Author: Justin

Fr Luke Macnamara OSB

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the most Holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, known as Corpus Christi. The focus is on the great gift of the Eucharist. The image that probably first springs to mind for most of us is an intact host in a monstrance. This leads us to associate the Eucharist with perfection. The rounded host has no rough edges. All is harmonious, all is whole. This perfection and harmony contrasts strongly with our world and our experience. We recognise our sins at the beginning of every Mass. We come as
a community of the broken.

Saint Paul speaks of the cup which we bless as being a communion with the blood of Christ and the bread that we break as being a communion with the body of Christ. At this celebration of the Mass, the bread will be broken for us. Christ gives himself up to be broken on the Cross, and this complete gift of self is signalled in the sacrifice of the Mass, the breaking of the bread, and the pouring of the cup. Christ is broken for us because we are broken. He comes to
us as we are, broken individuals, broken families, broken communities. He has accepted to be broken up for us so that we might be made whole through communion with him.

The rounded host in the monstrance is in fact a broken fragment of Christ’s body. The perfection is an illusion. There are many hosts but only one body of Christ. St Paul puts it this way: “The fact that there is only one loaf means that, though there are many of us, we form a single body because we all have a share in this one loaf.” So there is at this Mass only one loaf broken into many pieces, which we will receive. We are many but through ingesting the fragments of the one loaf we are incorporated into Christ and become one body in him. The broken relationships which separate us are as nothing compared to the presence of Christ within us to draw us together into communion with Christ and with each other. Let us not be afraid to acknowledge our brokenness as we approach the Eucharist. It is for this that Christ became broken for us, that we might be made whole.

Fr Columba McCann OSB

A few weeks ago I looked at our notice board and saw that I was down to preach on Trinity Sunday. I said, ‘Just my luck! I get to preach on the most mysterious aspect of our Christian faith – the Holy Trinity!’ Because the mystery of God is totally beyond our comprehension. Trying to comprehend God is like trying to fit the entire ocean into a little bucket. And St Augustine said that, if you think you have an understanding of God, then it’s not God. Nonetheless, God does want to be known, very much so!

Moses pleaded with God: ‘Let me see your face!’. God’s response was: no, you won’t be able for it, but I will give you something – I will give you an intuition of who I really am. And so, as we have in today’s reading, the Lord passed before Moses and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.’ Another translation of the same Hebrew words speaks of ‘a God of tenderness and compassion’. When we look at the vast mystery of the universe, the amazing wonder of biology, the mystery of reality at a sub-atomic level, isn’t it extraordinary to think that, pulsating at the heart of it all, is tenderness, compassion, steadfast love and faithfulness…

Moses however moves this beautiful language into very concrete territory: we are a headstrong people, he says. We have complained and bickered and refused to believe, but if your tenderness, compassion, steadfast love and faithfulness towards us are real, please be with us and adopt us as your own. Maybe each of us could issue a similar plea to God; each of us knows the ways in which we seem undeserving of such special treatment, but we can invite God’s love in nonetheless, with the absolute certainty that we will get a positive response.

Moses’ request was answered by God, centuries later, in a way that went beyond his wildest imaginings. God decided to be with his people by becoming one of them, and here the Trinitarian life of God begins to spill out openly into the world. The only-begotten Son becomes human. The tenderness, compassion, steadfast love and faithfulness of God become flesh in our world. God adopts us as his own by becoming one of us!

In the life of Jesus we see tenderness towards the sick; compassion towards all the sinners who flocked to him; love so steadfast that he would rather die than withdraw it; faithfulness even towards those who killed him, as he forgave them. Jesus the only begotten Son of God reflects the one who begot him, referred to as the ‘Father’ in Christian tradition, even though this one is beyond male or female. ‘Whoever has seen me sees the Father’ Jesus says; whoever sees me sees the mysterious one who begot me from before the beginning of time. I come from him; I am his image.

The tenderness, compassion, steadfast love and faithfulness that came into the world are a divine life that cannot be killed or contained, and so the risen Jesus breathes his Spirit upon his disciples; divine love spreads like wildfire across the Roman empire and has continued spreading ever since. Jesus proclaims himself the vine, and we the branches, and we could say that the Holy Spirit is the sap that flows from him to us, so that we in turn bear fruit of tenderness, compassion, steadfast love and faithfulness.

I remember the story of a man, a number of decades ago, who was really grappling with this idea of the Holy Spirit. For him it was just an idea and he wanted to have a more real sense of what it meant to speak of the Holy Spirit. One day, on a bus, he pleaded with God to give him some sense of what the Holy Spirit was all about. Suddenly, without warning, he was filled with an overwhelming feeling of love for everyone on the bus, even though they were total strangers. A God
of tenderness, compassion, steadfast love and faithfulness. Today’s feast of the Holy Trinity is not about trying to squeeze our brains to understand how you get three into one, or one into three. It’s an invitation to enter into God’s love, which is the Holy Spirit, breathed out upon us by Christ the only begotten Son of God, God from God, light from light, true God from true God. And the best way to enter into that feast of love, a way that surpasses all others, is to do what we are just about to do, to celebrate the Holy Eucharist at this altar.

At this altar we will pray to God the Father, asking him to send the Holy Spirit to transform the bread and wine, so that sharing in them, we become one body, one spirit in Christ his Son. We can actually receive God’s tenderness, compassion, steadfast love and faithfulness into our hands and our bodies so that we may live in turn the life of the Holy Trinity.

Come away for a day to refresh your spirit at Glenstal Abbey!

A one-day retreat is being offered on Wednesday 28th June and Thursday 29th June from 10am – 5pm.

The day begins with tea and coffee on registration followed by talks, Mass, lunch, a Holy Hour (with the option of Confession) and afternoon tea.

Cost for the day is €50 with lunch and refreshments provided. Please contact us for more information and for booking at: events@glenstal.com or call 061 621005.

Fr Abbot Brendan OSB

Did you know that over 1 billion people worldwide drink coffee every day? After water and tea, it’s our favourite beverage. Almost everyone can tell the difference between the real thing and the decaffeinated variety. It may look like coffee and smell like coffee and even taste like coffee, but it lacks that all-important caffeine kick. Decaffeination removes about 97% of the caffeine.

Christianity without Pentecost is a decaffeinated Christianity. We go through the motions of what it means to be a Christian but we’re a little afraid to get too involved, so we cut down the edges, smooth off the places where it has touched our lives and then we wonder why there is no power left in it.

The disciples in the gospel were decaffeinated, locked away in their little room in Jerusalem, afraid that they too will be accused and imprisoned like Jesus their Master. They feel paralysed and lack courage. Literally, they are a team with no spirit! The Spirit, however, has slowly started to work in them. It didn’t all happen with a bang, the groundwork was laid first. Mary of Magdala, a very brave woman, brought her message: “I have seen the Lord”, while at the tomb itself, the beloved disciple “saw and believed”. These promptings begin to infect this frightened remnant.

On Pentecost the Lord himself came and stood among them in that room sealed off from the world by fear and the very first thing the Risen Lord does is give peace. This is important. When the Lord is present in a situation in my life, peace descends. Then Jesus blows his breath upon them, which is no longer a human breath, but the Holy Spirit. You remember the story of creation, God had blown into Adam the breath of life. In the new creation, God blows another breath, the breath of eternal life and every time he is present in the community of Christians, the Spirit continues to breathe.

With the breath of the Spirit comes real communication. When we fail to properly communicate the results can be disastrous. Language is a wonderful gift and we must use it well. The power to communicate, for Christians, has always been connected with the Holy Spirit and held in the greatest esteem. In the early sixteenth century a Benedictine monk called Pedro Ponce de Leon adapted the hand signs the monks used in his monastery to communicate with deaf children in the locality and so sign language was born. Real communication can change lives. It can heal rifts in families and communities, bring wars to an end and enable genuine progress in society. To communicate is to do something essentially human and divine. To communicate with God is to touch my freedom, my deliverance.

Pentecost is the feast of deliverance, the completion of the mystery of Easter, a deliverance that reaches out to our daily lives with their struggles, their downfalls and the evil that imprisons them. Deliverance from our own darkness, our homemade dungeons. Deliverance from war and oppression. Deliverance from our painful histories, our mistakes and our litany of bad choices. The Christian breathes the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit of God, and through this Spirit, we are sanctified. From what do you need deliverance? Ask the Holy Spirit for this now, in the silent communication of your heart…

Fr Patrick Hederman OSB

There are four gospels, as we know, but Luke alone mentions and describes the Ascension of Our Lord. It happens at the end of his Gospel and is taken up again at the beginning of this second work called The Acts of the Apostles. The Ascension, in his description, takes place as a blessing: the last paragraph of his Gospel reads: ‘lifting up his hands he blessed them, and as he blessed them, he withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven.’ The second book, which
describes what happened later when Christianity began, opens with those words we heard in our first reading this morning: ‘In my earlier work . . . I dealt with everything Jesus had done and taught from the beginning until the day he . . . . was taken up to heaven.’ Luke then quotes Jesus as saying: ‘when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be my witnesses.’ You will be my ambassador; you will be my agent in the world. And ‘after he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.’

The scene then changes to the audience who stand dumbfounded,
gawking up into heaven. “ They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them.    “People of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go.” He will come back to you, but in a different guise, not out there, but in here.
All this happens between Luke’s two books: his first one on the life of
Jesus, which we call his gospel, and the second one called the ‘The Acts of the Apostles,’ what his agents did when he was gone.

So, the mystery of the Ascension, which we celebrate today, a week
before we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, is described and accomplished as a blessing. Christ’s leaving was a blessing . . . is a blessing . . . the best thing that ever happened; the necessary preliminary to all progress in the spiritual life. Noli me tangere [‘do not touch me’ in Latin] applies to us all: stop holding on to me; free yourselves up and stop swooning over my physical presence, my external reality. Find that all-important presence, that security, that strength inside yourself. Christ’s ascending to the right hand of the Father was the greatest blessing ever bestowed on us. It was the gift of the Holy Spirit which we find inside ourselves when we have stopped weeping and wailing about our various losses. Leaving and separation, painful as they might be at the time, are, in fact, the greatest blessing, because they allow us to find ourselves, and, more importantly, to find and to cherish the Holy Spirit within the depths of our being, the place where we breathe from. It is only when the separation is complete, that ‘the acts of the apostles’ can begin. And those ‘acts’ are our acts, the curriculum of our lives as apostles. ‘Apostle’ in Greek means ‘someone who is sent off to do something.’ We are the apostles; we are being asked here this morning: ‘Why are you still looking up into the sky?’ He is risen and has gone before you. You have to rise up too and walk tall. Wherever you go from now on, God is up there in front of you; the Holy Spirit is planted deep inside you, acting as a permanent guide. You just have to turn on your Sat-Nav., your GPS, your Global Positioning System, and ask the Holy Spirit about your ‘global positioning.’ Your destination will be included in the instructions, with
directions also on how to get there, if you listen carefully and accurately.

The blessing is yours, if you have a mind to access it, nothing is forced or imposed in this idiom, it is always, and forever, up to you. So, Go n-éirí an bóthar libh, as we say in Irish, may the road rise to meet you, especially if you are doing exams or making important decisions in your life at this time. May the Holy Spirit be your first port of call. Remember that between now and next Sunday the hot-line is open. Amen.

Fr Abbot Brendan OSB

Most of you sitting up front are not old enough to remember Terry Waite, but those sitting further back probably do. He was frequently in the news in the late ’80’s and early ’90’s. He worked as special envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury and negotiated the release of hostages in the Middle-East. In 1987, while conducting hostage negotiations, he was kidnapped and held for 1,763 days, nearly 5 years. For 4 of those 5 years he was in solitary confinement and during that time he was frequently blindfolded, beaten, and subjected to mock executions. He lived much of the time chained to a radiator, suffered desperately from asthma, and was transported in a giant refrigerator as his captors moved him about.

After his release, he wrote two best-selling books recounting his experiences and gave countless interviews. He summed up his experience again and again in a single phrase. “At the end of the day, love and compassion will win”. He is just one of many people who having suffered greatly discovered this truth.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments, said Jesus. Those commandments are summed up as love of God and neighbour. It can sound all too easy to love, unless you hear it in a context where it has cost someone dearly. And yet Jesus tells us that this is how the world will know that we are his disciples. Our candidates for Confirmation, this morning, are completing their baptism, receiving the Holy Spirit and becoming his disciples. The point I want to make to you, is that this is a serious business. To really love is not an easy thing. It demands huge sacrifices from the one who loves. It demands patience, it demands wisdom too and it demands mercy and forgiveness.

Sometime in the past, water was poured over you and the words “I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” were spoken. Most likely, you have no recollection of that day because you were too young. Nevertheless, some very powerful things happened on the day of your baptism. You were anointed with the Chrism of salvation as a member of Christ, Priest, Prophet and King. If you watched the coronation of King Charles recently you would have seen that he was anointed king with the oil of Chrism too. You were also clothed with a white garment at your baptism as a new creation in Christ and you were given a lighted candle, lit from the paschal candle, which burns here behind me. You were told to keep this flame of faith alive in your heart. Finally, the priest touched your ears and mouth so that you might proclaim your faith.

So here you are today, before the altar of God to complete your baptism and be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands and anointing once more with the oil of Chrism.

When Jesus gave the Spirit to the apostles, he breathed upon them. He breathed into them his own breath of life, his “spirit’ and the Church was born. For the Church is all of those people into whom the Risen Jesus has breathed the breath of his own risen life.

This is the good news we carry. If this is our newfound dignity as human beings, then how should we treat each other? How can it be possible for us who claim to be Christian not to be moved to compassion when we see a brother or sister in need? We are not left as orphans; we are those who love the Lord and are loved by him.

This is what it means to be a Christian and this, my young friends, is the challenge placed before you today. “At the end of the day, love and compassion will win”.

Fr Abbot Brendan OSB

John Francis Barry was born on 24^th day of March 1928 into a family of three boys and three girls. He entered the monastery of Glenstal on 11^th March 1947 taking the name Anselm and became a member of this fledgling community. Fr Anselm spent much of his long monastic life in Wald, Germany, as chaplain to the nuns and to the school. Here he made lifelong friends and put down very deep roots. Anselm was at home in Wald and Wald was very good to Anselm.

As it happens, Fr Anselm was very aptly named. St Anselm his patron was born in Aosta, in Italy, became a monk at Bec in Normandy and ended up being Archbishop of Canterbury. Was he Italian, French or English? I’m not sure the question ever really bothered him. Our Fr Anselm was the same. He was truly international and he too spent some years of his later life in Italy, at St Paul’s in Rome. Many a bemused civil servant has struggled over the years to comprehend this Irish monk with German health insurance and pension. However, wherever Fr Anselm was, he lived a similar daily routine.

The daily rhythm of the monk has two pivotal moments, sunrise and sunset. For a monk the day begins and ends in the church and Anselm was always present. As the day moves on and the sun makes its way across the sky shedding its warm light and heat upon us, it is easy to take it all for granted. However, at the rising and the setting of the sun, we take note and we look up.

Fr Anselm was particularly fond of the early mornings. He was often the first to rise; he would make the coffee and while he was still able set off for a short early morning stroll, the first of several during the day. He saw many dawns in his long life and he admired the beauty and wonder of this daily miracle.

Once the sun rises, it gets on with its business. For Fr Anselm here in this monastery that meant work in the library, in Wald it was the school and chaplaincy and in Rome hearing confessions and giving tours of the basilica. We thank him for all of his work on earth. All that we do is done under the light of the sun, yet we hardly notice her presence because we are all so busy with our tasks. The same could be said of the course of a human life. We are largely unaware of the gift that each living soul is until their sun begins to set and their light starts to fade. The odd thing about the setting sun is that, as it sets and its heat and light begin to fail, it seems somehow to grow in size. The same was true of Fr Anselm. An unassuming presence, in these last years, his presence somehow seemed to grow in size.

Our life is such a mystery, a gift of God that comes upon us unawares, filling us with wonder. All we really know is that one day this gift of life will return to its source, the Giver of Life. Living to a ripe old age is in itself no assurance or mark of success. For any one of us, of any age, real success is understanding truth, living with God in love and sharing that love with others. The call from God to a monastic vocation in the Church is a great grace and a solemn responsibility. It is a lifelong vocation, regardless of what happens along the way. Fidelity and perseverance are very monastic virtues. Fr Anselm understood this and remained faithful as a monk to the end.

The sun went down for the last time on the life of Fr Anselm on the evening before the sixth day of May and he was ready and waiting. He passed from this world in the loving care of the staff of St Anthony’s, Pallasgreen, for which we thank them. It is from God that we come when we enter life, and it is to him we return when we leave it. May God guard our Brother Anselm’s going, on this his final walk into paradise, just as he guarded his coming.

Go, in the name of Patriarchs and Prophets;

Of Apostles and Evangelists,

Of Martyrs and Confessors; in the name

Of holy Monks and Hermits; in the name

Of Holy Virgins; and all Saints of God,

Both men and women, go! Go on your course;

And may your place today be found in peace,

And may your dwelling be the Holy Mount

Of Sion.

Fr Lino Moreira OSB

We have heard in today’s gospel that God the Father acts and speaks through his only Son, Jesus Christ. Being one with his Father (cf. Jn 10:30), Jesus said to the twelve sitting at table with him on the eve of his Passion: “The words I say to you I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father who dwells in me does his works” (Jn
14:10).

The disciples who heard this statement could not understand its full import at the time. But later, after they had received the Holy Spirit from the risen Lord (cf. Jn 20:20), they realised that Jesus was the divine Word through whom all things came into being (cf. Jn 1:2), and that by his Son’s incarnation, death on the Cross and resurrection, God the Father had redeemed the whole universe. It should be noted, however, that the work of creation through the agency of God’s eternal Word is still an ongoing event, and that the redemption of the world,
accomplished by Jesus when he laid down his life on the Cross, is to be made effective in the course of human history through the words and deeds of the Church. That is why Jesus said to his disciples: “Believe in God, believe also in me (Jn 14:1). Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and in fact will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father (Jn 14:12)”.
We can see the fulfilment of this prophecy, first of all, in the Acts of the Apostles. There we are told that the community of believers, under the leadership of the twelve, not only preached Jesus’ message and performed the same kind of miracles as he did, but made disciples of Jews and gentiles alike, baptising them with the Holy Spirit. That first generation of disciples, of which Paul was such a prominent figure, preached the Gospel of the kingdom far beyond the confines of Palestine, and wherever they went they celebrated the sacraments – especially the Eucharist, the living Memorial of Jesus’ Passover meal – and gave witness to Christ by their works of charity.

In fact the ministry of charity has always been an essential part of the Church’s mission. We heard in today’s first reading how a daily serving of food (cf. Acts 6:1) was a very well established practice in the early community of disciples at Jerusalem. And this service, this ‘diaconia’, was so important that seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom (cf. Acts 6:2), were chosen to minister at the tables (cf. Acts 6:2). As Pope Benedict says in his encyclical Deus caritas est (God is love): “With the formation of this group of seven, ‘diaconia’ – the ministry of charity exercised in a communitarian, orderly way – became part of the fundamental structure of the Church. As the years went by and the Church spread ever further, the exercise of charity became established as one of her essential activities, along with the administration of the sacraments and the proclamation of the word: love for widows and orphans, prisoners, and the sick and needy of every kind, is as essential to the Church as the ministry of the sacraments and preaching of the Gospel” (Deus Caritas est, 21-22).
So Jesus continues to speak and act in the world on behalf of God the Father by means of the threefold mission of the Church, namely: the proclamation of the word of God, the celebration of the sacraments and the ministry of charity, whereby the community of believers seeks to fulfil God’s commandment – love your neighbour as yourself (cf. Lv 19:18). These are the spiritual sacrifices spoken of in the First Letter of
Peter, where we read: you also, as living stones, let yourselves be built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 P 2:5).

Every day, then, we need to rediscover anew our own individual place within God’s house, of which the Lord Jesus is the cornerstone (cf. 1 P 2:5). But at the same time we should be keenly aware that, whatever our specific vocation may be, we are all meant to play an active role in attending to the spiritual and material needs of others. Jesus asks us all to follow the example of the Good Samaritan, and we know for sure that when he comes in his glory, he will welcome into his kingdom all those who were able to recognise him in the least of his brothers and sisters (cf. Mt 25:34. 40).

Anselm Barry OSB

MONK OF GLENSTAL

died, Saturday 6th May 2023

aged 95

John Francis Barry was born in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary on 24^th of March 1928. Because of his father’s position as a bank-manager, he spent his childhood in several Irish towns. After school with the Jesuits at Clongowes College, he entered the monastery of Glenstal on 11^th March, 1947 receiving the name Anselm. He was professed on 2nd February, 1949.

Following studies in Maredsous and in Sant’Anselmo in Rome and specialising in philosophy, he was ordained priest on 31st July, 1953. During the following years he taught in Glenstal Abbey School, acting also for a time as assistant to the Novice Master.

In 1966, at the invitation of the Catholic Bishop of Stockholm, he moved to Upsalla in Sweden where it was planned to open a Catholic faculty of theology in which Fr Anselm was to teach philosophy. This plan was not realised and Fr Anselm spent three years teaching English and Religion in a Catholic high school. During this period he learned Swedish.

In 1970, Fr Anselm moved to Wald-Sigmaringen in southern Germany. He remained there for forty-four years as chaplain to the Benedictine Sisters of St Lioba and the girls of their school in a former Cisterian women’ monastery. From the mid-70s, he also acted as curate in the parish, the church of which was also the monastery church. During this period he became a German citizen.

In 2004, Fr Anselm moved to Rome to the Benedicitine community at the Basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls. Here he had an active ministry as confessor, his ability to hear confessions in English, German and even Swedish being greatly appreciated.

When his health began to decline, he returned to Glenstal in 2014. In the monastery he acted as assistant librarian until, some months ago, his health made this impossible.

On 24^th March of this year he fell and broke a hip. Following and operation in Limerick Regional Hospital, he was transferred to St Anthony’s Nursing Home in Pallas Green, Co Tipperary. After only a few weeks there he died in the early morning of 6^th May, 2023.

Funeral arrangements: reposing at Monastery Reception on the afternoon of Tuesday 9th May with removal to the Abbey Church at 5pm for the Office of the Dead. Funeral Mass at 11.30am on Wednesday 10th May.

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.