Welcome, Fáilte - Diocese of Cloyne

Mother Magdalen Taylor, now Venerable, arrived by train with 2 Sisters, on 21 June 1875. There will be a re-enactment of this event at the Old Station recalling the welcome the Sisters received from the Parish Priest, Fr R Seymour, and the people of the Parish. We will walk along to the Church where a short Prayers will be said.

Next there will be an extensive and interesting Exhibition in Carrigtwohill Community Centre along with tea and cakes aplenty.

You are all cordially invited to come and enjoy meeting old acquaintances and sharing more stories.

Poor Servants of the Mother of God

30 April 2025

Come to know the Personal Love of the Lord more deeply through an uplifting and inspiring series of talks, prayer and togetherness (Life in the Spirit Seminars)

Facilitated by Mir Ministries
Venue: St. Mary’s Church, Waterloo, Blarney, Co. Cork. T23 A667

Friday nights at 8pm
from Fri 16th May to Friday June 27th 2025

For further information please contact:
Blarney Parish Office: 021 4385105 or Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Life in the Spirit Seminars

Camp Creideamh Knockadoon 8th - 14th June 2025

Camp Creideamh Faith Camps for teenagers, boys and girls, will take place again in Knockadoon (East Cork) over the dates 8th – 14th June. For those who are Post-Primary school age.

Activities will include catechesis, prayer, sports, hillwalking, kayaking, swimming, music, arts and crafts and other activities.

For bookings go to website Camp Creideamh

For more information please ring Fr Eamon Roche on 086 9972539

Camp Creideamh Knockadoon

13 February 2025

Cathedral drone pic original size St. Colman's Cathedral, Cobh

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Latest Homily

4 May 2025 - “Nature abhors a vacuum”

Latest Articles

May 2025
- Celebration of 150 years of Ministry - Poor Servants of the Mother of God
April 2025
- Life in the Spirit Seminars - May 16th to June 27th 2025
- Camp Creideamh Knockadoon
February 2025
- Recent picture of St. Colman's Cathedral, Cobh. Co. Cork
January 2025
- Pilgrimages for 2025
- Jubilee Pilgrimage to Assisi & Rome 25 Sep - 2 Oct 2025
October 2024
- Light a Candle at St. Colman's Cathedral
August 2024
- Visit of the Relics of St. Bernadette to the Diocese of Cloyne
- New Appointments In The Diocese Of Cloyne - Sep 2024
July 2024
- Camp Creideamh Killarney - 7 Aug 2024

Coram Fratribus

Good Shepherd Sunday

Homily at a Confirmation Mass.
Acts 13.14-52: We must turn to the pagans.
Acts 7.9-17: They stand before the throne and before the Lamb.
John 10.27-30: My sheep hear my voice.
The iconography of piety can make the Good Shepherd, an important motif in Read More

Coram Fratribus

Conversation with Céline Hoyeau

This interview was published in La Croix on 10 May. You can find an English version by scrolling down.
A 50 ans, Erik Varden est une voix catholique percutante venue des pays du Nord de l’Europe. Chrétien issu du protestantisme, moine, Read More

Coram Fratribus

Habemus Papam

I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal Read More

Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 19

You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
Some brothers set out from Read More

Coram Fratribus

Good Shepherd Sunday Homily at a Confirmation Mass.
Acts 13.14-52: We must turn to the pagans.
Acts 7.9-17: They stand before the throne and before the Lamb.
John 10.27-30: My sheep hear my voice.
The iconography of piety can make the Good Shepherd, an important motif in Scripture, seem remote, perhaps a little disagreeable. The shepherd presupposes the flock; and being likened to sheep, be they Biblical, does not flatter us. Further, we are used to seeing the shepherd carry a lamb, the hundredth, lost one supposed, the point isn’t lost on us, to represent us.
Now, once in a while we may feel like being carried in this way, when we’ve really made a mess of things and feel powerless. But in general we do prefer to walk on our own, to find our way with our own strength, to experience that we’re good for something. The image of the shepherd can seem to disenfranchise us. And we start wondering: is this what Christianity is about, becoming an animated ball of wool carried on draped shoulders into a pastel-hued sunset? This impression conditioned my own religious formation. For this is how, as far as I remember, the Gospel was presented to me the one and only time I attended Sunday School. I was appalled. When the lesson was over I marched home and declared to my parents with all the authority of my eight years: ‘Never again!’ I never did go back.
Only much later, when I started studying the Bible — and discovered what a fascinating, magnificent book it is — did I realise that the shepherd in fact stands for something rather different. Of course, ancient Israel was nomadic. People did not settle in one place. They moved around seeking favourable conditions for themselves and their flocks, which were their livelihood. A shepherd was exposed to risks: inhospitable nature, wild animals, bandits. The image par excellence of the Old Testament shepherd is David. When as a young man he faced Goliath, a trained guerilla warrior, he told King Saul, to prove himself fit for single combat:
Your servant used to keep sheep for his father; and when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and smote him and delivered it out of his mouth; and if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him and killed him. Your servant has killed both lions and bears (1 Samuel 17.34-6).
That is a rather different kind of shepherd profile. Such experience equipped David for a political career. For the Lord, we read in a Psalm, ‘took him from the sheepfolds; from tending the ewes that had young, he brought him to be the shepherd of Jacob his people, of Israel his inheritance’ (Psalm 78.71). The Christ-image in the parable of the shepherd does not suggest a chilled hippie pursuing an alternative lifestyle. It suggests a profile of clear strategy, courage, and a spirit of sacrifice, qualities we look for in a trustworthy leader.
When we turn to the Gospel we have just read, we find that it’s about trust above all. ‘My sheep hear my voice’, says the Lord: ‘I know them, and they follow me.’
All of us know what the sound of a beloved person can signify. Think of an infant who does not yet grasp what is being spoken around it, but who relishes the voice of its mother nursing it, caring for it, protecting it. Our Norwegian poet Per Sivle wrote a poem 150 years ago that begins with the words: ‘The first song I ever heard/was that of my mother at the cradle‘. He describes how remembrance of that song penetrated under his skin, becoming a symbol for the comfort we all long for when we’re afraid. The last stanza of the poem reads: ‘When weary I tire/in combat against what wrecks/I hear, quietly, from my mother’s grave/the song that can heal all things.’ Sivle lost his mother at the age of three and spent his childhood being moved from one foster home to the next. Bearing that in mind, we are alerted to the pathos of his text. That helps us to ask: Whose voice carries for me such promise?
We know, too, what threatening voices do to us — when we think of someone who has hurt us, perhaps, or taunted us at school or at work, belittling us. The resonance of a scornful, dangerous voice gives us goosebumps and sets our pulse racing.
At times we may find that life is like a vast resonant room in which threatening and comforting voices outshout one another. We must choose, then, which to follow. We must know how to tell the voices apart.
Today, my friends, you will receive ‘the seal of God’s gift, the Holy Spirit’. Thereby you are greatly helped in the work of voice discernment. The Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus, the Risen One. It conveys his presence and his power. It calls to mind all he has said. The Spirit teaches us what it means to live in Christ. The more we get used to living thus, the more clearly we shall know his voice. That does not necessarily mean that we will receive a lot of very specific instructions. God does not absolve us from thinking and working things out. But he helps us to think clearly.
The shepherd’s task is to lead the flock. The voice of Jesus guides us forward so that we, before the crossroads of life, where we must make essential choices, choose well and so can move forward towards goals corresponding to our true desires, where we shall find freedom and the joy of giving ourselves for something great; in other words, we shall learn to love. For the basic principle of love is not self-satisfaction, it is self-giving. It is paradoxical but true: Only by giving ourselves do we discover who we really are. I become myself when I freely say Yes! to another.
The fourth Sunday of Easter is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. It is a devout custom on this day to pray for vocations. When we hear the word ‘vocations’ the chances are we think of the call to be a priest or a religious. We do need such, and consecrated life is a wonderful adventure that can lead to great happiness: take my word for it! All young Catholics should ask themselves at some point: ‘Might I be called to serve in such a way?’ But of course the notion of vocation is broader, more variegated. God has a purpose in mind, not just for priests, monks, and nuns, but for all his children. Each of you has a vocation in the sense that a task is awaiting you that will correspond to your particular giftedness, which will let you attain your full measure. Use the grace you receive today to ask: ‘Lord, to what do you call me? Where do you need me?’ Then, follow the shepherd’s voice. It is trustworthy. It will lead you into landscapes that surpass your expectations.

Coram Fratribus

Conversation with Céline Hoyeau This interview was published in La Croix on 10 May. You can find an English version by scrolling down.
A 50 ans, Erik Varden est une voix catholique percutante venue des pays du Nord de l’Europe. Chrétien issu du protestantisme, moine, auteur de livres de spiritualité, musicien, évêque : son parcours est en soi atypique. Né en 1974 en Norvège, Erik Varden a grandi dans une famille luthérienne avant de rejoindre l’Eglise catholique à l’âge de 19 ans. Après des études au Saint John College de Cambridge, en Angleterre, et à l’Institut pontifical oriental à Rome, il a prononcé ses premiers voeux à 30 ans dans l’abbaye trappiste Mount Saint Bernard, en Angleterre, dont il deviendra près de dix ans plus tard abbé. Nommé évêque en 2019, il s’emploie à «construire des ponts», soucieux de combler le vide qui s’est creusé entre les sociétés sécularisées et l’immense richesse de la tradition chrétienne.
La Croix : Nous sommes en Occident dans des sociétés de plus en plus sécularisées et, en même temps, nous observons une soif accrue de spiritualité. Comment caractérisez-vous la quête spirituelle contemporaine ?
Mgr Erik Varden : La sécularisation est-elle réellement en hausse ? J’ai des doutes. Il me semble pouvoir discerner un tournant, un nouveau mouvement des plaques tectoniques qui structurent notre univers mental. Le matérialisme galopant des dernières décennies ne convainc plus. Nous constatons la fragilité des systèmes économiques que nous pensions, hier encore, faits pour durer éternellement. L’instabilité de la vie politique nous laisse perplexes. Les guerres fratricides en Ukraine, où l’agression russe se montre insatiable, et au Moyen-Orient trouvent un écho inquiétant tout près de chez nous, dans la violence de nos villes, même en Scandinavie.
Les avancées de l’Intelligence artificielle — inhumaine — nous fascinent tout en nous troublant. La présence des êtres humains paraît de plus en plus superflue sur cette terre. Après nous être confiés aveuglément au progrès technique, nous en constatons la vulnérabilité. La récente gigantesque panne d’électricité dans la péninsule Ibérique est une sorte de parabole : il suffit qu’une personne, quelque part, pour quelque raison que ce soit, appuie sur l’interrupteur pour que cela arrête toutes nos entreprises, toutes nos actions y compris domestiques, jusqu’à nous rendre incapables de faire cuire un œuf. Face à de tels phénomènes, l’humanité s’interroge, elle est en quête de critères selon lesquels construire une existence, une société durables. Voilà, je pense, la situation globale qui provoque, non pas tant une soif de spiritualité qu’une soif de vérité. Il était temps — après une période intellectuellement et artistiquement aride, caractérisée par un relativisme soporifique.
La Croix : Beaucoup de contemporains sont en quête de guérison. Que cherchent-ils ? De quelle guérison nos sociétés ont-elles besoin ? Comment l’Eglise peut-elle rejoindre cette soif ?
E. V. : Pour proposer une guérison, il faut un diagnostic. De quelles maladies parlons-nous ? Nous avons évoqué des éruptions d’angoisse. Une autre maladie largement répandue est celle de la solitude. La méfiance causée par la confiance trahie en est une autre : nous en voyons les manifestations dans la vie politique comme dans l’Église. Une agressivité collective, active ou passive, en résulte. Le corps de l’Église reste meurtri par la plaie ouverte des abus commis par des clercs.
La guérison sera lente. Elle doit avoir, et garder, deux aspects. Tout d’abord, il faut poursuivre la justice dans la vérité qui seule libère. Dans ce domaine, un travail considérable a déjà été fait. Il ne faut pas oublier, pourtant, l’autre aspect, plus discret, qui est celui de la réparation. Le fardeau dont nous sommes héréditaires est fait de crimes mais aussi de péchés, un poids que le Christ prend sur lui pour l’enlever. Ce travail, réalisé une fois pour toutes sur le Golgotha, s’éternise mystérieusement et concrètement dans son Corps mystique. Rappelez-vous la pensée profonde de Pascal : «Jésus sera en agonie jusqu’à la fin du monde. Il ne faut pas dormir pendant ce temps‑là.» Veillons donc. L’Église répondra à la soif de guérison de notre temps en s’associant en toute liberté à l’œuvre salvifique de son Seigneur, trouvant dans ce mystère de miséricorde la source de tous ses mots, tous ses gestes, toutes ses initiatives.
La Croix : En France nous voyons arriver ces dernières années de nombreux convertis qui demandent le baptême. Vous aussi en Norvège. Qu’est-ce qui, selon vous, a déclenché cette quête spirituelle ?
E. V. : Je suis chrétien, moine, évêque : depuis de nombreuses années je construis mon existence sur la conviction que l’Évangile du Christ proclamé par l’Église est la vérité. La vérité peut être offusquée ou oubliée pendant un temps ; mais elle ne disparaîtra pas. Si elle le faisait, elle ne serait pas vraie. Voilà la raison profonde du réveil que nous voyons.
La sécularisation a en outre accompli son travail. Par sa nature, elle parvient à son terme : elle n’admet pas de valeur absolue ou de finalité infinie. Elle ne laisse qu’un vide, qui est celui de notre société. Nous trouvons-nous sur le seuil d’un post-sécularisme ? Dans le nord de l’Europe, c’est peut-être le cas. Le nouvel athéisme proclamé avec confiance au début du siècle n’a plus d’allure — c’est la rosée du matin d’un jour lointain, passé. Nos contemporains cherchent autre chose : la vraie manne, du pain substantiel et, si vous me permettez un peu de jargon, supersubstantiel. L’Église a le devoir solennel et joyeux de le leur proposer en prenant soin de ne pas le remplacer par des pierres.
La Croix : Ces conversions restent toutefois faibles numériquement par rapport à la sécularisation massive. Comment l’Eglise catholique doit-elle se situer dans des sociétés où elle devient (ou est) minoritaire ? Comment être audible ?
E. V. : Je constate qu’il est souvent avantageux d’être minoritaire. On a une plus grande liberté de parole. On n’a aucun territoire à défendre. On n’est pas hanté par le spectre plus ou moins illusoire d’une grandeur de jadis. Bien sûr, on est sujet à d’autres illusions, il faut toujours rester vigilant dans ce domaine-là !
Quant à l’audibilité : avoir une voix audible, c’est une chose. Il suffit d’acheter un mégaphone, ce que nous faisons en assurant, par exemple, une présence sur les réseaux sociaux. Mais est-ce que le monde nous écoute ? Pour être écouté, il faut adresser avec lucidité et respect les angoisses et les aspirations qui touchent vraiment notre monde. La solitude par exemple. J’ai été très surpris que le livre que j’ai écrit il y a quelques années sur ce sujet soit traduit en plus de vingt langues. Le simple fait de nommer cette réalité, de déculpabiliser, en quelque sorte, la solitude, de présenter ce que la Bible dit d’une telle expérience, de proposer des pistes, tout cela parle aux gens.
Souvent, dans l’Église, nous passons notre temps à proposer des réponses sublimes, bien pensées et élégamment formulées, à des questions que personne ne pose. Notre grand risque est de présenter avec la meilleure volonté du monde la vie chrétienne comme s’il s’agissait d’abord de devenir une autre personne ou de se créer un autre univers. Or Dieu a pris la chair qui est la nôtre. J’aime ces mots du poète écossais Edwin Muir : «The Word made flesh here is made word again» («La Parole faite chair est redevenue des mots»)… Voilà le risque que nous courons et qu’il nous faut éviter.
La Croix : Pourquoi la figure du Christ parle-t-elle encore aujourd’hui dans nos sociétés sécularisées ?
E. V. : Parce que le Christ n’est pas une figure, mais une Personne — dont la voix résonne au plus profond de notre âme comme familière, aimée, irrésistible. Dans la parabole du Bon pasteur, le Christ dit une chose significative. Les brebis suivent le pasteur «car elles connaissent sa voix». Elles la connaissent avant de comprendre ce que le pasteur dit ; peut-être sans la possibilité de comprendre. Le Christ est le même aujourd’hui, hier et toujours. Sa voix résonne ici, maintenant. Qu’on la perçoive n’est pas étrange. C’est la tâche de l’Église de la rendre explicite, l’élucider, montrer de manière crédible Qui parle.
La Croix : Vous avez publié avec les évêques d’Europe du Nord un document sur l’éthique sexuelle et le genre. Comme une feuille de route pour limiter les excès d’une idéologie qui «dissout l’intégrité corporelle de l’individu, comme si le sexe biologique était quelque chose de purement aléatoire ». L’Eglise doit-elle retravailler sa manière de parler de l’homme et de la femme, de la famille, de l’identité et du genre ?
E. V. : Cette année nous commémorons le Concile de Nicée qui nous a légué la formule, le Credo, qui exprime l’essence du christianisme : le fait que le Fils de Dieu s’est réellement fait chair. Par ce fait, il a donné à la chair humaine comme telle, faite pour l’éternité selon l’intention divine première, la possibilité de connaître Dieu ; et il lui a annoncé la promesse de la résurrection. Cette proclamation, notre kérygme fondamental, a des implications anthropologiques phénoménales ! Il faut commencer par là — comme l’ont fait, d’ailleurs, beaucoup de Pères de l’Église. Trop souvent, nous, catholiques avons donné au monde l’impression que la seule chose que nous ayons à dire à propos de la sexualité, de l’affectivité, de l’amour est : «Non !» Il nous faut affirmer la légitimité de l’élan d’infini qui habite la chair et la possibilité de canaliser cet élan de manière heureuse et belle pour croître vers la pleine mesure de notre humanité, qui est une mesure divine. Uniquement sur cette base peut-on adresser des problèmes plus spécifiques de manière féconde.
***
La Croix: Our societies in the West are increasingly secularised. At the same time we see an increased thirst for spirituality. How would you characterise our time’s spiritual quest?
Mgr Erik Varden: Is secularisation in fact increasing? I have my doubts. I think we can discern a turning point, a shifting of the tectonic plates that structure our mental universe. The galloping materialism of the last decades no longer convinces us. We see the fragility of economic systems that, just the other day, we thought would last for ever. We are baffled by political instability. The fratricidal wars in Ukraine, where Russian aggression is insatiable, and in the Middle East find an echo close to ourselves, in the violence of our cities, even in Scandinavia.
The advances of artificial — inhuman — intelligence simultaneously fascinate and trouble us. Ever more, human beings seem superfluous on this earth. Having entrusted ourselves blindly to technical progress, we see how vulnerable it is. The recent mega-powercut on the Iberian Peninsula was like a parable: so it’s enough for someone somewhere, for whatever reason, to switch off the currents for all our enterprises to stop, rendering us incapable even of boiling an egg. Faced with such phenomena humanity asks questions. It seeks criteria by which it is possible to construct an existence, and a society, with some promise of stability.
This, I believe, is the situation globally that calls forth a thirst, not so much for spirituality as for truth. It’s about time this happens — after a period that has been intellectually and artistically arid, marked by soporific relativism.
La Croix: Many of our contemporaries seek healing. What are they looking for? What sort of healing do our societies need? How can the Church respond to this need?
E. V.: Before proposing a form of healing, we need a reliable diagnosis. What sicknesses are we talking about? We have already mentioned eruptions of anguish. Another very common sickness is loneliness. Distrust caused by trust betrayed is yet another: we see signs of it both in political and in ecclesiastical life.
The body of the Church remains afflicted by the open wound of clerical abuse. Healing will take time. It must have, and maintain, two aspects. First, justice must be pursued in truth, for truth alone liberates. In this area considerable work has been done. We must not forget, however, another, more discreet aspect, which is that of reparation. The burden to which we are heirs is made up of crimes and sins, a weight Christ assumes to take it away. This work, accomplished once for all on Calvary, continues mysteriously and concretely in his mystical Body. Remember that profound Pensée of Pascal’s: ‘Jesus remains in agony until the end of the world. That is not time to be slumbered away.’ Let us watch, then. The Church will respond to our time’s thirst for healing by associating herself in perfect freedom to the salvific work of her Lord, finding in this mystery of mercy the wellspring of all her words, gestures, and initiatives.
La Croix: In France we have over the past few years seen many converts asking for baptism. You have seen the same in Norway. In your opinion, what has set off this spiritual quest?
E. V.: I am a Christian, a monk, a bishop. For years I have built my life on the conviction that the Gospel of Christ proclaimed by the Church is truth. Truth can be obscured or forgotten for a while, but it will not go away. If it did, it would not be true. This is the radical reason for the awakening we see round about us.
Further, secularisation has run its course. By its nature it moves towards an end: it does not admit an absolute value or an infinite finality. It only leaves a void, which is that of our society. Are we standing on the threshold of a post-secular era? In Northern Europe this may be the case. The New Atheism preached with such pluck at the beginning of the century has lost its allure — it’s the morning dew of a day far gone. Our contemporaries seek something else: true manna, substantial and, if you will permit a little jargon, supersubstantial bread. The Church has the solemn and joyous duty to provide it, taking care not to serve up stones instead.
La Croix: Still, these conversions are nog very numerous seen alongside massive secularisation. How can the Catholic Church position herself in societies where she is becoming, or already is, a minority presence. How can she make herself heard?
E. V.: I find it is often an advantage to be in a minority. One has greater freedom of expression, no territory to defend. One is not haunted by the more or less illusory spectre of past grandeur. One is subject to other illusions, naturally — in this area we must be on our watch constantly!
As for making oneself heard: having an audible voice is one thing. You’ve only got to purchase a megaphone. This is what we do, for example, by making sure we’re present in social media. But is the world listening? To be listened to we must with respectful lucidity address the anguish and aspirations that touch our world. Take solitude. I have been astonished to find that the book I wrote on the topic a few years ago has been translated into some twenty languages. The mere fact of naming this reality, removing the culpability attached to it, talking of what the Bible says about it, indicating ways out — this clearly speaks to people.
In the Church we easily spend our time proposing sublime answers, well thought out and elegantly phrased, to questions no one is asking. With the best will in the world, we run the risk of insinuating that to be a Christian you must first become another sort of person or inhabit an alternative universe. But God took the flesh which is ours. I love the words of the Scottish poet Edwin Muir: ‘The Word made flesh here is made word again’. That’s the risk we are running, and we must guard against it.
La Croix: Why does the figure of Christ still speak to our secularised societies?
E. V.: Because Christ is not a figure but a Person whose voice resounds in the innermost depth of our soul where we recognise it as familiar, beloved, irresistible. In the parable of the Good Shepherd Christ says something significant. The sheep follow the shepherd because ‘they know his voice’. They know it before they understand what the shepherd is saying, perhaps unable to understand. Christ is the same today, yesterday, and forever. His voice resounds here, now. That we should perceive it is not strange. It is the Church’s task to make that voice explicit, to elucidate it and credibly to show who is speaking.
La Croix: With the other bishops of the Nordic countries you have published a document on sexual and gender ethics. It is something of a road map set to demarcate limits to the excesses of an ideology ‘that abstracts from the embodied integrity of personhood, as if physical gender were accidental’. Does the Church have to rework her mode of speaking about women and men, the family, identity, and gender?
E. V.: We commemorate this year the Council of Nicaea which gave us the formula, the Creed, which articulates the essence of Christianity: the fact that God’s Son truly became flesh. By so doing, he bestowed on human flesh as such, created according to God’s first intention for eternity, the possibility of knowing God; he announced to it the promise of resurrection. This proclamation, our basic kerygma, has phenomenal anthropological implications. This is where we have to set out from — the way many Fathers of the Church did.
Too often we Catholics have given the world the impression that the only thing we have to say about sexuality, affectivity, and love is: ‘No!’ We must affirm the legitimacy of the yearning for the infinite which inhabits human flesh, showing how we can channel this yearning in a joyful and beautiful way to grow towards the full measure of our humanity, which is a divine measure. Only on this basis can we fruitfully address more specific problems.
The Fathers of Nicaea displaying the Creed.

Coram Fratribus

Habemus Papam I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him. As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me. This is the bread come down from heaven; not like the bread our ancestors ate: they are dead, but anyone who eats this bread will live for ever (Jn 6.52-60).
The Gospel gives us today our Lord’s assurance that he will mystically remain present in his Church, also when he goes ‘to the Father’ (Jn 14.28).
He realises this promise primarily through his Body and Blood, the sacred mysteries we daily celebrate by way of sacrament with astonished reverence. He is present too in consecrated, wholly given women and men who, by following a particular call, bring Christ close to us.
Of this we have seen a grandiose example these past few days.
How weird it is, incomprehensible, really, that the eyes of the whole world have since Wednesday evening been fixed on a chimney above the Sixtine Chapel; that global society for all its professions of godlessness, has somehow felt orphaned while Peter’s chair has stood empty. Hardly anyone has not more or less consciously listened out for the Habemus papam!
When I watched the broadcast from St Peter’s Square last night, one scene struck me forcefully. The camera caught a little girl, about six or seven I should think, sitting on her daddy’s shoulders. When the protodeacon made his proclamation she burst into tears. She cried the way we cry when we meet someone deeply beloved we have not seen for a long time, when we come back home after a painful absence.
The girl is unlikely to have known the new pope personally. Did she even know who he was, Robertus Franciscus Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalis Prevost?
That would have made no difference at all. For she knew: he was her pope, a personal messenger of the Gospel, a credible bearer of Christ Jesus’s comforting light into this world’s darkness.
I suppose we all felt a bit like that girl last night — I know I did — overwhelmed by heartfelt gratitude.
We thank God for his provident care. We pray filially for our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV.
All the while remembering: all of us are called to service and testimony as Christ-bearers, that the light the Lord brought will not be left faintly glimmering under a bed but will be placed aflame on a candlestick, that the world may believe.

Coram Fratribus

Leo XIV ‘I am’, said our Holy Father this evening, addressing us for the first time as pope, ‘a son of St Augustine’ — of Augustine, that supremely intelligent, compassionate, yet uncompromising prober of the human condition, who knew how to orient hearts and minds towards God in such a way that his words resound still with undiminished power. Prosper of Aquitaine held Augustine forth, too, as an example of those ‘strong figures who could tame the unjust powers of the world and protect otherwise helpless communities from the ravages of war’. As another such instance he cited Leo the Great, who turned Attila away from northern Italy in 452 relying ‘on the help of God, who one should know is never missing from the labours of the pious.’ Augustine and Leo, consummate theologians, men of prayer and courage, orderers of chaos, keen readers of the signs of the times: these are the patrons of a new papacy. Long life to Pope Leo XIV!

Coram Fratribus

Desert Fathers 19 You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
Some brothers set out from Scetis to see Abba Antony. When they got into the boat to travel to where he was they met another old man. He, too, intended to travel to the same place; but the brothers did not know him. Sitting down in the boat, they began to speak about the sayings of the Fathers, and about Scripture, and about their manual labour. The old man, meanwhile, kept quite the entire time. Arrived at port, they found that the old man, too, was going to see Antony. When they came to him, he said to them: ‘In this old man you have found excellent company!’ Then he said to the old man: ‘Abba, you have found and brought with you some fine brothers!’ The old man said to him: ‘Yes, they are good; but their yard has no gate. Anyone who wishes can come in and let loose the donkey.’ He said this because they said aloud everything that came into their mouth.
The next book in the collection is about self-mastery. This is the full title in the Greek text: ‘About self-mastery, to be kept not only with regard to food, but also with regard to the other movements of the soul.’ We, now, are obsessed with food. Even journals of spirituality have cookery columns. Obesity is a challenge to public health throughout the Western world; at the same time dieting is a secular religion. The coexistence of these two trends is representative of much societal tension. We are quirky about what we eat and drink on account of real or imagined intolerance or simply on the basis of taste. With so much else not working around us, we want to get our food orders exactly right. It is a way, I suppose, of making us feel we are somehow in control. So rampant is this tendency of specific requirement that if you go into a coffee shop and ask for a straight coffee with caffeine and cow’s milk the barista gives you a blank look. ‘What? Not even a shot of pumpkin spice?’ Ask an average Catholic what he or she is doing for Lent, and the chances are you will hear about dietary regulation. This is excellent, of course, but if we dig a little, we often find a sub-text of self-interest: the wish to fit again into clothes bought last year or awareness that the habit of taking just a single extra glass of wine has gone too far.
Since the role food plays in our lives is already so much in focus, it is striking to find that the first entry in this section speaks, not of fasting, but of restraint in speech. We meet Antony once more, dear Antony, who spent the final period of his life on a mountain in the inner desert, solitary yet always ready to receive guests who came to him for solace or advice. His fame had reached far. At one point the emperor, Constantine, called for Antony to come and see him. Antony asked his friend, Abba Paul, ‘Should I go?’ ‘If you go’, said Paul, you will be called Antony. If you refrain from going, you will be called Abba Antony.’ Antony wrote a nice letter to the emperor, but stayed put. The word ‘abba’ means ‘Father’. It was by fidelity to his desert outpost, by perseverance in his specific call, that Antony acquired his moral authority. Thereby his life became fruitful. More and more people came to regard him as their father, as a man who was for others a source of life. Pilgrims started coming from far away, like the four men described in the saying above.
Note Antony’s cordial welcome. Long years in seclusion had not made him crusty. He remains an attentive, generous host. Note, too, the visiting elder’s thoughtfulness. For several days he has had occasion to observe his fellow travellers. He recognises them as sincere: ‘They are good!’ The reference to the loose donkey permits him nonetheless to communicate salutary fraternal correction. In ancient Egypt a donkey was for the average farmer tractor, car, and bus all in one: indispensable for the management of necessary tasks. The old man shows that we lose something truly vital by unbridled talk, be it about edifying topics. In as much as we nurture the urge to say all that occurs to us, inner strength is tapped. The monk’s turn of phrase is telling. He blames his young friends for speaking everything that comes ‘into their mouth’. There is a stage at which speech is still potential. A thought has been articulated; the words lie ready on our tongue; but as yet they exist only in our mind. At that moment we exercise sovereign freedom to choose whether to speak or whether to keep silent. The old man lets us see that this choice should be carefully pondered, for much is at stake: the whereabouts of the donkey, our inner dynamo.
It is good to reflect on this matter today, when everything is set to let us say and share absolutely everything that occurs to us however vaguely. Hoards of donkeys are roaming around to no useful purpose, eating freely from strangers’ flower beds, while we are left feeling exhausted and deflated. Discourse thereby becomes superficial. So does society itself. Once we realise what can be wrought by a good, deliberate word, we discover how easily mere chatter turns into a deafening, dull, unproductive din. We wake up, then, to the responsibility we carry through our freedom either to speak or to be silent. That freedom is always there, even when our tongue is really itching. As Jesus Ben Sirach wrote more than two millennia ago: ‘Have you heard a word? Let it die with you. Be brave! It will not make you burst!’

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Cloyne Diocesan Knock Pilgrimage 2025
Sunday 11 May 2025
Schedule of Ceremonies
2:00pm: Rosary
2:30pm: Anointing of the Sick at Knock Basilica
3:00pm: Concelebrated Mass at Knock Basilica followed by Benediction and Rosary Procession
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Exposition in Blessed Sacrament Chapel
Self-guided Auio Tours available
Guided Prayer Sessions Read More 6 Likes

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Life in the Spirit Seminars - May 16th to June 27th 2025

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