Author: Justin

If there is any word to take away from today’s readings, it is ‘Rejoice!’. The word ‘Greetings!’, which we heard at the start of today’s gospel, is one translation of the original Greek ‘kiare’. Another translation is  ‘Hail!’, and we use that when we recite today’s gospel as a prayer, the ‘Hail Mary’. But ‘Rejoice’ is the full sense of ‘kiare’ and expresses best of all the angel’s greeting. ‘Rejoice!’ To exult. It is the only possible response to a recognition of the momentous event which is happening: Christ coming into the world, God finally fulfilling his promises, throwing in his lots with what are now his fellow human beings. It is for Mary to rejoice! It is what the shepherds in the fields will do when the angels ‘bring news of great joy, kiare; the Saviour has been born, Christ the Lord’. It is what the apostles did, we are told, after the resurrection: ‘they rejoiced to see the Lord’. We too are invited to rejoice at what is in effect the beginning of the New Testament, God’s new covenant with all humanity. ‘ 

And the angel continues: ‘Full of grace!, or, truer to the original, as we heard, ‘favoured one’. It is not that Mary is filled with anything; she is favoured by God’s magnanimity! Grace has often been represented as a divine fluid or power but, rather, it is the unmerited favour of a sovereign ruler who needs to justify his choices to no one. And what is that favour? ‘The Lord is with you.’ That is the gift: He is with her; he is in our midst. This is the marvel of the incarnation, of Christmas.

And it seems, for some at least, that he has been a long time coming and that it is also a long time before his ‘Second coming’ and the full establishment of the Kingdom of God! The psalmist evokes our long wait’ very well. He writes: 

“Lord, my God, I call for help by day; I cry at night before you. 
My soul is on the brink of the grave. I am reckoned as one in the tomb; 
like the slain lying in their graves; like those you remember no more.
                           My one companion is darkness.’

That is where we would be without the Saviour. How many of us have experienced this! and even are experiencing it! The meaning of Christmas is that we are not alone in such a dark place, without the knowledge or love of God. And for some that darkness means very great hardships, today for instance, in many parts of the world. 

To know that one is not alone, that God is with one, Emmanuel, makes all the difference. It will not resolve our problems but it can change the way we approach them and their hold over us; it changes the way we respond to them. It is like the child, or a person at any stage of life, who, knowing he / she is loved,  can therefore remain calm in adversity, has the courage and ability to endure, and can even perhaps go to the point of death in the sure hope of the resurrection. 

Faith like this, in God’s trustworthiness, in his presence, is what made Mary’s faith exemplary; she had no end of perplexity and reversals in her life! St  Paul too, in today’s reading to the Roman, praises God for, as he says, giving his readers ‘the strength to live according to the Good News that he preaches’.   

One thousand years before the coming of Christ, King David had vowed to build the temple of which the foundations still lie in modern Jerusalem. Dare we say that he never understood the kind of temple it was to prefigure, the real temple, the people in which he takes up his residence, us, Emmanuel. And Mary, with the gift of the Holy Spirit, would only gradually come to such an understanding. 

We too are called to live with an heroic faith in God’s continued presence in our world and let it stand the test of time. Christians today, are called on to rejoice in it, to make it visible and to allow raise the morale of all and let it guide decision-making in these troubled time – by acts of love which go beyond a more or less selfish purpose. The need for this is great today. We need only look around us. And if practical help is not possible for us to give let us at least pray that the hope our God gives may reach those most in need of it.

In this episode of the Mindful Monk, Father Simon talks with Nóirín Ní Riain about prayer and Psalm 121:

Our series on the Icons of Glenstal Abbey comes to a close but will remain as a playlist on our YouTube channel for personal and communal prayer. May all viewers echo in prayer the words of Peter at the Transfiguration: “Lord, it is good for us to be here.” (Mt 17:4)

W finałowym odcinku #MeetTheMonks udaj się z br. Jarkiem w podróż, w czasie której stara się on odpowiedzieć na Boże powołanie do życia mniszego ⛪🎻🌳🇵🇱🇮🇪:

National Geographic magazine once described Mary the Mother of God as ‘The Most Powerful Woman In The World’. Father Simon offers this short reflection after the celebration of the Immaculate Conception:

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

Tuesday 8^th December 2020

Genesis 3:9-15,20

Ephesians 1:3-6,11-12

Luke 1:26-38

Today the Church celebrates the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This feast is about how God acted in an extraordinary way in the life of the Mary, so that from even the first moment of her own conception, she was rescued from the power of original sin.

What does this even mean?

Original sin is a fact of our existence, a sad fact that characterises the human condition. It darkens our intellect, distorts our imagination, and positions our will so as to be susceptible to sin. We are born this way and it seems that our own efforts have only a limited ability to remedy this situation. Because of original sin, the inclination towards sin is a part of who we are from the very beginning- from the first moment of our own conception. This inclination towards sin affects us in lots of ways and we know its consequences whether in the heroic failings shown recently by men like Theodore McCarrick, Jeffrey Epstein or Harvey Weinstein. 

Sin at its base is our refusal of God.  “What we forget is how much religion costs. We can all too easily think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.” And as the American writer Flannery O’Connor says, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.” I have always found the idea that Mary is separated from the rest of creation in order to bear God, a bit troubling surely the most interesting thing about her is that she, a person like you and me, could not only bear God, but parent Him. As Michael Longley says “The cosmos shaper has come down to earth and Mary is counting his fingers and toes”. I think one way to look at her sinlessness is to see her being totally aligned with God’s purpose and the mission of her son Jesus Christ. That reading from St Paul to the Ephesians helps us think this through in that it confidently asserts that God chose us to be holy before the world was made and to live through love in his presence and to live our life to the praise of his glory. In other words just as Mary is made sinless by the redemptive action of her Son, so we too have the same possibility of being worked over by the grace of God.   

No one will ever be the Mother of God other than Mary. The singular grace conferred on Mary speaks to our own situation in another way, in that the self-evidence of a world animated by Christian principles is no longer apparent. And maybe Mary’s singular calling can give us heart to try and live out our own singular callings. But we are called to live out his call to accept His plan for us formed from before the world was made.  That it’s His plan not ours is of course one of the biggest hurdles to accepting it. But this journey is mainly deep within us, and in this regard I believe that the basic experience of everyone is the same experience of human limitation but saints ultimately are what they are, not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of holiness makes it possible for them to admire everybody else.  And then we too can point like she does to the Saviour and the way.

Instruments of the Passion at Glenstal Abbey’s Icon Chapel and Mass Rock link these places of prayer and recall Christ’s sufferings and those of local people, past and present:

Second Sunday of Advent (B) 2020

St Mark’s Gospel, the one we’ll be hearing from most often over the coming year, begins much later than all the rest, around thirty years after the birth of Jesus – with John the Baptist, calling the people to conversion and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

At least, that’s the way it runs from the second sentence forward. But I can’t help lingering a while over the slightly blunt and undramatic first sentence: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. It would be easy to overlook this sentence. It can feel more like a paragraph heading than an actual part of the Gospel. The reader had already announced “A reading from the holy Gospel according to Mark”. If you were half asleep, it could seem like he was repeating himself when he then said: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. You might be inclined to tell him to skip the preambles and just get on with it. And that is what he did. He went on to read: “As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:’” And then we heard about John the Baptist, that voice crying out in the wilderness.

John the Baptist can often come across as a fearsome character. Artistic depictions of him through the ages haven’t always been very flattering either. He comes across as a tough and wild man, a marginal character – travelling through the desert, dressed in camel skin, living on insects and preaching repentance. Not the kind of man whom you would be inclined to let into your home if he came knocking on the door late at night.

But let’s get back to that first sentence in the Gospel: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. Good news… That is, of course, the meaning of the word ‘gospel’. The beginning of the good news was John’s preaching. And so, Scripture is telling us that John wasn’t a miserable or unhinged fanatical killjoy. He was, in fact, the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. His message of repentance was good news. 

And, just in case we might miss the point, the Gospel goes on to liken John to the prophet Isaiah, quoting the passage we heard from Isaiah in the first reading. And what are the first words of that reading? “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.” The prophet’s message isn’t fire and brimstone, or doom and gloom. It is comfort. He is told to speak ‘tenderly’. The Almighty commissions the prophet to comfort his people, to speak tenderly to them…. to be a ‘herald of good tidings’. Good tidings… Good news… Gospel… The language is beautiful, as are so many of the texts we hear in Advent. But are they just beautiful words? What do they mean? 

Isaiah’s ‘gospel’ certainly wasn’t some abstract ‘pie in the sky’ kind of good news. It was very concrete and tangible indeed: Israel’s Exile in Babylon was coming to an end after 160 years. God was leading his people home. And he wouldn’t delay. The poetic language of Isaiah almost sounds like God was going to create a super-highway for his people. Obstacles would be removed, hills flattened, surfaces smoothed out. Because no barrier can prevent God from doing what he wills.

Isaiah’s ‘gospel’ was that God loves his people. And wouldn’t hide it. Their return from Exile was his very Public Display of Affection. “Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together.” God’s glory, his greatness and his might, would be revealed, not in storms or earthquakes, or in warriors’ victories. Rather, the glory of the Lord would be revealed in his LOVE for his people – a sign for all the world. “And all people shall see it together…” “Comfort, O comfort my people…” “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem…” “He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms.” In this was Isaiah’s ‘gospel’: “Here is your God!”

That was the gospel that John the Baptist came to announce too: A new return from Exile. A new Exodus. His message was urgent because he wanted them to be ready for the one, more powerful than him, who was coming after him – who would baptise with the Holy Spirit. John the Baptist’s ‘gospel’ – his good news, his good tidings – was Jesus Christ himself, the Son of God. It still is. Jesus was, and is, the tender, comforting presence of God made visible, who feeds his flock like a shepherd.

But as we bask in that comforting tenderness, we shouldn’t try to domesticate and tame John the Baptist too much. We need to heed this odd-looking man’s message of repentance. Because, unless we recognise our brokenness, our sinfulness and our need for God’s mercy, we cannot truly recognise how desperately we need a Saviour. We can sing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”, but will we really mean it? Unless we know our need for a Saviour, how can we hear his Gospel as truly Good News, and so open our hearts to receive him when he comes? Let us prepare his way, and standing upon the heights, let us behold the joy which comes to us from God.

We can easily sleepwalk through life. Advent instructs us to ‘stay awake’ to the nudges of the Spirit and the fulness of life:

Dublin priest Father Lyons answered his monastic calling during a cycle-ride to Jerusalem and then entered the monastery on his return to Ireland. Follow his journey in this episode of #MeetTheMonks