Author: Justin

Fr John O’Callaghan OSB

Today’s gospel asks a question that we all have to answer, many times
throughout our lives, and it is not by words but by actions that we answer: Christ asks ‘Who do you say I am?’ So, let us consider how relevant is Christ, and discipleship, to ourselves in particular? One might think one’s parents and friends, a rugby coach and a music teacher are all I need. In the future would not a marriage partner, a friendly bank manager and a few golfing buddies be entirely sufficient?
In Jesus’ own time lots of people questioned his relevance: some were
astonished by the authority of his words, but they would nonetheless dismiss him with a sarcastic rhetorical question: ‘Is not this the son of the carpenter?’ Others saw him as religious and indeed political threat to their own position. Some dismissed him completely as deranged, possessed by a devil. And Peter did not do much better! Although he recognised Jesus as a messiah, he had a very different view of messiahship than Jesus. He wanted a social and political one, who would expel the Roman army from Jerusalem. As today’s gospel
reveals, for Peter it was absolutely out of the question that the messiah would endure the physical suffering and public humiliation of crucifixion. Jesus had a different idea: “Get behind me Satan. The way you think, Peter, is not God’s way but man’s!”

But those who dismissed Jesus as irrelevant or a danger did not have the benefit of encountering the Risen Christ! They hadn’t an inkling of his future resurrection. And that changed everything! The resurrection of Christ was not only the indisputable divine seal of approval of Christ but it shows that God has the last say in what survives; and it demonstrates that Christian discipleship opens onto eternity. The followers of Christ are called into a relationship with him that is not only to transform their present life, but also introduces us into a new one. Following Christ calls us actually to be heroes now, not shrinking form suffering, not sinking back from a tough challenge, so that we can claim a final victory. We all know heroes – perhaps in our own entourage, but also elsewhere. The Olympic games were full of a type of hero. We see and admire such people, especially the para-Olympic champions, who overcame particularly demanding odds. We also encounter them in hospitals and cancer wards; people rising to the very best in themselves, surpassing themselves in courage, often upheld by the love of others and faith in God’s love.

Christian heroes are prepared to be generous, to love beyond their comfort zone, to be truthful and thus courageous; they forego the soft options that cowardice can invite us to take. The do not allow suffering to direct their lives. Easier said than done! but it is our Christian way. Young people and adults who rise to it are saints – which we are all called to be. What would a life be if we were only egocentric, selfish and cowardly? Profoundly boring and achieving nothing! If you make yourself the end of all that is the end of you! But the relationship with our brother Jesus Christ fills us with courage and generosity even now and promises a brighter future. We Christians are called to move mountains in society, in our personal lives, to stand up for what is right and true. It is in that struggle that true peace can come into being, in place of an apparent peace, beneath which lie hidden hypocrisy and all kinds of weakness and conflict.

Jesus did not avoid the challenges, and he warned us of them but he added: ‘Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light’. May he help us all to take up whatever cross we may be carrying and follow him to victory!

Glenstal Abbey was pleased to welcome and host a large group of guests to the monastery for our day-retreat titled ‘The Garden of the Risen Lord: From Recognition to Action’ on Saturday 7th September.

The retreat explored  Mary Magdalene’s encounter with Jesus through the Gospel text, art, chant and contemporary ecological and feminist readings, with Dr Margaret Daly Denton as keynote speaker. A biblical scholar who began her career as a church musician, composer and liturgist, Margaret spoke first about the garden where the encounter with the Risen Lord takes place and the many echoes it has for readers familiar with the Biblical and Ancient Near East background on the Garden of Paradise.

In the afternoon, Margaret went on to discuss how the encounter leads to action and ended with a strong ecological reading on how we are to assume our stewardship of God’s creating activity.

Fr Luke Macnamara presented an opening paper titled ‘The Divine Bridegroom in Search of the Spouse’ which gave a scriptural perspective on the spousal motif in John’s Gospel and how the Risen Lord’s encounter with Mary Magdalene is its climax.

Later, Br Cyprian Love and Br Pádraig McIntyre gave a combined organ and chant improvisation session, before Br Emmaus O’Herlihy concluded the retreat day with an exposition and discussion of his newest painting of Mary Magdalene.

To stay up-to-date with our upcoming events, visit: www.glenstal.com/abbey/events

Fr Denis Hooper OSB

I have known my oldest friend since we were seven years old. There are two days separating our birthdays, he is the older – by two days!
Next month, please God both of us will be celebrating another significant birthday.

When we got to our 40th birthdays we scratched our heads and asked “how is it that we have come to the age of 40?” The same for our 50 th and 60 th birthdays – and now once again we ask the same question.
Simon and Garfunkle wrote a beautiful song “Old Friends”. The image in the song is of two elderly men sitting on a park bench on a bleak Autumn day in New York City.

And Simon and Garfunkle imagined what it might be like when they reach the age of the two old men. The words of the song are pretty stark:

“Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy”.

I suppose approaching old age it isn’t all that bleak – but old age creeps up on most of us – and when it does – we don’t feel that we are old.
I have a T-Shirt which says “I can’t believe I am the same age as old people”. I also have the usual “Grumpy Old Man” T-Shirt.
But getting old does have its lighter side. I went to an antique shop recently and they asked me to stay.

My sister said that at my age I should do something that I have never done before in my life. So I thought about it and decided to get a tatoo.
I went to the tatoo artist and asked if he had any suggestions. He said that he would tatoo my name and address on my forehead so that when I get lost they will know where to send me home.

I had an MRI done on my hip a year ago. When I saw the doctor, I told him “I suppose the MRI shows I have arthritis’.
He said “no, you have the early onset of rigor mortis”.

We get very much set in our ways the older we get and I think that there is a lot in today’s gospel that speaks to that reality. Even young people, even secondary school students can get set in their ways and very often, they don’t like change.
“This is the way we’ve always done it”.
“If it’s not broken, why fix it?”

Over the past week at mass we have been listening to various accounts of Jesus confronting Pharisees about their insistence on keeping to the ways things had always been done. There is nothing wrong with upholding traditions. There are so many things in our lives that
we owe to tradition. But for me the message of Jesus today is that the most important thing is not about blind adherence to the way we always did things. Times change. People change. The world
changes.

People can react to change by looking to the past and striving to go back there. All we have to do is to look at some people’s reaction to immigrants in this country. They blame them for disrupting our culture and traditions. And what of MAGA – as if there was some great
mythical time in the past that was better than the way it is now. There wasn’t. There isn’t.

Today’s gospel tells us that there never was a Golden Age and sometimes by sticking to the old ways we can justify putting obstacles in the ways of people’s lives. Jesus tells us that anything that gets in the way of our relationship with him and the Father – whether it be a tradition or not – must be avoided.

When I first came to Glenstal, Vespers on Sunday was at 4.00pm. Every other day Vespers was at 6.10pm. The reason for 4.00pm was that this was the time of Sunday Vespers in Maredsous Abbey in
Belgium. Glenstal was founded by Belgian monks from Maredsous almost a hundred years ago. And on Sundays, people used to take the train from Brussels to Maredsous for Vespers. The train arrived in the nearby station at 3.40pm and it took people about 20 minutes to
walk to Maredsous.

This tradition was carried on through to the Glenstal timetable.
Then people began to question the time of Sunday Vespers in Glenstal. Why 4.00pm? A carryover from the way things were done in Maredsous. Some traditions are accepted as the norm – even if they have no basis on present needs or realities. We all need to take stock every now and then – and in the context of today’s gospel especially, to examine things in our lives that get in the way of our relationship with God.

I will leave the last word to English writer Thomas Hardy,
“Time changes everything
Except for something inside us
Which is always surprised by change”

Fr Luke Macnamara OSB

Our first impressions of Jesus are that he is hugely successful in his ministry. While we cannot ignore his end on the Cross, for the most part we celebrate his successes: his preaching to great crowds, his many healings and exorcisms, his ability to still storms, etc. Today we get a more realistic view. We learn that many of the disciples left him and stopped going with him. In fact it appears as if only the Twelve remain. The large crowds at the Capernaum synagogue have evaporated.

What provokes so many to leave? We have a clue since they say: “This is intolerable language, How could anyone accept it?” Jesus’ teaching asks too much of them. Does it ask too much of us? The second reading from the Ephesians is often paired with the Gospel of John chapter 6 in the lectionary. There is a common theme of self-giving love.

In the Gospel Jesus gives us his body to eat, his flesh to drink. The language is symbolic of the extent of Jesus’ love and gift of himself for us, which will be manifest at the Last Supper and at the Cross. As a pregnant mother lovingly gives of her body and of her blood to the growing infant inside her that the child may have life, so Jesus lovingly gives of himself for us, that we might have eternal life. This is a great and costly gift, but one that leads to eternal life.

In the letter to the Ephesians, the reading opens with the line “Give way to one another in obedience to Christ.” This sets the scene for the further teaching for wives and husbands to be obedient to one another. The self-giving love is primarily directed to Christ who loves us first and infinitely more, and this is the context in which we are empowered to exercise this self-giving love for one another. Marriage is a privileged relationship in which to exercise this self-giving love, to which all the baptised, married, or celibate are called to practice.

Where might we practice this self-giving love in our lives? There are many possibilities, but they begin here at this altar. It is here that we offer our very selves along with the gifts of bread and wine that they and we be transformed into the body and blood of Christ, that gives life to the world. By virtue of our baptism we are empowered to exercise our priestly role in communion with Christ in this self-gift. We make this gift of ourselves in love which leads to our transformation already here and now for our true destiny, eternal life. Our participation at this altar enables us to practice this self-giving love in our lives.

Simon Peter responds to Jesus’ question as to whether the Twelve also will go away: “Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life.” Simon understands Jesus’ teaching on self-giving love as the path to eternal life, a path discovered by many married couples through the challenges of life, also by true friends, faithful neighbours, and all who love. Yes this love comes as a cost to us, but it produces life, most immediately for those we serve, but also true and eternal life for our ourselves.

Over the years many people have united their prayers with those of the monastic community by joining our live-stream of services on the webcam. The stream goes live just before each liturgy commences, and we invite you to pray with us at: glenstal.com/abbey/webcam

Abbot Columba OSB

When a flash of lightening leaps across a darkened landscape our eyes are opened to hidden features. Sometimes the same thing can happen with a few words of scripture, when they flare brightly and illumine our minds and hearts. In the gospel according to John two words are repeated regularly in order to leave a lasting imprint on our awareness of Jesus: I AM.

Of course we use these words ourselves all the time: ‘I am from Ireland’, ‘I’m tired’, ‘I am on the way to the airport’. But in the gospel according to John the words ‘I am’ are used regularly in a solemn and beautiful manner: I am the Bread of Life, I am the Good Shepherd, I am the Gate, and so on.

Hidden behind these simple words is the mysterious name of God. Remember the call of Moses at the burning bush, when he was sent to bring his people out of slavery in Egypt. He asked the Lord for his name. He was told to say ‘I AM has sent me…’ Now Jesus says, ‘I Am… I AM…’ His awesome identity is being hinted at through the repetition of these mysterious words.

If these is who Jesus really is, then everything he has being saying in the gospel accounts of recent Sundays makes sense: he is the bread which has come down from heaven. He invites us to come to him, to believe in him, to entrust ourselves to him, to listen to him, to learn from him. He wants me to share my life with him so that he can share his life with me.

Today he takes it even further: the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world. I AM has taken flesh. God is one of us. He becomes one of us in the flesh and in our flesh and blood will die our death. He will give up his life. He shares everything of who he is with us and, in order to bring this home in a very personal and graphic manner, he captures it all under the simple signs of food and drink,
bread and wine. The life that comes from heaven, the life that took flesh among us, the life given up for us on the cross, is given as bodily food and drink.

Sharing in this food is sharing in the life of God himself. But it doesn’t happen by magic. It’s not simply a mechanical result of something we do with our mouths and our digestive systems. The sharing in God’s life implies everything else that Jesus has been speaking about: coming to him, believing in him, entrusting our lives to him, listening to him, learning from him. What we do at his table every Sunday is the culmination of all of this; it is also the fountain of life that makes it all possible.

When we have heard the word of Jesus as food for our lives and digested it, then we are ready to receive a fuller taste of his life in the Eucharist. When he have done this we are empowered to live his eternal life in the here and now, from day to day.

Fr Patrick Hederman OSB

This is the Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, or, for those of us who have been living on this planet for the last three weeks, it is the First Sunday after the Olympics. Whether you have been watching or not, you cannot fail to have noticed that there was something happening in Paris which meant that every Newspaper and TV programme was choc-a-bloc with racing and jumping, complaining, rejoicing, sweating, grunting, grieving and celebrating. It cannot have escaped your notice either that headlines were snatched, not by the
umpteen medals won by China, France, or the USA, or the proportionately large number won by Ireland – no, the major spotlight was on a cameo on that first evening during the opening ceremony [only a couple of seconds, but enough to generate a bonfire of indignation] – they were making a laugh out of the Last Supper: la Cène sur la scène sur la Seine, as the French would have it.

Christianity was being mocked, Christianity is outraged. Apparently the
somewhat large drag artist at the centre of the float, wearing an outsized halo, is getting death threats and hate-mail from horrified Christians and fat-phobic psychopaths, to the extent that she is looking for police protection and is suing her attackers. What was meant to be a flash in the pan during the 6 hour ‘opening’ of the games has turned into the most prominently viewed icon of the entire Olympics – more famous even than the Leonardo Da Vinci original. And what was, and is, that original painting, so famous that it can be recognized everywhere as the outline and the basis for this recent send-up?
The Last Supper Is a mural painting by Leonardo Da Vinci dated
to between 1495–1498, about 500 years ago. It is housed in the Convent of santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan where it covers an end wall of the dining hall. It is one of the Western world's most recognizable paintings and among Leonardo da Vinci's most celebrated works. It represents the scene of the Last Supper of
Jesus with his twelve apostles as this is told in the Gospel of St John, the very same Gospel which was read for us here this morning. The painting depicts the moment after Jesus announces that one of his disciples will betray him.

Leonardo worked on the mural for about three years, but did not work
continuously. A dated document indicates that the painting was nearly
completed in 1497. The prior of the monastery complained to Leonardo about the delay. Leonardo wrote to the head of the community, explaining that he had been struggling to find the perfect image of betrayal, the most villainous face possible for Judas Iscariot. If he could not find a face corresponding with what he had in mind, he would use the prior’s who had complained against him.

Leonardo's masterful use of perspective draws our attention to the face of Christ at the centre of the composition, and Christ's face, through his down-turned gaze, directs our focus along the diagonal of his left arm to his hand and therefore, to the bread on the table. “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.” That declaration is all that matters –it is exactly what we are doing here together this morning. Anything
that changes our perspective and fixes our attention on this reality is good news, is Gospel. And never before, since this century began, has our attention been more firmly fixed on this reality.

If Donald Trump has taught us anything it is this: ‘the only bad publicity is no publicity!’ Au contraire: Here is Jesus Christ, here is this morning’s gospel, here is the bread of life: one of the most talked about events at the Summer Olympics of 2024. And we’re talking about a congregation of about 34 million viewers glued to their screens. Our response as Christians should be guided by the second reading this morning: ‘Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God.  Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice’ [Ephesians 4:30]. As the Gospel of Saint Mark puts it:
‘Whoever is not against us is with us’ [Mark 9:40]. Amen.

Fr Christopher Dillon OSB

“This is working for God: you must believe in the one he has sent.” “That you believe in the one that He has sent”. That is about the most concise summing up possible of the essence of Christianity; and it is a statement ascribed by the gospel writer to Jesus himself, the very one who was sent. And the heart of that summing up is the activity of believing, for activity it is and very hard work. The work is that described in the Second Reading in the words, “Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution, so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of
the truth.”

Where are we to begin with all this? We are on holiday; it is the beginning of August. Well, you begin here and now, as you allow these words and their challenge to touch you. “You must give up your old way of life”, whatever that is and whatever that giving up, that revolution, involves. The reality is that many, even most, of us will duck the challenge, for now, anyway. It is too much to take in, too much to take on, on a Sunday morning during the summer holidays. The pity is that God does not do holidays, nor does “the one whom He has sent”.
On the other hand, you may well be thinking, “But I do believe; that is why I am here.” In that case, the challenge is easier to take on; but you still have to make a new beginning. That is how this activity of believing works; it means starting again, every day, re-affirming your belief, your trust, in Jesus as the one sent by the Father to show us the Father, as the ONE whose very being is expressed in His giving of Himself in and to the Son. We see something of what this means in the giving of himself by the Son to the Father in the whole drama of the Cross; this is love which costs everything, love from which we are invited to learn, a love to imitate in our own lives. It is for this purpose that the Son has been sent; it is for this reason that the Father admonishes us to listen to the Son, as the voice from the cloud spoke to Peter, James and John, on the occasion of the Transfiguration which we shall celebrate in two days’ time.

Listening to His voice and receiving the bread from heaven are but two ways of speaking of the same thing. While the voice suggests the word from which we learn, the bread suggests the food, the daily bread, by which we live, the manna which lasts for only a day; the imagery is as basic as it is urgent. But are we hungry enough for it to appeal to us?
Believing in the one whom the Father has sent and listening to His voice are integral to being Christian. This, we are being reminded today, is what our life as Christian human beings is really about. At a practical level, it means being familiar with Holy Scripture, chiefly the Gospels as the obvious place where we will hear Jesus’ voice, which is why the Gospels were written. Gathering this food can be hard work, if we take it seriously. After that, the question is, “Do you want this life? Is it worth it? Will you work for it?” Only you can answer.

The year 2024 marks the 1500th anniversary of the death of Brigit of Kildare, a figure who fascinates and inspires countless people to the present day.

A one-day conference on Saturday 26th October from 9.45am-5pm at Glenstal Abbey will explore her legacy and that of other Women of God through archaeology, history and folklore. It also celebrates the memory of the great Glenstal Brigit scholar and Celticist, An tAthair Seán Ó Duinn OSB.

Talks include:

• The Holy Helpers and the Handmaid: Aspects of Devotion to Female Saints in Late Medieval Ireland with Colmán Ó Clabaigh OSB
• Brigit in Irish Popular Tradition: devotion, narrative, performance and belief with Professor Bairbre Ní Fhloinn
• Sean Ó Duinn OSB – In Retrospect with Luke Macnamara OSB
• The Archaeology of Brigit with Dr Tracy Collins
• St Brigit: forging a patron saint in medieval Ireland with Dr Liz Dawson

For more information and for bookings please contact events@glenstal.com or telephone 061 621005.