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Fr. Abbot Brendan Coffey

C.S. Lewis wrote a Christmas essay about the fictional island of Niatirb – Britain spelled backwards, where every citizen is obliged to send to each of their friends and relations a square piece of card stamped with a picture. Finding cards from someone to whom they also have sent cards, they throw them away and give thanks that this labour is over for another year. Finding cards from someone to whom they have not sent, they beat their breasts and wail and utter curses against the sender; and, having sufficiently lamented their misfortune, they put on their boots again and go out into the fog and rain and buy a card for them also. Sound familiar? Is this really, what Christmas has become?

Nothing, however, says Christmas in this part of the world like Charles Dickens. He has shaped many of our Christmas traditions with his stories. These dominate the Christmas Season even today and first among them is undoubtedly the heart-warming tale, A Christmas Carol. From Tiny Tim to Ebenezer Scrooge, this story has captured our attention like no other.

Ebenezer Scrooge is a central protagonist in this tale, but who, or what, is an ebenezer? Did you know that the word “ebenezer” comes from the First Book of Samuel? The Philistines had stolen the Ark of the Covenant. The country was in disarray. It was then the people turned their hearts back to the Lord. Samuel set up a stone and named it “Ebenezer” meaning, “the Lord has helped us”.

An ebenezer is a memorial of God’s faithfulness and our repentance. The stone is a marker for transformation and conversion and this is exactly what Ebenezer Scrooge becomes in Dicken’s story. 

Gregory of Nazianzus tells us that instead of garlanding our porticoes and titillate our taste-buds, we should luxuriate in the word and in the law and narratives of God. So for a moment let us do just that.

When human history is complete and the last books are written, one of the saddest lines in all of that history will be this one: “there was no place for them in the inn”. How strange and how very sad that God simply doesn’t fit into our world and yet on this holy night his favour rests on each of us, on our communities and families and on all who suffer and feel afraid. Mary and Joseph, for whom there was no room, are the first to embrace the One who comes to give all of us our document of citizenship, for this night the Lord has truly come to help us. God has set up his own ebenezer.

Our gospel tells of a world thrown into turmoil for a census: but what Augustus and no one else realised was that this turmoil had the hand of God behind it. A virgin named Mary, betrothed to Joseph of the house of David, arrived in Bethlehem, the city of David for the census, “while they were there, the time came for her to have her child and she gave birth to a son, her firstborn.” It is all said so simply, just one sentence, and indeed that was how it seemed to everyone at the time too.

In Bethlehem, a small chink opens up for all who have lost their way, their land, their country and their dreams. Once in our world, a Stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world. God could, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of great power. He chose instead to be incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth who wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane. The faith we proclaim tonight makes us see God present in all those situations where we think he is absent, for God has come to help us.

All of the trappings of this Christmas Season are only significant insofar as they are “ebenezers.” They are important because they mark a change and remind us of the change that is happening now and that is still to come; for I too am called to become an Ebenezer, “O Christian be aware of your nobility, it is God’s own nature that you share.”

 

 

 

 

As Christmas approaches we chant here Psalm 110 with the antiphon “Jerusalem, rejoice with great joy, for the Saviour will come to you, alleluia!”  📖🎼 

O God, you are my God, for you I long…” 🎶📖 

Fr. William Fennelly

Today we celebrate the third Sunday of Advent, also called ‘Gaudete Sunday.’ It’s called ‘Gaudete Sunday’ because it takes its name from the first word of the entrance antiphon meaning rejoice. So we’re supposed to rejoice today, to be happy, but why? Advent as a whole is about expecting and preparing, hoping and working. That expectation and preparation; however, has a twofold character: expectation and preparation for the coming of Christ at Christmas, his birth; but also expectation and preparation for the second coming of Christ at the end of the world, the end of time. So during Advent we’re not just looking towards Christmas, but we’re also looking beyond that to Christ’s second coming at the end of time. And whilst the best way to try and prepare ourselves during Advent for these events is to pray earnestly that Christ will indeed come, to pray that we will repent and change our way of seeing, nevertheless on Gaudete Sunday we take a step back from that earnest atmosphere, so we can allow ourselves to experience that joy and gladness which Christ’s coming holds out to us. Our preparing has a joyful quality because of what is to come but also because the joy of that coming transforms our daily round. But what is it that we are rejoicing about and why should it make us happy?

Today’s gospel uses the contrast between Our Lord and John the Baptist to help us understand what is going on. To begin with, they both had a long history together, going right back to their childhood. Their relationship, therefore, was neither casual nor insignificant; it was deep rooted. So when Mary discovered her friend Elizabeth was pregnant she came to visit Elizabeth to offer her support. That decision to offer support, however, led to the occasion of an even more important event, the first meeting of Our Lord and John the Baptist. The God of Israel left the temple to dwell in Mary’s womb. By this act he forever changed God’s relationship with the flesh, with our humanity. He doesn’t just draw near; he inhabits our world as one of us. This was why John, as he experienced the presence of the Lord in the womb of Mary for the first time, he famously leapt for joy in the womb of his own mother, Elizabeth and so began the relationship between these two as John realised all the good work that the Lord would do.

John’s own contribution to that work is in no way minor or lesser. He represented a culmination of all that was good in Israel. He represented the culmination of prophecy in Israel. He called Israel to repentance. He called Israel to change their way of seeing and as we can see in the gospel that he pleaded Israel to change their behaviour. He insisted that people should be just, honest, and generous. But, as important as all that John did, was; moral goodness alone, which effectively was what John, preached, couldn’t and wouldn’t change the world. There is no shortage of morally good people who can testify to this. Moral goodness alone, for all its value and importance, won’t free us from our sin and it certainly can’t earn us eternal life with God. For that to be possible something more is needed and that’s what Our Lord offered through his life, death, and resurrection. This great torrent of grace, this great torrent of his gift to the world, what does he give? He gives his love at work in the world.  That’s what unleashed by Our Lord’s sacrifice, it perfects our moral life, it raises up our human nature, and it makes possible eternal life with God.

And if this doesn’t make us happy, then what will. Because after all the point of Christ’s coming is to renew the world, that is to say to give us newness of life and this renewal won’t just be in some modest or slight way. It won’t be the sort of thing we have in mind when we say, ‘well, things could be better’. No, when we focus on the ultimate point of Christ’s coming and allow ourselves to rest contentedly in the joy that this can let loose in us, then we will realise that what’s envisaged here is a fundamental change that will overthrow the shackles of our own inadequacies, the sticky molasses of our power plays and our petty rivalries, the effects of sin; in ourselves and in the world and after this change nothing will ever be the same again. No one will need ever to wish that things could be better for them in any way at all. Everything will be as God always intended things should to be and all of us will be better for that.

So today then let’s pray for the coming of Our Lord. Let’s immerse ourselves in the joy that this gives rise to and let this be our springboard to ever better discipleship and together let’s work to build the kingdom that is to come. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The monks of Glenstal Abbey chant Psalm 112 with the Advent antiphon ‘Ecce veniet propheta magnus et ipse renovabit Jerusalem, alleluia’ 📖🎶

Fr. Mark Patrick Hederman

John Cage, the American composer tried to change our attitude to music. He was ‘a voice crying in the wilderness.’ Probably his most famous piece 4 33 has musicians coming on stage as if to play music, and then sitting with instruments raised, doing nothing for four  minutes, thirty-three seconds. This was not meant to be four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence, in his view, but an invitation to the audience to hear the real music happening around them. The  sound of a lawn-mower outside the window, laughter from another room, someone sneezing in the audience. Music, according to Cage, should not be an attempt to make our ugly world seem more lovely. Music should be a way of waking us up to the very life we’re supposed to live. Listen to the cries of  the 60 million refugees in our world today, the families of those drowned trying to cross the Channel between England and France, the starving people of Syria and Afghanistan. Then you  can  eat your turkey and sing Happy Christmas.

  Peggy Guggenheim, his friend, was having none of this. John Cage was a sourpuss killjoy according to her. She  brought him to hear some real music, to shake him out of his lawn mowers and belching cattle outside the window. A Christmas performance  of Handel’s Messiah was where they went. ‘Well john, wasn’t that wonderful? Didn’t you just love the Alleluia chorus, weren’t you moved?’ I don’t mind being moved, he replied, but I hate being shoved!’

We should not allow ourselves to be shoved into Christmas. When I tell you that there are only 21 shopping days left to Christmas, do you feel a twinge of panic or of guilt? What the hell are you doing here listening to this nonsense when you could be out shopping till you drop with Harvey Norman; and when they’re gone they’re really gone and there’s no use crying about it, you missed your opportunity.

Let’s try not to celebrate  Christmas at too high a pitch. The media and the advertising moguls wind us up to high doh, an hysteria  of gluttony and greed. We don’t really need any of this stuff – it’s a false  illusion.

Advent should be a time of quiet anticipation.The mystery we celebrate is a singular and a silent one. Because it is almost impossible to understand, it becomes easy to  swop the facts for the fiction.

It is going to take something pretty  original, something miraculous, something unheard of,  to make this world of ours in 2021 a happy Christmas. And you might be the very one one being asked to initiate some of that originality, or at least contribute towards it. But you would have to step off the whirligig to hear the off-stage whisperings.How could this world we are living in become a better place for the seven billion people presently alive on  our planet?  Step back and  ask yourself:  How’s it going? Am I on the right track? Am I driving my own vehicle, or is someone else at the steering-wheel? I would need to find a small stable, an out-house near the three-storey mansion I  have just built; somewhere small and simple where something personal, original, something divine, could be brought into being against all the odds.  Remember ‘What the Donkey Saw’ who was present on that first Christmas beside the crib:

No room in the inn, of course,
And not that much in the stable,
What with the shepherds, Magi, Mary,
Joseph, the heavenly host —
Not to mention the baby
Using our manger as a cot.
You couldn’t have squeezed another cherub in
For love nor money. Still, in spite of the overcrowding,
I did my best to make them feel wanted.
I could see the baby and I
Would be going places together.

 

 

‘What the Donkey Saw’ by U.A. Fanthorpe [1929-2009]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fr. John O’Callaghan OSB

Stand erect, hold your heads high, your liberation is near at hand’. This is the key message of today’s gospel for Christians and all people of good will.

This message is delivered to us on the first Sunday of Advent when we are invited to reflect on the end of the world, that is the Second coming of Christ. On future Sundays we will reflect on Christs’ birth in Nazareth and the lead up to it but now, we look at the destination of human history. The apocalyptic images of the clamour of the ocean and its waves; people dying of fear as they await what menaces the world”, true enough even in these times, might fill us with dread. But the gospel is clear: hold your heads high, your liberation is near. This means that the Second coming is not a cataclysm for Christians but something to welcome, to rejoice in, despite all the conflict surrounding it. This applies to us today too, as we negotiate our way through various crises. That is why we read it. And it is saying something very reassuring about God.

In former times, in the Middle Ages, the end of time was known as ‘dies irea, dies illa”, the day of wrath. That didn’t calm spirits. It was seen as fearsome because, as the creed says ‘Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead’. Christianity was being reduced to moralism, robbing it of that hope and joy which is its breath of life. It seemed to forget that it is not simply God, the Infinite and Eternal One, who judges but, on the contrary, that He has handed judgement over to one who, as a man, is our brother. Our judge will not be a stranger to us but one whom we have known in faith. He will advance to meet us, not as the entirely Other, but as one of us, who knows human existence from the inside and who also has suffered. The Christian will recognise he to whom ‘all authority in heaven and on earth has been given’ was his or her companion in faith while on earth’. And it was this Jesus Christ who said to his disciples on Lake Gennesaret ‘Fear not, it is I’. That is reason to hold your head high. The first Christian community did and cried out ‘Mar an atha, Come Lord Jesus! ‘

But let us remember that today’s gospel does have another message: ‘Stay awake!’…. We are not relieved of responsibilities in the time between the first and second coming. ‘We are called’, as St Augustine says, ‘to do what we hope for.’ Every day brings its opportunities in the forcefield of good and evil, in little ways and large.

Daily we learn in the media of the delicate equilibrium of our human habitat. Every household has its subtle influence on  the environment.

Daily the gospel calls us to integrity and generosity in our relationships. May we do what we hope for.

The challenges of life under Covid might frighten us but for the Christian hope is stronger than despair and is not even overcome by death. And, in Jesus, we know that we do not suffer alone, but with God as a fellow-sufferer.

Finally, today’s gospel reminds us to ‘Pray at all times’. Pray to stay open to our great destiny.

St Augustine also said ‘Tell me your hopes and I’ll tell you who you are.’ Christians have the most audacious hope and a divine promise of victory.  May we be ambassadors of that hope in Advent. So that we can confidently cry out Mar an atha! Come, Lord Jesus!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We begin Advent with the Vespers hymn ‘Conditor alme siderum’, recalling Christ who comes ‘proceeding from a virgin shrine.’ Watch this space for more chant soon!