Category: abbeynews

Abbot Columba McCann: Ask and it will be given to you.  I asked God for a winning lottery ticket, but I didn’t win.  What went wrong? What went wrong is that God was offering me something far greater, something far more valuable, something beyond what I can actually imagine:  the Holy Spirit.

If we ask God for the Spirit we will receive.  We will begin to think with the mind of Christ himself.  We will have godlike instincts. We will live a divine life in human form, just as Jesus did when he walked the earth.  But since all this is, at first, too big for us to handle, God feeds us this new life, this new relationship, piece by piece.

And so we ask God for our daily bread.  We are asking God to keep feeding us this new life, this new way of being with him, this new way of being in the world.  Like any food, you don’t just get this once and then forget to eat again.  We have to get it continually, and that’s why Jesus says ‘ask, and keep on asking’ – because that’s what the original Greek meaning is.  Ask and keep on asking, knock and keep on knocking, seek and keep on seeking.

As a young child I was quite fussy about food, and sometimes my mother would have to coax me to open my mouth and take just one more mouthful, again and again and again until my dinner was finished.  She must have had the patience of Job!  When we repeatedly ask God for heavenly food, for the Holy Spirit, it’s not because God is mean and has to be pestered; it’s more like continually opening our mouth for more.  God can’t force feed us his nourishment.  We have to open our mouth by asking for it.

Once we stop asking for a live relationship with God, it stops.  Because it takes two to tango.  A dance designed for two comes to an end if one partner stops, even though the other wants to continue.  If we stop looking towards God for life, then he can’t bring our relationship with him any further.  It we keep looking to God in every situation, then we are protected, and furthermore, we have a huge influence on the people around us. It’s like a phone conversation.  We have to stay on the line with God.  If we hang up on God then the line goes dead, and we go dead. If we stay on the line, then we really live.

When I was a teenager I was mad about trains, and used to watch them for hours.  Once I was on a train where the driver’s compartment wasn’t in a separate locomotive but was at the end of a carriage.  The curtain that would normally hang behind the glass partition was drawn back.  It meant that by sitting right at the top of the carriage, I could watch the track ahead as if I were the driver, and I could watch what the driver was doing.  It was train-spotter heaven!

I noticed that every minute or so a bell would ring in the driver’s compartment, and a light would flash on his dashboard.  He would then pull some kind of lever.  I noticed that under the light was a label marked ‘vigilance’.  Later I guessed that this was probably some kind of safety mechanism to ensure that the driver hadn’t fallen asleep.  A few days ago I researched this online.  I discovered that in Ireland in the 1970’s they installed on trains a thing called a ‘Vigilance Control System’.  I read:

The system would typically monitor the driver’s actions, such as applying brakes, changing throttle settings, or operating other controls. If the driver failed to perform any of these actions within a set time (e.g., 60 seconds), the system would activate a warning (e.g., flashing light, buzzer). If the driver did not respond to the warning within a further period (e.g., 17 seconds), the system would automatically apply the brakes to bring the train to a stop.

So I think that, when Jesus tells us to keep on asking, keeping on searching, keep on knocking, it’s a spiritual Vigilance Control System.  It’s a way of ensuring that our connection with God remains live at all times, that we don’t fall asleep on the job.  Otherwise our thoughts, our drives, our talk, our actions get corrupted.  Without this system in place we are like a runaway train, dangerous to ourselves and others. Our conversations will get derailed. Our emails will miss the mark. Our decisions will be poorly judged. What we communicate to others may be true, but if it’s not coming from God, it will be wrong piece of the truth, or for the wrong person, or at the wrong time, or said the wrong way.  If we do look continually to God in each situation, we will arrive at whatever the next station is, safely, on time, not too early not too late.  Ask, and keep on asking; seek and keep on seeking; knock and keep on knocking, for your whole life.

Fr.Mark Patrick Hederman:The first reading we heard this morning is one of the great stories of the Bible. It recounts the first time in our JudeoChristian tradition that the Lord our God chose to meet up with a human being in the form of three persons. The text says specifically: ‘The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre.’ So it was ‘the Lord’ who appeared. But then Holy Scripture goes on to say: ‘Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby.’ In other words, what Abraham saw when he looked up and what had appeared in the theophany were not quite the same; he saw three men but it was actually ‘the Lord’ who was present to him. The text continues: ‘When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed down low to the ground.’

Did you ever have the experience of hearing the doorbell ring, of taking a peek out the window, seeing three people hanging around outside, and then closing the curtain and hiding under the bed in case they might find out that you are there. You wait silently, your heart thumping, hoping against hope that they will just go away. Well, I suppose it’s more difficult to do that if you are living in a tent. Whatever his motivation, Abraham did the opposite. He rushed out to meet them and invited them to dinner. 

What is also difficult to figure out is why such readings are paralleled with the Gospels on Sundays, and why this particular reading was twinned with the story of Jesus visiting Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, another trinity, in their home at Bethany. 

I think we can find a clue, not so much in the text itself but in the bit that was left out at the end of the first reading. You may remember that one of the visitors said he would be back the following year and that Abraham’s wife, Sarah, would give birth to a child. 

Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, and she happened to be 90 years old at the time we are told. So she laughed to herself. Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh?’  Is anything too hard for the Lord? And Sarah was afraid, so she lied and she said, “I did not laugh.” But the visitor said, “Oh Yes, you did laugh.”

The child that Sarah gave birth to a year later was called Isaac. Isaac in Hebrew means ‘laughter.’ 

Coming back to the scene that was twinned with this in the Gospel reading. Jesus is at Bethany with Martha and Mary. All my sympathies in this passage are with Mary who is doing the cooking and who sees her sister sitting wide-eyed and star-struck at the feet of their guest. It’s a wonder that Martha didn’t tell them to cut the cackle and get their own food for themselves. 

I think the answer to the whole problem is in the line which Jesus spoke, not just to Martha, but to every one of us: ‘you worry and are preoccupied by many things – few things are needed— indeed only one.’ All that matters is what we are being promised. If you listen to the Lord and do what you are told you will be free. No matter how old or decrepit we are, there is new life in the old creature yet, and nothing is impossible to God. Whatever is preventing you from being fully alive, from being really yourself: whether it be drink or drugs, lethargy or laziness, bingeing or being bullied, you can free yourself and give birth to the laughter in your life. 

For God’s sake stop sniggering at the back of the tent; come out into the open and believe in the power of angels to allow us to live the glory of God. For what is the glory of God? It is each and every one of us fully alive. 

So, let Isaac be a code word for today.

Fr. Henry O’Shea: In 1952, the poet Patrick Kavanagh ruffled many of our feathers by saying, referring to Irish society: 

Parochialism and provincialism are [direct] opposites. The provincial has no mind of his own; he does not trust what his eyes see until he has heard what the metropolis – towards which his eyes are turned – has to say on any subject. … The parochial mentality on the other hand is never in any doubt about the social and artistic validity of his parish. 

Both of these attitudes or mentalities can be self-satisfied or chronically dissatisfied. Neither is new. Today’s first reading from the book of Deuteronomy, written at some time between the 14th and 7th centuries before Christ, points out that our real selves are not discovered by trying to wander to heaven, or over the seas, not in fashionable gurus, diets, physical jerks, fairy dust, healing stones or psychological trick-acting. We are told quite clearly, ‘…the Word is very near to you, it is in your mouth and in your heart for your observance.’ 

Most of us, most of the time, like to imagine that we are intelligent, independent-minded, persons, who make up our own minds about everything. In fact, most of us, most of the time, live lives short-circuited by slogans. And these slogans are very often what is fashionable at any given time in any given society.

A fashionable contemporary slogan is claiming that one is spiritual but not religious. This can let one off many hooks, hooks of thought, behaviour, of commitment, of responsibility – with the bonus, sometimes, of giving nice warm feelings. 

Another common slogan is ‘Everyone knows…’. This often prefaces our more inane, thought-deprived, utterances. We do indeed know all about following the herd or jumping on band-wagons. 

Today’s gospel tells the immediately accessible story of the Good Samaritan. Only the terminally or intransigently hard of heart cannot understand and/or refuse to be touched by the story. Most people can identify with both the victim and with the stranger who helps him. 

In addition, if we are so inclined, we can feel smugly superior to the members of the establishment, the priest and the Levite, who pass by on the other side. We would never behave so callously. Except of course, when the victim, be he or she a foreigner, an immigrant, a Palestinian, a Hindu, a Moslem or, in many circles in modern Ireland, a practising Catholic. The fact is that we pass by on the other side of any ‘othered’ person in our society. Deep down, even if we do not admit it, we think that such persons, or non-persons, actually deserve what they get – or don’t get.

The very dynamism of today’s gospel story can lead us to forget an important phrase early in the passage we have just heard. Replying to the lawyer who was trying to put him in his place, Jesus got him to quote Scripture, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself.’ In other words, we must love with all we have, with our whole selves. Faith does not require brain-death.

But how can we do this? How can we have a self to love and a self with which to love? How can I move beyond regarding myself as the centre of the universe? How can I move beyond self-centredly regarding others as transactional subjects and objects – ‘I am in this to get what I can out of you and presume that you are in it to get what you can out of me.’ Just read the newspapers.

In today’s second reading from St Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, the author tells us where the inviting Word with its great possibilities lies – where that Word it is present with its unique capacity to create the self of each one of us. No mere idea can and save, never did and never will.

 We hear about who and what Christ Jesus was and is: the image of the unseen God; in whom everything, visible and invisible, were created; who existed before anything was created and who holds all things in unity. 

And we are told where that Word is to be found: in his Body, the Church. Because the God-Man Christ was in the Beginning and also was the first to be born from the dead, every one of us is invited into the life-giving embrace of his Body. Through the gift of Baptism we are enfolded in this embrace and become, not just isolated self-catering spiritual projects, but real members of one another. This enfolding gives us the opportunity, the capacity to see in every human person, the flame of Christ’s Body.

And so, the Samaritan, though not baptised, was able to go beyond the established, the legally permitted, the selfishly transactional, to help the stranger. It often was and often is left to a person who is not ‘one of us’ to come to the aid of ‘one of us.’

What has all this to do with provincialism and parochialism? The heart, soul, strength and mind with which we must love, can come only from within us. This is where my parish begins. But this ‘within’ is not isolated in a self-created, self-fulfilling, self-satisfied, splendour.

 As members of one another, we learn, journey and grow with and from each other, participating, however, falteringly, in the perfection that God wanted to be in Christ and to be available through and in Christ. This is our parish, the parish of my becoming self, of us becoming ourselves, the place of encounter, of engagement. And all this with the expanding hearts so beloved by St Benedict.  

If we do have any metropolis, it exists in what we call heaven. But we do not look at this metropolis over our shoulders, but straight ahead and in the company of our fellow parishioners in the Body of Christ.       

To be parochial one needs the right kind of sensitive courage and the right kind of sensitive humility. Parochialism is universal; it deals with the fundamentals.

    

Abbot Columba McCann: I like the honest, self-interested question of Peter in our gospel story:  what about us?  We have left everything and followed you.  What are we to have, then?  It’s good to be honest and straightforward in our conversation with the Lord!  I like even more the generous promise of Jesus:  for all that we leave behind to follow him, we will get a hundredfold return and eternal life into the bargain.

The promise of a hundredfold return is not an empty promise.  Look even at the generosity of nature itself:  how living organisms increase and multiply with amazing speed and abundance.  Two weeks ago we put out an empty beehive in the hope that it might attract some new inhabitants.  Before we knew it, forty thousand bees turned up and settled in.

The bees go from flower to flower.  Even the humblest flower, even a buttercup or a dandelion has a perfection of beauty that outshines the expensive kingly robes of any king or queen.  God-given beauty.

Look up then at the night sky:  they say there are about a hundred billion stars in the average galaxy.  And they estimate that there are more galaxies in the universe than there are grains of sand on the earth.

It gives us an inkling, perhaps, of the kind of God we are invited to share our lives with.  A God of infinite abundance.

Look also at some of the other moments in the gospels.  Peter and his co-workers went fishing all night and caught nothing.  But then he stepped out of his usual pattern.  More precisely, he allowed Jesus to step into his boat.  He left  behind his professional competence as a fisherman, and fished where nothing should have been found.  The nets filled to breaking point.  Without Jesus:  nothing; with Jesus, abundance.  But that was only the beginning.  It was the sign that, if he continued with Jesus he would fish people out of deep water when they were in trouble. That certainly happened a hundredfold.  The decision to be with Jesus, to let him in, to follow him, to be in the same boat, makes all the difference between narrowness and abundance.  When Peter let Jesus into his boat he didn’t realise that the outcome would eventually affect millions of people. Not just a hundred fold, many millionfold!

On another occasion, when everyone was hungry, a young boy gave up his few loaves and fish that would have been just right for his family, thank you very much.  He handed up, gave up, what he had to Jesus.  The result fed, not hundreds, but thousands. Being with Jesus, handing over to Jesus, brings abundance.

Then there is the amazing story of Peter walking on water.  There are moments when we may feel we are walking on water, for example in the middle of a family crisis where we are only able to take one step at a time, wondering how it will all end. When Peter tries to do it on his own, he starts to go under, looking at the waves.  When he keeps his gaze on the Lord, all is well and miracles happen.

The huge catch of fish, the feeding of five thousand, the walking on the water all speak of an abundance, a source of life and stability that hides gently under the appearances of things, once we remain with the Lord. But there are other miracles that happen all the time, more gently, perhaps without our even realising it.

Think of the wedding feast of Cana: almost no-one realised even where the wine had come from.  It was just there, it was good.  It was there because a need was brought to Jesus, and people did what he told them to do.

Being in the same boat as Jesus, handing over what we have to him, looking constantly to him for stability, voicing our needs to him.  This is the formula for abundant living.  It’s the Christian life.  But St Benedict set up a special environment for those who really need help to make this happen:  a monastery.  Everything necessary to  help us turn our gaze constantly in one direction:  a timetable, spaces for communal and personal prayer, space and time for listening to his word, the right kind of work that harmonises with this.  The gift and task of community life.

And again the hundredfold happens:  St Benedict didn’t set out to form a worldwide movement.  He just knit together some traditional guidelines, adjusted them as he thought best, and proposed them to those who wanted to leave everything and follow Jesus as monks.  In the process, almost by accident, he set in train a chain reaction that produced oases of learning, culture, stability and human community that helped the rebuilding of Europe in the ashes of the dying Roman Empire.  That’s why he is a patron saint of Europe.  But all he wanted to was to help his companions find a way to prefer nothing to Christ.  If we support one another in our life with Christ, then we too will reap the hundredfold.  In the end we are given God.

Fr. Fintan Lyons: The gospel passage today is about Jesus sending out 70 others (or 72 in some manuscripts) ahead of him to preach the coming of the kingdom, in areas where he himself intended to go. ‘Others’ in the text refers to the previous chapter when Jesus sent the twelve apostles out on a similar mission, a small number sent out among the local Jewish villages. Since in those times there were thought to be just 70 nations in the world, some commentators have seen in the number 70 an indication of Luke’s view, throughout his gospel, that the message was for all nations, salvation was for all the world. 

While the passage we have heard refers to Jesus’ lifetime on earth, we can transpose it to our day in order to reflect on the task of today’s church, the preaching of the gospel. What does the form it took at the time of the seventy say about the Church’s task today?

In the gospel passage these men are being sent out ahead of him into what may well prove hostile territory. They are told to travel light, not to get involved in discussions on the road, to check on people’s reaction to them, to see if their greeting of peace will be accepted. But where accepted they, are to cure the sick, cast out demons and say that the kingdom of God is at hand. 

Proclaim peace, they are told, and show you are not afraid of rejection by shaking the dust off your feet in the best Jewish fashion. And it worked; they came back rejoicing, so thrilled, it seems, by having cast out demons, that there is no mention of people accepting their message or that they prayed over people and healed illnesses.  

Turning to today’s task of proclaiming the gospel, there is this difference, of course: the seventy went out to proclaim the coming of God’s reign before the death and resurrection of Christ; but they were given basic training that could apply to the church’s mission today; don’t be distracted – stay on message; don’t do it for gain – hospitality can be tempting.

Today, the Church cannot shake off the dust of an unbelieving world, but must stay on message by proclaiming everywhere the resurrection of Christ. That was of course what the first generation did. Both Peter and Paul explained to the Jews of their day that Jesus was the fulfilment of the prophecies, and Paul went on to bring the same message to the Gentile world. That world was not irreligious, it had its gods; to proclaim the risen Jesus was to challenge a religion that worshipped divinised Roman emperors. Hence the fate of both Peter and Paul, whose feast was a week ago.

But the church was given its freedom by the fourth century emperor, Constantine, and the Christian era began. It had its ups and downs, but it is only in recent times that what was the heartland of Christianity, Europe, began to be considered no longer rightly described as Christian, and the need to evangelise Europe became one of the preoccupations of the late Pope Benedict XVI. 

So the time was ripe for the appearance of the unique Pope Francis, and the joy of his evangelising vision, now shared by the missionary Pope Leo, whose first public words echoed the risen Lord: ‘Peace be with you.’ We look now to Pope Leo for guidance in order to recognise what we as church need to be convinced about and aspire to – here in Ireland we are quite European. For example, can the days of Ireland’s great contribution to the missions through the work of clergy and religious return? 

Vocations will come only if the church is healthy, by which I mean there is need for leaders to emerge from the body of believers as a result of the synodal process, a need for centres of church life that excel  – even if that has consequences for parish structures – and for monasteries too. Be a centre of excellence or perish.  

In that scenario, some features of church life today need not reflect what is described in the gospel: reliance on that early charismatic healing, for example, because over the centuries Christianity gave rise to the medical marvels we take for granted. Yet miracles should not be excluded because the church can draw on the treasury of the saints’ lives. Today, many mental health issues, which sufferers themselves describe as demons, are got rid of through advances in psychiatric medicine.  

But it has been believed since the time of the earliest philosophers that there is something of the demonic in all human institutions, which theology today calls, perhaps inadequately, ‘social sin’. This demonic factor leads to corruption and rivalry and aggression of one nation against another. At a lesser level it gives rise to social upheavals, racism, intolerance and disturbances which governments struggle to cope with by legislation. How this demonic factor is related to the devil, which the church teaches is real, is not quite clear, but it’s worth remembering what Pope Francis wrote in his 2013 autobiographical dialogue with his Rabbi friend: ‘With the prince of this world you can’t have dialogue. Let this be clear’. 

What is certainly clear is that there is need for the spiritual power of a renewed church to overcome the evils of today’s world. 

Such renewal is possible, but it requires that each of us be part of it, by firm belief and daily awareness that the Lord is truly risen – not just a verbal acclamation at Easter – and by living in accordance with that belief, in season and out of season, thereby uniting ourselves with the original witnesses, Peter and Paul. 

 

Luke Macnamara: Today we interrupt the rhythm of Ordinary Time to celebrate a great feast—the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul. Though every Sunday is a celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection, this solemnity takes precedence, reminding us of the two great pillars of the Church, whose lives and witness shaped our faith from the beginning.

Peter and Paul are remembered together from the earliest days of Christianity, even though they were never a missionary pair. In fact, the New Testament records only two meetings between them—both in Jerusalem, and over a span of 14 years. So why do we celebrate them together?

On the surface, they couldn’t be more different.

Peter—originally Simon—is a fisherman from the village of Bethsaida on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. He’s impetuous, passionate, often the first to speak and act, and just as often the first to stumble. He tries to walk on water, only to sink. He vows to stay by Jesus’ side, only to deny him three times. Yet Jesus calls him anyway.

Paul—originally Saul—is from Tarsus, a cultured and significant city in the Roman Empire. He’s educated, well-off, a Roman citizen, and a devout Pharisee. He zealously persecutes the early Christians, even overseeing the stoning of Stephen. And yet, Jesus calls him too.

Two men, so different in background and temperament, are united by one thing: their encounter with the risen Christ.

Peter meets Jesus while casting his nets. Paul meets him on the road to Damascus, blinded by a light from heaven. Both undergo deep transformation. Both continue to encounter Jesus in their lives—in their mission, their suffering, and their witness.

Peter’s journey is marked by Jesus’ relentless love and mercy. When Peter fails, Jesus reaches out. After the Resurrection, Jesus doesn’t reject Peter but shares a meal, offers peace, and asks three times: “Do you love me?”—allowing Peter to affirm the love he once denied. Even Peter’s imprisonment becomes a sign of Easter, as an angel rescues him during Passover, echoing the Exodus and pointing to new life.

Paul’s journey, too, is shaped by the power of the Resurrection. Temporarily blinded, he comes to see more clearly than ever. His entire ministry echoes the life of Jesus: preaching, healing, suffering, rising again. Time after time, Paul is delivered—from prison, shipwreck, stoning. His life becomes a living testimony to the risen Christ at work in him.

So why do we celebrate Peter and Paul together?

Because despite their differences, they are united in what matters most: they have seen the Lord. They have experienced his mercy. They have been transformed by his love. And they have dedicated their lives to proclaiming that love, even to the point of death.

Today, we are invited to reflect on that same encounter.

Jesus once asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered from his heart. So did Paul. Now the question is ours.

Who do you say that Jesus is?

Look at your life. Reflect on where Christ has met you—in your weakness, in your strength, in your failures, in your growth. Only then can we, like Peter and Paul, give an answer not from a textbook, but from experience—an answer born of grace.

 

Visitors to the Abbey cannot but notice the word ‘PAX’ over the castle archway, an invitation and hope that all may find, experience and dwell in peace in our monastery. A longer version of this Latin motto for the Benedictines is ‘pax inter spinas’, meaning ‘peace among thorns.’

Much like Saint Benedict himself, we are living in a thorny time. The prickly days of our founder saw him seek refuge from the decadence of Rome and the collapse of its Empire, whilst in our time we find ourselves haunted by the memory of pandemic, appalled by scenes of intercommunal violence on our island, dismayed by political instability across the ocean, and concerned by the bloody conflicts raging in Europe and the Middle East.

The temptation – especially for monks – is to pull up the drawbridge and keep the problems of the world at the gate. It’s not just the chaos of the world that we sometimes wish to flee from, but also growing trends such as secularism, moral relativism and hostility to the Christian faith. In such a scenario, some advise detachment from the world and rejection of our popular culture, with the American conservative writer Rod Dreher going as far to ask:

‘could it be that the best way to fight the flood is to stop fighting the flood? That is, to quit piling up sandbags and to build an ark in which to shelter until the water recedes and we can put our feet on dry land again?’ [1]

Dreher goes on to propose small communities exile themselves from the popular culture in order to construct their own counterculture of shared Christian life, values, and worship.

Appealing as it might sound, such a course of action isn’t an option for those of us who are called to be a leaven of the Gospel in the world around us. Benedictine life was forged in the chaos of the Roman Empire’s collapse, and whilst it was countercultural it was never meant to be escapist. Indeed, according to Cardinal Basil Hume OSB, there has always been a tension on the question of whether the monk ‘is a person who withdraws into the desert to pray and be alone with God, or is he someone who goes out into the marketplace to mingle with and serve the people?’ [2]

Monastic life isn’t a call to isolation, but rather to presence: a stable, faithful presence in the midst of the world’s suffering, questions, and hopes. The monastery is not so much an ark set adrift from society, but a lighthouse rooted on the shore — lit not for our own sake, but to guide others through storm and darkness, and to serve the world around by our prayer and work.

It may be for this very reason that Abbot Columba McCann OSB recognised: ‘the worst days of the pandemic brought home to us just how interconnected we are on our planet, even at a spiritual level. Part of our task as monks today is to keep rediscovering what it is we bring to the Church and the world, and what God wishes to bring to others through us.’ [3]

Living in the Middle East these past four years, I’ve come to witness first-hand the thorns of this region and the need to seek, establish and share peace between these prickles. Monasteries have always sought to be places of peace, order, and communion that ripple outward, and thus it seems our task as Benedictines today might be to take seriously the intention of our motto, ‘pax inter spinas’, and dwell among the thorns of our time, offering a witness of peace to a world badly needing it.

The ‘PAX’ we seek is peace with God, with ourselves, with our brethren, and with the world around us. Amidst the thorns of his life, and the thorns of his community and the world outside, the monk seeks peace and radiates it according to the instruction of Saint Benedict: ‘let peace be your quest and aim.’ [4]

We all live amidst thorns of one sort or another, and Saint Benedict has provided us with a model so that we may dwell in peace among them. To live ‘pax inter spinas’ is to refuse to despair, to persist in love, and to trust that even in the most tangled and bloodied places of our world, peace can take root.

May all who pass under the archway into our Abbey find peace, and have the courage to carry that peace beyond our walls.

Saint Benedict, pray for us.

Justin Robinson OSB

[1] Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option (New York: Sentinel, 2017), 12.

[2] Basil Hume, Searching for God (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1979), 9.

[3] Columba McCann, “Abbot Columba receives abbatial blessing.” Glenstal Abbey, November 2024. https://glenstal.com/abbot-columba-receives-abbatial-blessing/. Accessed 22 June 2025.

[4] Saint Benedict in Timothy Fry, ed. The Rule of St. Benedict in English (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1982), 16.

There was nobody more surprised than I was by the success of the Glenstal Book of Prayer nearly a quarter of a century ago. I was flicking through the Ampleforth Prayer Book in our tiny monastery shop when FatherPeter Gilfedder, then in charge, chided me, “It’s time we had our own prayer book, and isn’t it time you did something useful?”

I took the bait, and a committee went to work to produce the Glenstal Book of Prayer in jig time. It arrived in July 2001, which is apparently the worst month for publishing a book. Yet within a week it was keeping company with John Grisham on the Bestseller List. In another week it had passed him out, reaching the top. The phone was constantly ringing, multiple interviews with radio stations followed and when ABC Australia (their equivalent of the BBC) arrived on our doorstep – drawn by a best selling prayer book in Ireland – I knew something dramatic had happened!

In the Ireland of that time, there was something in the zeitgeist that needed a prayer book. The church was reeling from scandal, losing its grip and a raw, untended, spiritual felt-sense coincided with a ripening nostalgia for an ‘old time’ prayer book. This coincidence of need and nostalgia fuelled a buying frenzy.  The book sold out and the publishers couldn’t keep pace. They ran out of books. Easons were furious – they demanded extra copies… now!

Almost a quarter of a century later, the nostalgia of 2001 has gone and now a prayer book is more likely to be considered a novelty item and prayer a vague, unfamiliar practice from a distant past. And here we go… a new edition of The Glenstal Prayerbook and with a publisher hoping for a second bonanza.

People’s attention is harder won and the competition stiffer than in 2001 – technology’s ubiquity, consumerism, and the all encompassing entertainment industry dulls our ancient spirit-hunger. The God-shaped hole is now filled with ‘stuff’ as we try to quench our nagging ‘not enoughness’ but it simply doesn’t suffice.

But we keep up appearances – it cost a fortune to get us here – and it’s way too late to jump ship with family, career, mortgage. Behind the scenes, we are busily backfilling that God-shaped hole with all kinds of spiritual bric a brac from around the world and from varied spiritual traditions. Amazon keeps the ‘stuff’ rolling in, as we do our best to spend our way out of spirit-poverty. Once again, a sort of famine stalks our land.

Our world has become “a kind of spiritual kindergarten,” says Edwin Arlington Robinson, “where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.” And in this kindergarten we spend our new found wealth developing our minds and minding our bodies in education, health, fitness – things we can measure.

Responsibility is handed over to institutions with their roll call of experts: vast universities, schools, extra-curricular courses, night courses busily at work on our minds – hospitals, primary care centres, fitness centres, sports facilities and diet centres cater for our reappropriated bodies. On the south side of Limerick, we have the ever expanding, yet always inadequate, University Hospital (UHL), while north of the Shannon, there is the huge University of Limerick campus. Cathedrals and churches, still prominent in our cities, towns and villages, are ghosts of their former selves, standing as ancient monuments to a bygone era.

The one time spirit-carers cast aside, the Spirit drops out. Those who feel a need for a spiritual life cobble together a spiritual practice; check into a yoga class, do some breath work or adopt a spiritual practice from India or elsewhere, whereas going to church or using a prayer book is not on the menu. One could argue that we are paying for this ‘dropping out’ of spirit with pervasive and growing mental health issues. The Spirit hasn’t gone anywhere and won’t be ignored – it hits back and in ways we don’t understand. “What is wrong with us,” we ask. We never had it so good for goodness sake. Cars and homes, undreamed of comfort and entertainment 24/7, holidays in the sun, weekend breaks to wherever we like. And in 2025, “I don’t want anyone telling me how to run my life, spiritual or otherwise!”

“Not much room for a prayer book here,” you may be thinking… It won’t make us feel any less lonesome inside. All a publisher can reasonably expect is a brief shelf life for a new prayer book and likely as not, John Grisham will be, once more, speeding up the bestseller chart.

And yet here we are with The Glenstal Prayerbook. Why? Because in the end we have to deal with God if we want to be who we are as human beings. The alternative, idolatry, is the oldest sin in the business – the worshipping of lifeless, tempting idols, found on our screens, in our homes and living rooms doesn’t do it. And the devil sits back and laughs – he never had it so easy! “Our world is populated with atomised ‘godlets,’”writes George Buttrick, and everyone is having a great time, on Facebook at least. But behind the scenes misery and emptiness lurks, anxiety and depression ferment. Being ‘gods’ gutters in on itself and fails us. Living out of our cramped and expensively ‘put together’ self, loneliness has become epidemic and our spirit is gasping for air, cut off from its source…

And so we must return to keeping company with God, and so we pray. A prayer book can help us. Herbert Butterfield, an Oxford historian says that prayer is more important in shaping history than war and diplomacy and more significant than technology and art. He worries about the disappearance of monks in the Protestant tradition. “If I desired to say perhaps one thing that might be remembered for a while, I would say that sometimes I wonder, at dead of night, whether, during the next fifty years, Protestantism many not be at a disadvantage because a few centuries ago, it decided to get rid of monks. Since it followed that policy, a greater responsibility falls on us to give something of ourselves to contemplation and silence and listening to the still small voice.’”

The new Glenstal Prayerbook is to help us keep company with God – to help us to pray, to help us to listen to the still, small voice calling us to life, speaking to and from the God-shaped hole, below the noise and hullabaloo of our taut, stretched and often edgy selves.

We need to listen and answer God, we need to unblock the God-shaped hole and  then, and only then, will we find peace and life – life and more life. And with our spirit nurtured, we can still rise from the dead, back from the brink…

Get your copy of The Glenstal Prayerbook here.

Simon Sleeman OSB

Abbot Christopher Dillon: We have received three very different scenes from Holy Scripture to celebrate this extraordinary feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord. Melchizedeck, that mysterious figure, blessing Abraham, “brought bread and wine”, we are told.

St Paul describes the scene at the Last Supper, where Jesus identifies the bread and the wine as his body and his blood in an action which we are to re-enact in his memory. And St Luke presents us with the miraculous multiplication of loaves to feed the thousands who were hanging on his words, reflecting, perhaps, the miracle of the sacrament and the generosity of its availability to all comers. 

But, “Why” you might ask, “do we need a special feast to celebrate the Eucharist, when we can celebrate it almost every day of the year?” We have just completed our celebration of Easter with Pentecost. And we followed that with the meditation on the mystery of God as the Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit. Today we review the wonder of Jesus Christ’s gift to us of himself under the appearance of bread and wine. And, at the end of this week, the Church will celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus as a kind of summing up of the whole reality of God’s unlimited love for us and for all creation. 

Love is what it is all about; God’s love for us, so vast in its implications that it needs to be expressed from various different angles, for us to begin to understand it and to appreciate its gracious generosity. This annual review of these feasts offers us the opportunity of gaining an ever better and deeper insight into the mystery and its marvels. 

Today’s feast expresses the totality of God’s gift of self to us, his creatures, but also his beloved adopted children. Jesus gives us his very life as expressed in his body and blood, so that in this sharing of himself, we may become one with him and so be loved by the Father as the Father loves him as the Son. This is an absoluteness of intimacy which is peculiar to this sacrament and it both invites and evokes a response of astonished gratitude on our part. At the same time, it hints at the mysterious future reality which beckons at the end of this life, when we are promised, like the Good Thief, that we shall be with Jesus in Paradise, sharing God’s life, living God’s joy for all eternity. 

 More words will add nothing; we need only to reflect in silent and wondering gratitude and behave ourselves accordingly. In so doing, we will make our essential contribution to spreading God’s peace in our troubled world.

Fr. Jarek Kurek OSB: This year feels so much under the shadow of the 2025 Jubilee Year, with all our travelling to Rome, going through the Holy Door and so on.

But it should not escape our notice that it is also 1700 years after a very important council which took place in Nicaea. This was a very significant moment in the history of the Church, and so it is not by chance that this place has been chosen by our new Pope, Leo XIV, as the destination of his first papal visit.

What was the Nicaea about? 318 bishops from all around gathered to discuss the most fundamental issues of the Christian doctrine. The most lasting legacy of the assembly is what we commonly know as the Nicene Creed, the foundational statement of our faith in God as Trinity, which, with some additions, we proclaim so often in our churches.

In 325 Nicaea, which is situated in what is now the north-western part of Turkey, was a part of the Christian empire. But when Pope Leo goes there in November, he will visit a Muslim country. 

I do think it’s becoming more and more essential that we grasp the dynamics of the Christian-Muslim interreligious context. So this morning I would like us to look at the Most Holy Trinity, this key element of our belief that we are celebrating today within this frame, through the lens of a certain Benedictine abbot, called Peter the Venerable.

Why him? Because this French abbot realised, and we are talking about the 12th century, that there was an urgent need to reach out to the Muslim world, to get to know about their beliefs. So he commissioned the first translation of the Quran into Latin and also composed very important works about Islam, which includes addressing the Muslim believers themselves. 

In his dialogue with the world of Islam, he was rather outspoken, to put it mildly. And the idea that mattered to him most was precisely the concept of God as Trinity, distinctively missing in the doctrine of the Muslim faith. 

That was the first thing he dwelt upon, clearly very important to his penetrating mind. 

 

Now the question: do we ever reflect upon this great mystery, the mystery of the Trinity in God?

Sadly, as one contemporary theologian noted, there is nowadays a tendency to regard all the mysteries as mysterious, obscure, beyond our comprehension. So also the Trinitarian mystery has been relegated to the list of objects and concepts considered virtually useless for a practical dimension of our Christian life. This doesn’t help at all.

But how about the idea that the Trinity shouldn’t be considered only as the theoretical foundation stone of Christianity, a relic of the dim and distant past, but become the practical, concrete, and existential basis of our Christian life today? 

It is up to us, each of us attending this liturgy to make a choice. Am I interested in getting to know the deeper meaning of this mystery? Do I want to learn the truth about Trinity, as much as I can? Do I want learn more about God the Father, his Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit?

If you say yes to it, why not pay a special attention to it today while pronouncing the Creed, while it is sung by our congregation in a few minutes’ time? Why not take it up again at home, trying to penetrate the meaning of the words and their significance? 

In doing so, we will be well advised to take the powerful suggestion of Peter the Venerable given at the time to the Muslim brothers? To him the true knowledge of God should never be neglected. It must be investigated, debated and examined until the one who does not grasp it understands it.

Blessed Peter the Venerable was full of holy audacity in his attempt to penetrate the essence of God who is Trinity. May it become so also with us, may we strive to deepen our understanding of this mystery in the belief that the more we try to get it, the more it will be revealed to us, by God. 

Believe in the message of today’s Gospel, the Holy Spirit will declare those things to you.