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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.

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Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 24

Abba Antony said: I think the body possesses a physical movement that is mixed up with it, though it does not work except with the consent of the soul. There is another [kind of] movement which comes from nurturing and Read More

Coram Fratribus

Pentecost

Acts 2:1-11: How can each of us hear them in his own language?
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13: There is a variety of gifts but one Spirit.
John 20:19-23: Peace be with you! Receive the Holy Spirit!
In her autobiography, Thérèse of Lisieux speaks of Read More

Coram Fratribus

Pentecost Vigil

Genesis 11.1-9: Let us build a town and a tower reaching heaven.
Romand 8:22-27: We groan inwardly.
John 7:37-39: If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink!
We stand on the threshold of Pentecost, the culmination of Eastertide. The Read More

Coram Fratribus

Setting out to Sea I read Adam Nicholson’s wonderful book on Homer years ago, in Cameroon. Recently I came upon this essay, ‘Sailing with the Greeks’, in The Plough. He remarks how Western thought has long unfolded in a terranian framework. It is has been on ‘a long campaign to establish “foundations” for what it does. No thought can be valid without some meaty “groundwork” having been laid. “Grounds” are where truth is thought to begin.’ What if, instead, we attuned our thinking to the sea? ‘When lying on a sofa or having lunch in a restaurant, nothing seems more obvious than our ability to choose. The menu of life encourages the illusion of potency and feeds the arrogance that comes in its wake. The boat is the opposite of that. It imposes a necessary modesty, a submission to the all too obvious reality of the defining situation around you. You can only do what the boat requires you to do. And in that compulsion, mysteriously, a sense of freedom flowers, one in which your life is momentarily liberated from the need to choose’.

Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 24 Abba Antony said: I think the body possesses a physical movement that is mixed up with it, though it does not work except with the consent of the soul. There is another [kind of] movement which comes from nurturing and heating up the body with food and drink, on account of which hot-bloodedness moves the body to act. That is why the apostle said: ‘Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery’. And the Lord in the Gospel gives the disciples this commandment: ‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness’. There is, though, yet another movement affecting those who fight [the ascetic battle]. It is born of the wiles and envy of the demons. You need to know, then, that there are three kinds of bodily movement: one physical; one sprung from indiscriminate eating and drinking; and one worked by the demons.
It was customary for a long time to consider St Antony an unlettered bumpkin. This was partly because he was known for his extravagant temptations. Scholars who were sons of the Enlightenment took it for granted that, had Antony read more books and been smarter, he would have been armed against trials of this kind — a position that betrays, really, great (and potentially culpable) naivety on their part.
A detail in Athanasius’s life nurtured this misconception. We read that as a child Antony ‘was raised by his parents, knowing nothing besides them and life at home’; then that, growing older, ‘he did not continue learning his letters, wishing to stand apart from the normal activities of children.’ What the text says is that Antony did not wish to be conditioned by prevailing pagan culture. He chose to develop an independently Christian mind. Early modern readers, however, assumed he had simply dropped out of school. Great was the perplexity, then, when a cache of letters attributed to Antony was unearthed. These texts betrayed a high degree of intellectual culture. A number of people assumed they were spurious; others more creatively asked if it might not be the case instead that the prevailing image of Antony was false? This last lot was proven right. Hardly anyone now doubts the authenticity of the letters.
The saying before us corroborates the account of Antony as a man of subtle thought. Introducing the section of the Apothegmata devoted to lust, it sets the scene, as it were, for disquisitions to follow. The distinctions Antony draws are extremely helpful. Had they been better known, better taught in seminaries, noviciates and marriage preparation courses, much perplexity and pain might have been avoided.
For is it not often the case that when things go awry in people’s sexual and affective lives, nature is blamed? One hears people say, ‘My body’s natural urge was too strong!’ or ‘This is just who I am!’ Sometimes this may be so; but not always.
Antony sets out from a clear affirmation: the body’s ‘movement’, its erotic impulse, is fundamentally neutral, untouched by stains of immorality. To be human, a man or woman, is to have physical urges. In themselves they are good. They can become a source of happiness, expressions of love, if directed well by the discerning reason of our intellectual soul. According to our true nature, made in the image of God to be like him, body and soul are not at odds. The pursuit of chastity is about reconquering their fruitful complementarity. Pressed for definitions, the Fathers are unlikely to have called this first kind of urge porneia. It is just physical eros.
The second kind is more ambiguous. The body, no longer working ‘naturally’, is in imbalance on account of overindulgence. Rich food and immoderate drinking stimulate physical passion. Anyone who over time has fasted or practised abstinence will know this interconnectedness from experience as appeasement. There is a chance, therefore, that the body’s lustful urges are not merely ‘natural’ but fuelled by gluttony, acquiring that vice’s characteristics, no longer seeking communion in love but rather private satisfaction, stimuli to feed on. To start combating impure lust, I must begin by examining what, and how, I eat and drink, to equilibrate appetite.
The third kind of lust is demonic. The sayings abound in accounts of devils assailing sorely-tried ascetics like swarming flies. Let us not too quickly dismiss these tableaux as superstition. They do presuppose the reality of the ‘hater of good’. At the same time they are instances of imaged speech that convey realities hard to fathom in words. What they boil down to is this: a realisation that we human beings are, in the realm of our sexuality wounded by sin, prone to impulses that may be irrational, perverse, and destructive. With these there can be no dialogue. They must be driven out by prayer, compunction, and the revelation of the heart. How to recognise them? They induce deep sadness, even despair.
The Fathers do not say that that all lust fits under this heading; but neither do they call all desire pure. At once dispassionately lucid and shrewd, they teach us to discern. That is why they could give counsels both sublime and practical. They would elevate the tempted person’s mind towards God’s love. At the same time they would say things like these: ‘Never take more than three cups; and do not hang around in places where you have sinned against God.’
St Antony will not have looked anything like this, but it’s an engaging motif all the same, displaying him as a writer, smart spectacles and all. Piero di Cosimo, Visitazione con Sant’Antonio abate (1490), now in the National Gallery of Arts in Washington.

Coram Fratribus

Speech One doesn’t expect an essay on Pentecost in a secular broadsheet, but that is what Carsten Knop, an editor of the FAZ, provided yesterday in a beautiful, wistful piece: ‘[Those present at Pentecost] recognise the power of human words. They notice that a divine origin shimmers behind words not destructively used: we are intended for relation with each other. The purpose of words is to live out relationship. To be endowed with language is not just about emitting grunts. We are able to confide in one another; we can establish connections and networks; we can enthuse each other, create shared knowledge and elevate ourselves in its light. That is the effect of the Power that, in the story which provides us with an extra holiday, is called Holy Spirit. Don’t laugh: anyone who has known what happens when people leave an auditorium amicably together in order, afterwards, to speak about what they have experienced, has had a sense of what it is about, not just at Pentecost. We must simply try to understand earth other.’

Coram Fratribus

Pentecost Acts 2:1-11: How can each of us hear them in his own language?
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13: There is a variety of gifts but one Spirit.
John 20:19-23: Peace be with you! Receive the Holy Spirit!
In her autobiography, Thérèse of Lisieux speaks of something that happened while she was still a novice in Carmel. One day when she was ‘sorely tried’ she went to the infirmary to seek counsel from a wise old nun, Mother Geneviève, one of the monastery’s foundresses. She found two sisters already there; the house rules did not permit a third. Thérèse withdrew disappointed.
The old nun noticed this, then called out to her to say:
Attendez, ma petite fille. Je vais seulement vous dire un petit mot. A chaque fois que vous venez, vous me demandez de vous donner un bouquet spirituel; eh bien, aujourd’hui je vais vous donner celui-ci: Servez Dieu avec paix et avec joie. Rappelez-vous, mon enfant, que notre Dieu, c’est le Dieu de la paix.
In other words:
Wait, my daughter! Let me speak a brief word to you. Whenever you come to see me, you ask me to give you a spiritual bouquet. Well, today I give you this one: Serve the Lord with peace and with joy. Remember, child, that our God is the God of peace.
The words corresponded exactly to what Thérèse needed to hear. She was so stirred she burst into tears, touched by God’s goodness and by a sister who could, she was sure of it, read her heart like an open book. ‘Next Sunday’, she writes, ‘I asked Mother Geneviève what sort of revelation she had had. She assured me: None at all! That made my amazement greater still; for I saw the extent to which Jesus lived in her, acted and spoke through her.’
You may think this account of a whispered conversation in a darkened room smelling of lavender and ether a world removed from Pentecost’s rushing wind, tongues of flames, polyglot preaching, and perplexity. In fact, though, we encounter exactly the same message proclaimed in two complementary ways. Just like the apostles, Mother Geneviève was able to acquire another person’s language without noticing it. Like them she bore witness to the Lord’s great deeds, his magnalia, and thereby provoked a response of bewildered gratitude. She testified that the Spirit of Jesus was alive in her. This she did with the greatest calm, her head still on her pillow, and with just a few quiet words.
If we assume that the Spirit’s work is invariably tumultuous, noisy, and ecstatic, we are wrong. The Spirit may manifest itself spectacularly, of course; but by preference it is discreet. Think of its most wondrous accomplishment, the incarnation. The angel said to Mary: ‘The Holy Spirit shall come upon you.’ The Fathers likened this coming of the Spirit to the dew that descended upon Gideon’s fleece, an encounter that is utterly silent (Judges 6.36-40). Not even Joseph, that great listener, noticed the Spirit’s overshadowing of Mary. Think, too, of what happens each day at Mass when, at the hands of a poor, sometimes distracted man, the Spirit descends upon elements of bread and wine and changes them into Christ’s Body and Blood. At communion, we say ‘Amen’ to this miracle of transformation. But how inconspicuous it is!
When John in today’s Gospel describes the gift of the Spirit, the words, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ are inseparable from the greeting, ‘Peace be with you’. I encourage you to think often of this connection. We find it likewise in the Gospel of Matthew. When Jesus readies the Twelve for apostolic ministry, he refers to the hostility they will meet: ‘You will be handed over to the courts and scourged’. Then he adds: ‘Worry not about what you are to say. For your Father’s Spirit will speak through you.’ The Spirit gives us peace in exposed, objectively perilous circumstances. The presence of the Spirit is peace.
The world God has made is a peaceful, ordered universe. This natural order is matched by supernatural order. The same Spirit is at work in either sphere. Chaos, disturbance, destruction: these are our accomplishments, manifestations of our sin.
What is sin? Sin is the tendency we carry, like a soul-wound, that makes us apt to seek and generate disorder. At Lauds this morning the Church let us pray: ‘Lord, destroy sin in the world!’ Break it down! Now, that’s what I call a prayer. Each of us can appropriate it, applying it to the particular sins that wreak havoc in our lives. That would be an excellent, necessary way to prepare to receive the Spirit, ‘the soul’s sweet guest’, who comes bringing consolation, consonance, and rest.
During the novena that runs from the Ascension to Pentecost we have prayed each day: ‘Send forth your Spirit and renew the face of the earth!’ Considering the state the earth is in, who would doubt the need for renewal? We all have a role to play, a personal responsibility. The Spirit is given us so that it can pour out its boundless gift through our limitations in order to heal what is sick, straighten what is crooked, melt what is frozen, and irrigate dry land.
First the Spirit must establish its dwelling in us as in a sanctuary. I used to know an old monk who was bright with the Spirit’s light. After seventy years of monastic life, his prayer had distilled itself into two short invocations: Saint Esprit mon ami! Saint Esprit mon amour!‘ Holy Spirit, my friend! Holy Spirit, my love!’ He repeated these two phrases ceaselessly, day and night. Like Antony the Great, the old monk had let Christ become the air he breathed; he constantly inhaled and exhaled the Spirit. He stands before me as a noble, beautiful, and realistically imitable example of a Christian existence sealed by Pentecostal grace.
May the love of God the Father in Christ became incarnate in us through the Holy Spirit to God’s praise and the world’s comfort. Amen.

Mère Geneviève de Sainte Thérèse, 1805-1891, one of the foundresses of the Carmel in Lisieux.
***
Tu, qui Apostolis, in Spiritu tuo potestatem contulisti peccata remittendi, destrue peccatum in mundo!

Coram Fratribus

Pentecost Vigil Genesis 11.1-9: Let us build a town and a tower reaching heaven.
Romand 8:22-27: We groan inwardly.
John 7:37-39: If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink!
We stand on the threshold of Pentecost, the culmination of Eastertide. The Church expectantly robes herself in red, the colour of testimony. But what exactly are we waiting for? The word ‘Pentecost’ may carry a somewhat sour undertone for us Catholics of today, marked by a particular ecclesial context.
In the 60s and 70s it was all the rage, among prelates and people alike, to speak of a ‘new Pentecost’. It seemed natural in those days, when so many dreamt, at various levels, of a world working on new terms. Promises were given of a peerless effusion of Spirit, of charismatic renewal, of societal transformation. By all means: much that was good took place. But what fruits do we see now, half a century down the line?
Let’s beware of superficial judgements. We have every reason to admire God’s work. That said, expectations of renewed Christendom have not been met. Not only has dechristianisation proceeded at phenomenal speed; many ‘charismatic’ projects and persons have turned out untrustworthy, some downright destructive. Therefore we are sceptical, now, when people invoke the renewing power of the Spirit.
It is as if the very concept of renewal were in need of repristination.
For this Vigil Mass the Church lets us read the story of the tower of Babel. We can see why. The confusion of languages and the fragmentation of humanity point forward towards what the Spirit wrought on the fiftieth day after the Resurrection, when all the peoples of the earth, gathered in Jerusalem, heard the Gospel proclaimed in their own tongue. The Church, born at Pentecost, made good that which was ruined at Babel.
Let’s not, however, pass over this narrative too quickly.
What does Babel’s tower stand for? It was intended as the focal point of an all-embracing polity. The top of the tower would reach to the heavens and bring heaven, rethought in the image of man, down to earth. The architects usurped the prerogatives of God, intoxicated by their own ambition, by the thought of their omnipotence. The image speaks powerfully to, and about, our own times. God saw that such a project could not end well. ‘Nothing will now’, he said, ‘be too hard for them to do.’ So he sabotaged the project, for philanthropy’s sake.
For a paradise thought out by humans sooner or later turns out to be hell. We have seen that time and again.
Yet the mindset of Babel retains its charm. We justify it as well as we can. If our notions of Pentecost are superficial we may turn into tower-constructors ourselves. If we assume that the Spirit will manifest itself spectacularly, in earth-shattering events and powerful emotions, through towering, eloquent, charismatic agents; well, then we may come to think that the ‘age of the Spirit’ represents a new reality marked by ecstasy, fire, transformative energy. Such a maximalist reading of Pentecost flatters our Babelic penchant, our vanity. It lets us work out enterprises of self-glorification as if we possessed here and now, under our own steam, ability to create a new heaven, a new earth, as if the work of redemption were already past. We think: ‘We who have left sin behind and are free can abandon ourselves to the Spirit’s charisma!’ Nothing then stands in the way of sentimental despotism.
Paul ascertained this, not least in his work at Corinth; we ascertain it in our own settings.
If we consider the damage the Church has suffered and caused over the past decades, is it not often tied up with a perverted understanding of Pentecost, of the Spirit? Has not a caricatured ‘holy spirit’ at times become an idol? The question merits reflection.
The Church’s authentic teaching provides clear parameters, thank God. Today’s collect [the one set for Saturday in the seventh week of Easter] gives a good example:
Grant, almighty God, that we who have kept to the end the Paschal feasts may, by your gift, hold on to them by our life and manners.
Paul had received the Holy Spirit: there’s no doubt about that. Still he exclaimed to the Corinthians: ‘I have not wanted to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.’ To the Romans he wrote: ‘We who possess the first-fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait for the redemption of our bodies.’ Pentecost stands at once for an already and a not yet. The Holy Spirit is inseparable from the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. The Cross continues its work until the end of time. Any so-called charisma that works on terms different from those Christ displayed in his self-outpouring, that do not resemble him who came not to be served but to serve, is not from the Holy Spirit.
I say this not to give Pentecost a sorrowful or gloomy aspect. Not at all! I simply stress that we cannot pretend we have somehow passed beyond Christ’s Paschal oblation, which is still working itself out. We must be on our guard against illusions and against our personal pride, which inspires us to want to manage on our own; instead we are called to live by trust, on grace, which is an infinitely sweeter form of existence. Let him who thirsts come to Jesus to drink; let him drink of his chalice, no other’s. Wine from elsewhere may tickle our palate for a moment, but will intoxicate without bringing either freedom or power – or joy or beauty or purity.
May the Spirit grant us a thirst for truth and grant us ability to distinguish between what is true and what is fake, for our own good and for the world’s salvation.
Amen.

The Big Cube summer camp runs from the 7th to the 10th of July
Ages 6 to 12 years
Booking is essential and payment to be made when booking
Please call up to the reception to book in your child.
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Posted: An hour ago

Photos from Cloyne Diocese's post Campa Mhuire Mháthair Catholic Faith Camps for primary school-aged boys and girls.
€40 per child (€25 for each additional child in family).
Team Games, Drama, Music, Action Songs, Arts & Crafts, Prayer.
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St Barnabas was born on the island of Cyprus. He was one of the first converts in Jerusalem and preached at Antioch. He became a companion of St Paul and went with him on his first missionary journey, Read More 6 Likes

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Hope at the heart of communication: Catholic communications seminar celebrates 50 Years
Archdiocese of Armagh Archdiocese of Dublin Synodal Pathway - Ireland
https://catholicnews.ie/hope-at-the-heart-of-communication-catholic-communications-seminar-celebrates-50-years/ 3 Likes

Posted: Yesterday

Photos from Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes's post 13 Likes

Posted: Yesterday

Recent picture of St. Colman's Cathedral, Cobh. Co. Cork

Pilgrimages for 2025

Pilgrimages for 2025

Jubilee Pilgrimage to Assisi & Rome 25 Sep - 2 Oct 2025

Light a Candle at St. Colman's Cathedral

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