Category: Abbey | Latest News

-Fr. Henry O’Shea OSB

In the early Church when the catechumenate was still a living reality, the weeks after Easter were used as a period of further instruction for those who had been baptized, confirmed and had received Communion for the first time at the Easter Vigil.

Baptism was regarded – and was often referred to – as the great illumination of mind and soul.   Along with the sealing with the Spirit in the chrismatization or confirmation and the reception of the Eucharist for the first time, it prepared the candidate for the further period of so-called mystagogy, or instruction in the mysteries into which she or he had been initiated.   The initiated soul was now considered capable of grasping the full implications of her or his initiation.

It is, I think, not untrue to say that we are now living in an environment in which any sense of baptismal initiation has largely evaporated. Baptism is for many a social rite of passage or, worse, an insurance against the time when a child needs to get a place in a local school.  Along with this evaporation comes an attenuated understanding of the Christian mysteries – a limited and limiting grasp of what faith in Jesus means and demands.

The liturgical texts that we pray and scripture readings to which we listen  celebrate and in meditate on the implications of initiation to the mysteries. This happens in every liturgical gathering of the faithful, but very markedly in the weeks after Easter and leading up to Pentecost.

All three of to-day’s readings are taken from the New Testament.   In the readings from the Acts of the Apostles, from the book of Revelation – also called the Apocalypse – and from the Gospel of John, the community of the new covenant indulges, as it were, in celebratory introspection on, or joyful examination of, its own beginnings.   As in all liturgy, the community reflects on how things were, on how they were intended to be and on both of these with a view to how they might, ought and still can be.

As in all liturgy, each of these readings has to a greater or less extent, three dimensions or aspects. The first aspect is historical, that is, it deals with where we came from, how and why. The second aspect is rather grandly called eschatological (which is a word derived from the Greek eschatos/ last or final) that is, where we are going and how and why we are going. The third aspect is existential, that is what we can do and be now, how and why we can do and be now in our present time.

The reading from the Acts of the Apostles depicts a community living with the dawning implications of faith in the resurrection. But this is a community still feeling its way. Peter and the apostles are still coming to terms with what they had experienced. The consequences of this coming-to-terms are immediately recognised by the Jewish religious establishment as dangerous, as a threat to the regime. And the Roman occupying forces are always there in the background.

The book of the Apocalypse or the Book of Revelation is a book of which we tend to be nervous.  Its language is too redolent of mystery, mystery in the non-liturgical meaning of the word, that is, something not understood, even a fairly-tale.   That is partly the point, partly the intention, of the book.   This book tries to describe a reality beyond words, a reality before and beyond and after time. So language is strained. The limits of language are stretched.  The Book of Revelation tries to put into words who and what Jesus Christ is and was and who and what those who believe in him are and can become.   It tries to put this hope, this life, into words.

From this attempt comes the time-out-of-time image of the throngs of thousands of angels, animals and elders around the Throne of God. From this desire to go beyond language, is the shout, the proclamation, of the reality of who the Lamb, the risen Jesus, is: ‘the one who was sacrificed and worthy to be given power, riches, wisdom, strength, honour, glory and blessing.’

Crucially, this gathering around the Throne of God and this proclamation are not confined to the heavenly throngs. All of creation is included in this cosmic vision; past, present and future – including ourselves and especially the throngs of the baptised. Along with the four animals, representing the four Evangelists we see on the panel at the front of our altar; along with the elders in the reading, we are called to prostrate ourselves, to worship and to proclaim.

In all preaching, there is a danger of succumbing to the lure of words, of being seduced by word-play or by bad poetry. Today’s gospel puts us right.

Saint John tells us that Jesus really rose from the dead. Ghosts do not eat bread and fish. Ghosts do not eat at all. Such is the bewilderment of the disciples that they still cannot quite grasp that they are dealing with the risen Lord. They want to believe –  but cannot quite make the leap. They remind us of ourselves.

John tells us that the disciple whom Jesus loved – most likely John himself – says to Peter, ‘It is the Lord.’

Then, everything falls into place. The large catch of fish after an unsuccessful night – but now 153 caught in obedience to Jesus’ instructions to try again. The seemingly senseless number of 153 is used to show the concreteness, the reality of the catch; the breakfast of bread and fish showing that the Jesus eating with them is truly risen.

But, Jesus does not stop, is not satisfied with spectacle. Jesus is not about show or conjuring tricks. He pushes on to ask Peter – the very one who so recently denied him – ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ Jesus is asking Peter, as he asks us, ‘Have you moved on from knowing about me, to knowing me?’ ‘Have you moved, are you moving on, from knowing to loving. Have you moved, are you moving to knowing by loving, so that you can know and love yourself, so that you can become your real self and in so doing, catch followers for me and feed and serve them as I have fed and served you?’

We can believe in, even occasionally catch a glimpse of, the Throne of the Lamb. We can confess, proclaim and worship the Lamb. That Lamb, Jesus, the risen Lord, wants this and makes it possible, but also wants and makes it possible for us to live out this confession, this proclamation, this worship in the concrete here and now.

‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’

Fr. Senan Furlong O.S.B.

On the occasion of the first Mass of Fr Jarosław Kurek O.S.B.

Throughout the long sweep of Christian history, today, the Sunday that concludes the great Octave of Easter, has been known by many names.  It is Low Sunday: ‘low’ perhaps being in contrast to the ‘high’ feast of Easter Day, but more likely coming from Laudes, the first word of a sequence sung on this day, Laudes Salvatori: Let us sing praises to the Saviour.  It is also White Sunday, Dominica in albis, because on this day those who had been baptised during the Easter Vigil put aside their white baptismal robes which they had worn for the entire Octave.  In the Middle Ages it was known as Quasimodo Sunday on account of the opening words of the entrance chant that we sang earlier: Like new-born babes, long for the pure spiritual milk.  Finally, and more recently it has become known as Divine Mercy Sunday, because today marks the conclusion of the Divine Mercy Novena, a devotion originating in Our Lord’s revelations to St. Faustina. Today, Jarek, as we conclude this eight day celebration of Easter — a day whose different names inspire praise, joy for the gift of baptism, new birth, trust in God’s merciful love  —  you offer your first Mass.  You celebrate it in the midst of the assembly of the faithful, with your family, your confreres and your friends, here in this Abbey church of Ss Joseph and Columba at Glenstal where God in his divine mercy has willed that you pitch your tent.

As a priest, Jarek, it is your privilege — for privilege indeed it is — to preside at the celebration of the Eucharist, to lead the people of God in this timeless celebration of the mysteries of Christ.  It is your privilege to preside over the Liturgy of the Word: God’s revelation to his people.  It is your privilege, in the name of the Church, to stand at the altar of God as earth unites with heaven in this great act of thanksgiving and praise.

To understand what all this means we need only think of the scene portrayed in today’s gospel. The disciples are gathered in the upper room, behind closed doors, on the day of resurrection. The Risen Lord, still bearing his wounds, comes and stands among them. He speaks a word of peace, shalom, a word of tender mercy that banishes fear. The disciples see, they can even touch the risen Lord. The same risen Lord comes and stands in the midst of his Church, age to age, even to this day whenever two or three are gathered in his name. Here, now, he stands among us, despite the closed doors of our fears and doubts.  And what we celebrate is the very icon of heaven.  It reveals the face of God to us.

To lead God’s people in prayer, Jarek, you must adopt the attitude of Christ himself: the one who serves, who humbles himself, who bends down and washes the disciples’ feet; something, which as a monk, you also learn from the daily worship of God in choir and from your life in community. As a monk-priest you are called to serve your brethren and all those who draw life from this place, bearing their griefs, carrying their sorrows, sharing their joys. The more you do this, the more perfectly you will be conformed to Christ himself who came to serve, not to be served.

St Benedict, as you know, is somewhat ambivalent about the presence of priests in a monastic community, though not near as harsh as he is about the prior.  Benedict’s reservations spring from the fact that priests sometimes get notions about themselves. But it is also clear that Benedict has a tremendous respect for the priesthood. For like all the sacraments, the priesthood is one of God’s great gifts to his people, a treasure contained in frail earthenware vessels.  Echoing St Cyprian’s admonition to the confessors of his day who in time of persecution showed great courage but in time of peace were proving difficult, Benedict urges the ‘frail vessel’, the monk chosen to exercise the priesthood, to “make more and more progress toward God”. His words resonate with those spoken by the archbishop when he presented you, Jarek, with the bread and wine brought to the altar by Witek and Mirka: “Accept from the holy people of God the gifts to be offered to him.  Know what you are doing, and imitate the mystery you celebrate: model your life on the mystery of the Lord’s cross.”

When the Risen Lord appeared to the disciples in the closed room he breathed on them the breath of God, the Spiritus Sanctus, the Holy Spirit that enlivens the whole world. Jesus has breathed into each of us the Holy Spirit that we might become to the world we live in a bearer of mercy.  That is the vocation of all the baptised. That is the heart of being a priest.  To paraphrase the core of St Faustina’s message and mission: Breathe into your world what the risen Christ has breathed into you, which is divine mercy. May this message and mission resound and reside in your heart, Jarek, and may you become like Christ, your master, a living spring of mercy, flowing out into an arid world, a world hungering and thirsting for God.  Ad multos annos.

Fr. Christopher Dillon OSB

Against the backdrop of the war in Eastern Europe, it seems almost obscene to shout, “Alleluia”, as Christians of the Western tradition are doing today. But the fact that we are doing so is itself an indication of the overwhelming importance of the day. After the solemn liturgical celebration of these past three days, during which we have marked, scene by scene, the drama of our being bought back from destruction at the price of God’s blood, if we can say that of the blood of Jesus Christ, we cannot withhold our rejoicing at the achievement of Jesus’ resurrection. We are celebrating nothing less than the defeat of death. From the moment of Jesus’ “return to the Father”, by means of his death, the phenomenon of death for all humankind has been changed irrevocably. Thenceforth, death is no more than the point of graduation from this temporal human manner of being to the fulness of life in God, however that is to be understood. This is the heart of the Good News of Christianity, the goal of the Incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth.

In our world of alternative facts, fake news and disinformation, you may well ask what it means to make this assertion of the resurrection of Jesus from death. It is a critical question and one that needs both to be asked and to be answered. Is the testimony of the self-styled “eye-witnesses” which we heard in the first reading sufficiently compelling? “We have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead – and he has ordered us to proclaim this.” But what does “resurrection” mean? Read for yourselves the various accounts of the resurrected appearances of Jesus, in the different Gospels. Jesus’ rising was clearly not a raising from the death, as Lazarus had been raised, only to die again, at some later date. This was/is a physical rising from death, which allowed for eating and drinking; but also for appearing and disappearing, for a manner of being which exceeds our normal experience and description.

This testimony, we are told, was supported by the working of miracles and manifest heroism of those witnesses in martyrdom, later on. All of us here have been brought up to believe this testimony and to live accordingly, in the community of believers which we call the church. But, do we believe it? And if we do, how does our believing affect the way we live our lives, if at all?

These are questions which deserve responsible enquiry by every one of us. Indeed, the credibility and the future of the church in the West depends on the quality of our engagement with them.

The synodal process on which we are struggling to embark offers an obvious opportunity to address them and the many other matters which follow from them. We need to inform ourselves of the real issues in the community of believers, men and women – more women than men, don’t forget – and to hold our leaders in the church to account both in what they teach and in how they live.

All this makes us an Easter people, involving engagement and hard work, but always in the certain knowledge that the Spirit of God which Jesus breathed into the world is with and within us. We have good news to share and good news to live by: Christ is risen, Alleluia!

– Fr. Abbot Brendan Coffey OSB

We have just heard the beginning of the resurrection story; a narrative which is both shocking and amazing. One of the things that makes these accounts so believable is that sense of unexpectedness. The disciples arrive at the empty tomb never having really believed that Jesus would return from death, and now they find themselves in a disturbing new world where anything is possible; and so bright is the light of this new Easter morning that even the familiar face of Jesus is unrecognizable. And so, ‘My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.’

The women at the tomb, the apostles, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, all experienced something terribly traumatic. Thomas was not the only one who doubted. The resurrection accounts are full of people getting it wrong. In fact this is one of the few details that all the gospels actually agree on. Mary thinks Jesus’ body was stolen. Peter sees the linen wrappings and has no idea what they mean. The disciples failed to understand the scriptures or what was really going on. Even after the angels message to the women they were still confused and unconvincing and so the apostles thought their story pure nonsense. You could hardly get more misunderstandings into a couple of pages if you tried. The simple fact is that our minds and our imaginations are far too small to contain the vastness of the mystery of the resurrection. This is why we still descend into jealousy, war, vengeance and so on.

Did you ever wonder what it was like for those first few hours after the empty tomb had been found and Mary of Magdala, the apostle to the apostles, delivered her message? There must have been great uncertainty, half hope and much terror; which of us would really rejoice at the prospect of a miracle that would make us rethink most of what we had taken for granted? Then into that chaos steps a figure before whose face ‘the questions fade away’. Tonight Raffi, you will be baptised into this mystery, sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit and feast on the bread of angels. You are about to meet the Risen Lord, before whose face ‘the questions fade away’. The world is even more dangerous and strange than before, the future is now quite unimaginable; but there is nothing that can alter the sheer effect of his presence.

How can I experience the presence of the Risen One in a world so full of atrocity and injustice? Yet people in the most extraordinary situations have witnessed to this presence. We might well remember some of them tonight – the people caught up in the war in Ukraine, Christians facing threats and attacks for their faith in different parts of the world; please pray for and think of them. Sometimes people in such situations feel his presence in the middle of what they endure. They feel an overwhelming sense of being where they should be, being rooted in the moment in a way that doesn’t at all blur your honesty about what’s there in front of your eyes but gives you what you need to sit in the presence of horror and grief and live – and so once again, hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.

On Easter morning, it is as if ‘the fountains of the great deep’ are broken open, and we are allowed to see through this darkness, like Peter and John at the empty tomb, and glimpse for a moment the light of Easter. So now we open the fountain of life, the womb of the Church, and admit Raffi into this great mystery.

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! (Khristós Anésti! Alithós Anésti!) Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

The Lord has truly Risen, Alleluia!

After an absence of two years we were able to welcome guests and visitors back to Glenstal for the celebration of the Easter Triduum. These intense days, when we celebrate the Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Saviour, are the most important days of the year.

We remember all those who celebrated Easter with us down the years and are no longer with us. We particularly remember those who went to their eternal reward during the Covid pandemic and pray for their grieving families. We give thanks that we are now able to celebrate these great mysteries together once more and for all the solidarity and kindness we received over the last two years, particularly from our health care professionals.

We also pray in a very special way this year for our brothers and sisters in Ukraine. We pray for an end to this terrible war. We pray for peace, for justice, for compassion and humanity. We pray that the victory of Christ over sin and death will give strength and courage to all who are suffering, who have lost loved ones, who have been driven from their homes and separated from their families. We pray that the presence of the Risen Lord will soften the hearts of those who make war and that this great offence against God will swiftly come to an end.

May the peace and joy of our Risen Saviour be with all of you and those you love. Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

Brendan Coffey OSB

Abbot of Glenstal

Fr. Abbot Brendan Coffey OSB

“The hour has come,” Jesus rises from the table, removes his outer garment, fills a basin with water and begins to wash the feet of his disciples. This is lost on us, until we realise that it was a great courtesy in the ancient world for a slave to meet people at the door and wash their feet. After this washing the lord of the house would come out and put perfume on their hair to make them feel truly welcome. It was a lovely gesture.

The only trouble here is that when Jesus knelt down to wash the disciples’ feet everyone in the room became very quiet, because they felt ashamed. Their Lord and master is doing this and they know that he’s not acting, because Jesus only dealt in truth. And there he was, kneeling before them, washing their feet.

And so Peter says, “You’re not going to wash my feet.” “If I cannot wash your feet, you can have nothing to do with me” said Jesus. Why would Jesus say something like that? He was saying, “If you do not let me wash your feet, you will never understand who I am, you will never understand why I came, you will never understand your own destiny.”

Jesus teaches us, you either love or you do not love, and, if you love, you wash feet. We either live in the history of this world or we’re not really living at all. If we think that we can measure everything, that we can control everything, that we can do all things without an aura of mystery in our lives, we’re deluded. The world is a messy place, where lots of jarring notes are found, war, famine, injustice; the great mystery, life, confounds us. Washing feet helps makes sense of it all. How can we ever hope to make sense of something as awful as the war in Ukraine without it? How are we to react to something like this as Christians, without this example from Jesus at the Last Supper? Only in the realm of mystery is it possible to find answers and adequate responses to so many of life’s most difficult challenges.

An itinerant preacher who has nothing to give, understands and teaches us that we have nothing to give. Our money is not important. Speaking fine words is not important. Social standing, or power, are not important. The only important thing is that we are learning how to love. This is the beginning of the mystery of Holy Week. For it is love that is the secret of wisdom. And the one who loves, understands truth. And the one who loves, understands the meaning of things. Without this fundamental example from our Lord and Master we would have no response to give to the most pressing problems of life. “I have given you an example”, we need to pay attention.

Fr. Denis Hooper OSB

IF YOU GOOGLE APRIL 3^RD YOU WILL DISCOVER THAT IT IS “WORLD PARTY DAY” – WHATEVER THAT MEANS.

TODAY IS THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT. TO MARK THE SEASON OF LENT IN THE SCHOOL WE HAVE HAD ONE PENETENTIAL SERVICE ON FRIDAY AND TWO MORE ARE PLANNED FOR NEXT WEEK. THIS IS A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY FOR THE STUDENTS HERE IN GLENTSTAL ABBEY SCHOOL.

THROUGHOUT THE NEW TESTAMENT PEOPLE COME TO JESUS TO BE HEALED AND TO HEAR WHAT HE HAS TO SAY.

IN TODAY’S GOSPEL THE LADY CAUGHT IN ADULTERY NEITHER WANTS TO HEAR WHAT JESUS HAS TO SAY NOR DOES SHE WANT TO BE HEALED.

SHE HAS OTHER THINGS ON HER MIND, MOST PRESSINGLY FOR HER IS THAT SHE IS ABOUT TO BE EXECUTED BY STONING – AND I AM SURE THAT SORT OF THING TENDS TO FOCUS THE MIND AWAY FROM THINGS LIKE LISTENING OR HEALING.

INTERESTINGLY, HER PARTNER IN THE CRIME OF ADULTERY IS NOT PRESENT. ONLY SHE IS HERE TO PAY FOR THE CRIME. WHAT HAPPENENED TO HIM I WONDER?

THINK OF HER SHAME AT BEING QUOTE – “CAUGHT IN THE VERY ACT OF ADULTRY” – THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT SHE IS GUILTY. THERE IS NO DOUBT IN THE EYES OF THE SCRIBES AND PHARASIEES SHE HAS TO PAY FOR THIS CRIME WITH HER LIFE.

SO, SHE IS DRAGGED BEFORE JESUS BY THE SAME RIGHTEOUS SCRIBES AND PHARASEES. THEY ARE CERTAIN THAT THIS TIME JESUS CANNOT WRIGGLE HIS WAY OUT OF THIS ONE. SHE IS GUILTY AND THE LAW SAYS SHE MUST BE PUNISHED BY STONING TO DEATH. THIS IS A METHEOD OF EXECUTION BY THE WAY WHICH IS STILL PRACTICED IN PARTS OF THE WORLD TODAY.

INSTEAD OF RATIFYING WHAT IS THE LAW OF THE JEWISH AUTHORITIES, JESUS STARTS QUESTIONING THE WOMAN’S ACCUSERS. THERE IS NO NEED FOR ME TO REPEAT THE STORY, IF YOU WERE LISTENING TO THE GOSPEL YOU WILL REMEMBER THAT JESUS SAYS TO THE MEN WHO INTENDED TO EXECUTE THE WOMAN:

“LET HE WHO IS WITHOUT SIN CAST THE FIRST STONE”

I HAVE TWO FRIENDS WHO ARE BROTHERS. THEY ARE NOW IN THEIR MID 50’S. THEY WERE VERY CLOSE GROWING UP BUT AS IS USUAL THEY DRIFTED APART AS THEY GOT OLDER. FAMILY LIFE CALLED ON BOTH OF THEM TO GIVE ALL THAT THEY HAD TO MAINTAIN AND PROVIDE FOR THEIR FAMILIES. SO, AS THE YEARS PASSED THEY DRIFTED MORE AND MORE APART.

SO AT ONE OF THESE FAMILY OCCASIONS, THE TWO BROTHERS DECIDED TO GO ON A SORT OF BONDING HOLIDAY AND PRILGRIMAGE TO ITALY.

WHEN THEY WERE IN ROME THEY WENT INTO ST PETERS BASILICA. SOME OF OUR FIFTH YEARS VISITED THE BASILICA RECENTLY.

WHEN THEY WERE IN ST PETERS, ONE OF THE BROTHERS FELT AN URGENT NEED TO GO TO CONFESSION. HE HADN’T BEEN TO CONFESSION FOR OVER 25 YEARS BUT HE HAD THIS OVERWHELMING DESIRE TO GO. HE WENT IN TO ONE OF THE CONFESSIONAL BOXES. HE WAS ONLY THERE A MINUTE WHEN THE PRIEST TOLD HIM HE DIDN’T CONSIDER HE WAS MAKING A GENUINE CONFESSION. THAT HE WAS USING CONFESSION AS PART OF HIS LIST OF THE THINGS TO DO IN WHILE BEING A TOURIST IN ROME.

AT THIS MY FRIEND WAS SO UPSET THAT HE LEFT THE CONFESSIONAL. WHEN HE TOLD HIS BROTHER WHAT HAD HAPPENED  – HIS BROTHER IN TURN CONFRONTED THE PRIEST AND IT WAS THEN THAT THINGS GOT QUITE HEATED.

AT THIS STAGE A YOUNG PRIEST EMERGED FROM A NEARBY CONFESSIONAL AND THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT WAS THAT THE YOUNGER MAN APOLOGISED FOR THE OLDER PRIEST’S BEHAVIOUR. HE HEARD MY FRIEND’S CONFESSION AND ALL WAS WELL. WELL SORT OF.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE IN THE WAY JESUS TREATS THE WOMAN IN TODAY’S GOSPEL THAN THE WAY MY FRIEND WAS TREATED BY THAT PRIEST.

JESUS DOES NOT JUDGE OR CONDEMN HER.

BUT HE DOESN’T JUST LEAVE IT AT THAT. HIS FINAL WORDS TO HER ARE:

“GO AND FROM NOW ON SIN NO MORE”

THAT IS THE GREAT CHALLENGE FOR ALL OF US – TO SIN NO MORE.

THIS STORY IN TODAY’S GOSPEL FOR ME IS THE GREATEST ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE SACRAMENT OF CONFESSION.

JESUS HAS LEFT US THIS SACRAMENT SO THAT IF AND WHEN WE DO SIN JESUS DOES INDEED FORGIVE US OUR TRANSGRESSIONS AND ENTREATS US ALWAYS “TO SIN NO MORE”.

CONFESSION IS SUCH A WONDERFUL GIFT FROM GOD AND WHEN WE CONFESS OUR SINS WE ARE GIVEN A GRACE AND EVEN A JOY WITHOUT COMPARE.

Fr. Patrick Hederman

Somebody decreed that we lose an hour’s sleep last night and we all agreed. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here. We’d still be in bed. So, this morning in this church we are all suffering from DST.

DST is the acronym for Daylight Saving Time, a fairly recent invention of the British government. It was first proposed in 1907 by William Willet, an English builder and outdoorsman who, during a pre-breakfast horseback ride, was dismayed to see so many Londoners sleeping through the best part of the summer’s day. An avid golfer, he disliked cutting short his round of golf at dusk, so he published a pamphlet called The Waste of Daylight. He had two bills introduced to the British Parliament; both were rejected and he died of influenza, at the age of 58, in 1915.

Winston Churchill backed his scheme as early as 1911in a speech in parliament: ‘An extra yawn some morning in the spring, an extra snooze some night in the autumn, is all we ask in return for the most dazzling benefits.’ In 1916, when Britain and Germany were at war, Germany first decided to try Willett’s scheme to save fuel costs for lighting. A few weeks later, Britain hurriedly passed the Summer Time Act, and so, on May 21^st 1916, almost a month after our Easter Rising here, Britain’s Summer Time became a reality. In Ballingarry, Co Limerick, where I come from, we refused to put our clocks backwards or forwards. We stuck to what we called ‘God’s time’ which meant that we were an hour behind everyone else. We believed that by sticking to God’s own time we would reap ‘the most dazzling benefits’ of quite another kind.

Christianity has devised an alternative calendar year, a different way of living time. Three weeks from now, Sunday the 17^th April, is D-Day in that computation. If you look up google you will find that this all-important day is listed as National Espresso Day in Italy if your interest is in concentrated coffee; as National Haiku Poetry Day in Japan if you’re into concentrated poems; and as Bat Appreciation Day in the United States: to raise awareness of the critical role that bats play in our ecosystem.

For us, on the contrary, three weeks from today, Sunday the 17^th April, is the most important day of the whole year: it is the day of resurrection, the day when Jesus Christ transformed the whole of our ecosystem. He introduced daylight saving time forever and ever. From now on ‘They will need neither lamplight nor sunlight, because the Lord God will be shining on them forever.’[1]  Saint Paul assured us in today’s second reading:[2] ‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!’ Again he tells us in the Epistle to the Romans: ‘If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.’[3] This is Daylight saving time by the new time, by God’s time; and you have three weeks left, during this special time of Lent, to prepare yourself for take-off.

God, thou great symmetry
Who put a biting lust in me
From whence my sorrows spring,
For all the frittered days
That I have spent in shapeless ways
Give me one perfect thing.[4]

[1] Revelation, 22:5.

[2] Corinthians, 5:17.

[3] Romans 10:9.

[4] ‘Envoi’ by Anna Wickham.

Fr. Christopher Dillon OSB

There is a riot of ideas competing for attention in these readings for this Third Sunday of Lent. The over-all context of Lent focuses on the notion of life as a journey, during which we learn to encounter God in the positives and the negatives of that journey. Today, the initial and startling encounter with God by Moses sets the scene for this journey and its adventure, in terms which have been described as the struggle between tragedy and hope, fighting each other without victory. Is this not a description of the current catastrophe which is Ukraine?

Some of you may remember that trendy book of the Self Help variety, some years ago, entitled The Road Less Travelled by Scott Peck; and it began, if I remember well, with the lapidary statement, “Life is difficult”. The theme of today’s liturgy would seem to be visiting the same territory. That encounter of Moses with God in the Burning Bush turned his life on its head and perhaps defined the beginning of the rest of human history in bringing to birth the Hebrew people and the story of the Jews who gave birth to the Saviour of the world, in Jesus of Nazareth.

One of the foremost teachers of that people, Paul of Tarsus, with very specific reference to those early adventures of his people, as they emerged from servitude in Egypt to peoplehood in the desert and then in the Promised Land, elaborates on the inevitability of difficulty and the very real possibility of failure on the circuitous journey that we experience as life. His words for today conclude with that caution, “The one who thinks he is safe must be careful that he does not fall.”

But, critically, the Gospel piece from St Luke provides a backdrop of positivity and hope. The fruitless fig tree in the parable may be taken to represent all the negativity of failure, whether in our collective or in our personal history. And, while the business-like course of action might be to cut it down and start again with a new tree, Jesus seems to ascribe to the Father the very un-business-like approach of working with it just one more time, for one more year. Divine patience is what is offered to us as a recipe to consider in our individual and personal story. Dare we hope for something like this in Eastern Europe, today?

St Benedict, the patron of our monastic life, appears to make much of this possibility in the mind of God, when he writes in the Prologue to his Rule, “The days of our life are lengthened and a respite allowed us for this very reason, that we may amend our evil ways. For the Apostle says, ‘Do you not know that the patience of God invites you to repentence?’ For the merciful Lord says, ‘I do not want the death of a sinner, but that he be converted and live.’” Vladimir Putin, are you listening? More immediately, perhaps, are we listening to this invitation of God, at this mid-point in Lent, to welcome his patience and to work with it? That is our task, in the amending of our ways; even in the extending to others God’s patience with ourselves. “For the one who thinks he is safe must be careful that he does not fall.”

Yes, life is difficult; sometimes, very difficult. But so, too, God is patient, very patient.