L’ChaimA committee established by the Storting earlier this year to consider whether provision for euthanasia should be integrated into our country’s legislation published its findings this week. The report is a heartening expression of good sense and humane intuition. It Read More
32 Sunday AThis homily was given in French. You can find an English version by scrolling down a bit. Sg 6.12-16: La Sagesse est resplendissante. 1 Th 4.13-18: Nous ne voulons pas vous laisser dans l’ignorance. Mt 25.1-13: Nos lampes s’éteignent. Nos trois lectures parlent du contraste entre lumière et ténèbres. La première présente la Sagesse divine comme resplendissante. Le monde des hommes est envisagé par implication comme crépusculaire. La splendeur de la Sagesse y est immédiatement perceptible, tout comme, par un soir d’hiver, nous remarquons, même à 250 mètres de distance, la lumière d’une torche qui de jour ne se verrait pas. L’Écriture parle de l’aisance avec laquelle la Sagesse se révèle à qui a des yeux pour regarder. Cette affirmation devrait nous frapper. La Sagesse se laisse ‘facilement contempler’ at ‘trouver’. Ayant le désir positif de se manifester, elle devance le désir des chercheurs et se fait ‘connaître la première’. Souvent nous envisageons la vie spirituelle come très ardue, marquée par de grandes sécheresses. Combien de livres pieux idéalisent la peine de ce qu’on appelle, en vulgarisant un peu trop Saint Jean de la Croix, la ‘nuit obscure’. La révélation biblique, par contre, indique un sentier bien illuminé. La Bible ne se fait aucune illusion par rapport à notre vertu ou force. Elle affirme simplement que Dieu, qui est tout-puissant, veut se faire connaître. Il faut juste accepter d’être des noctambules discernant l’étoile du matin. Le seul vrai obstacle sur l’itinéraire vers Dieu, c’est l’idée qui peut s’insinuer en nous d’être déjà, sans lui, illuminés, d’être déjà, nous-mêmes, lumière. Si nous sommes dupes de telles absurdités, un petit passage par une vraie nuit pourra se montrer libératrice et rédemptrice. Saint Paul parle aux Thessaloniciens, dans une lettre qui est probablement le texte le plus ancien du Nouveau Testament, des ténèbres intellectuelles où sont emprisonnés ceux qui ne reconnaissent pas la sainte résurrection de Jésus Christ d’entre les morts. La victoire de Dieu sur la mort est en effet d’une importance catégorique. Elle impacte la compréhension de toute réalité métaphysique et concrète. Vivre sans réaliser que la mort ait perdu son aiguille équivaut à exister dans le monde moderne sans se rendre compte de l’électricité. Si c’est mon cas, je pourrai me débrouiller plus ou moins, certes, mais je resterai entouré par de phénomènes inexplicables, en proie aux peurs inutiles. Seul en admettant qu’un courant vital réunit désormais le temps et l’éternité, l’univers visible et l’univers invisible (mais parfois audible) pouvons-nous affronter l’existence sans trouble aucun, avec courage et sérénité. L’illumination qu’apporte la foi est vraiment une lampe pour nos pas, une lumière pour notre sentier (cf. Ps 118.105). Quand, dans l’évangile, le Seigneur nous parle des vierges sans huile pour leurs luire leurs lampes, les considérations sur la lumière que nous venons de faire sont implicites. Mais le Christ indique autre chose aussi: une insuffisance de sagesse ou d’intelligence ne nous exclue pas, Dieu merci, de la vie éternelle. Saint Séraphim de Sarov, un grand moine si étroitement uni au Christ qu’il brillait parfois de lumière taborique, propose une interprétation de la parabole qui garde toute sa pertinence. Le marché où l’huile pour les lampes s’achète, dit-il, est notre vie dans ce monde. Les portes fermées de la chambre nuptiale, empêchant l’accès vers le Fiancé, sont une image de notre mort. Les vierges symbolisent les âmes chrétiennes. L’huile ne symbolise pas nos actions, mais bien la grâce du Saint-Esprit qui peut divinement transformer une chose en une autre chose: le corruptible en incorruptible, la mort psychique en vie spirituelle, les ténèbres en lumière, notre étable existentielle, où les passions sont enchaînées comme des bêtes, en temple de Dieu, en chambre nuptiale de la joie ineffable en le Christ Jésus notre Seigneur, Créateur, Rédempteur, éternel Fiancé de nos âmes. Songeons-nous assez à cette dimension de la foi? Croyons-nous vraiment que l’état de notre âme peut changer, que Dieu peut transformer notre être pour le configurer au sien? Pour Saint Séraphim, la parabole nous pousse à découvrir combien l’ouverture à l’Esprit nous est vitale. Le Paraclet est l’Esprit Créateur. Il nous prépare à vivre divinement. L’Esprit façonne nos âmes selon l’intention première du Père. Il rend éternel ce qui par nature est périssable, il nous élève de la mort à la vie, fait resplendir la poussière avec un éclat d’éternité. D’elle-même, notre âme s’abaisse parfois à l’état d’une ménagerie mal tenue. Par grâce, elle peut devenir un tabernacle. Il faut apprendre à être réceptifs, purs d’esprit et de corps. Quand l’Esprit descend, accueillons-Le avec humilité, dans un profond silence, pour en brûler. Ainsi nous ne serons pas étrangers, au terme de notre parcours terrestre, à la vie des séraphin dont le chant ardent résonne devant la face de Dieu éternellement. En attendant, nous apporterons de la joie consolatrice sur cette terre qui, abandonnée à elle-même, sombre dans la tristesse. Amen. * * * All our three readings today speak of the contrast between darkness and light. The first presents God’s Wisdom as ‘bright’. The world of men is envisaged, by contrast, as being crepuscular, for Wisdom’s splendour is at once perceptible in it, the way on a winter’s evening we see, even at a distance of a quarter-mile, a torchlight that by day we’d stand no chance of noticing. Scripture speaks of the ease with which Wisdom is revealed to those who have seeing eyes. The point is striking. Wisdom is ‘readily seen’, ‘found by those who look for her.’ Having a positive wish to make herself known, she even ‘anticipates those who desire her’. Often we think of the spiritual life as being terribly hard, marked by inward drought. How many pious books idealise what they refer to (by an easy vulgarisation of St John of the Cross) as ‘the dark night’. Scripture, meanwhile, traces a well-lit path. Not that the Bible has illusions about our virtue or strength. It affirms, quite simply, that God, who is omnipotent after all, wants to make himself known. We must simply accept to be night-watchers looking out for the star of daw. The only real obstacle on our path to God is the idea that might insinuate itself in us that we’re enlightened without God — or even, in extreme cases of delusions, that we are light. Should we fall for such absurdities, passage through a genuine night might be a heaven-sent blessing. Writing to the Thessalonians in what is probably the New Testament’s oldest text, St Paul speaks of the intellectual darkness that imprisons those who do not recognise Christ’s holy resurrection from the dead. God’s victory over death has categorical importance. It impacts on all metaphysical and concrete reality. To live without realising this is a bit like living in our modern world without being aware of electricity. Were we to do so, we’d get by somehow, of course, but we’d constantly be surrounded by the inexplicable, delivered up to useless fears. Only by admitting that there is, now, a live current uniting time and eternity, the visible world of earth and the invisible (but sometime audible) world of heaven can we confront existence with courage and serenity. The enlightenment that faith brings is truly a lamp for our steps, a light for our path (cf. Ps. 118.105). When in the Gospel the Lord speaks of the virgins who had not acquired enough oil to make their lamps shine, the aspects of light we’ve already considered are implicit. Still, more is at stake. An insufficiency of wisdom or understanding does not exclude us, thank God, from eternal life. St Seraphim of Sarov, a great monk so closely united with Christ that he sometimes reflected the light of Tabor, put forward an interpretation of this parable that is worth thinking about. The market where the oil is bought symbolises, says Seraphim, our life. The shut door of the bridechamber, barring the way to the Bridegroom, is human death. The wise and foolish virgins stand for Christian souls. ‘The oil does not symbolise deeds, but the grace of the most holy Spirit of God, which changes things from one state to another: what is corruptible into something incorruptible; the death of the soul into spiritual life; darkness into light; the stable of our being (where the passions are tied up like dumb beasts) into a temple of God, a bridechamber of unspeakable joy in Christ our Lord, the Creator, Redeemer, and eternal Bridegroom of our souls.’ Do we think enough about this dimension of our faith? Do we believe that the state of our soul can really change, that God can conform our being to his? This parable, as Seraphim reads it, lets us see how vital the Spirit is for us. The Paraclete is Creator Spiritus. He makes us ready to live divinely. The Spirit refashions our souls according to the Father’s first intention. He makes what is perishable eternal. He raises us from death to life. He renders dust resplendent with a sheen of eternity. Of itself, our soul tends, as Seraphim points out, to descend to the state of an ill-kept zoo. By grace, it can become God’s sanctuary. Our misfortune, our only true misery, is ‘our inattention to his care for us’, our ignorance of his gifts. We must learn to be receptive, pure of mind and body. When the Spirit descends, we must welcome him attentively, in profound silence, to burn with his light. In so far as we do, we shall not be strangers, when our earthly pilgrimage ends, to the life of the seraphim whose ardent praise resounds before God in all eternity. While we wait we may bring consoling joy to this earth which, left to its own devices, only too easily sinks into paralysing sadness. Amen. St Seraphim was famous for his friendship with a bear. Seeing uncreated Light shining in him, the bear knew it had nothing to fear, and could therefore relinquish its own hostility.
L’ChaimA committee established by the Storting earlier this year to consider whether provision for euthanasia should be integrated into our country’s legislation published its findings this week. The report is a heartening expression of good sense and humane intuition. It affirms the inalienable value of life, criticises vague rhetoric, calls for the careful development of palliative medicine. I saw the report after reading an essay Gilbert Meilaender wrote 35 years ago: ‘I want to Be a Burden to my Loved Ones’. An honest piece, it makes it clear that no love is easy. To care for and suffer with someone dear to us who is ill and dying will, especially, constitute a weight. But such weight can bear the imprint of glory. Not for nothing does kavod, the Hebrew word for ‘glory’, like the one Isaiah saw in the temple, have as its root meaning, ‘heaviness, weight’. Meilaender warns against any ‘last-ditch attempt to bypass the interdependence of human life, by which we simply do and should constitute a burden to those who love us’. The same note is heard in Christ’s injunction in Gethsemani: ‘Watch with me’. By abiding with him, sharing his passion, we are readied for his glory. This dynamic mysteriously works itself out in human loyalties, too.
CatholicismPhilippians 3.3-8: I. Have come to see my advantages as disadvantages. Luke 15.1-10: Rejoice with me! I have found what was lost. The Church is by nature and vocation Catholic. The word ‘catholic’ comes from Greek. It is made up of the phrase kath’holon. ‘Holon’ stands for what is whole — it gives us ‘holistyczny’. ‘Kath’ is a contracted form of ‘kata’, a preposition meaning ‘according to’. To say ‘The Gospel according to Mark’ in Greek, we say to evangelion kata Markon. The Church’s ‘catholicism’ points towards universality: the marvellous energy that pushes it out towards the ends of the earth, ready to transcend all earthly boundaries. But the Church is ‘catholic’ also in so far as it is integral, whole. In Lumen Gentium, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council speak of how God from all eternity ‘foreknew and predestined’ the elect to be ‘conformed to the image of his Son’, that the Church might present a perfect icon of Christ. ‘He planned to assemble in the holy Church all those who would believe in Christ’, having an intended place for each. To get an idea of how God sees the Church, we might think of what it is like to assemble a big jigsaw puzzle, a serious one, say one with 18,000 pieces. We’ll beaver away at if for weeks, composing the image, making sure it corresponds to the prototype, delighting in seeing it come together. But what frustration we feel if, near the end, we find that a piece is missing. In such a large puzzle, a single piece is almost invisible. Still, if it isn’t there, our eye is inevitably drawn to the empty spot, leaving us sad, as if the work of putting together the 17,999 other pieces had been in vain. Only against this background can we grasp the parables given us today: the one about the hundredth sheep and the one about the missing drachma. In both, there’s urgency about looking for what is lost: It has to be there somewhere! The woman whose coin is missing keeps sweeping away ‘till she finds it’. Then, what rejoicing. She calls the neighbours in for a glass of sparkling wine. What was made to be perfect, yet looked depressingly faulty for a while, is again complete. Joy in such completeness has to be shared. It’s just to much to bear on one’s own. This, Jesus tells us, is how God builds up his Church. To be a Catholic is to be driven by determination that no single piece will, at the last, be absent from the puzzle-portrait of Christ that the Father is providentially preparing. We need to acquire the zeal of Fr Franziskus Jordan, founder of the Salvatorians, who at Christmas in 1894 wrote in his diary: ‘As long as there is a single person on earth who does not know God, who does not love God above all things, you cannot permit yourself to rest even for a moment.’ May our Christian sensibility be ever strengthened in this sense, purified by the fire of God’s generous love, so that God, when this world’s work is done, may rejoice in a Church that is truly catholic, entire, lacking nothing — and no one. Amen.
DiscipleshipPhilippians 2.12-18: For his own loving purpose God puts the will into you. Luke 14.25-33: None can be my disciple unless he gives up all his possessions. These days, we like to communicate in such a way that our message reaches and attracts the maximum number of people. We tweet. We post. We blog. Even stiff-coloured clerics venture onto TikTok, having read in good Catholic papers that this is where the young are to be found now that FaceBook has turned into a medium for grannies. Diocesan and congregational media officers anxiously count their ‘followers’. What a contrast with the pastoral policy of Christ, our Lord. We find him in today’s Gospel followed by ‘great crowds’. Should he should have been pleased, ready for a charismatic spiel on the benefits and joys of faith? That’s exactly what he doesn’t provide. Instead he utters some of the harshest words in the Gospel: ‘Anyone who does not hate those closest to him cannot be my disciple! Anyone who does not carry his cross, cannot be my disciple! Anyone who does not give up all he has, cannot be my disciple!’ What surprises us is not the fact that, after this salvo, some turned away, but that anyone at all stayed. Elsewhere Jesus speaks with accents of tenderness. Why is he so severe here? He wants to make sure that people do not follow him on false pretences. He does not want to inspire illusions that can’t be fulfilled. To be a Christian is often hard; it calls for commitment, sacrifice, perseverance. The images Christ uses to support his injunctions are telling. You can’t start a building project without an adequate budget; you can’t go to war without sufficient strategic resources. The world we live in is full of illustrations of what happens if you do. Our Gospel speaks of the greatness of the Christian vocation. Being a divine enterprise, it calls on us to transcend ourselves. We must not instrumentalise the Gospel for purposes of self-realisation or gain, or even to maintain affections. ‘God’s loving purpose’, which Paul speaks of, is to recall what by grace we have the means to become: God’s children, apt to shine like stars in the night of human hopelessness. To shine, we must burn. That in us which is not fire-resistant must perish. Dare we present this proposal to the world of today? I think we must, first of all by living it out. As St Charles Borromeo, whose feast we keep, told the clergy of Milan in 1599: ‘Be sure you first preach by the way you live. If you don’t, people will notice that you say one thing, but live otherwise. Your words will then bring nothing but cynical laughter and a derisive shake of the head.’ We can’t be the servants of two masters. It makes us unhappy. It generates tension within us and around us. We know that. At the same time a persistent little voice tells us we can always have a go. It’s really the temptation to follow that duplicitous voice the Lord tells us to ‘hate’. Once we put God first, we are free to love freely, and our love will not be troubling. Let’s make sure our lives of faith do not end looking like this.
UngraciousnessPhil 2.5-11: He emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave. Luk 14.15-24: All alike started to make excuses. Salvation history is the account of God’s kindness visited upon mankind. The story’s pathos results from repeated clash between divine grace and human ungraciousness. The parable we have heard is instructive. It presupposes a joyful setting: a fine feast. We all know the delight of preparing a celebration for friends. We fix it in the diary well in advance, cook and clean, choose the music, rejoicing in the prospect of our guests’ having a good time. There may be last-minute cancellations on account of work commitments or a sick child — that goes without saying. What the Gospel speaks of, though, is different. No one wants to come. All spurn the host’s invitation, not bothering even to make up decent excuses. They just say: ‘Thanks but no thanks; I’ve enough with my contentment. I find it in my property, my status symbols, my immediate circle. I can’t be bothered with your party. Please go away.’ To meet such an attitude is humiliating and hurtful. In Matthew’s account of the parable, the host, enraged, punishes those who turn his invitation down. Luke, the physician, that keen observer of human affairs, the evangelist of the nativity, presents a more tempered response. He concedes that the host is angry; but his wrath is simply turned into an extension of hospitality. Lovely things have been prepared. The host wishes them to be enjoyed. He sends his servants out into ‘the open roads and the hedgerows’, which is to say that he invites the down-and-out, the poor and those sleeping rough. His concern is not with the elegance of the assembly; he wants to make sure his carefully prepared gifts are not wasted. It is moving to hear this parable proclaimed in conjunction with Paul’s hymn of praise of the Son of Man who emptied himself, assumed the condition of a slave, becoming ‘as all men are’, only much humbler, more at ease out in hedgerows than at dinner parties. Jesus Christ is God’s extended hand to us, sons and daughters of Adam, created in his image to be like him; he beckons us, all of us (as well as all those whose company we may not spontaneously desire) to eat and drink with him. Do we respond to his summons with alacrity, happy to come when we are called? Or do we really prefer to be left undisturbed at home in our own little kingdoms, where we make the rules? In this week’s collect we ask for grace to ‘hasten without stumbling to receive the things [God has] promised’. What trips us up most, often enough, are not obstacles around us, but our own deep-seated care for our convenience. Lord, have mercy! ‘I have bought five yokes of oxen and am on my way to try them out’, said one of the invited guests. Five yokes of oxen back in the day would have been the equivalent of a smart new car in our money.
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Today we celebrate St. Willibrord St. Willibrord was born in Northumbria in 658. He entered the Benedictine order and sent to study, including spending twelve years, 678-90, at the monastery of Rath Melsigi, near Milford, Co. Carlow before going with Read More 1 Comments
HAPPY FEASTDAY SAINT WILLIBRORD OF FRISIA, PRAY FOR US!!!!! 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
☘️Today we remember all the Saints of Ireland The feast celebrates the gifts and the glory of God in his saints, their sharing in the paschal mystery of Christ, our communion with them in Christ, their example and their intercession Read More 1 Comments
HAPPY FEASTDAY OF ALL THE SAINTS OF IRELAND, PRAY FOR US!!!!! 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
Today we celebrate St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop. Cardinal Bishop of Milan at the age of twenty one, he worked for reform in his Diocese, drafting Catechism of the Council of Trent. Patron saint of catechists and seminarians. 1 Comments
HAPPY FEASTDAY SAINT CHARLES BORROMEO, PRAY FOR US!!!!! 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
Today is the Feast day of St. Martin de Porres - patron Saint of the sick and afflicted 🙏 He spent the first few years of his life in poverty, and learned to sympathize with the struggles of the poor. Martin eventually Read More 60 Comments
A beautiful Saint Martin 🙏Amén negrito lindoAmen 🙏❤️⚘️
Today is All Souls’ Day or more formally ‘the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed’ This a solemn celebration commemorating all of those who have left us and moved onto the next world. Eternal rest grant unto them O Lord, and let perpetual Read More 1 Comments
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