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HE CERTAINLY LOOKED THE PART. HIS ROMAN COLLAR WAS DAZZLING WHITE BENEATH HIS SPOTLESSLY NEW VESTMENTS . AND THIS NEWLY-ORDAINED PRIEST PREPARED TO SAY HIS FIRST MASS IN A DUBLIN INNER CITY CHURCH.

THE GOSPEL THAT DAY WAS THE SAME GOSPEL WE HAVE JUST READ. OH BUT HE HAD DONE HIS RESEARCH FOR THIS HOMILY. HE HAD LOST TRACK OF THE NUMBER OF BOOKS HE MADE REFERENCE TO.

AFTER THE MASS TWO OLD LADIES WERE SITTING AT THE BACK OF THE CHURCH. ONE SAID TO THE OTHER: “ISN’T THAT A BEAUTIFUL PRIEST MARY WITH ALL THE LOVELY ACUTRAMENTS AND ALL. WHAT DID YOU THINK OF HIS SERMON MARY?

“WELL”, MARY REPLIED “I WISH I KNEW AS LITTLE ABOUT MARRIAGE AS HE DOES”

WHEN I JOINED THE COMMUNITY HERE AT GLENSTAL ONE OF THE OLDER MONKS SAID TO ME “YOU HAVE JOINED THIS COMMUNITY FOR VARIOUS REASONS – BUT IF YOU ARE TO LAST THE COURSE YOU WILL NEED DIFFERENT REASONS”.

I IMAGINE THE SAME COULD BE SAID ABOUT MARRIAGE. THE EXILERATING JOY OF LOVE WHICH BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHER IN THE FIRST PLACE – IS REPLACED BY A DIFFERENT KIND OF LOVE WHICH EVOLVES THROUGHOUT THE LIFETIME OF A MARRIAGE.

JESUS ASKED PILATE: “WHAT IS TRUTH?”

HE COULD HAVE ASKED THE SAME QUESTION REGARDING LOVE.

FROM THE DAWN OF HUMANKIND LOVE HAS BEEN EXPRESSED IN ART, IN IN LITERATURE, IN POETRY, IN DRAMA, IN NOVELS, IN MUSIC.

ROMEO AND JULIET – SHEAKSPEARE’S TREMENDOUS STORY OF YOUNG AND PASSIONATE LOVE WHERE BEFORE THE END OF THE PLAY BOTH OF THEM ARE DEAD.

LOVE STORY WAS ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR BOOKS OF THE 1970’S.

IT BEGAN WITH THE FOLLOWING LINE:

“WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT A 25 YEAR-OLD GIRL WHO HAS DIED?”

THE FILM WAS AS SUCCESSFUL AS THE BOOK. ONE OF THE QUOTES FROM LOVE STORY WHICH WAS TAKEN UP AS ONE OF THE CATCH-PHRASES OF THE 1970’S IS:

“LOVE MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU ARE SORRY”. 

I AM ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT ST. BENEDICT WOULD NOT HAVE AGREED WITH THAT STATEMENT!

BUT WHAT IS LOVE? THERE IS THE IDEAL LOVE AND THERE IS ALSO THE REALISTIC LOVE. WE MUST AT ALL COSTS PRESERVE THE SUPREME IDEALISM OF LOVE. IT IS SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL, ENDURING AND EVERLASTING. NOBODY GETTING MARRIED CAN THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE. HAVE WE NOT ALL AT LEAST HAD A GLIMPSE OF THIS LOVE IN OUR LIVES?

JESUS DESCRIBES THE FATHER IN TERMS OF THIS IDEALISTIC LOVE. AS THE FIRST READING SUGGESTS WE ARE MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD AND OUR LOVE FOR ONE ANOTHER IS THE MOST PERFECT IMAGE OF GOD WE HAVE. AND WE MUST NEVER DIMINISH OR TARNISH THIS LOVE.

BUT WE ARE ALSO FLESH AND BLOOD AND WE MAKE MISTAKES. WE CAN CREATE DEVASTATING FANTASIES FOR OURSELVES. WE FALL IN LOVE, WE GET MARRIED; WE SWEAR VOWS OF ETERNAL LOVE FOR ONE ANOTHER. BUT WE CAN END UP CREATING FOR OURSELVES A HELL ON EARTH.

BUT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN IS THAT MANY, MANY COUPLES HAVE LIVED TOGETHER LOVINGLY AND SUCCESSFULLY FOR THE ENTIRETY OF THEIR MARRIED LIVES.

A GROUP OF MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN WERE AT A SEMINAR ON HOW TO LIVE IN A LOVING RELATIONSHIP WITH THEIR HUSBANDS. THEY WERE ASKED: “HOW MANY OF YOU LOVE YOUR HUSBAND?” THEY ALL RAISED THEIR HANDS.

THEN THEY WERE ASKED: “WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU TOLD YOUR HUSBAND YOU LOVED HIM?” THERE WERE VARIOUS ANSWERS RANGING FROM – THAT MORNING TO WELL… THEY COULDN’T REMEMBER WHEN.

THEY WERE TOLD TO TAKE THEIR PHONES AND TO TEXT THEIR HUSBANDS THE FOLLOWING WORDS – “I LOVE YOU SWEETHEART”

HERE ARE SOME OF THE REPLIES THEY RECEIVED FROM THEIR HUSBANDS:

“WHO IS THIS?”

“DID YOU CRASH THE CAR?”

“JUST TELL ME HOW MUCH YOU NEED?”

“I THOUGHT WE AGREED YOU WOULDN’T DRINK DURING THE DAY”

THIS IS MORE THE REALITY OF WHAT LOVING RELATIONSHIPS REALLY ARE ALL ABOUT. ACCEPTING THE OTHER IN THEIR ENTIRITY, WARTS AND ALL.

BUT THERE IS ALSO THE REALITY THAT IF SOME COUPLES REMAINED TOGETHER THEY WOULD HAVE DESTROYED EACH OTHER COMPLETELY – NOT TO MENTION THEIR CHILDREN.

THERE IS ALWAYS THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE LOVE WHICH WE KNOW IS GODLIKE AND GOD-GIVEN – AND THE HUMILITY WE NEED TO ACCEPT THE FUNDAMENTAL REALITY OF WHO AND WHAT WE ARE

GOD BLESSES EACH LOVING MARRIAGE. GOD GIVES MARRIED COUPLES THE GRACE AND THE RESOURCES FOR THAT LOVE TO FLOURISH – FOREVER.

AT THE RECEPTION TO CELEBRATE 50 YEARS OF HAPPILY MARRIED LIFE, THE COUPLE WAS ASKED WHAT THEIR SECRET WAS FOR THEIR LONG AND LOVING RELATIONSHIP. TO WHICH THEY ANSWERED TOGETHER:

“TWO WORDS – YES DEAR”.

THERE IS A LESSON FOR ALL OF US IN THESE WISE WORDS – WHETHER WE ARE MARRIED OR NOT.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10^th July 2021

Dear Friend,

On 24^th October 1964, Pope Paul VI wrote as follows about St Benedict,

When darkness seemed to be spreading over Europe after the fall of the Roman empire, he brought the light of dawn to shine upon this continent. For with the cross, the book and the plough, Christian civilization was carried, principally through him and his disciples, to the peoples who lived in those lands which stretch from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia, and from Ireland to Poland.

With the cross, that is, the Law of Christ, he strengthened and developed the institutions of private and social life. Through the “Work of God,” that is, through the careful and assiduous conduct of prayer, he taught that divine worship was of the greatest importance in the social order…

With the book, that is, with the culture of the mind, this venerable patriarch from whom so many monasteries have drawn their name and their spirit, spread his doctrine through the old classics of literature and the liberal arts, preserved and passed on to posterity by them with so much care.

And lastly, with the plough, that is, through agriculture, he changed the waste and desert lands into orchards and delightful gardens; and joining work with prayer in the spirit of those words, ora et labora, he restored the dignity of human labour.

As we celebrate his feast on 11^th July, we pray for our own country and for the continent of Europe, for peace and for prosperity, for an end to this pandemic and for health. Above all, we pray that the peoples of Europe will continue to treasure the message of St Benedict, the cross, the book and the plough: love of God, love of true learning and all that is best in human culture, art and literature, and love for God’s beautiful creation that has been gifted to us.

With every blessing

Brendan Coffey OSB,  Abbot of Glenstal

 

14th Sunday B

 

The expression familiarity breeds contempt is as old as the hills. We find it in works ranging from Aesop’s fable of ‘The fox and the lion’, to the tale of Melibee in the Canterbury Tales, where Chaucer says, over-greet hoomlynesse (or familiarity) engendreth dispreisynge (engenders contempt). We all know from experience what the reality of this expression can mean in our lives. We get used to people and assume we know them. We take them for granted and can be blind to their good qualities. We become dismissive and are quick to find fault. We lose a sense of wonder.

In today’s gospel we hear of Jesus’ return to his home village after a period of preaching and working miracles around Galilee. No doubt news of his activities found its way back to Nazareth and on the Sabbath he is invited to teach in the local synagogue. Initially the people are astonished and they recognize in Jesus something out of the ordinary. Where did this man get all this, they ask, his wisdom and his power to work mighty deeds? We don’t know what Jesus said but the initial astonishment quickly sours and gives way to hostility and rejection. Who does he think he is? We know him. He grew up among us. He is just the local carpenter. We know his family. He is no different from us. How mistaken they are! Yes, familiarity breeds not just contempt but unbelief. Jesus says as much when he tells them, ‘a prophet is not without honour except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.’ And he is taken aback at their lack of faith.

Today’s gospel suggest that a great obstacle to faith is familiarity, hoomlynesse: a refusal to believe that God’s presence could possibly come to us in so familiar a form as the person next door; a resistance to recognise that God might have sent us a prophet in someone who, to our eyes, does not quite fit the bill. We can be like the locals of Nazareth who had fixed ideas as to when and where and how the Messiah should come to Israel. The local carpenter, the son of Mary, did not measure up. And they really missed out.

In today’s second reading St Paul draws our attention to another type of prophet that God sends into our midst, one to which we also turn a blind eye and even ask him to take away. Paul calls it ‘a thorn in the flesh’. All sorts of suggestions have been made as to the nature of this thorn in the flesh of the Apostle but that is not the point. For Paul it was the discovery that this thorn, the abiding personal weakness that he shunned, could be a channel of God’s grace, an opening onto the mystery of the cross of Christ. ‘I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest on me.’ Shutting the door will not do, he tells us, for the God who came to us in the flesh meets us there in the flesh of our experience, all of it, all of our self and our world.

Growth in the Spirit almost always shows itself in the capacity to recognise Christ more and more in the ordinary, the everyday. The great saints never ceased being filled with wonder at the mysterious presence of God. ‘The Word became flesh’ not only means that the Son of God became a human being, but that he took human form in a town as ordinary and insignificant and out of the way as Nazareth. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? For sure, it can! But can we identify the Nazareth in our own selves, in our families, in our community and open the door to the Heaven in ordinarie that is in the place we would least expect it to be?

Fr Senan OSB

12^th Sunday in Ordinary Time B

Glenstal, 20.06.2021, 10 a.m.

Job 38:1-4, 8-11 2 Corinthians 5:14-17 Mark 4:35-41

 

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? (Job 38:1) Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? (Job 38:4)

On hearing these words Job must have thought that God was entirely alone when he made the world, and that, being all-wise and all-powerful, our Creator had no need of an agent to carry out his work. But in the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel we read: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things came into being by him, and nothing has come into being except through him (Jn 1:1-3). These verses tell us in the clearest terms that in fact God is not a lonely being, and he always acts through the agency of his eternal companion – the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us (cf. Jn 1:1-3) in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

None of the so-called synoptic gospels – those of Matthew, Mark and Luke – refer to Jesus Christ as the divine Word incarnate, but they too make many allusions to Jesus’ divine nature. For instance, they present Jesus as a man who performs some of the actions that Holy Scripture attributes to God alone, as is the case in today’s third reading, taken from the Gospel of Mark. So let us take a quick look at the main points of the story.

The boat in which Jesus and his disciples were sailing across the Sea of Galilee was being tossed about by a mighty storm. Woken up by his terrified disciples, Jesus ordered the wind to cease, and the sea to be still, and at once they obeyed his command. Seeing this, the disciples could not but have remembered the words of psalm 107: they cried to the Lord in their need and he rescued them from their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper: all the waves of the sea were hushed (Ps 107, 29). This was how God had rescued those who were about to be swallowed up by the waves, so the disciples asked themselves: “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mk 4:41)

Who indeed is this man who became known to history as Jesus of Nazareth? Countless answers to this question have been given down the centuries, but for those whose minds have been enlightened by faith there is only one answer that can be deemed true and accurate: Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God (cf. Mt 16:16). As St Paul says, we no longer know him from a human point of view (cf. 2 Co 5:16) but profess rather that Jesus Christ is the only son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God (Nicene Creed). And because faith tell us that Jesus is both human and divine, we place all our hope in his promise that he will always be with us, even to the end of time (cf. Mt 28:20).

In fact trusting that Jesus is very close to us all the time, wherever we may be, we can also understand that today’s gospel is a true parable of our own life in this world – and not just an account of an astonishing miracle that happened in the past – for, when we received the gift of faith and were washed clean in the waters of baptism, we accepted our Lord’s invitation to step into a boat and sail across with him to the other side (cf. Mk 4:35). We are now on our way to our homeland in heaven (cf. Ph 3:20) and are sure to reach our destination if we no longer live for ourselves but for him who died and was raised for our sake (cf. 2 Co 5:16). There can be no doubt that our voyage is a perilous one. At times it may seem that Jesus never really woke up from the sleep of death, and we are going to be engulfed by the waters of destruction. But all shall be well if we have faith (cf. Mk 4:40) and bear in mind the words of Jesus at the Last Supper: “In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (Jo 16:33).

Fr Lino OSB