Reality Magazine Summer Edition 2020.

THE FAITH OF FLANNERY O'CONNOR

JULY/AUGUST 2020

DEVELOPING A SENSE OF GRATITUDE

PHOBIAS: JUDGING PEOPLE WE DON'T KNOW

Informing, Inspiring, Challenging Today’s Catholic

A LOAF OF BREAD

THE LINKS BETWEEN LIFE AND LITURGY CHRISTIANITY, AGNOSTICISM

LET THE PEOPLE SING

AND THE POSSIBILITY OF BELIEF

DO WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE SINGING ABOUT?

www.redcoms.org Redemptorist-Communications @RedComsIreland �2.50 �2.00

Partners in Peace Two men of God – Intrinsic to the Irish Peace Process – Convinced of their path – Spurred on by their faith

For the first time, the personal stories and political struggles of Redemptorists Alec Reid and Gerry Reynolds are told, highlighting their underlying influence in gaining peace on this island

ONE MAN, ONE GOD

UNITY PILGRIM

Fr Alec Reid made an extraordinary contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process. As a member of the Clonard community for over 40 years, Fr Alec’s peace ministry emerged from a religious community deeply rooted in west Belfast.

Fr Alec saw himself as a servant of Christ in a situation of political conflict. He felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to reach out and work for peace. His contribution to peace in Ireland is immeasurable, and there would not have been a peace process without his hard work and determination.

This unique book by Fr Martin McKeever CSsR. explores the extraordinary work of this good and simple priest.

When Limerick-born Redemptorist priest Fr Gerry Reynolds first arrived in Belfast in August 1983, it was to a city starkly divided by conflict and violence. His instinct to reach out to those who were suffering, on both sides of the community, would develop into a lifelong devotion to the cause of peace and Christian unity – a pilgrim of peace.

He believed the church could be ‘God’s peace process in human history’, and that dialogue and friendship would open hearts to the mutual understanding and trust that are the foundations of true peace.

Above all, Gerry was a pilgrim, struggling in his faith, always striving towards the goal of Christian unity, one small step at a time. This book by Gladys Ganiel draws on Gerry’s own words and writings, and the recollections of his family and friends, to uncover the story of this gentle priest, pilgrim and peacemaker.

AN AMAZING DEAL: THE TWO BOOKS FOR JUST

€25 plus p&p

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IN THIS SUMMER ISSUE FEATURES �� A LOAF OF BREAD: THE LINKS BETWEEN LIFE AND LITURGY We encounter the mystery of God in our everyday lives.

By Prof Tom O’Loughlin

�� GLENGARRIFF AND THE WONDER OF GARNISH ISLAND Garnish Island is famous for its gardens and specimens of plants that are rare in the Irish climate.

By Fr John J. Ó Ríordáin CSsR

�� LET THE PEOPLE SING PART � Our parish celebrations of the Eucharist would be transformed if we sang the right things, and if everyone knew why!

By Maria Hall

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�� CHRISTIANITY, AGNOSTICISM AND THE POSSIBILITY OF BELIEF Is it possible to be intellectually certain of the existence of God? Sometimes the journey of faith begins in dark mystery.

By Prof Brian Cosgrave

�� FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES AS… In telling us to forgive seventy times seven, Jesus is not encouraging us to be passive but he wants to highlight God’s unconditional love for all.

By Mike Daley

�� PHOBIAS People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

By Fr Colm Meaney CSsR

�� SUMMER READING Some good reading to fill the summer holidays.

By Fr Brendan McConvery CSsR

�� HOUSE HUNTING Clement’s trials and tribulations while trying to find a worthy property.

By Fr Brendan McConvery CSsR

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OPINION

REGULARS

11 BRENDAN McCONVERY

04 REALITY BITES 07 POPE MONITOR 08 WOMEN SAINTS & MYSTICS 09 REFLECTIONS 40 TRÓCAIRE 43 GOD’S WORD

17 JIM DEEDS 31 CARMEL WYNNE 42 PETER McVERRY SJ

REALITY BITES PRIZE FOR COVID RESEARCHER LONDON

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AN OPPORTUNITY WHERE WE CAN LEARN AND GROW

A geneticist on the front lines of developing a vaccine for COVID-19 was selected as the recipient of this year’s Templeton Prize. Dr Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), an evangelical Christian and a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, said of the pandemic that, “Like all crises, like all occasions of suffering, this is an opportunity where we can learn and grow. And I'm glad that I worship a God who knows about suffering,” The Templeton Prize is an annual award of £1.1 million to a living person who has made “an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery or practical works”. It was established in 1972 by Sir John Templeton, global investor and philanthropist. Its first award was to St Teresa of Calcutta in 1973.

Dr Collins has led research in genetics related to diseases as diverse as cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington’s disease and HutchinsonGilford progeria syndrome, a rare form of premature ageing. Veering between agnosticism and atheism until age 27, Collins says he became a Christian thanks in part at least to C.S. Lewis’ classic book Mere Christianity, which lays out a rational case for God’s existence. He wrote The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief in 2006 in which he describes how religious faith can motivate and inspire rigorous scientific research. He was nominated to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences by Pope Benedict in 2009.

Dr Francis Collins

ONE HUNDRED NEWBORNS STRANDED UKRAINE

ORDERED, MANUFACTURED AND SOLD

At least 100 babies recently born to surrogate mothers were “stranded” in Ukraine, as coronavirus restrictions prevented their surrogate parents from entering the country to collect them and bring them to their new homes. The Ukraine is one of the few countries that permits women living there to be used as surrogate mothers by foreigners. There are at REALITY SUMMER 2020

least 50 surrogacy clinics in the country, many offering their services to American, European, Chinese, and South American couples. The country’s Latin rite and Ukrainian Greek Catholic bishops, in a joint statement issued on May 15, called for an end to the practice. It criticised surrogacy as a phenomenon whereby “persons are treated as a commodity that can be

ordered, manufactured and sold”. Every child is a gift of God that should be gratefully accepted in the marriage of a man and a woman, the bishops said. According to the Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, the number of babies in this situation is likely to grow into “thousands” if travel restrictions continue. A woman who offers herself as a surrogate mother through one of the agencies that operate in the country can expect to be paid about $15,000-$16,000 for carrying a child. “The practice of surrogacy, its subject, purpose and means of achievement are morally unacceptable,” the bishops said.

“The commercial basis of surrogacy from a moral point of view … it adds the moral evil of buying and selling the functions of woman’s body and the person of the new-born child.”

N E WS

BACK TO DOCTORING BELFAST

VATICAN–STILL SOLVENT VATICAN CITY

SAVING SOULS – THE MEDICAL WAY

Brother Chris Gault exchanges Dominican habit for doctor’s scrubs

Among those who returned to the active practice of medicine during the coronavirus pandemic there were at least two young men who had recently left medicine to begin studies for the priesthood. Bro Chris Gault, a Belfast-born student for the priesthood, returned to the Mater Hospital where he was once a junior doctor. He graduated with his medical qualifications from Queen's University in 2013 but for the past two years, he has been a student with the Irish Dominicans. When he heard the appeals for qualified personnel to make themselves available, he consulted his superiors who encouraged him to volunteer.

Image courtesy of The Irish News

When the students of San Fulgencia Seminary in Cartagena, Spain, returned home when a state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic was declared, one man went in a different direction. First-year seminarian Abraham Martínez Moratón was a qualified doctor and asked permission to go back to work in a hospital treating COVID-19 patients.

He said that the experience has deepened his sense of vocation. “I want to be a disciple of Jesus, who is the physician of bodies and souls.

I used to say to God: If I’m already helping you through medicine, why add on more things?

But it’s also true that I always told him, and I continue to tell him, whatever he wants for me.”

NO DEFAULT YET

Although the Vatican is facing difficult years ahead due to the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, its budget is not facing a massive default, said the prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy. Father Juan Antonio Guerrero SJ, head of the secretariat, denied reports that the Vatican's annual deficit is at risk of growing 175 per cent.

While acknowledging difficult times, he said the Holy See would not default. Describing the unique economic status of the Vatican, Fr Guerrero said: "We are not a business, we are not a company.

Our objective is not to make a profit. Every unit of the Vatican, every entity performs a service. Every service has associated costs. Our approach must be the maximum sobriety and the maximum clarity.

Our bottom line is in view of mission." The Church carries out its mission thanks to the offerings of the faithful and it is to them that it is accountable.

“We must manage our finances with the passion and diligence of a good family man." While cuts may be necessary, they will never be applied in three areas–salaries of employees, aid for people in difficulty and support for churches in need. He also noted that the Vatican's finances are comparably less than other countries, and even "less than the average American university, for example", a reality that is often ignored. "Between 2016 and 2020, both income and expenses have been constant: revenue, in the region of €270 million, expenses averaged around €320 million, depending on the year."

MASS BY PHONE UNITED KINGDOM

I JUST CALLED, TO SAY.... THE LORD BE WITH YOU!

Realising that not everyone has a computer for access to Mass on the web-camera of their local church, the Diocese of Middlesbrough decided to make Mass available by phone during the period when churches were closed by the Coronavirus pandemic. The technology has been supported by the Knights of St Columba, and the first Mass-by-Phone was celebrated at St Mary’s Cathedral on May 3, with 100 people participating. Fr Derek

Turnham, the head of communications in the diocese, said “Parishes including my own in Redcar have been reaching out through YouTube, Facebook and sending out emails to try to keep in touch with people. But we also knew there are a whole lot of people who don’t have smartphones or internet access.”

Many of these would be elderly or people who cannot afford the technology. Bishop Terry Drainey noted that church services in

the diocese were getting higher 'attendance' figures through the internet than parishes were recording before the crisis began.

“Everyone needs hope and encouragement at this time, and I’m delighted that through digital technology, the Church is able to is give comfort to Catholics and also to others who are not churchgoers and may not consider themselves to be Christians,” he said.

continued on page 6

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REALITY BITES MORE BRITISH TURNED TO PRAYER DURING PANDEMIC According to a poll commissioned by Tearfund, a UK-based Christian relief and development agency, one in 20 British adults say they started praying during the lockdown, although they did not pray before. When the lockdown began on March 23, churches were closed to the public in the UK, and many faiths began conducting services by online streaming or over radio and television.

According to the poll, 24 per cent of UK adults say they have watched or listened to

a religious service during the lockdown: the figure was higher for regular churchgoers (76 per cent). Five per cent of those watching or listening to services have never gone to church. Among those who pray, nearly half (45 per cent) said they prayed because they believe in God, a third believe that prayer makes a difference, a quarter said they prayed in times of personal crisis or tragedy, and a further quarter say they have prayed to gain comfort or to feel less lonely. Men

were more likely than women to say they have watched or listened to a religious service since lockdown (28 per cent vs 21 per cent respectively). Eighteen per cent have asked someone else to say a prayer and 19 per cent say they have read a religious text during lockdown. The top five of prayer intentions mentioned were for family (53 per cent), friends (34 per cent), thanking God (34 per cent), self (28 per cent) and the frontline services (27 per cent).

SOCCER CLUB HELPS MANAGE MASS ATTENDANCE

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FC Cologne, the city’s first-division soccer club, helped the local Catholic archdiocese with a ticket system for church services when seating capacity in churches was limited due to the coronavirus social distancing restrictions. In order to meet the conditions, the Cologne Archdiocese used an online ticket reservation system that FC Cologne employs in planning for such events as autograph-signing sessions. The club trained parish staff members in using the system. “It would make us very happy if we can help people in our city, despite the restrictions of the corona crisis, live and practise their faith,” said Alexander Wehrle, managing director of FC Cologne. The archdiocese said the ticket system guarantees that worshippers do not show up at churches only to be turned away. In addition, possible infection chains can be traced. Tickets are issued online or by telephone.

Waiting to collect tickets for Mass

RELIGIOUS-RUN HOSPITAL TRANSFERRED TO THE STATE Original St Vincent’s Hospital in St Stephen’s Green

REALITY SUMMER 2020

The Vatican has approved the decision of the Irish Sisters of Charity to transfer the ownership of St Vincent’s Hospital Dublin to the Irish State.

It will become the site of the new National Maternity Hospital. St Vincent’s was founded in 1834 by Mother Mary Aikenhead, foundress of the Sisters of Charity. Its original location was St Stephen’s Green; it moved to its present site in Elm Park in 1970. The sisters announced on May 8 last that they were giving the lands and present building as a gift to the people of Ireland. It is estimated that it has a value of €200 million. There was some criticism of the proposal to transfer the new maternity hospital to a hospital that was at least nominally under Catholic control, especially after the legalising of abortion. The Sisters withdrew from the board

of St Vincent’s Hospital Group. The transfer of land or assets by a religious community is subject to approval by the Vatican, especially when those assets have been the fruit of the work of the religious or donations in view of Catholic management. The Sisters obtained Vatican permission to transfer the site to St Vincent’s Healthcare Group, which no longer has any association with the Irish Sisters of Charity, and that permission has been granted.

Some commentators expressed surprise at the Vatican decision as the new maternity hospital would be committed to implementing the State’s provisions for abortion and other areas of obstetric and gynaecological medical care. Moral theologian and commentator, Dr Vincent Twomey SVD, said he was shocked by the decision: “I’m dumfounded really, I just can’t understand it.”

N E WS

POPE MONITOR KEEPING UP WITH POPE FRANCIS Chinese Catholics praying outside a church closed by the State

HELP FOR TRANSGENDER COMMUNITY Pope Francis sent money to a small community of transgender people in Torvaianica, central Italy, at the request of the local parish priest. The community, which includes some sex workers, has approached their local parish priest for financial aid due to the coronavirus restriction. He provided them with food parcels, but was unable to provide money due to his own parish’s circumstances. He suggested that the community request help directly from the pope. They did so and the pope directed his almoner, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, who is in charge of the papal charities, to wire money directly to the group. Through the cardinal, the community sent audio messages back to the pope: “Many thanks to Pope Francis.

God bless you, thank you for everything. A thousand blessings. May the Virgin protect you."

POPE FRANCIS DEDICATES CHINA TO MARY Pope Francis commended China to the care of the Blessed Virgin Mary and asked people to pray for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the most populated country in the world. Speaking after the Regina Caeli on May 24, he said: “Dear Catholic brothers and sisters in China, I wish to assure you that the universal Church, of which you are an integral part, shares your hopes and supports you in trials.”

That day was the feast of Our Lady, Help of Christians, a title under which Our Blessed Lady is specially honoured by Chinese Catholics. The centre of devotion is the shrine of Sheshan in Shanghai, but pilgrimages to it were suspended because of the coronavirus. It is estimated that there are more than 10 million Catholics in China, 6 million of whom belong to the state-run Chinese Patriotic Association.

The Holy See and the Chinese government signed a provisional agreement in 2018 on the appointment of bishops belonging to the Patriotic Association. By the agreement, bishops who had been excommunicated because they were named by the State without permission of the Holy See were received back into full communion with the universal Church. According to a report from the U.S. China Commission, Chinese Catholics have suffered “increasing persecution” despite the agreement. The government was alleged to have demolished some churches, removed crosses from others and imprisoned “underground” priests and bishops (those who remained independent of the Patriotic Association).

LAUDATO SI’ YEAR On May 24, the Vatican launched a year-long celebration of Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical, Laudato Si, to mark its fifth anniversary. It is an initiative of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and will include a wide range of events, starting with a global day of prayer and ending in the

launch of multi-year sustainability action plans. Noting that the anniversary of the encyclical began while the coronavirus had spread world-wide, the dicastery noted that the encyclical’s message was as prophetic today as it was in 2015: “The encyclical can indeed provide the moral and spiritual compass for the

journey to create a more caring, fraternal, peaceful and sustainable world." The Laudato si’ Year began with a day of prayer for the earth and for humanity.

Forthcoming events include talks with the Global Catholic Climate Movement via videoconferencing software Zoom, for Laudato si’ Week, the publication of a

document on 'operation guidelines' for Laudato si’, the launch of a new annual Laudato si’ Award, a documentary film on the encyclical, a tree initiative, and a social media Read the Bible Contest. Next January, the Vatican will host a roundtable at the World Economic Forum gathering of international leaders at Davos.

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WOMEN OF THE SPIRIT A SERIES OF WOMEN SAINTS AND MYSTICS FLANNERY O’CONNOR 1925-1964

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Flannery O’Connor is one of the best-known American writers of the 20th century.

She was a storyteller, penning two novels and 32 short stories. Since her death, she has also come to be regarded as a spiritual writer, with the release of her letters in 1979 and prayer journal in 2013 giving greater insights into the theology and faith that shaped her writings.

Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia in March 1925. Aside from a brief stint up north for study and at the start of her career, Flannery spent all her life in Georgia. The South is the main setting for most of her works, which are often categorised as Southern Gothic or Grotesque in genre. Of the latter, she commented: “Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”

Flannery was an only child, and the family moved to her mother’s hometown of Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1940 following her father’s diagnosis of the autoimmune disease lupus. He died in 1941. Flannery was diagnosed with the same illness in 1952. Upon her diagnosis, she wrote that “grace changes us and the change is painful”. She moved back to the family farm where she stayed until her death in 1964, aged 39.

Flannery succeeded academically from a young age. In 1946 she was accepted into the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop. As well as sharpening her writing ability, her time in Iowa was an important moment for her development in faith.

For the first time in her life she was living among many non-Christians. After graduating, she spent some time at Yaddo, an artists’ community in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she completed several short stories and worked on her first novel Wise Blood.

Her fiction is not for the faint-hearted. ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’, arguably her best-known story, is about the brutal murder of a family. It also features the classic line "'She would have been a good woman,' The Misfit said, 'if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.'" Flannery has been described as a prophet of sin, grace, mercy and redemption.

She described herself as a "Hillbilly Thomist", spending at least 15 minutes each night reading the Summa Theologica. The reality presented in her writing reflects God’s grace, albeit “the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil”.

She saw the glory of God in creation and particularly had an enthusiasm for birds.

In later life she collected peacocks and peafowl on the farm.

As her illness progressed, Flannery continued to write. Christian critics sometimes saw her work as too violent, while secular critics saw it as too Christian. She saw no tension between her writing and her faith: “When people have told me that because I am a Catholic, I cannot be an artist, I have to reply, ruefully, that because I am a Catholic, I cannot afford to be less than an artist.” Her message remains even more relevant today. Violence, she saw, is always accompanied by hope: “I think that the Church is the only thing that is going to make the terrible world we are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and on this we are fed.”

Sophia White REALITY SUMMER 2020

Reality Volume 85. No. 6 July/August 2020 A Redemptorist Publication ISSN 0034-0960 Published by The Irish Redemptorists, St Joseph's Monastery, St Alphonsus Road, Dundalk County Louth A91 F3FC Tel: 00353 (0)1 4922488 Web: www.redcoms.org Email: sales@redcoms.org (With permission of C.Ss.R.)

Editor Brendan McConvery CSsR editor@redcoms.org Design & Layout David Mc Namara CSsR Sales & Marketing Claire Carmichael ccarmichael@redcoms.org Accounts Dearbhla Cooney accounts@redcoms.org Printed by W&G Baird Printers, Belfast Photo Credits Shutterstock, Trócaire, Cover image: Detail of the Last Supper by Sieger Koeder, Villa San Pastore, Italy.

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Promoters: We keep all of our promoters in our prayers and thank them for their loyal service in selling Reality.

We remember in our prayers sick and deceased promoters and their families.

REFLECTIONS When faith did come, it came, I think, by way of my little paralyzed daughter.

Her lifeless hands led me; I think her tiny feet still know beautiful paths.

JOYCE KILMER

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man’s lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times.

CICERO

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all.

Some people seem to gravitate from one fundamentalism to another, from some kind of secular fundamentalism into a religious fundamentalism or the other way around, which is not very helpful.

Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow! Grow!”.

JEWISH TALMUD

I am prepared to meet my Maker.

Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

The difference between having faith in the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus and not having such faith is, at one level, the difference between really discovering Jesus in the needy and oppressed, and simply thinking that it is a rather beautiful idea.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

HERBERT MCCABE OP

There is no sinner in the world, however much at enmity with God, who cannot recover God's grace by recourse to Mary, and by asking her assistance.

Be careful if you make a women cry, because God counts her tears. The woman came out of a man’s ribs. Not from his feet to be walked on, not from his head to be superior, but from his side to be equal, under the arm to be protected, and next to the heart to be loved.

PETER BERGER

ST BRIDGET OF SWEDEN

Pray, even if you feel nothing, see nothing. For when you are dry, empty, sick or weak, at such a time is your prayer most pleasing to God, even though you may find little joy in it. This is true of all believing prayer.

JEWISH TALMUD

The most common one-liner in the Bible is, "Do not be afraid." Someone counted, and it occurs 365 times.

RICHARD ROHR OFM

Each of our lives is a Shakespearean drama raised to the thousandth degree.

The Church is like a swimming pool: most of the noise comes from the shallow end.

Dress suitably in short skirts and sitting boots, leave your jewels and gold wands in the bank, and buy a revolver.

ANNA AKHMATOVA

WH VANSTONE

CONSTANCE MARKIEWICZ

JULIAN OF NORWICH

EMILY DICKINSON

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EDI TO R I A L UP FRONT BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR

PIETY AND PANDEMICS

Epidemics

of dangerous diseases were a fact of life for most of the long stretch of human history. Our scientific response to outbreaks of deadly epidemics is relatively brief. The first use of an inoculation against smallpox, a disease that is known from archaeological evidence to have raged periodically from at least three centuries before Christ, dates only from 1796. Thanks to the success of inoculation programmes, the World Health Organisation was able to declare in 1980 that it was totally eradicated less than 200 years after the first inoculation.

Plagues or serious illness that spread rapidly have also left their trace in our religious story.

When medical knowledge was rudimentary, the loss of life and the suffering of a plague were interpreted as proof of human sin. The liberation of the Hebrews from decades of harsh slavery in Egypt begins with a narrative of ten plagues which so afflicted their Egyptian overlords that they even gave them gifts to speed them on their way.

(Exodus 7-11). Each Passover, the plagues are still remembered, but Jewish tradition recognises, even in this joyful celebration, that this path of liberation brought anguish to the Egyptians. By custom, a first-born Jewish male fasts on the eve of Passover and each one spills a little wine from their glass as each plague is named. In a reckless move to assess his military power, King David ordered a census of his people. God’s answer to David’s pride was a plague that rendered the census useless. In his mercy, God halted the plague and allowed David to see an angel sheath his sword as a sign that the plague had ended. David later purchased the place where the angel stood as the site on which to construct his Jerusalem temple. The New Testament Book of Revelation was probably a response to persecution and martyrdom of Christians in the first century. It contains

a vision of seven plagues that will mark the end of the evil empire that oppresses them.

The history of Catholic liturgy and prayer has many examples of how people coped with great outbreaks of disease, some of them on the scale we have learned to call a pandemic. According to one legend, the prayer we know as the Regina Caeli at Eastertime was given to the Roman Church as Pope St Gregory the Great lead a penitential procession during such a time of plague. As they neared an ancient Roman monument, the penitential litany of the procession was drowned out by the sound of an angelic choir singing the first lines of a hymn in honour of the Mother of God. Gregory joined in and sang the last line – “pray for us to God, Alleluia!” It is still our official Marian hymn for Eastertide. The Black Death was probably the worst global pandemic in history. Arriving along the Silk Road from Central Asia to Constantinople, it spread into Europe where it peaked from 1347 to 1351. No one knows exactly how many people died from it, but it is variously estimated to have carried off between 30 per cent and 60 per cent of the population of Europe. It was during the time of the Black Death that the Passion of Jesus and the sorrows of his mother began to assume a larger place in Catholic devotion.

Wooden carved and painted statutes of Our Lady holding the dead body of her son became very popular. This type of statue became known as the Pieta, or to give it is old English name, Our Lady of Pity. Mothers and fathers who had watched children – babies, teenagers, young adults – die painfully from the swellings of the plague went to the Passion and the suffering of the mother in search of consolation and hope. They must have found it, as the images remain so much part of our faith.

What might a future historian of religion say of our response to the coronavirus pandemic?

Unlike most of the plagues of history, our way of coping with this one has been by isolation, not by sharing in community. We had no public processions, no pilgrimages to shrines of healing, not even the ordinary celebration of Mass and sacraments. There was however something different. It was the way in which parishes and individual priests responded to the challenge of the lockdown by the using the modern means of communication. Many churches, it is true, had already been streaming Sunday services for those unable to come to church.

It is remarkable, however, how within a very short time, it became the most common way of communicating the Church’s solidarity with those who facing the uncertainty of life in isolation. Younger priests, who were no strangers to modern media but who had no live-streaming, set up their iPads and laptops to stream daily Mass from their sitting room, often adding the Rosary or adoration in the evening. Religious communities shared their daily celebration of the office. We at Redemptorist Communications arranged for a daily 'Thoughts from a Distance' to be available through Facebook. Lasting three minutes, it was delivered by Redemptorists, Redemptoristine Sisters and lay people who work alongside us in our various ministries.

Has the pandemic made us more aware of the potential of these unfamiliar media as allies in spreading the Gospel?

Brendan McConvery CSsR Editor

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C OVE R STO RY

A LOAF OF BREAD THE LINKS BETWEEN LIFE AND LITURGY

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WHEN WE USE PHRASES SUCH AS "THE LITURGY IS THE CENTRE AND SUMMIT OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE" WE ARE NOT ONLY COMMITTING OURSELVES TO A CERTAIN WAY AT LOOKING AT WORSHIP BUT WE ARE COMMITTING OURSELVES TO A WAY OF LOOKING AT OUR LIVES. IT IS A VISION OF THE UNIVERSE IN WHICH WE CAN ENCOUNTER THE MYSTERY OF GOD IN OUR EVERYDAY LIVES. THE CREATION IS NOT JUST ‘STUFF’, SOMETHING ‘WE JUST USE', BUT THE LOVING GIFT OF GOD.

BY THOMAS O’LOUGHLIN

If

gathering with our sister and brother Christians, and collectively praising the Father, is the summit of prayer, then where are the foothills and the plain? If a formal celebration of the Eucharist is the centre of our prayer, then what does the periphery

REALITY SUMMER 2020

look like? Here lies the key to much of our confusion about worship. This has several distinct elements. The first confusion is that when we worship, we imagine ourselves stepping out of the ordinary world – the world of work and matter – and entering

some ‘spiritual world’. This ‘other’ world we set up through a series of binaries: the ordinary / the special; the material / the spiritual; the profane / the sacred; the everyday / the holy … In the end we forget that all we are, and all this is, every material

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When we worship, we imagine ourselves stepping out of the ordinary world and entering some ‘spiritual world' ‘thing’, and all we know comes from God. All is God’s gift.

AT A DISTANCE? Crafting this religious world has the effect of keeping God at a distance. We do not like admitting this, but severing the creation from its creator suits us. It allows us to treat the creation as just ‘stuff’ we can use, abuse and throw away without seeing any sinfulness in our actions. It allows us, while sounding reverential, to ignore our duties to one another and to the poor as being the primordial expression of love of God: "But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his sister or brother in need, yet closes his heart

against them, how does God's love abide in him?" (1 Jn 3:17). It allows us to limit religion to a little box. It might be a lovely jewelled box, smelling of incense and with wondrous, beautiful music, all warmed by nostalgia, but it is still a box: an ornament on a mantelpiece that we admire and praise, but do not see as affecting ‘real’ life.

The second confusion is that we think of the Eucharist – literally ‘the action of thanksgiving’ – as a ritual whose focus is upon Jesus: remembering him, meeting him, ‘receiving’ him, and making him present.

But ‘eucharist’ is a verb before it is a noun, it is an activity not an object. Eucharist is focused on the Father. Jesus, whom we

remember, gathered his followers and led them in blessing and thanking the Father for all his goodness, then they celebrated this in sharing a loaf and a cup. The Eucharist is our praise of the Father through the Christ, with the Christ, and in the Christ. When we gather we address our prayer to the Father, in the power of the Spirit, "through [the] Christ, our Lord". And as the Christ entered into the creation, and all that is came into being through him, so our eucharistic action takes place within the creation. The plain of the eucharistic summit must be, therefore, in our ordinary lives. There, in union with the Word made flesh, we offer the Father praise and thanks.

C OVE R STO RY

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Eucharist takes place every time a group around a table offer thanks for the gifts of the creation and the food on their plate, and then, having enjoyed the food and company, offer when the meal is over another thanksgiving to God for the joy of the meal CREATION’S WONDER Only a genuine sense of the wonder of all that is – our lives, those around us, human life, and of life on this planet – can lead us to reflect back to the Creator the praise of the creation.

When we see ourselves as the voice of the whole creation, our first word becomes: we thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth for all we are, all that is: it is your gift!

But keeping all this in mind all the time is beyond us, so we concentrate our gratitude on that which brings us face to face, every day of our lives, on our dependence on God’s goodness: food.

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THANKFULNESS FOR FOOD Being thankful for food – it is more than the formality of ‘saying grace’ – is the means which fosters our sense of creaturely dependence, coupled with a sense of how loved we are by the Creator, and should propel us towards our awareness of our dignity as being able to stand in God’s presence as our praise. Eucharist takes place every time a group around a table offer thanks for the gifts of the creation and the food on their plate, and then, having enjoyed the food and company, offer when the meal is over another thanksgiving to God for the

joy of the meal. This was expressed in the Law in this one sentence: "And you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land he has given you" (Deut 8:10). The Jewish sages saw in it the twin blessings of God: the blessing before the meal was for the gift of the food, and then the second blessing (our ‘grace after meals’) was thankfulness for the joy of the food, the pleasures of eating and drinking, and the joy of being with others around the table. The sequence of the two graces not only bracketed the meal but brought out the continuity of dependence and rejoicing.

It is within this tradition of being eucharistic that we have to understand the eucharistic practice of Jesus, and our own eucharistic praying for we praise the Father for his gifts and our joyfulness ‘through the Christ, our Lord.’

NATURE AND LABOUR Look at a loaf of bread – a lovely, rich brown loaf. Feel it and smell its lovely aroma when it

is not long from the oven. Appreciate it as a token of all the wonderful food that sustains us and gives us joy. This first appreciation is primary and sensual, is real and basic to us as human beings.

Now appreciate it again in reflection.

This is not only nature’s gift – the gift of a planet that is not abused but cared for and respected – but the work of human hands: its being there in your hands requires a massive range of skills, a network of human co-operation, and even if you have baked it yourself, it still needs a human network of inter-dependence.

Now appreciate it a third time as a moral agent within our world. What about those who do not have food this day? What of those who are oppressed by the sin of the world so that they are in poverty and cannot enjoy the good things of this world for which we can be thankful? What of the condition of the planet which gives us this loaf of bread – are we caring and careful stewards of the Lord’s creation or exploiting asset strippers of the divine goodness?

Now we are in a position to take this loaf in our hands at the beginning of a meal, and there in our own space, at our own

table, with our own around us, to begin a Eucharistic Prayer. This Eucharistic Prayer at the kitchen table is one of the foothills, part of the periphery for the Eucharistic Prayer we offer within our larger Christian family – we are, after all, sisters and brothers in the Lord’s Anointed – on Sunday.

HESITATIONS Whenever one speaks about these kitchenlocated Eucharistic Prayers some are very hesitant with the term. They would be happier to use the word ‘grace’ and keep ‘Eucharistic Prayer’ for Sunday. This is not surprising: we are emerging out of more than a millennium when the Eucharist was so removed from life that we forgot that a summit needs foothills. Overcoming those binaries that blind us to the totality of our dependence on the Creator is not only the aim of Vatican II, but of the whole work of Jesus the Christ.

The other hesitation is that it is easy to think of God’s goodness in the creation, and be thankful, when holding a hot, sweet-smelling loaf of bread. It seems to warm us inside and to make us want to cut it up and share it.

But such a sense does not jump into our minds when we see a ciborium of pre-cut little roundels made of pasty white stuff that can only be called ‘bread’ by a stretch of the imagination. That should remind us that the renewal called for by the Council is, after 50 years, still beyond the imagination of most Catholics. Ecclesiastical ‘fast food’ has to give way to a real loaf, so that we can be real, and really thankful. But this change must start, not in some Vatican office, but around your table when you next pick up a real loaf of real bread.

So – when will you next compose a Eucharistic Prayer in your house?

A native of Dublin, Professor Thomas O’Loughlin taught in the Milltown Institute and the Dominican Studium in Dublin. He is currently Professor of Theology at the University of Nottingham.

His most recent book of the Eucharist is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking up Pope Francis’ Call to Theologians (2019)

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COM M E N T WITH EYES WIDE OPEN JIM DEEDS

GRATITUDE

DEVELOPING AN ONGOING SENSE OF GRATITUDE FOR THE BIG AND SMALL GIFTS OF EVERYDAY LIFE CAN BE THE PATH TO A DEEPER CONTENTMENT, SINCE IT IS HARD TO BE GRATEFUL WHILE STILL BEING ANGRY OR FRUSTRATED OR ANXIOUS AT THE SAME TIME. Gratitude is the combination of a feeling of thankfulness with a readiness to show appreciation in return for kindness we have been shown. In other words it is a verb– an action word. We experience gratitude and we pass it on to others. We know that God is in the gifts we receive and God is the ultimate giver of all those gifts.

Often those gifts are the people we encounter in life. Therefore, God is in the people we encounter.

To show gratitude to others is, de facto, to show gratitude to God. Indeed, at Mass, we hear the priest proclaim, "it is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks". How awesome a statement for us to believe; that not only is it right and a duty, but our very salvation lies in gratitude to God. I have had two encounters with gratitude over the past week that I would like to share with you. My first encounter came with a group of health professionals I have been leading in a series of sessions of relaxation. These workers are on the front line caring for the most vulnerable people in our society; often caring for them right to the moment of their death. Much of the illness and death they see is caused by COVID-19. These truly are remarkably brave and compassionate people.

While leading groups in meditation, I always draw our attention to holding on to at least one thing that we are grateful for.

The reason for this is that I have

I felt a deep gratitude for them and the work they were doing– at some risk no doubt. I called to them, "thank you for the work you do." I have to confess I can’t remember ever saying thank you to refuse collectors before. And I have a feeling those I thanked were not used to being thanked in this way because they stopped what they were doing and thanked me for thanking them! This encounter with gratitude left us all with a smile on our face.

found experiencing gratitude to be a way to open a person up to a more compassionate way of being with themselves and the world around them. An insight that led me to this is that it is very difficult to be grateful and angry or frustrated or anxious at the same time. Sure, those other feelings might still be there after, but in the moment of feeling and experiencing gratitude, all else is quietened. This makes it an excellent tool for those who are looking to relax and to feel at peace. My curiosity, and slight concern, was whether this group of people who had seen illness and death in high numbers be able to go with me to this place of gratitude. To my delight they were. Indeed, they enjoyed the experience and it taught many of us that we hadn’t made space to feel grateful for a long time. We agreed that we would all create a ‘bank account’ in our minds– a ‘gratitude bank account’. We

are going to make time each day to put something into the bank account– a person, a thing, an experience for which we are truly grateful– and we are going to ‘make a withdrawal’ from the account in the stressful or worrying times by remembering and experiencing those things for which we are grateful.

The second encounter with gratitude came when I was on my daily walk with my dogs. It was very early and the streets and main roads where I live were very quiet indeed. However, there was one vehicle, a bin lorry, ahead of me. And there beside the lorry were three workers collecting and emptying bins. While we think of healthcare workers as key workers in the response to COVID-19, they are not the only ones. Those who keep society going by ensuring our rubbish is taken away and disposed of, are all key workers. As I passed them,

Gratitude is a muscle to be flexed daily. Like other muscles, the more we use it the stronger it becomes.

These are challenging times in which to be alive. These are very challenging times in which to feel gratitude, but the bigger the challenge the bigger the prize of rising to it.

One challenge is to make time and space to recognise the things we have to be grateful for. We can so easily lose sight of these things unless we are intentional about how we hold on to them– perhaps you could open a ‘gratitude bank account’ of your own?

Rising to these challenges, we will live lives grounded in gratitude– gratitude for ourselves, for others, for this fragile life itself and ultimately gratitude to and for God. Let’s do it. It is our duty and our salvation after all. Thank you for reading these words of mine.

Belfast man Jim Deeds is a poet, author, pastoral worker and retreat-giver working across Ireland.

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d n a l s I h s i n r a G

GLENGARRIFF AND THE WONDER OF

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A SMALL ISLAND IN GLENARRIFF BAY, GARNISH IS FAMOUS FOR ITS GARDENS WHICH ARE LAID OUT IN BEAUTIFUL WALKS AND HAS SPECIMENS OF PLANTS THAT ARE RARE IN THE IRISH CLIMATE.

BY JOHN J. Ó RÍORDÁIN, CSsR

How

does one spend a Sunday in West Cork when the weather is not too promising? Well, here is how I spent one in early September. After breakfast in Eccles Hotel I headed for the 11.30 Mass in Glengarriff parish church. I sat in a front pew to the right of the altar. As the church filled up the organist set a prayerful tone with Bach’s Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring. The Scripture text was from St Paul’s Letter to Philemon, pleading for the reinstatement of Onesimus the runaway slave. And while Paul and Philemon had problems with Onesimus, so had the reader – not a very popular name in West Cork it seems. The choir and organist were

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splendid all through the celebration and I said as much to them. In a sense ‘they made the liturgy’.

"KEEP GOING UNTIL YOU HEAR THE BLAST" Outside the church there was time for chat as people got into their cars and attempted to get into the traffic-flow on this busy Glengarriff-Killarney road. I bided my time awaiting the opportune moment to make a move and as I edged out, a local lad cheerily remarked, “My boss always said, ‘keep going until you hear the blast’!” Meanwhile the raindrops were falling with ominous frequency, but rain or no rain an outing to Glengarriff is incomplete

without visiting Garnish Island. I therefore parked the car and joined the queue for Garnish. The ticket master was busily engaged in pouring red diesel from one container into another. "Good stuff?" inquired a bystander. "Yes," came the reply "would you like a drop?"

At the pier-head those ominous raindrops were still falling but come what may, Garnish Island beckoned. The boat journey was short, ten or 15 minutes perhaps; I lost track at the sight of so many large seals spending a lazy Sunday afternoon on the rock. Approaching seal colonies, the boatman slackened speed and hove by to facilitate the excited photographers.

On one or two previous occasions I had been to Garnish, but the visits were brief; today I had hours to spare and made good use of them. The first prejudice of which I let go was the impression that this was a landlord’s residence with a history of oppression, famine and emigration which all too often is the story behind 18th-century stately homes. Garnish had no such tale to tell. The British

established a Martello tower on the highest point of the 37-acre island during the threat of a Napoleonic invasion in the early 19th century.

A hundred years later the sole occupier of the island was a Sullivan woman and her four sons all living in a three-roomed cottage. In 1910 the island was bought by John Annan Bryce and his wife Violet who were no strangers to Glengarriff despite the fact that John was Belfast-born with strong Scottish connections.

The Bryce couple possessed vision and money.

By 1911 they had already engaged the services of Harold Peto, the illustrious English architect and garden designer. He set to work at creating a garden and drew up plans for a magnificent mansion which was destined never to get beyond the drawing board because of a downturn in the Bryce fortunes.

Instead of the proposed mansion the couple and their children settled into life in the gardener’s cottage which was built in 1912.

The Bryces were a much-travelled family and assembled an interesting and valuable collection of artistic works in their London home. Some of these items were transferred to Garnish to adorn both the cottage and the gardens. The combined creativity of John Annan and Harold Peto, with the assistance of a hundred workmen, transformed the 37-acre outcrop of rock into a stunning work of art with its gardens, its array of exotic plants and some occasional sculptures of Mediterranean provenance.

THE ITALIAN GARDEN After all the rock-blasting, soil importing, tree planting and a thousand other things, Garnish Island began to present a new face to the world, the most outstanding feature of which was not the walled garden, nor the clock tower, nor the Grecian temple that crowned the great flight of steps, nor the vistas beyond. No, the bijou of Garnish Island is beyond doubt the Italian Garden. It may not be the wonder of the world, but it is certainly known all over it.

After the death of John Annan Bryce in 1923 Violet continued to live in Garnish and opened

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up the gardens to visitors. Meanwhile her son Roland remodelled and extended the cottage. In 1928 Violet appointed Murdo MacKenzie, a gifted Scotsman, as head gardener. Under his stewardship the gardens acquired the fame they have never since lost. Between then and Murdo’s death in 1983 he was the recipient of a catalogue of awards and medals in Ireland, Britain and further afield.

Another employee of the Bryce family served even longer than Murdo. She was Margaret O’Sullivan, better known among friends and visitors as Maggie.

At the age of 15 Margaret, a farmer’s daughter from the hinterland of Glengarriff found employment as a domestic servant at the Bryce family cottage in Garnish. The strong enduring friendship that grew up between Maggie, Murdo and Roland proved to be ‘the makings of Garnish'. The island became a place of welcome to friend and stranger; among the high-profile personalities to enjoy the warm easy manner of Maggie were George Bernard Shaw and President Seán T. O’Kelly. When parting with Shaw she expressed the hope that they would meet

in heaven and to this G.B. replied "Madam we’re already there!"

The Irish State acquired the Island in 1953 and under the new management, The Office of Public Works, Murdo and Maggie retained their former occupations. Neither of them married. Murdo died at the age of 87 and Maggie gave up her spirit at 91.

When Roland bequeathed the island to the state, he stipulated that the Bryce house and its contents be kept intact.

(In preparing this article I am indebted to the inspirational words of the tour guide at the cottage, and to the booklet 'Ilnacullin – The Bryce legacy' by Carol Mullaney-Dignam).

Fr John J Ó Ríordáin CSsR is well-known as an authority on early Irish Christianity. His books include Early Irish Saints (Columba Books 2016).

LIT U RGY

LET THE PEOPLE PART TWO

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IN PART 1 WE LOOKED AT HOW MUSIC IS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE LITURGY. HOWEVER, THE FORMATION OF THE LAITY AFTER VATICAN II HAS BEEN A SLOW PROCESS, AND WE STILL HARBOUR OLDER HABITS, FOR EXAMPLE, THINKING THAT THREE HYMNS IS THE IDEAL WAY OF CELEBRATING MASS! OUR PARISH CELEBRATIONS OF THE EUCHARIST WOULD BE TRANSFORMED IF WE SANG THE RIGHT THINGS, AND IF EVERYONE KNEW WHY!

BY MARIA HALL

In

this article, we shall look at some lesser-known parts of the Mass that should be sung. Remember, we should be singing the Mass, not singing at Mass!

INTRODUCTORY RITES The entrance music plays a vital role in gathering the people, unifying them as a worshipping community, setting their thoughts to the feast or season, accompanying the procession and lifting their hearts ready REALITY SUMMER 2020

for worship. Ideally the Entrance Antiphon is sung, either the antiphon of the day or one reflecting the feast or season.

This is good practice for two reasons. Firstly, it means that we are singing the actual text of the Mass, which is always preferable to a hymn.

Also, singing a piece with a refrain gives the congregation the opportunity to watch the procession while the choir or cantor sings the verses. Processions are meant to be watched!

After the altar has been incensed, the priest begins "In the name of the Father…" and we

reply with "Amen". This should be sung too! The music is in the Roman Missal, but even singing on one note would raise the level of celebration.

We are familiar with the Kyrie and Gloria being sung, so I won’t dwell on these, except to say that it isn’t necessary to sing everything every week. In my parish, we focus on singing the Penitential Rite in Advent and Lent, and we sing the Gloria on major feasts.

Another of the dialogues comes at the end of the Collect. If the celebrant is a confident singer, he could sing the whole of the prayer with the

people replying with a sung "Amen". If not, he could recite the prayer and sing "through Christ our Lord" on one note ready for a sung "Amen".

LITURGY OF THE WORD Readers or lectors are the mouthpiece of God. Their ministry is not about 'reading something for Father". Good lectors bring the Word of God to our hearts and minds: poor readers leave us uninspired. Good pastoral formation is so important but can be a challenge when the very people who need such formation are the ones who don’t attend! Lectors must be fully aware of the immense importance of what they do.

The rubrics in the Roman Missal are a great guide for lectors. They provide music for the dialogue with the people at the end of the readings as well for the beginning and end of the Gospel. Some practical training is probably needed here, though for most people, confidence rather than musical skill is most needed. If the melody proves too difficult to start with, the dialogues can be sung on a single note (even accompanied by the organ if needed). The priest and director of music need to be gentle and encouraging! This could be introduced for special occasions (eg Holy Saturday, Christmas, major feasts) to give people time to get used to it. It will make a difference!

A better option would be to sing a hymn that reflects the theme of the readings or the season

Universal Prayer The Prayer of the Faithful is another opportunity to sing a dialogue after each petition. The lector or a cantor would sing "We pray to the Lord" and as a response there are several beautiful settings including : O Lord hear us we pray, O Lord give us your love.

Lord hear our prayer (Celtic Rune) Liam Lawton Through our lives and by our prayers, John Bell LITURGY OF THE EUCHARIST Preparation of the Gifts The September 2019 Issue of Reality has a full article on the Preparation of the Gifts, but it’s worth repeating some points about music here. We might still call it the ‘Offertory’ but that is misleading; the bread and wine are offered during the Eucharistic Prayer.

Music should accompany the procession, may continue until the gifts are placed on the altar and can go up to the incensation.

It may be instrumental, which gives people the opportunity to watch the procession and place themselves spiritually with the gifts. If a hymn is to be sung, the words should reflect the aspect of preparation, not offering. There are several well-known hymns (e.g. 'Gifts of Bread and Wine') that would be better placed elsewhere (Communion) so as not to confuse the real theme of preparation.

A better option would be to sing a hymn that reflects the theme of the readings or the season.

Eucharistic Prayer The Roman Missal assumes that the dialogue at the beginning of the Preface will be sung. It is presented as music! This dialogue is a fanfare for the "centre and high point of the entire celebration".

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Many of us are used to singing the Holy Holy, Memorial Acclamations and Great Amen. There are some wonderful contemporary musical settings for these, particularly from Irish composers, but we still have dubious folk-style arrangements from the 1970s which might be better shelved.

Any liturgical music should have integrity and create a sense of the sacred. If it is so simple that you can pick it up immediately, then it is probably not worthy of being used.

We should be prepared to learn and practice, even a little bit!

Church music has its own traditional style, Gregorian chant, and we should not forget it. Though still deemed by many to be old fashioned, we have a duty to pass on this wonderful musical heritage and the Church asks us to do this. Chant versions of the Sanctus, Pater Noster and Agnus Dei can be easily included into a parish repertoire.

It’s time to ditch dated, simplistic Mass settings and look for quality music that is worthy of the liturgy. Two great collections of music are: Sing the Mass. Veritas (National Centre for Liturgy) Glory to God, New Music for the Mass.

Decani Music.

COMMUNION RITE If you wish to sing the Our Father, the Ár nAthair is a great Irish option; so also is the chant version in Latin or English, or even the Russian setting. There are some settings from the 1970s that followed the folk-style of the day, some not keeping to the proper translation. It’s time they were consigned to history!

There are some beautiful litany pieces for the Breaking of the Bread which can continue as people move forward to receive Communion, bridged by instrumental music during "This is the Lamb of God". Try: REALITY SUMMER 2020

Jesus, Lamb of God, Bernadette Farrell (Laudate, Decani) Litany for breaking of Bread, Paul Inwood (Laudate, Decani) Communion Antiphon The Communion Chant begins when the priest receives Communion and continues till all the faithful have received. The first option is the Communion Antiphon because it is part of the Mass. The Roman Gradual or the Simple Gradual are primary sources and a fabulous free resource is www.communionantiphons.org. This is a complete collection of Communion Antiphons for every Sunday of the threeyear cycle, composed by Andrew Motyka.

These beautiful settings are suitable for most parish musicians.

ROLE OF THE PRIEST “No other single factor affects the liturgy as much as the attitude, style and bearing of the celebrant; his sincere faith and warmth as he welcomes the worshipping community; his human naturalness combined with dignity and seriousness as he breaks the Bread of Word and Eucharist.” (Music in Catholic Worship 21)

The priest has a pivotal role in directing the way a parish celebrates its liturgy. His enthusiasm will encourage others and has the potential to inspire their encounter with Christ during the Mass. The parish needs to work as a team, understanding that this is about raising the quality of the liturgy, creating a foretaste of the Heavenly Jerusalem, not following personal preferences. Formation will be needed, especially for lectors, cantors and choir members and everyone needs to work in a spirit of cooperation. It might be the opportunity to finally bring everyone together and form new beginnings!

There is also the elephant in the room; the fact that some people, especially the priest, are required to sing on their own and might not want to. Lots of practice, preparation and guidance is needed and shouldn’t be rushed. In this way the music will become familiar and not scary. You might prepare for six months before introducing a sung dialogue at Mass. The music director will help here, or you can access them online and sing along. If the melodies in the Missal are too difficult, remember, sing on one note.

It’s a start!

Further Resources Singing the Mystery of faith. Veritas. The National Centre for Liturgy. www.icelweb.org/musicfolder/openmusic.php. Chants from the Roman Missal https://media.musicasacra.com/books/simplechoralgradual.pdf (These are free-to-download settings of the entrance, offertory and communion antiphons by Richard Rice. Suitable for parish musicians.)

SAINT MEINRAD Entrance and Communion Antiphons for the Church Year.

Columba Kelly OSB. Available at www.OCP.org YouTube: Search for ‘Roman Missal Chants’, a collection of 19 brief music videos from the Church Music Association of America which includes all the dialogues for priest and lector.

Maria Hall is music director at St Wilfrid's Church, Preston, England. A qualified teacher, she has a Master’s from the Liturgy Centre, Maynooth and is a consultant on matters liturgical for schools and parishes. www.mariahall.org

F E AT U R E

CHRISTIANITY, AGNOSTICISM AND THE POSSIBILITY OF BELIEF

IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE INTELLECTUALLY CERTAIN OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD? SOMETIMES THE JOURNEY OF FAITH BEGINS FROM THE REALISATION OF GOD’S DARK MYSTERY.

BY BRIAN COSGROVE

A

true agnostic, not to be confused with an atheist, is a radical sceptic who holds that, whether there is a God or not, there is no way of arriving at a knowledge of his existence.

Thus, the dictionary definition of an agnostic is “a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God”. Many world religions, however, confess to a similar ignorance when asserting that nothing positive can be affirmed about the nature of

God. As we know, there is in fact a strong tradition known as apophatic theology in Christian thought. From the Greek word ‘to deny’ this is a theology which holds that we cannot say positively what God is, but that we can proceed only through a via negativa (Latin: negative way) which allows us to say what God is not.

AN UNKNOWN GOD? An important contribution of Keith Ward’s God: a Guide for the Perplexed

is its reminder that this lack of knowability extends across the entire spectrum of world religions. Among the religious thinkers he cites are the Eastern Orthodox bishop St Basil the Great (c.330-79) for whom the “essence” of God is “inaccessible”. He recalls also the Jewish tradition of “the unknowableness of the divine name (Jews will not even pronounce the name God revealed to Moses on Sinai) and of the divine nature”.

He recalls the 11th-century Islamic thinker, al-Ghazali, for whom the essential nature of God “transcends

all that is comprehensible”. It is likewise with Eastern religious traditions. Sankara (or Shankara) who is closely associated with Hinduism, takes a similar stance.

Ward’s conclusion is that many orthodox religious traditions insist that the essential nature of God is unknowable.

The question that then arises is this: how does the agnostic or the Christian progress to a more assured knowledge of or relationship with God? For the Christian the obvious answer would seem to be revelation;

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How does the agnostic or the Christian progress to a more assured knowledge of or relationship with God? but in that direction lies a circular or self-defeating argument. In order to interpret, or even accept revelation, you need faith in the first instance: but in order to arrive at faith you need revelation. Perhaps St Anselm, who is remarkable for his reliance on a rationalist approach to theological thought, can help us to reinstate the claims of the intellect. But in fact when he formulates his famous dictum, fides quaerens intellectum, “faith seeking understanding”, we cannot fail to note that fides comes first, not just as subject of the verb but in more general aprioristic terms.

As Keith Ward points out (p. 138), Anselm makes this emphatically clear in the opening chapter of his Proslogion ('Discourse on the Existence of God') when he writes: REALITY SUMMER 2020

For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand.

For I believe this also, that unless I believe, I shall not understand.

In spite of his rationalism, then, Anselm does not give reason priority.

THE HEART HAS ITS REASONS In the 17 th century, Blaise Pascal goes further in providing an alternative to “reason”.

Significantly in his collection of 'Thoughts' (Pensées) Pascal concludes that: “It is the heart that feels God, not reason; that is what faith is. God felt by the heart, not by reason”

(Pensée 680). In a related way, John Henry Newman does not hesitate to use a word that has behind it the prestige of one of Wordsworth’s most famous poems. In a sermon of February 2, 1843, he speaks of “Divine intimations”. Wordsworth’s poem is the 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhoo' and there is evidence that Newman was not only familiar with the 'Ode', but highly responsive to it.

Intimations, however, are unlikely to prevail with an agnostic: especially if s/he remains a rationalist, unmoved by the blandishments articulated in the previous paragraph.

Intimations might just provide a starting point for a would-be Christian, whence s/he might progress to a willingness to explore such intimations as if they were indeed true. Then such a path might lead to faith.

A thought-provoking essay by the philosopher William James,

'The Will to Believe', provides a further endorsement of such a procedure when he speaks of “precursive faith”. There are cases, he suggests, “where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming”. He gives the simple example of deciding whether “you like me or not”. That depends “on whether I meet you half-way”, indeed on whether I “am willing to assume that you must like me, and show you trust and expectation”. He concludes: “The previous faith on my part in your liking’s existence is in such cases what makes your liking come”. If I wait for “objective evidence”, I lose the chance of a possible friendship.

In the matter of marital commitment , where the evidence is of necessity limited and cannot be definitive, and we may be obliged to act on “intimations”, the marriage vow is obviously an act of faith.

HINTS FOLLOWED BY GUESSES That said, all that we have so far accumulated in support of belief may be summed up in the words of T.S. Eliot in 'The Dry Salvages' (one of his Four Quartets): There are only hints and guesses, Hints followed by guesses.

So what we may do, or have to do, when we do not possess certain knowledge is this: we gamble. Hence Pascal’s famous “wager”. There are various ways of summarising the wager, but what it comes down to is this. Either there is a God, or there is not. If we say that there is no God, and there is a God, then in Pascal’s words we may lose the chance of “an eternity of life and happiness”.

But on the other hand, if we wager that there is a God, and there isn’t, what have we lost? Nothing, because there was nothing to lose in the first instance. In fact, Pascal adds, what we gain is a set of ethical imperatives which provide a basis for honourable action: the believer in God can be “faithful, honest, humble, grateful, doing good, a sincere friend” (Pensée no. 680). We might add that the believer, as a practical consequence of belief, finds meaning in life, and is saved from absurdism or nihilism.

This might just be the furthest that reason may go in providing what is essentially a pragmatic solution.

With that in mind, one may turn to another statement in the Pensées, not certainly as well-known as the wager sequence, but closer to the truth of lived experience, and on that basis perhaps more authentic.

Like the famous conclusion of Voltaire’s Candide, “Il faut cultiver notre jardin” (“We must look after our own patch”), it is in effect an admonition to narrow our focus to what immediately concerns us, and cease our aspirational speculation as we attempt to find answers to unanswerable questions. Pascal writes: “It is good to be weary and tired from the useless search for the true good, in order to stretch one’s arms out to the Redeemer” (no. 524).

What differentiates Christianity from other world religions is this emphatic humanism at its core

AN INCARNATE GOD If faith is born out of extreme experiential need, then here is one instance of such a need. Moreover, faith in this case seems to emerge out of scepticism – its seeming opposite – since what generates the need for a Redeemer is the sheer difficulty of determining what the “true good” is. Above all, Pascal is here offering the possibility of salvation, not by a hidden God, a deus absconditus, but by an incarnate divinity.

We are not here dealing with an unknowable God, but with the Christ, “a man like us in all things but sin”. In Hans Küng’s deceptively simple phrase, used as the heading for one of the sub-sections of a chapter in On Being a Christian, the divinity at the heart of Christianity is “the God with a human face”. (And what differentiates Christianity from other world religions is this emphatic humanism at its core .)

When Jesus tells Philip: “To have seen me is to have seen the Father …” (John

25

14:9), he presents a major challenge for the Christian’s capacity to believe: how can a simple man like ourselves, a mere speck of sand on another speck of sand (the Earth) inside another speck (the Milky Way), and so on literally ad infinitum – how is he to be identified with the Creator not just of an infinite universe but, if modern physics is to be believed, a multiverse?

The tenor of Pascal’s remark is such that it entirely foregrounds the surrender to the saving possibility.

It is as if he were saying: “Does the castaway ask himself who threw the lifebelt? Does he not eagerly accept it and, intensely preoccupied by his dominant existential need, suspend all questions?” After such a commitment, we are still not entirely secure (and so may continue to sympathise with the agnostic point of view). But we do have an orientation. In the words of T.S. Eliot, again from Four Quartets: “For us, there is only the trying.

The rest is not our business” ('East Coker' l. 189).

Brian Cosgrove is a native of Newry, Co Down. He is emeritus professor of English at Maynooth University.

TH E O U R FAT H E R : PART 6

FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES AS…

26

IN TELLING US TO FORGIVE SEVENTY TIMES SEVEN, JESUS IS NOT ENCOURAGING US TO BE DOORMATS, PASSIVE IN THE FACE OF PHYSICAL VIOLENCE, BUT HE WANTS TO HIGHLIGHT GOD’S UNCONDITIONAL LOVE FOR ALL.

BY MIKE DALEY Iguazu Falls, Argentina

REALITY SUMMER 2020

I

know it’s hard to imagine today but there was once a time when things called cassette tapes were giving way to the new technological marvel of compact discs. Limited on funds, I was faced with an important decision: what were my first CD purchases going to be? Being the good Irish American that I am, I bought a copy of 'The Best of Van Morrison'. Where do I begin arguing which song of his is better than the next?

Being the good Catholic American that I am, the other CD I got was Ennio Morricone’s mesmerising soundtrack to The Mission. The movie is based on Robert Bolt’s book which narrates the inspiring, yet tragic, story of Jesuit missionaries to South America who fall victim to political and ecclesial intrigue in the middle of the 18th century.

'FALLING' INTO FORGIVENESS Alongside the evangelising work of the Jesuits, the viewer is introduced to Captain Rodrigo Mendoza, a seemingly merciless, slave-trading mercenary, played by Robert DeNiro. In response to discovering a love affair between his fiancée and brother, a betrayed Mendoza impulsively issues a duel which leads to the death of his brother.

Several months later, Fr Gabriel, the leader of the Jesuit mission to the native Guarani, played

by Jeremy Irons, discovers a grief-stricken, guiltridden, and deeply depressed Mendoza rotting away in prison. There, Fr Gabriel issues him a challenge: “God gave us the burden of freedom.

You chose your crime. Do you have the courage to choose your penance?” To which Mendoza dismissively replies, “There is no penance hard enough for me.”

What follows is an arduous climb up the Iguazu Falls to the village of the Guarani. Trailing behind the Jesuits is Mendoza weighed down by a net carrying the tools of his former life– armour, swords, and other weapons. After some harrowing, near-death moments, the Jesuits reach the top of the falls. There they are greeted warmly by the Guarani. Then sight is caught of Mendoza, caked in mud, collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. The Guarani recognise him as the one who has killed and enslaved their people.

One of the villagers quickly runs over to Mendoza. Unexpectedly, rather than kill him, the Indian cuts the rope connecting Mendoza

to the net with his weapons and armour and pushes it into the water below. In response to this unmerited act of forgiveness all Mendoza can do is weep for joy.

THE HARDEST EQUATION In trying to capture the mystery of the Incarnation– God become flesh – Christians have given Jesus many theological titles. Some are very familiar to us like Lord, Christ, and Son of God. An enigmatic one that I recently came across is the Mathematician. It comes from a question that Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” To which Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times” (Mt 18:22).

Like Peter, we want to put a limit on forgiveness.

Seven times…at best. Jesus, however, challenges our expectations of forgiveness, reconciliation, mercy, and maths. Not just with the number, but the quality, depth, and degree. As shown in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus moves beyond the 'restraining' ethic of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth", when he states “offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on [your] right cheek, turn the other one to him as well” (Mt 5:38-39).

that if we can’t forgive the people we love to hate, if we continue to cherish that grudge, we will be burdened and embittered for the rest of our lives, and deprived of the abundant life that faith in Jesus offers. Something tells me that it is OK to be angry at injustice, and selfishness, and abusive behaviour, at political incivility, at clericalism and patriarchy.

Something tells me that there are other, better, more Godly ways of resisting evil than hatred and revenge. Something tells me that, if we are open to it, God will find a way to enlighten our minds and persuade us to soften our hearts. Something tells me that if we take one or two small steps toward forgiveness – even if only acknowledging our desire to try to forgive – we have at least begun the journey.”

AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US To err is human.

It goes without saying that we all have been hurt, harmed, and dehumanised. Not just by individuals – family members, friends, co-workers, mentors – but by institutions, the church included. Perhaps harder to admit, we’ve done the same destructive, mean, and sinful things to others.

If ever there was a truism: the world is crying out for reconciliation. This truth doesn’t make it any easier to forgive or to accept forgiveness. Like the older son in Luke’s Gospel, some have a hard time letting the grudge go. They’d rather retain the pain. To do otherwise, they say, would deny what happened and diminish the injustice.

Even deeper still may be a lingering doubt that we’ve never been forgiven ourselves, whether by God or others. The great spiritual writer Henri Nouwen addresses this in his book The Road to Daybreak: “Maybe the reason it seems hard for me to forgive others is that I do not fully believe that I am a forgiven person. If I could fully accept the truth that I am forgiven and do not have to live in guilt or shame, I would really be free. My freedom would allow me to forgive others seventy times seven times. By not forgiving, I chain myself to a desire to get even, thereby losing my freedom. A

Maybe the reason it seems hard for me to forgive others is that I do not fully believe that I am a forgiven person. If I could fully accept the truth that I am forgiven and do not have to live in guilt or shame, I would really be free Jesus is not encouraging Christians to be doormats here, to be passive in the face of physical violence. What Jesus wants to highlight is God’s unconditional love for all. He wants to break the cycle of hate, revenge, and retaliation. Yet, is this possible, even realistic? Even for Christians?

In a recent homily, Stephen Bevans, Divine Word priest and professor emeritus at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, responds for all of us when he says, “I’m really tempted to say no.

But something deep in me tells me that we are at the heart of the gospel here, right at the centre of what it means to be Christian. Something tells me

forgiven person forgives. This is what we proclaim when we pray, ‘and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.’ This lifelong struggle lies at the heart of the Christian life.”

To forgive is divine.

In case there was ever any confusion as to what Jesus meant by forgiveness, he told his disciples the story of the unforgiving servant (Mt 18: 23-35). In it a servant is indebted to his king to a degree which is insurmountable. As payment the king orders not only his servant, but his wife, children, and property be sold as well. With nothing to lose the servant prostrates himself at the king’s feet and pleads, “Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.”

Surprisingly, moved with compassion, the king lets his servant go and forgives the debt.

A short while later, the servant encounters one of his fellow workers who owes him a small amount of money. For lack of payment, the servant throws his peer in jail. Thankfully, friends of the jailed worker go to the king and tell him what happened. Outraged the king calls for his servant. With anger in his voice the king declares, “You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?” Jesus closes the story with a warning that unless each of his disciples (us) forgives from the heart they (we) will end up “jailed” like the ungrateful servant.

Echoing the words of the martyred Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, forgiveness for Jesus is no “cheap grace.” “Costly” demands are placed on us. There is a reciprocal dynamic at work. According to the Our Father, the degree to which we have forgiven others, God will forgive us.

Mike Daley is a teacher and writer from Cincinnati, Ohio, where he lives with his wife June and their three children. His latest book, co-edited with Diane Bergant, is Take and Read: Christian Writers Reflect on Life’s Most influential Books.

27

PHOBIAS "THE LORD DOESN’T SEE THINGS THE WAY YOU SEE THEM. PEOPLE JUDGE BY OUTWARD APPEARANCE, BUT THE LORD LOOKS AT THE HEART.” (1 SAMUEL 16:7)

28

BY COLM MEANEY CSsR

I

stayed with a charming family some time ago while on mission. Judith, the mother, is president of the chapel – almost an honorary title, as her only activities revolve around the annual fiesta, the celebration in honour of the village’s patron saint. She works with the city government. Her husband used to be a vendor and now looks after the domestic side of life.

They are not rich, and they are not poor either. I have a room to sleep in, which has a plasticbladed ceiling fan revolving at a height of five feet, five inches. I have to be alert to avoid cranial accidents.

AN “ORIENTATION”?

The six children, ranging in ages from 19 to the early 30s, all live in the extended house.

REALITY SUMMER 2020

They are all extremely friendly, welcoming and laid-back; they don’t get too excited with the Amerikano lodger ('Amerikano' is the common term in the Philippines for any Caucasian), and certainly show no great enthusiasm for the activities of the mission. Even on the two occasions when the neighbours gathered in their house for faithsharing, the children made no appearance. Their parents were present of course, and Judith shared tearfully about how disappointed she was with her children – not because they showed no interest in the mission (or the Church), but because of their “orientation”.

I shared that, whatever about their “orientation”, I found them all to be exceptionally kind, pleasant and respectful.

Judith was not referring to two of her sons who are married, nor to the youngest daughter, shapely and easy on the eye, who lives with her tattooed, taciturn boyfriend. She was upset with Mira who is a tomboy, and with Christopher and Richie who are both quite effeminate. Richie dresses sometimes in a miniskirt, sometimes in an alluring pink negligee; Christopher goes off to work to his beauty parlour in a skirt, tight blouse, false breasts and whatever other paraphernalia help him to appear more feminine. As transvestites, they display a real joie de vivre.

However, apart from Judith’s tears, I have neither heard nor sensed any negative, derisive or opprobrious comments or allusions regarding her children.

I asked Christopher about all this when he was putting burgundy highlights into my hair. “The neighbours are used to my appearance; others often call out ‘Hi Sweetie’, or something similar. But it really depends on how you present yourself.

Some effeminate people overdo it, they flaunt it, and this, not surprisingly, invites a similarly exaggerated response or taunt.”

As he sensibly says, the manner in which others respond to us depends to a large extent on how we present ourselves – and not only in terms of dress, mannerisms, speech, etc. Think of how we respond to someone who is arrogant or overbearing or untrustworthy. The presentation invites and shapes the response.

The manner in which others respond to us depends to a large extent on how we present ourselves – and not only in terms of dress, mannerisms, speech WOULD YOU LET THEM JOIN YOU? I'm writing on this topic because some time ago a group of religious in the Philippines issued guidelines as to who would be acceptable to join them. They wrote as follows: "Because of cultural considerations in the Philippines, we have decided not to accept those who are obviously effeminate". And the reason given for this decision was a perceived (or rather, imaginar y) "homophobic culture" in the country. When I read these statements, I had my doubts about them.

What exactly are "cultural considerations"? (No example was given). And whatever "cultural considerations" may refer to, should they determine who joins a particular group?

And can a person be "obviously effeminate" and another be "not so obviously"?

I know some people who are effeminate, like Christopher: their speech, their mannerisms, their instinctual reactions all announce this fact. As to whether they are homosexual or gay or of a same-sex orientation, I have no idea. All I have access to is their external behaviour. Conversely, I know some people who are of a same-sex orientation (they have told me), but they don't seem to me to be in any way effeminate.

So a distinction should be made and the two labels, effeminate and homosexual, ought not to be conflated.

There is no "homophobic culture" where Christopher lives, where he is certainly not the only effeminate person. Indeed,

there is no such culture in the Philippines. There probably are individuals who are homophobic, just as there are others suffering from various other phobias. But surely a homophobic person or even a homophobic culture should not be any group's guide as to who is or is not welcome to join their group. After all, a phobia is an extreme or irrational fear or aversion to a situation or a person. It is an excessive and unhealthy reaction. It would be unwise, for example, to put a person who suffered from hydrophobia (irrational fear of water) in charge of the local public swimming pool, because nobody would be allowed to swim, all because of one person's phobia. It would be similarly rash to ban all productions of the musical

Cats, just because the censor suffered from ailurophobia (an extreme aversion to our furry feline friends).

And it would be disastrous for any group to base its decision as to who is acceptable to become a member purely on the exaggerated, fearful opinions of some who suffered from homophobia.

Finally, on the matter of homosexual people, Pope Francis said, "who am I to judge?"

A native of Limerick city where he went to school in St Clement’s College, Fr Colm Meaney first went to the Philippines as a student and has spent most of his priestly life there.

29

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COM M E N T FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS CARMEL WYNNE

LET GO AND LET GOD

ISN’T THERE A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOW YOU BELIEVED YOU WOULD COPE IF YOU HAD TO DEAL WITH MAJOR CHANGES IN YOUR LIFE, AND HOW YOU COPED WHEN THE PANDEMIC BROUGHT RESTRICTIONS THAT WOULD HAVE SEEMED IMPOSSIBLE FOUR MONTHS AGO? On January 23, 2020 the Chinese Government put the city of Wuhan and three other cities on lockdown. The following day they extended the lockdown to cover 36 million people. This seemed like a blatant denial of civil liberties. It could only happen in an authoritarian regime like China One month later there were 23 deaths outside of China from the coronavirus. The media reports of the spread of the virus confirmed that the world was a global village.

As COVID-19 spread to Europe, people who returned to Ireland from abroad were asked to go into isolations for 14 days.

Earlier in the year adults could shield children from media coverage of disasters. Parents knew how to reassure children if they felt worried and anxious. Young people accepted that "Scary things happen in other parts of the world, but you don’t need to feel anxious or afraid. Mum and Dad will always keep you safe".

Older children were comforted when they knew that the scenes of natural disasters, war-ravaged countryside and reports of epidemics happened thousands of miles away from their homes.

The first death in Ireland from Covid-19 was reported on March 11, 2020. The next day the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, in line with the advice of the National Public Health Emergency Team, announced that all schools, pre-

schools and third-level educational centres of education would be closed in order to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Parents who were trying to come to terms with the monumental changes in their own lives, discovered that many children were more knowledgeable about how the virus was spread than they were. Teachers put glitter on the hands of one child who was then allowed to play with the other children in the class.

In a short time the glitter was everywhere, on desks and books and other children.

A few months ago, when a frightened child asked a question, a parent could give a simple ageappropriate response that would comfort the child and reassure him or her that "Mum and Dad know how to keep you safe". The reassuring messages which worked in the past don’t work during the pandemic. It’s understandable that well-informed children who

are not allowed to go out to play, meet their friends or go to school are upset and angry at the major changes and limitation of lock down.

Young people need their parents to be dependable and trustworthy. It would be foolish if not irresponsible for any parent to pretend that everything is okay when clearly it is not. Children sense when adults feel stressed.

If they believe a parent is lying or hiding the truth they will be more scared and fearful than if parents gave them factual information.

There is no right or wrong way to talk to a son or daughter about the major life changes in their family.

The approach that suits a child who has the ability to express how she feels may not work with an anxious child who listens to news reports but won’t talk about them for fear of worrying a parent.

and children are confined and do not have a break from each other. When everything familiar, everything that people knew and believed and trusted is taken away, without preparation or warning, people need to grieve those losses whether they are aware of that need or not.

No one could ever have anticipated a time when schools would shut down, churches would be closed and socially-isolated families would not be allowed to have a traditional funeral to celebrate the life of a beloved grandparent who died alone.

Children under the age of about ten don’t fully understand death.

They can tell you that dead people go to heaven or the cemetery.

In their minds the person has gone to live someplace else. It’s vitally important for parents to explain that they feel very, very sad because they can never see a person who died again. It may seem morbid to show them a picture of the coffin in the hearse but psychologists tell us that seeing the picture helps to make the bereavement real.

The COVID crisis has taken away control of our lives and life choices.

We don’t know how long we will stay socially isolated, physically distant, not free to hug the people we love. It’s a time when our best wisdom is to let go and let God.

Families in lockdown are in crisis.

Relationships suffer when parents

Carmel Wynne is a life and work skills coach and lives in Dublin. For more information, visit www.carmelwynne.org

31

U N D E R T H E M I C R OSCOP E

Summer Reading

WITH FOREIGN TRAVEL LOOKING UNCERTAIN, AND HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION STRAINING UNDER SOCIAL DISTANCE RULES, INVESTING IN SOME GOOD READING FOR THE SUMMER MIGHT BE ADVISABLE! REVIEWER: BRENDAN McCONVERY CSSR

32

This year marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of the artist Raphael Sanzio da Urbino, better known by his Christian name. He died at the age of 37 on Good Friday, 1520 and he was a contemporary of the leading artists of the Italian Renaissance such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

This beautifully illustrated book is, as its title suggests, a study of the world in which Raphael was born and came to maturity.

Three years before his death, the German friar Martin Luther had fired the first salvo in what was to be the Reformation which ended the unified Catholic culture of Europe.

Truth to tell, that culture was already in a bad way throughout much of the artist’s life. The papacy was, to a large extent, the prize of competing Italian city states and dukedoms. It was in one of those dukedoms that Raphael was born in 1483, probably also on Good Friday. His father, Giovani Santi, was an artist in the service of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. He learned the rudiments of art from his father before being apprenticed at the age of eight to one of the leading

painters of the time, Pietro Perugino, whose workshop was in the city of Perugia, more than 100 km from Urbino.

Commissions began to come for the young painter while he was still a teenager. His most prestigious commissions came from the popes who were restoring Rome. It was the fund-raising for the rebuilding of St Peter’s Basilica through the sale of indulgences that triggered the Reformation. The landscape for much of Raphael’s life was dominated by three popes – Alexander VI (Borgia), Julius II (della Rovere) and Leo X (Medici).

Not one of the three could be said to be a model of priestly life and seemed more concerned with advancing the ambitions of their families (including their own illegitimate children). Julius seemed more in his element when at the head of the papal army, while Leo had accumulated a considerable number of benefices, or ecclesiastical sources of income, including two abbeys, by the time he was created cardinal at the age of 14!

They were nevertheless patrons of the arts. Julius had commissioned Michelangelo to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and would later commission Raphael to design tapestries to hang along the lower part of its walls.

Fr Michael Collins is a priest of the diocese of Dublin who has a particular interest in Rome.

He has already written The Fisherman's Net - The Influence of the Papacy on History (2003) and The Vatican - Secrets and Treasures of the Holy City (2008).This highly readable book introduces the reader to many of Raphael’s works but does not delay too long on any one of them. The author however has a knack of highlighting lively and entertaining details– for example, he includes Raphael’s drawing of Annone, the pet white elephant of Pope Leo X, a coronation present from the King of Portugal!

Raphael’s World by Michael Collins Messenger Publications, Dublin: 2020 Paperback: 128pp €19.95 / £17.95 ISBN 9781788121231

REALITY SUMMER 2020

Food, Feast and Fast. The Christian Era from the Ancient World to Environmental Crisis

by Fintan Lyons OSB Dublin: Columba Press, 2020 Hardback 408pp €19.99 ISBN 9781782183716

This is a most extraordinary, and highly original, study of the history and theology of the Eucharist. In 20 chapters, it pursues the twin themes of feast and fast from the Old Testament until today and leaves us with the troubling conclusion: “In the end, the role of food, feast and fast in the Christian life must include addressing the looming environmental crisis from the perspective of the coming reign of God.” Fr Lyons, a monk of Glenstal Abbey, is also an academic, specialising in the history of the Reformation. He has taught postgraduate courses in aspects of his specialisation in the Angelicum and the Pontifical Liturgy Institute

of San Anselmo in Rome. Although there are fascinating vignettes in every chapter, I found the treatment of the Reformation tradition the most enlightening part of the study. By Luther’s time, the number of annual days of penance requiring either fasting or abstinence had reached 161, or over one third of the year. Fasting, in the strict sense, required abstinence from all forms of dairy food, eggs and fat. While the actual observance of the fasting regulations by the majority of the people has been questioned, Lyons says that regions where the fasting regulations had already been reformed by both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities were less attracted to following the reformers. In comparison to some of the other reformers, Luther’s treatment of the new form of the Eucharist to be observed was relatively conservative and aimed to preserve the festal character of the liturgy. A more radical reform of the theology and the liturgical practice of the liturgy came from the Swiss reformers, Huldrich Zwingli and John Calvin, who stressed the memorial rather than the presence aspect of the celebration, and whose form emphasised the nature of the Eucharist as the banquet of the community even in its new name, the Lord’s Supper.

Given the rarity with which the ucharist was usually celebrated in those churches that look back to Calvin, it is instructive to be reminded that his ideal for Sunday worship of his Genevan community was centred on the celebration of the Eucharist. Calvin also interpreted fasting as an ideal life-style of the followers of Christ: the "life of the godly indeed ought to be tempered with sobriety and frugality, so that as far as possible, it bears some resemblance to a fast".

The chapter on Calvin is followed by one (ch 11) that seems far from his ideal of frugality.

It, and chapter 13, treat at some length food and banqueting at the heights of the Roman renaissance. The formal act by which Pope Leo X took possession of his Cathedral of St John Lateran was an extraordinary lavish event. The processional way from the Vatican to the Lateran was adorned with triumphal arches, many erected at great expense by noble families competing for the papal favour. The climax of the day was a splendid banquet: 65 courses was not unusual!

It is above all among the Orthodox (and Catholics in union with Rome who follow Oriental liturgical tradition) that the style of fasting and feasting that reached their highest development in medieval times have remained virtually unchanged. Their fasting laws make for an essentially vegetarian diet for almost one third of the year. In developing his theological reflections (chapters 16-19), Fr Lyons draws on the film Babette’s Feast (a favourite of Pope Francis), not to speak of a learned aside on the history of the fork!

This is a book to be savoured like good food!

At the price for such a long and beautifully printed volume, it is a bargain. Unfortunately, the illustrations are poor. The majority are from the great heritage of western art which cannot be adequately represented in black and white. Perhaps another edition might consider making them available in colour.

33

UNDER THE MICRO S C O P E

The Outlaw Christ: Who do You Say that I Am? By John F. Deane Dublin: Columba Press, 2020 Paperback: 316pp €16.99 ISBN9781782183662

“Gradually, slowly, we came to the conclusion that Christ was best seen, in the world of poetry, as an outsider – one who disturbed the status quo. Gradually we saw how evolution fits into the development of our awareness of Christ, and began to search for a new poetry alongside what might be considered as a new Christianity. Christ the outsider, then Christ the Outlaw.” This, the final paragraph to the foreword of this book, will explain its intriguing title. The ‘we’ are the author and a group of students at Loyola University where John F. Deane was Teilhard de Chardin Fellow in Catholic Studies in 2016.

Reading this book during the coronavirus lockdown of 2020 was a pure pleasure. To be truthful, there were few new poets or even unfamiliar poems to be discovered here. It was in large measure a journey of rediscovery with a wise and insightful author who often pointed and said ‘Have you noticed this or did you hear the music of those words?’ It was also a journey of gratitude – remembering teachers from my teenage years doing A

Level English in Belfast and a few years later, 'reading English' in University College, Galway as the older expression would have it.

Deane has invited his students to share here something of their own discovery of poetry and faith. Each of the chapters includes the full text of a poem and an appreciation of it. The choice of texts runs freely from the Anglo-Saxon 'Dream of the Rood' – first encountered in the original in Galway but some of its haunting words stuck in my mind in their unfamiliar form - to James Harpur’s 'Zone of Timelessness', a new and challenging voice for me.

There are some voices that recur – John Donne and George Herbert above all seem to represent most of what is ideal in faith and poetry for the author. There are some texts that might not be considered poetry but belong to that place where language strains at its own borders with faith. Deane records in his introduction his discovery of Teilhard de Chardin and his vision of creation transformed through evolution at a time when even a moderate theory of evolution was viewed with some suspicion by the Catholic magisterium. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, martyred under Hitler, delivers a testimony that still has relevance: “Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus, living and incarnate." Simone Weil, the Jewish mystic who remained until death an outsider, yet who sensed the power of Herbert’s 'Love bade me welcome' when she encountered two young English men who read it to her at a retreat in Solesmes. This is a book to be re-read. I will give presents of it to some of my dearest friends, but I am keeping my copy to re-read and make more notes in!

Did Jesus Really Exist and 51 Other Questions

by Nikolaas Sintobin SJ Dublin: Messenger Publications, 2020 Paperback: 128 pages €12.95 / £11.95 ISBN 9781788121217

This unpretentious little book would be ideal for a parish study group or a Leaving Cert / A level religious studies class. None of the entries runs to more than two pages and each one is rounded off with a few questions for discussion. There is also a glossary of 52 common words, each explained in a couple of lines. Among the questions raised are the resurrection, miracles, prayer, reincarnation. I have two reservations. First, despite its simple presentation (short, fairly large type font, no colour illustrations) the price seems a little high. Second, the list of books on the final page are all Belgian editions: while the originals are French or Flemish, the titles are given in English. It would have been more convenient for readers to be directed towards English language material of the same standard.

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IN T H E F O OT ST E PS OF CL EMENT: PART 5

HOUSE HUNTING

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Clement and Fr Thaddeus Hubl presented by the nuncio to the authorities of Warsaw

AFTER ALMOST EIGHT YEARS IN WARSAW, CLEMENT’S COMMUNITY HAS ATTRACTED MANY YOUNG MEN AS REDEMPTORISTS. THE SMALL MONASTERY CANNOT HOUSE THEM ALL, AND SO BEGINS A SEARCH FOR AT LEAST ONE NEW HOME THAT WILL TAKE 12 YEARS OF CLEMENT’S LIFE AND EVENTUALLY PROVE UNSUCCESSFUL.

BY BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR

Since

the first three Redemptorists arrived in Warsaw in 1787, their community continued to grow beyond their expectations. Within two years of their arrival, the first new brother member of the community was professed.

Others followed, mostly as candidates for priestly ministry. They were a mixed group – some Germans, Poles, Swiss and a handful of French. By the time they were forced to abandon St Benno’s 20 years later in 1808,

REALITY SUMMER 2020

it had been nursery of 65 Redemptorists.

With the growth in numbers, it was evident that the small monastery could not accommodate them all. In any case, when he left Rome, Clement had been given the charge of founding the Congregation north of the Alps, and that could not be reduced to one community in Warsaw, no matter how evangelical it proved to be.

Political changes had led to a change of climate in Warsaw in any case. In 1796 it had

come under the rule of the Kingdom of Prussia.

If nominally Catholic states like Austria and Naples tried to clip the wings of religious orders, that was even truer of Protestant Prussia. Particularly suspect were ‘the monks of St Benno’s’ who were attracting new members and providing an intense Catholic presence in the city. The Prussians forbade candidates to be admitted under 24 years of age, and on no account were lay members to be admitted. Also, those entering were

to choose from the outset whether they wanted to be teachers or pastors: there would be no question of mingling the two ministries. Since the obvious purpose of these restrictions was to drain the life blood from religious communities, survival would only be possible if they had another home, at least for the training of new members.

While they managed to get safely back to Warsaw, the charge had been laid that Clement was guilty of childkidnapping!

he had committed a breach of the emigration act, and word was sent out that he was to be arrested.

While they managed to get safely back to Warsaw, the charge had been laid that Clement was guilty of child-kidnapping! Some months later, he was stopped at a checkpoint near Cracow.

He was identified as a dangerous criminal and immediately placed under house arrest at the Dominican priory of Cracow. Clement spent three months in Cracow.

In the meantime, a delegation had come to Warsaw from the Swiss town of Wollerau asking

Clement to establish a school and orphanage along the lines of St Benno’s. The foundation only lasted a matter of months, as war was beginning to loom. Clement was beginning to find the uncertainty of looking for a new home in an increasingly uncertain Europe a challenge.

According to his biographer, Fr Josef Heinzmann, Clement was probably on the verge of a nervous collapse at this stage. In his depression, he even interpreted letters from the community in Warsaw giving him the latest news as suggesting that he should stay away.

HOUSE HUNTING The next 12 years of Clement’s life would be taken up with travels to explore the possibility of new foundations. They would take him to Switzerland and Bavaria, and on one final visit to Rome.

The first venture outside of Warsaw was to send a small group of priests to do mission work in the small Duthy of Courland. At that time, it was part of the Polish Federation: later, it would become part of Latvia / Lithuania. A house was established at Mitau (today Jelgava in Latvia). All seemed to be going well until the Bishop of Vilna, in whose diocese they worked, told them without any reference to Clement or to their Roman superiors, that they were dispensed from their religious vows as Redemptorists, and for the future would be incorporated into his clergy.

CHILD KIDNAPPER? A planned trip to Switzerland to explore a possible foundation in the summer of 1795 had to be cut short because there was a war in Southern Germany where their route lay. Clement took advantage of this to visit his hometown of Tasswitz. Catching up on the news with family and old neighbours, Clement mentioned the school he was running in Warsaw. Immediately there were requests to take some local boys back with him. The decision to take four boys back to St Benno’s was to cause Clement a lot of trouble.

When word came to the local police, they decided

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Dominican Priory Cracow where Clement spent three months under house arrest

Redemptorist Communications Presents

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By Fr Peter McVerry SJ

“There is something profoundly wrong when, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we have a record number of people homeless, children going to school hungry, and many, many people struggling to make ends meet and provide even basic necessities for their children.”

For the past 40 years, Fr Peter McVerry SJ has lived and worked with some of the most vulnerable people in Irish society. His experience with those who are homeless, poor and marginalised has given him a unique perspective on the issues facing Irish society, and their underlying political, economic and social roots.

This book contains a selection of articles from Fr McVerry’s monthly column in the Redemptorist magazine, Reality. They offer a reflection on issues from homelessness and drugs to justice and faith, as seen from the perspective of the poor.

Inspired by the Gospel and the Catholic Church’s social teaching, Fr McVerry challenges us all, from politicians to ordinary citizens, to listen with compassion, to examine our attitudes, and to attack the causes of inequality.

To order, contact Redemptorist Communications St Joseph’s Monastery, St Alphonsus Road Dundalk, County Louth A91 F3FC

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IN THE F OOTSTEPS OF CLEMENT: PA RT 5

EUROPE IN CHAOS From 1803 until 1815, much of Europe was in the grip of a series of wars, triggered first by the French Revolution and then by the rise of Napoleon. It was at this time that the British Prime Minister, William Pitt, said "Roll up that map of Europe, it will not be needed for another generation.” In this time of shifting borders and uncertainty Clement continued his house hunting.

In 1802, another opportunity to establish a house in Switzerland presented itself. The place was Jetstetten in the diocese of Constant. The diocese, and especially the vicar general, Ignatius Baron von Wesssengerg, was in favour. The place chosen was a convent of nuns that had fallen on hard times at a place called Mount Tabor. The Gospel text might have prompted Clement to say, “Lord, it is good for us to be here!” They began their mission on the lines of what had been running in St Benno’s. It proved a success and within a few weeks, there was a queue of ten candidates waiting to be admitted to the noviciate. Clement called Fr Passerat to act as superior. Passerat had been a quarter master in the French revolutionary army before he deserted to follow a priestly vocation.

He was professed in 1796 and ordained the following year. Despite his relative inexperience, Clement trusted his skill as a director. Soon the community counted a membership of six priests, four brothers, nine novices and a few students.

The problem was again one of cramped space.

“A single large room served as refectory and study hall, and along with two other rooms, comprised

Interior of the church at Triberg

the entire monastery,” Clement wrote. “The novices, students and some of the priests have their bedrooms in the attic of the chapel, and I live in a summer house in an old tower in the garden where one must protect oneself against the bad weather with boards rather than glass.

The door cannot be closed, and you have to climb up a rickety ladder.” The financial position of the nuns was precarious and the Redemptorists had somehow to find a way to survive that included working in the fields.

Trouble however was brewing. The parish priest of the place was not impressed when the Redemptorists began attracting his flock by their preaching and ministry in the confessional. The civil administrator, called Teufel (the German for ‘devil’) backed him up. He described Clement as "a dangerous crawling snake that has slid into the German fatherland behind a mask of piety”.

By 1806, it was decided to abandon Tabor. Law suits for the return of money the Sisters had borrowed and in which the Redemptorists had become implicated dragged on for several years and proved yet another headache for Clement.

A SHRINE IN THE BLACK FOREST While they were still in Mount Tabor, overtures had been made to the Redemptorists to take on the pilgrimage shrine of Triberg in the Black Forest. Clement and Thaddeus Hubl set off on another walking pilgrimage.

It looked promising. For the first time, the accommodation on offer was attractive. The

The pilgrimage church at Triberg

house could accommodate a community of 35 and it was ideal as a place for a noviciate.

A community was soon gathered, and the pilgrimage centre was once again throbbing with activity. Confident that all was well, Clement departed on what would prove to be his final visit to Rome.

In his absence, problems began to arise in Triberg. The vicar general, Wessenberg, who had initially been a supporter of Clement, now took a decisive turn against him. It was probably triggered by Clement arranging for the ordination of three of his students without the vicar general’s permission. No amount of pleading on Clement’s part could move him.

It was compounded when the anticlerical critics of the Redemptorists seized the opportunity of the disintegrating relationship with the church authorities to spread rumours about them–that they were a band of beggars who were taking bread out of the mouths of the local poor and were "the superstitious Thaborite monsters". Despite the support of the local people, they packed up and returned to Warsaw in May 1807. An even worse time of testing awaited them the following year.

Fr Brendan McConvery CSsR is editor of Reality. He has published The Redemptorists in Ireland (1851 – 2011,) St Gerard Majella: Rediscovering a Saint and historical guides to Redemptorist foundations in Clonard, Limerick and Clapham, London.

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MORE VITAL THAN EVER TRÓCAIRE APPEALS TO SUPPORTERS TO RETURN DONATIONS FROM THEIR TRÓCAIRE BOXES. A DECLINE IN DONATIONS TO ITS LENTEN APPEAL BECAUSE OF COVID-19 RESTRICTIONS COULD PUT MANY OF ITS LIFESAVING PROGRAMMES AT RISK.

BY DAVID O'HARE 40 Trocaire’s

biggest fundraising campaign has been severely affected this year by the pandemic, with many supporters unable to return their Trócaire boxes due to travel restrictions.

THE TROCAIRE BOX The Annual Lenten Appeal usually raises about €8m (£7.1m) each year. Two thirds of this comes from the Trócaire boxes distributed through schools and parishes and which people fill as part of their traditional Lenten observance. Many factors, including travel and social restrictions, as well as the closure of schools and churches, have meant that many boxes were not returned this year.

Trócaire has warned that unless donations from the boxes are returned, it will face a massive funding crisis which will impact directly on the 3 million people who rely on its work overseas.

Trócaire’s CEO, Caoimhe de Barra, says: “People all over Ireland fill their Trócaire boxes to support the world’s poorest people, but the closure of schools and churches meant a lot of that support did not get through. Unless these generous donations are sent on to us, we won’t be able to provide

REALITY SUMMER 2020

life-saving support to some of the poorest people in the world.

“We are asking our supporters to please ‘make your Trócaire box count’. Please count or estimate what is in your box and

donate the equivalent amount online, over the phone or via post. People can also contact their local parish to see if there are arrangements in place to return their box that way.”

Trócaire team giving directions to villagers about the coronavirus

Please count or estimate what is in your box and donate the equivalent amount online, over the phone or via post.

Habiba Mohamed, one of Trócaire’s health workers, checks the temperature of Mohamed Abdi Ali at Luuq hospital, in the Gedo region of Somalia.

COVID-19 NOT JUST AN IRISH PROBLEM In addition to its vital ongoing programmes, Trócaire is also responding to the COVID-19 crisis. The virus is present in all 20 countries where Trócaire provides support. The charity is responding by providing support in all regions, including 11 countries in Africa where over 100,000 coronavirus cases have been confirmed.

Trócaire’s response includes things as basic as providing soap, water and hand-washing stations, as well as supporting quarantine facilities and funding expert medical care.

Dony Mazingaizo, Trócaire’s country director for Rwanda, said: “At the start of the pandemic,

many African governments responded quickly by shutting their borders and implementing lockdown measures but the impact of COVID-19 will be catastrophic for small business, those in the informal sector and those at the bottom of the pyramid.

“Though the measures by governments to implement lockdown were necessary, the average person on the streets of Harare in Zimbabwe and Kinshasa in Democratic Republic of the Congo were asking: ‘How can I survive for more than 21 days without food to eat and without basic needs in the household?’ There are other serious negative consequences from the COVID-19 shutdown, such as mental health challenges and an increase

in gender-based violence.

“Unarguably, those that bear the brunt in such times of crisis are women. They are the ones that till the land to feed families, that take on unpaid care work during lockdown while already taking care of the household. Young girls and boys have had to miss school. With limited internet facilities and technology options for most schools, Africa’s young people are missing out on valuable time to improve their education, prepare and sit for exams and move towards their future. This will significantly impact on the targets set to address poverty by 2030.

“Those in agriculture are counting losses too with challenges in harvesting and linking to markets as demand for goods and services is now low.”

WHY YOUR BOX IS NEEDED Trócaire’s CEO Caoimhe de Barra said: “This funding crisis comes at a time when we are working to reduce the spread of the coronavirus in all 20 countries where we work. People in countries like Somalia and South Sudan are incredibly vulnerable to this virus, while lockdowns and travel restrictions have plunged millions of people deeper more into extreme poverty.

“When contents of each and every Trócaire box, no matter how small you might think it to be, are addedtogether,theywillmakeasignificantdifference to the lives of the people we help. We have done – and continue to do – so much to protect each other. Now it is time to protect the world’s most vulnerable.”

How to return your Trócaire box donation Simply count or estimate what is in your box and donate now in one of these four easy ways: 1. Online at www.trocaire.org 2. Over the phone at 1850 408 408 ROI or 0800 912 1200 NI. 3. By post to Trócaire, Freepost, Maynooth, Co Kildare ROI or Trócaire, King Street, Belfast, BT1 6AD 4. Check with your local parish to see if it has drop-off arrangements.

For more information, visit www.trocaire.org Using a handwashing station in a Somali village

41

COMMENT REALITY CHECK PETER McVERRY SJ

LIFE IS A LOTTERY

WHEN I JUDGE SOMEONE, I AM IMPLYING THAT I AM A BETTER PERSON THAN THEY ARE. BUT IF EVERYTHING IS GIFT, ALL I CAN SAY IS THAT I MAY HAVE MORE OR BETTER GIFTS THAN THEY DID.

42

I’m a Jesuit priest. I have had a long and very happy life. Sixty years ago, I had a wide choice of careers: I could have become a doctor (like my two brothers), or a dentist (just to be different!) or a lawyer (which, in hindsight, would have been useful for my future work with homeless people) or a teacher (which I tried for two years, but, much to the relief of my students, gave up as a bad job), or an engineer or any one of a number of other interesting and well-paid careers.

But I chose to become a Jesuit and I will leave this world with no regrets.

But I could just as easily have been a drug user, like John. John told me that, when he was 13 years old, he used to sit in the kitchen every evening watching both his parents injecting heroin. Using heroin seemed to him to be normal, like eating or drinking. There were no controls placed on him, he could do what he wanted and go where he wanted. He would often go off with his friends for days on end.

His parents were too focused on using heroin to even notice.

John ended up in a sleeping bag in a doorway, dead from an overdose.

And I could just as easily have spent much of my life in jail, like Joe. When he was a child, Joe’s parents used to keep him out of school to go shop-lifting with them. Joe’s role was to kick REALITY SUMMER 2020

or dentist, or teacher or engineer was laughable to them. They had to survive as best they could.

Having listened to so many stories like theirs, I came to realise that everything I have was given to me as a free gift.

I didn’t do anything to earn or deserve what I have been given in life. Even the intelligence that allowed me to study hard, the good health that allowed me to work hard, were also free gifts.

Everything I am is gift.

up a tantrum, to distract the security, while his parents filled their bags and walked out. Joe, consequently, had no interest in school and left early. Joe’s father progressed to armed robbery. Joe was left to support his mother but the only way he knew was to rob. He has spent 20 of the last 25 years in jail. For much of that time, he shared a cell with his father.

Or I could just as easily have been homeless, like Jim. Jim was abused by his father as a child. He left home when he was 15, and lived on the streets, and developed mental health issues. He found it difficult to stay in homeless shelters, mixing with people who had their own personal issues. He went in and out of mental health facilities,

always discharged back on to the streets.

Why am I a Jesuit priest, while John is dead and Joe is in jail and Jim is living in a doorway?

One major reason is that I grew up in a loving home, my parents wanted the best for me, made sure I got a good education, and supported me in my choice of career. Our culture wants people to think that John and Joe and Jim made bad choices and are now bad people, while I made the right choices, studied and worked hard, and am now a good and responsible person. But that’s not true. John and Joe and Jim did not know what it meant to be cared for, had no hope of getting a good education, and the idea of becoming a doctor,

And so I cannot judge homeless people, or drug users or anyone else. For when I judge someone, I am implicitly saying that I am a better person than they are. But if everything is gift, I cannot say I am a better person than anyone else. All I can say is that maybe I received nicer gifts than they did, or more gifts, or better gifts.

Gratitude is the foundation of all spirituality. As the poet, George Herbert, said 400 years ago: “Thou hast given so much to me, Give one thing more, a grateful heart.”

For more information or to support the Peter McVerry Trust: www.pmvtrust.ie info@pmvtrust.ie +353 (0)1 823 0776

GOD’S WORD THIS SUMMER COME TO ME, ALL YOU WHO LABOUR AND ARE HEAVILY JULY LADEN Jesus' mission has met with less than glowing success. In response to 14TH SUNDAY IN that failure we meet the E TIM ORDINARY passage we read in today’s gospel. It has two parts. First, there is a deeply personal prayer in which Jesus gives thanks to the Father for those who have received the message. In contrast to those who have refused to listen, like the learned Pharisees, these are "mere children" in the eyes of the world. Jesus often refers to those who follow him as "children" as their trusting openness is without self-interest. The Wisdom literature of the Old Testament uses

05

IS IT ALL A WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY? JULY Matthew’s Gospel is made up of five great discourse of Jesus.

Matthew is a careful arranger TH of his material. The first and 15 SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME last of the discourses are the longest and are delivered on hill-sides (in Galilee and the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem). The second and forth are delivered ‘in the house’ and are about the mission and life of the community as church.

The middle one, the Parable Discourse of Chapter 13 which we read today, is delivered from a boat on the Sea of Galilee.

The introduction sets the scene. Jesus goes out into the open air to address the crowd. It shows how different he was from the teachers of law whose teaching was confined to their studentfollowers or like-minded scholars. Jesus usually sat down to teach, and the boat provides a kind of pulpit that carries his voice over the water. Like most of Jesus’ parables, the sower is drawn from things that would have been familiar to people living in the fishing and agricultural economy of Galilee. Perhaps even as he was preaching, a farmer was scattering seed and Jesus might have said – “look, do you see that man up there on the hillside?” The point of the parable is how

similar language for those who have taken their place in Wisdom’s school.

The second part continues the Wisdom language (“Come to me…”). Wisdom, like a hostess inviting guests to an elegant dinner party, tells them to “Come and eat my bread and drink the wine I have drawn!”

(Provers 9:5). Like Wisdom, Jesus promises refreshment and peace. Old Testament Wisdom is presented as a feminine character: it is important to catch the gentle, almost maternal language of this passage. The message of Jesus will only be truly grasped by the "little people", those who are at the bottom of society. “Those who labour and are heavily laden” are especially the poor oppressed by a cruel social system that lays heavy burdens of taxation on them. It

includes too, those who are burdened by a religion that lays heavy burdens of law on them. A yoke was a bar across the shoulders that enabled a slave to carry heavier and more awkward loads. It was used as a metaphor for any kind of slavery. Some rabbis taught that a convert to Judaism was ‘accepting the yoke of the commandments’ – not just the ten commandments of Sinai but also the 613 commandments the Pharisees had calculated as belonging to the oral law. By contrast, the yoke Jesus invites his followers to follow is not a burden but it will prove to be gentle and life-giving.

Today’s Readings Zach 9: 9-10; Ps 144; Rm 8:9.11-13; Mt 11:25-30

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12

reckless the sower is in scattering the precious seed. He casts handfuls as he goes along, not caring whether it falls on good soil or bad. The miracle is that the seed does produce a crop. In the same way, the Kingdom of Heaven is God’s reckless gift to human beings. Just as Jesus does not confine his mission to a small group of like-minded people, the call to the Kingdom is intended for everyone.

Matthew lived in a community that was familiar with failure and human weakness. He constantly returns to some important lessons in his Gospel.

Here are two.

1. Don’t give up just because you do not get overnight results. Walt Disney was fired from one of his first jobs as a newspaper reporter

because he was not creative enough! Then he started a company to produce cartoons and short advertising films. Within a short time, it went bankrupt. Walt packed up, went to Hollywood and, as they say, the rest is history.

2. Be slow to judge others. Some people in Matthew’s community wanted instant holiness and had little time for the weed growing among the wheat or the useless fish that get hauled in to shore in the net. Matthew’s answer was 'Give them a chance.'

Today’s Readings Is 55:10-11; Ps 64; Rm 8:18-23; Mt 13:1-23

God’s Word continues on page 44

GOD’S WORD THIS SUMMER A CHURCH OF SAINTS AND SINNERS JULY Today’s Gospel continues the reading of Matthew’s parable chapter from last week. It contains one longer 16TH SUNDAY IN E TIM parable about wheat and RY ORDINA weeds, and two shorter ones about extraordinary growth, and ends with with the explanation of the parable of the weeds and wheat.

Like the sower, stories about the weeds and wheat would have been familiar to Jesus’ audience. It is unique to Matthew’s Gospel, however. Perhaps as the result of a personal vendetta or family feud, a planted field is over-sown at night with a weed that resembles wheat initially until its grains turn black. The problem is spotted by the farm labourers when the crop begins to ripen. Their solution, to uproot the weeds 44 immediately, runs the risk of destroying the whole crop. The master is wiser – let them grow until harvest, then the genuine wheat can be saved and the weeds burned. The

theme of the harvest, and the presence of the ‘Lord of the Harvest’ or landowner, suggests that the parable must be read in a new key, one that has reference to the final age. The parable suggests the question of evil in the community (weeds among the wheat) has to be faced, but radical and simplistic solutions, like that of the servants, are not the answer.

The master is wiser: wait for harvest time.

Matthew is suggesting that the Church will never be totally free of bad elements, but too radical a solution risks alienating others, especially their family and friends.

Jesus’ community is not a tidy circle of the devout. It will remain open to all, and only at the end will there be a final reckoning.

The two short parables (mustard seed and leaven) make the point that secret and mysterious growth of the Kingdom does not depend on human agency, but on the power of God. The Kingdom’s beginnings may be simple, but it will soon provide a shelter for the birds of heaven (all the nations according to a similar parable in Ezekiel 17).

The final section is addressed to the disciples

WILL YOU RISK IT? We return again to JULY Matthew’s parable chapter 13. Today’s three parables are addressed, not to the crowd like those of the 17TH SUNDAY IN past two weeks, but to the ORDINARY TIME disiciples alone. The first two have similar situations (unexpected finding of something of great value) but the third (the net), with its brief allegorical explanation, echoes last week’s parable of the weeds among the wheat.

In the first two parables, the finder of the treasure and the pearl are both overjoyed at a discovery that promises to bring them wealth, but they are also faced with a decision: are they prepared to sell all they own to acquire it? There may be a slight contrast implied: the man who found the treasure is a poor agricultural worker, while a merchant trading in pearls would probably be a man of some wealth.

Both are faced with a risky decision that demands action, as delay gives a competitor, or a neighbour, the opportunity to get there first. The point of the parable is that the joy of discovering the nearness of the Kingdom demands the same kind of decisive and brave risk-taking, but that it has its reward.

The Sea of Galilee was renowned for its fishing and the ancillary industries it supported in the surrounding towns. There are many similarities between the parable of the net and the parable of the weeds, for example gathering / separating, good wheat / weeds, the harvesters / fishermen compared to angels, a furnace of fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth. The net of the kingdom includes everyone, and the final separation will not take place until the end of the ages. Matthew is not writing for a

19

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REALITY SUMMER 2020

(36-52.) The explanation of the parable of the weeds follows the same pattern as the sower. There are seven allegorical keys: 1. the sower of good seed = the Son of Man, 2. the field = the world, 3. the good seed = the children of the kingdom, 4. the weeds = the children of evil, 5. the enemy = the devil, 6. the harvest = the end of the ages, 7. the harvesters = the angels. While the final explanation is the final (eschatological) age, it is also open to the present reality of life in the community. While awaiting the final days, the community has to live realistically with the fact of evil. Only at the last day will the angels remove all the causes of evil and scandal: in the meantime, put up with the reality of a church of sinners (even if you are a saint) because if you try to apply radical solutions, you may well make it worse!

Today’s Readings Wis 12:13.16-19; Ps 85; Rm 8:26-27; Mt 13:24-43

perfect church, but for one clearly struggling with human imperfection. He rejects radical solutions because they are likely to create a new brand of Pharisees – Christian ones!

Today’s Readings 1 Kg 3:5.7-12; Ps 118; Rm 8:28-30; Mt 13:44-52

“FIVE THOUSAND MEN – TO SAY NOTHING OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN” The story of the feeding of the crowd is introduced 18TH SUNDAY IN by a short note that puts ORDINARY TIME the event in context.

News of the death of John the Baptist must have thrown Jesus and his disciples into deep sorrow, so he tries to bring them away into a quiet place where they could collect their thoughts. A large crowd however is there to meet them on the shore, and it so moves the heart of Jesus that a rest day is turned into another day of teaching and healing.

As the sun sinks lower in the sky, the disciples remind Jesus that supper time is approaching, and the crowd needs to go shopping for food. His answer must have surprised them – "there is no need for them to go: you feed them". All they have is a few barley loaves (the bread of the poor) and two small dried fish. Jesus asks them to bring the

food to him. He then tells the people to sit down on the grass. The Greek word for sitting means something closer to ‘lie down or recline.’ This was the posture people adopted at a banquet. He says the customary Jewish blessing over bread, breaks it and gives it it to the disciples to share among the crowd. To their amazement, not only is there enough for everyone, but there are enough leftovers to fill twelve baskets.

While Matthew wishes to emphasise Jesus’ compassion towards the poor, his way of telling this story looks back and forwards.

It looks back to Israel’s history. Moses fed the wandering Israelites in the desert with manna, ‘bread from heaven’. The prophet Elijah fed a hundred of his followers with 20 loaves of barley bread (2 Kings 4: 42-44).

Jesus, the new Moses, provides food for the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 10:6; 15:24) in a desert place. He is even greater than Elijah: with only five barley loaves, he feeds a much greater number of people. It also looks forward to the future.

At his last meal with his disciples, Jesus will again take and bless bread, this time saying: "Take and eat: this is my body." Those four actions – taking bread, saying the blessing, breaking it and giving are repeated in every celebration of the Eucharist.

Matthew emphasises the joyful festive nature of this moment. It is not a hastilyorganised catering operation in fast food.

He includes a little detail about the grass.

In the hot climate of Palestine, grass had a very short lifespan. Poor men, women and children reclining to eat on a grassy hillside in view of a lake suggests relaxation and joy.

BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER After he sends the crowds back home, Jesus asks the disciples to go ahead of 19TH SUNDAY IN him in the boat while ORDINARY TIME he spends time alone in prayer. The Sea of Galilee can sometimes experience violent storms.

The disciples in the boat are making little progress. Not only is the wind against them but it’s whipping up the water so that they seem to be in danger. They are in the middle of the lake, far from any cove or harbour where they could take shelter. It is then that Jesus comes to them, walking on the water.

Whatever panic they may have felt from the storm is now compounded by what seems like the appearance of a ghost. Jesus speaks to them: “Take heart, it is me! Do not be afraid.”

Peter asks Jesus to allow him to walk to him across the water. But as waves crash around

him Peter begins to panic. Jesus grabs him by the hand and rebukes him, “Man of little faith, why did you doubt?” Mark coined a Greek word, oligopistos, ‘small faith’, that he uses to describe the weakness of some followers of Jesus.

By the time they get into the boat, the storm has ceased. The disciples worship Jesus as the Son of God. This is what biblical scholars call an ‘epiphany story', a revelation or manifestation. It has many similarities to the stories of appearances to the disciples after he has risen from the dead. In these Easter stories, Jesus appears when the disciples least expect him. They think they are seeing a ghost, but he tells them to not be afraid, and they recognise who he really is. For the Israelites, the sea was a dangerous place. They believed it to be the place where a particularly dangerous monster, called Mot, lurked. Mot’s name means 'death'. To walk on the sea then, was not so much to defy gravity as to defy death:

by his resurrection, Jesus had conquered death The story about Peter shows two sides of the apostle. First is his generous commitment to Jesus: he is prepared to come to Jesus even if it means defying the wind and the waves. Second is his impulsiveness; he is liable to collapse in time of crisis. This little story anticipates how Peter follows Jesus to the house of the high priest when the others abandon him, but in a moment of panic, he will deny that he knows him, proving again he is a man of little faith. It is not the end for Peter. The Lord, who stretched out a hand to support him in the storm at sea and help him back into the boat, will meet him again after the resurrection as the forgiving Lord and restore him to his place as leader of the community.

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Today’s Readings Isa 55:1-3: Ps 144; Rom 8:35.37-39 Mt 14:13-21

Today’s Readings 1 Kg 19:9.11-13; Ps 84; Rm 9:1-5; Mt 14:22-33

God’s Word continues on page 46

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GOD’S WORD THIS SUMMER BRAVE WOMAN! Matthew sees the ministry of Jesus the Messiah as directed towards the house of Israel.

Only when the Gospel has 20TH SUNDAY IN been offered to them will it ORDINARY TIME be extended to "all nations" through the preaching of the church (Mt 28:19).

Tyre and Sidon were two coastal towns just north of Israel. Matthew has compared them favourably to the lake-side towns in Galilee that rejected the message of Jesus (11:21-22). As Jesus and his disciples walk along, they are hailed by a Canaanite woman. Canaanite was the Old Testament name for the original non-Jewish inhabitants of Israel. She greets him as "Lord, Son of David" – an astonishing confession for a non-Jewish woman to make. Her daughter is badly tormented by a demon and she wants a cure. Jesus, who is normally so compassionate 46 towards anyone in need, does not even deign to answer her. The disciples are becoming annoyed at her unwanted attention and ask him to send her away. In keeping with Matthew’s sense of

his mission, Jesus replies that he is only sent to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel" – a phrase Jesus used when he told his disciples to restrict their preaching to them (Mt 10:6).

The story now becomes a dialogue between Jesus and the woman. She makes just a short plea – "Lord, help me!" Jesus’ reply seems rough and unmannerly: "It is not right to take the bread of the children and throw it to the dogs." Dog is a term of abuse that Jews sometimes used for Gentiles. This apparent put-down opens a small chink of light for the woman, and she proves herself to be a better debater than Jesus!

Pet dogs are allowed to eat the crumbs of food that fall from the family table: all she is asking for is just one of those crumbs! Jesus is forced to concede defeat, and probably even to smile at the woman’s ready wit. He praises her great faith – remember how last Sunday he reproached Peter for being "a man of little faith". Just as the servant of the centurion is healed at a distance because his master’s faith, ("truly, in no one in Israel have I found faith like this" Mt 8:10), so the girl will be healed from that moment because of her mother’s faith.

WHO DO YOU SAY I AM? We can divide today’s Gospel AUGUST into two parts. The first is Peter’s profession of faith in Jesus. The second part is Jesus’ words to Peter about 21ST SUNDAY IN the building of the Church TIME Y INAR ORD and Peter’s role in it.

Jesus’ ministry has set people talking. He asks his disciples what people are saying about him. They respond with the usual answers – a prophet, John the Baptist come back to life. He makes the question more pointed: who do you say I am? Peter acting as the spokesman for the others makes the most complete profession of faith: Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Attention now turns to Peter. Jesus praises him, using a typical biblical phrase – "blessed are you".It is sometimes translated as ‘you are a happy man’ but that is not quite accurate. It means something

more like acknowledging that Peter has received a blessing, a revelation that goes beyond the mere externals. When people try to fathom the mystery of who Jesus is by externals alone, they can only compare him to a figure of the past, a prophet or the Baptist or Elijah come back to life. For the first time in the Gospel, Jesus uses the word ‘church'.

What will take the place of Israel is a new kind of community, the Church. The Greek word ekklesia comes from the verb ‘to call’ (kalein). Israel was the people of God by birth and race: the community of Jesus will make room for everyone, no matter what their origins.

Jesus goes on to speak about Peter’s role in the Church. He will be the foundation stone on which the community will be founded. That is reflected in Peter’s new name. His family name was Simon, son of John. Both of these were Jewish names of long-standing. Peter comes from the Greek word petros meaning ‘rock’ e.g. petroleum – ‘oil from rock’). Although Peter’s faith will sometimes

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REALITY SUMMER 2020

Today’s Readings Is 56:1, 6-7; Ps 66; Rm 11:13-15.29-32; Mt 15:21-28

be weak, the powers of evil ("the gates of the underworld") will be unable to destroy the new community. Jesus symbolically gives Peter the keys of the Church. Peter will not replace Jesus as ‘head’ of the community, but he will play a leading role in its administration. ‘Binding and loosing’ were used by Jewish teachers. When there was doubt about how to apply a law, the decisions of leading rabbis were to be respected by the people since they would be applied by the court of heaven as ‘binding’ or ‘loosing’. The whole episode at Caesarea Philippi ends with a command to the disciples to keep silence. The full proclamation of Jesus as the Messiah must await his resurrection from the dead and the beginning of the Church’s mission.

Today’s Readings Is 22:19-23; Ps 137; Rm 11:33-36; Mt 16:13-20

THE REALITY CROSSWORD NUMBER 6 JULY/AUGUST ����

GET BEHIND ME, SATAN! AUGUST Today’s Gospel is the immediate continuation of the dialogue between Jesus and his disciples we began to read last Sunday. Having heard Peter’s confession and praised him as one who has ND 22 SUNDAY IN received a special revelation from God, Jesus reveals what it will mean for him to be the Christ, Son of ORDINARY TIME God. They are now on the northernmost borders of Israel. Shortly, they will set out on the Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem. If Jesus were the Messiah, the visit to Jerusalem would be his moment of triumph. He would reveal himself there as the Son of David, a kingly figure, who would throw off the Roman power.

That is what the disciples are hoping for, but it is not the way Jesus is thinking. As Messiah, he is destined to suffer grievously, to die in agony as God’s suffering servant, so that God could vindicate him by raising him on the third day.

This vision of the Messiah will come as news to Peter: Jesus must surely be mistaken in thinking that so much hostility lies ahead.

Conscious of the role he has just been given, he takes the master aside to tell him a few home truths lest he discourage the others.

Jesus’ response is scarcely what Peter could have anticipated. Jesus calls him Satan and tells him to get behind him. The scene recalls the temptation in the wilderness when Jesus refused Satan’s offers of worldly power. This time, it is one of his own, the one he has just named as his deputy leader, who is playing the part of the tempter.

Peter, the rock on which he would build his church, has become a scandal, literally, a stone blocking the path. Peter is thinking in human terms, not in God’s terms.

This brief confrontation with Peter provides a masterclass in discipleship. If they are going to follow him, they will need to learn where he is going. Becoming a follower of Jesus means abandoning all thought of self. It means following him on the way that leads to the cross: choosing any other way will lead to grief. The language of finding and losing recalls the language of the parables of the treasure and the pearl (see 17th Sunday). True disciples of Jesus are offered a choice of a different kind of life. If they choose worldly power and wealth in place of the treasure of the kingdom, they will come to grief. Someone who is prepared to lose even their life for the sake of the Gospel will find that they really possess the gift of life.

Unfortunately, due to an error of giving the wrong clues to crossword no.4 last May, a winner cannot be announced. But that means, for this Summer's crossword (crossword no.6) the prize is...

30

ACROSS 1. New Testament Messiah. (6) 5. Fast-flowing part of a river. (6) 10. Roman emperor who was a noted wall builder. (7) 11. A miniature 3D model representing a scene. (7) 12. Draw a straight line, as the government does. (4) 13. Place of pilgrimage in Co. Mayo, Ireland. (5) 15. The hairy man of Genesis! (4) 17. Short Egyptian pharaoh. (3) 19. Asian religious figure often pictured sitting cross-legged. (6) 21. Changes the church parts by the sound of it! (6) 22. A devoted follower of Alec Toy. (7) 23. Idolise, worship. (6) 25. Break loose, from prison perhaps. (6) 28. A number that is not divisible by two. (3) 30. Charmingly pretty. (4) 31. Howled, at the moon perhaps. (5) 32. Worry about a guitar part. (4) 35. "I have sinned." (Latin) (7) 36. She needs a pardon for releasing the ills that beset humanity. (7) 37. Grab away from. (6) 38. Portugal and Spain together. (6)

Special S umm Prize er

€70

DOWN 2. Stood very close together to keep warm. (7) 3. Apt name for a female eye doctor! (4) 4. Home renter. (6) 5. Carted off to black out text. (6) 6. Pointed front part of a ship. (4) 7. Salt lake site of famous scrolls. (4,3) 8. She sees her cub as a little angel! (6) 9. French WWII underground resistance. (6) 14. Title for the Virgin Mary. (3,4) 16. A trinket worn on a bracelet. (5) 18. Make holy, sprinkle holy water on. (5) 20. Point of no return in tennis. (3) 21. Sounds like you consumed more than seven. (3) 23. Piecemeal instructions. (6) 24. The Pope's Residence. (7) 26. Reasoning from cause to effect based on theory rather than experiment. (1,6) 27. Actors with small roles. (6) 28. Coarse and ill-mannered. (6) 29. I'd help to find the location of this ancient oracle. (6) 33. It should never be put before the horse! (4) 34. "Measure twice, cut ..." (4)

Entry Form for Crossword No.6, July/August 2020 Name:

Today’s Readings

Address: Telephone:

Jer 20:7-9; Ps 62; Rom 12:1-2; Mt 16:21-27 All entries must reach us by Friday August 28, 2020 Once off €70 prize is offered for the first correct solutions opened. The Editor’s decision on all matters concerning this competition will be final. Do not include correspondence on any other subject with your entry which should be addressed to: Reality Crossword No.6, Redemptorist Communications, St Joseph's Monastery, Dundalk, County Louth A91 F3FC