GOSPEL COMMENTARY IN STORIES FR GERARD BOYCE
Discovering the wonders of Catholic literature.
Y
ears ago when in Form 1 I somehow came across a copy of Ulysses by James Joyce. It is a long and large book and I merely read the first lines: “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown,ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: - Introibo ad altare Dei.” and then put it aside. My mother translated the Latin and told me it was the beginning of the psalm that the priest said at the start of the old Latin Mass: “I will go in to the altar of God.” This impressed me, but she also said that Joyce was a Catholic who had left the church, which was not as impressive. The Irish nun at school, thinking my surname Joyce, had, prior to this, declared him “Very Wicked.” Catholic or not, wicked or not, years later at university a flatmate’s girlfriend would tell me these lines were all a parody of the Mass. The bowl of lather was the chalice, the dressing gown was the priest’s chasuble, the razor suggested the pain the church had caused and causes, and the mirror was a sign of a self-absorbed, narcissistic church in Ireland. Despite Joyce’s commentary on the church in Ireland, when my ordination approached in 2003 I chose the Latin from Ulysses to appear on my ordination card. I liked the line, Fr Gerard Boyce (left) with James Joyce, Dublin 2018. 26
and the truth the words announced, and made them my own on ordination day. These days, when asked about a literature that is Catholic, my thoughts begin here with Ulysses and the Latin of the Mass. But these thoughts go elsewhere too. The Prologue of John’s Gospel should also be considered: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14, RSV). However
