Category: abbeynews

Fr. Luke Macnamara: “Ground zero” once referred simply to the centre point of a nuclear explosion. Since 9/11, it evokes the World Trade Centre and the memorial to the 2,977 lives lost that day. New York’s city centre will forever be remembered as Ground Zero.

Something similar happens in today’s readings. Zebulun and Naphtali were tribal place names, long unused by Jesus’ time. His contemporaries would have called the region Galilee. Yet the Gospel deliberately uses these older names, which carry a history of suffering: oppression, exploitation, conquest, and displacement. Zebulun and Naphtali recall some of Israel’s lowest points.

By beginning his ministry here, Jesus shows that he comes to people at their lowest, where need is greatest. These struggles are not only caused by external forces but also by internal sin and division. Still, he comes: “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

We all have our own “Zebulun and Naphtali”—places in our lives where things have gone wrong, often because of our own choices. The good news is that Jesus comes even to our darkest places. He brings the power of God’s kingdom to transform our lives: “The people who lived in darkness have seen a great light; on those who dwell in the land and shadow of death, a light has dawned.”

How do we receive this light? One way is through the Word of God. The psalmist reminds us: “The Word is a lamp for my steps and a light for my path” and “The Lord is my light and my help.” Even when darkness comes, God’s Word can reach the deepest parts of our hearts and shine a transforming light there. As Hebrews says: “Indeed, the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit… it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

God’s Word not only brings light but transforms us: fear becomes trust, despair becomes hope, hatred becomes love, and division becomes unity. It reshapes how we think, speak, and relate to God, to one another and to ourselves.

Let us honour the victims of 9/11—and all who suffer from violence and war—by walking in the light of God’s Word. May we nurture the gifts that flow from it: trust, hope, love, and peace. Just as Zebulun and Naphtali became “Galilee of the nations,” may we too become a land of freedom and courage—a home where God’s light shines, even in the darkest places. 

Fr. Simon Sleeman: ‘Look’, here is the lamb of God, John the Baptist calls out. At communion, I will say, ‘Behold’ ‘Look’, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world –  twice I’ll say it. There we have an image of the lamb on the front of the altar. In the OT people bitten by snakes are told to look at a bronze serpent and be healed…Looking, looking, looking….it seems to be key. Yet it seems an easy, uncomplicated task.

But it is not simple – this capacity to look has taken 3.5 billion years to become the superpower it is today.

How we ‘look’ is unclear … it is a problem that has bedevilled scientists, philosophers and engineers for a long time and especially the last fifty years…It is the BIG issue for AI. Teaching a ‘robot’ to look.

The old idea was that the world is made of objects, we look at an object, the chair. Evaluate the object and then act.  I sit on the chair.

When I look down the church, what do I see?  and what determines what I see? I can’t look at everything…and there is an infinite number of things I could look at….

Six people were in a gym – three dressed in white bibs and three in black ones. Their task was to pass a basketball and to count the number of passes made to a person in a white bib. In the middle of the game a person dressed in a gorilla suit walks into the group, stops, thumps its chest and moves away. You can see it on tube only 45 seconds. Most of the group never saw the gorilla!

Looking is not that simple it turns out. When we look, what we see is in accordance with our aim.  What I look at, what I see, reflects my aim.  ‘Look’ there is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Sin means my aim is off.    

Our culture tempts us to aim low.  ‘Look’ it says – at stuff that brings your aim down – do things that bring your aim down – in some ways, our culture, doesn’t want us with any aim at all – just blind, confused and distracted, consuming in desperation, accumulating. Fulfilling every desire and whim – the secret to happiness and the economy growing…and our aim dragged down into the mud. 

The readings today, in contrast, challenge us to aim high. Look, there is the Lamb of God. ‘Oh Christian be aware of your nobility’: become a light to the world, saints of God. Aiming at the highest.

It is no accident that the cross hangs, high, above the altar inviting us to ‘look up’… to aim high.  ‘Look up’ at the fulfilment of the highest possible aim, behold the lamb of God, crucified, in an act of sacrificial love, inviting you and me to do the same – to die and to rise from the dead.

At this time of the year it is easy to for our aim to be off ….and thus to look down – it takes great courage and fortitude to live to the highest aim, to take on the responsibility of your life and live to your highest calling. And we fail but we come each week to urge each other to ‘look’ up again, to check our aim. You might say, that we don’t do it very well and that may be true but what happens doesn’t depend on you and me alone – you are, we are, the one on whom the Holy Spirit descends, nudging us upwards. The Cross hangs there, a challenge, right in front of us. Beckoning.

Fr. William Fennelly: On Christmas Day we asked the shepherds‘Whom have you seen? Who has appeared on earth?’ Then came their answer: ‘We have seen the New-Born Child, and choirs of Angels praising the Lord.’ Today’s Feast invites us to ask again: ‘Who has appeared on earth?’ Remember ‘epiphany’ means ‘appearance.’

Let’s ask the Magi. They saw the stars align. They were led to the manger by their own questioning and their following of the star. Maybe the Magi would reply: ‘The heavens tell us of a King born in Israel.’ If they had talked to Mary and Joseph, they might add: ‘This King chose the time of his own birth so the heavens proclaim him.’

This Feast traditionally celebrates three events. In the West, we spread them out; in the East, Our Lord’s Baptism is today’s main event. So let’s ask God the Father: ‘Who has appeared on earth? ’We will hear God add at the Lord’s baptism next Sunday: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’

Let’s ask the Holy Spirit: ‘Who has appeared on earth?’ or, rather, let’s ask John the  Baptist what the Spirit meant by descending on Jesus. St John in his gospel records the Baptist’s answer: ‘He who sent me… said… “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptises with the Holy Spirit”.’

The third event is the Wedding at Cana, when Jesus worked his first sign. To the question, ‘Who has appeared on earth?’ it gives this answer: ‘The Creative Word who turns water into wine. The context in which Jesus worked this sign adds: ‘The Divine Bridegroom come to purchase his Bride.’ Let’s ask St John: ‘Who has appeared on earth?’ He replies, enigmatically: ‘Jesus… manifested (showed) his glory.’

In Greek, epiphany can refer to various types of appearances, among them to the appearing of a god. The Eastern Churches are a bit clearer, and call today Theophany, the Appearing of God. The Feast is not, primarily, about the visit of the Magi to Jesus; it’s about God’s Visit to us, the Solemn Visit in which the Divine King has let the world see him. The Magi, the star-sign they saw, and the others of whom we enquire, tell us whose Visit we celebrate.

They also point us towards a greater Theophany. Today’s the traditional day for the date of Easter to be announced. This points to the fact that it was on Calvary at Easter that Jesus, as King, drew all things and all people to himself. God isn’t only adored in some disembodied spiritual quest by an inward movement folded in upon myself and detached from all that might disturb and engage the heart. It has to be possible to find and adore God in the simple yet messy complexity of human experience’ of our experience.

Even in our own times which so profoundly distrust claims for absolute truth, there remains in the human heart a deep desire for the truth. The RB talks about the dilation or expansion of the heart. We believe that the child born in Bethlehem is the truth for which the human heart hungers. Like the magi, we need to be attentive and to seek the truth wherever it is to be found, for ultimately it is in Him who said, ‘I am the truth’, it’s in this great God who shows himself to us in a little child.

Fr. Fintan Lyons. Among other gifts, some people receive books at Christmas, and if one is fortunate enough, the book will appear interesting, and not one already read and already familiar. So, what happens next is likely to be a quick survey of the beginning of a new book received and then a check on how it ends. I think we are all inclined to do that. 

The story from the Gospel of Matthew today, is however already very familiar; the story of Jesus’ baptism is in each of the gospels and has been read many times, so we may find what we have heard today less gripping for being so familiar. 

I’m saying that because I want to focus on the person of Jesus at the centre of the story, and stay with him, rather than moving quickly to the implications of our own baptism, as we often do on this Sunday of the Baptism of the Lord.

And, familiar as the story is, we need to be reminded of the lead up to it in the gospel, not included in today’s reading. What precedes it in Matthew’s gospel is an account of John the Baptist’s personality and what he was doing at the Jordan. This fearsome ascetic, clothed only in camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, was calling on the crowds who gathered round, fascinated by him, to repent of their sins by immersing themselves in the Jordan. 

Baptism was not part of normal Jewish ritual – Jesus was not baptised as a child – though it was used for converts to Judaism from paganism, but a water immersion could also be part of a person’s expression of a conversion experience when they recognised God’s mercy in forgiving them; that would be the meaning of John’s ritual. 

Why then would Jesus, the sinless thirty-year old, leave his carpenter’s workshop and walk the 135 km from Nazareth to Bethany on the other side of the Jordan river, opposite Jerusalem, to go through that ritual himself? 

That question invites us to reflect on Jewish religion in the time of Jesus. John the Baptist obviously believed it was in a bad state. But he didn’t think his special cousin, Jesus, deserved to be included with those whom he addressed in harsh terms as a brood of vipers. So why did Jesus insist on being baptised, saying something about fulfilling all righteousness or justice? 

What it means, I believe, is that Jesus was identifying himself with the people of Israel, God’s chosen people, good and bad. He made no distinctions as he began the mission he sensed he had, to restore their relation with God – God whom he had called his Father as a teenager in the Temple, according to Luke’s gospel. 

It’s something to be marvelled at, this young man finding himself, finding his purpose in life, about to begin a career following on that of John the Baptist. If he needed reassurance that this is what he was called to do, all three accounts of his baptism speak of his hearing a voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s son, and of his sensing the power of the Holy Spirit confirming him in his mission, at whatever cost to himself. Soon, the Spirit led him – drove him, Mark’s gospel says – into the wilderness, where he had a bootcamp kind of encounter with the devil, if that’s not too irreverent a way to speak of the devil’s assault against Jesus.

His endurance, as one whose own relationship with God was unique, would enable him to restore to God’s favour not only his own who would accept his leadership, but all who would look to him as the one enabling them to address God as their father, including ourselves. Our faith is that he embodied within himself a new Exodus, a new journey to freedom, and, most important, he was the paschal lamb of sacrifice marking reconciliation with God for all humankind.

So, what of us, who I said benefit from Jesus’ saving mission? According to St Paul and  early church Fathers, Jesus by his baptism in the Jordan was not only finding himself, but emptying himself by descending into the water, not holding on to the dignity of being God’s son but leaving it there as a dignity humanity could acquire. According to Ephrem the Syrian, Jesus went down into the water of the Jordan to deposit there the robe of glory, thus making it possible for humankind to put it on. (Hymns on the Epiphany 12:1). St Paul says in Galatians 3:27: ‘As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ’.

So we do need to reflect today on what our baptism has done for us; it has made us sharers in the life of the risen Christ and the power he won to conquer evil, power we have also. The early Christians suffered from persecution like Christ, but in the strength of their faith in the Risen Christ overcame the power of a hostile Roman  empire. Aggressive empires exist today, both seen and unseen; each one of us faces the challenges of evil influences, but with faith in Christ we can overcome.

Fr. Senan Furlong: When the scientist Benoit Mandelbrot began studying patterns in nature, he noticed something strange and beautiful. The closer he looked, the more familiar everything became. A small rock resembled a mountain. A fern leaf was made up of smaller leaves shaped exactly like the larger one. A snowflake carried the same design in every branching arm. No matter how far he zoomed in, the pattern repeated itself—more detailed, more intricate, more beautiful. The same mystery, revealed more deeply. Mandelbrot called these patterns fractals: designs where the whole is present in every part. Fractal geometry is the scientific equivalent of the intuition to sense the great in the small, the infinite hidden within the ordinary.

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

This is why the mystery of Christmas is never exhausted. Like a fractal, it invites us to return repeatedly to the same scene, and each time discover ever-unfolding horizons. The pattern does not change, but our vision deepens. And the pattern is this: the unfailing love of God.

In today’s first reading from Sirach, we see the outline of that pattern. Wisdom comes forth from eternity, from the mouth of God. She is sent to pitch her tent among a people, to take root in Israel. God’s Wisdom chooses to dwell in his people’s life in the form of the Law so that the divine light might shine into the world.  Then, in the second reading, St Paul prays that we may be given a spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that the eyes of our minds may be enlightened. In other words, Paul is asking God to help us look more closely, to zoom in. In Christ, he says, we have already been chosen, blessed, and destined to become God’s children. What was once hinted at now begins to come into focus: God is not merely near to us; he is drawing us into his own life.

And finally, in the Gospel, St John takes us all the way in. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is the deepest level of the pattern. God’s Wisdom is not an idea or a force, but a person, Jesus Christ. The Word pitches his tent in our humanity. God does not stand outside our lives but enters them from the inside. This is the heart of Christmas. At Christmas, the infinite God is revealed in the smallest possible way. Like a fractal, the whole mystery is present in a child lying in a manger. We look at that Child and say: This is what God is like. And if we look closely enough, we see everything: humility, mercy, self-giving love, light offered without force or compulsion.

Christ is the image of the Father, and we are made in the image of Christ. When we look at a life lived in him, the same pattern should appear: love, mercy, light overcoming darkness. This is why St John says that those who receive the Word are given power to become children of God. Not copies, but true reflections, each life unique, yet each echoing the same divine geometry of self-giving love.

Scientists tell us that no two snowflakes are exactly alike, and yet all obey the same hidden design. God saves the world in the same way, not through force or compulsion, but through love patiently repeated: from eternity to infancy, from the eternal Word to a new born baby’s cry, from the crib to the cross, and from the cross into the everyday acts of mercy that quietly change the world.

We see this mystery most clearly at the Eucharist we now celebrate around the altar. Ordinary bread and wine: plain, familiar, and yet lifted up, revealing infinity. The whole contained in the small; a fragile host bearing the Lord of heaven and earth; the eternal Word placed into our hands. 

And so we are invited to live the mystery we celebrate: to let the eternal shine through our ordinary, unfinished, even broken lives; to let the great be revealed in the small; to make room for God dwelling among us.

To see a world in a grain of sand, 

To hold infinity in the palm of your hand: 

This is the mystery and message of Christmas.

Abbot Christopher Dillon: Mary, Mother of God. What an extraordinary concept, that God should have a mother! And that that mother should be a human being like one of us! This noblest of Mary’s titles says much about the graciousness of God, about the identity of the boy and the man, Jesus, and also about God’s regard for humankind and most of all about God’s regard for Mary herself. All of it expresses the realisation of the blessing which Aaron was ordered by God to invoke on humankind, the graciousness of God brought to fruition in this gift to us of God’s very self in the person of Jesus Christ; this gift which ennobles us as children of God, daughters and sons as beloved to the Father as the only begotten Son is beloved; and heirs with him to all that he is heir.

We have been resting with the majesty of this mystery over the past week, some of us, perhaps, more than others. We can and really should continue to ponder it in the weeks and months to come, along with Mary and indeed with Joseph, her most remarkable companion and spouse.

By devoting this first day of the year to the achievement of this solemn blessing of us by God, we acknowledge, at the same time, the splendour of God’s cosmic creation  project in our regard in the very meaning of our existence, namely, that God has become human in the person of Jesus, so that we humans may become God. Now, that is something to ponder with Mary; something to ponder through the year!

As we enter the New Year, my social media feed is full of advice on how to set and achieve goals for 2026, while my email inbox overflows with offers for gym equipment and self-improvement plans. But I’m not quite ready for all that — and perhaps you aren’t either.

If so, I’d like to draw your attention to a quiet gesture the Church offers in the upcoming feast of Epiphany: the singing of the Proclamation of the Date of Easter, sometimes called the calendar of movable feasts. After the Gospel, the Church solemnly announces the dates of Easter and the great feasts that flow from it. Time itself is named, blessed, and gently ordered around the mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection.

For those shaped by monastic life, this moment resonates deeply. Monasteries live by a calendar that is both intensely practical and profoundly theological. Bells ring, psalms return, seasons change, and feasts arrive whether we feel ready or not. The Epiphany proclamation reminds us that our lives are not simply a series of personal plans or private resolutions, but part of a shared rhythm — a common life in time.

There is something quietly countercultural about singing the year into being. Instead of asking, “What will I achieve?”, the Church asks, “How will we receive what is given?” As this New Year opens, rather than turning first to goal-setting videos or productivity advice, you might look instead to the singing of the Proclamation of the Movable Feasts from St Peter’s in Rome, where the year ahead is named and entrusted to God. In that same spirit, the dates of the movable feasts for 2026 are set out below, so you can take a screenshot and return to them when the year begins to unfold.

May we live this year, in all things, that God may be glorified.

Oscar McDermott OSB

The Year Ahead — Movable Feasts 2026

Ash Wednesday – 18 February

Easter Sunday – 5 April

Ascension of the Lord – 14 May
(in some dioceses celebrated on Sunday 17 May)

Pentecost Sunday – 24 May

Corpus Christi – 7 June

First Sunday of Advent – 29^th of November

This week the monastic community remembers Father Gerard McGinty OSB whose anniversary occurs at this time. Born Francis Patrick Joseph McGinty in Dublin on 12th March 1929, he was educated by the Jesuits at Belvedere Collegeand entered Glenstal on 10^th October 1948, receiving the name Gerard. He was professed on 6^th January 1950 andstudied theology at Glenstal, Maredsous and Sant’Anselmo before his ordination to the priesthood on 11^th July 1954.

After his ordination he began post-graduate studies at University College Dublin. Following some delays, these studies culminated in a Doctorate in Medieval Studies, which he obtained in 1971. His dissertation was an edition of an important Irish treatise, De Mirabilibus Sacrae Scripturae, written around the year 655.

Although Father Gerard held a variety of offices in the monastery and was a long-term Master of Ceremonies, Sacristan and Annalist, he was essentially a monk-scholar. Excelling in the editing of medieval religious texts, he was an expert in Hiberno-Latin. He edited the Glenstal Bible Missal (1983) and Today We Celebrate – the Saints and their Message (1985). Father Gerard made a major contribution to the three-volume Divine Office. In a pre-computer age of the 1970s, he was modestly proud that, as he put it, “every word of the three volumes of the English Breviary passed through my fingers.”

In 1980, he published a short commentary on the Rule of Benedict for the 1500^th anniversary commemorations of the saint’s birth. He also composed a martyrology for monastic use. There was a practical side to Fr Gerard. He was one of the first in the community to master the complexities of the computer and for a number of years he was responsible for the maintenance of our telephones.

He also liked outdoor work, and spent much of his free time managing our garden and orchard. His knowledge of birds was extensive and he was keenly interested in all aspects of nature and wildlife. From its foundation in 1968, up to his death, Father Gerard was the official representative of Birdwatch Ireland in its survey of the two ‘squares’ that covered the townlands of Glenstal and Cappercullen.

At a spiritual and pastoral level he was a man of faithful observance who was always available for the hearing of confessions, the counselling of people with problems and the giving of blessings. Faithful to the end, it was in the course of a full working day that he died on the evening of Saturday 29^th December 2001.

May he rest in peace.

Fr. Jarek Kurek: There you go — we’ve been celebrating another Christmas, a truly beautiful time for any family.

And yet today, the loveliness of this season seems to have been disturbed. What we see instead is the Holy Family — Jesus, Mary, and Joseph — fleeing in fear.

Who caused this havoc? Herod. Herod, having heard of the rise of a new king, perhaps one mightier than himself, felt threatened. He might have thought, “I am the star of the show; I cannot let anyone else shine.” Cruel as it was, he chose to annihilate the potential danger.

Jealousy — that was Herod’s feeling, a trait that has marked the human condition since the beginning of the world.

And yet, from the very beginning, weren’t we meant, as humans and as families, to be united in love — as we see in the story of Adam and Eve?

But the Enemy came lurking — the Devil, diabolos, the one who divides.

Why did he disturb the harmony of human existence? Because he was jealous. In fact, he was the prototype of Herod: he too felt threatened and refused to let anyone hold a higher place than himself.

Cain was jealous and became a murderer of his brother Abel. The brothers of Joseph shared that same jealousy. And many others have followed that path.

But we hardly need those biblical examples. Just look at the news — from Ukraine, the Middle East, or Africa. Killing each other has become our daily bread, something once thought unthinkable after the tragedy of World War II.

Yet murder can take subtler forms. It can be found in our words — for words can wound, sometimes lethally. It can appear in our gaze — don’t we say someone gave a “murderous look”?

What does that say about us? Doesn’t it reveal our unhappiness, our bitterness, perhaps even hatred? And yet the worst of all these feelings is Herod’s feeling — jealousy. Because jealousy, believe it or not, leads directly to murder, though it may not always take a physical form.

Today, this Christmas, we have a great chance to reverse the cycle. It is a marvellous opportunity to turn our hard feelings into compassion and love — to be reborn after the model of Jesus and his family. Does that idea attract me?

But this renewal requires real effort. I must look within, examine my heart, and confess before the inner tribunal of my conscience any trace of jealousy — whether in my family or in my community.

Anyone courageous enough to begin this spiritual renewal will soon rediscover our true human and Christian destiny. 

And what is that? As human beings, we are meant to be a bond that unites all creation; as Christians, we are called to be witnesses to the bond of love.

There is no doubt that a destructive, divisive spiritual force is at work in the world. But we Christians, empowered by God’s love, have the mission of binding and unifying — wherever and whenever we can.

Fr. Henry O’Shea: ‘Paris is well worth a Mass.’

In 1592, after three years on the throne, King Henry IV of France, a vociferously avowed Protestant, guaranteed his grip on that throne by converting to Catholicism. On doing so, he is alleged to have quipped about Paris and its worth. A Mass.

Even if the king didn’t actually use these words, they sum up succicintly the cunning self-promoting cynicism which, from the beginning of time, has characterised many successful politicians. What matters is winning – at whatever the cost and regardless of human collateral damage. Does this sound familiar? 

Today’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah, mentions the king, Ahaz, but supplies none of the back-story of this walking disaster who was King of Judah in the eighth century before Christ. To avoid having his rather small kingdom attacked by hostile neighbours and in particular, to avert a take-over by the regional super-power, Assyria, Ahaz instituted and promoted what was in effect a cultural surrender. He permitted and promoted a cultural colonisation. Does this sound familiar?

Earlier on in the Book of Isaiah, we hear of how Ahaz desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem, placing in it idols of the gods of neighbouring kingdoms and halting or disrupting traditional temple worship. He also, for the convenience of citizens and visitors, for passing trade, had shrines erected at street corners for devotional quickies. He explained that he was not so much denying the God of the Jews as practising what today is called inclusiveness by giving other gods and other religious outlooks a look-in. Whatever you’re having yourself…you know.

As so often, the compliant, conformist, opportunistic and indifferent in society went with the flow. We’re all the same really, aren’t we. And isn’t one set of beliefs really as good as any other? Or, as Frederick the Great of Prussia would declare twenty-four centuries later, ‘Everyone should be allowed to be saved in his – sorry, in their –  own fashion.’ Isaiah tells us that Ahaz ducked the issue by refusing to oblige the Lord by asking for a sign. It was and usually is, too risky to put present compromises in jeopardy. 

So, it is no wonder that Ahaz refuses to ask a sign of God. He is not really sure to which god he should turn. He is not really sure if there are actually any gods to which, to whom, he can turn. He ducks the issue by claiming that he would prefer not to put the God of Israel, the Lord, to the test.

While Isaiah is as capable of a bad-tempered rant as most other prophets, in this case he simply tells the House of David about a sign that it will get from the Lord: ‘Listen now, House of David! Not satisfied with trying human patience, will you try my God’s patience too? The Lord will give you a sign in any case. Look, the virgin is with child and will give birth to a son whom she will call Immanuel — God is with us.’ No explanation, no date, no century, no time-scale. Simply a promise.

Today’s gospel, by quoting the first reading, literally links up this promise with what we celebrate, with what we recall and look forward to every Advent and Christmas. Today’s gospel links this promise with what we celebrate, recall and look forward to at every liturgy – with what we celebrate, recall and look forward to all of our baptized lives. In his dream, Joseph is told just enough to make it possible for him to give his heart and soul.

Today’s second reading also describes, if only partly, who this Immanuel, this human descendant of David was, is and will be: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, ‘in all his power through his resurrection from the dead.’

Through his resurrection from the dead: that is, not by philosophical argument, not by political ideologising or activism, not by psychologising, not by magic, convenience, not by manipulability or mere usefulness. Importantly, too, not as the possession of any exclusive group, ethnic, cultural or cultic. 

While Paul, in his letter to the Romans, affirms that he received grace and his apostolic mission to preach through Jesus Christ, he affirms simultaneously, that every nation, every people, every one of us, has received that grace and apostolic mission to preach the obedience of faith…. the listening to and spreading of message of the baptised heart and the living of its consequences.

And this grace and mission can be undertaken only when each one of us starts with her or his own heart as the recipietnt of grace and as mission territory. This Immanuel, this God-with-us, at every moment of our being is calling us to be Advent, to be Nativity, to be Epiphany, that is, to be always waiting for his coming, to be constantly reborn, to give witness to, to radiate, this coming and birth. 

While there will always be an Ahaz in every one of us, and every one of us is our own Paris,  Immanuel, God-with-us, certainly can and does make us well worth a Mass.