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

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

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

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

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

We pleased to share with you details of the liturgical celebrations for Christmas, and wish to draw your attention to changes to the timetable throughout the period:

 

• Tuesday 24th December (Christmas Eve)

6.00 pm – Vespers I

11.20 pm – Vigil followed by Midnight Mass

 

• Wednesday 25th December (Christmas Day)

8.00 am – Lauds

10.00 am – Morning Mass (no music)

12.00 noon – Solemn Conventual Mass

5.00 pm – Vespers II

 

• Thursday 26th December (Feast of St Stephen)

7.00 am – Matins & Lauds

12.10 pm – Mass

6.00 pm – Vespers

 

• Friday 27th December (Feast of St John the Apostle)

7.00 am – Matins & Lauds

12.10 pm – Mass

6.00 pm – Vespers

8.35 pm – Compline

 

• Saturday 28th December (Feast of the Holy Innocents)

7.00 am – Matins & Lauds

12.10 pm – Mass

6.00 pm – Vespers I

8.35pm – Office of the Resurrection

 

• Sunday 29th December (Feast of the Holy Family)

7.00 am – Lauds

10.00 am – Mass

12.35pm – Sext

6.00 pm – Vespers II

8.35 pm – Compline

 

• Monday 30th December (Sixth Day in the Christmas Octave)

7.00 am – Matins & Lauds

12.10 pm – Mass

6.00 pm – Vespers

8.35 pm – Compline

 

• Tuesday 31st December (Seventh Day in the Christmas Octave)

7.00 am – Matins & Lauds

12.10 pm – Mass

6.00 pm – Vespers I

8.10 pm – Vigil

 

• Wednesday 1st January (Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God)

7.00 am – Lauds

12.10 pm – Mass

6.00 pm – Vespers II

8.35 pm – Compline

 

NORMAL LITURGICAL TIMETABLE RESUMES ON THURSDAY 2ND JANUARY

 

• Confessions

A priest will be available on Christmas Eve from 2pm – 5pm in the Abbey Church.

 

• Guesthouse

Closes on Sunday 22^nd December and reopens on Monday 30^th December.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Fr. Henry O’Shea OSB.

We have tested and tasted too much…- 

Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder. 

But here in the Advent-darkened room 

Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea 

Of penance will charm back the luxury 

Of a child’s soul, we’ll return to 

Doom The knowledge we stole but could not use.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For the difference that sets an old phrase burning- 

We’ll hear it in the whispered argument …

Wherever life pours ordinary plenty. 

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

God we shall not ask for reason’s payment… 

Nor analyse God’s breath in common statement. 

 

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

Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour- 

And Christ comes with a January flower.

Abbot Columba McCann OSB.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And nothing exists except the Child”

Sometimes we might only remember a single word, sentence or scene of a movie. It’s not because the movie overall fails to inspire, but rather because a specific moment powerfully makes a lasting impression upon us.

One such scene for me comes from Of Gods and Men, the true story of a group of French Trappist monks murdered in Algeria during that country’s brutal civil war. The film was released in 2010 to critical acclaim, winning the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.

The movie begins with Algeria plunged into violence and the situation rapidly deteriorating, with the small monastic community at Tibhirine much valued by their Muslim neighbours. Militants have made a threatening visit to the monastery and the monks have begun to discuss whether they ought to leave the country or stay behind, come what may.

On Christmas Eve, the Trappists gather in the chapel and sing:

Voici la nuit,

L’heureuse nuit de Palestine,

Et rien n’existe hormis l’Enfant,

Hormis l’Enfant de vie divine :

En prenant chair de notre chair,

Dieu transformait tous nos déserts,

En Terre d’immortels printemps.

For me, it’s perhaps the most powerful moment of the entire film and the scene most etched into my memory. “This is the night, the happy night of Palestine” goes the chant. Maybe it’s because of my connections to the Holy Land, forged over more than a decade, that this moment strikes a chord. Palestine doesn’t see many happy nights, especially at the present time. This night is different, unlike others, because it’s a happy one in Palestine. How?

“And nothing exists except the Child, except the Child of divine life.” Afraid and uncertain about the future, the chant seems to break through the violence and chaos to speak to the monks in the holy night. Nothing else now exists: not the war raging outside, nor the terror which engulfs the small community, for the Child of divine life has come into the world on Christmas night and reconfigured everything. With their gazes fixed on the Christ Child, nothing more exists in this moment of prayer and song.

“By taking flesh of our flesh, God transformed all our deserts, into a land of immortal springs.” Suddenly, a new perspective has been opened. The situation has been transformed for the monks – as it has for all of us – as God enters into our broken world and takes on our fallen humanity to free it, raise it up and redeem it. A vulnerable Child lands into the chaos of the Algerian civil war – into war everywhere – to bring peace, turning deserts into springs and giving life in abundance. The darkness of the world is put to flight, as the “Child of divine life” comes to teach us divine life and give us a share in it.

It may all seem a little romantic, but this scene seems to have made a lasting impression on me. I’ve often returned to it, especially amidst the war and turmoil which besets our world – and the Middle East in particular – at this present time.

In this season of Advent, perhaps this scene can be a reminder that “nothing exists except the Child” who ought to be the focus of our attention despite the distractions all around. Everything else becomes secondary and is transformed when we put the Child at the centre of this time of year and our entire lives. It is the Child of Bethlehem, born on that happy night of Palestine, whose coming into the world changed everything and continues to do so.

This is Good News for our world: darkness is turned to light, death into life, despair into joy, affliction into hope. As Advent gets underway and leads us to Christmas in this precarious time for our world, what better gift could we hope for?

Justin Robinson OSB

This month the monastic community marks the 25^th anniversary of Abbot Augustine O’Sullivan, who died on 7^th December 1999.

Seamus O’Sullivan was born in Limerick city on 21^st October 1918. He trained and worked as a primary school teacher before entering Glenstal Priory in 1946, receiving the name Augustine. He was professed on 13^th April 1947 and, following studies in the monastery and with the Spiritan Fathers at Kimmage Manor in Dublin, was ordained priest on 15^th June 1952. For the next five years he was involved in many areas of the life of the monastery and school. During this period and later, when his workload permitted, he was a much sought-after retreat master and speaker, in particular for religious sisters.

When Glenstal became an abbey in 1957, Father Augustine was appointed Prior and Novice Master. For the next nine years, by his constant devotion and presence, Prior Augustine maintained the rhythm of monastic life while supporting the young Abbot Joseph Dowdall who was much involved in assuring the role of religious in the Irish Church, not least as the founding president of what was then known as the Conference of Major Religious Superiors.

Elected second Abbot of Glenstal Abbey at Christmas of 1966, following the premature death of Abbot Joseph, Abbot Augustine served the community for fourteen years until his retirement at the end of 1980. These were the years immediately following the Second Vatican Council. With his clear-headed and courageous defence of essential monastic values, Abbot Augustine guided the community calmly through this exciting and sometime turbulent period. He encouraged Glenstal’s contribution to the wider Church by supporting the Annual Ecumenical Conference, which had made a faltering, exploratory, start in 1964. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the older Liturgical Conference, but was sufficiently far-seeing to recognise in 1975 that this conference had, at least for the time being, served its purpose and that it was time to hand over to other fora.

Upon his retirement as abbot in 1980, when he might have sought a quieter life, Abbot Augustine went to the monastery at Ewu in Nigeria he had originated and constantly supported during his time as abbot. He remained at Ewu for the remaining nineteen years of his life, acting as superior for fourteen of these years. On his last visit to Glenstal, scarcely two months before he died, Abbot Augustine did not hide his impatience to return to Ewu, stating that he wanted to be buried there.

Appropriately, his last days were spent in the care of the Medical Missionaries of Mary, with whom he had had close associations in Ireland and Nigeria for many years. He died in Ibadan on 7^th December 1999 and, as he had wished, was buried in Ewu. People from all over Nigeria came to his funeral, witnessing to the peace he had brought into the lives of so many.

May he rest in peace.

Back by popular demand, Glenstal Abbey’s scented candles are now in-stock in our online shop: shorturl.at/jPJqY

Inspired by the botanicals of our walled garden, Father Cuthbert created these fragrant candles with La Bougie in Co. Cork.

Strike a match and lift your mood! 🕯️