Category: Abbey | Latest News

– 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.

Fr. Martin Browne OSB

When you look at the News these days, one of the first things you’ll see is people on the move. Refugees. Vast numbers of Ukrainians have had to flee their homeland over the past two weeks and we see images daily of huge crowds at airports and train stations, and long tailbacks on the roads towards the border. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated on Friday that 2.5 million people had fled Ukraine so far. It really has been quite something to witness how hospitable and generous so many people across Europe have been. It is also striking to see how swiftly bureaucratic and administrative obstacles can be overcome in the case of a real continent-wide emergency.

Those millions of people are surely lucky to be safe and away from the bombs and shooting. But that doesn’t take away the fact that they have been uprooted from their homes. They have left loved ones behind, in many cases not knowing whether they are dead or alive. Many have arrived in countries where they don’t understand the language and are being hosted by people with whom they cannot speak. Some have arrived without passports or other papers. People have been extraordinarily generous. But we shouldn’t get sentimental about what is a truly horrific situation. Being uprooted and forced to go somewhere where you don’t belong is real trauma – no matter how warm the céad mile fáilte may be.

I thought of these refugees as I read today’s Second Reading. ‘Our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.’ We may be uprooted and displaced, but at the deepest level, our true homeland is not of this world at all, but of heaven. St Paul is encouraging his audience with these words, bidding them to ‘stand firm’, in their faith that the Lord will indeed bring salvation. God’s ultimate plan is to transform and heal the entire creation and make it whole. It’s not hard to see how these words might touch the heart of a refugee, newly arrived in a strange country and culture, bewildered and without visa or passport. How consoling it must be to hear: ‘Our citizenship is in heaven’ – where the waters of baptism are the only visa needed.

But we need to be careful not to use these words as mere escapism. Simply telling people who have lost everything that all will be well in heaven is the type of attitude that caused Karl Marx to describe religion as the ‘opium of the people’; a kind of drug to dull the pain of the human condition – and stifle the impulse to rebel – with illusory consolations. As one satirical folk song puts it: ‘You will eat, bye and bye, in that glorious land above the sky. Work and pray, live on hay. You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.’

The disciples, Peter and John and James, had a wonderful, mystical experience in today’s Gospel story. They experienced Jesus in his ‘glory’, accompanied by Moses and Elijah. It was an extraordinary privilege. They didn’t have to wait till they died or for life in the sky in order to taste heaven. They had ‘pie’ on earth while they lived…
And so, understandably, Peter wanted to prolong the experience. He offered to build three dwellings, one each for Jesus, Moses and Elijah. But Jesus wasn’t interested in having a mountainside ‘glamping’ holiday. He was focused on his journey to Jerusalem and what the Gospel calls his ‘departure’. He had told the disciples this just eight days before: ‘The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.’ That is the ‘departure’ that he was talking to Moses and Elijah about: his Pascha – his Passover through death to life, his cosmic battle – and victory – over the forces of sin and death. It is the mystery we celebrate every Sunday and most especially at Easter. They had forgotten what Jesus had told them, but the Father reminded them. Like Moses on Mount Sinai, they were enveloped by a cloud, signifying the presence of the Almighty and Holy One. A voice from that cloud said: ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ This extraordinary moment of transfiguration on the mountain wasn’t a show or a treat for Jesus’s mates. It was a revelation and preparation of what was to come.

Just as the first Passover and Exodus had been the means by which God liberated and saved his people, the Passover of the Lord Jesus – his death on the Cross and his passing over from death into life – was how the Father willed to reconcile the whole world to himself and free us from death and sin. There would be suffering. There would be death. But the future would be one of transformed, reconciled, healed, freedom. It is something too beautiful for words, but the disciples were given a glimpse of it on the mountain as they saw the appearance of Jesus’s face changed and his clothes become dazzling white.
‘Then this world’s walls no longer stay my eyes, a veil is lifted likewise from my heart,
The moment holds me in its strange surprise, the gates of paradise are drawn apart,
I see his tree, with blossom on its bough, and nothing can be ordinary now.’ [Malcolm Guite]

‘Listen to him.’ ‘He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.’ ‘Listen to him.’ Our citizenship is indeed in heaven, and these aren’t just nice words to pacify refugees and other suffering people into accepting their lot with stoic resignation. It is not ‘pie in the sky’. It is the deepest truth of our identity as God’s people. After the Lord God revealed it to Peter and to John and James, ‘nothing can be ordinary now…’ What was revealed to them at the Transfiguration gives context and meaning to all the madness and absurdity of human suffering and sorrow. ‘Listen to him.’ Let’s not expect too little of what he can and will do. There is more to existence than the bodies in which we suffer now. Greater things await us, infinitely more glorious than what we know now. Death is not the final word. And neither are Terror or War. ‘Hope in him, hold firm and take heart. Hope in the Lord!’