Author: Justin

The Most Holy Trinity (B) 2021

Lots of priests and pastors are nervous about preaching on the feast of the Holy Trinity. The feasts of Ascension and Pentecost that we celebrated over the last two weeks mark seminal moments in the story of our salvation. We have accounts of them in the Gospels. But the feast of the Holy Trinity is different. It can sometimes feel like what we’re celebrating in this feast is an idea, a theological definition or a doctrine. And while definitions and doctrines are important, celebrating them as feasts can seem strange.

On one level, the Holy Trinity is simple enough for a young child to understand – God is three and God is one: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three persons, but one God. That’s an elegant and balanced statement, but if we dig deeper and try to understand exactly what those statements mean, we come up against some questions that are pretty hard to answer. How can three be one? How can the Holy Spirit be a ‘person’? How can Jesus be both God and Son of God? It can get very confusing very quickly. Theologians down the ages have come up with all kinds of technical language, much of it in Greek, to speak of the three persons of the Trinity and their relationships – words like consubstantial and co-eternal, hypostases and perichoresis, are important for theologians, but they don’t provide much inspiration for an 8-minute Sunday homily.

Because the language surrounding the Trinity is so technical, it’s very easy to say incorrect things about it. In preparation for today I read a book with the amusing title, The Trinity: How Not to Be a Heretic. In it, among other things, I learned about weird and wonderful heretical – incorrect – understandings of the Holy Trinity down through the centuries, such as Arianism, Sabellianism, Adoptionism, Subordinationism, and the magnificent-sounding Modalistic Monarchianism. All very fascinating, but again not much use as we attempt to break open God’s word on Sunday morning.

A handy cop-out is to say that the Trinity is a mystery and that you just can’t speak about it in normal language. Maybe it’s better to remain silent, then? The author of the book I just mentioned wryly suggested that it’s so hard to speak about the Holy Trinity without putting your theological foot in your mouth that maybe Alison Krauss (and later Ronan Keating) had the right idea when she sang: ‘You say it best when you say nothing at all’….He was being sarcastic, of course. But he had a point. Because, the celebration of a feast day in honour of the Holy Trinity doesn’t demand words or thoughts from us, but wonder and awe. Today’s feast doesn’t call us to discuss obscure Greek or Latin concepts, or to speak of God as if he were a mathematical formula or a geometric shape. Today’s feast calls us to worship and adore. No more, no less. And often, that adoration is beyond words and definitions and explanations. Silence is indeed what is called for. Saint Anselm reflected: ‘The truth is, I am darkened by myself and also dazzled by you. I am clouded by my own smallness and overwhelmed by your intensity; I am restricted by my own narrowness and mastered by your wideness.’

Silent adoration is indeed the only fitting response in the face of such an overwhelming experience of simultaneously knowing and not knowing God.

I was struck by the antiphons – the refrains at the beginning and end of the psalms – that we sang at Vespers last night. All four of them were calls to praise. We sang them in Latin, but there was no mention of words like consubstantialem, circumincessio or filioque. Just praise and glory…  ‘Glory be to you, O Trinity of equal Persons, one God, before all ages, now and forever’; ‘Praise and eternal glory be to God the Father and to the Son, together with the Holy Paraclete for ever and ever’; ‘Let glorious and everlasting praise resound from every voice to the Father, to his only-begotten Son and to the Holy Spirit’.

We can praise him so exuberantly because the Lord our God is a god who reveals himself. Though utterly other and unapproachable, he draws near to us and makes himself known. In today’s First Reading, Moses reminds the Israelites at Sinai of how close God came to them, choosing them as his people and leading them out of Egypt. Moses instructs them to ‘acknowledge today and take to heart that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other’. They are to praise him because he has revealed himself to them. For our part, we Christians celebrate the Holy Trinity, not because it is an important idea or doctrine, but simply because that is how God has revealed himself: As the Creator; as the Eternal Word, made flesh for our salvation; and as the Spirit of Truth, the bringer of consolation. That is who God has shown himself to be. That is the name in which Jesus commanded his disciples to evangelise the world, ‘baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’.

Encountering the God who reveals himself to us as three persons but one god, we worship and adore, not trying to understand complicated definitions, but simply, as the hymn puts it, ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’. God, Pope Benedict once said, ‘is not solitude, but perfect communion’. The good news today is that there is a place for us in that communion. When we cry out, ‘Abba!’, the Spirit is bearing witness that we are God’s children, and his co-heirs with Jesus. So let us cry out to the Father, knowing that in so doing we are sharing in the life of the Trinity. ‘From him and through him and to him are all things; to him be the glory forever.’

Fr Martin OSB

Step into the cloister to learn more about our monastic life and the importance of prayer, work, hospitality and education in a new video series by the monks of Glenstal Abbey. Watch this space!

Mark Patrick Hederman first met ‘God’ on a hill in County Limerick many decades ago. But where is the divine to be found in the Ireland of today? Order a signed copy of Mark Patrick’s latest book here: https://bit.ly/3fAwXzK

One summer day in Renaissance Rome, Michelangelo was pushing a huge rock down the street to his workshop. A curious onlooker bemused by the sight of this old man labouring behind such an enormous stone asked, “Why are you breaking your back on a worthless piece of rock?”  Michelangelo stopped, and while wiping his brow said, “Because there is an angel in that rock that wants to come out.”

At the time of Jesus Pentecost was a Jewish harvest festival fifty days after the first day of Unleavened Bread. It also celebrated the Covenant made on Mt Sinai, where God gave his people the gift of the Law in a great and noisy revelation of wind and fire. The wind and fire in the Acts of the Apostles, which enveloped the community of Christ’s disciples, gathered in the Upper Room, is meant to evoke that scene on Mt Sinai and give it new fullness. The Law written on stone tablets is now written on human hearts, the angel emerges from the stone, if you like, and the Mystery of Easter is complete.

On the day of Pentecost, devout people from every nation under heaven were gathered together in Jerusalem. The People of God who once gathered at the base of Mt Sinai are now enlarged to the point of recognising no boundaries. This new People of God, the Church, are a people that derives from all peoples and on this day of Pentecost the characteristic gift of the Holy Spirit is finally revealed: understanding, “each one heard these men speaking their own language”. The curse of the Tower of Babel, division and confusion, is overcome by understanding.

We must learn in our own lives how to pass from Babel to Pentecost, where no barrier prevents the entry of the Risen Lord and the power and action of the Holy Spirit. The Gospel reinforces this point. The Risen Lord passes through closed doors, enters the place where the disciples are gathered, and greets them twice with the words: “Peace be with you”. Why do we continue to close our doors? Does it make us feel secure? We don’t like our lives being disturbed, even by God! We don’t like the pain and effort involved in releasing that angel from the rock.

The Gospel account gives us an unmistakable reference to the story of creation in the Book of Genesis. The Lord God formed Adam out of the dust of the earth and blew into his nostrils the breath of life. On this day of Pentecost Jesus breaths afresh upon us, giving us the breath of God in a new and greater way. The life of God now lives in us.  

On Mt Sinai, there was fire, thunder and a great wind. When Christ breaths forth the Holy Spirit in today’s Gospel it is more akin to the experience of the prophet Elijah on Mt Horeb, than the pyrotechnics of Mt Sinai. On Horeb God was not in the great wind, the earthquake or the fire, but in the gentle breeze. In the Gospel Jesus gently breaths out the Spirit upon the Apostles.

This is how God has chosen to complete the great Mystery of Easter. The Holy Spirit comes in mighty wind, thunder and tongues of flame. The Spirit completes the Law once given on Sinai and breaks down doors and barriers with understanding and peace. But the Holy Spirit also comes as the gentle breath, the breath of life, a life that now lives in you and me. The Spirit has many manifestations, one for every occasion. The essence of Pentecost is to celebrate and make known that the Holy Spirit is Christ alive among the believing community, bringing, as it were, angels out of stones, helping each one of us move from Babel to Pentecost, division to understanding, in our own lives.

Abbot Brendan OSB

Prepare for Pentecost with the monks of Glenstal Abbey as we sing in prayer in our latest video, ‘Sonus Spiritus’. Come, Holy Spirit! 💨🔥🕊️ https://youtu.be/2zJQgqqcsr4

Father Simon returns with a new series of the Mindful Monk and this week considers the Holy Spirit, the ‘Divine Artist’, ahead of Pentecost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVJcFeqvWpU

Dear Friend,

I want to send you greetings and blessings from Glenstal Abbey as we approach the great feast of Pentecost. Our society is slowly reopening after a long and difficult lockdown. We have returned to public worship and the vaccine allows us to hope that we are finally emerging from this COVID cloud. Our pandemic experience has reminded us of the importance of community. It has reminded us of our need for other people and the responsibility we all carry for each other.

Pentecost also reminds us of these things. Pentecost is the feast of unity and of understanding. On the day of Pentecost everyone heard and understood, “Parthians, Medes and Elamites; people from Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya around Cyrene; visitors from Rome – Jews and proselytes alike – Cretans and Arabs.” In these days, we pray that God will send us this gift of understanding, opening our hearts and minds.

We pray especially for the people of India, suffering the worst effects of COVID. We pray for the people of Jerusalem and the Middle East, where violence has again taken hold. We pray for the sometimes forgotten people of Nigeria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan and Ethiopia, Myanmar and Tigray, where war and violence have caused so much human suffering. We also pray to the Holy Spirit for our own country at a difficult time, that wisdom and understanding will prevail. As we conclude the Season of Easter, we give thanks for the hope that the Holy Spirit brings. May we continue to cherish our newfound appreciation of each other in our communities and may our hearts and minds open to receive the Spirit’s gifts.

I wish all of you and your loved ones every blessing

Brendan Coffey OSB

Homily for the Ascension Year B 2021

Over many recent months people have by physically isolated from one another, but thanks to modern technology we have discovered that being physically in the same room with someone is not the only way you can be present to them.  You can have a very real contact with someone who is miles away.  We can fit a few hundred people in our church here.  But over Easter there were thousands of people connected with us online.

We know that Jesus had contact with a limited number of people during his earthly life:  those whom he physically met.  This contact continued, amazingly, after his death when he was seen by his disciples for a significant number of weeks.  But the ascension was the moment when that kind of contact came to an end.  ‘A cloud took him out of their sight,’ we read.  In other words:  his visible presence was withdrawn into the mystery of God.  Jesus was no longer physically present, in order to be present in a new way, not just to a limited number of people in Palestine, but to everyone in the world. 

For us being present via webcam, or zoom, or phone or mobile is a second best compared to physical presence.  For Jesus and us it is different.  He has withdrawn from human sight in order to be much closer again.  His presence now is more like the way a mother is present to the child in her womb, or the way the ocean is present to the fish that swims in it.  We are members of his body.

But the presence of Jesus ascended isn’t inert, like a piece of wood resting on a stone.  It’s active.  St Mark says that as the disciples went out the risen Lord worked with them.  The description of his work is fairly dramatic:  picking up snakes and drinking poison with no harm, healing the sick, expelling demons.  This dramatic kind of work has continued down through the centuries until our present day, in the lives of very exceptional people.  The temptation might be to say, ‘Well my faith is certainly not exceptional, so this gospel text doesn’t apply to me.’  Happily, that’s not true.

You only have to think that the most dangerous snakes on this planet are in fact the two-legged ones.  Ourselves.  And there can be plenty of poison in the human heart – you don’t have to drink it.  You are much more likely to spew it out!  This is where real unhappiness comes from – it come from inside.  And the work of Jesus with us is to heal, protect and nourish.  St Paul, writing to his community in Corinth made the point that, whatever about dramatic gifts that win admiration, by far the most important one is love.  This is the real healer.  This is life.  The Lord’s work with us and on us is to make us alive and life-giving.

The Lord can work in extraordinary ways if we give him space to do it. But we have to let him.  We are told in the gospels that even in his earthly life Jesus was rendered almost powerless in his home town of Nazareth because so few people really believed in him.

We know the kind of scene on a plane or ship where someone has taken ill, and an announcement is made, ‘Is there a doctor on board?’  Imagine a plane where someone is desperately ill and cabin staff are struggling to help.  Imagine that you are a doctor and nobody thinks of asking for help.  Imagine how frustrated you would be.  How would you get through to them?

Things start changing when we actually invite the Lord to work with us.  New possibilities emerge, fears subside, tempers cool, people get creative and find solutions. 

And it only takes a second or two.  At an auction it often takes just the slightest gesture for a bidder to communicate with the auctioneer.  It’s the same with the Lord, the merest gesture, in the fluttering of an eyelash, in a heartbeat, in a single breath, we can issue our invitation.  We can make an opening in our world for God to get in and change things.

Through signs of bread and wine, let us enter into a presence that does work wonders, a presence that heals and saves, a body and a life-blood closer to us than our own.

Fr Columba OSB

The Abbey Church reopens for public worship on Monday 10th May with the standard measures of face masks 😷, social distancing ↔️ and hand washing 🧼. Our shop and guest accommodation remain closed until further notice and the hearing of Confessions will resume at a later date. Welcome back!