with the Spirit of God. He was altogether equal to himself, a man governed by the Word and abiding in a natural state.
Antony’s fiercest inward struggles occurred while he lived in a pagan cemetery. It was a place associated with unquiet spirits. He chose it purposely, to face evil on its own turf. The battle brought him to the limit of his strength. On one occasion he found himself immersed in troubled darkness when, of a sudden, a ray of light descended on him. The spirits vanished; there was peace; the pain was gone. The Lord had come to his aid. Antony was comforted, yet puzzled. He cried: ‘Where were you? Why did you not appear before, to bring an end to my suffering?’ A voice answered: ‘I was there, Antony, but waited to see you fight.’
There is a lesson in this story. Often we see our struggles in a negative light, as obstacles only. We think God has abandoned us. We lose hope, and mope in self-pity. Let us instead be mindful that God makes use of trials, even contradictions, to test and purify us. Scripture testifies to this pedagogy. Think of Jacob’s fight with the angel, of Job’s vast losses, of Jeremiah imprisoned in a well. These hardships were not arbitrary. They were calibrated preparations for some future grace and task. In Antony’s case, resistance to temptation gave his inner man discipline and strength. It made him ready to leave the cemetery; he had learnt what there was to learn from the realm of the dead. After the incident with the ray of light, he found his way into the inner desert. There he settled in an abandoned fort. He remained there, all alone, for twenty years.
What did he do during this time, from his thirty-sixth to his fifty-sixth year? He lived sparely, on bread and water. Twice a year his friends would lower a supply of Egyptian loaves, baked to last, down through the roof; there was a well inside. He still endured demonic assaults. Passers-by could hear the racket that ensued. One worried traveller called out to Antony: ‘How are you?’ Antony replied through the barred door: ‘Oh, this is how demons appear to those who are afraid. Make the sign of the cross and go in peace. Let them make fools of themselves.’ Antony had passed beyond fear. Peace was his portion now, growing and flourishing through love.
It says much about him that his friends turned up up so loyally with his ration of bread, year after year, hardly ever catching sight of him. They heard him, though; they heard him sing. The Psalter was Antony’s constant companion. In a throwaway remark early in his text, Athanasius tells us that Antony while still a boy ‘attended faithfully to reading, conserving its benefit within’. He likely committed large chunks of Scripture to memory. They stood him in good stead in the desert. ‘The word of God is alive and active.’ How vital it is, then, to know it well and to interiorise it.
It was not by his own initiative that Antony eventually left the fort. His friends brought him out. They just could not bear it anymore. They had to know what had become of him. Had the solitude made him mad? Or angelic? They pulled down the door and cried, as if to a Lazarus: ‘Come out!’ We can imagine the suspense in the crowd when the hermit stepped forth ‘as from a shrine, as an initiate into mysteries, inspired by a divine breath’.
People were almost disappointed at first. Antony was recognisably the man they knew, ‘neither chubby for lack of exercise nor gaunt from fasting’. A new kind of light, however, shone from within him. His soul was pure, totally tranquil in the midst of popular excitement. At this point Athanasius makes a crucial remark. He says that Antony was ‘fully equal to himself, a man governed by the Word, abiding in a natural state.’
The Greek word I have translated as ‘Word’ is logos. It can equally well mean ‘reason’. That is the rendering you will find in most published versions. Still, I will argue for this stronger, more specific translation. Athanasius, remember, was a theologian of the incarnation. He had attended the Council of Nicaea, which defined the creed we still recite, spelling out the mystery of who Christ is, God from God yet born of Mary, truly divine and truly human.
The life of Antony illustrates what this tenet of faith means for concrete human living. ‘God became man so that man may be divinised.’ This Athanasian formula is no abstract speculation. It points to what St Paul teaches: that we are called to a new life in Christ. Christ truly lives in us. Recognising this, we do not become less ourselves, but more. Antony remained his well-loved self; but it was as if this self had been raised into a new dimension. He was no longer a mere individual in a queue of others. He had become ‘a man of God’. In him the life of God was palpably present. This presence revealed man in his natural state, which we are all called to reach.
No asceticism is an end in itself. The end is always to become Christlike and a Christ-bearer, to carry the living water of God’s light grace into an arid, heavy world.
The Son of God, incarnate in the Blessed Virgin Mary, giving his Word to angels, that they may carry it abroad. The Word remains alive and active. The photograph comes from a church in Puglia I visited years ago – I’ve forgotten its name.

Coram Fratribus

Patience As after a gloriously azure morning clouds descend and the snow begins to drift, the abbey of Tamié nestles with perfect serenity in the mountainside 900 metres above sea level, resembling a mother bird spreading her wings to protect her brood. She has sat there for almost a thousand years. She has seen all sorts of weathers come and go. She has seen fat years and lean. ‘But the mercy of the Lord is everlasting.’ This has been the constant refrain of the monks living within her, one generation succeeding another. The words have been borne out by experience. Saints have gone forth from her, and martyrs. Even a bishop. Today she lies there discreet, almost invisible. At the opportune time her white walls will stand out in bright contrast to her green surroundings. For winter will yield to spring, and the pear trees will bloom. An image of the Church in her mystery.

Coram Fratribus

Silence This essay was written as a preface to Monsignor Massimo Camisasca‘s book Il silenzio, just published. You can find an English version by scrolling down.
Un aspetto della vita monastica che apprezzo sempre di più con il passare del tempo è la statio. La statio è, come suggerisce il nome, il fermarsi. Si riferisce al momento appena prima della Messa, o prima di un’Ora dell’Ufficio Divino, quando i monaci si raccolgono in silenzio affinché i loro corpi possano trovare quiete, le loro menti e i loro cuori pace. Si preparano per il mistero che stanno per celebrare.
La statio può aver luogo nel chiostro o in chiesa. Nel chiostro, prima dei vespri, per esempio, la comunità si mette in fila sempre lungo la stessa parete. I fratelli si ordinano in fila, con levità, ognuno al proprio posto. Il rango nel monastero è determinato oggettivamente, dedotto semplicemente dall’ora di ingresso di una persona. Così, dice san Benedetto, se due fratelli entrano nel monastero lo stesso giorno, uno alla prima ora, l’altro alla seconda, il secondo saprà di essere più giovane di quello che è arrivato per primo. I due trascorrono la loro vita fianco a fianco, nel coro, nel refettorio, nel capitolo. Diventano fonte di stabilità, persino di identità, l’uno per l’altro.
La quiete della statio deriva in non piccola misura dal fatto che ognuno sa esattamente quale è il suo posto. Lo si attende esattamente lì; se manca, tutto l’insieme rimarrà in qualche modo imperfetto.
Una volta al suo posto, il monaco resta in attesa, così come i suoi confratelli. Di solito indossa la cocolla, la veste dalle lunghe maniche che è segno della sua consacrazione, e si copre la testa con il cappuccio. Chi osserva da lontano una comunità così radunata percepisce i suoi membri quasi fossero identici, come i pezzi degli scacchi, solo con piccole divertenti variazioni dovute all’altezza e alla circonferenza.
Chiunque conosca da vicino un qualunque monastero sa quanto sia illusoria questa impressione. Una gamma inverosimile di caratteri e sensibilità costituisce ciò che San Benedetto chiama il corpus monasterii, quella chiesa in miniatura in cui tutti sono membri di un unico corpo vivente. Il fatto di essere vestiti allo stesso modo, di indossare il segno di un ideale condiviso, non elimina la diversità, ma la contiene, consentendo agli individui di progredire (a volte in modo laborioso) in una concreta realtà di comunione che consente alle tensioni personali e comunitarie di essere risolte nella pace.
Trovarsi regolarmente nella statio significa ricongiungersi decisamente con ciò che si è e dove ci si trova. È dire: “Questo è ciò che sono; questa è la compagnia che servirò, che amerò e a cui sarò fedele; questo è il mio campo di battaglia e potenzialmente il mio paradiso”.
Riconoscere questa realtà in silenzio, prendendovi gusto, è costruttivo nel senso più profondo del termine. Mi edifica, distaccandomi da tutto ciò che mi frammenta e mi distrae, e mi radica in un contesto allo stesso tempo sociale e soprannaturale. Stare in silenzio quindi significa essere intensamente vigili, invitati ad acconsentire alle cose così come sono affinché la loro fecondità possa essere rivelata.
Il vero silenzio non è mai semplicemente assenza di rumore. Silenzio significa ascoltare; e ascoltare, come sa ogni monaco, significa essere chiamati a dare una risposta a ciò che si sente. In latino, il legame tra audire e oboedire, tra l’ascolto e l’obbedienza, è etimologicamente evidente; un termine palesemente deriva dall’altro. Per tutti noi, tuttavia, non importa quale lingua parliamo, questa connessione deve essere fatta esistenzialmente, nel modo in cui edifichiamo la nostra vita.
Il silenzio, oggigiorno, è difficile da trovare. Molti ne sono affamati. Molti lo cercano, solo per scoprire che, stabiliti in qualche luogo remoto o in un ritiro austero, con tutti i loro aggeggi spenti, non lo possono sopportare. Silenziare le voci esterne ci rende stranamente consapevoli della cacofonia di voci che gridano dentro. Per affrontarle, abbiamo bisogno di umiltà, coraggio e perseveranza. Antonio il Grande scrisse nel quarto secolo: “Chi dimora nel deserto e persiste nella quiete [in hesychia] è liberato da tre specie di combattimenti, quelli dell’udito, del pettegolezzo e della vista; può dedicarsi completamente a un’unica battaglia, quella del cuore”.
Per noi che viviamo in un universo di distrazione onnipresente e dittatoriale, quest’ultima battaglia è ancora più impegnativa di quanto non lo fosse per lui. Perché i nostri cuori non hanno forse perso in gran parte l’abitudine al silenzio? Il silenzio non è forse per noi un universo quasi mitico o un’utopia, per giunta leggermente minaccioso? Noi moderni dobbiamo imparare a stare in silenzio. La gioia del silenzio è per noi un gusto che dobbiamo acquisire, proprio come un palato brutalizzato da bevande eccessivamente zuccherate deve sottoporsi a un lento apprendistato, un digiuno dalle sensazioni travolgenti per assaporare la delicatezza di un raffinato tè al gelsomino.
Monsignor Massimo Camisasca ci ha fatto il gentile e pastorale favore, in questo libro essenziale, di insegnarci, con passi alla nostra portata, come entrare nel mondo del silenzio, trasformando quello che potrebbe sembrare un raggiungere la luna in un pellegrinaggio graduale e ricco di grazia. Questo libro sarà una benedizione per molti. Quanto più silenzioso sarà il lettore, tanto più profonda e paradossalmente melodiosa sarà la sua risonanza.
An aspect of monastic life I appreciate ever more as time passes is the statio. The statio is, as the name suggests, a standing-still. It refers to the time just before Mass, or before an Hour of the Divine Office, when the monks recollect themselves quietly so that their bodies may find stillness, their minds and hearts peace. They ready themselves for the mystery they are about to celebrate.
The statio may take place in the cloister or in church. In the cloister, before vespers, say, the community lines up along a designated wall, always the same. The brothers slip into line, each finding his designated place with ease. Rank in the monastery is determined objectively, deduced quite simply from a person’s time of entry. Thus, says St Benedict, if two brothers enter the monastery on the same day, one at the first, the other at the second hour, the second shall know that he is junior to the one who turned up first. The two spend their lives side by side, in choir, in the refectory, in chapter. They are a source of stability, even of identity, to one another.
The stillness of the statio in no small measure derives from the fact that each knows exactly where he belongs. He is awaited in that particular place; if he is missing, the whole will somehow remain imperfect.
Once he is in place, the monk waits, like his brethren. He typically wears his cowl, the long-sleeved garment representing his consecration, and draws its hood over his head. An onlooker seeing from afar a community thus assembled will perceive its members as near-identical, as if they were chessmen, only with small humorous allowances made for evident differences of height and girth.
Anyone who knows an ordinary monastery up close will know how illusory this impression is. An improbable range of characters and sensibilities typically make up what St Benedict calls the corpus monasterii, that miniature church in which all are members of a single living body. The fact of being dressed the same, of wearing a mark of a shared aspiration, does not eradicate diversity, but contains it, enabling individuals to flourish (sometimes challengingly) within a concrete reality of communion that lets tensions personal and communal be resolved peacefully.
To find oneself regularly in statio is to reconnect deliberately with what and where one is. It is to say: ‘This is who I am; this is the society in which I will serve, love, and be faithful; this is my battleground, and potentially my paradise.’
To acknowledge this reality silently, savouring it, is constructive in the deepest sense of that term. It builds me up, drawing back from all that fragments and distracts me, rooting me in a setting at once social and supernatural. To stand thus silently is to be intensely alert, invited to consent to things as they are in order that their fruitfulness may be revealed. True silence is never merely the absence of noise. Silence means listening; and to listen, as any monk knows, is to be summoned to give a response to what is heard. In Latin, the bond between audire and oboedire, listening and obedience, is etymologically self-evident; one term is demonstrably derived from the other. For all of us, though, no matter which language we speak, this connection must be made existentially, in the way we construct our lives.
Silence, these days, is hard to find. Many are hungry for it. Many seek it out, only to find that, established in some remote place or austere retreat, with all their gadgets switched off, they cannot bear it. The silencing of voices without uncannily makes us aware of the cacophony of voices crying within. To confront these, we need humility, courage, and perseverance. Anthony the Great wrote in the fourth century: ‘He who abides in the desert and persists in stillness [in hesychia] is delivered from three combats, those of hearing, of gossip, and of sight; he can devote himself fully to a single battle, that of the heart.’ For us who live in a universe of omnipresent and dictatorial distraction, this last battle is more demanding still than it was for him. For have our hearts not largely lost the habit of silence? Is silence to us not a quasi-mythical world or utopia, a slightly menacing one at that? We moderns need to learn to be silent. The delight of silence is to us a taste we must acquire, much the way a palate brutalised by sugary soft drinks must undergo a slow apprenticeship, a fasting from overwhelming sensation to relish the distinction of fine jasmine tea.
Monsignor Massimo Camisasca has done us the kind and pastoral favour, in this essential book, of teaching us in manageable steps how to enter the world of silence, turning what might seem like a moon-landing into a gradual and gracious pilgrimage. This book will be a blessing to many. The silenter the reader, the more profound and paradoxically melodious its resonance will be.

Coram Fratribus

Sr Chiara Picierro RIP On the feast of the Epiphany, in our monastery of Vitorchiano, Sr Chiara died. She was wonderfully full of life. The sudden death after fulgurant illness of a young person is hard to accept. Yet one can with eyes of faith see mysterious, even lovely patterns of coherence. On making profession, Sr Chiara wrote: ‘I live fully only when utterly available to receive God’s love and to live within it. To give ALL is not only to offer what is best in me, what I think I can give; the ALL embraces my limitations, too, and my talent, my sin and my joy.’ Not long ago, knowing she was very ill, she wrote: ‘I think I can see in this business of illness a call from the Lord to grow into self-giving. To live out an offering is about more than giving something; it is about bringing to the Lord what he gives us, and to do so deliberately, embracing what he proposes.’ Sr Chiara fought the good fight, finished the race, kept the faith. Her testimony inspires. Her memory is joyful, sweet.

Coram Fratribus

Baptism of Christ You can find an English version of the text by scrolling down.
Is 40.1-11: Voici votre Dieu !
Tt 2.11-14, 3.4-7: La grâce de Dieu s’est manifestée.
Lc 3.15-22: Jésus priait, le ciel s’ouvrit, l’Esprit Saint descendit.
Il y a plusieurs manières de contempler la fête du baptême du Seigneur. Pour ce qui me regarde, j’ai peiné un peu à les découvrir. La difficulté était liée à une expérience qu’il vaudra peut-être la peine d’évoquer. Une seule fois dans ma vie j’ai fait une retraite ignacienne. C’était il y a trente ans. J’étais étudiant; je voulais apprendre à prier; je cherchais un guide. Je me suis donc inscrit pour une retraite individuelle accompagnée de dix jours à St Beuno’s au Pays de Galles, une maison chère à Hopkins qui y passait trois années heureuses et y écrivit, entre autres, son exaltant poème Le Faucon: au Christ notre Seigneur.
Un jésuite ancien, bon et accueillant, était mon accompagnateur. Pendant notre première rencontre il m’a chargé de passer, le lendemain, trois fois une heure à méditer sur le baptême de Jésus. Ce fut un échec! Décontextualisée, la scène me parlait peu. Je me suis découvert nul en méditation imaginative. J’ai passé la journée dans une frustration croissante et ai connu, la nuit, ma première vraie insomnie. La retraite fut une grâce quand même. A la fin de mon séjour je savais que ma sensibilité était nettement plus monastique que jésuite. J’avais soif d’une liturgie nourrissante et d’une vue objective, d’ensemble sur le mystère.
C’est la liturgie qui m’a révélé le sens de l’évènement que nous célébrons. Elle nous présente le baptême du Seigneur comme un aspect de sa divine Épiphanie. Une logique interne unit l’adoration des Mages à la sortie du Christ des eaux du Jourdain. Proclus de Constantinople, un contemporain de Saint Augustin, dit magnifiquement:
La fête précédente nous montrait un pauvre nourrisson qui manifestait notre pauvreté. La fête d’aujourd’hui nous le fait voir dans sa perfection. Elle nous suggère qu’il est l’Être parfait, issu de l’Être parfait. Alors, pour les Mages, le Roi était revêtu de la pourpre de son corps. Aujourd’hui, au baptême, celui qui est la Source, est enveloppé par l’eau du fleuve.
La kénose de Dieu, justement, est révélée aux Mages. Ils voient Dieu, le Roi de l’univers, ‘revêtu de la pourpre de son corps’, un enfant de l’homme ayant adopté la nature humaine jusque dans sa misère pour ainsi la relever. Au bord du Jourdain, la foule des juifs voient l’homme comme Dieu, incarnant une échelle vivante qui réunit terre et ciel. Ces manifestations complémentaires coïncideront à Cana, où Jésus se montre à la fois humainement accessible et divinement sublime, transformateur.
Entrant dans le fleuve, le Christ marie la promesse prophétique à la réalité présente. Il sait que son passage par les eaux représente un accomplissement (Mt 3.15). Le Baptiste le sait aussi. Il est le pont entre deux testaments, deux mondes (sur une rive le plus grand, sur l’autre le plus petit), le garant de l’axe horizontal et historique de l’événement. Le Christ ne prononce aucune parole, ne fait aucun geste. L’action qu’il accomplit n’est pas en soi extraordinaire. Il suit une foule anonyme. Mais pendant que les autres gens noient par intention dans l’eau des charges spécifiques de culpabilité, Jésus porte dans son corps ‘le péché du monde’ (Jn 1.29).
Saint Paul, dans ses lettres, nous rappelle que notre rédemption est effectuée en Christ. Elle devient effective ici, au seuil de l’Israël de Dieu, quand Jésus, dont le nom veut dire ‘Dieu sauve’, entre librement dans sa mission. L’immersion dans l’eau se fait discrètement, pourtant le silence est rompu quand la voix du Père éclate en approbation. Cette voix hors temps établit l’axe vertical de louange — une louange paradoxale qui résonne du ciel à la terre, nous rappelant que l’offrande du Fils s’oriente, non pas vers une froide Transcendance sans visage, mais vers un Père qui l’accueille reconnaissant et scelle l’échange en envoyant l’Esprit sous la forme qui jadis s’envola de la main de Noé, incapable de trouver du repos pour ses pieds, mais qui vient maintenant demeurer (Jn 1.33) sur les prémices d’une nouvelle création.
Proclus de Constantinople, évoquant la Source de toutes choses enveloppée par le fleuve, dit:
Le Feu se plonge dans l’eau.
L’eau est un élément polyvalent pour l’homme. Nous en avons besoin pour vivre: les sécheresses dramatiques de nos jours présagent que de futurs conflits mondiaux se joueront sur l’accès à l’eau. Au même temps l’eau nous menace. L’hypothèse d’un monde noyé par la montée des mers inspire un grand nombre de livres et de films apocalyptiques.
Dans le baptême du Christ, Dieu, qui au Deuxième Jour de la création mit une limite aux eaux, touche cet élément montré dans l’iconographie comme un être vivant. Isaïe prophétisa: ‘Quand tu traverseras les eaux, je serai avec toi, les fleuves ne te submergeront pas’ (43.2). La traversée par laquelle le Christ nous porte nous ouvre la vie en plénitude; au même temps elle sanctifie la mort. Nous ne devons donc craindre ni l’une ni l’autre. Dieu est présent et règne même dans l’apparent anéantissement. ‘Je prends les ailes de l’aurore et me pose au-delà des mers: même là, ta main me conduit, ta main droite me saisit’ (Ps 138.9-10).
Voilà la bonne nouvelle que cette fête proclame. Maintenons la perspective large, infinie qui s’ouvre par le baptême du Christ. Suivons-le, notre Sauveur, allègrement, dans la paix, abandonnant toute pusillanimité, nous sachant bien-aimés dans le Bien-Aimé. Amen.
***
J’ai surpris ce matin le chouchou du matin, le digne
Dauphin des états du jour, le Faucon tiré par l’aube, en selle,
Déroulant un tapis d’air stable sous la ligne
Qu’il traçait là-haut — spirale, par la longe d’une aile
Extasiée! Toujours plus loin, plus fort, comme signe
En arc un talon de patin qui vire — élans et rappels
Bravaient le grand vent. Mon cœur qui cligne
A fondu pour ce vol maître du ciel.
Beauté brute et valeur et acte, oh air et gloire ralliés,
Tu plonges! Alors le feu qui sort de toi est des millions
De fois plus fascinant, plus redoutable, ô mon chevalier!
Quoi d’étrange? Un seul pas et le soc dans le sillon
Brille! Et les braises bleu-blême, ah mon allié,
Tombent, s’écartèlent et saignent or-vermillon.
Traduction par Jean-Pierre Issenhuth.
Isaiah 40.1-11: Behold your God!
Titus 2.11-14, 3.4-7: God’s grace has been revealed.
Luke 3.15-22: While Jesus was at prayer, heaven opened.
There are various ways in which to approach today’s feast. I struggled to discover them. The difficulty is linked to an experience it may be worthwhile relating. Once in my life I have done an Ignatian retreat. It was thirty years ago. I was a student; I wished to learn to pray; I sought a guide. So I signed up for a ten-day directed retreat at St Beuno’s in North Wales, a house dear to Hopkins, who spent happy years there during which he wrote, among other things, his splendid Windhover poem ‘to Christ our Lord’. A seasoned Jesuit, gracious and kind, was my director. When we met on my arrival he told me to spend, the following day, thrice one hour meditating on the Baptism of Christ. It was a disaster! Out of context, the scene did not speak to me at all. I discovered I was useless at imaginative meditation, inept at composition of place. I spent the day in increasing frustration and experienced, the following night, my first real insomnia. The retreat was a blessing all the same. At the end of my stay I knew my sensibility was clearly more monastic than Ignatian. I was hungry for nurturing liturgy and for an objective, overall view of the mystery.
It was the liturgy that, in time, revealed the sense of what we now commemorate. It presents the Baptism as an aspect of the Lord’s Epiphany. An internal logic ties the adoration of the Magi to Christ’s emergence from the Jordan. Proclus of Constantinople, a contemporary of Augustine, has written magnificently:
In the previous feast we saw a weak baby, giving proof of our weakness. In today’s feast, we see a perfect man, hinting at the perfect Son who proceeds from the all-perfect Father. At Christmas the King puts on the royal robe of his body; at Epiphany the very source enfolds and, as it were, clothes the river.
God’s self-emptying is revealed to the Wise Men who see God, King of the Universe, wearing ‘the royal robe of his body’. They see God as a son of man having adopted human nature even in its misery in order, thereby, to raise it up. On the bank of the Jordan, the assembled crowds see this man as God, embodying a living ladder uniting heaven and earth. These manifestations of manhood and godhead later coincide at Cana, where Jesus shows himself simultaneously humanly accessible and divinely sublime, performing a great work of transformation.
Descending into the River, Christ marries a world of promise to one of lived reality. Transposing the future tense of prophecy into the present, he is conscious of his passage through the waters as ‘fulfilment’ (Mt 3.15). So is the Baptist, himself a bridge (on one bank the greatest, on the other, the least), guarantor of the horizontal, historical axis of the event. Christ utters no word, makes no gesture. The action he performs is not in itself extraordinary. He follows a throng of anonymous others. But while they drown individual loads of guilt in the Jordan by intention, he carries the totality of sin in his body and for real (John 1.29).
The categorical ‘in him’ that underpins Paul’s Christology with locative force becomes effective here, on the threshold of God’s Israel, as Christ enters fully, freely into his mission. The crossing happens secretly, but silence is broken when the Father’s voice erupts in jubilant approbation. It establishes a vertical axis of praise — praise that, in this instance, resounds from heaven to earth. It reminds us that Christ’s offering is directed, not towards a faceless Transcendence but to a loving Father who receives it thankfully and seals the exchange by sending the Spirit in the form that once flew forth from Noah’s hand, hovering on the waters, unable to find rest for its feet in a drowned, stricken world, yet now coming to ‘abide’ (Jn 1:33) on the first fruit of a new creation.
Proclus, after speaking of the Source clothing himself in the river, exclaims:
‘Fire immersed in water!’
Water is polyvalent for man. On the one hand we need it to live: the dramatic droughts plaguing today’s world presage that future global conflicts will be played out on the basis of access to water. At the same time, water threatens us. The spectre of a world drowned by rising seas informs any number of apocalyptic books and films right now. In the Baptism of Christ, God, who on the second day of creation set water a limit, touches this element, which iconography shows as a living being.
Isaiah once prophesied: ‘When you pass through the waters I shall be with you, the floods will not drown you’ (43.2). The passage through which Christ carries us opens for us fullness of life; at the same time it sanctifies death. We shouldn’t, then, fear either. God is present, present as King, in what may appear as annihilation. ‘If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me’ (Psalm 138.9-10). This is the Good News proclaimed by today’s feast. Let us keep our perspective broad, open to the infinite vastness unsealed for us through the Baptism of Christ. And let us follow him, our Saviour, gladly, in peace, abandoning small-mindedness and pusillanimity, knowing we are profoundly loved in the Beloved. Amen
***
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
    dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
    As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
    Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
    Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
   No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
    Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

➡️ 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐲
The Annual Cloyne Lourdes mass celebrating the Feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes and World Day of the Sick will take place in 𝐒𝐭. 𝐆𝐨𝐛𝐧𝐚𝐢𝐭'𝐬 𝐂𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡, 𝐁𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 on 𝐅𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐅𝐞𝐛. 𝟕𝐭𝐡 at 𝟕.𝟑𝟎𝐩𝐦 Read More 5 Likes

Posted: 2 hours ago

As we celebrate the Feast day of St. Brigid, one of our three national patron saints, the Flame of St. Brigid present at Knock Shrine on Saturday, February 1st, courtesy of the Brigidine Sisters at Solas Bhríde, Kildare.
Programme Read More

Posted: Yesterday

Photos from Cloyne Diocese's post Catholic Schools Week 2025 – Alive in Christ!
“Christ is alive! He is our hope, and in a wonderful way he brings youth to our world, and everything he touches becomes young, new, full of life. The very first words, Read More 6 Likes

Posted: 3 days ago

New Appointments - January 2025
Bishop Wm. Crean, due to the untimely death of Fr. Robin Morrissey P.P. of Castletownroche (R.I.P) has appointed V. Rev. Peter O’Farrell P.P. of Milford to be P.P. of Castletownroche/Ballyhooly.
V. Rev. Francis Manning P.P. of Newmarket Read More 1 Comments

Ita O'Donoghue

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Posted: 3 days ago

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Light a Candle at St. Colman's Cathedral

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