Author: Simon Sleeman

Fr. Mark Patrick Hederman: It is a cruel irony that the first detonation of a nuclear weapon by the United States on July 16th 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project, was code named ‘Trinity.’ Oppenheimer, who assigned the name ‘Trinity’ to this death-dealing operation says that he was influenced by the poetry of John Donne [1572-1631] Donne seemed to claim that unless the Trinity used its almighty power to overcome and subdue us we would never come to heel and behave towards God in a mannerly fashion. 

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you 

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; 

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend 

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. 

Take me to you, imprison me, for I, 

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, 

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. 

 

Unless God’s love is weaponised into a nuclear explosion on our planet, we won’t pay any attention. Less than a month later, on the 9th of August, 1945, a plutonium bomb, resulting from the Trinity experiment, was dropped on Nagasaki in Japan killing 75,000 people instantly. The world certainly sat up and took notice. We now had unheard of power in our hands. Today’s Feast reminds us of an alternative power, an alternative energy, the power of love which we can, each one of us, switch on or off, whenever we wish, at will.

Going back to the beginning of the world as we know it, the explosion which was the creation of the universe at the beginning of time – sometimes described as ‘the big bang’ – was a Divine, life-giving experiment, also with the code name Trinity. The Trinity brand is imprinted on all things that exist, and every last particle, is in relation with every other. We are relational beings and love is our connection.

Ever since it has been revealed to us that the God who created this marvellous universe is a three-personed unity which we call The Trinity, whose feast day we celebrate today, the greatest brains of humanity have tried to explain what this might mean.Theologians have built geometries and theological constructs to work it out, or so they think.  Diagrams were sketched and maps were drawn. Augustine spent sixteen years writing his De Trinitate starting in the year 400. 

 These were mostly men, using their heads. Let us skip the head work and get down to the heart work. There are people in this world who spend at least two hours a day in conversation with the makers of the universe who, they believe, are dwelling deep in their hearts.  I think of the Carmelite order of contemplatives who have sixteen communities at this time in Ireland. I am influenced especially by a young French Carmelite who called herself Elizabeth of the Trinity especially to emphasize today’s particular feast.  She was seven years younger than Thérèse of Lisieux. Although less well known than the little flower, she was canonized by Pope Francis in 2016, ten years ago. She died at the age of 26 in the year 1906 and her feast Day is on November the 8th 

Elizabeth promised to spend the eternity she now enjoys helping any of us to find the three persons of the Trinity in our hearts. She has taught me, more than anyone else, that the God of love is an immensity, an abyss, an ocean, into which we can plunge at every moment, without endangering our own personal identity or interrupting the rhythm and integrity of our way of life here on earth. God is the tsunami of love that sweeps each one of our surf boards to heights where we can enjoy the company  of the extravagant Trinitarian Three . . . . ‘I would like to whisper this secret to those I love, she writes, that they too might cling to the great silence within until it reveals its song.’

Fr. Lino Moreira: In his Letter to the Ephesians, Paul says that God showed the full extent of his power by raising Jesus from the dead and enthroning him at his right hand in the heavens (cf. Eph 1:20). According to the Acts of the Apostles, this enthronement of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah and Son of God, took place forty days after his resurrection, when he was lifted up before the eyes of his disciples and a cloud took him out of their sight (cf. Acts 1:9). 

Some, however, dismiss this mystery of the Lord’s ascension into heaven as mere fiction. Their argument is usually twofold: first, they point out that the Earth is round, and therefore ‘being lifted up’ simply means moving away from our planet in whatever direction the observer perceives as ‘up’; second, they emphasise that even if it were possible for someone to travel to the farthest reaches of the universe, they would not be able to find a physical place where Jesus is literally sitting at the right hand of God’s throne, surrounded by a court of angels and saints.

No one, of course, can take issue with any of this, but the Bible is not primarily concerned with science and often relies on imagery and symbolism to convey spiritual truths that can only be partially grasped by human intelligence. Every word of Scripture carries a deeper meaning. In his reflection on the Lord’s ascension into heaven, one of the greatest fourteenth-century mystics, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, helps us to see something of what lies beneath the surface of the New Testament account. This is what he says: “Since it was the case that Christ was to ascend in body, it was more appropriate that it should be upwards and from below; but if it were not for this appropriateness, he would no more need to go upwards than downwards, for the main and shortest road to heaven is travelled by loving desire and not by footsteps” (Chapter LX).

When people still believed that the Earth was flat and that Paradise lay somewhere above the stars, this insightful author evidently understood that, at his ascension, the man Jesus was not transported to a different cosmic location; rather, he entered into communion of life and power with the living God, to whom he had always been united by love. Admittedly, instead of saying that Jesus entered the mystery of God, Luke reports that he was lifted up in the presence of his disciples, and a cloud took him out their sight; but here the cloud symbolises God’s presence and action. As for the New Testament assertion that Jesus is seated at God’s right hand – an echo of Psalm 110 – it means that the glorified Jesus shares God’s dominion over all creation and, like his divine Father, is everywhere without being bound by the constraints of time and space.

This, in fact, is what Jesus says about himself in today’s gospel: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt 28:18, 20). As is typical of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus addresses not only his immediate audience but the entire church. The promise he makes to the Eleven after his resurrection extends to all believers throughout the centuries. He says he will be with them until the end of time because, as the glorified Messiah, he can now be as close to them as only God can be.

Paradoxically, then, by departing from this world, Jesus took the final step towards becoming Emmanuel, God with us (cf. Mt 1:23). It is no longer possible to encounter him in his mortal flesh on the roads of Palestine or anywhere else in the world, but we can find him ever present within our innermost being and among those gathered in his name. We can recognise him above all in the Eucharist, where he speaks to us through the words of Scripture and gives himself to us under the signs of bread and wine. He is our brother, accompanying us on our pilgrimage through life. If we are not too self-absorbed, we will be able to hear his voice gently guiding us along the way until he finally welcomes us into his kingdom, where he lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever.

Fr. Mark Patrick Hederman: In this heady time after Easter we are full of talk about Resurrection and everlasting life; most of our official prayers are about joining Jesus in his risen state and remaining with Him for ever. Another big topic of conversation is the journey to the far side of the moon which happened very recently. Artemis II carried the first astronauts to travel to the Moon in more than half a century. These came back to Earth last Friday week after a record10-day journey that took them the farthest distance from the Earth ever reached. I have to say that I keep asking myself what is the point of it all, especially when it costs four billion dollars a pop?

Getting beyond the time/space orbit of our natural biological lives requires a rigorous training programme. To become an astronaut, you often spend months lying in a tilted bed with your feet 6 degrees higher than your head without ever standing or sitting up.— this gives a physical reaction akin to weightlessness. “Human beings on the way to Mars, for instance,  have to become halfway between a fish and a bird,” the experts say. 

The largest human-made object launched beyond earth’s gravitational pull is The International Space Station (ISS). It is about the size of a football field, and contains living quarters about the size of a six-bedroom house. Two years ago a pair of American astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, were launched up there for what was meant to be an 8 day mission. However, because of technical problems, they were left there for eight months. They came back to earth in March of last year. What would your weightlessness do up there floating around six bedrooms for eight months? 

We say in both the Apostles and the Nicaean creeds, as you will say in a few minutes time: ‘I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.’ But the truth is that we weren’t really made for long-term capability. Half the beauty of a sunset on this planet is that it doesn’t last. We can only put up with short-term entertainment. ‘Beatific Vision for all eternity is a no-no for those who find a three hour movie too long and too  tedious. What can it mean to be blissfully happy for all of eternity? Think of any pleasure you really enjoy and then imagine it going on forever. The ice-cream that you crave on a summer’s day – if it’s stuck in your gob for a fortnight it kinda loses its flavour. 

There are over 8 billion persons in the universe as we speak. The 15th November, 2022, was the “Day of Eight Billion.” From that day onwards our human family comprises that number all expecting to be resurrected when their time comes. Calculations which have become possible in our day also suggest that since human persons have emerged on earth there have been about 117 billion bodies formed. Do we think these are kept in some deep-freeze in the sky? Nothing of the material body in which I now stand is going to endure for eternity. Every single particle of me has been renewed during each ten years of my life. I have none of the limbs, joints or bones I started out with. 

Anyone who wants to become anything in this life has to undergo rigorous training whether to be an athlete or an astronaut. When we say that Easter means resurrection, we mean that resurrection has already happened; our task is to be plug into that fact. Resurrection is divine energy, divine power and divine love meeting with and transforming each one of us as human persons. Resurrected living is a form of love. In ourselves, in our bodies, in our lives, it shows itself as being in full flow. We are and we act from the true centre of ourselves which is the Holy Spirit of Divine Love. We have to train ourselves for such a life style, and one that goes on forever. Here is the best description I have found: Your personal identity, established in and through an embodied history, is raised up into a trans-physical reality. This means fuelling ourselves with the love of God, becoming lovers of that calibre. We have to begin living that way as of now, no matter what age we are, or what situation we are in. 

Homily 6^th Sunday of Easter 2026

Fr. Simon Sleeman: ‘If’ you love me and keep my commandments I shall ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth…

When I began looking at the readings for today, sometime ago,  it was that ‘if’, right at the start, that stopped me, in my tracks. I found it hard to move past it. I wondered why?

Maybe it was because those little words provide the meaning while the big ones look after themselves. The little ones that drive the big words into action; if’, ‘no’, ‘to’ ‘in’, ‘go’.  If you lose them you lose the lot. ‘If’…. you love me and keep my commandments …I will….

Maybe it was because my Mother  often quoted Rudyard Kipling’s poem ,‘If’ to us when we were children, the last lines of which are .

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

A mother talking…

‘If you love me and keep my commandments I shall ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you…that Spirit of truth…’ Jesus talking.

‘If’ ….and it seems to be one of those BIG ‘Ifs’…implies there are conditions – implies there is something required of me,  …‘ if you can fill the unforgiving minute’…then….

There are conditions to enter the large world of God and have it enter us. ‘If’ you love me and keep… then’…God protecting himself from us; protecting himself from our pride and our futile, but constant attempts to be god.

‘If’ ….the gauntlet thrown down, the invitation received, the challenge set, …a huge entry point to the divine opening before us, life on the line… the Trinity of God, beckoning….to us to participate in their life of love.

‘On the whole’, Annie Dillard says, ‘I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions.’ But even the biologists among you will know the need for conditions if a seed is to germinate and grow- oxygen, warmth, water….

Oh… but we don’t like conditions or even recognise the need for them.

Conditions, commandments – no thanks – just give me the goodies, skip the conditions….the ‘ifs’…especially the big ‘ifs’…conditions cramp my style…commandments – no thank you….just send me that other Advocate…just one click should do it…Muscle and  memory. I’ll take the love, Yes…. ‘that feeling you feel, when you feel, that what you feel, is a feeling you never felt before – oh that’s it… Yes….now we are talking.  Good luck with that…

Carl Jung, the Swiss Psychoanalyst, says that modern human beings no longer fulfil the necessary conditions  to see God – that they don’t see God because they no longer bend low enough…they are not sensible of conditions – we’ve got way above our station…busy building Towers of Babel, chasing our wild dreams and perpetrating outrageous evil.

There is something required of me as a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ and recipient of the Holy Spirit;  a commitment to look beyond the small cramped world of me where our culture would have us hang out – hungry…for stuff. And Jesus seems confident we can do it…

Jesus speaks, ‘If’ … but he also sets the ‘if’ into action.

At this last supper gathering, where he is speaking, of the ‘ifs’….he gets down on his knees and washes the feet of his disciples.

That gesture, that generous response to the BIG ‘if’. This doesn’t seem like much of an invitation but rather a degradation…especially to those who no longer bend low enough to see ….the Spirit of Truth…..beckoning….

Fr. John O’Callaghan: There are some marvelous synonyms for Christ: he is ‘the Bread of life’, ‘the Salt of the earth’, ‘the Light of the world‘; and today, Jesus says of himself ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’. He is telling us who he really is, elucidating his identity. But his words nonetheless suffer from misunderstanding.

Thomas gets off to a bad start when he says: ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way!’  He seems to think Jesus is planning a trip and it will be for him to simply follow the same route. But we’ve met Thomas before, ‘doubting Thomas’,  who insisted on putting his fingers into the holes made in Jesus’ hands and side before believing in the resurrection. His shallow understanding of what Jesus means by ‘the Way’ shouldn’t surprise us too much.  We might even share his incomprehension.

The ‘Way’ of which Jesus is speaking is the Way that leads to God the Father. Jesus is this Way because he brings us to the Father. He is one with the Father and at the same time he is one with us; this makes him an excellent means by which  we can access the Father. He has identified himself as the Truth; he brings us into the truth of the One who is the Creator.

But Christ is not just a guide that we learn from and then go off better informed to plough our own furrows. No, one must belong to Christ, belong to the truth and live in the truth. Christ has also identified himself as the Life: through him we receive the life of the Father, eternal life. 

Our role in this is to recognise Christ for who he is; to believe. His resurrection from the dead, his miracles, his teachings, and his fulfilment of the prophecies and traditions of Judaism help to recognise him and so enter upon this Way. Out of all the paths we take in life it is absolutely important for us to find this one, the ‘Way’ to God, by uniting ourselves with Christ, through faith. 

The Acts of the Apostles recounts the action of the Holy Spirit in the Christian community, gifting it with varied charisms for the building up of the People of God; indeed they were sometimes called ‘followers of the Way’. The First letter of Peter refers to the early Christians as ‘living stones (in all their scintillating variety) making up a spiritual house where God lives’. So, ultimately, we can see that this ‘Way’ leads us into an intimate relationship with God, into the mystery of the Trinity, our incorporation in the divine life. It is actually beyond imagining. 

And it shows one thing beyond question: that Christian life is about far more than morality, as some people seem to think of it. It is above all to recognise the love of God towards us, his calling us to a life beyond the one we currently experience, and where all shall be well and all manner of things will be well. That is the first and foremost message of Easter. ‘He is alive’ and we are called to share in that promised life, and to let faith have full impact in our lives. Such a hope can transform us and our world; it impels us to spreading the gospel of hope in word and deed.  May we follow our ancestors in the faith who did just that, so that, 2000 years later, there are 2.6 billion Christians in the world today. 

Fr. Henry O’ Shea:

Not a gate that’s gently hinged or deftly hung,

Not like the ones you planed at Joseph’s place…

Not like the ones that closed in Mary’s face

From house to house in brimming Bethlehem,

Not like the one that no-one may assail,

The dreadful curtain, the forbidding veil

That waits your torturing in Jerusalem….

 IT IS AMAZING HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE SURPRISED TO LEARN THAT REAL COWS, MOO-COWS, AND REAL BAA-BAA BLACKSHEEP STILL EXIST. AS A CHILD BACK IN THE DARK AGES I REMEMBER BEING AMAZED AT THE REACTION OF A YOUG AMERICAN COUSIN FROM NEW YORK WHEN HE SAW A REAL COW FOR THE FIRST TIME. HE WAS INTRIGUED TO LEARN THAT MILK DID NOT COME PRIMARILY FROM BOTTLES OR CARTONS ON A SUPERMARKET SHELF

FOR MOST OF US THE WORD SHEEP SUGGESTS WOOLY BRAINLESSNESS ON FOUR LEGS – OR, I IMAGINE FOR MANY OF  US,  ON TWO LEGS. 

FEW OF US WOULD FEEL PARTICULARLY HAPPY TO BE COMPARED TO OR WITH A SHEEP. 

THE IDEA OF A SHEPHERD IS LESS THREATENING BUT PROBABLY CALLS TO MIND LITTLE MORE THAN THE CHRISTMAS CRIB OR GREEN WELLIES, OR MORE RECENTLY HERE IN IRELAND, BLOCKADED STREETS AND ROADS.

IMAGINE THE HOLY LAND – MODERN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE – AT THE TIME OF OUR LORD. THERE WAS PRECIOUS LITTLE LAND TO CULTIVATE. LIVESTOCK AND THE SHEPHERDS WHO TENDED THEM WERE IMPORTANT ELEMENTS IN THE ECONOMY. OUR LORD’S LISTENERS WOULD HAVE HAD LITTLE DIFFICULTY IN UNDERSTANDING THE NEED FOR A SHEPHERD WHO IS TRUSTWORTHY, DILIGENT, ALERT AND ATTENTIVE TO THE NEEDS OF HIS FLOCK. THESE LISTENERS WOULD HAVE HAD NO DIFFICULTY UNDERSTANDING OUR LORD WHEN HE SPOKE OF SHEEP RECOGNIZING THE SHEPHERD’S VOICE AND CALLING EACH SHEEP BY NAME. THIS PHENOMENON CAN STILL BE EXPERIENCED IN THE HOLY LAND AND ELSEWHERE TO-DAY.

THOUGH IN SEVERAL PLACES IN THE GOSPELS JESUS DOES DESCRIBE HIMSELF AS A SHEPHERD, IN TO-DAY’S GOSPEL HE PRIMARILY CALLS HIMSELF THE GATE. HOW CAN A PERSON BE A GATE? HERE, AS IN MANY PLACES IN THE BIBLE OUR QUESTION IS NOT SO MUCH ‘HOW CAN THIS BE?’, BUT, ‘WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?’

JESUS DOES NOT SAY THAT HE WILL SHOW ANYONE THE WAY TO THE SHEEPFOLD WHICH IS, PERHAPS, THE CHURCH. NOR DOES HE SAY THAT HE WILL GUARD THE GATE TO THIS SHEEPFOLD. HE SAYS, RATHER, THAT HE IS THE GATE ITSELF.

A GATE OR DOOR MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR SOMEONE TO GO IN AND OUT. IT GIVES ENTRY, USUALLY TO THOSE WHO ARE INVITED OR HAVE A RIGHT TO ENTER. IT PROTECTS THOSE WHO ARE INSIDE AND EXCLUDES THOSE WHO DO NOT BELONG, THOSE WHO WOULD DO HARM. AS THE GATE ITSELF/HIMSELF, JESUS IS THE MAKER POSSIBLE FOR ALL, SHEEP AND SHEPHERDS ALIKE, TO GO IN AND OUT.

THE THIEVES AND BRIGANDS OF WHOM OUR LORD SPEAKS ARE THOSE WHO TRY TO GAIN ACCESS TO THE SHEEP AND THE SHEEPFOLD BY BY-PASSING HIM, JESUS THE GATE.

THIEVES AND BRIGANDS ARE THOSE WHO TRY TO GAIN ACCESS BY THE FALSE ENTRANCES OF FAKE VALUES, EASY ANSWERS, SELFISHNESS, COWARDICE, LUST FOR POWER, ARROGATED AND ARROGANT AUTHORITY AND FUNCTIONS, ENTITLEMENT, ILLUSIONS AND DELUSIONS OF ALL KINDS, EMPTY PROMISES, INVENTED SALVATION. THESE FALSE SHEPHERDS CAN ONLY STEAL, KILL AND DESTROY. THEY DO NOT FEED THE LORD’S LAMBS, THEY DO NOT FEED THE LORD’S SHEEP – THEY SIMPLY SHEAR THEM AND DEPART. AND ONE CAN EVEN DO UNIVERSITY COURSES NOW ON THIS AND, INDEED, OBTAIN ACADEMIC DEGREES IN IT.

THE SHEEP OF JESUS’ FLOCK HAVE AN EAR FOR THE VOICE OF A SHEPHERD WHO PREACHES NOT HIMSELF BUT THE DEAD AND RISEN CHRIST. THIS SHEPHERD’S VOICE RINGS TRUE – REAL VALUES, GENUINE, IF DEMANDING, ANSWERS; SELFLESSNESS, COURAGE, REALISM, WELL-FOUNDED HOPE, TRUE LOVE, DISINTERESTED AVAILABLITY – REMEMBERING THAT THE WORD ‘DISINTERESTED’ MEANS NOT ON THE MAKE AND ‘UNINTERESTED’ MEANS ONE COULDN’T CARE LESS.

THE TRUE SHEPHERD DOES NOT BULLY. THE TRUE SHEPHERD DOES NOT BELIEVE IN VIOLENCE, SUPERIOR FORCE, OR THAT THE UNIVERSE IS DIVIDED INTO WINNER AND LOSERS. AND ONE DOES NOT HAVE TO HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO BE A BULLY. LOOK AT ANY KINDERGARTEN, ANT SCHOOL, ANY WORKPLACE.

THE  TRUE SHEPHERD LEADS THE TRUE SHEEP THROUGH THE GATE WHICH IS CHRIST, TO THE SECURITY OF CHRIST’S LOVE, TO THE FREEDOM OF ONE’S BEST SELF, TO THE NOURISHMENT AND CHALLENGING PEACE OF A LIFE WITH REAL PURPOSE – TO SURE PASTURE.

WHO ARE THE TRUE SHEEP?

IN TO-DAY’S FIRST READING WE HEARD ST.PETER SPEAKING IN A LOUD VOICE ABOUT JESUS THE LORD, THE CHRIST, OF WHO THIS CHRIST WAS AND WHAT HAD BEEN DONE TO HIM. PETER’S HEARERS ASKED HIM WHAT THEY SHOULD, WHAT THEY COULD DO HAVING HEARD THIS.  HE SAID THEY SHOULD DO TWO THINGS. THEY SHOULD REPENT AND SHOULD BE BAPTISED IN JESUS’S NAME. IN RETURN, THEY WOULD BE GIVEN THE HOLY SPIRIT.

TRUE SHEEP REPENT. THAT IS: THEY LOOK ON THE FACE OF JESUS AND LISTEN TO HIS WORD. THEN THEY LOOK AT THEIR OWN LIVES AND NOT ONLY ADMIT THEIR SINS AND ARE SORRY FOR THEM, BUT, MORE IMPORTANTLY THEY ACCEPT A WHOLE NEW WAY OF BEING HUMAN. THEY ACCEPT A WHOLE NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS AND A WHOLE NEW WAY OF BEHAVING. CHANGE OF MIND AND HEART LEADS TO CHANGE OF SEEING AND DOING.

BY BEING BAPTISED, THE TRUE SHEEP ARE TAKEN SYMBOLICALLY AND REALLY INTO CHRIST RISEN FROM THE DEAD. THIS CHRIST NOW BECOMES THE TRUE GATE FOR THEM. IT IS ONLY BY GOING THROUGH THIS GATE THAT THEIR SINS AND WHAT FOLLOWS FROM THEM CAN BE TAKEN AWAY.

THIS GATE ALONE OPENS TO THE POSSIBILITY OF A TRULY NEW VISION AND A NEW BEHAVIOUR. BY GOING THROUGH THIS GATE, THE SHEEP ARE GIVEN THE HOLY SPIRIT AND FROM HIM RECEIVE THE STRENGTH AND GUIDANCE TO PERSEVERE IN THIS CHANGE OF MIND AND HEART AND ACTION – DESPITE BACKSLIDING AND OCCASIONAL DEAFNESS TO THE TRUE SHEPHERD’S VOICE.

Not a gate you made 

but one you always were and have become:

Load-bearing, balancing, a weighted beam

To bridge the gap, to bring us within reach

Of your high pasture. Calling us by name,

You lay your body down across the breach,

Yourself the door that opens into home.

Abbot Columba McCann: I wonder:  when is the last time you threw a tantrum? Can you remember throwing a tantrum, perhaps as a teenager?  Imagine a young person is really angry at their parents.  When the parents are out he takes some eggs out of the fridge and flings them at the kitchen wall.  That feels good! So he goes a little further.  He takes a slab of butter and uses it to write obscenities on the kitchen floor.  Then he really gets into the swing of it.  He slits open a bag of flour and throws it everywhere.  Then just to make it even worse he throws sugar on the floor so that it will crackle under his parents’ feet.  Finally, to make it all look a bit dirtier, he takes a tin of cocoa and empties it around the room.  Then he leaves the house, slams the door and goes off to meet his friends.

Well you can imagine the reaction when the folks get home, faced with utter chaos in their brand new designer kitchen.  Pretty awful, to put it mildly.

And yet you have in all that chaos all the right ingredients to make a beautiful chocolate cake.  I know because I have made them myself.  All you need is to put them together in the right way.  And so you create a chocolate cake.

It’s not a million miles away from the description of how God creates, as recounted in the first reading from Genesis.  This particular piece of writing, more like a poem than a documentary, is not too interested in ideas like creation out of nothing, or the big bang, or how long it really took, and so on.  It’s hard to find the right English words to translate the original Hebrew description of what it was like before God got to work:  tohu vavovu.  Formless and empty, void, desolate, waste and void, without shape.  And it was dark, with some kind of watery mass.  All a description of chaos, you might say.

But the breath of God, the Spirit of God was breathing, blowing like a wind over all of this incoherence.

There are chaotic moments in all our lives:  moments when things don’t make sense or are empty; moments when you don’t have a clear shape about what is going on; moments when you may feel out of control, where everything is uncertain.  But all the ingredients are there, and God is ever-creative.

God brings light into the darkness; God brings order out of chaos; God brings beauty out of wasteland; God brings forth life where there was none.  And how?  God’s Spirit hovers over everything that happens.  And God speaks.  When God says ‘Let there be light’, there is light.  When God speaks, it happens.

Amid the awfulness and chaos and sheer depravity of what was done to Jesus on Good Friday, the Spirit still hovered.  The Spirit raised Jesus from death.  The same Spirit hovered over the waters of our baptism.  Tonight we baptise John and Sara’s baby:  Fionbarra Edward John.  The Spirit hovers over him tonight and for the rest of his life.  The same Spirit accompanies us.  The word of God continues to speak.  Every time we hear the voice of Christ and respond, God continues to create in us and through us.  Every time we respond to the words of Jesus with faith, our world becomes a better place.  If we keep responding, always open to God’s Spirit, attentive to the presence of Christ, we finally grow up into what we were always intended to be:  the image and likeness of God himself.

The amazing fact of the death and resurrection of Jesus is that God, not chaos,  always has the last word, and it is always a word of light and life.

Abbot Columba McCann: Moving house is a high-stress event.  It’s there alongside changing job or losing a life-partner.  Letting go of the familiar and having to adapt to the unknown.  Wondering what it is going to be like.  It’s a kind of bereavement, and it’s also a moment of uncertainty.  A leap of faith into the dark.  Wondering:  will I survive?  Will I get through this?

In ancient times this kind of transition was a regular event for nomadic herders, who moved their flocks every now and then into new pastures.  It was a risky moment, and there was the tradition of offering up one of their lambs and painting the doors of their tents with its blood as a sign of divine protection for the journey ahead.

Small wonder then that this becomes the ritual for the Jewish Passover, celebrating a really extraordinary journey, an amazing transition, out of the slavery of Egypt to freedom, from darkness to light, all under God’s guiding hand.  And every year the Passover meal brought it all back again:  the memory of what God is like:  the one who sets free, the one who protects us on life’s journey.

Around the time of Jesus’ earthly life there was an expectation that the Messiah would finally show himself at Passover, that a new and greater moment of liberation would happen.  And here he is, this evening, at table with his friends at Passover time, about to complete the greatest journey of all before our eyes, the journey all of us must make, the journey from this life to the next.  But for him it’s not a comfortable slipping away under palliative care; it’s the worst possible way to go:  condemned as a blasphemer by his own religion, and crucified like a criminal by the Romans.  Tortured to death and abandoned.

It is perhaps his way of saying:  no matter how dark it gets, no matter how hopeless it looks, I have been there before you.  I have been through the worst that human life can throw at you, and I am alive.   I am your Passover Lamb.  The blood I shed is the sign that I am with you now as your protection on life’s journey.  My lifeblood is not something sprinkled on the outside, but something for you to take into yourself, so that you take me into yourself and begin to live by my risen life.  No matter whatever passage you may walk through, my life will sustain you and lift you up.

Abbot Columba McCann: After such a long and moving gospel account, I will simply share one idea.

We may often think we know the meaning of what the Bible says, but sometimes the real meaning can be surprising and liberating.

When Jesus speaks of Judas, the one who betrays him, he says ‘Alas for him’ or ‘Woe to him’ and goes on to say, ‘It would be better for him if he were not born.’

It can sound like a word of condemnation, suggesting that Judas is going to get what is coming to him in retribution for his betrayal.  But one day a scripture scholar opened my eyes to what Jesus was really saying.

In the language of his own time and place, Jesus’ words ‘Alas for him’ or ‘Woe to him’ meant,  ‘I’m really sorry for him, he’s in a dreadful situation.’

What about the words ‘better for him if he had not been born’?  Does the Bible itself give us any clue as to what this might be about?  These are the words of Job, in the book of Job, the story of a man who goes through intense suffering.  In his pain, Job cries out, ‘Better if I had not been born!’   Jesus is commenting on the sufferings of Judas.

It seems that Jesus is really saying something like this:  ‘I feel so, so sorry for this man.  He is suffering terribly’.  No condemnation.  Words of compassion about the one who betrays him.  This is the kind of Messiah we acclaim waving our palm branches…