MannI first encountered Hanns Zischler on the screen as the ambiguous Captain von Lerenau in Europa Europa. He was eerily credible as Klaus Barbie in La Traque and as the amiable forger Hans, an unlikely Mossad agent, in Spielberg’s Munich. Read More
Natural JoyEvelyn Waugh wrote of his father Arthur that his ‘most obvious characteristic was theatricality, but I did not become conscious of this until it was pointed out to me at the age of sixteen by the first adult visitor I Read More
Ulrik Sverdrup-Thygeson RIPRom 14.7-9: Ingen av oss lever for seg selv, og ingen dør for seg selv. Joh 14.1-6, 27: Min fred gir jeg dere, ikke den fred som verden gir. I møte med døden, synger Kirken om fred. Det gjør den enten den avdøde var gammel og grå, mett av dage, eller et lite barn; enten døden fant sted i en veloppredd seng med elskede mennesker omkring, eller isolert kaotisk i en skyttergrav. Requiem! Ordet vekker assosiasjoner av trøst selv hos de mest kirkefjerne. Mozart, Verdi, Fauré har gitt Requiem-messen musikalske uttrykk som er blitt til allemannseie. Lett kan vi glemme å bemerke hvor paradoksalt det faktisk er å besynge døden med en grunntone av håpefull ømhet. Menneskelig sett er døden opprivende, også når den er ventet. For en ærefrykt vi føler ved et dødsleie! Den døende kan være bevisstløs, men er åpenbart til stede. Så kommer døden. Og med ett er vi oss et tydelig fravær bevisst. På norsk sier vi at en døende “går bort”. Uttrykket er egentlig ikke så dumt. Det er heller ikke så dumt å snakke om “de etterlatte”. De blir stående igjen der ved veiskillet, i avmakt. Opplevelsen kan frembringe dype reaksjoner av sorg, opprør, sinne. Og tross alt synger vi om fred? I evangeliet utgår freden fra et dobbelt utgangspunkt. Det første har med en viljeshandling å gjøre. “La ikke hjertet bli grepet av angst”, sier Jesus. Angst lammer. Når andre vil mestre oss, prøver de å gjøre oss redde. Men angsten er ikke determinert. Vi kan, i forbausende stor grad, nekte angsten adgang til vårt sinn. Vi gjør det ved å anerkjenne ting som de er: “Se, nå er jeg her. Nå er det sånn.” Det reelle kan vi hanskes med; det er det fantastiske som skremmer. Utgår vi fra kjens-gjerninger, kan vi ta overlagte valg. Følelsen av å stå fanget kommer fra forestillingen om at det som er burde være annerledes. For å gå døden fredfullt i møte, må vi godta den som en del av livet. Vi trenger hverken å usynliggjøre den eller å jåle den til. Vi må kun kunne se den i øynene som noe som kommer til oss, noe som blir oss gitt. Det andre evangeliske utgangspunkt for fred, er tro: “Tro på Gud og tro på meg!” Tro er gjerne et plundrete begrep for nordmenn. Det er en snodig følge av reformasjons-tidens krangler at “tro” kan fremstå som den ypperste form for gjerning. Vi vet vi må tro, at frelse forutsetter tro. Men hvem vet om vi tror nok, om vår tro når den foreskrevne renhet? Vi kjenner eksempler fra litteraturen, muligens også fra livet, av folk som drives til grensen av vanvidd ved slik spørring. Så kan det være greit å få et bibelsk perspektiv på saken. Det Nye testamentes ord for “tro”, pistis, betyr også “tillit”. Å “tro” på bibelsk vis er ingen ensom bestrebelse. “Tro” betyr besluttsom visshet om at Én holder sin hånd over og under meg, slik at jeg kan ferdes, og stå, trygt. “Bakfra og forfra omgir du meg”, står det i en Davidsalme; “Tar jeg morgenrødens vinger, vil jeg bo ved havets ytterste grense, så fører også der din hånd meg, din høyre hånd holder meg fast.” Slik arter bibelsk tro seg. Den bygger, for det første, på et gjennomtenkt og rasjonelt Gudsbegrep, næret av Skriften og teologisk vitenskap. For det annet, baserer den på oppmerksom iakttagelse av andres liv. Helgenenes vitaer er viktige for oss fordi de viser, i myldrende mangfold, hvordan tro får konkret form i svært ulike sammenhenger, så kan vi finne en brukbar rettesnor for eget trosliv. For det tredje, næres slik tro av erfaring. Jo lenger vi lever, jo klarere sanner vi at det saktens stemmer: Gud er trofast; derfor kan, får jeg tro. Ureddhet og tillit: det er ikke vanskelig å gjenkjenne Ulrik i disse egenskapene Mange her har kjent ham langt lenger enn jeg. Dere får se om dere er enige; selv kan jeg knapt forestille meg Ulrik oppkavet. Sindig var han, og regelrett. Han kalte en spade en spade. Iblant fremstod spaden for andre annerledes enn for ham; det syntes han var en real sak. Men han utgikk fra det han så. Døden hadde han tatt mål av. Han snakket udramatisk om den — med respekt, men også et velgjørende snev av ironi, også mens han ennå virket helt frisk, i uforskammet god form for sin alder. Han visste, simpelthen, at han ikke lenger var ung, og at døden var neste epokale overgang. Hans lune realisme skapte, uten store ord og fakter, en lunhet omkring ham. Den var til velsignelse. Ulriks tro var usentimental. Det betyr ikke at den var følelsesløs. Hvor kjær hans katolisisme var ham, gav han uttrykk for iblant, nesten litt overraskende for en så privat mann. Også her handlet det om å si ting som de er. Ved ettertanke og erfaring hadde Ulrik fastslått at tilværelsen ikke er meningsløs; at livet har en retning, et mål; at vi bæres av en veldig Kraft som mener det godt med oss; at denne Kraften har gitt seg til kjenne i Jesus Kristus, som vi derfor, uten å tape et grann av verdighet, kan kalle “Herre”. Ulrik, velbevandret i de formelle forutsetninger for verdslig samfunn, var kommet til at slik anerkjennelse er forutsetningen for et endelig fellesskap som overgår grenser i tid og rom, hvor døden er en formell prosedyre uten definerende makt. Er det sånn, ja, da får man si det — det var en Ulriksk tilnærming — så får andre modent beslutte om de vil ta del i fellesskapet eller ikke. Like Ulriksk var aktelse for andres frihet. Uredd og tillitsfullt fór han inn i evigheten, Ulrik, full av takknemlighet. Kort tid før han døde, skrev han til meg fra sykehuset. “Har det kongelig — kongelig!” Adverbet var gjentatt. Med Tone og familien rundt seg, omsorgsfullt pleiet, brøt han fredfullt opp slik han fredfullt hadde bygd sin hytte på jord, som om ferden gjennom døden bare var en noe annerledes skitur. Sekken, den var planmessig pakket for lengst. Veien visste han. Fred lyser vi over Ulriks minne! Vi ber om at han nå får glede seg for den evige Konges åsyn. Amen.
MannI first encountered Hanns Zischler on the screen as the ambiguous Captain von Lerenau in Europa Europa. He was eerily credible as Klaus Barbie in La Traque and as the amiable forger Hans, an unlikely Mossad agent, in Spielberg’s Munich. Now you can see him as Thomas Mann in Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, a brilliant account of Mann’s journey to Weimar in 1949, to receive the Goethe Prize. The Nobel laureate thought this foray into the Soviet-occupied East a unifying, grandly European gesture. In fact it embroiled him as a pawn in a political game. Mann’s mixture of egotism and humanity is rendered in a way that seems to me accurate. Chilling is his response to the news of his oldest son’s suicide. With intelligence and tact, Pawlikowski develops the theme of Mann’s ambivalence in such a way that viewers are brought to consider, uncomfortably, the relative purity of their own motivations. In a recent interview, Zischler spoke of his engagement with the role. He says he would count it among the three or four most consequential of his career. That is a big statement, coming from one of our time’s best actors.
22 Sunday AHomily preached in the church of Longyearbyen to commemorate the centenary of the first Catholic Mass offered on Svalbard by Bishop Johannes Olav Smit in August 1926, while we prayed, too, for King Harald, who left this life two days ago, on 27 August. Jer 20.7-9: You have overpowered me: you were the stronger. Rom 12.1-2: Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed. Mt 16.21-27: The way you think is not God’s way but man’s. My first conscious impression of Svalbard is a childish remembrance refreshed each year on New Year’s Eve, when King Olav at the end of his speech to the nation sent good wishes ‘to all of you on Svalbard, Jan Mayen, and in the Arctic.’ It sounded like a litany of enchanted names. As a child, I hardly thought about what the names meant, but they pointed northward towards a world of ice and long winters, the midnight sun and tough people. A southerner coming to Svalbard is tempted, even after just a few hours, to pour forth platitudes about grandiose nature and mystic solitude. Oh well. The solitude is rather softened these days by the fact that we are conveyed here comfortably by air and discover we have excellent mobile reception on arrival. Everything that distracts us elsewhere follows us here. Still, it’s gratifying to think oneself a little Nansen-like as one takes up position in a brand new arctic outfit to take a selfie against an austere background. It was quite a different matter to arrive on Svalbard a few generations ago, after a tiring journey at sea. Once arrived, it was hard to get away, especially during winter. Awareness of the 900 kilometres of icy water lying between oneself and the mainland must have been a tad oppressive even to keen explorers. And what might the life of trappers have been like during the Polar night, in isolated cabins, days’ travel away even from other people on the island? Helge Ingstad, who served as governor for a couple of years from 1933, described how he called on one such, a man thought to be ill, since there had been no sighting of him for a while. The trapper turned out to be physically fit, but soul-struck. ‘He looked at us with an amazed, distant gaze, the first human beings seen for an eternity. Our presence seemed to shatter his world, focused on life in solitude as darkness weighed down and the snowstorm came in as a shower of whiplashes from the Polar ice. At the same time something like fearful joy came over him’. This image makes me think of accounts of the first monks of Egypt who, in the fourth century, wishing to emulate Elijah and John the Baptist, withdrew from society and went into the desert to be alone. They did not despise other men; no, they were kindly disposed. Quite simply, they wished to be relieved of any illusions they might have about themselves. They knew that we, in order truly to encounter others, and to know the utterly Other, God, must first meet ourselves in truth. To meet oneself means facing one’s vulnerability. We live in a world that seeks to cancel vulnerability. Since industrialisation, particularly in the near-century that has passed since Ingstad whizzed around on a dog-sled in these parts, we have been assured that nothing in nature is beyond out power of control. We have firmly believed that technical progress will let us master any earthly circumstance; indeed, the tech-gurus of our time think earth too little, they are keen to conquer the moon. At the same time, the fabric of the world as we have known it is unravelling. As King Haakon told the nation last night, we live, now, with a new degree of uncertainty, surrendered to factors beyond our control, less and less convinced by pompous politicians who promise supremacy in return for adulation and cash. What we need now isn’t more virtual fantasy; what we need is a healthy sense of the real. Reality is what the desert conveys, be it tropical or arctic. If we switch off our phones, Svalbard teaches us much that is essential. Even a visitor realises that. Nature is in a state of change, the ice is melting. That fact is ineluctable here. The question of who is to blame is important, but not the most important one. We must learn to relate to what is now, to what will be. That is something we can only manage together. In the desert, we perish if we stay isolated too long. Along Isfjorden, geological layers exposed to the light of day show how Svalbard’s mountains have come into being over hundreds of thousands of years. If we have eyes that see, we realise how minute we are in time as well as space. If we have ears that hear, that realisation will resonate with eternity. ‘Before the mountains were brought forth, you are God’, we read in a Psalm. I dare say you can’t live on Svalbard for any length of time without, at some level, turning into a theologian. Today’s readings exhort us to see the world afresh. ‘Do not be conformed to this world’, writes Paul, ‘but be transformed in the renewal of your minds.’ In the Gospel Jesus rebukes Peter sharply: ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.’ The form of the world and a human way of thinking tell us that we are on our own, that the law of existence is premised on the survival of the fittest, and that other people, well, will just have to mind themselves. The mind of God, meanwhile, and the path he bids us follow teach us that we are responsible for one another. If we walk along that path for a bit, we realise that this responsibility need not, in fact, crush us; for God keeps us all in his hand, at once almighty and divinely tender. Ingstad’s description of the trapper he met in the 30s tells us much about the roughness of life on Svalbard; it also spells out the human condition as such. For aren’t we all, to a large degree, conditioned to envisage a solitary life, resigned to the darkness and storms outside our front door, kept locked; and don’t we, at the same time, hope that someone might still brave the storm winds and knock? When a friendly face showed, Ingstad notes, ‘something like fearful joy’ came over the man. After a while, the joy of the encounter drove the fear out. Jesus reprimanded Peter because the Apostle did not see what it costs to trace the path of God in this world. Jesus had just pointed towards the cross, the sacrifice awaiting him, saying: This must come about! Peter refused to accept it. Only later, after having wept bitter tears in solitude, did he understand how it all fit together. We must remain rooted in that connectedness. We do so by pouring out of our lives, by bringing the good news of reconciliation, healing, and possible friendship to anxious, hopeless people round about us, people ensconced in loneliness. We shall do this as least as effectively with actions as with words. It was in order to bring the effective oblation of Christ to Svalbard that Bishop Smit came in 1926 to offer the first official Catholic Mass on this continent. A Christian fellowship now flourishes here. Thankful for the grace God has poured out on Svalbard this past century, we wish to answer for that grace, staying anchored in the real, resistant to illusions, without letting ourselves being overwhelmed by fear. Let us knock on the doors of snowed-under cabins whether we find them out in the arctic wilderness or in the urban desert on the mainland. If we do, the fearful joy of others may find blessed, safe release. In the name of Christ! Amen.
King Harald V RIPThe tradition of the Church gives us a prayer to recite when death is near and our own words fail us. The prayer, from the ninth century, begins like this: ‘Go forth, Christian soul, from this world, in the name of God the Father almighty, who created you; in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who suffered for you; in the name of the Holy Spirit, who was poured forth on you’. The prayer reminds us that physical death is a passage from life to Life. Today our beloved king, Harald V, has made this passage. With reverence and gratitude we commend him to God’s loving mercy. All of us must make this passage one day. That is our life’s only certainty. Still, the passing of a king affects us uniquely. We suddenly feel orphaned, surrounded by a resounding absence. In an exemplary manner, King Harald embodied the nation. We were aware that he saw us, knew us, valued us. We knew his care, were embraced by the warmth he exuded. He gave us a magnificent example of dedication. He was so entirely our king, given to his people. No ego seemed to stand in the way. That brought him near to us in a wholly beneficent way. We, the Catholics of Norway, pray devotedly for him. We pray for Her Majesty the Queen and for the royal family. Not least we pray for King Haakon VIII, that God may grant him wisdom and choice blessings. The old acclamation, ‘The King is dead, long live the King!’, stirs us today. The monarchy represents a stable axis in society. It stands for self-evident continuity. In our uncertain times, that is comforting. King Harald has, with Queen Sonja, brought a unique kind of stability to Norway. Ever dignified, the king has been a natural point of reference in both grief and gladness. He has spoken wisely to us, with a kind, quirky humour we shall miss. We will now stand loyally by King Haakon, that the heritage may continue, nurtured by the trust that for ages has bound the people and its sovereign together in this country. The deathbed prayer culminates in an expression of firm, luminous hope: ‘May your place today be in peace, your dwelling with God.’ Trusting in the intercession of St Olav, Perpetual King of Norway, we bless the memory of King Harald V and pray that he may rest in peace. We thank God for everything he gave us through him. Requiescat in pace! +Erik Varden ocso Bishop av Trondheim and Apostolic Administrator of Tromsø Portrait from NRK
Natural JoyEvelyn Waugh wrote of his father Arthur that his ‘most obvious characteristic was theatricality, but I did not become conscious of this until it was pointed out to me at the age of sixteen by the first adult visitor I introduced into the house. This friend said to me: “Charming, entirely charming, and acting all the time.” When I consulted her, my mother confirmed this judgement. […] I must not be thought to impute insincerity to him. It was simply that his nature required every thought and emotion to have immediate histrionic expression. […] He read aloud with precision of tone, authority and variety that I have heard excelled only by Sir John Gielgud. […] In these recitations of English prose and verse the incomparable variety of English vocabulary, the cadences and rhythms of the language, saturated my young mind, so that I never thought of English Literature as a school subject, as matter for analysis and historical arrangement, but as a source of natural joy. It was a legacy that has not depreciated.’
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Today we celebrate the feast of St. Teresa of Calcutta. St. Teresa known as “Mother Teresa” dedicated her life to helping the sick and the poor and founded The Missionaries of Charity Order. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II Read More 8 Likes
Today we remember St. Mac Nissi (or Oengus) When he was born, Oengus was baptised by St. Patrick at a Holy Fountain that sprang from the earth. He studied under St. Patrick and his disciples growing up, and was gifted with Read More 2 Comments
Today we celebrate St. Gregory the Great, pope and doctor of the Church St. Gregory the Great, Roman noble who was Prefect of the City before becoming a monk. As pope, he established a pattern for the papacy in years Read More 1 Comments
Conducted Holy Hour of Eucharistic Adoration Led by Fr. John Keane , Director of Eucharistic Adoration Holy Hour St. Patrick's Church, Fermoy - Monday 21st September Rosary at 7pm Eucharistic Adoration at 7:30pm It will be an hour of resting with Jesus, asking Him Read More 2 Comments
In Midleton recently. Absolutely beautiful Holy Hour . God Bless you Fr Keane.A wonderful preacher.🙏🙏Every every success to you i loved loved it in castledermot
East Cork Camino of Faith, Hope and Friendship The third stage of the inter-parish Camino takes place on Saturday 5th September from Castlemartyr to Ballintotis. This stage will be guided, and pilgrims are asked to stay together as a group Read More 1 Likes
