Author: Simon Sleeman

Fr. Senan Furlong.  Already it is the fourth Sunday of Advent, and Christmas is just a few days away –days that can be hectic and stressful. While some are well organised and ahead of themselves, most of us are busy, rushing here and there trying to get things done at the last minute. Many are full of anticipation and are looking forward to Christmas. Still others may be dreading Christmas, especially if they are feeling alone, suffering from illness or are grieving. Whatever our state, we are called this Sunday to stay in Advent, to wait, to seek moments of quiet prayer, and reflect on what it is all about. To help us do this, today’s readings introduce us to three people to be our companions in the coming days. 

The first is Micah, one of the so-called Minor Prophets. Micah looks forward in hope that God will transform our broken world and usher in a new era of justice and peace. That hope lies in the coming of a future king of the house of David, a good shepherd and person of peace. And where will this happen? You, Bethlehem of Ephrathah, says Micah, least among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me the one who is to rule over Israel. You, little town of Bethlehem, who would have suspected that in your dark streets would shine the everlasting light? Micah opens our eyes to the importance of small things, for it is often through the most improbable of sources that God realises his purpose. Do not spurn the lowly and the insignificant, Micah teaches, otherwise we might miss the gift God is giving us. 

Our second companion is Elizabeth, wife of Zachariah and mother of John the Baptist. Elizabeth’s story is like that of a number of Old Testament women before her: Sarah, the wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac; the wife of Manoah, mother of Samson; and Hannah, mother of Samuel. Elizabeth was elderly and unable to have children. And then, God did a wonderful deed. After the angel’s annunciation to Zachariah, he went home and Elizabeth miraculously conceived, despite her age. God often chooses the most unlikely of people to manifest his glory. Where there is barrenness, he can bring forth life. When we feel lifeless, purposeless or powerless, Elizabeth teaches us never to give up hope. 

  Our third companion is Mary. At the angel’s annunciation to Mary, she was told that she would conceive and give birth to the Son of the Most High. Mary puzzled how this could happen but accepted that this was the word of God and said to the angel, ‘Let it be to me according to your word.’ Mary listened, she believed and then she acted. In openness to the word of God, she undertook the long journey from Nazareth to the hill town in Juda. And there the two mothers met, and Elizabeth rejoiced with Mary, ‘Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.’ Did Mary see where her life would go? Did she fully comprehend what had happened? No. But Mary believed in the presence of God in her life and trusted his plan, even though she could not see the future. Our own life stories too can be strangely touched by events we do not understand. As we look forward to Christmas, today’s gospel challenges us to look back to our own lives and to sense like Mary the presence of God in the unfolding mystery of our own story. It could be said of each of us, ‘blessed are you because you have believed in the promise made you by the Lord’, but only if we respond, ‘Let it be to me according to your word’.    

On the threshold of Christmas when we celebrate the birth of the Prince of peace, we ask that like Micah, we may glimpse the rich possibility of God’s purpose in what seems little and insignificant; that like Elizabeth, we may never abandon hope in the life-giving power of God; and that like Mary, we may say yes to God’s amazing plan for us.

Fr. John O’Callaghan. This Sunday is traditionally called ‘Gaudete Sunday’. That is because, on the surface level, “Gaudete” is the first word sung during the entrance hymn, “Rejoice….”. But, on  a deeper level, it is because, as we move closer to Christmas, we have very good reason to rejoice. Someone might suggest that, on the contrary, we have a great deal to complain about: apart from personal challenges, there is the rising cost of living, record levels of homelessness, wars new and old, climate challenges and political inertia in the face of it. A list of current dangers and disasters, here and around the world, is available in any newspaper. So, why rejoice? Because, precisely it is into a troubled world, into a conflicted space, that God is sure to make Himself present. 

A core message from Zephaniah, from whom our first reading is taken,  is that ‘the Lord will have his day against all the proud and lofty, against all that is high and arrogant’. Zephaniah was aware of evil, especially idolatry, among his own people and he was aware of threats of invasion from neighbouring populations  but, nonetheless, he spoke the word of truth that God would protect his chosen people and offer a time of favour and reconciliation. This allowed him to proclaim, in God’s name, ‘Have no fear!’ and to assert, despite appearances, that ‘The Lord your God is in your midst!’

The same but better, with John the Baptist, in today’s gospel! His time was also one of conflict, corruption and challenges of all kinds, between Romans and rebellious Jews, and amongst the different factions of the Jewish people etc. There were hopes of a messiah.  John announced the coming of ‘someone more powerful than himself and of whom he was not fit to undo the strap of his sandals.’ This exalted figure was Christ himself and this ‘day of the Lord’ was of a much higher order than anything gone before.  Born of the Virgin Mary, and of the smallest tribe of Israel, Christ came in silence and humility, to share in our humanity. In him God did not just send somebody else, he came himself. He wanted to inaugurate his kingdom by being born in an insignificant place and amongst the common people, to make ordinary people His people.  He came without needing us; it is we who have needed him. And the way he has done it touches our hearts. It can change the direction of our lives and thus change the world. In this season of advent we recall the special ‘time of favour’  when love came (in person) close to the human race. Love was the only reason for the incarnation. By it our minds are enlightened, our hopes are enlivened and our energy renewed; and so it is that we can live as the people of God. 

Immersed like everyone else in the complexity of modern life, Christians remain unshakably certain that God is our Father and loves us, even when his silence remains incomprehensible. “If you understand him,” as St Augustine said, “He is not God”.

Faith, hope and charity go together. Faith is seen when one accepts the mystery of God through humility and trusts him even in times of darkness. Hope is seen when one  continues to do good work for the common good, even in the face of apparent failure. Love is the light, in the end the only light, that can illumine a world grown dim.  We can practise it because we are created in the image of God.  Let us spread this light of God in the world; then, of its own, the darkness will disappear!

Luke McNamara. Mary’s birthday falls on the 8th of September and therefore we celebrate her conception 9 months earlier on the 8th of December. This year the 8th falls on a Sunday and the celebration is transferred to Monday. Mary’s immaculate conception is the preparation for her role as mother of Jesus through whom we are all one family. We are all the result of an act of love of our parents. Through that love we were conceived, spent 9 months in our mothers’ wombs and then were born. Jesus shares in our human family. Jesus is conceived through an act of God’s love and spends 9 months in the womb of his mother Mary. His conception we celebrated at the annunciation on the 25th of March and his birth we will celebrate at Christmas, the 25th of December. Our human nature is transformed when Jesus comes among us. Death and sin do not have the final word. Instead, we have a new destiny with Jesus and through him become part of the family of God. 

God initially placed our first parents in the garden of Eden where he also walked each evening. This closeness to God was to be our destiny but sadly instead of feeding from the tree of life, they took the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which led to their expulsion. One of the first acts after this disaster was for Adam’s wife to be named Eve because she was to mother of the living. Although access to the tree of life blocked, this name points to the promise of future life.

This promise is not without hope of fulfilment. God is always seeking us. As the letter to the Ephesians states: “Before the world was made, he chose us, chose us in Christ, to be holy and spotless, and to live through love in his presence, determining that we should become his adopted children, through Jesus Christ.” Today God prepares our adoption by choosing Mary from the moment of her conception to be the mother of his new holy family, beginning with Jesus and through him, all of us. Mary is the new Eve, the new mother of all the living but this life is to be as God’s children who live in love in his presence.

Mary’s immaculate conception occurs through the power of God’s love. She is holy so that she may bear holiness itself. She is loved so that she may bear love itself. She is the yes to God’s call: “let it be done unto me according to you word.”

This celebration reminds us that we too are chosen to be holy and spotless and to live through love in God’s presence. God is constantly seeking us. God’s powerful love is near – stay close in prayer and allow that love to overshadow you, transform you and make you holy. Rest in love in his presence. By saying our yes to God’s love we discover freedom, life and love, for ourselves and for all those around us, every member of our human family, every child of God.

 

Fr. Henry O’Shea OSB.

We have tested and tasted too much…- 

Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder. 

But here in the Advent-darkened room 

Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea 

Of penance will charm back the luxury 

Of a child’s soul, we’ll return to 

Doom The knowledge we stole but could not use.

 Walking on the beach, you sometimes find seashells, gnarled and wrinkled by salt, sand and tide. Turning them over, you discover the smoothest mother-of-pearl, a surface shimmering and beautiful. We can take this as an image of the Church and the saints. Pummelled and polished by the tide of time, by the storms of life, the Church waits for the rising tide of God’s timelessness which will engulf all, before casting up on the shore of eternity, miracles of patience and fortitude which remain hidden today.

The first Christian community experienced the tension between the two comings of the Lord, the tension between his earthly life and ministry and his return at the end of time. Believing this second coming to be imminent, they also believed in the necessity of living blameless lives. But, by the time St Luke was writing to-day’s gospel, his listeners were already aware that this second coming would not take place in the immediate future. 

With this realisation came the growing awareness of another dimension. For Luke’s listeners, the Lord’s coming is not for some unknown time in the future, or at least not only for some unknown time in the future. He is already here in the now which is salvation history. At any moment, he may suddenly pass judgement on the inner meaning which we give to our human existence – at every moment, whether we are aware of it or not, he is passing this judgement. In the letters of Saint Paul, there is also present this tension between the already and the not yet.

To-days’s gospel is a favourite text for so-called hellfire preachers, particularly among radical evangelical sects, some even nominally Catholic. They wallow in the apocalyptic signs and disasters, the movements of the sun, moon and stars, the clamour of the oceans, wars and nations in agony. These preachers move on to describe in lurid detail various aspects of human wickedness and sinful behaviour, debauchery and drunkenness featuring prominently in the catalogues of iniquity. The message is ‘repent or burn – in the meantime, this is our bank-account number.’ The effect is frequently to instil in listeners that perfect fear that drives out all love. Again, modern secular entertainment revels in horror, in violence, wars, even star-wars – revels to the point where many become deafened, insensitive, to true evil, to true horror. 

Looking at the first two readings this morning, there is no reek of sulphur, no glimmering of the flames of hell. Jeremiah promises the coming of a time of honesty and integrity, of salvation and confidence. But how the honesty and integrity, the salvation and the confidence that come from the knowledge of being saved come about, are indicated in the second reading from St Paul to the Thessalonians. 

Firstly, it is the Lord who makes us able to love and increases that love. He does this by loving us even before we are born. This is called grace. This grace makes us in our turn able to respond to this love and to allow our hearts to be strengthened, confirmed in holiness and thus able to love the whole human race. But, if grace comes first, our own efforts have to be added to it. St Paul urges us to make more and more progress in the kind of life we are meant to live. An important aspect of this life is remembering, in not forgetting – in remembering the good things God in Christ has done and is doing for us, remembering his promises, particularly in the great promise which is the Eucharist we celebrate, remembering the future he is calling us to. 

Elsewhere in his writings, Saint Paul refers to the Christian communities as the saints. As saved, loved and baptized we may be saints – this is the ’already’, but most of us have a long way to go to make this sanctity a living reality. In most of us, there is much of the ‘not yet’. To-day’s gospel is perfectly right, perfectly realistic, in calling for prayerful watchfulness, in reminding us of the reality and possibility of a coarsening of the heart which makes us forgetful of and eventually incapable of the one thing necessary. Christ has promised to be with us always – and he is. Christ has promised to come in glory at the end of time – and he will. But for many of us that end of time can be to-day, to-morrow, any minute now. For those who recognize its signs, this coming is and will be a liberation, a liberation looked forward to, a liberation lived towards with heads confidently held high.

O, after Christmas we’ll have no need to go searching 

For the difference that sets an old phrase burning- 

We’ll hear it in the whispered argument …

Wherever life pours ordinary plenty. 

Won’t we be rich, my love and I, and… 

God we shall not ask for reason’s payment… 

Nor analyse God’s breath in common statement. 

 

We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages 

Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour- 

And Christ comes with a January flower.

Abbot Columba McCann OSB.

Elections are in the air!  Getting elected President of the USA is quite a feat for anybody.  Think of the power and influence it brings!  But it only lasts for four years.  Then you have the Irish elections.  Who will win seats?  What kind of government?  How long will it last?  People in political office either retire while they are still ahead, or else they eventually get pushed out by their opponents.  

By way of contrast the book of Daniel describes this mysterious figure called the Son of Man, on whom is conferred kingship, and an eternal sovereignty, a sovereignty that will never pass away.  And the gospels apply this to Jesus himself. 

It doesn’t look that way when we see him in the gospel story, the prisoner standing there bound hand and foot in front of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor.  Not much of a king.  Unless his way of ruling is quite different, and that is in fact what Jesus himself says.

It reminds me of another election, not so long ago.  When one of the recent popes was elected, he appeared, as usual, on the balcony of St Peter’s in Rome.  One of the cardinals standing beside him was looking off into the distance.  Later on, someone asked him what was going through his mind as he stared off into the distance.  He replied, ‘I was looking across the city of Rome to the Palatine Hill, at the ruins of the palace of the Roman emperors.  I thought to myself:  their day is long over, but here am I standing beside the successor of Peter, the fisherman from Galilee…  Jesus has a sovereignty that shall not pass away.  

We have to admit that, over the centuries, some of his followers have departed from his methods, with disastrous results, using physical force to promote his message. But that is not the Jesus does things.  And he gave the same advice to his disciples when he sent them out on mission:  if they don’t accept you in one village, just go on to the next.  When some disciples walk out on Jesus, he says to Peter, do you want to go too?  Jesus doesn’t rule by force.

But the real question right here is not about Pontius Pilate, the Roman Empire, or world history.  The real question here and now is:  does the sovereignty of Jesus extend to me life?  Is he my mentor?  Is he the main influencer in my life?  Jesus says, ‘All who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.’  He won’t force his message on me.  But he offers me something that won’t topple the way everything else does.

Mentoring, life-coaching is recognised today as so valuable.  What if my life-coach, my mentor were the Son of Man, whose sovereignty  is eternal, who isn’t fazed by failure or setback.  What would it be like if my daily decisions were formed by him, referred to him, guided by him?  I might begin to experience some of his freedom, the kind of freedom he showed even as he stood there before the Roman governor.  Prefer nothing whatsoever to Christ, St Benedict says.  Listen to his voice, St Benedict says.  

Jesus says ‘All who are on the side of truth listen to my voice.’  Elsewhere he says ‘The truth will make you free.’

Fr Simon Sleeman OSB

Sometimes I wonder about God. Especially on days like this.  Maybe you do too. I wonder about the risk God took using words, language, and story, to tell us his truth.  Words can be so ambiguous and stories unclear.

He could have given us a cosmic fireworks display.

He could have used math, hard data, information, facts, geometry, algebra. Maths is the most precise, unambiguous language we have –  you can dismiss stories as kids stuff, but your sum is either right or wrong.

But No…God revealed himself through story and who am I to question the Holy Spirit’s genre of choice.

The truth is, that we are not a collection of facts or an assemblage of data  –  we are storied people; there is a narrative structure to our lives – a beginning,  middle and an end, characters, plot.

And here we are Sunday after Sunday, getting you to dress up, asking you  to sit on those hard benches, and do our best to tell you the story of God – creator of the universe. The greatest, vastest story ever told. The truth is, we probably don’t tell it very well or don’t even get it ourselves.

If a story is working well, it get’s you  into it…..doesn’t it? You are right in there…in a good novel or murder mystery, turning the pages when you should be turning out the light and going to sleep…

And here is the very weird thing that I have learnt preparing this sermon – God wants us in his story…and he has written the bestselling story of all time to get us into – 73 books with a huge cast of characters and many plots – and with a  beginning, a middle and the End.

Prophets.. major and minor

Gospels and letters

Parables and prophets

Psalms and prayers..

Not even Agatha Christie, with her 74 books or Shakespeare, have sold as many.

The truth is… God is not interested in us knowing the right things or doing the right things – he doesn’t want to be reduced to a nice idea or fine theology, or us tipping our hats to him at the weekend. He doesn’t want us on the side line, spectators at the match – he wants us on the field and for the full match.

He desperately wants us in his story – a love story.

So we can choose.

We can opt into God’s story, like Abraham, take the plunge, let go of control,  watching for the hints and nudges in the unfolding chapters of a life with God.   

We may opt out, go my own way – prefer the facts, the data, fold my life into a neat bundle of me… Give me the GPS co-ordinates if I am to go anywhere and enough food. Stick with geometry, algebra…

God’s story – a huge, vast love story.

He speaks…… revealing himself,

‘I love you’ he says.

You say, ‘Yes’ …and the plot thickens.

My story – small and cramped.

Facts, data, information. The plot weakens.

I speak

but how will I ever manage to say …‘I love you’…in algebra.

Fr. Henry O’Shea OSB.

Many years ago, when teaching a junior class about Frederick the Great of Prussia, I asked the group if anyone knew the meaning of the word ‘martinet’. One young man, a budding naturalist said, excitedly ‘Yes, yes, I know, it means a female pine-marten.’ The King of Prussia was indeed a martinet but not a pine-marten. Though, maybe he was a pine-marten in a figurative sense. Figurative does not automatically mean that a term is not truly applied.

Until a very few years ago, the words ‘Tick-tock’ meant only the sound of a clock – and even then, not of all clocks. Now TicToc, as part of social media, has become not only predominant in huge sections of the world’s population, but a necessity to the point of addiction.

Arguably, one of the effects of this dominance, as in most of the social media, has been a dumbing down of discourse, a flattening in our use of words, a narrowing down of meaning and possible meanings, a draining of our capacity to understand figures of speech, a limiting of our capacity to see, a contraction of our horizons. All that matter is now. History has been abolished along with joined-up writing.

In the opening sentence of his Rule, St Benedict asks us to ‘open the ears of our hearts’ to what he has to say. But many Tictocers might ask, ‘How can a heart have ears.’   

In today’s gospel, we hear that Jesus is allergic to the scribes with their minute knowledge of the Law and its 613 rules and regulations, swanning around in long robes and basking in public adulation and prominent in the front seats of the synagogues. Martinets. This insidious attitude of the knowers-better is a universal phenomenon, which has always been present, in every culture, in every religious, artistic- business- and political culture. It is particularly corrosive when linked to our relationship with God and to the way we relate to other people, that flows from how we see and treat God.

Christ’s great insight and change of emphasis lie in his placing of what is in the heart above outward conformity to rules, above any ticking of the boxes of conformity, above all superficiality of observation. ‘Heart’ means, that instrument and facility that is and can be in us, in me, that active combination of seeing, knowing, getting-it and loving, that engagement of our minds and our capacities for love.

This is why Jesus uses the example of the widow and her tiny monetary contribution to the treasury, pointing out that as a gift of her heart, this tiny sum vastly outweighs the lavish donations of those who, in their abundance, hardly miss what they give. The widow, gives her heart, which ultimately is all that the Lord is interested in. And she give that heart freely. She is not forced. Because the Lord respects her freedom and does not want to force anyone. 

The second reading tells us how Jesus can dare to upset the apple-carts of the know-alls, of the omnicompetent, the movers-and-shakers. But how can Jesus be such an influencer?

 In the evening office of Vespers in the Churches of the East, there is a beautiful hymn in praise of the Light, sung while the evening candles are being lit. The opening words are:

Hail gladsome light,

Of his pure glory poured,

Who is the eternal Father, heavenly blessed.

Holy of Holies, Jesus Christ, Our Lord.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us that Christ is the definitive appearance of the Father’s revelation of himself. Christ is the only and final sacrifice that perfects and puts an end for all time to all human sacrifices. In abolishing these sacrifices, he has abolished all human altars and temples and is himself the sacrifice, the altar, the temple, the only true priest. He is the definitive Holy of Holies. 

Not only does this Holy of Holies make possible and offers to us an end to sin, but by making us part of himself in Baptism and feeding us with himself in the Eucharist, gives us access to true worship with and in the only Holy of Holies. Our only real future.

The heart is the organ by which we recognise, through which we are inhabited and cling to this Holy of Holies, Christ Jesus himself. ‘Heart’ is a dynamic and energizing giving and receiving of our emotional and intellectual capacities in an eternal learning-curve.  This is the part of us that the Holy of Holies wants for himself – and that forever. 

This is why the widow of Sidon and the widow at the treasury are, literally, an eternity removed from the misguided know-alls who see only as those men and women see, for whom outward appearances and instant thrills are all that matter.

 

Hail gladsome light,

Of his pure glory poured,

Who is the eternal Father, heavenly blessed.

Holy of Holies, Jesus Christ, Our Lord.

 

  

 

      

Fr. William Fennelly OSB

Today’s readings devote a lot of attention to the act of listening. In that first reading from Deuteronomy we heard Moses address the stern injunction to his people. “ Listen the, Israel, keep and observe what will make you prosper and give you increase. For Israel the source of their power and increase was the covenant and their whole history had been the story of their living faithfully and in rupture with this core element of their identity as a people. But before the covenant can begin to give life to God’s chosen people they must listen. And Moses goes on “Sh’ma Yis’ra’eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.” Listen, Israel the Lord is our God and the Lord is one. The greatest dogmatic affirmation of the Jewish tradition is predicated on the necessity and by the necessity of listening. There is more at work here that the cry of an orator trying vainly to hold his audience’s attention. There is something more profound in question here. Jesus picks up on this in the gospel text from St Mark with his paraphrase when he says the most important commandment is “Listen Israel… you must love the Lord with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength”. Listening is the first thing that the Moses required of the people of Israel and Jesus as the fufilment of the Old Testament echoes this call. It is the same call that St Benedict uses to address his monks in the first words of his rule for monks “ausculta meii filii praecepti magistrii,” Listen my son to the precepts of the master. In other words be quiet, still your own torrent of words, turn your own inner cinema off, so that you can hear. Be attentive. This call has lost none of its relevance for us gathered here this evening. The challenge of removing distractions or trying to stop multitasking when something of consequence is being said or is taking place is no less difficult for us than it was for the people of Israel following Moses, or for those listening to Jesus and even for Benedict’s monks. Listening invites us into an act of imaginative empathy with the person who is speaking to us. We must be patient while we wait for them to speak and to stop speaking. And we must suspend our own personal judgment and prejudices so that we can actually be attentive to what’s being said. And indeed this rule applies not just to the act of listening but also to discernment or evaluating our lives. The text of our lives requires and the events that happen in them require a certain patient acesis in order to be understood or appreciated. It takes time to figure out what things mean and it takes patience to enable meaning to unfold, to manifest itself. When Jesus was transfigured on Mount Tabor he did not change but Peter, James and John when they gazed on him saw that he was filled with a radiance that they had not seen before.

Jesus says that once we have listened then the central act and truth in the life is love of God and love of neighbour. This is more important that any temple offering or material success or personal investment. But we do not dispense with liturgy just because the Temple is no longer the central element of Christian worship. The catholic imagination is deeply sacramental in that there is a very keen sense that all comes from God. And somehow everything bears an imprint of its divine origin. To speak of a sacramental vision means that we use words to speak of realities that are beyond words. Language cannot exhaust the depths of this reality. Food and drink will soon be used to express, to experience our unity with Christ and through him with each other. The whole of life is touched by this divine origin and so our Christian faith is not a merely spiritual or ethereal thing but it works itself out in our daily lives. And love is crucial here. The Latin anthem “Ubi caritas et amor deus ibi est” says it well where love is there is God.

Listening to the text of our lives and the word of God requires a patient and determined attention and the call is to live out this attention in a loving attention to the God we met in the neigbour, in the other, in our lives now.