Reality March 2020

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ST CLEMENT

MARCH 2020

A PRIEST IN THE FAMILY

APOSTOLIC WORK: DEDICATED SERVICE TO THE FOREIGN MISSIONS

Informing, Inspiring, Challenging Today’s Catholic

CHURCH IN ITS IRISH HORIZONS

ROLE OF CATHOLICISM IN IRELAND'S FUTURE

MOTHER MARY MARTIN THOSE WHO SUFFER MUST EXPERIENCE SOLIDARITY AND COMPASSION

LENT

AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE SYMBOLISM OF LENT

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

IN THIS MONTH’S ISSUE FEATURES 12 CHURCH IN ITS IRISH HORIZONS Ireland has gone from being a society that had a highly deferential attitude towards the Church to one that is critical and even sceptical about religious leadership. What are the implications of this for our future?

By Professor Michael A. Conway

20 LENTEN PRACTICES: ANCIENT AND MODERN An in-depth look at the symbolism of Lent.

By Maria Hall

24 CLIMB THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN A true and accurate account of climbing Mount Apo – with only the occasional outlandish exaggeration and fabulous hyperbole, strictly for theatrical effect.

By Fr Colm Meaney CSsR

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26 HALLOWED BE THY NAME We say that we have a father, but we live like people who do not believe either in God or in man.

By Mike Daley

28 DROGHEDA’S MOST FAMOUS DAUGHTER? Foundress of an order of medical missionaries, Mary Martin left her mark on Ireland and especially on Drogheda.

By John Scally

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32 APOSTOLIC WORK An organisation that supports missionaries in their financial, medical, structural and educational needs.

By Josephine O’Boyle

35 WHAT’S IN A NAME? Celebrating the second centenary of the death of St Clement Hofbauer.

By Fr Brendan McConvery CSsR

38 BEFORE BELFAST HAD A CHAPEL The beginnings of a city's Catholic roots.

By Fr Brendan McConvery CSsR

OPINION

REGULARS

11 BRENDAN McCONVERY

04 REALITY BITES 07 POPE MONITOR 08 WOMEN SAINTS & MYSTICS 09 REFLECTIONS 41 A PRIEST IN THE FAMILY 42 TRÓCAIRE 45 GOD’S WORD

19 JIM DEEDS 31 CARMEL WYNNE 44 PETER McVERRY SJ

REALITY BITES GUIDELINES ON ASSISTED SUICIDE

CATHOLIC PRISONERS AT AUSCHWITZ

SWITZERLAND

The 75th commemoration ceremony at Auschwitz

POLAND

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A SOURCE OF SPIRITUAL COMFORT

On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at AuschwitzBirkenau, a Polish scholar has published the first study of religious practices among Christian prisoners in the camp. “Although most deportees to Auschwitz were Jews, the camp was originally opened for Polish prisoners and it also took in Catholic resistance fighters from France, Germany, Belgium and other countries,” said Teresa WontorCichy, a historian at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. This aspect of its history has been largely neglected until now. Although the fate of its canonised prisoners, St Maximilian Kolbe and St Edith Stein is well known, thousands of lay Catholics also had kept their faith at the camp, where 1.2 million inmates were killed by the Nazis. Most of the camp’s archives have been destroyed, so it is impossible to state exactly how many Christians were there. We do know, however, that after Jews who made up 90 per

St Maximilian Kolbe

REALITY MARCH 2020

cent of the victims, Catholics were the next largest group— mostly from Poland, but also from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovakia and the Soviet Union. Dispensing the sacraments had been “strictly forbidden” on pain of death by Nazi commanders at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but priests secretly administered them, providing spiritual and psychological comfort and a sense of community. Many nonbelieving prisoners had turned to prayer while incarcerated, “instinctively seeking contact” with Catholic priests and nuns who were often assigned the harshest workloads.

Many prisoners concealed devotional objects for their use such as rosaries made from dried bread.

The camp’s Nazi administrators had attempted to deter Christmas observances in 1944 by installing a decorated Christmas tree surrounded by dead bodies in the camp’s assembly yard, but one priest, Fr Wladyslaw Grohs, had celebrated Mass and heard confessions in his cell.

St Edith Stein

MAINTAIN THE HOPE

In response to the "significant development" in assisted suicide in Switzerland in recent years, the Swiss Bishops' Conference has issued pastoral guidelines for chaplains and pastoral workers concerning the administration of the sacraments.

The bishops began by reminding Catholics that "the concern of the Christian community for others, especially for the poor and those who suffer, has its roots in the mystery of Christ".

However, they noted that for the Catholic Church, "suicide is, objectively, an unholy act".

"No sincere intention or circumstance would change this evil into good, nor justify it," the bishops added.

Yet the bishops asked how we might accompany people who want assisted suicide yet who at the same time ask for the sacraments. Helping a person at the last hour of his/her death is "a great Christian tradition of the Church", the bishops said. Pastoral workers find themselves confronted with a formidable ethical challenge at such a time.

They must "take seriously" the person’s desire for suicide and "maintain the hope" that this desire might change, without exerting pressure on the person, but trying to divert them "till the end" from their suicidal intentions. They must approach "with great caution" the question of the gravity of sin, the bishops said, and they proposed ten concrete steps to help people in this situation. The purpose of pastoral care is to “to enable terminally ill patients to see their lives and deaths in a new light, in the light of God”.

N E WS

THE HEMORRHAGING CHURCH THE NETHERLANDS

A PLACE OF CONNECTION, NOT JUST OF WORSHIP

The former parish church of the village of Afferden in the Netherlands.

A Dutch Catholic newspaper has warned that churches will continue to close in the Netherlands, where half of all Catholic parishes have already been dissolved, and where participation in Sunday Mass is plummeting.

The paper reported that, according to the results of its year-long study, the Catholic population of the Netherlands had fallen by a fifth in 15 years, with just 5 per cent of the country's 3.7 million registered Catholics still attending Mass. It also found that 55 per cent of parishes had closed but suggested that Dutch society had not yet reached its lowest point of secularisation, warning that if the majority of church funds were devoted to maintaining buildings, the "biggest wave of church closures" was still to come. Among the people interviewed by the paper, one living near Nijmegen told how he had decided not to travel to another parish after his village church closed and instead joined others in "finding their own way". "I do miss the church at times, especially at important moments like when someone passes away, when the whole village used to gather in the church." Another from near the German border, said she and others

had tried to save their church as "a place of connection, not just of worship", but that the faith no longer "played an important part" in village life. The editor said that the discovery that most churches were not "missed" by local inhabitants had been "unexpected and sobering", contradicting the assumption that Catholic parishes had a "positive impact on the social fabric". Many Catholics at the local St Victor's Church in Afferden, he said, continued to attend after it was turned into a Buddhist temple in 2017, "without apparently noticing the difference". The Dutch daily, Nederlands Dagblad, reported last autumn that the shortage of native priests meant that, over the last decade, the number of foreign clergy had doubled. Foreign clergy now form 22 per cent of the clergy nationwide and half of the clergy in the Haarlem-Amsterdam Diocese. In February 2019, Catholics protested when the bishop of Utrecht, Cardinal Eijk, announced the sale of the 16th-century Gothic St Catherine's Cathedral. In a pastoral, the cardinal warned two thirds of churches in his archdiocese and its neighbouring dioceses would be forced to close by 2025.

The last sweep-up in St Victor's

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Pews piled up for sale from St Victor's Church, Afferden.

continued on page 6

REALITY BITES VATICAN SIDES WITH PARISHIONERS

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Parishioner John Lewis outside St Michel's Church, Conwy. Picture: Kerry Roberts

The stations of the cross, Conwy

When their bishop decided to close their parish church, the parishioners of St Michael and All Angels in Conwy in the Wrexham diocese appealed to the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome. Bishop Peter Brignall had announced in 2016 that 22 of the 62 churches in his diocese, including Conwy, would be closed over the following four years as the result of declining congregations and falling numbers of clergy. St

church was closed, parishioners still gathered to make the Way of the Cross on Good Friday.

Bishop Brignall said that the diocese had been informed that the "hierarchical recourse of the decree of January 4, 2018 to reduce to profane but not sordid use the Church of St Michael and All Angels in Conway has been sustained", or in simpler terms that the intended permanent closure of the church cannot currently take place.

Michael’s was officially closed on February 11, 2018. The Catholic church of a popular tourist spot on the coast of North Wales, it was particularly well-known for its outdoor Stations of the Cross in Carrara marble. Twelve of them are embedded in the town’s medieval walls They are listed as grade II by Cadw, the Welsh heritage organisation, and are among the reasons why UNESCO declared the town a world heritage site. Even though the

HAS PERSECUTION OF CHURCH WORSENED AFTER VATICAN-CHINA DEAL? An American government report says that human rights abuse in China has worsened in the last year. It specifically highlighted the increasing persecution of Chinese Catholics since the Vatican-China agreement of 2018. It said that that “After the Peoples’ Republic of China Ministry of Foreign Affairs signed an agreement with the Holy See in September 2018 paving the way for unifying the state-sanctioned and underground Catholic communities, local Chinese authorities subjected Catholic believers in China to increasing persecution by demolishing churches, removing crosses, and continuing to detain underground clergy.” The report notes the rise of mass internment camps, the brutal persecution of Christians, Muslims, and other unregistered churches or religious groups, a well as the repression of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

The Chinese Communist Party’s five-year plan for 'sinicization' aims to establish state control over religion. “Scholars and international rights groups have described religious persecution in China over the last year to be of an intensity not seen since the Cultural Revolution,” the report said.

The number of Catholics in China is estimated to be more than 10 million, while government statistics claim that 6 million Catholics are part of the state-sanctioned church. In spring 2019, the authorities detained three underground priests of Xuanhua diocese in Hebei province.

“Local Chinese authorities subjected Catholic believers in China to increasing persecution by demolishing churches, removing crosses, and continuing to detain underground clergy,” the report said. In Western China, the Muslim Uyghur people have been subjected to many forms of control including detention camps. Due to overcrowding, some detainees “reportedly died in camps due to poor conditions, medical neglect, or other reasons”.

REALITY MARCH 2020

N E WS

POPE MONITOR KEEPING UP WITH POPE FRANCIS COME AND SEE ME IN ROME

The rector of Knock Shrine, Fr Richard Gibbons, and members of his team received an unexpected invitation justbeforeChristmas– tobring theirstatue of Our Lady to Rome for the first Catholic Bible Sunday to be celebrated on January 26. Pope Francis visited the shrine during his Irish visit in 2018, as did Pope St John Paul on the occasion of the first papal visit to Ireland. The new pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Knock, which was commissioned to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the apparition last year, was placed next to the Altar of the Confession in St Peter’s Basilica. It had been blessed by the pope in Rome last year. The choir of the shrine shared the music of

the liturgy with the papal choir. The Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Michael Neary, and Fr Gibbons were among the concelelebrants while a deacon from the archdiocese and students from the Irish College participated in the liturgy. Commenting on the appropriateness of the choice of the Knock sanctuary for Bible Sunday, Archbishop Neary noted that the Knock apparition was a silent one, and “for the Word of God to be in a position to take root, there is a need for a welcoming in silence.

When you consider the proliferation of words today in chat shows and all of that, maybe what we need is time for silence. A silence that will be creative,

receptive, and a silence that will enable us to listen to what is really taking place.”

In his homily, Pope Francis called on Catholics to make room in their lives for the Word of God. “Each day, let us read a verse or two of the Bible. Let us begin with the Gospel: let us keep it open on our table, carry it in our pocket, read it on our cell phones, and allow it to inspire us daily,” He said we should receive God’s word in scripture “like a love letter he has written to you, to help you realise that he is at your side.

His word consoles and encourages us. At the same time, it challenges us, frees us from the bondage of our selfishness and summons us to conversion.”

STOP PEDDLING FAKE NEWS – TELL STORIES INSTEAD

In a message for World Communications Day 2020, Pope Francis has said that people need to rediscover the art of storytelling and guard against the rise of 'fake' media narratives. “In an age when falsification is increasingly sophisticated, reaching exponential levels, we need wisdom to be able to welcome and create beautiful, true and good stories.” The message was issued on the feast St Francis de Sales, the patron saint of journalists, and underlined the importance of stories in providing a moral compass. There is a need, the pope stressed, for a narrative which shows that as human beings “we are part of a living and interconnected tapestry”, along with stories which reveal the “untold heroism” of ordinary life.

By contrast, false news “by patching together bits of unverified information, repeating banal and deceptively persuasive arguments, sending strident and hateful messages, we do not help to weave human history, but instead strip others of their dignity.” This is not the first time that Pope Francis has spoken about 'fake news'. In an interview to a Belgian Catholic weekly, he said that spreading disinformation is “probably the greatest damage that the media can do”. Human beings are storytellers, he said, who hunger for stories as much as for food. “Stories influence our lives, whether in the form of fairy tales, novels, films, songs, news, even if we do not always realise it. Often we decide what is right or wrong based on characters and stories we have made our own.” While the primordial story is the story of God’s dealings with human beings in the scriptures, it is not the only narrative of value. Pope Francis went on to mention what are probably some of his own favourite stories, like the Confessions of Augustine, A Pilgrim’s Journey of Ignatius, The Story of a Soul of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, as well as novels like The Betrothed or The Brothers Karamazov.

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WOMEN OF THE SPIRIT A NEW SERIES OF WOMEN SAINTS AND MYSTICS Reality

ETTY HILLESUM (1914-1943)

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Etty (Esther) Hillesum was a Dutch Jew, born in 1914, and 'exterminated' in the gas chambers at Auschwitz in 1943. If it wasn’t for the publication of the diaries and letters she wrote in the last two years of her life, it is unlikely that we would ever have known anything about this courageous young woman.

Hillesum was a troubled young woman who suffered from chronic depression. After university, she escaped from what she called her “chaotic” family home, moving to Amsterdam in 1937, working as housekeeper to a Dutch accountant and widower. Apart from the effects of her turbulent childhood years, her passionate nature led her to engage in a series of destructive relationships.Attempting to understand her internal motivations better, she began working with a charismatic therapist, Julius Spier, who suggested that she keep a diary. Her first entry on March 9, 1941, referred to her prowess as a lover – hardly the words of a spiritual writer! And yet, it was precisely through the medium of her embodied desires that Hillesum explored the depths of her passionate longings for the Divine.

In a way, Spier was the midwife to her soul, helping her to excavate her true self. It was here, in the deepest centre of her being, that she encountered God. Faith in God became the pivotal meaning of her life. For the next two years, her diaries documented the simultaneous development, and indeed dependence, of her psychological well-being upon her growing spiritual maturity. She even spoke of her physical need to kneel to God as if her “body has been meant and made for the act of kneeling ... it has become a gesture embedded in my body”.

Hillesum believed that God is always present, even amidst the worst degradations. However, she also maintained it is necessary that someone is there to bear witness to it all. She asked a question which we too might ask ourselves – “why should I not be that witness?” If nothing else, Etty Hillesum’s life and words are proof enough that we do not need to be perfect and ‘holy’, whatever these words might mean, in order to begin the work which is reflecting the love that is God. Indeed, it is up to us to act on behalf of God – “we must help You to help ourselves. And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves.”

Her contemplative faith was simultaneously a faith demanding action on behalf of those who are suffering. Hillesum moved through the camp embodying love and compassion, “willing to act as a balm for all wounds” as she wrote in her final diary entry. But it was not a love expressed only for the suffering Jewish internees to whom she ministered. Her love extended beyond partisan boundaries to include the very instigators of the suffering in Westerbork, the Nazis themselves. She refused to hate them. This was not just simple acceptance or submission to forces of evil. Rather, it was to embody and enact God’s eternal love which allows no room for hate or judgement.

Hillesum believed that her God-given mission was to bear witness to God’s love in all circumstances and all forms of suffering.

Hillesum continued writing her diaries until three months after taking up a job from the Jewish Council to work at the Nazi transit camp in Westerbork. She believed that she could do good, indeed, do the work of God, by accepting this position and opening herself to the suffering of others.

By the middle of 1942, her diary entries illustrate her awareness of the growing danger for Jews in the Netherlands. As an employee of the Jewish Council, she had the freedom to come and go as she pleased from the transition camp. Realising the danger her life was now in, she asked her friend Maria Tuinzing to arrange for the publication of her diaries before making her final trip from Amsterdam to Westerbork on June 6, 1943. The following month in July she lost her status as worker and became an intern of the camp. In September 1943 the Hillesum family, apart from one of the boys who was still in Amsterdam, were transported to Auschwitz. Etty was gassed on November 30, 1943.

Edith Ó Nualláin REALITY MARCH 2020

Volume 85. No. 2 March 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.)

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REFLECTIONS What a fool I was! I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into power.

I was born in the island of Ireland. I have Irish traits in me – we don't all have the traits of what came from Scotland, there is the Celtic factor... and I am an Irishman because you cannot be an Ulsterman without being an Irishman.

Should an anthropologist or a sociologist be looking for a bizarre society to study, I would suggest he come to Ulster. It is one of Europe's oddest countries. Here, in the middle of the twentieth century, with modern technology transforming everybody's lives, you find a medieval mentality that is being dragged painfully into the eighteenth century by some forward-looking people.

IAN PAISLEY

BERNADETTE DEVLIN

SIR EDWARD CARSON

When anyone asks me about the Irish character, I say look at the trees. Maimed, stark and misshapen, but ferociously tenacious.

I'm an Irish Catholic and I have a long iceberg of guilt.

May the strength of God pilot us, may the wisdom of God instruct us, may the hand of God protect us, may the word of God direct us. Be always ours this day and for evermore.

ST PATRICK

The Irish Catholic side was married to the life of an actor and I found out acting could be a form of prayer.

LIAM NEESON

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

OSCAR WILDE

You know people are always putting Ulysses in the top 10 books ever written but I doubt that any of those people were really moved by it.

Seanabhean is ea mise anois go bhfuil cos léi insan uaigh is an chos eile ar a bruach. (“I am an old woman now with one foot in the grave and the other on its edge.”)

RODDY DOYLE

PEIG SAYERS

Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.

An Ulster Scot may come to disbelieve in God, but not to wear his weekday clothes on the Sabbath.

Let me just say that I am not often lonely in country places.

In cities I am. Nature doesn't break your heart: other people do. Yet, we cannot live apart from each other in bowers feeding on nectar. We're in this together, this getting through our lives, as the fact that we are wordusers shows.

CS LEWIS

NUALA O'FAOILAIN

DOUGLAS HYDE

EDNA O’BRIEN

Difference is of the essence of humanity.

Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace: respect for diversity.

JOHN HUME

EDNA O’BRIEN

DANIEL O’CONNELL

As our language wanes and dies, the golden legends of the far-off centuries fade and pass away. No one sees their influence upon culture; no one sees their educational power.

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EDI TO R I A L UP FRONT BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR

RE-GREENING CATHOLIC IRELAND?

It

was once common on St Patrick’s Day to take stock of our Irish Catholic roots with a certain degree of pride and even a measure of self-congratulation. Nowadays, the celebrations are closer to a week than to a single day, and the element of selfcongratulation, if anything, tends to overrun to include all our modern exploits. If Patrick features, his costume may retain the traditional trappings of a bishop’s vestments, but he will be more of a cartoon character battling, with his crosier, serpents that look more like dragons that have survived from the last Chinese New Year celebration. There will be very little on show of the Patrick known from his Confessions. He describes himself as “first of all a simple country person, a refugee, and unlearned. I do not know how to provide for the future. But this I know for certain, that before I was brought low, I was like a stone lying deep in the mud. Then he who is powerful came and, in his mercy, pulled me out, and lifted me up and placed me on the very top of the wall. That is why I must shout aloud in return to the Lord for such great good deeds of his, here and now and forever, which the human mind cannot measure.” Despite the human cost and toil of his ministry that has cost him much in mind and body, he is amazed at its unexpected success: “Never before did they know of God except to serve idols and unclean things. But now, they have become the people of the Lord, and are called children of God. The sons and daughters of the leaders of the Irish are seen to be monks and virgins of Christ!”

Celebrating St Patrick’s Day is not confined to remembering his place in our history. It is also a time to take a look at the wider Irish society of which we are a part. This year is the centenary of the Government of Ireland Act, which effectively imposed partition on the island into an Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. Membership

of the European Community put that into a different perspective for many years, but we are beginning to feel the first strains of Brexit: what it will eventually mean for that border is very uncertain. As I am writing this, the final outcome of the General Election of February 8 in terms of a government for the near future has not yet been resolved, hence another time of uncertainty.

For many voters, the General Election was an uncomfortable reminder of the debates that had surrounded the two recent referendums. If Ireland’s Catholic loyalties had become uncertain over the past two decades, the outcome of those referendums removed any doubt that we were heading towards a republic driven more by the standards of secular humanism.

While I might wish it otherwise, is that realistic in the many-coloured mosaic that is contemporary Ireland? Might not the role of Catholic thinkers and people active in public life be to moderate such a debate in ways that can highlight the values we respect and treasure? While I do not believe that the voices of religious people should be silenced, the authoritative voice does not always have to be that of the bishops. Part of the deficit of Irish Catholicism is that we have not been good at giving the laity a voice and providing them with the skills to use it.

The last election has been interesting in the way in which the people focussed issues such as housing and a poorly-performing health service and demanded better.

In an article in this issue of Reality, Professor Michael Conway writes: “A particular feature of Irish life and culture in recent decades is a clear rejection of the Catholic Church’s dominant position in public and social life.

This should not be read, however, as an outright rejection of religion and faith, but, rather, as a realignment of its place as a public reality.” The tale of woe of the sad state of

contemporary Ireland has become a cliché.

Mass attendances have plummeted, but they are even worse in many other parts of Europe.

“It’s worse elsewhere” is of course a poor argument, but it might help us to regain a sense of balance. An item in this month’s Reality Bites on the Church in Holland describes how a village church was converted into a Buddhist temple, but the locals did not apparently notice the difference. Mass-going among younger people is certainly in decline but that might not be the full story. When I was teaching in Maynooth, daily Mass was well attended from across the campus and special events like remembering the dead in November attracted larger numbers. Youth 2000 retreats are popular, and many young people are rediscovering the Rosary and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. My own congregation has several groups of young adults involved in ministry, something that was never the case when I was that age. I have no idea what the figures are for young Irish people working in the Third World, but I suspect they are high. Maybe once again the sons and daughters of the Irish will become religious and priests in Christ.

Brendan McConvery CSsR Editor

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C OVE R STO RY

Church IRELAND HAS GONE FROM BEING A SOCIETY THAT HAD A HIGHLY DEFERENTIAL ATTITUDE TOWARDS BISHOPS, PRIESTS, AND RELIGIOUS TO ONE THAT IS MUCH MORE CRITICAL AND EVEN SCEPTICAL AS REGARDS RELIGIOUS LEADERSHIP. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF THIS FOR OUR FUTURE?

BY MICHAEL A. CONWAY 12

Reading

the signs of the times and interpreting them in the light of the Gospel is an essential task for the Church in any country at any particular time. There has been an enormous change in Irish culture over the last 30 years or so, and this is having a significant impact on the role and understanding of Church in Irish society. It could be said that everything about the Church is now being refashioned in the cauldron of contemporary culture. The Church has much to learn from the culture and, as regards to responding to change, the first task is to understand our present situation as best we can.

In terms of the relationship between the Catholic Church as a major figure of Irish society and the culture at large, there is neither harmonious uniformity nor aggressive opposition. There are, rather, ongoing processes of divergence and disagreement, dialogue and discernment arising from the specific tension between the Church as belonging in, and deeply marked by, the REALITY MARCH 2020

culture and the Church as herald of the good news of the Gospel from within that same culture. The various debates surrounding the recent referendums on the Constitution reflect this complex relationship. In general, the Church in Ireland is cognisant that it is only by paying attention to the ambient culture and being sensitive to its spiritual needs and aspirations that one can hope to "evangelise culture" (St John Paul II).

RE-POSITIONING THE CHURCH’S ROLE IN PUBLIC LIFE? A particular feature of Irish life and culture in recent decades is a clear rejection of the Catholic Church’s dominant position in public and social life. This should not be read, however, as an outright rejection of religion and faith, but, rather, as a realignment of its place as a public reality. Whereas this has led necessarily to a certain diminishing of the Church’s voice in public debate, it is far less a dynamic of exclusion and much more one of establishing the appropriate place

in its

IRISH

HORIZONS 13

C OVE R STO RY

A largely monolithic, catholic, social order has been replaced in recent decades by a much more diverse society, where religion, faith, and spirituality continue to play a very important role for a large number of people

14

for religion in public life in a modern state.

This translates as a concern with building new relationships between Church and State, religion and culture, and religious freedom and social reality. It is interesting that the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, underlined this very point in his remarks on the occasion of the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland. In the coming decades this new situation will have an impact not only on the place of the Catholic Church in Irish culture, but also on the Church’s self-understanding as a voice among others in a modern liberal democracy.

As regards the cultural and religious situation of present-day Ireland, it is remarkable that a largely monolithic, catholic, social order has been replaced in recent decades by a much more diverse society, where religion, faith, and spirituality continue to play a very important role for a large number of people. In general, there is a vibrant appreciation of the religious dimension of human life, which extends to the life of faith. This is confirmed most particularly in the local church as an extraordinary commitment to ordinary parish life, and most generally in the wider culture as an appreciation of ‘spirituality', understood as openness to religious values and even experience.

There is much that witnesses to an active, engaged, and creative life of faith in every REALITY MARCH 2020

diocese of the country. This is reflected, for example, in real engagement in parish communities, in activism directed at overcoming social inequality and injustice, and in generous responses to charitable causes on a local and global scale.

A GROWING DIVERSITY? A new feature of Irish culture is the growing diversity that is evident at every level of society. Over the last 20 years it has been remarkable to observe Ireland becoming a multi-religious, multi-racial, and multi-

cultural society. This is changing, significantly, the cultural setting of ministry, where the

background now includes a series of options as regards religious affiliation. It is vital that

as a society and church we learn to navigate this complexity in an open spirit of dialogue and respect for otherness in all its variants.

This positive assessment is, however, offset by a troubling dynamic of dissatisfaction with organised religion and with the Church as an institution that up to recently played such a powerful role in terms of the social order.

A monolithic expression of the institutional church in Ireland is being deconstructed forcefully in the culture. This is going to have enormous implications for future ministry.

Whereas most people can, and do, make a distinction between the institution and the life of faith, a growing number rejects all engagement with religion and faith along an axis of a rejection of the institutional church.

The credibility of institutional structures is now a serious concern for the Catholic Church in Ireland

15

C OVE R STO RY

touch with the contemporary realities of life, and alienating people in its public discourse.

Healing this rift will be a major task for the Church in the coming decades.

THE PRIEST IN IRISH SOCIETY The position of the priest in particular in Irish society is changing, together with the understanding of his role in the community.

He has gone from being a dominant figure at the very centre of an all-encompassing parish life to being one voice among others in community leadership. His role as a leader is still very important, but the manner in which it is exercised is changing in harmony with the demands of the ambient culture.

The heightened awareness since Vatican II of the inherent dignity and responsibility of all the baptised means that ordained ministry is exercised increasingly in a collaborative spirit that enables all members of the Christian community to take their proper place in the life of the Church. This in itself requires an ability in future ministry to engage with differing points of view, to work with others, and to recognise clearly the

16 Notwithstanding a general positive attitude toward spirituality and faith in the culture, it is most often disassociated from its connection to the institutional church. This is especially remarkable among younger generations, where the Church as institution is often perceived to be controlling, too powerful, and inauthentic in its mission. In fact the credibility of institutional structures is now a serious concern for the Catholic Church in Ireland. The boundary between belonging and not belonging to the ecclesial community no longer enjoys the clarity and confidence of earlier generations, and there is a large spectrum of positions varying from regular religious practice to outright rejection of any connection whatsoever to the institution.

The majority of Irish people are now closer to the centre of this spectrum. In line with this development, there is a clear diminution in the numbers, who regularly attend the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist, coupled with a not inconsiderable decline in the numbers, who seek baptism, marriage, and ordination.

REALITY MARCH 2020

Priestly ministry can no longer continue as the only instance of responsibility at parish level, but needs to recognise and integrate complementary structures of inclusion, collaboration, accountability, and professional competence to ensure ongoing parish life It is significant that in the culture in general attitudes to church leadership and authority are changing; we have gone from a society that had a highly deferential attitude towards bishops, priests, and religious to one that is much more critical and even sceptical as regards religious leadership. Undoubtedly, recent scandals have contributed to this attitude, which, together with a perceived authoritarianism, have added to a serious disjunction between a sizable cohort in Irish society and the institutional church, which is often assumed to be incapable of respecting personal freedom and conscience, out of

legitimate boundaries of the "autonomy of earthly affairs" (Gaudium et spes, 36).

In line with trends that are evident elsewhere in Europe, a remarkable feature is the dwindling number of ordinations to the priesthood that is general throughout all Irish dioceses and advancing at a rate that many judge to be catastrophic. It means, for example, that there is an urgent need for change in regard to some diocesan and parish structures that are no longer sustainable.

This has a direct impact on priestly ministry for the immediate future. A central task in this new situation is enabling the increased

participation of lay people in the active mission of the Church. Priestly ministry can no longer continue as the only instance of responsibility at parish level, but needs to recognise and integrate complementary structures of inclusion, collaboration,

accountability, and professional competence to ensure ongoing parish life. Good practice in regard to financial management, awareness of appropriate professional boundaries, effective integration of proper employment procedures, etc, are just some of the areas

Praying the Rosary

that are important in ensuring that healthy structures of accountability and support are part and parcel of parish life.

Despite the significant change that is occurring in Irish culture in its relationship to the Church, it is remarkable that a renewed acknowledgement of a thirst for God is tentatively re-emerging in the wider culture in the wake of Church scandals that left so many perplexed, angry, saddened, and even disillusioned (to name some of the more general reactions). It is now vital that the Church in Ireland shows concretely that it is committed to ensuring that healthy human dynamics are part of Church life on all levels as we move towards the as-yet-unknown horizon of redemption.

Professor Michael A. Conway is a priest of the Diocese of Galway and Professor of Theology and Culture at the Pontifical University, Maynooth

Just

€3

Plus P+P

MEDITATING THE GOSPEL STORY WITH THE MOTHER OF THE LORD

By Fr George Wadding CSsR Archbishop Fulton Sheen said that when we pray the rosary in a prayerful, contemplative manner, it lifts us into a world where “we see and enact the greatest drama of love the world has ever known.” Fr George Wadding CSsR is well-known for his thoughtful but simple and imaginative style of writing. In this little book, he invites us to explore the twenty scenes from the story of Jesus our Redeemer that make up the Joyful, Sorrowful, Luminous and Glorious mysteries of the Rosary. Walking and praying with Mary, we accompany the Lord along his way. This beautifully illustrated book is for beginners, as well as those who have been praying the rosary for many years. It can be used by the family or a prayer group. It is ideal for those who wish to pray the rosary tranquilly, resting in the mysteries, like Mary, ‘who pondered them in her heart.’ It is well-bound but still small enough to slip into a handbag or a pocket, and the colourful images for each decade will long stay in the memory.

May God’s Spirit be with all who seek comfort in its pages.

To Order:

ONLINE: www.redcoms.org EMAIL: sales@redcoms.org PHONE: 00353 (1) 4922 488 Redemptorist Communications, St Joseph’s Monastery, Dundalk, Co.Louth A91 F3FC

COM M E N T WITH EYES WIDE OPEN JIM DEEDS

YOU CAN’T MAKE GOD LOVE YOU MORE!

DO YOU HAVE A CONTRACT WITH GOD? "IF I DO THIS, GOD, THEN YOU WILL HAVE TO KEEP YOUR SIDE OF IT? BARGAIN!" I must begin my article this month with an apology. I am sorry. I am sorry to tell you that you just can’t make God love you. No amount of good works or prayers is going to do it. No amount of self-sacrifice or going the extra mile will add one cubit length of extra love from God to you. Sorry.

And yet, so many of us live in this way though, don’t we?

We live trying to make God love us and worrying that God doesn’t. Often that in itself comes from poor self-image or self-esteem, sometimes coupled with meeting people who have treated us negatively.

Accordingly, some of us are living in a shadow world of negativity and judgement of ourselves (and others). We allow this to overflow into our relationship with God. In this way of being, our internal conversation might go a bit like this, “I will be good, and I will be loved if I do good things. When I do good things, I will allow myself a glimpse of acceptance and love from God, myself and others. When I don’t do good things or when I make a mistake (horror!) I will settle back into my default mode of beating myself up and trying to make God love me (and me love me for that matter) all over again.

Now, where are my Rosary beads and the poor and needy?!”

Do you recognise yourself or someone you know in this conversation? I know that I can see myself in it sometimes.

have life and have it to the full.'

God loves me. And from that place of being loved I will pray and love others through good works; not to earn God’s love, but to spread that love about.

I don’t do good things to make God love me, I do good things because God loves me.”

Now, I’m exaggerating in the conversation, of course. But am I exaggerating much? A lot of us do get into a contractual-type relationship with God. "If I do this, God, you will do that." How did that come about? Were we told that this is the way things are when we were young and just swallowed it wholesale? Perhaps we met people or circumstances in our lives which communicated to us that we aren’t quite good enough and so we thought, "I can’t have this. I’ll show you. I’ll be so, so good that everyone will see that I am good. And being good, perfect even, I will make God love me."

But you can’t make God love you. It doesn’t work that way.

How could it be possible for any of us to change God? We have to go deep into the source of all things through prayer, sacred scripture, liturgy, church teaching and the insights of wise people to find the truth.

And when we do this, what do we find? We find that you can’t

make God love you... because...

God already does. God already loves you! And not just a little.

God loves you a LOT! God loves you more than you or I could even imagine is possible. There is no more love that God could possibly have for you. God’s love is complete and total. You can’t make God love you... any more than God already does. And God’s love for each one of us is unique. St Augustine put it this way, “God loves each of us as if there were only one of us”. How beautiful to be loved this way!

So, what about that internal conversation now?

“I am good, and I am loved. I don’t need to do anything to earn it or deserve it because that’s not how God works. All I have to do is experience it.

That usually means taking time in silence or in the presence of beauty or goodness. I could let the words of Jesus ring in my ears and my heart when he told us: ‘Peace be with you, I have come to set you free so that you may

That sounds like a conversation free from the burden of the past and free from useless self negativity. It sounds like a conversation that holds a deep truth, a path to peace and a roadmap to a world in keeping with Jesus’ vision of building the kingdom of God. We find ourselves now in the wonderful season of Lent; a time of preparation for and journeying towards the pinnacle of our church year at Easter time. Our tradition of ‘doing something for Lent’ is a great way to make this journey of preparation.

However, perhaps this Lent we could check ourselves. Are we doing something for Lent in the hope that God might love us? Or are we doing something for Lent because God loves us? It strikes me that the latter approach might make Lent a more joyful season, filled with gratitude. It might also allow us to consider doing something for Lent that would spread the good news of the great love of God to others.

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

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LI T U RGY

LENTEN PRACTICES ANCIENT AND MODERN

LENT IS A LITURGICAL SEASON RICH IN PERSONAL DEVOTIONS AND PUBLIC LITURGIES. HERE ARE A FEW THOUGHTS ON REFRESHING THE MEANING OF OUR SYMBOLS AND SOME IDEAS ON LESSERKNOWN PRACTICES FROM THE PAST.

BY MARIA HALL Consider burning your own palms! Using last year’s palms to make this year’s ashes is a wonderful way of understanding the symbolism and making it relevant, especially if young people of the parish can be involved. This could be a school event in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday, or take place in parish on the Sunday before.

20

Resources, videos and texts for the burning are available at mariahall.org/lent-and-easter.

Using last year’s palms to make this year’s ashes is a wonderful way of understanding the symbolism and making it relevant

The

use of ashes dates back to the Old Testament where they were a sign of penitence. In the Early Church, there was no Ash Wednesday, though the beginning of Lent was marked by a day of fasting. In the fourth century, those who had committed serious sins were temporarily excommunicated and

REALITY MARCH 2020

marked with ashes as a sign of their need to do penance before they were re-admitted to the Church. In 1099 Ash Wednesday was added to the liturgical calendar by Pope Urban II and in medieval times it was traditional for popes to walk barefoot in procession across Rome to receive their ashes.

THE SEASON OF LENT In the second century people would fast for two days in preparation for Easter. A hundred years later, they were commemorating ‘Holy Week’. In 339 AD Athanasius remarked that the "whole world" fasted for 40 days. Basil the Great wrote:

reminder of the sins of Adam and Eve, they were banished from the church community during Lent.

Those who wished to join the Church underwent an extensive catechumenate which culminated at Easter. They were frequently questioned about what they were learning. A public ’scrutiny’ was held by the bishop; the catechumens had to provide witnesses who would testify that they had changed their ways and were living a Christian life. Lent thus came a solemn and penitential time and the liturgy reflected this. They were also encouraged to take part in prayer, almsgiving and fasting and the faithful would adopt these practices in solidarity with the catechumens and also to strengthen their own spiritual lives.

These three disciplines are still the basis of our Lenten acts today.

There is no island, no continent, city or nation, nor distant corner of the globe, Where the proclamation of the Lenten fast is not listened to.

Armies on the march, travellers on the road, sailors as well as merchants, All alike hear the announcement and receive it with joy.

In practice this meant one meal a day and as always, those in need were at the centre of the Church’s thoughts and actions. Pope Leo the Great (fifth century) reminded the faithful: Fasting is a means and not an end in itself.

Its purpose is to foster pure and holy and spiritual activity… what we forego by fasting is to be given to the poor.

By the seventh century, Ash Wednesday was being celebrated and was the time for sinners to join the Order of Penitents. This was their path to reconciliation. They would confess privately to the bishop, then, wearing sack cloth, they received the laying on of hands and the imposition of ashes. As a

LITURGY DURING LENT Everything about the liturgies should speak of noble simplicity. This is in order to do several things : To reflect the penitential nature of the season. To heighten the celebration of the Paschal Mystery at Easter.

Lent only makes sense if it is seen along with the Triduum (Holy Thursday to the Easter Vigil) and Easter.

The Lenten season calls for a simpler liturgical environment (even more heightened for the Triduum). For this reason, flowers are not placed in church except on solemnities, feasts and the Fourth Sunday of Lent, which is known as Laetare Sunday and is also Mother’s Day. This has its origins in the return of agricultural workers to their mother church for mid-Lent Sunday.

The organ and other musical instruments are only used in order to sustain singing.

Chants to be used should be in harmony with the spirit of the season and the liturgical texts.

From the beginning of Lent to the Easter Vigil, Alleluia is to be omitted in all celebrations, even on solemnities and feasts.

BURYING OF THE ALLELUIA From the earliest days of the Church, Alleluia has always been used in its original Hebrew form and what a powerful word it is! Its omission is one of the most significant changes to the Lenten liturgy.

As early as 1073, Pope Alexander said that it is sung twice and then not heard till Easter.

In the 13th century, Bishop William Durand wrote: We part from the Alleluia as from a beloved friend, Whom we embrace many times and kiss on the mouth, head and hand before we leave him.

The burying generally took place on the eve of Septuagissima (the third Sunday before Lent) in anticipation of the approaching season. This is an extract from a 15th-century source of the church of Toul in north-eastern France: The choir boys gather in the sacristy… to prepare for the burial of the Alleluia.

After the last ‘benedicamus’ they march in procession, with crosses, tapers, holy water and censers, and they carry a coffin as in a funeral.

Thus, they process through the aisle, moaning and mourning, until they reach the cloister. There they bury the coffin, they sprinkle it with holy water and incense it; whereupon they return to the sacristy by the same way.

This Medieval custom was prevalent up to the 16th century and is becoming popular again as we seek to emphasise liturgical practices with a meaningful and dramatic ritual action.

The word Alleluia should be written and decorated on a large banner, and hidden during Lent. It could be placed in a box, wrapped up and put away or literally buried in the ground.

When I was a teacher, the children made a giant banner decorated in glitter. Before the Ash Wednesday Mass, the pupils wrapped it in purple cloth and carried it from the high altar to a side altar where it stayed till the first school Mass of Easter when it was carried in procession.

21

L IT U R GY

22

This could be a family activity, take place at school, or as part of children’s liturgy in parish, and whilst not part of the official liturgies of the Church, it is a welcome optional extra!

A good overview and ideas are available from: www.saintpats.org/parish/lent, or www.catholictv.org/shows/saints-seasons/ bury-the-alleluia MARY GARDEN This is the wild card of devotions because Mary isn’t the main focus of Lent. But the feast of the Annunciation, March 25, frequently falls in Lent and through his conception, it marks the beginning of the journey of Christ’s redemptive journey.

It is the perfect time of year for planning and planting a garden full of Marian symbolic meaning to remind us of the themes of new life and new beginnings.

Originating in Medieval France, the hortus conclusus, the enclosed garden (also popular in poetry and art) was sy m b o l i c o f M a r y ’s v i rg i n it y a n d contained flowers that were symbolic of her many virtues. There are not set rules other than the list of flowers, and REALITY MARCH 2020

Resources: www.catholicculture.org/ commentary/annunciation- and- lentcelebrating-new-life-through-mary-garden/ List of plants and their meaning: www. mariahall.org/lent-and-easter

VEILING OF CROSSES AND IMAGES This is another ancient tradition that is becoming popular again and worthy of consideration in the parish. Bishop Durand described several similar practices using veils and curtains. In one church, curtains were "spread out in front of the altar during Lent". Sometimes known as the ‘hunger cloth’ this was like the veil of the Holy of Holies in the Temple which was torn as Jesus died on the cross.

While veiling can be seen as an act of mourning, here it heightens the sombre mood of the season. It is a powerful visual sign, directing our thoughts towards the approaching Passion and death of Christ, particularly on Good Friday when the only visible cross is gradually unveiled and venerated. It also serves to contrast the great joy with which we celebrate the Resurrection.

Unless stipulated by the local bishop, the decision to veil is to be made by the local pastor.

Before Evening Prayer or the Vigil Mass on the fifth Sunday of Lent, all statues and crosses (but not the Stations of the Cross) are covered in plain, light purple material without decoration.

On Good Friday, after the Commemoration of the Passion, all crosses are unveiled, and all other images (statues and pictures) are unveiled before the Easter Vigil.

Further reading: Ceremonies of the Liturgical Year. Msgr. Peter J. Elliott. Ignatius Press.

2002. ISBN: 9780898708295

Maria Hall is music director at St Wilfrid's Church, Preston.

A qualified teacher, she has a master’s in liturgical theology from the Liturgy Centre, Maynooth and is a consultant on matters liturgical for schools and parishes.

this would make a great project for any individual or group.

REDEMPTORIST

PARISH MISSIONS

Breaking the Word in March 2020

Please pray for the Redemptorist Teams who will preach the Word and for God’s People who will hear the Word proclaimed this month in:

St Peter & St. Paul’s, Lurgan (7th – 13th March 2020) Parish mission preached by Laurence Gallagher CSsR, Noel Kehoe CSsR, Ciaran O’Callaghan CSsR, Gerry Moloney CSsR, Clare Gilmore, Neill Foley and the Clonard Youth Ministry Team Lower Creggan, Cullyhanna (7th – 14th March 2020) Parish mission preached by Denis Luddy CSsR and Derek Meskell CSsR Aghabullogue, Cork (21st – 28th March 2020) Parish mission preached by Laurence Gallagher CSsR, Derek Meskell CSsR and Clare Gilmore The details above are accurate at the time of printing. If you have any views, comments or even criticisms about Redemptorist preaching, we would love to hear from you. If you are interested in a mission or novena in your parish, please contact us for further information. And please keep all Redemptorist preachers in your prayers.

Fr Laurence Gallagher CSsR, Email: largallagher@gmail.com Tel: +353 61 315099

March Retreat for Priests Open to all priests Wed. 4 12noon – 5pm Peter McVerry SJ Is Democracy under Threat?

Values in our age of disruption Sat.7 10am – 4pm Ian Hughes

Ennismore Retreat Centre

April Forgiveness The key to happiness in our world today Sat. 18 10am – 4pm John Lonergan

Full day retreat €75 (including lunch) Booking is essential.

Nature is never Spent…

The mystics’ sense of creation’s abundance Sat.14 10am – 4pm Donagh O’Shea OP

St Dominic’s

www.ennismore.ie

021–4502520

info@ennismore.ie

CLIMB THE HIGH A TRUE AND ACCURATE ACCOUNT OF OUR ASSAULT OF MOUNT APO – WITH ONLY THE OCCASIONAL OUTLANDISH EXAGGERATION AND FABULOUS HYPERBOLE, STRICTLY FOR THEATRICAL EFFECT.

BY COLM MEANEY CSsR

After 24

the intensity of preaching the Holy Week retreats in one of our retreat houses, I was sorely in need of the calm, refreshing breezes of Mount Apo (the Philippines’ highest peak). The seriousness of the solemn reading of the Passion on Good Friday had been sorely tested, fairly early on in the proceedings. The narrator had gotten us off to a sombre start, and the men retreatants and their families were suitably melancholic and grave as they listened to the once-a-year proclamation of the Lord’s Passion.

The narrator had us located in Gethsemane, and the temple guards approached Jesus to arrest him. As the Lord, I solemnly enquired “who are you looking for?” With equal gravity, but with a completely unrehearsed and unexpected heterodoxy, the surprising reply was “Jesus of Arimathea”!

At that point, one can either throw up one’s hands and guffaw uncontrollably, or bite one’s lip so intensely that almost blood and water seem to flow…We got through it, but, even as the reading proceeded, I was already putting on my rucksack to scale the majestic peak.

REALITY MARCH 2020

SETTING OUT We had an Exodus-style breakfast: standing, our loins girded and the mother of all adventures ahead of us. At 7am we prepared to start; but before one foot had been put in front of the other, the first of countless photographs was taken, with our specially printed tarpaulin as backdrop: “Redemptorist Mission”.

The first few hours were easy-going – what deceptive innocence! Barely climbing, we passed a few houses clustered together, surrounded by fields planted with a variety of vegetables. At noon we stopped in a clearing and had our first lunch.

Conditions were not exactly of a Ritz standard, but sufficient: we ate from whatever container we had (Tupperware, noodles dish, saucepan cover), leaning on tree trunks or squatting.

We continued and conditions became more difficult. Now we were going constantly upward – that is, apart from the times we were descending into ravines to cross streams and then ascend the far side. The paths were muddy and sodden. We had to decide how to

negotiate tree trunks fallen across our path: stooping down to crawl under was difficult with the big, heavy backpack; climbing over them involved a delicate balancing act as one maneuvered across the slimy moss. It would be alright to slide and crack a rib or slip a disc – it’s the embarrassment that would be terrible.

Around 4.30pm, in the semigloom of the forest, the first hikers arrived at the campsite. I continued innocently to entertain a beginner’s notion of a Mount Apo campsite: Naïve notion: a well-maintained, evenly-grassy clearing with hot and cold showers, barbeque facilities and hopefully one or two nubile young ladies to massage away the day’s aches and pains (I was willing to do without the cinema and Starbucks outlet).

Actual reality: an empty space among the trees, not only uneven, but with branches prodding you in the spine.

By 7.30am next morning we were on our way. By 9am we were at what are known as 'The Boulders'.

For Irish readers, picture the Burren at a 35-degree angle, a vast expanse

of rocks and boulders, spewed out millennia ago during one of the volcano’s periodic eruptions.

We climbed over rocks the whole morning and by noon we were at our lunch site, a few hundred metres from the summit. As many other groups were also heading summitward, one of our guides decided to go ahead, so as to secure a favoured spot at the peak. By the time we reached the summit around 2.30pm, we found that many others were already camped. Our farsighted guide had secured the only natural shelter on such a remote, weather-beaten plateau: a cave-like fissure, maybe five feet in height and depth. It proved to be a most timely move. By 4pm the rain was pouring down; we had to run from our tents to the cave for our evening repast.

Shivering, we ate our heated rice and humba [cooked pork]. Then we dashed back to the tents for our second night on Mount Apo: now we were pitched on a plateau at 10,000+ feet, affording little shelter from the constant rain and strong gusts of wind.

Having had a restless first night on Mount Apo, you’d expect that we’d

Mount Apo as seen from Amakan, Buhangin District in Davao, Philippines

HEST MOUNTAIN sleep soundly on the second night.

Think again. Perched at 10,000+ feet, with strong winds and heavy rain, we slept fitfully, and in a fog-bound dawn, were huddled around our butane-fired stoves, eagerly awaiting our breakfast of cooked-ham slices and rice.

Still, our spirits were high, because whatever about all the hardships on the climb to the peak, surely the descent would be one easy downward step after another – at least, that’s how my innocent, naïve mind was thinking as we set out.

It wasn’t long before I was made keenly aware that the descent would have its own challenges. Due to the previous night’s rain, the ground was sodden and we were soon sloshing through what can only be described as a marsh. Consider a bog in the middle of winter, in the middle of nowhere, and you get the picture. With our still pristine Nike and Adidas footwear to consider, at first we were gingerly taking cautious steps along the edges of the mire; it wasn’t long before we realised that this was going to last for hours and that protecting our branded footwear was pretty low

on our priority-list. So we sloshed on through the water and mud, and on, and on…

We arrived at Lake Venado, perhaps two hours from the peak, a place of stark beauty and vast serenity. Volunteers were marking out spaces for games of volleyball and other sports for later that day; it coincided with an international climb of Mount Apo. We declined an invitation to hang around till the afternoon to partake in the sports fest, and continued on our way down. It was at this stretch of the journey that we passed the gnarled tree trunks, twisted into apocalyptic shape over time, painted by Manny Cabajar (a Filipino Redemptorist, recently-retired bishop of the diocese of Pagadian in Mindanao, southern Philippines). The surroundings are so stark and wind-swept that you could imagine that it was some kind of moonscape. What came to mind was Neil Armstrong’s “one small step for mankind”, because at this stage, due to weariness and torpor, I was, if not in astronautmode, most definitely on 'autopilot', barely putting one foot in front of the other.

The jagged boulders of Mount Apo mountain

We had lunch in a clearing among the trees, and soon continued on.

For me, the next few hours were an exercise in perseverance. We eventually reached the foot of the mountain, and rested for some time.

We still had to walk along by a river for perhaps three hours, crossing it continually, but at least we were on the level, and the magic words “a cool, refreshing drink” were like the voice of a siren wooing a wearied traveler, in a seemingly-endless desert, to an oasis of delights unimagined. Well, not to get carried away, we eventually did make it to our final campsite, a simple but adequate resort, which had the almost sybaritic indulgence of a volcanically-heated swimming pool! I was in no mood for swimming, but simply lay supine for 30 minutes in the 20 inches of hot water, being gawked-at by the bemused locals, letting the dirt, sweat and weariness of the previous days simply and pleasingly drain away. What luxury!

If our breakfast on the first morning

of the ascent had been Exodus-style, due to its frugality and our haste, our supper that final evening was surely eschatological, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet! To be sure, we didn’t have the Isaiah-type “choice wines and tender steaks”, but we did have the demeanor of “the saved”, and we partook of food whose succulence and scrumptiousness we could hardly have imagined during our Spartan privations on the Mountain-of-Challenge. That night we most definitely did sleep the “sleep of the just” and awoke the next morning like warriors who had successfully completed the most challenging rite of passage imaginable.

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.

25

THE O U R FAT H E R 2

HALLOWED BE THY NAME

POPE FRANCIS HAS REMINDED US THAT AS CHRISTIANS, “WE SAY THAT WE HAVE A FATHER, BUT WE LIVE LIKE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT BELIEVE EITHER IN GOD OR IN MAN. WE LIVE WITHOUT FAITH; WE LIVE NOT IN LOVE BUT IN HATRED, IN COMPETITION, 26 IN WAR; WE LIVE IN DOING EVIL.”

BY MIKE DALEY

No

more adjectives. Just nouns.

If you think this advice was given by a crabby old grammarian, you’d be wrong.

It was offered by Pope Francis.

Speaking to employees at the Vatican’s Communication Office, Pope Francis stated that one of the things they must not do “is advertising, mere advertising".

To this he added two words that he is allergic to: 'authentic' and 'truly'. He gave the example: “’This is a Christian thing’: why say authentically Christian? It is Christian!

The mere fact of the noun Christian, ‘I am of Christ’, is strong: it is an adjectival noun, yes, but it is a noun.”

Pope Francis observed: “We have fallen into the culture of adjectives and adverbs, and we have forgotten the strength of nouns.

The communicator must make people understand the weight of the reality of nouns that reflect the reality of people. And this is a mission of communication: to communicate

REALITY MARCH 2020

with reality, without sweetening with adjectives and adverbs.”

As reflected in the Our Father, Jesus is a proponent of nouns without any of the flowery additions we think so necessary when addressing God. Unlike other Jewish and near Eastern prayers of his time, the Our Father is brief. It gets right to the person (God) and the point (petitions). Coming in at just around 50 words (Gospel of Matthew version), it doesn’t mince or waste words.

Remarkably, considering the subject–our relationship with God–it contains little to no formality or ceremony.

THE POWER OF KNOWING A NAME Though the Our Father begins with a very intimate and familial name for God–Father– it quickly moves to a call to glorify, to sanctify, and to reverence God’s name. You get a sense in this movement of a relationship–God and us–which should be stronger, closer, more

mutual and reciprocal, but isn’t. Interestingly, we often think of 'hallowing' God’s name in terms of violating it. Like when we curse.

Ironically enough, mentioning this in the sacrament of reconciliation, some of us are given Our Fathers as a form of penance.

In his own book on this prayer, Our Father: Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer, Pope Francis suggests: “’Hallowed be thy name’ means it should be hallowed, it should be revered and honored, in us, in me. Because many times we believers, we Christians, present a testimony that is sad, ugly. We say that we are Christians, we say that we have a father, but we live like–I do not want to say like animals, but we often live like people who do not believe either in God or in man. We live without faith; we live not in love but in hatred, in competition, in war; we live in doing evil.”

In the ancient world, unlike today, names were very important. To know someone’s name was to have power over that person. To

the Lord’s Prayer Today: “But the temptation for the people of Israel, as for all of us, was to pay lip service to God’s name while going their own way in the ordinary events of life. At several different stages of their history they confined their service of God to external worship.

God always broke out of such a straitjacket, often in a blazing fire of anger from the mouth of one of the prophets.”

Furthermore, even when we’re trying to hallow God’s name, chances are our fingers are crossed such that we hope to see ourselves elevated as well. Some of us may remember from 'back in the day' putting at the head of school papers 'AMDG'. It comes from the Latin phrase ad majorem dei gloriam which translates 'To the greater glory of God'. Pious paper heading or necessary reminder of who should be at the centre of our lives? What would happen if, in addition to our corporate or business brands, we put AMDG on our professional correspondence?

Call it Original Sin but as soon as we say “Our” Father something inside us quickly makes it “My” Father. What we want–social standing, economic gain, and good looks -God wants for us. Unfortunately, this distorts, exploits, and perverts who God is.

In the absence of our commitment to faithfulness, to justice, comes the recognition that God must hallow God’s name. Even when we are not faithful to God’s covenant, God is. This is made clear when the Book of Ezekiel proclaims: “Therefore say to the house of Israel: Thus says the Lord GOD: Not for your sake do I act, house of Israel, but for the sake of my holy name, which you desecrated among the nations to which you came. But I will show the holiness of my great name, desecrated among the nations, in whose midst you desecrated it. Then the nations shall know that I am the LORD–oracle of the Lord GOD–when through you I show my holiness before their very eyes” (36:22-23).

CO-OPERATORS IN GOD’S WORK Despite our shortcomings and sinfulness, we are still invited to become co-operators with God in bringing forth the kingdom. God

To know someone’s name was to have power over that person.

To reveal your name to someone was to invite relationship and commitment with that person

reveal your name to someone was to invite relationship and commitment with that person. Such is the revelatory event when God reveals God’s name–Yahweh, “I AM”–to Moses at the burning bush (Ex 3:14). Here God begins a covenant with a ragtag group of misfits, rejects, and slaves. The one thing God asks for is faithfulness.

“OUR” BECOMES “MY” As history and our lives attest to today, our response to God’s covenantal offer of relationship can be summed up in three words: 'Yes', 'No', and 'Maybe'. Depending on the day, it can be one, two, and/or all three of them. Fervent belief and practice meet defiant rejection followed by indecisive waffling. Makes you wonder what God was thinking to initiate such a relationship.

As Irish Dominican scripture scholar, Sr Celine Mangan, O.P. reminds us in Can We Still Call God “Father”: A Woman Looks at

doesn’t want to hallow God’s name for us, but with us. Whatever the time and age, this is no easy task. Bringing glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed (Luke 4:1819), takes patience, energy, courage, and perspective. Rarely is it met with financial reward or gracious recognition.

Yet, that is our vocation as Christians. As Capuchin friar Michael Crosby reminds us in his book, The Prayer that Jesus Taught Us: “To make God’s name holy on earth as it is in heaven may take us into boardrooms and shareholder meetings as well as into the inner chambers of curias and councils.

However, when we do, we may incur their ‘justice’ in forms of rejection and even being called ‘communist,’ unpatriotic, or disloyal to the Holy Father. However, such persecution was promised those who would be willing to promote justice in a world marked by injustice (see 5:10). Matthew’s Jesus even goes further to say that this persecution will be done in his name, or on his behalf (see 5:11).”

I’m starting to realise becoming more fully conscious of the Our Father comes with certain risks and challenges.

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

W HAT I R E L A N D OW E S TO TH E SISTE RS

DROGHEDA’S

Most Famous

28

MEMBER OF A WEALTHY DUBLIN FAMILY, VOLUNTEER NURSE IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR , FOUNDRESS OF A CONGREGATION OF MEDICAL MISSIONARIES, MARY MARTIN LEFT HER MARK ON IRELAND AND ESPECIALLY ON THE TOWN OF DROGHEDA.

BY JOHN SCALLY

She

remains one of the most iconic names in Drogheda. Marie Martin, better known as Mother Mary Martin, was born in Dublin to a wealthy Catholic merchant family. The eldest girl in a family of twelve children, her domestic bliss was smashed into tiny pieces by the tragic death of her father on St Patrick’s Day in 1907. In 1914, when her brothers Tommy and Charlie, and her boyfriend, Gerald,

REALITY MARCH 2020

enlisted for service in World War I, Marie commenced a three-month training course at the Richmond Hospital in Dublin, preparing to nurse wounded soldiers as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD).

NURSE AT THE FRONT Like many brave women before, she sought to bring the faith to a new audience. She sailed for Malta in October 1915 where she was posted

to St. George’s Military Hospital. War cast a long shadow over her family.

While there, she heard the distressing news that her brother, Charlie, had been wounded and was missing. She invested significant time and energy seeking news of him from comrades who had been with him when he was wounded and hoped against hope that he would turn up on one of the hospital ships.

The following June she was called up for service in France and was there during the infamous Battle of the Somme in 1916. It was then she received the dreaded news that Charlie was dead. Her strategy for coping with her own loss was to transfer her energies into caring for those who were wounded. In the process she acquired considerable experience in nursing young men with gangrene and gas poisoning, and others whose injuries were compounded with skin diseases like scabies and impetigo.

After her 25th birthday, Marie broke the news to her boyfriend that marriage was not on her horizons. Still unsure where this would lead, she trained as a midwife at the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, and sailed for Nigeria in 1921.

OFF TO AFRICA Initially she had an understandable naivety about her mission in Nigeria as it took considerable time to

appreciate all the nuances of the new culture she encountered. Intuitively she knew her past practices would somehow need to be adapted for an African region. Such inculturation required her to be constantly looking for what was best for the Nigerian context and be attuned to the key skill of modern missionary methods – listening. The only approach that would deliver success was: mind to mind and heart to heart. She quickly learned not just to listen to the words that were used, but tones in which she could distinguish delicacy, independence and compassion. She had a strong sense of the privilege she enjoyed in entering into a people’s culture and to be allowed to see the world through their eyes. Her faith life was enriched by nature which imbued her with humble silence and wordless prayer.

She faced many problems on the road to founding the Medical Missionaries of Mary. Her vision was as clear as a summer’s day: dedicated women were needed, women who would bring health care to places where there was none, and would give particular care to pregnant women, mothers and infants.

She wanted her Sisters to receive the most professional training possible, but the Church at that time did not look favourably at the prospect of women religious practising surgery or obstetrics. It took a lot of

Daughter? careful diplomacy to convince the authorities of the great needs and of the rightness of her vision.

Then when all the bureaucratic obstacles were cleared, she faced a more personal challenge. When she finally got the green light to establish the Medical Missionaries of Mary, she fell ill herself, and was believed to be on her death-bed when she made her vows in 1937 in a Government Hospital in Nigeria. She was sent home and ordered by her doctor never to set foot in Africa again.

DROGHEDA She established the first Novitiate at Collon in 1938. In 1939 she was invited to Drogheda to take over the maternity home at Beechgrove.

Despite ‘the Emergency’, otherwise known as World War II, she oversaw extensions in 1942 and again in 1946.

Moreover, during those years she was building a convent and training centre for her growing community of Sisters.

On Shrove Tuesday 1952, fire destroyed the convent. The Drogheda Fire Brigade were assisted by units from Navan and Dundalk as well as a section of the Dublin Fire Brigade and a unit from the Army before bringing it under control. They saved much of the building but left 136 young Sisters homeless. Despite this reversal of fortune, Mother Mary was not deflected from her plan to

build a hospital for the people of Drogheda, and at the same time a place where missionaries could be trained for service in the most remote places on earth. She declined an invitation from the Minister for Health to take over a hospital at Carlow, preferring to stick to her plans for Drogheda.

On June 6, 1966, she became the first woman to receive the Freedom of the Borough of Drogheda in recognition of: "the wonderful work, self-sacrifice, and devotion of Mother Mary Martin, an unassuming lady whom the Drogheda people have come to know and love".

That same year she received the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland’s first honorary fellowship awarded to a woman, "in recognition of her singular achievements in the field of medical missions and to the lustre she has added to Irish medicine in many parts of the world".

Her final illness began in 1968, and for the following seven years she was a patient at the hospital in Drogheda.

The former president Eamon de Valera visited her to pay his respects.

MISSION CONTINUES Her shroud of suffering was painful, but she was determined to replace it with the translucent beauty of the Lord who rose from the tomb on Easter Sunday. She lived through what Emily Dickinson refers to as

‘The Hour of Lead’ – a process of mourning that results in a final relinquishing, and an essential thaw.

The message of the Christian story led her to accept disappointment and loss but she never lost hope. Storms make the oak grow deeper roots. The Rule of Saint Benedict the ancient guide to the monastic life, includes the exhortation to "keep death before one’s eyes daily". To some that may sound morbid but to Marie Martin in times of suffering it was a reminder that she came into this world without fear and that her passing allowed her to return without fear as well, crossing over knowing that union with God would be her first and final home.

After her death in 1975 more than 4,000 people signed the books of condolence. She was described as "one of the outstanding Irishwomen of our time" in a tribute by the then Taoiseach, Mr Liam Cosgrave. In his tribute, the Taoiseach said: "Mother Mary Martin's achievements in her profession, her triumph over ill health, to found the Order which will always be associated with her name, and the widespread international recognition which was accorded to her, mark her out as one of the outstanding Irish women of our times. Her concern for the sick, the deprived and the underprivileged of the third world was in advance of her time and a guideline for governments and social agencies in later years. I would like to

tender my very sincere sympathy to the relatives and community of the late Mother Mary Martin."

Cardinal Conway described her as a woman of remarkable foresight and intelligence, as well as being a profoundly spiritual person. "Decades before the Second Vatican Council she had insights into the apostolate of religious, which were later to be fully justified and confirmed. May God rest her noble soul," the cardinal added.

Today her Sisters work in Angola, Brazil, Ethiopia, Honduras, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Republic of Benin, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. With Mary as their model, their special concern is the care of mother and child and the fostering of family life. These sisters have commited themselves to lives of fidelity to God and each other. The mission of Jesus was that of Mother Mary: those who suffer must experience solidarity and compassion; our ravaged planet must find us working with everyone of goodwill to restore it to health.

John Scally teaches theology at Trinity College, Dublin. He has a special interest in the areas of ethics and history.

29

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COM M E N T FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS CARMEL WYNNE

THE RESPONSIBILITY TO DO SOMETHING

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU REALISE THAT THE MARRIAGE OF YOUR SON OR DAUGHTER, BROTHER OR SISTER, IS IN DEEP TROUBLE? Marriage breakdown is a tragedy that causes untold distress. It affects not just the couple and their children, but grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. The divorce rate in Ireland is the lowest in Europe but the numbers may surprise you. The CSO figures for 2016 showed that 103,895 people were divorced and 118,175 couples separated.

When parents fight it changes the atmosphere in the home, affects children and creates problems for the extended family. Children do not understand why mum and dad fight. They feel frightened if their angry parents scream and shout at each other. They will blame themselves for contributing to their parents' problems.

It’s heart-breaking for family members to see the unhappiness caused by the constant bickering between a couple they love. It’s even more painful when they have concerns about the wellbeing of children. People often don’t know what they should do. They defer having the difficult conversation for very good reasons: "I’m waiting for the right opportunity to present itself" or "I don’t want to be seen to be interfering."

In a family crisis it takes courage to be the person who speaks out and has the difficult conversation.

Let’s say everyone in a family knows that Archie is having an affair. His wife Aoife seems to be the only person who doesn’t know. Family members agree that it’s not fair to leave her in the dark. She needs to be told but there is much discussion and little agreement on who will be

row. It felt like she wanted her to hear the litany of blame, complaints and grievances against John that she spewed out, with her as the audience. She genuinely believed that Mary’s focus was on hurting and humiliating John. Maybe John and Mary needed a wakeup call; someone should have a conversation about the extended family’s concerns.

the one to reveal that her husband is unfaithful.

Take another example.

Grandparents Joe and Vera worry that their son John and his wife Mary are having serious marital problems. The couple's relationship is in trouble, probably heading for divorce, but they think it’s wiser not to intervene. Mary is likeable, fun to be around, the life and soul of every party. She is also a perfectionist and controlling. Everything must be done to her standards. When it’s not she gets very angry. On a couple of occasions Vera’s instinct was to intervene when Mary was so enraged that she made a scene, shouting and screaming abuse at the children.

Joe said he was confident that Mary would not hit the children and it was not their business.

Their grandchildren were far from perfect and probably needed to be checked by their mother. He wasn’t surprised that Mary made a scene because she is a drama queen.

He suggested that the contrast in different parenting styles was probably good for the children.

Their mum was volatile and loud, their dad was calm but stern and they paid more attention to him.

Joe thought Vera needed a more positive attitude. His support helped her feel better about deferring what would be a difficult conversation. In her heart of hearts she felt that positive thoughts could never blind her to the pain, the heartbreak, the sadness that she saw in the grandchildren.

Something needed to be done to protect them but she genuinely felt anyone else would do it better than her.

John’s sister worried about the tension in her brother’s home.

Her nephew Ritchie told her that sometimes when his mum was upset and was fighting with his dad their rows could last for up to an hour. Ritchie was very angry that his father allowed his mother to walk all over him. He complained, "He just stands there and does nothing."

She had witnessed her brother and sister-in-law fight and was shocked at how obnoxious and rude Mary sounded. Mary didn’t seem to care that she was there to witness the

Many families are in similar situations. They are concerned for children because the family atmosphere is toxic. Mum has angry meltdowns. Dad is having an affair.

The children are acting out because the parental conflict. If dad spends more time at work, the children get the brunt of mum’s frustration.

Couples can be so focused on their own unhappiness that they are blind to the dysfunction. Parental conflict, maternal anger, drug abuse, emotional withdrawal, an affair are issues that affect children.

Marital conflict has an impact on children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and everyone who loves the parents and children. Extended family members who see the misery of unhappy children living in a toxic home have a huge responsibility for the young people. What they decide to do, or not do, will affect the happiness and future wellbeing of the children. We all know that bad things happen when good people do nothing.

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

31

F E AT U R E MISSION SUNDAY CELEBRATION – ST PATRICK’S, LISBURN Back row : Fr John O’Donoghue M.Afr, Fr Conor McGrath, Fr Liam Dunne SVD, Fr Martin Cushnan CSsR, Fr Gerald Doyle MHM, Fr Francis Ahern OSA, Fr Fergus Tuohy SMA, Fr John Brown CSSp, Fr Eddie Deany SMA Front row : Fr Terence McGuckin CP, Fr Billy Fulton SPS, Fr Aloysius Lumala, Mary McGrath, Bishop Noel Treanor, Geraldine Goodall, Fr Fonsie Doran CSsR, Fr Kevin McHugh SSC, Canon Brendan Murray, Josephine O’Boyle

APOSTOLIC WORK

32

APOSTOLIC WORK WAS FOUNDED IN BELFAST IN 1923, FOR THE PURPOSE OF SUPPORTING MISSIONARIES AND THEIR WORK IN MANY COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD, WHETHER THEIR NEEDS ARE FINANCIAL, MEDICAL, STRUCTURAL OR EDUCATIONAL.

BY JOSEPHINE O’ BOYLE

Although

it is now 96 years in existence, the aims and ideals of the founder, Agnes Mc Auley, are still the basis of the Apostolic Work Society today.

Agnes Mc Auley, born in Enniskillen, moved to Belfast in 1903 and eventually after various jobs she finally began working in the office of the Franklin laundry. In her private life she displayed exemplary Christian attitudes, offering both spiritual and material assistance to others, especially those on the missions. As well as attending many Masses each week, she also was involved in the sale of missionary magazines including The Far East, African Missions and other forms of fundraising. Such was her commitment and powers of persuasion that her friends and

REALITY MARCH 2020

indeed the Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Joseph MacRory all helped in her work, providing spiritual, financial and material aid for the missions.

This work included providing vestments for Fr O’ Connor, a missionary priest in Africa; helping Mother Marcella (a Franciscan nun) to finance the building of a leper hospital in Kamuli, Uganda; and providing a bursary of £500 for the education of students for the priesthood through the African Missionaries in Cork. The Bishop’s approval for this project was secured when he was blessing vestments for dispatch to the missions in Africa.

BEGINNINGS Agnes, with a few like-minded friends, organised themselves into a group to provide funds for missionaries. When Bishop MacRory was

Agnes Mc Auley, founder of Apostolic Work

Apostolic Work financed this classroom and a place of worship at Kapukupudu

approached about this idea, his reaction was very positive and encouraging. “I do not see how anything but good can come from it” he said.

The first group of ten young women from six different parishes met in Belfast on October 15, 1923. After some prayers, they discussed ways to raise money to help the missions. At the next meeting which was addressed by a Mill Hill priest on leave from his mission work in Uganda, the group were told “What is not good enough for God at home is not good enough for Him in Africa” This comment has endured as a policy of Apostolic Work to this day – only the best goods and materials are dispatched to the missions.

What took place at those early meetings is still today replicated at Apostolic Work branches throughout Ireland. Although Agnes died on December 23, 1925, she was succeeded in 1924 by a very competent and like-minded Mary Mc Call whose organisational ability, dynamism and zeal led to remarkable growth in the spread of the association and the deepening of its spirituality.

Within a year of Mary Mc Call’s accession to the presidency, new branches had been formed in Clonard and Ardoyne in Belfast as well as one in Ballymena. From these small beginnings has developed a global organisation, whose work now reaches missionaries across the world including Africa, Asia and South America providing altar linens, vestments, Mass kits, chalices, ciboria, pyx, oil stocks, monstrances and other liturgical essentials, as well as financial help for food, water provision, medical supplies, transport, orphanages, education, clinics, church buildings and seminaries. The money required for all these needs comes from a variety of sources: honorary members’ subscriptions collected annually, fundraising events such as. Christmas fairs, cake sales, sponsored sporting events, coffee mornings and fashion shows. Apostolic members are very ingenious at developing new ways to encourage

It also supported a clean water project at Mador, Ghana

their supporters to continue with their financial help.

TODAY The introduction of the UK Gift Aid scheme some years ago annually increases donations by 25 per cent if the donor is a UK taxpayer, and this brings a welcome addition to funds as it also does to many other deserving charities.

Sponsorship of more expensive liturgical items are often undertaken by individuals, families or sporting groups. Annual church door collections are a valuable source of income, especially in parishes which do not have a branch of Apostolic Work but welcome a speaker, who gives a short talk about the needs of missionaries and the role of Apostolic Work in helping fulfil these needs.

Some parishes have a junior branch of Apostolic Work, often based in a local school.

These also help to inform and encourage young people in their role as missionaries and provide opportunities for them to help raise muchneeded finance for mission projects especially those involving children, such as education and medical needs.

In 1935, the Prefect of the Sacred Congregatation for the Propagation of the Faith wrote from Rome to Bishop Daniel Mageean (Bishop of Down and Connor at that time) praising the work of Apostolic Work association.

He also announced that from then on it was directly aggregated to the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, now known as the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, thereby granting it and its workers apostolic privileges which continues to this day.

Although in some dioceses in Ireland the number of members in Apostolic Work has decreased in more recent times, there is still great support for this work which continues to provide for the ever-increasing needs of missionaries.

ALL OVER THE WORLD The annual monitoring return from Apostolic Work Down and Connor to the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland for the financial period ending November 30, 2017 lists the countries where it is active. It includes Albania, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Bolivia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chile, China, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Lithuania, Madagascar, Malawi, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Swaziland, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, Venezuela, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

This list is by no means the complete picture, as other dioceses may support missionaries in other countries. A quick glance will show that Apostolic Work operates in some of the poorest regions of the world where large numbers of the population suffer severe deprivation of basic needs. The role of Apostolic Work is to implement projects which, while providing the necessary short-term help to these people, aim through a range of interventions to provide them or their children with the skills and the means to become self-reliant. It is for this reason that the Apostolic Work Society was founded and will continue to help fund missionaries who are working to alleviate poverty and suffering throughout the world.

WHO DOES APOSTOLIC WORK HELP? The organisation uses a range of projects which are tailor-made to suit different groups with specific needs. For example in some countries there are specific areas of deprivation which can include different age groups like preschool through to young adults, groups who suffer

33

F E AT U R E

from illnesses which require long-term treatment including HIV/AIDS patients, and those addicted to misuse of solvents, alcohol or drugs. Refugees, asylum seekers, those with learning difficulties and groups whose needs are complex and possibly long term, can get advice and help from trained personnel who are supported by finance provided by Apostolic Work. These examples are not exhaustive as certain situations require specialised, specific help and where possible this will be given.

Fr Liam Dunne SVD spoke very eloquently at the annual retreat in 2018 about his experiences as a missionary who was helped by Apostolic Work. He told us that his group, Divine Word Missionaries, is the largest missionary organisation in the world today, working in over 80 countries – most of which are heavily reliant on help from other countries if their mission is to succeed. As Irish missionaries are not as numerous today as in former years, many missionary priests, sisters and lay people at present are coming from less developed countries like India, Indonesia, Brazil,

Papa New Guinea and the Congo. These missionaries are not as well supported by their families or home countries as past Irish missionaries were, so in fact the needs of the mission world have increased in recent years and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

The two main objectives of Apostolic Work today remain as they were in 1925, namely: The classroom turned to chapel 1.To provide missionaries with the material needs required for their work evangelising in impoverished parishes and word of God and alleviating poverty where in the developing world. This aim is achieved by needed around the world. With God’s help this various fundraising activities with all monies being work will progress and develop even further in our quest to provide the most deprived peoples of the sent to a central diocesan office.

2. To pray for the success of missionary work in world with their essential needs, both spiritual and temporal. spreading the Gospel to all peoples.

It was for these reasons that the Apostolic Work Society was founded, and therefore will continue Josephine O’Boyle is secretary to the Apostolic Work, Down to help missionaries working to spread the love and Connor Diocese

The Spirituality of St Patrick is a fountain of nourishment based on the writings of the man himself. The booklet presented here is not just ‘a good read.’ It is the Rule of Life that gave Patrick meaning in success and adversity – something upon which the reader is invited to reflect, to ponder, to revisit and to live by.

Besides including “Patrick’s Profession of Faith” and “Sayings of St Patrick,” part 5 of the publication is a ready resource for Patrician hymns in English and Irish, notably Hail Glorious St Patrick, Dóchas Linn Naomh Pádraig, and Mrs Alexander’s classic rendition of St Patrick’s Breastplate.

by John J. Ó Ríordáin CSsR

Ecumenically the booklet contributes to “the new season of reconciliation that is defrosting the divisions that have scarred our island and pushed believers apart.”

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IN THE F OOTSTEPS OF CLE M E N T

WHAT’S IN A NAME? REDEMPTORISTS THIS YEAR WILL BE CELEBRATING THE SECOND CENTENARY OF THE DEATH OF ST CLEMENT HOFBAUER, THE CZECH-BORN BAKER’S APPRENTICE WHO BROUGHT THE REDEMPTORISTS NORTH OF THE ALPS. HE EXERCISED HIS APOSTOLATE IN WARSAW AND VIENNA AT A TIME WHEN EUROPE WAS FALLING APART IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE NAPOLEONIC WARS.

BY BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR

He

was known as Jan Dvořák . When he died, he was known to friends and critics alike as Clement Hofbauer. It was by that name he was canonised, and is today honoured as the great propagator, and second founder of the Redemptorist congregation and the patron of the city of Vienna. The story of the change of name is virtually a summary of Clement’s life and his world.

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD Jan Dvořák was born on St Stephen’s Day, 1751. He was the ninth of twelve children of Maria Steer and Pavel Dvořák in the small town of Tasovice. Maria was of relatively wealthy family. Her father was the local judge

who had a profitable sideline as the village butcher. Pavel Dvořák had arrived in the town some 20 years before and had begun to replace his native Slavic language with the local German dialect.

Tasovice today is virtually perched on the border separating the Czech Republic from Austria. This border was at one time the 'Iron Curtain' that physically separated the countries of Russian-controlled Eastern Europe from the West. In the 18th century, Tasovice belonged to the dukedom known as Moravia and it formed part of the Holy Roman Empire, a vast territory that covered much of present-day Germany and Austria and stretched into Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

35

Despite its small size, Tasovice was a region of mixed language. It was probably for family reasons that Pavel began to call himself Paul Hofbauer. Dvořák is the fourth most common Czech name. It means something like a house with a courtyard; Hofbauer means much the same in German. His son, Jan Dvořák, became Johannes (Hans) Hofbauer. His choice of another first name, Clement, belongs to a later period in his life, but for the sake of continuity, we shall call him Clement from now on.

Young Hofbauer would spend much of his life moving from one language to another.

In addition to his native dialects of Czech and Moravian German, he picked up some Italian on his travels and apparently also

IN THE F OOTSTEPS OF CLE M E N T

some French. He would spend the middle 20 years in Warsaw ministering in both German and Polish.

eldest were teenagers but all the children learned the lesson of hard work. Clement, who served Mass and felt an early call to the priesthood, attended class in the village school. The local pastor offered to help him learn Latin, but that was cut short by the priest’s death. It is said that young Clement Hofbauer heard some neighbours talk about ‘killing time'. This was a new phrase for the boy and he asked what it meant. Even when it was explained to him, it still puzzled him. “If people have nothing to do,” he said, “they should pray at least!”

The next few years took their toll on the Hofbauer family. Apart from his father, seven siblings died, leaving three brothers and a sister, all of whom had already married and left home. Clement was left in a rented apartment with his mother but by his 14th birthday, the time had come to find him an apprenticeship.

Apart from his father, seven siblings died, leaving three brothers and a sister, all of whom had already married and left home GROWING UP IN POVERTY Maria was expecting her twelfth child when Paul Hofbauer died relatively young and Maria was left to care for the children. She was a woman of deep faith, and the day her husband died, she brought the seven-yearold Clement to look at the crucifix hanging in the family living room. She explained in simple words what dying meant, and then added “Son, from now on, this is your father, be careful to follow the paths that please him.“ He never forgot those words. Today in his native village of Tasovice, a stone cross inscribed with these words stands on what was once part of the Hofbauer farm.

If family life had been relatively comfortable when Paul ran his own business, the situation changed dramatically on his death. The three

BAKER AND STUDENT Clement found an apprenticeship to a baker called Franz Dobsch in the town of Znaim, a little more than five miles from Tasovice.

The road leading into the tiny village of Tasovice, the Czech Republic.

The family were kind to him and towards the end of his apprenticeship, he found work as a journeyman baker in the Premonstratensian monastery of Klosterbruck, just outside the town. Klosterbruck was a medieval foundation, dating back 600 years. Like many of the great abbeys of the Canons Regular, it was a wealthy foundation and it owned extensive land, including the area around Clement’s native village. It also ran a school for boys.

Aware of Clement’s secret ambition to become a priest, the abbot rearranged his working hours in order to leave more time for study, In many ways Klosterbruck was an ideal place. The solemn sung office and Mass of the canons gave him an ideal experience of sung worship which he would later reproduce at a more popular level in his first small church in Warsaw.

He managed to complete the four-year programme at the abbey school. If he were to begin the professional studies of philosophy and theology needed for the priesthood, he would have to look elsewhere as the abbey did not provide these. Money was of course a problem: his job in the abbey had covered bed and board, but there was little left that would enable him to begin studies in one of the centres of theological learning either in Moravia or further afield.

He was by now in his mid-20s. The next ten years or so of Clement’s life are relatively difficult to entangle. Still driven by a sense that he was called by God but with few means to put the call into practice, this decade will be marked by two contrasting calls. The first is to the life of a hermit, and the second is to the wandering life of a pilgrim. We shall look at Clement, pilgrim and hermit, in our next article.

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

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BEFORE BELFAST HAD A CHAPEL BELFAST IS UNIQUE AMONG THE LARGER TOWNS OR CITIES OF IRELAND IN HAVING VERY LITTLE OF A CATHOLIC HISTORY. IT IS ESSENTIALLY A TOWN OF THE ULSTER PLANTATION. ITS CATHOLIC ROOTS MIGHT BE TANGLED BUT THEY ARE NOT WITHOUT INTEREST.

BY BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR

It 38

is a well-known story that the opening in May 1784 of St Mary’s Church in what is now Chapel Lane in Belfast was a highly ecumenical event. The largely Presbyterian Irish Volunteers turned out in full uniform as a guard of honour for the celebrant and subscriptions to the building were made by members of all the Protestant Churches in the town. That sense of goodwill endured for many years.

The Church of Ireland congregation of what is now St George’s in High Street donated the wooden pulpit which still graces the church.

It would be another 30 years before a second Catholic church was built in Belfast, St Patrick’s in Donegal St. In the course of the 19th century, the Catholic population of Belfast continued to grow as did the number of churches.

Belfast was very much a new town of the Ulster plantation. Founded by Arthur Chichester who had been given a land grant in 1609, its largely Scots and English inhabitants numbered 15,000 by 1780: but of these only 365 were Catholics, or less than 3.5 per cent of the population.

CATHOLIC ROOTS Before the Reformation, the greater Belfast area had a number of Catholic churches. Béal Feirste, or ‘the mouth of the sandbank’, had one small chapel situated at the mouth of the Farset River which was a tributary to the Lagan and formed a sandbank which made it possible to cross the river. The Farset still flows underground

REALITY MARCH 2020

through Belfast city centre. No trace of the little chapel has survived, but it probably stood close to what is now St George’s in High Street, the corporation church of 18th-century Belfast.

The largest church in the area was the Church of St Patrick of the White Ford. Better known by is popular name of ‘the Old Church’ (Sean Chill or Shankill) whose successor today stands at the top of the Shankill Road, it may have dated back to Patrician times. It is mentioned in the Papal Taxation of Pope Nicholas IV (1288-1292)

as having six daughter churches – one of which was probably the chapel near the sandbank.

The pope was raising money for the crusades and decided that the burden should be shared around.

Another of the churches dependent on Shankill was one called Kilwee. The name survives today for part of Dunmurry Lane. It is mentioned in a ledger dated 1613 where it is called the Capella de Kilemna. Killwee probably comes from the Irish Cill Uaighe which means ‘the church of the burial ground'. In his history of the Diocese of Down and Connor compiled in the last century, Fr James O’Laverty records that the ancient Church of Kilwee "stood in the field opposite the five-mile stone from Belfast. The site is now a mill pond…according to local tradition, the last interment took place about 120 years ago. The Holy Water font is still preserved by Mr Mc Cance of Suffolk."

McCance was a wealthy linen merchant who gave his name to 'McCance’s Glen' in Suffolk,

Belfast mural depicting celebration of Mass at a mass rock

now better known as Colin Glen. The font was placed in the new church of Our Lady Queen of Peace, close to the church where it originally stood.

The new suburb of Newtownabbey was created in North Belfast in 1958 by merging a number of villages into a single administrative unit. As the name suggests, it had monastic roots in the name of one of the villages, Whiteabbey, originally the site of a monastery of the Premonstratensian order, or 'White Canons". No trace of it survives but the Premonstratensian order was particularly strong in Ulster where they made their first foundation in Carrickfergus, a few miles further up Belfast Lough, in 1183.

THE FRIAR’S BUSH Despite being such a small minority in the town and with few resources, the Catholics of Belfast remained faithful to the Mass. The oldest cemetery in Belfast is known as Friar’s

Bush. It is next door to the Ulster Museum.

According to legend, St Patrick is reputed to have built a church and blessed a well on the site. The cemetery takes its name from an old hawthorn tree in the centre of the cemetery known as 'the friar’s bush' – although exactly who the friar was is unclear! During the penal times of the 18th century, Catholics gathered in the graveyard to celebrate Mass near the bush. One of the friars who celebrated the Mass is said to have been hanged on the site in the 1720s but nothing certain is known.

In 1828, the year before Catholic Emancipation, the Marquis of Donegall, the leading landlord of Belfast, provided land to extend the cemetery. It was also enclosed with a high wall at this time, probably to deter body-snatchers who sold newly-buried bodies to anatomists for profit.

The cemetery contains the mass graves of hundreds of people who lost their lives during the cholera epidemic of the 1830s

Friar's Bush graveyard where Mass was celebrated in Belfast in penal times

and the famine of the 1840s. They were buried under a mound, known as ‘Plaguey Hill’. located just inside the site's main gates.

The cemetery had become crowded by the end of the 19th century. No longer available as a burial ground, it remains an important witness to the history of Catholic Belfast.

Among those buried in it is the famous baker Barney Hughes who had flour mills and bakeries in West Belfast and is regarded as the inventor of the famous 'Belfast Bap'.

CONFESSOR OF THE FAITH Fr Phelimy O’Hamill was registered in 1704 as the parish priest of Belfast, Derriaghy and Drumbeg (only 14 years after the Battle of the Boyne, so at the height of the Penal Laws).

This is an extensive area that stretches six miles from the town to Derriaghy near Lisburn and Drumbeg on the Lagan. Under the Penal Laws, he was obliged to declare himself to the nearest magistrate. George Macartney, the Sovereign (mayor) of Belfast tricked him into visiting him. He had him arrested and he remained in prison until his death. He was probably buried with his family in Lambeg.

Fr O’Hamill was about 60 years of age and believed to have been ordained to the priesthood by St Oliver Plunkett. Macartney, writing to his superiors for guidance on what to do with the priest, said “His behaviour has been such amongst us since, and was, upon the late Revolution so kind to the Protestants, by saving several of their goods in those times, that I had offered me the best Bail the Protestants of this country affords.

However, the Proclamation being positive, and no discretionary power left in us, I would not bail him. Thank God, we are not under any great fears here; for upon this occasion I have made the Constables return me a list of all the inhabitants within this town, and we have not amongst us within the town

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A BRAVE PRESBYTERIAN WOMAN A road runs through the Catholic area of Poleglass in West Belfast. Few of those who travel on it A road in Poleglass commemorates Belle Steele, a Presbyterian defender of daily probably realise her Catholic neighbours that it is called after above seven Papists; and by the return made by a brave Presbyterian woman who lived in a the High Constable there is not above 150 Papists cottage in Poleglass in the 18th century and in the whole barony.” who protected the Catholic community as The clergy of Down and Connor were few and they met for their Sunday worship. Although ageing. Fr O’Hamill was succeeded by a Fr Magee the Catholic population of these areas – until 1733, and he in turn by Fr John O’Mullan who Deriaghy, Glenavy and Hannastown – was was parish priest until his death at 80 years of age relatively large, there were still no Catholic in 1772. In 1768, a younger priest was appointed chapels in the area. The few simple ones that as curate to Father O’Mullan. His name was Fr had been quietly erected were destroyed by a Hugh O’Donnell, the energetic pastor of St Mary’s group calling themselves ‘the wreckers’ in the and the harbinger of better days for the Catholics aftermath of the 1798 rising. In good weather, of Belfast.

Mass was usually celebrated in the open on a

Our Lady Queen of Peace near the site of the old Cill Uaigh (Killwee) – church of the cemetery

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Holy water font from old church of Cill Uaigh (Killwee) now in Our Lady Queen of Peace in Dunmurry Lane

Mass rock. When the weather was bad, they took refuge in a barn.

Belle Steele kept a wooden chest in her house containing the priest’s vestments and the sacred vessels needed for the Mass. On Sundays she had them ready for the members of the congregation who came to prepare for the Mass. She also kept an eye out for trouble and held in readiness either a cow’s horn or a little brass bugle on which she sounded the alarm should intruders arrive to disrupt the celebration.

One of the churches in the area still carries the memory of those days. St Peter’s Church, Stoneyford is better known as ‘the Rock Chapel’ as the first church built on the site in 1785 was intended to be the end of the Mass rock days.

It was built by Fr Hugh O’Donnell who had built St Mary’s in Belfast the previous year. It did not last too long, as it was destroyed by the wreckers of 1798 and it was more than 30 years before it could be replaced. The same priest built the church in Hannahstown on land provided by the Protestant John McCance.

Catholic Belfast was beginning to grow!

Fr Brendan McConvery CSsR is a native of Belfast and editor of Reality.

A PR IEST I N THE FAM I LY THIS IS A SHORT ACCOUNT OF A CONTRIBUTION FR STAN MELLETT MADE TO A MEETING OF IRISH PRIESTS AND LAY PEOPLE. FR STAN WAS ACTUALLY ORDAINED IN INDIA, FAR FROM HIS IMMEDIATE FAMILY.

The

same subject one more time! The ordination of women! Most at the meeting were in favour. One woman wondered if it happened would it simply produce more clerics, only this time with long hair. At this point I recalled what theologian Anne Thurston said at a talk on the feast of St Catherine of Sienna more than 30 years ago. The exact words I cannot now quote but the substance of her statement went like this: "A day will come when believers gather together for the Eucharist, then the marital status or the gender of the one who presides will not be an issue." Mulling that sentiment over in my mind, I mused that I could favour neither the ordination of women nor the ordination of men as formed over the last few centuries.

Is the current training fit for purpose today? Has it outlived whatever virtue it might have had! I have nostalgia and heart glow when I recall seminary days and the day of ordination. The aura of that day, the first blessings, the great pride of parents and siblings to have a priest in the family! Hands consecrated with holy oil and the awesome power to say Mass and make present, mysteriously but really, the Body and Blood of Jesus in his Death and Resurrection. High dignity and high status was given at ordination!

But yesterday and he was one of us Sharing in the tumult of

our boyish ways And now his is a priest through all this days.

His late-anointed hands Are wet with sacrifice His whispered breath Can summon Christ to mystic death He is a priest forever.

Let not this glory dim, O Lord this fervour fade.

Always remember him whom Thou hast made your own anointed.

Keep his heart from all the dust of earth apart And in Thy teeming comfort Ever be strength to his frailty.

(John D Sheridan) A saying of the French priest Jean Baptiste Lacordaire was a bookmark in thebreviary,aframedpictureinsacristy and presbytery – a profound influence intheformationandministryofpriests for a few hundred years.

To live in the midst of the world without wishing its pleasures: To be a member of each family yet belonging to none To share all suffering To penetrate all secrets To heal all wounds

To go from men to God and offer Him their prayers To return from God to men and bring pardon and hope.

To have heart on fire for charity and a heart of bronze for chastity To teach and to pardon console and bless always.

My God, what a life! and it is yours O priest of Jesus Christ!

There is a nostalgia for that kind of priest and priesthood, and it lingers.

But will it stand up to the tough realistic call to serve the People of God in 2020? The point of departure used to be the sacrament of holy orders; above that, you could be a bishop or higher; below that, you were one of the laity. Today theologians, church documents and liturgy instructions insist that the point of departure is the sacrament of baptism. Everyone is priest, prophet and king; each one with different roles and gifts serves the whole People of God – like Jesus who came not to be served but to serve and give his life for many.

The ordained minister for today and tomorrow will have a mindset and attitudes whereby he/she is like the rest of men and women – not a person apart! Deeply prayerful with ‘the Bible in one hand and the daily paper in the other’ at the service of

all life and all creation! I wonder what happened in the early church. After Jesus from the cross committed Mary to his safe-keeping, John took her to his own home. Did the others gather there with "Mary the mother of Jesus’" to tell the stories of Jesus and break bread in his memory! Who presided and who decided? As time passed what kind of governance emerged?

The professional scripture scholar and historian will provide the most accurate detail available. Meantime we do well to start at the beginning to ask what is the non-negotiable core and what are the additions conditioned by history? Already small groups of believers, mostly women, come together and tell the stories and break the bread. Are they ploughing a new furrow?

The past is another country.

Nevertheless I salute the thousands of deeply spiritual, committed, hardworking priests at home and abroad who served the Kingdom of God as priests formed in the vision of John D Sheridan and Père Lacordaire! Theirs is a proud legacy. A hard act to follow for any kind of ordained minister in the future!

Fr Stan Mellett CSsR is a native of County Clare. He did part of his priestly studies in India where he was ordained and was for many years a member of the Redemptorist Parish Mission Team.

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CATHOLIC AGENCY’S FUNDRAISING DRIVE IN FULL SWING Angela Murillo Bardales from Honduras with three of her children. Angela features on this year’s Trócaire Box. Photo: Simon Burch

ON ASH WEDNESDAY TRÓCAIRE LAUNCHES ITS ANNUAL LENTEN APPEAL. AS PART OF THE APPEAL HUNDREDS OF 42 THOUSANDS OF TRÓCAIRE BOXES WILL BE DELIVERED TO HOMES, SCHOOLS AND PARISHES NATIONWIDE.

BY DAVID O'HARE

This

year’s Trócaire Box features Madris and Angela – two mothers from two very different parts of the world who are the face of Trócaire’s appeal this year.

ANGELA’S STORY Angela is a 39-year-old mother of five living in northern Honduras. She is a farmer with a small plot of land. She and her husband built their home on ancestral land that has been in their family and their community for generations.

They were living a quiet life working hard to put their children through school. Then a few years ago, a logging company and a mining company moved into the area. Angela’s children began to develop a rash from the pollution in the river and now the local river is beginning to dry up.

REALITY MARCH 2020

These companies are moving in on Angela’s community and they want the families to leave. Angela has stood up for her community and for this she has been beaten and tear-gassed and told she will be killed. She is struggling to keep her children safe and protect them from intimidation and violence.

Angela simply wants her children to be healthy and to stay in school. Without a home or land Angela knows this will be impossible. Angela is risking her life to protect her family’s future but she can’t do it alone.

MADRIS’ STORY On the other side of the world, Madris is a mother in eastern Kenya who is also

struggling to keep her children healthy and in school. Like Angela, Madris is a farmer and the family relies on their land for food and income.

But the impacts of climate change are a harsh daily reality for Madris and she often struggles to feed her children. In the space of a generation the weather and environment have changed so much that a farm which used to produce 70kgs of beans can now only produce 5kgs (which is only a month’s supply).

Madris told Trócaire, “When I was small there used to be plenty of rain and we used to have a good harvest but now you can’t even tell if the rains are coming or not. It’s a big difference. I feel it is not fair… in other countries people are living well and here we

are struggling without rain. I feel very bad when my children don’t eat because they cry a lot from the hunger.”

Madris must also walk a three-hour round trip to gather water every day for her family on top of the farm work. She keeps going against the odds to protect her children from the difficult life she has known. Madris said, “It is very important that I’m strong, because that’s how I can take good care of my family."

LENT, YOU AND TROCAIRE Madris in Kenya and Angela in Honduras are fighting hard every day for their children and the support they receive through your donations to Trócaire provides relief and protection. These two women are a perfect example of why Trócaire was established in 1973 as the overseas development agency of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

The pastoral letter establishing Trócaire stated: “The aim of Trócaire will be two-fold.

Abroad, it will give whatever help lies within its

resources to the areas of greatest need among the developing counties. At home, it will try to make us all more aware of the needs of these countries and of our duties towards them.

These duties are no longer a matter of charity but of simple justice.”

These words have resonance as much today as when they were written. Trócaire supports the most vulnerable people in the developing world. This support is grounded in the values, ethos and teachings of Catholic Social Teaching and is at all times fully compliant with the policies of the Catholic Church. For example, Trócaire does not fund, support or promote the use of abortion.

As Bishop William Crean, chair of the organisation, recently noted: "Trócaire is firm and faithful in its commitment to the values and teaching of the Church. As an agency working on the frontlines to deliver support to the world's most vulnerable people, Trócaire is the embodiment of our Church's mission."

Trócaire’s support is provided based on need

to people of all faiths. The organisation works without prejudice to express the support of the Catholic Church in Ireland for the rights of the poorest and most vulnerable people. This work is supported by parishes all over Ireland and the support of the Catholic community here at home is vital for the successful delivery of Trócaire’s work overseas.

Last year, the support of parishes across Ireland enabled Trócaire to deliver support and aid to 2.9 million people in over 20 countries, from war-torn South Sudan to drought-stricken Malawi. Donations to Trócaire during Lent are what drives this work throughout the year.

The generosity of people here is something to be proud of and Trócaire has no doubt that this will manifest itself again during this Lenten season.

For more information about the Lenten Appeal visit www.trocaire.org/lent

Available from Redemptorist Communications

Denis McBride’s STATIONS of the CROSS

then and now

The way of the cross is not confined to a lonely road in Jerusalem two thousand years ago: it is a busy highway winding through every village, town and city in our modern world.

Fr Denis McBride C.Ss.R. reflectively guides us along the way of the cross. He contrasts the beauty and solemn simplicity of the more traditional Stations by artist Curd Lessig with modern images that challenge us to link Jesus’ story to the struggle of our everyday life. Through its rich array of scripture passages, paintings, poetry, prayers, photographs and reflections, Stations of the Cross – then and now becomes a companion not only on our Lenten journey but throughout the year: suffering is not limited to one liturgical season. Whether we walk in solitude or with others, this book translates the passion of Jesus into our own life and times.

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CO M M E N T REALITY CHECK PETER McVERRY SJ

WAS JESUS REALLY THE MESSIAH?

FOR HIS CONTEMPORARIES, JESUS WAS AN UNLIKELY MESSIAH. HE LIVED AMONG THE POOR OF ISRAEL AND WELCOMED SINNERS. POPE FRANCIS ALSO PUTS THE POOR AT THE CENTRE OF THE CHURCH’S MISSION, BUT LIKE JESUS HE FACES OPPOSITION FROM SOME WITHIN THE CHURCH.

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Jesus was a practising Jew. The apostles were all practising Jews.

Mary was a practising Jew. Too often, we think our Christian faith has little to do with Judaism, or even has replaced it, making Judaism irrelevant to us Christians.

But we cannot properly understand the message of Jesus unless we understand the Jewish roots from which Christianity emerged.

Jesus came claiming to be the Messiah that Jews had been awaiting for centuries. Since God had promised to lead them into the kingdom where they would live in peace for ever, with God as their protector, they were expecting a mighty king who would conquer their enemies, who kept invading Israel and ransacking Jerusalem.

Then along comes Jesus, born into a poor family, of humble origin, without any power or connections.

How could this possibly be the mighty king they were expecting?

And instead of wanting to destroy their enemies, Jesus wanted Israel to “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who persecute you". No, Jesus could not possibly be the Messiah whom they were awaiting.

Furthermore, God’s promise of the Messiah was conditional on the Jewish people keeping the law that God had given them. When they were invaded by foreign armies, they believed that this was due to the fact that some were not observing the law of God perfectly enough. So the Messiah, when he REALITY MARCH 2020

came, would obviously expel those sinners amongst them.

But Jesus, himself, broke the law!

He healed people on the Sabbath.

And worse again, instead of expelling the sinners, he “ate with tax collectors and sinners". No, far from being the Messiah whom they were anxiously awaiting, Jesus was obviously an imposter, indeed a dangerous imposter. By breaking the law and welcoming sinners, Jesus’ actions were actually delaying the coming of the real Messiah. Jesus would have to be got rid of.

Jesus told Israel that the problem, as God saw it, was not with the foreign enemies surrounding them. No, the problem lay within them. Some in Israel lived an extremely wealthy lifestyle, while ignoring the poverty and destitution of those around them. Furthermore, many were made to feel unwanted, rejected, pushed to the margins of their own society, such as the sick, the blind,

the lame, the deaf, the dumb, and the lepers, although they too were part of God’s chosen people. This was not the way God had intended Israel to live, when they were chosen to be God’s own people. God could not possibly reign over them while they lived like this. The change that God wanted would have to happen within the Jewish people, not those outside.

Today, if Jesus came, what would he say to us Christians? The same inequality exists within the Christian churches, as Jesus found in Israel, extreme wealth existing side-byside with extreme poverty. Some people, too, many of them fellow Christians, experience rejection and marginalisation, such as homeless people, Travellers, drug-users.

Others are made to feel unwanted, such as people who need social housing. Jesus wanted Israel then, and now the Christian community

today, to show that they cared for each other by sharing what they did not need with those in want and to welcome those who felt unwanted and rejected.

Jesus picked twelve apostles to show Israel, and the world, how we should live together, as God desires.

They lived amongst the poor of Israel, and showed that they cared for each other by sharing what little they had. They welcomed sinners, calling them to repentance, recognising that they, themselves, were sinners called to repentance.

Today, Pope Francis is calling the Catholic Church to put the poor at the centre of the Church’s mission and to reach out to those who feel rejected. But he faces opposition from some within the Church who believe that the observance of law is more important and that those who break the law should not be tolerated within the Church. Jesus did not fit the Jewish authorities’ understanding of what the Messiah would do and was rejected by some.

Pope Francis does not fit some people’s understanding of what a pope should do and is being rejected by some. Thankfully, God’s patience is infinite!

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 MONTH FASTED AND FAMISHED 40 is a familiar measuring unit in the Bible that suggests some considerable duration: the rains that caused the FIRST SUNDAY great flood fell for 40 days OF LENT and nights, Israel wandered for 40 years in the desert, Elijah the prophet walked for 40 days to meet God at Mount Horeb. The account of Jesus’ fast evokes all those other 40-day periods. A 40-day fast would severely weaken the body.

The earliest Gospel, Mark, told us relatively little about the temptations. Matthew and Luke agree that there were three but treat them somewhat differently. The first temptation takes place in the desert itself. Matthew uses three different terms that mean substantially the same for the tempter – the devil, tempter (‘tester’) and Satan. Food is one of the most basic human needs and the temptation to satisfy his hunger is combined with a temptation to prove he is God’s Son by changing

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stones into bread by a word. Jesus replies to the temptation by quoting a word from scripture. It is taken from Moses’ farewell to the people of Israel.

He reminds them during the 40 years in the desert, God “humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut 8:3). It reminds us that the human heart has hungers deeper than that for bread and that God wills to satisfy all the hungers of the heart as well as those of the body.

The second temptation shifts to Jerusalem.

Matthew probably considered this as a journey in the imagination rather than in a physical sense. The devil now quotes a verse from Psalm 91, telling how those who live in the shelter of God’s protecting power have nothing to fear because God has committed them to his angels as guardians and protectors and challenges Jesus to throw himself from the parapet and display

A DAZZLING WHITE Today we do not meet a Jesus who is hungry from a long fast and vulnerable to temptations, but one through whom the light of God’s glory shines for a brief moment as he is revealed as the beloved

Son of God. The Gospel begins with the phrase "six days later". Just before this, Matthew told how Peter recognised Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Jesus went on to make the first of a series of predictions of the kind of death that awaited him in Jerusalem, how he would “undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Mt 16:21). Today’s Gospel looks beyond the cross for a brief moment, as the disciples are granted a glimpse of what Jesus will be like when he is raised from the dead. It also looks backwards to the baptism of Jesus when the same heavenly voice declared that he was the Son of God.

This scene is known as the Transfiguration.

That word means simply that the appearance of Jesus was changed so that his face shone like the sun and his clothing became as white as the light. Something similar happened to Moses when he met God on Sinai to receive the Law. According to the Book of Exodus, as he came down the mountain carrying the two tablets of the covenant, he did not realise that “the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God” (Ex 34:29). For Matthew, Jesus is a second Moses. Just as Moses taught Israel the

his power. Jesus cites another verse from Moses’ farewell in Deuteronomy: “do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah” (Deut 6:16).

The final temptation is conducted on a "very high mountain". The mountain is symbolic of how people can be seduced by delusions of power or wealth. The devil claims ownership of them and offers them to Jesus in return for his submission. It is not easy to find the precise text Jesus quotes in reply to Satan. The evangelist may be citing from memory or simply combining two texts – the first of the Ten Commandments and the second, Israel’s creed, "Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one" which is part of the regular morning and evening prayer of Judaism.

Today’s Readings Gen 2:7-9, 3:1-7; Ps 50; Rom 5:12-19; Mt 4:1-11

Law, Jesus has interpreted the Law with a new authority, superior to that of Moses. That is why Moses appears in the transfiguring vision. He is accompanied by Elijah the prophet. At a time of crisis, Elijah made a long trek to Mount Sinai, where he heard God speaking to him, not in thunder, storm or earthquake but in "the sound of sheer silence" (1 Kgs 19:12).

The vision lasted only a short time. When it is finished, the disciples look up and see "only Jesus".

As they descend the mountain, he orders them to keep the vision a secret "until the Son of Man has risen from the dead". Today’s reading is intended to give us a moment to pause and reflect. Our Lenten journey will bring us through the darkness of Holy Week. What is revealed to us on the bright mountain of Transfiguration and on the dark hill of Calvary is "only Jesus".

Today’s Readings Gen 12:1-4; Ps 32; 2 Tim 1:8-10; Mt 17:1-9

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GOD’S WORD THIS MONTH THE GIFT OF LIVING WATER Lent was originally the last stage in the catechesis of prospective members of the Church. The last THIRD SUNDAY three Sundays of Lent were OF LENT highpoints in the preparation for baptism. All the Gospels of these Sundays were taken from the Gospel according to John.

More than any other Gospel, John emphasises the importance of personal encounters with Jesus. For Jews in the time of Jesus, Samaria was a kind of ‘no man’s land’ between the two main regions of Galilee and Judea. Once the capital of the independent Jewish Kingdom of Israel, it was captured by the Assyrians more than 700 years before the birth of Christ and ‘planted’ with non-Jews who intermarried with remnants of the local Jewish population. Other Jews considered them as outsiders. The Samaritans returned the 46 compliment and often harassed Jewish pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. It was territory best

avoided. The Samaritans were proud of their ancient Jewish roots however, including the well of the patriarch Jacob that is the scene of today’s Gospel.

A well was one of the main meeting places in a middle eastern village. Each day’s routine included one or more trips to the well and there one learned the latest village gossip. Since travellers would stop at a well, it was a meeting place for strangers. John skilfully focuses his attention on the meeting between Jesus and the woman by sending the disciples to town on a shopping expedition. Jesus’ innocent request for a drink of water sparks a conversation that is soon going in several directions at once – why don’t Jews and Samaritans use the same dishes, what is living water, where is the true temple?

‘Living water’ meant fresh spring water. Palestine was a hot dry country. During the summer, water was often drawn from cisterns – underground pits with plastered wall where water went stale or worse. Spring water pouring out of a rock was cool, mysterious and life-giving. It is the symbol

of everything the woman longs for in life – love, security, happiness and above all, eternal life.

The woman has what looks like a series of disastrous relationships behind her – five husbands and a live-in partner. Her chequered matrimonial history suggests that she is a representative of her people, the northern kingdom of Israel who split from Judah. The prophet Hosea described Israel as an unfaithful wife whose husband wanted only to bring her on a second honeymoon in the desert where he could "speak to her heart"(Hosea 2:14).

The choice of this Gospel for the first of the Lenten scrutiny liturgies was probably intended to make the catechumens confront their own deepest desires: why are they looking for baptism?

What are the things in life for which they are truly thirsting? What kind of living water can assuage that kind of thirst? They are questions we too can reflect on.

I ONCE WAS BLIND, MARCH BUT NOW I SEE The story of the cure of the blind man is the third of the great baptismal stories of FOURTH SUNDAY Lent. The actual cure of the OF LENT blind man is told briefly in a mere seven verses. More than five times that amount is devoted to what follows – a dispute involving the blind man, the Jewish critics of Jesus and finally Jesus himself.

Like most people of their time, the disciples shared a fatalistic view of the world: if bad things happened to a person, it was a punishment for some sin, perhaps even one they were unaware of or maybe one committed in a previous generation, or as punishment to meet some future evil that God had foreseen the person might commit in the future. Jesus takes a radically different view: God is not vindictive, but when bad things happen to good people, they can sometimes create a space for God’s light to shine through the complex human condition.

John shows Jesus here using very human resources like a mud pack in the man’s eyes and a wash in fresh water to restore the man’s sight.

The pool of Siloam was the main water supply in Jerusalem. It was fed by an underground spring, and a tunnel had been built to connect the pool and the spring back in the time of the prophet Isaiah. Siloam comes from the source’s ancient name – Shiloah whose ‘waters flow gently', but John tells us that it comes from a similarsounding root word meaning ‘sent’. St Augustine, preaching on this text, used this information as a key to story as a symbol for baptism. “This blind man stands for the whole human race,” he tells us, “if his blindness is infidelity, then his restoration to the light is faith. By washing in the pool called ‘one who has been sent', he is baptised into Christ.”

This story is unique among Gospel stories: Jesus is not present ‘on stage’ while most of the actions take place. The blind man is on trial for saying that Jesus healed him. The scene bears an uncanny resemblance to the trial of Jesus before

Pilate. His opponents want to prove that he is either a fraudster for claiming to be cured, or a supporter of a dangerous prophet who claims to be the son of God. Witnesses are called, including the star witnesses, his parents, who have been so intimidated that they refuse to say anything and throw the responsibility back on the man himself: "He is of age." A Jewish boy came of age at twelve, so the way in which the once-blind man conducts himself suggests he is relatively young with a sharp mind. By his defence of Jesus, he proves himself a devoted disciple.

The candidates preparing for baptism and undergoing the second scrutiny today are given the example of the blind man. Baptism gives us a new kind of sight. It enables us to see many things in life differently. Baptism confronts us with our blind spots. It is also a commitment to be ready to stand trial for the sake of Jesus.

MARCH

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REALITY MARCH 2020

Today’s Readings Ex 17:3-7; Ps 94; Rom 5:1-2, 5-8; Jn 4:5-42

Today’s Readings 1 Sam 16:1, 6-7, 10-13; Ps 22; Eph 5:8-14; Jn 9:1-41

THE REALITY CROSSWORD NUMBER 2 MARCH 2020

UNBIND HIM, AND LET HIM GO FREE! The raising of Lazarus is the third of the great Lenten Catechumenal Gospels. It is also the longest and most dramatic of the series. The story is quite straightforward: Lazarus, a disciple FIFTH SUNDAY of Jesus, has fallen ill. His family calls on Jesus to OF LENT heal him, but he dies before Jesus arrives. When Jesus does come, Lazarus had already been buried for four days. Jesus orders the stone to be removed from the tomb and calls to Lazarus who comes out wrapped in the burial clothes in which he had been buried.

While the outline of the story is quite simple, John adds to its complexity and suspense by using a number of delaying techniques.

One of these is called the ‘technique of misunderstanding’. Jesus tells his disciples that Lazarus’ sickness is "not unto death" – meaning that it will not lead to death. The disciples presume that Jesus means merely mortal life. John (and Jesus) mean something else. John calls it "eternal life". Just as only the living water which Jesus gives will be able to quench the thirst of the woman at the well or restore sight to the damaged eyes of the beggar, so ‘eternal life’ is the only life that is worth having as it is the life of God. John also uses conversation and dialogue as a way of slowing down the action of the story. There is a long debate with the disciples about whether or not it is safe to go back to the Jerusalem area or whether they are simply going to ‘wake’ Lazarus from sleep. John also turns short dialogues with other characters into a kind of delaying technique – the discussion with Mary about whether there is such a thing as resurrection.

As part of the baptismal preparation liturgy, the Lazarus story is a vivid reminder of what baptism is. It is through baptism that we are plunged into the life of God so that it takes us over or rather, eternal life, God’s own life, becomes our birth right. The raising of Lazarus looks forward to the Resurrection of Jesus at Easter. When the disciples come to the tomb, they will find the stone removed: a stone blocks the door of the tomb of Lazarus. In the empty tomb, they will find the shroud and bandages wrapped neatly and laid aside: Lazarus hobbles to the door of the tomb still bound by the grave clothes so that Jesus has to order the bystanders to "unbind him and let him go free".

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SOLUTIONS CROSSWORD No.10 ACROSS: Across: 1. Pulpit, 5. Stuart, 10. Slipper, 11 Hogwash, 12. Oboe, 13. Signs, 15. Bier, 17. Pax, 19. Tenant, 21. Bunyan, 22. Vatican, 23. Samson, 25. Nimrod, 28. Pea, 30. Lyre, 31. Keens, 32. John, 35. Michael, 36. Rosetta, 37. Leaned, 38. Waders.

DOWN: 2. Unicorn, 3. Pope, 4. Turnip, 5. Sphinx, 6. Urge, 7. Reality, 8. Escort, 9. Charon, 14.

Galilee, 16. Envoy, 18. Tunic, 20. Tan, 21. Ban, 23. Salome, 24. Miracle, 26. Rooster, 27. Dental, 28.

Pealed, 29. Andrew, 33. Cain, 34. Used.

Winner of Crossword No.10 John Doran, Chapelizod, Dublin 20

ACROSS

1. Having or showing deep religious commitment. (6) 5. Made amends or reparations. (6) 10. A ghost, not real. (7) 11. A day of religious observance and abstinence from work. (7) 12. A religious or other solemn ceremony or act. (4) 13. 'The Banner County.' (5) 15. An indication of something to come. (4) 17. The furthest part of something. (3) 19. Great enthusiasm or passion. (6) 21. Animals, particularly large and dangerous ones. (6) 22. Archangel of medical workers, the blind and happy meetings. (7) 23. A person who has come to feel helpless and passive in the face of misfortune. (6) 25. Of the greatest age. (6) 28. A wildebeest by another name. (3) 30. Spend time in idleness with a shaped mass of bread. (4) 31. This Duke John converted to Christianity on his deathbed. (5) 32. A stand on which a coffin is placed. (4) 35. Distinctive clothing remaining the same in all cases and at all times. (7) 36. Refused to take notice of. (7) 37. Sea between Greece and Turkey. (6) 38. Fold down the corner of a book to mark a place. (3-3)

DOWN

2. Held in high regard; in a state of extreme happiness. (7) 3. A solemn promise, often invoking a divine witness. (4) 4. A building devoted to the worship of a god or gods. (6) 5. Wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate. (6) 6. Globes, spherical bodies. (4) 7. EU programme, named after a Dutch philosopher, allows students to spend a year studying abroad. (7) 8. Warrior society of ancient Greece. (6) 9. Songs attributed to Gregorians. (6) 14. The patron saint of lost things. (7) 16. The administrative institutions of the Holy See. (5) 18. TCD decorated Bible came from this Co. Meath town. (5) 20. An adult male sheep. (3) 21. Winged insect with a queen. (3) 23. Fine parchment made originally from the skin of a calf. (6) 24. The Eucharistic cup. (7) 26. African country with only one President and no elections since independence in 1993. (7) 27. A long, angry speech of criticism or accusation. (6) 28. Ham which has been cured or smoked like bacon. (6) 29. Relax after a period of work or tension. (6) 33. The Bishop of Rome as head of the Roman Catholic Church. (4) 34. Close-fitting; warm and cosy. (4)

Entry Form for Crossword No.2, March 2020 Name:

Today’s Readings Ezek 37:12-14; Ps 129; Rom 8:8-11; Jn 11:1-45

Address: Telephone:

All entries must reach us by Friday, March 27, 2020 One €35 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.2, Redemptorist Communications, St Joseph's Monastery, Dundalk, County Louth A91 F3FC