Today is the first day back to work, college or school for many people – and the dark moody period known as the doldrums begin. The doldrums are that part of mid-ocean where there is no tide and no wind. Sailing ships, relying on nature alone, are at a complete standstill. There is no sense of achievement or accomplishment because, despite having a compass and all the equipment and cargo, without a puff of wind, the ship is useless. The doldrums are also noted for calm periods when the winds disappear altogether, trapping sail-powered boats for periods of days or weeks.
When the winds are gone the sea actually has no swells, on a clear day the color of the sky is reflected in the water. At night the same effect, with no clouds or moon, gives one the effect of floating in space. The crew have to wait it out, monotony sets in, jobs and maintenance performed for their own sake soon become a crushing bore. This whole month of January can be tedious. After the excitement and distraction of the aftermath of Christmas, reviews of the year just past, and January sales, even still the next secular event - Valentine’s Day seems far away.
The weather can be pretty drab as well, and we can be tempted to book holidays to divert ourselves and rescue ourselves from the ever-yawning chasm of boredom and return to difficult tasks we have put off tackling. Our lives, if they were biographies, would be at the ‘boring’ part.
Prevailing sadness and monotony are part of the human condition. We all go through periods of ‘seeming meaninglessness’, but like the sails of a boat, the oppressive calm will once more end and we can once more get on our way. Before we know it, our lives pick up speed and in the midst of activity we hanker again for quiet and calm!
As we pause let us begin our year with a resolution to be more reflective.
What better source of material for reflection than the daily readings from Mass?
So let us begin Week One of Year II in the Liturgical Year as we launch once more out into the deep.
Baptism
Baptism of the Lord, 7th January 2012
The Birthday of Christ begins the season of Christmas and now this Sunday the Baptism of Christ brings an end to the season. We go back to ordinary time as well as resuming our tasks and lives - back to school, work, and routine.
But before we do so, before all the decorations are put away for another year and all the cards are recycled, the Church invites us to take another look at our baptism in commemorating the Baptism of Jesus – and its relevance and importance in our lives.
For each of us our physical birth to our mother and father begins a close relationship of dependency, of nurturing and love as well as membership of a family and taking our rightful place in the family home.
But in some cultures the 'name-day' or christening date is celebrated or marked more significantly than one's birthday. It is the day after all we began our son-ship/daughter-ship as members of God's family. It is our spiritual birthday. Why not find out when you were baptised, and commemorate it annually?
Baptism is a spiritual rebirth, we belong to Mother Church and are nurtured by the sacraments, and we are at home in the Church with our spiritual kinship to our brothers and sisters. St Augustine said "he will not have God for his Father who would not have the Church for his mother."
Our obligations and responsibilities towards the other members of our own human family, brothers and sisters etc., are mirrored by the relationship and responsibilities to our brothers and sisters in Christ.
But baptism involves this and much more on a spiritual level.
We can remind ourselves often of our great dignity and calling through Baptism, by utilising each of the letters of BAPTISM to help us to realise the implications of the Sacrament.
B is for Beloved. God the Father describes Jesus at His Baptism as His ‘beloved’ Son. We too are beloved of the Father through our Baptism and this is an unfathomable mystery that God takes the initiative to love us who are so undeserving. To recognise that we have a loving Father is very important, but can be conditioned and hampered by the relationship we have (had) with our earthly father. But even if it was nit an ideal relationship hopefully all have us have had the experience of being loved by someone. That wonderful sensation is just a glimpse of the love God has for us. Sometimes we wonder what a woman might ‘see’ in a man she loves, and vice-versa. They may seem to us to be ill-matched, but through the lens of love they see themselves as ‘made for each other.’ It remains a mystery. There are no really satisfactory human comparisons to God’s love for us. God’s Love has no reasons ‘why’ but it is worth reflecting on His generous Love for you and me.
A is for Adopted as sons and daughters of God the Father. This is a spiritual adoption. Adoption has legal implications, giving the adopted person the same legal rights of inheritance as biological children. Through baptism we are adopted by God as His children, and become brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ and of one another and are given the ‘right’ to the inheritance of heaven, something which is again God’s loving initiative. Every man is therefore my brother in Christ, and every woman I can call my sister. If only I would begin to treat them accordingly and as they deserve!
P is for People of God – on a pilgrimage through the wilderness of life. We are no longer individuals, isolated, rudderless, without meaning or identity. We truly ‘belong to each other’ and are called, in the words of Pope John Paul II, to build ‘a civilisation of love’. We have a collective identity. We are a people. We are a family, with relationships and responsibilities – just as we are all at once a son or daughter, grandson or grand-daughter, niece or nephew, cousin, so we have relations in the Christian family.
T is for Temples of the Holy Spirit, called and commanded to keep the temple of our bodies undefiled, by sin. True self-love respects the body of oneself, as well as therefore treating the bodies of others with dignity. We do great harm to ourselves by sin, and if we involve another in a sin, do great harm to them also. This should give us pause for thought, to meditate often on our true worth and value, as well as by implication, the worth of others for their bodily and spiritual integrity.
I is for Intercessors for one another – we ought to take seriously the invitation to pray for one another. We ought to believe that our prayers can and will be heard even if they are answered in ways and at times that we do not expect. I wonder if I have always taken this call to intercession seriously enough and if I have had the requisite faith to believe in it.
S is for Sanctified and called to be a saint, and able to receive the other Sacraments. Without Baptism, the other sacraments have no meaning and no value or effect on our souls. That is one reason that the Church has always taken great care to record the event of a baptism. The sacrament changes us interiorly and invisibly to make us holy and acceptable in God’s sight. We are to take seriously the baptismal call to holiness. The Bible says: ‘this is God’s will – your sanctification’ (1 Thess 14-16) Persevering prayer is the key to holiness. Sanctification is the work of a lifetime.
M is for Members of the Body of Christ, members of the Church and on a Mission. We have a collective purpose, calling and vocation by word, and by example to be lead, and to lead others closer to God. We cannot keep to ourselves the ‘secret’ of Christ, what He means to us, and what He does for us. We should desire this happiness for others. As Pope John Paul II said ‘those who have come into genuine contact with Christ cannot keep him for themselves, they must proclaim Him’. Membership of the Church should make us consider seriously becoming members of an apostolic or missionary organisation, concerned with spiritual and charitable works for our neighbour. We prove we are Christians by our love, especially for those whose need is greater than our own. To sum up, it means doing More!
So let us remember who and what we are as baptised Catholics:
Beloved-Adopted-People-Temples-Intercessors-Sanctified-Members
The Epiphany
The Solemnity of the Epiphany - January 6th
While reading once again the familiar account of the journey of the three Magi, it struck me that their last stage of their journey was their shortest, but was too long for Herod and the Jews because they lacked faith.
Having travelled hundreds of miles across the wilderness of the Middle East, with faith but not the requisite knowledge, the distance for the Magi from Herod’s palace to the lowly manger in Bethlehem was only 6 miles. Yet it is not recorded if any of the scribes or Pharisees bothered themselves to make the journey for themselves. They had the requisite knowledge, but not the wisdom or genuine faith to lead them to Christ. Herod was too proud and sceptical to go there. But the Magi did go there and fell on their knees; and their faith, armed with knowledge was rewarded.
There were four stages to their journey –
Firstly, based on their human calculations and assisted by the star but also on their wits, logic and tenacity, yet somehow still unsure, they made their way to the place where an earthly king could be expected to be found – in Jerusalem.
Secondly, based on the accumulated and collective wisdom and Revelation to the Jews, they made their way - correctly - to Bethlehem.
Thirdly, they fell down and worshipped Christ – the Messiah and the King of Kings, seen with Mary His Mother. They offered what they had.
Fourthly, they were guided by divine intervention in a dream, and made their way home by a different, safer route.
This journey of faith, hope, and expectation of the Magi is our journey too and an example to each Christian.
The Magi remind us that we too make our way through life amidst uncertainty, unsure of what lies ahead in the future. They crossed the wilderness, and eventually through their own perseverance and with the right guidance, they found Christ, the goal of their quest and long searching.
We are often left uncertain and anxious of the road ahead, but like the Magi, our journey is marked out for us. The star was not there for them at all times to guide them continuously, but arose again when they were near their goal. They availed of the wisdom of the Jews. The Old Testament - and the New Testament Revelation - the Word of God - is at our disposal.
We know that Christ will guide us but He respects our free-will and expects us to make an effort by ourselves to persevere and not give up in prayer.
We encounter Christ in the sacraments – and adore Him, falling on our knees in the Eucharist. The more time and sacrifice (required of us) in our efforts to give honour, praise and adoration in the Eucharist, and the more we offer ourselves and our lives to Him and His will, the more freely He acts in us and guides us to where He wants us to go. His will becomes clearer to us in proportion to prayerful, persevering effort in prayer.
The Magi’s journey home was far more secure and certain after their encounter with Christ and His Mother. Jesus, with Mary also, can guarantee us safety and right direction as we continue the earthly pilgrimage to our heavenly home.
May we be truly wise and may Jesus and Mary be with us every step of the way in 2012!
January 1st 2012 Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God
This is the time of year for resolutions – yet again, many of which we will fail to keep by month’s end, because we are creatures of habit. All self-help books promise a winning formula – a plan, a programme that is fool-proof (except for me that is!), offer tangible results, short term and long term goals, strategies against back-sliding, reviews, exercises, and accountability to and the support of others.
The top ten resolutions of course include more exercise, getting fit, losing the flab, acquiring a new hobby, getting organised, more time with family and friends, quitting smoking, helping others and so on.
One thing is true however – apparently it takes three weeks for the body to attune to a new habit it has not adapted to before – before it becomes automatic.
All of these are quite praiseworthy, but have I thought about my relationship with God?
The passing of another year means that I am a year closer to meeting Him. How do I feel about that? The only good news is that if you have a frame of mind like mine you know now that 2011 won’t be on your headstone. Now that another 365 days have passed, how many more lie ahead?
‘The key to a better you’ is a physical fitness plan a friend of mine has undertaken recently and he lost 2 stone in 2 months – a bit dramatic, and involving strenuous exercise and a massive change in diet – 70% of any weight loss plan involves change in diet by the way.
But what is the key to a better ‘spiritual you’?
Is there a winning formula in my relationship with God? Yes I believe there is, and who better to look to than the woman we celebrate today – someone who we may have overlooked in recent years.
MARY
The letters of Mary’s name correspond to a daily spiritual programme to draw us ever closer to God.
M is for Mass – if possible, daily. While there are many reasons to participate at Mass regularly, here are just two:
In a particular way, the prayer ‘give us this day our daily bread’ corresponds to the strength and healing that Christ alone can give us to carry on. Just as we are weakened by lack of proper nourishment, without Christ we are weak indeed.
Secondly, it is good to go to Mass with an intention in mind, and easier to focus with that intention – for ourselves or someone else – and to pray for that intention at the elevation of the Host and the Chalice at consecration.
A is for Angelus – a prayer that can be said at 6 am, 12 noon, and at 6 pm. It is a reminder of God’s love for us in sending us His Son as well as Mary’s response in faith to her unique calling. To what is God calling me, and how can I be more faithful and attentive as Mary was, are questions that we can ponder during the recitation of the Angelus
R is for Rosary – the prayer that Mary asks us to pray daily in order to obtain peace for the world and for ourselves.
Y is for You – the unique gift that only you can give to God is the ongoing daily surrender of your very self – thought words, actions, intentions and sacrifices, in the spirit of Mary, and through her intercession.
For 2012 and beyond, this is the key to a better ‘spiritual you’.
Happy New Year
Christmas day 2011
When a child is born
When a child is born, the good news spreads quickly. If a man is relating the news it is a curious fact that he is only interested if the newborn is a boy or a girl; women want to know what weight the baby was, the baby’s name(s), the intensity and duration of the labour, the time of birth, and how the mother is afterwards. Men and women therefore have completely different perspectives on childbirth, probably because men will never experience it.
The good news of Christmas is, of course, the birth of Christ.
But details are few. We do not know his weight, the duration of Mary’s labour (if any), or anything about her recuperation. We do know that he was born in a manger in Bethlehem in the middle of the night, and we know His name.
These two facts alone are hugely significant.
Firstly, a long-standing tradition has it that Jesus was born in the middle of winter in the middle of the night. Now, we ourselves have little control over labour and child-birth, apart from induced births. But God has. And isn’t it interesting that He chose that His Son would be born at the darkest hour of the year, in order to be our light?
And so it is that in all the darkness we experience, external or internal, God wishes to be our light of hope and joy, our light at the end of the tunnel?
Secondly, Jesus is called ‘Emmanuel’, a Hebrew name meaning ‘God-is-with-us’. We choose the names of children after much thought – after a relative, friend, or a saint’s name. The choice of our name is something not taken lightly, because after all we carry it for life.
When we combine these two bits of information that we do possess we realise that God is with us in our darkest hour.
Is there anything else we need to know?
Happy Christmas 2011.
Fourth Sunday of Advent Year B
There is a very clear link running through all the readings this Sunday and that is God’s promise to David that his lineage will produce an heir that will rule forever in the dim and distant future. This prophecy was 600 years in the fulfilment. All of Israel waited for a Messiah and yearned for the promised liberator and king to rule all nations from Israel. God was faithful to His promise to David beyond all imagining, that ‘I will be father to him and he a son to me’, and so in the fullness of time ‘God sent his Son born of a woman’ (Galatians). This is the great mystery hidden for the ages that St Paul speaks about in the epistle today.
This prophecy begins to be fulfilled in the ‘yes’ of Mary, who is aware of the prophecy, and that it is to be her son that will be the fulfilment of all the hopes, dreams and aspirations of a nation crying out for liberty. Mary is the mother of Israel’s liberation. The familiar beautiful scene which we now call the Annunciation is worth pondering. The angel goes into Mary’s house – there is a sense of heaven meeting earth – of a heavenly being ‘reduced’ as it were to the simple motion of physically walking into Mary’s home and extending a formal greeting like any visitor would. Gabriel’s news and invitation would change Mary’s life forever, and it was the pivotal point in our salvation. This scene is recalled millions of times each day in every Hail Mary, in the first Joyful Mystery, in every Angelus and in every recitation of the Creed, when ‘he was made man’ (incarnatus est).
Now we must place our minds and our lives in the mind, if we can, of the teenage girl Mary, who was being asked something so monumental it has changed the world. God was asking her to be the Mother of His Son – and it is mind-blowing for our tiny minds to imagine what God was actually proposing to Mary in this unique, unrepeatable event which we call the Incarnation.
Mary’s ‘Yes’, it must be recalled, was one of extraordinary blind faith, trust and profound love. She could not refuse, it was not in her make-up to refuse God anything. And yet in that silent moment when she gave her free consent, she conceived Jesus in her womb, and she became a mother. And ringing in her ears as she contemplated this change in her own state in life and the beginning of the embryonic life of her son, must have been Gabriel’s words: ‘nothing is impossible to God.’
Yet after the 600 year promise to Israel it would be another 9 months before Mary would set eyes on Him, and another 30 years before His voice would be heard by all the nation. God’s plan slowly unfolds.
As we ponder this scene so familiar to us, we must ask ourselves why this scene is presented to us as the last Sunday Gospel before the annual commemoration of the birth of Christ?
The words of the angel are meant for us too: ‘do not be afraid!’ ‘Listen’, ‘the Lord is with you’, and ‘nothing is impossible to God’.
• What was an ‘annunciation’ moment for you?
• What is God asking of you?
• God keeps His word, do I trust Him?
• God keeps His promises, do I?
• What am I afraid of?
• To what does God want me to listen? And to listen to the promptings of my angel, and my conscience?
• What is so ‘impossible’ for me that is possible to God?
• Does God want me to exercise patience because of His seeming slowness to act?
• Do I believe God wants to intervene in my life, and do I let Him enter in?
• What is God asking me to do as we prepare for his coming? What change(s) are required of me? What challenges, what new responsibilities lie ahead of me? Where is God leading me? To whom does God want me to reach out, as Mary did to her cousin Elizabeth?
It is a wonderful feeling to be the bearer of good news, even of something monumental and life-changing, something with a definite ‘before’ and ‘after’ moment, or day, that we can all mark in our lives. Today’;s Gosepl was Mary’s ‘before/after’ moment.
This long-expected news of Israel’s liberation was good news indeed, the best news ever, and Mary was the first to hear it. Israel was - to use familiar terms today, in a spiritual recession, in need of a spiritual bail-out, in need of having its debt of sin paid in full.
Jesus, the longer-for Messiah, Saviour and King, is ours too, for the whole world, and for each person. We will not truly ‘get’ Christmas until at last we come to realise that Jesus did not ‘merely’ save the world, He saved you, and He saved me.
‘Come Lord Jesus’.
Frank Duff - Biography
The following is a review of the latest book on the life of the founder of the Legion of Mary - Frank Duff, published recently. This article also features in the Legion of Mary Christmas newsletter sent to Cobh parishioners now living abroad.
Cobh, December 2011
Dear friends,
We wish you the blessings of the season of Advent as we anticipate the season of Christmas 2011.
In the coming year 2012 we eagerly await the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, which will be forever etched into the history and consciousness of Cobh, and which will no doubt receive widespread international publicity in April.
As we look back on 2011, however, significant milestones were also commemorated. This past year marked the 90th anniversary of the founding of the voluntary lay organisation, the Legion of Mary, by the Dublin man, Frank Duff on September 7th, 1921. A new book on his life and mission has recently been published by Continuum Books, entitled ‘Frank Duff, A life Story’ by Finola Kennedy (see picture). While it is true to say that ‘a prophet is never recognised in his own country’, at his death in 1980, Frank Duff was described by then Cardinal Tomás O Fiaich as the ‘Irishman of the century’.
The new book is a thoroughly enlightening and well-researched book, helped by the fact that Duff’s 30,000 letters have now been painstakingly digitally formatted and catalogued - a work of three years - making research all that easier. Unlike previous biographies, this one puts flesh and blood on the man and his work, without the pious gloss to be found in other previous biographies. You can read how Frank was an outstanding public servant and his grievances at being overlooked for promotion to which he was entitled, to his concern for the financial well-being of his family, his familiarity with Michael Collins and WT Cosgrave, as well as many of the leading lights in the emerging Free State.
Frank Duff was a man ahead of his times. His concern for the poor shines through. His early membership of the St Vincent de Paul Society led to his concern for the spiritual welfare of those being proselytised by soup kitchens. He was prophetic, when at the very first meeting on that night in September 1921, he said to the ladies present that their gathering would be the template for a worldwide organisation. At present in 2011, the Legion boasts 4 million active members and 10 million auxiliary members worldwide in 170 countries. No other Irish organisation of any kind can make the claims of the Legion for its universal acceptance within decades of its foundation.
A pivotal event in the spread of the Legion after a quiet decade in the 1920s was the International Eucharistic Congress held in Dublin in 1932. The 80th anniversary of this event is of course being marked by another Congress- the 50th of the kind - in Dublin in June 2012. It was in that year of 1932 that the word of the Legion spread from Dublin through contacts made at the Congress to many mission lands and within a short few years the Legion grew with dazzling speed at the behest of Irish missionaries, through Africa, Asia and Latin America. Many Chinese Legionaries were imprisoned or executed in the 1940s and 1950s for their persistence in Legion membership, and their refusal to renounce their Catholic faith.
The work of the Legion could be summed up as the performing of the spiritual works of mercy under the banner of Mary, ‘so that’, in the words of the Legion Standing Instruction, ‘the person of Our Lord is once again seen and served by Mary, His Mother.’ The Legion is a highly stylised organisation, whose hierarchical structure is modelled on the Roman Legion. It stresses efficiency and unity of purpose as the hallmarks of its organisation. The attendance at a weekly meeting, lasting no longer than 1½ hours and the striving towards performance of heroic apostolic work for 2 hours each week, are the two defining characteristics of the life of the member, who is known as a ‘legionary’. But behind the ‘body’ of work and meeting, is the soul-work, that is the sanctification of every member, to imitate the humble servant that Mary also was, to place one’s talents at Her service, and at the service of Her Son, to bring the wayward back to the right path, and to strengthen the faith of those in the fold.
The Legion has been variously criticised in certain quarters for its high level of organisation, with the jibe of ‘inflexibility’, or that its spirituality in its Legion Handbook is eccentric and ‘excessively Marian’, or that its members lack a certain sophistication in theological matters. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. Legion members work in a master-and-apprentice system, and learn by doing. Frank Duff’s philosophy was one of Christianity with its ‘sleeves-rolled-up’. Furthermore, the astonishing success in so short a time meant that the Legion of Mary was an idea ‘whose time had come’. It was firmly established before the Church, in its official documents caught up, 40 years after Frank Duff, on the idea that the Church exists to be missionary by its very nature, and that by virtue of baptism every Catholic is called to be apostolic. Frank always believed that no matter what one’s background, anyone could become a member of the Legion, and from the beginning Legion membership miraculously circumvented any clash of social background, race, colour or caste.
Legion work is courageous and challenging. Frank and his early fellow-legionaries overcame obstacles ‘where angels feared to tread’ and successfully closed down a well-established red-light district in Dublin known as the ‘Monto’, with many girls trapped in prostitution, finding a new life, and in most instances, new careers and marriage, and ultimately with their dignity and self-respect restored to them. With sheer tenacity and firmness of vision and faith the early Legion challenged and continue to see the solution to many social problems at their previously overlooked spiritual roots. From the outset some Dublin diocesan clergy were appalled at the apostolic work of lay people and felt undermined in their understanding of what constituted acceptable respective roles of clergy and lay faithful.
Frank Duff was also head of his time in ecumenical matters organising gatherings with prominent Protestants and Jews, which were graciously received by those faiths. He was castigated by the formidable Dublin Archbishop John Charles McQuaid for this at the time, who also gave Frank a hard time in delaying to give the Imprimatur to the second edition of the handbook, hampering the work of the Legion worldwide where new translations and printings were urgently needed.
Duff was not afraid to tackle the most distressing social problems, with the setting up of hostels for homeless men and women. He was prescient in condemning the practises in Magdalene laundries and other work-houses, and opposed the separation of unwed mothers from their children.
If you want a cracking read for Christmas, then I heartily recommend
‘Frank Duff, A life Story’ by Finola Kennedy, Available online for €10 from www.bookdepository.co.uk
Happy Christmas 2011, Fr John McCarthy CC Cobh Parish
For my Sunday sermons you can follow me on: www.frjohnsermons.blogspot.com
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