To Become a ManThe death of Gérard Philipe on 25 November 1959 provoked national grief in France. In a recentish book, Jérôme Garcin revisits the actor’s singular life and death. He contends that Philipe personified the need for catharsis after World War II, Read More
St GeorgeThe story of St George was popularised by James of Voragine, a Dominican contemporary of St Thomas Aquinas. It seems extravagant at first, but once we cotton on to James’s style of story-telling, we find his account is far from Read More
Dealing with StuffJim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother ends with a scene in which two twins stand before a garage that is full of the things of their parents, mysteriously deceased. Considering the relics of these two lives and of their own heritage, Read More
4. Sunday of EasterActs 2.14-41: On the day of Pentecost Peter stepped forward. 1 Peter 20-25: He suffered but made not threats. John 10.1-10: He calls each of his sheep by name. Dear friends! You receive the sacrament of confirmation on the Fourth Sunday of Easter. We call it Good Shepherd Sunday, for on this day we always read from the tenth chapter of John, which contains the parable of the Shepherd and the sheep. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought what I remember thinking back when I, with a lot of resistance, if the truth be told, was confirmed. When there was talk of the Good Shepherd, or pious images of him were displayed, I groaned. The images irritated me. The Shepherd resembled an old-school hippie. And was I supposed to count myself a sheep? Anyone who’s had dealings with sheep knows they’re not especially reflective. Sheep move in flocks. Steer a few in a given direction, and the rest will follow. I, meanwhile, at fifteen, was determined to find my own way in life. I didn’t want to be pulled along in some woolly, smelly heap. There was something suspicious, too, I thought, about the Shepherd. He made me think of the Pied Piper, the fellow who went about playing a flute prettily while the town’s rats, enchanted, followed him into a river, where they drowned. Is this Christianity, I wondered — the unthinking pursuit of a charismatic leader with no objections raised, no questions heard, only bleats? Later, when I started reading the Bible and discovered what an exciting, thought-provoking book it is, I saw how wrong I’d been. The people of Israel were nomads. Sheep-farming was the foundation of their society and business. The shepherd became a symbol of political leadership. King David, the personification of a kingly ideal, is called Israel’s shepherd. It’s a title of honour. In the Bible, sheep aren’t just distracted balls of wool. They represent the nation’s citizens. They’re presented as intelligent. Psalm 23, which begins, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’, speaks of the soul of sheep and of their yearning for righteousness. In the Bible, a relationship of trust exists between shepherd and sheep. The sheep recognise the voice of the shepherd they trust. They refuse to follow other voices that merely imitate the good shepherd’s voice. The sheep seek security and thriving. They do not give in to threats. It isn’t, then, a humiliation to be likened to a sheep! On the contrary. The image suggests that we have exercised discernment, worked out where we want to go in life, have found a leader it is safe and sensible to follow. We have ears that hear, eyes that see. You who are about to be confirmed were marked with the sign of the Good Shepherd in baptism, becoming part of his flock. That was a gift your parents gave you. Remember to thank them for it. Today you assume adult responsibility for this gift you received as children. You declare yourselves Christians. You say: ‘Yes, I recognise the Good Shepherd’s voice, and I will follow it.’ To be a Christian is not, as I have said, to drift passively along with a crowd or current. It is to listen critically to voices that surround us. We must consider both the message and tone of those voices. Which concord with that of the Good Shepherd? Which try to draw us away from him? Much is at stake in the world right now, especially for you who are young. Even in Norway, where we’re used to living in stability and security, preparations are made for possible war. There’s a new edge to debate. Old prejudices find new expressions. People insult one another in public. There’s much talk of inclusion and solidarity, true, but what we see is that bridges are burnt and walls constructed as suspicion rises. Our country is becoming more violent. I say this, not to cast shadows over what should be a bright day. I simply point out something you’re bound to have noticed already: Not all voices about us are good. Not all have honest purposes. There are ‘thieves and robbers’ set on leading you astray. That’s why you need to be able to think for yourselves. To think for yourselves, you need sure criteria and principles. That is what our Catholic faith gives you. It is a joy, and a source of encouragement, that you young people today confess and confirm your allegiance to that faith. On Good Shepherd Sunday we pray for vocations. In a way that seems superfluous. All of you are called. God, in whose image you are made, has a task for each of you. To find out what that task is, is part of youth’s terror and exhilaration. Savour the exhilaration and enjoy it! Take time, now and again, to ask: ‘What do I really want? What do I long for?’ Remember: the Good Shepherd’s voice doesn’t just speak from without. It is heard, too, in the heart’s deep desire. Learn to listen out for it there. All of you are called to live good Christian lives built on truth and love of neighbour. When we talk about vocations, though, we also think specifically of the call to a consecrated life. I invite you to take that option seriously. Who knows if God isn’t calling some of you here to be priests or religious? It’s a good life — to that I can testify. The Church needs young women and men with guts to say a wholehearted ‘Yes!’ to the promises of Christ, ready to establish their life’s task within them as bearers of hope, joy and comfort into an often saddened, sometimes lugubrious world. ‘Christ’, we have heard Peter say, ‘left you an example, that you might follow in his footsteps.’ That’s what life is ultimately about. Remember that, and everything else will fall into place. Amen.
Christian iconography daringly represents the Lord himself as a sheep, as here in the Ghent Altarpiece.
A Future for Empathy?This conversation with Annachiara Valle was published in Famiglia Cristiana on 18 April. It focuses on the publication of Illuminati da una gloria nascosta, which brings together the conferences of this year’s Lent retreat in the Vatican. You can find the Italian text of the interview here. Below is an English translation. Why did you focus the retreat on Psalm 90? It was simply the first idea that occurred to me when I received the phone call from the Secretariat of State – an utter surprise – inviting me to give the retreat. Psalm 90 is a structural element in the liturgy of Lent. I know and love St Bernard’s reading of this text. So it made sense to make use of it. The Psalm begins with the words: ‘My refuge and my strength, my God in whom I trust.’ Is this refuge a kind of resignation, or is it something else? A Christian can never be resigned. A Christian is a person committed to the reality of a world the Lord is presently saving. We have our role to play in this great project, at once divine and human. It’s worth stressing that in the Latin version that St Bernard used, and on which I based my exposition, the term is not ‘refuge’ but rather ‘help’. The Psalm speaks of ‘living within the help of the Most High’, Qui habitat in adiutorio Altissimi. It suggests that we can make God’s help our habitat, and that that’s how we learn to live in this world in a specifically Christian way. So to inhabit this world as a Cristian is not an experience of passivity? Absolutely not. But how can we go about this, especially where there’s war? We must beware of counsels that are too general and banal. We need to be attentive to the enormous challenge of witnessing to the Gospel in situations of devastation and war. That is why I stress, in the book, the theme of peace. St Paul tells us that Christ is our peace. We are called to be bearers of that peace. As far as we can, we must, even in violent circumstances, resist the temptation to yield to bitterness, violence, aggression, and hate, remaining open to the possibility of reconciliation, of the transformation of situations of conflict. By our presence, by Christ’s presence in us, in so far as we are possessed of his peace, we can be instruments of his work even in terribly difficult conditions. In your book you also speak of the instrumentalisation of God’s name for purposes of war. A relevant theme right now. Absolutely. I state very clearly that it stands for a distortion. Resistance to any instrumentalisation of the vocabulary and symbols of faith represents a major challenge for today’s Christians. Which are the risks involved? The great risk is idolatry. In so far as we construct a God on the basis of our imagination, we use the terminology of faith to make a little god, a protector god, a tribal god who protects me and my interests. The Biblical revelation goes against this tendency, trying to make us see, precisely, that God is the God of all, an inconceivably great God who will not let himself be enclosed in our categories. All the struggles against idolatry in the Old and New Testament are directed against the tendency to reduce God to the mere patron of my ideas. We see this idolatry at work today at the highest levels. We may think of Trump, but also of Netanyahu, who says that the extension of Israel’s borders means the coming of the Messiah. How to resist such misrepresentation? By living out a Christian witness credibly, upholding the Biblical revelation of God incarnate in Christ Jesus without yielding to dangerous simplification. Another important theme in the book is hope. How to hope in a world in crisis? Hope is trust in things unseen. Hope is born when I ascertain that the present reality of a given situation, thing or person may not ultimately define the reality of this situation, thing or person. Hope is born of knowledge that there’s always a potential for growth and maturing, for conversion and even sanctification. I believe the basis of hope is a personal experience of the possibility of pardon – even the smallest experience of what grace might amount to, of what mercy is, and the utterly unmerited gift of God’s love. If I have, even in small ways, entertained such experience, I can with some authority convey the certainty that, well, if I can receive such illumination, then anyone can. You develop, too, the notion of truth in a time marked by fake news and the manipulation of media. How can we come to discern the truth? By facing the media with caution, intelligence and a critical sense. By nurturing our capacity for a healthy judgement of opinions and things. This is hard today, on account of the speed of the exchange of ideas. Precisely for this reason we need to be a little revolutionary – I’d say it should be our preferential option to resist acceleration. We need the courage to take a step back in order to get an overall view of given situations, given political and cultural phenomena. We need a clear, lucid, objective, well-founded view of reality as it is, without being seduced by illusions or others’ projections. For this we need time, and a certain slowness. Can we ourselves be tempted to manipulate? It’s a temptation everyone is exposed to. Given our digital resources and social media, any individual has ample means to project their own reality, personality, appearance, and blissful happiness. These projections do not necessarily correspond to what we are in fact. We need to be honest with ourselves and ask if we have the courage to be truthful. We can, indeed we must, begin modestly, in our circle of family and friends. We must practise the art of being truthful. You go on to speak of freedom? How can freedom be understood? As the Gospels present it to us, freedom ever unfolds in view of communion. Freedom is not a matter of stepping away from obligations. To be free is not about being disconnected. In a Christian optic, being free is a matter of speaking a lasting ‘Yes’ that involves accepting a task, a responsibility for the common good, for the good of others. How can we transmit this value to the young? Above all by living it out. It seems to me that young people are tired of rhetoric, tired of a multitude of words. They’re impressed, however, by the example of a faithful life, by people who remain faithful to an ideal, a relationship, a responsibility – by a couple that remains together, by a priest who fully lives out his consecration without compromise, with generosity. They are impressed by the example of religious who choose to stick to their commitment, to the ‘Yes’ pronounced once for all. The young are well aware of the grandeur and dignity implicit in saying a ‘Yes’ that is for life. In our contemporary climate, marked by much instability and much anxiety, there’s a search for fixed points of reference. The young ask: ‘What can I build my life on? Which are the values that last? Is there a foundation able to support my hopes and aspirations?’ If we, as individuals and communities within the Church, testify that, yes, such a foundation exists, then it can have massive impact. Your book originates as a Lenten retreat. Why go back to it in retrospect? St Benedict, in his Rule, says that the life of a monk or nun, or, for that matter, of any Christian desiring to live their faith coherently, should be a continuous Lent. He did not mean that their existence should be morose, terribly austere, marked by exaggerated mortification. Rather, he indicated a form of existence always oriented towards Christ’s victory over death. The mystery we consider during Lent in a concentrated way is no less the mystery of Christian life as such: Christ’s Paschal victory – his victory over sin, over all that which ties us to death, in order to carry us, rather, towards life in fullness, towards beatitude and eternal life. How can we practise abstinence and fasting in a frenetic, consumerist world? Look around! We’re surrounded by fasting cures, fitness centres, dieting campaigns. The secular, even atheist, imagination is more than open to offers of self-improvement: we want to look good; to be able still to wear outfits we bought last year; to be able to go to the beach without shame. These are, in a way, propositions inviting us to become better versions of what we are now. What the Christian faith offers is infinitely more interesting and joyful than simply the prospect of going to the beach with our head held high. To live Lent well is also a matter of slowing down. We realise that we can in fact get on perfectly well without rushing along, like everyone else, at a mad pace. That mad pace is not compulsory. In this area, too, we must uphold the freedom we have to find our own rhythm. By slowing down, do we become better able to consider the world’s wounds? Yes. And not only that. We need the honesty, humility, and realism to recognise, first of all, our own wounds. The first step is about not hiding them from ourselves. Then we can face the central Gospel question: ‘Do you want to be healed?’ We can ask ourselves: ‘Do I want to let God’s grace, through the Church, and through the people who surround me, enter my life for a purpose of healing, or am I attached to my wounds?’ If I look honestly at that which has wounded me, I am ready to start learning the art of compassion. Compassion is unsentimental. It is a dynamic that plays out relationally, equipping me to understand that which another person is living through without reducing everything to my own perspective. Compassion is a kind of empathy inviting me to see life as it manifests itself in the reality of someone else. Have we lost this empathy? I think we have, a bit. Let’s consider the way in which we look at migrants, the poor, the victims of war. At the same think I do think that compassion is an impulse deeply rooted in the human heart, even if it may be covered by layers of rocks and sand. We may have excavation work to do in order to rediscover that fount of living water that is the heart’s compassion. How, though, can we manage to stay afloat confronted with so many images of pain from all over the world? We are submerged by images, surrounded on all sides by evidence of pain. It is humanly impossible to invest oneself fully in each of these realities. It would kill us. A certain detachment is needed before this tsunami of information, of images of suffering. Yet it matters not to close our eyes, or our heart, to the suffering other, present in real, incarnate persons. We have to train ourselves to keep our eyes and hearts open and vulnerable in the encounters we have daily, not enclosing ourselves in an interior cell where we try to resist the wounds of the world and of the other. Before so much pain, how can we not feel powerless? We can look at ourselves, at the circumstances of our own lives and ask: ‘What can I do do here, now, in this situation that is providentially entrusted to me? What can I do for my wife, my husband, my children, my neighbour, the people I meet at the shop, in church, at the post office, in the cinema? What can I do for the beggar sitting before my front door?’ This is where the real work begins; this is where we can begin to transform society. Society is transformed, too, by way of politics. What are the characteristics of the Christian politician? Honesty, realism, truth. A Christian politician must not give in to hyper-rhetoric; he or she must have the courage to call things by their names. They also need a clear sense of the common good, and a sense of what society is. It seems to me that in the West, now, we’ve largely lost a sense of society; instead we isolate ourselves in little confraternities made up of people who share our sensibilities and convictions, people who have been formed the way we have. We need to get out of this kind of isolation. A politician should also be capable of compassion. To whom is your book addressed? To write a book is a bit like putting a letter into a sealed bottle, then chucking that bottle into the sea. You don’t know who will pick it up, if anyone. Ultimately, I’d say the book is addressed to all people of good will. It will establish its own trajectory. It will find its own ways to reach appropriate destinations. I’ll observe it from a distance with interest. What fruit do you hope it might bear? Above all the sweet fruit of hope, of courage to live well and fully without being overwhelmed by the pessimistic darkness powerfully clouding contemporary culture. I hope the book might, in a small way, nurture people’s resolve to follow the high ideals of freedom, truth, communion. Communion, society, is born of principles, ideals, shared ideas. It is born no less of simply taking time to do simple things together, like collecting pebbles on a beach, rejoicing in the wonder of them. A scene from near Ålesund.
To Become a ManThe death of Gérard Philipe on 25 November 1959 provoked national grief in France. In a recentish book, Jérôme Garcin revisits the actor’s singular life and death. He contends that Philipe personified the need for catharsis after World War II, embodying the French nation’s best aspirations. But he stood for something more universal, too. Maria Casarès said of him: ‘He was a man seeking avidly, ferociously to become a man’. He knew time was short. In an interview with the journal Arts, he was asked: ‘What thought preoccupies you?’ He answered: ‘The urgency of the things I have to do.’ Then, ‘What amazes you about life?’, to which he responded, ‘Its brevity’. Happily we have both the films in which he acted and many sound recordings that he made — this one, for example: a marvellous reading of Georges Duhamel’s Mozart Told to Children.
St GeorgeThe story of St George was popularised by James of Voragine, a Dominican contemporary of St Thomas Aquinas. It seems extravagant at first, but once we cotton on to James’s style of story-telling, we find his account is far from implausible. ‘It was, however, the symbol of George, what he represented, that made him so well loved throughout the Middle Ages. Quite how he came to be patron saint of England we do not know, but he was honoured here long before the Norman Conquest. It is wonderful, I think, that England has as its patron a native of Cappadocia; in other words, a Turk. The choice shows what mattered to Englishmen of old when they constructed their identity: not ethnic criteria or narrow-minded jingoism rallying round a cricket team, but the generous living out of Christian faith through charity to the poor, help to those in need, and fearless confession in the face of secular might. These values are hardly less relevant today than they were in the third century. And I would say St George compares favourably to many a contemporary role model. If we put him alongside Justin Bieber or the Spice Girls, we may conclude that the medievals weren’t so silly after all.’ From Entering the Twofold Mystery.
Dealing with StuffJim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother ends with a scene in which two twins stand before a garage that is full of the things of their parents, mysteriously deceased. Considering the relics of these two lives and of their own heritage, one asks: ‘What’re we gonna do with all this stuff?’ The other replies: ‘I can’t deal with it.’ So they pull down the garage door, lock it, and walk away, fragmenting, by a cunning camera effect, as they withdraw. The film is made up of three perfectly composed visual short stories that explore the dynamics of unprocessed family tensions. There’s a cynical note to the movie, but it is also fond, at times funny. It’s beautifully realistic, one of those films that absorb you to such an extent that you feel a little lost when you step outside the cinema. We’re shown that the construction of family is ongoing work, at once an ascesis and an art. Deep connections, an interpenetration of colour, remain even in the face of estrangement.
Home
Today is the Feast of St. Catherine of Siena who is one of the Patron Saints of Europe. Born a twin and one of 25 children in her family, Catherine devoted her life to prayer and service of the poor. Read More
The Parish of Ballymacoda & Ladysbridge will be celebrating Youth Mass on every first Monday during the summer months in Muintir Mhuire, Ballybutler, Ladysbridge. They would like to invite the young people of neighbouring Parishes and Diocese to join Read More 2 Likes
Saint of the day: St Mark, the Evangelist. One of the four Evangelists, in his life Mark achieved what every Christian is called to do...to proclaim to all people the Good News that is the source of salvation. His is Read More 6 Likes
Today is Earth Day and every April 22nd, stakeholders of all backgrounds come together to advance sustainability and climate action in commemoration of Earth Day. It also provides an opportunity to explore how we can engage with the “Adoption of Read More 15 Likes
