March 19th: Solemnity of St Joseph

We have all heard the expression ‘if you want to make God laugh tell Him your plans. ‘ [See also the movie’ Evan Almighty’!]

How many days are we just about coping? How many times, I wonder, do we go to bed at night truly satisfied that we accomplished everything we had set out to do that morning?

Often a day does not turn out as planned. There are upsets, unexpected twists, disappointments and adjustments which may be unforeseeable. It is good to have contingency plans, and to qualify our expectations according to what God might want for us. Sickness or a sudden visit to the hospital, an unexpected death of someone, a traffic jam or even bad weather shatters our schedules and our comfort. We know in our hearts that we cannot see ahead, that we cannot plan for every contingency or for everything that might put our plans astray and yet we live as if we are in total control. It is not that we begrudge others what is urgent but what is interesting is that we never cease to be surprised that things just won’t always go our way.

I wonder therefore about St Joseph and his plans. To me he is the saint for people who are struggling to cope with whatever life throws unexpectedly at them. What HAD Joseph planned for himself? If we imagine for a moment that he had thought that he would marry Mary, settle down with a trade and steady income; that if God blessed him that he would have children who he would raise up in the Jewish faith and who would follow him in the family profession; that he might be fortunate to live to see grandchildren; and that he would never have to travel very far except to Jerusalem; then we know with the benefit of hindsight that he would have been completely off the mark. Everything important in life - marriage, childbirth and home - took an unexpected turn. He had to cope with unique situations, never to be repeated and never to be experienced by any one else - ever.

He had to learn to cope with unforeseeable changes to his plans but he was prompted and guided in extreme situations of danger and crisis.

Therefore, maybe it is not so much what I set out to do that is of most interest to the Lord, but how I cope when things do not go according to my plans. It is not only in the faithfulness to the many little things that occupy me that interests Him but how I prioritize them and how promptly I can leave aside what I consider important so that I am ready and willing to turn to a more pressing immediate need of another. This does not mean that God is ‘playing games’ with us, but rather that He may be challenging us to see how much we realistically think we can accomplish by our own efforts alone. 

Maybe God is not just calling me to fidelity in small things but sanctity is in how I handle crises that may be or not be of my own making. He may want me to see today how when things go wrong how I might be inclined to apportion blame and accept none; how I might give into rage and impatience; how I might blurt out something I may instantly regret (but may not be willing to acknowledge that I may be wrong or that I jumped to conclusions). Maybe humility and honesty is the way after all that God is calling me to live this day, and to greater trust and surrender to His will no matter how things turn out.

There are no recorded words of St Joseph – maybe he was a man of few words in reality, but we definitely are not! Maybe it is his silence rather than any words of wisdom that speaks volumes. His silence is his eloquence. May we follow his example in patience, understanding, and endurance. May he lead us to share in the constant company of Jesus and Mary which he had the privilege to enjoy in his earthly life because he silently, promptly and perseveringly obeyed what the Lord required of him at every given moment.

4th Sunday of Lent Year C

The story of the Prodigal Son

Of all the parables this one needs no introduction. It is the most popular of parables and as well known as the Good Samaritan.

What can we say that we have not already been said?

It is of course the greatest parable of forgiveness. Seen alongside the parable of the fig tree in last Sunday's Gospel, it is about giving someone another chance, even when in all human wisdom they are undeserving.

The question is - who can we relate to immediately in the story? The patient forgiving father, the reckless waster of a son, or the diligent yet resentful brother who did no wrong?

Can we relate the parable to any incident in our own upbringing about a family member?

Is there an incident of forgiveness in my life where I was forgiving or forgiven, or still resentful and refusing to forgive another?

How willing and ready am I to reconcile or be reconciled? Is there something I have yet to to do to repair a broken relationship?

Have I experienced the joy of being forgiven? Am I prepared to 'pay it forward?'

Am I in conflict with anyone? Have I sought to clear up a misunderstanding, or at least made a reasonable effort at home, in the workplace, in my family, in my marriage, among my siblings, my neighbours?

Can we relate it to our Western society or Irish society with the present economic downturn. We had it good for a while, yet mistakes were made and now like the Prodigal Son we all 'feel the pinch'. We might even feel like the resentful brother paying the price it seems for the mistakes of others. We can allude to the waste spending of the so called good times and the ghost estates, boarded up businesses and full planes to Australia and Canada with unemployed graduates. Are we 'coming to our senses'?

Are we returning to the Father having strayed from His paths?

Finally I think this parable is about three understandings of freedom. The boy at the beginning of the story thought he was free to do as he pleased. At the end he had made a decision internally and was free in his decision to return to the Father free from his passions. With the father's ready forgiveness he was externally free as well.

Jesus said 'you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.'  May we experience the joy and freedom forgiveness brings in our relationship with God and with one another. Then, in the immortal words of Martin Luther King, we can say: 'Free at last, thank God  I am free at last!'

Lá le Pádraig

The Confession of St. Patrick : extracts



                                             

1. I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to many …had a small villa nearby where I was taken captive. I was at that time about sixteen years of age. I did not, indeed, know the true God; and I was taken into captivity in Ireland with many thousands of people, according to our deserts, for quite drawn away from God, we did not keep his precepts, nor were we obedient to our priests who used to remind us of our salvation. And the Lord brought down on us the fury of his being and scattered us among many nations, even to the ends of the earth, where I, in my smallness, am now to be found among foreigners.

2. And there the Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief, in order that, even so late, I might remember my transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my insignificance and pitied my youth and ignorance. And he watched over me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.

12. I am, then, first of all, countryfied, an exile, evidently unlearned, one who is not able to see into the future, but I know for certain, that before I was humbled I was like a stone lying in deep mire, and he that is mighty came and in his mercy raised me up and, indeed, lifted me high up and placed me on top of the wall. And from there I ought to shout out in gratitude to the Lord for his great favours in this world and for ever, that the mind of man cannot measure.

[My mission was] to spread God’s name everywhere with confidence and without fear, in order to leave behind, after my death, foundations for my brethren and sons whom I baptised in the Lord in so many thousands.

15. And I was not worthy, nor was I such that the Lord should grant his humble servant this, that after hardships and such great trials, after captivity, after many years, he should give me so much favour in these people, a thing which in the time of my youth I neither hoped for nor imagined.

16. But after I reached Ireland I used to pasture the flock each day and I used to pray many times a day. More and more did the love of God, and my fear of him and faith increase, and my spirit was moved so that in a day [I said] from one up to a hundred prayers, and in the night a like number; besides I used to stay out in the forests and on the mountain and I would wake up before daylight to pray in the snow, in icy coldness, in rain, and I used to feel neither ill nor any slothfulness, because, as I now see, the Spirit was burning in me at that time.

17. And it was there of course that one night in my sleep I heard a voice saying to me: ‘You do well to fast: soon you will depart for your home country.’ And again, a very short time later, there was a voice prophesying: ‘Behold, your ship is ready.’ And it was not close by, but, as it happened, two hundred miles away, where I had never been nor knew any person. And shortly thereafter I turned about and fled from the man with whom I had been for six years, and I came, by the power of God who directed my route to advantage (and I was afraid of nothing), until I reached that ship.
19. And after three days we reached land, and for twenty-eight days journeyed through uninhabited country, and the food ran out and hunger overtook them; and one day the steersman began saying: ‘Why is it, Christian? You say your God is great and all-powerful; then why can you not pray for us? For we may perish of hunger; it is unlikely indeed that we shall ever see another human being.’ In fact, I said to them, confidently: ‘Be converted by faith with all your heart to my Lord God, because nothing is impossible for him, so that today he will send food for you on your road, until you be sated, because everywhere he abounds.’ And with God’s help this came to pass; and behold, a herd of swine appeared on the road before our eyes, and they slew many of them, and remained there for two nights, and the men were full of their meat and well restored, for many of them had fainted and would otherwise have been left half dead by the wayside. And after this they gave the utmost thanks to God, and I was esteemed in their eyes, and from that day they had food abundantly.

23. And after a few years I was again in Britain with my parents [kinsfolk], and they welcomed
me as a son, and asked me, in faith, that after the great tribulations I had endured I should not go anywhere else away from them. And, of course, there, in a vision of the night, I saw a man whose name was Victoricus coming as if from Ireland with innumerable letters, and he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter: ‘The Voice of the Irish’; and as I was reading the beginning of the letter I seemed at that moment to hear the voice of those who were beside the forest of Foclut which is near the western sea, and they were crying as if with one voice: ‘We beg you, holy youth, that you shall come and shall walk again among us.’ And I was stung intensely in my heart so that I could read no more, and thus I awoke. Thanks be to God, because after so many years the Lord bestowed on them according to their cry.

38. I am greatly God’s debtor, because he granted me so much grace, that through me many people would be reborn in God, and soon a after confirmed, and that clergy would be ordained everywhere for them, the masses lately come to belief, whom the Lord drew from the ends of the earth, just as he once promised through his prophets: ‘To you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth, and shall say, “Our fathers have inherited naught but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit.”’ And again: ‘I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the uttermost ends of the earth.’

41. So, how is it that in Ireland, where they never had any knowledge of God but, always, until now, cherished idols and unclean things, they are lately become a people of the Lord, and are called children of God; the sons of the Irish [Scotti] and the daughters of the chieftains are to be seen as monks and virgins of Christ.

44. So I hope that I did as I ought, but I do not trust myself as long as I am in this mortal body, for he is strong who strives daily to turn me away from the faith and true holiness to which I aspire until the end of my life for Christ my Lord, but the hostile flesh is always dragging one down to death, that is, to unlawful attractions. And I know in part why I did not lead a perfect life like other believers, but I confess to my Lord and do not blush in his sight, because I am not lying; from the time when I came to know him in my youth, the love of God and fear of him increased in me, and right up until now, by God’s favour, I have kept the faith.

58. Therefore may it never befall me to be separated by my God from his people whom he has won in this most remote land. I pray God that he gives me perseverance, and that he will deign that I should be a faithful witness for his sake right up to the time of my passing.

61. Behold over and over again I would briefly set out the words of my confession. I testify in truthfulness and gladness of heart before God and his holy angels that I never had any reason, except the Gospel and his promises, ever to have returned to that nation from which I had previously escaped with difficulty.

62. But I entreat those who believe in and fear God, whoever deigns to examine or receive this document composed by the obviously unlearned sinner Patrick in Ireland, that nobody shall ever ascribe to my ignorance any trivial thing that I achieved or may have expounded that was pleasing to God, but accept and truly believe that it would have been the gift of God.

And this is my confession before I die.

Third Sunday of Lent Year C

The parable of the barren fig tree - the problem of evil

We can wring our hands and look at the world’s tragic headlines or we can look at the latest fall from grace of a bank official, politician or sports celebrity. The world is full of awful headlines – one famous newspaper editor famously out it – ‘I am not interested in good news.’ There are two reactions – discouragement or indifference.

Jesus refers if you like to two main headlines lost to history otherwise – the crushing to death at the tower of Siloam, and the death of the rebelling Galileans. These were obviously shocking – one was Pilate’s doing, the other was nobody’s fault. There are natural and man-made disasters, perhaps though there might be an inquiry and new safety regulations and legislation if the tower collapse were to happen today.

These inquiries lose their immediate sensational appeal and become news on page 5 or on the bottom of some page much later. Meanwhile newspaper editors and journalists have moved on to the next tragedy and the next sensation, under pressure to meet a deadline and have to get their headline. If you ever look at the RTE series ‘Reeling in the years’ it is surprising  - as the French saying goes  - ‘that the more things change the more they stay the same’ – disasters and terrorist attacks, civil wars, celebrity scandals.

How do we react?

·      The danger for all of us is to fall into indifference and shrug our shoulders, as if to say ‘it’s nothing to do with me’.

·      Another – (Jewish) superstitious response would be to think, ‘well they must have done something to deserve it, and they were cruising, playing with fire, that’s what you get for playing with matches’ they got what they deserved, God punished them.’

·      Another equally wrong alternative in the midst of so many scandals is to say ‘I’m not too bad after all’, I’m not a bad person, and I don’t do anyone any harm’.

 

The result is the same – whether you choose indifference or blame, we are not affected, and we do not act.

The challenge Jesus poses to us today is, well, what do you do?

Jesus teaches that these awful evils are not on merit! We are often puzzled by how good living people suffer so much; we have no answer to that.

The problem of evil is not one that can be solved, nor can we figure out how God permits awful tragedies to the young and innocent, and we wonder why he doesn’t intervene more.

In the season of Lent we are warned, there is accountability. Instead of smugness or indifference, we are reminded to look to ourselves: it is before God that each of us must render account for our deeds. Lent  - with the image of the unfruitful fig tree- taking form the soil but producing no fruit - is another opportunity to ask ourselves – doi I take more than I give. Now is the time to produce fruits of compassion, charity and forgiveness.

I remember a boy I used to teach in school in Fermoy – ‘Jack’ I will call him. He could not concentrate in class – and on Friday afternoon for double science I found it difficult to keep him sitting still. In the end after repeated warnings I would have to send him out of the class for disruptive behaviour. It became a bit of a buzz word or catchphrase in the class because inevitably Jack would say ‘ah, Father, one more chance, I’ll be good, and I mean it this time.’ He would even attempt to re-enter the class from the corridor – ‘ah Father can you let me back in? I’ll be good this time, I promise.’ Poor Jack was eventually expelled from school a year later.

But I wonder how much I am like Jack before God?

Transfiguration Sunday

Second Sunday of Lent

 

There comes a time in all our lives when ‘we need to get away from it all’.

We need to find an escape when and where we can think, catch up, reflect, remain silent, un-distracted and uninterrupted. Lent is a good time to take a day away in prayer somewhere for silence, reflection, confession and new purpose, a place like Mt Melleray for example.

Today’s reading from the Gospel is about the Transfiguration of Jesus. Jesus and His closest friends take some time out together. For a moment they see Him as the Son of God in glory.

What is that reading doing in the middle of Lent you might ask? Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham points out the relevance importance and necessary contrast between the reading for the event today and that of Good Friday.

The mountain of Tabor explains the hill of Calvary and vice-versa.

The transfiguration event recalled today can only be fully understood when we pair it with Good Friday.

Here Jesus’ clothes are dazzlingly white, on Calvary He is stripped of his garments

Here He is flanked by the great Moses and Elijah, there He is flanked by two thieves

Here He is surrounded by the brightness of the cloud; there He is covered in darkness

Here He is seen in glory, there He is in agony and flecked with blood

Here He is surrounded by some faithful men when all is well, there by faithful women when all is at its worst – how often women are the ones who are silently faithful as men suffer but men-friends cannot cope and are cowards in the face of pain

Here Peter has faith; there he is in hiding and in doubt

Here God the Father’s voice declares ‘This is my Beloved Son’; on Calvary there a pagan soldier says ‘truly this man was a son of God’

Jesus is all alone on Thabor after the disappearance of Moses and Elijah - in solitude, then at Calvary is all alone  on the Cross.

Here on Tabor, all is silence and solitude, there on Calvary all is clamour, violence and crowds and noise

The point is both are important events: and that just as joy and sadness fill our lives, God is present not only when things are brightest but also when things are dark – in loneliness, pain, suffering and tears.  God is with us not just when things are going well and all is calm; God is equally with us when all is chaos and even seemingly meaningless.

We are urged today to Listen to Him.

Let us take time apart sometime in Lent to listen to His voice in the silence.

There we might be able to make sense of things and also face the future with faith and trust and not fear.

First Sunday in Lent Year C

 

We have begun the season of Lent

When I was in the seminary many moons ago there was a professor who was a chain smoker. Faithfully each Lent he would give up smoking for Lent and keep to his resolution to the bitter end. Life became a misery in class, for without a cigarette he had a very short temper and made life a misery for students, and he would blow his top and take out his frustration at a quivering student. There would be a collective sigh of relief at Easter. Something is wrong with this picture, I think you’ll agree. He missed the point of Lent.

Don’t be like the married couple I heard about recently! A woman said to her husband about his resolutions for Lent: 'I don’t mind you giving up food, but could you please give up complaining about it'?!

Jesus three trials or temptations in the wilderness remind us of the 40 days of Lent as well as the fact that we too are lost and in the way of trial and tribulation in this life as Jesus’ followers.

I wonder what is the temptation you have to deal with most – is it pride, vanity, angry outbursts, impurity, lack of forgiveness, uncharitable talk, malicious gossip?  Lent is a time for us to ask ourselves: Have you ever thought what you are like to live with or to be at the receiving end of what you say and do?

Lent is about a new springtime in our lives. Amid the changing weather outside, there is change and growth intended in our lives too. Testing makes us grow.

Temptation tells us something about ourselves – about our proneness to weakness, to sin, sometimes repeatedly. Lent makes us face up to some home truths about ourselves, particularly in the nature of or the extent of our ability to make resolutions and keep them.

Fasting and abstinence are good practice – in the right spirit - and are tried and tested methods that bear fruit. We are all obliged to perform some act of penance for our sins. but Motivation is key.

I find it personally helpful in Lent to pray and offer up sacrifices for a friend of mine in New York who deals with troubled drug addicts and recovering and relapsing alcoholics with all sorts of weird and wonderful domestic arrangements and difficulties. These are young women in severe financial straits and in a cycle of poverty and addiction. I pray for their wellbeing and conversion. I have a list of their Christian names and I pray for them daily in Lent.

Find a cause, a purpose, a person to pray for. Find a prayer partner. Someone who with you with mutually pray for one another and even make some kind of sacrifice

Lent stretches us – but hopefully stretches our love beyond the boundaries of our selfish ways to the world of others, until we come to Good Friday to meditate before the One who in love stretched out His arms for us on the cross and died to save us all.

Surrendering our likes, our tastes, fasting from food is not an end in itself. We must all learn to surrender to God completely eventually. Kimberly Hahn, the wife of the famous convert Scott Hahn, was slowly edging towards full communion with the Catholic Church. She found numerous intellectual obstacles to becoming Catholic, even though she could see the sense of many of the Church’s teachings. She decided one year to undertake a Lenten resolution and asked God what she would give up. She felt the Lord reply to her in her mind: ’Kimberly, why don’t you just give up?!’  She did and became a Catholic .

Maybe that is the message we most need to adopt today.

Give yourself up to what God wants.

 

Fifth Sunday of the year

It may happen that at work you are asked and challenged to do something that does not quite fit your job description, something you had not ‘signed up for’. If you have ever felt unequal to a task at work, and  you wonder why you were chosen for a particular job because you felt you lacked the qualities or qualifications necessary, that you were called way above your station, that you were being stretched, then today’s readings are for you.

 Why would you feel this way?  Was it because you were afraid of failure,  of letting someone down (including yourself), afraid too of what you considered to be unrealistic expectations, that you wouldn’t measure up, and that you would fail very publicly. These are quite natural feelings in the face of a new challenge. We may be tempted to say: ‘who, me? I can’t do it’, ‘you must be desperate!’ or ‘why ask me, ask someone else’.

The readings this Sunday are about three people who were called and challenged in the midst of their workdays to do something more. Peter, Paul and Isaiah feel totally unsuited to teh task at hand, and what’s more, before God completely unworthy. They are honest and humble about their sinfulness. All they see is their failings, defects and deficiencies.

This does not stop God’s initiative. In the Gospel, Jesus knows Peter through and through and what’s more, Peter knows that too. Peter realises with the miraculous draught of fish that He is in the presence of God. Having first addressed Jesus as Master, he kneels before Him calling Him ‘Lord’. Their relationship has changed.

Peter’s best efforts without Jesus produce nothing. Peter having fished in the familiar waters and knowing the movements of the shoals of fish and where and what spots were the most likely to produce a catch, is left wondering at the fruitless search all night. But what Peter could not do with all his know-how, skill and experience, this ‘land-lubber’ carpenter from Nazareth, this rabbi, and now ‘Lord’, could accomplish at a single word.

After the dark of night, in the light of dawn, Jesus approaches and at Jesus’ word, they catch a draught beyond their wildest dreams. Can you imagine their excitement and astonishment? Amidst it all Peter is struck by Jesus’ authority, and his own unworthiness in His Presence. With Jesus, the miraculous happens, but with the human effort of casting the nets. The human factor is still required for God to accomplish the miraculous. God in His wisdom uses the weak.

What is this to us? Does this story mean anything? Or the story of the call of Isaiah, or Paul on the road to Damascus? What might God want of ME? Does God want something of me? Is he asking something of me, some calling, some task, to take another step forward, the next best step, and not to be afraid of what is being asked of us, because of who is asking it.

We are asked out of love which makes all the difference …it is God, Jesus who asks us, do we dare refuse? What can we refuse those we love?

Just as an employer or supervisor might decide to pick you for a certain task, it is usually not a spur of the moment decision on their part. They have deliberated, perhaps with others, and considered you suited for the  task at hand.

Have we confidence in ourselves alone, and our own abilities? Probably not, but with Jesus, with God, ‘all things are possible’.

Peter had no earthly idea what was ahead, what was going to happen, even that he was called to leadership and martyrdom. What mattered was here and now what Jesus wanted. Jesus had proved Himself to Peter, but Peter did not think he could prove anything to Jesus.

Peter leaves everything after him, even the draught of fish. The call - and the response is - total. It displays Peter’s total commitment, and there is no going back, no back-sliding.

Can I do the same?  What is the state of my relationship, or my commitment to Jesus?

Jesus is asking something of me and of you.

As with Peter Jesus sees something in all of us that we may be unaware of ourselves.

1.    The first is NOT TO BE AFRAID – the most common statement in the Bible. He is calling you closer to Him than you have been before. Peter was not making excuses, he was making a statement of fact –this is who I am, depart from me, what could you possibly want of me?

2.    The second is to make a step of faith or trust, to leave behind the nets is perhaps symbolic of leaving behind all the things that have entrapped us. It is at once and the same time to acknowledge our sinfulness and yet not to be afraid of our sin. TO TURN TOWARD JESUS CAN BE SUMMED UP IN ONE WORD – CONVERSION.

3.    And then to see what happens.

Lent is nearly upon us. We think of the things we give up for a time, but it is ultimately about freedom. To leave behind and detach ourselves from the nets and traps of sinful habits and compulsions, to be truly free from the past and its mistakes, and to live a new kind of life, one that Jesus wants. It is freedom for others, as it was for Peter who was the first Pope.

Can this be a Lent this year be the one that will make all the difference? Can we see that Lent is always in springtime, that the lengthening days and the emerging snowdrops and daffodils give new hope and promise? That Lent is a new springtime in our lives, to leave the dark night of winter behind. That our lives can take on a new direction - that the failed New Year resolutions can now become Lenten ones.

If you have a deep down feeling that you are called to something more, that you are somehow unfulfilled, that there must be more to life than having things, then this may be your opportunity for a new outlook, a new direction.

 Can we at least, if nothing else make a resolution to devote more personal prayer each day – 10 to 15 minutes, to listening to what God and instead of telling Him all the time what we want? May our daily prayer this Lent include the simple but important question: 'Lord, what do want of me?'

 Let us make this the best Lent yet!