�� WALKING THE WAY
What’s behind the resurgence of interest in Ireland’s pilgrim paths?
By John G. O’Dwyer18 PEACE IN PILGRIMAGE
St Declan’s Way: a modern walking route with a rich history
By Ann Marie Foley
21 CHOOSING THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED
Interviews with two people committing to religious life
By John Scally24 FAMILY LOVE
A vocation and a path to holiness
By Johnny Doherty CSsR
28 WELCOMING AT WEDDINGS AND FUNERALS
The opportunities posed by diverse congregations
By Maria Hall30 LETTER FROM THE PHILIPPINES
Marking the feast day of Our Mother of Perpetual Help
By Colm Meaney CSsR32 THE SOUNDCHECK SERIES
Grief, faith and justice in U2
By Michael Sherman
36 ME AND MY GOD
An ongoing adventure
By Mary Rose McCarthy38 JOHN BOYNE’S PORTRAYAL OF CATHOLICISM IN IRELAND
The challenge of creating a well-rounded priest character
By Eamon Maher
Researchers from the Vatican Observatory have announced a new mathematical model for describing how gravity worked at the time of the Big Bang.
The model proposed by two of the Observatory’s astrophysicists, Frs Gabriele Gionti and Matteo Galaverni, uses mathematics to describe how gravity would have functioned in the midst of ‘cosmological inflation’, or the rapid expansion of the universe during and after the Big Bang.
The findings of Frs Gionti and Galaverni were published in Physical Review D journal, and highlighted by the Holy See Press Office on April 29.
Scientists have been searching for years for a quantum theory of gravity, which would explain how gravity functioned during the Big Bang. This new research is part of a larger effort in the scientific community to understand the very first moments of the
universe.
Frs Gionti and Galaverni found that a common mathematical approach used to study gravity, the Brans-Dicke theory, is not always reliable, and proposed their new mathematical framework as an alternative.
It is hoped that their research could help to streamline the various theories that other
Catholic leaders in Texas have expressed their gratitude that a last-minute stay of execution has been granted to Melissa Lucio. An execution date of April 27, 2022 had been set for Lucio, but it was halted by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals due to claims she was wrongly convicted for the death of her child.
Lucio, 53 was sentenced to death in 2008 for the 2007 death of her two-year-old daughter, Mariah Alvarez, the youngest of her 14 children. She is the first woman of Hispanic descent to be sentenced to death in the United States. She will now remain on death row while new evidence gathered by her legal team is examined
scientists have proposed about cosmological inflation, which in turn could narrow down the possible theories proposed to explain quantum gravity, the most famous of which is String Theory. A coherent theory of quantum gravity would contribute greatly to scientists’ understanding of how the universe operates, and how it was created.
In a statement on April 25, the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops said “Melissa’s case highlights the serious flaws in our justice system that allowed her to be condemned to death on the basis of a dubious conviction.”
They noted that since her imprisonment, “Lucio has become a new person in Christ. Her conversion is a profound witness to the power of God’s love and mercy… We continue to pray for Melissa Lucio, her family, her community, and all who have been affected by the devastating loss of Mariah. May Melissa’s story be a catalyst for our civic leaders to consider more deeply the need for reform of our laws and practices regarding criminal justice,” they added.
In a statement, Lucio said, “I am grateful the court has given me the chance to live and prove my innocence. Mariah is in my heart today and always. I am grateful to have more days to be a mother to my children and a grandmother to my grandchildren.”
Lucio’s attorney, A. Richard Ellis, has said that Lucio is “a battered woman who was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death for the accidental death of her daughter, who had fallen down the stairs at the family’s home. Her conviction rested on ambiguous statements Melissa made to police in response to a coercive, late-night interrogation by male police officers.”
The European Parliament has voted in favour of a report on religious persecution which has been strongly criticised by the Christian churches.
On Tuesday May 3, in Strasbourg, France, members of the European Parliament adopted the report entitled ‘Persecution of minorities on the grounds of belief or religion’. However, Christian legal group ADF International described the report as “openly hostile towards religion”, arguing that substantial changes had been made to the text which had originally highlighted the extent of anti-Christian persecution around
the world.
While the initial draft of the report contained several positive aspects regarding the protection of religious minorities against persecution, the adopted report criticised religion as “an important driver of conflict worldwide”, according to ADF International.
“The persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Africa was omitted and all but one reference to Christians was deleted.
“Nobody should be persecuted because of their faith. It is unacceptable that this report, which is meant to stand in solidarity with those suffering from persecution because of
their faith, is openly hostile towards religion,” said Jean-Paul De Walle, legal counsel with ADF International.
“By adopting the wording of this report, the European Parliament has undermined its credibility of wanting to address the challenges religious minorities face worldwide.”
Prior to the vote, the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union had suggested that the report treated the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion and the right to life as “second-class rights”.
Twenty-four lay people have been commissioned to serve in the Diocese of Killaloe in the ministries of pastoral care, and catechetics/faith development. The commissioning took place on April 13 in the Cathedral of Ss Peter & Paul in Ennis at the annual Mass of the Chrism, an occasion that traditionally celebrates the renewal of commitment by the priests of the diocese. Bishop Fintan Monahan formally commissioned the 24 new ministers – women and men – who will minister in parishes and pastoral areas across the Killaloe diocese. Bishop Monahan said: “These new ministries are part of a diocesan response to the changing face of the church in recent times, and this includes fewer priests. Whereas once there was at least one priest in every parish, now many parishes have no resident priest, rather they are served by the priests of the local pastoral area. In the future, in our diocese, parishes will be served by a team of priests and lay ministers working together to meet local pastoral needs.
Some roles traditionally undertaken by priests will in future be carried out by the new lay ministers.”
Since the initiative was launched by the diocese in 2018, the 24 ministers have undertaken a process of training and formation including an academic programme of theology and pastoral studies at the Institute of Pastoral Studies in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick and training in skills necessary for ministry. They have also been involved in placements in their respective roles.
It is envisaged that the new pastoral care ministers will take on roles such as visiting sick or elderly people at home, in a nursing home or in hospital setting, having a concern for those who are isolated or on their own in the community, supporting people and families at the time of a funeral and bereavement, as well as offering sensitive care at other critical times on life’s journey.
Those commissioned as catechists will take on roles in faith development, for example,
engaging with and accompanying parents whose children are preparing for sacraments, supporting programmes such as Faith Friends, Do This in Memory and You Shall Be My Witnesses, and supporting people who wish to explore their own faith or spirituality.
Dr Fáinche Ryan reflects on the retirement of Dr Cornelius J. Casey CSsR, founding director of the Loyola Institute
“I don’t want to hear your opinions… maybe when you get to your final year, but for now I want you to learn how other theologians think!” I will always remember these words of Dr Cornelius Casey, spoken to the first-year students of theology at the Kimmage Mission Institute in the 1990s. I was one of those students. Almost 20 years later, it is hard to believe that I joined Con on the staff at the Loyola Institute in Trinity College Dublin. While Con has served as a Redemptorist in many roles – provincial superior of the Irish Province (1997-2006) and chair of the European Confederation of Provinces of the congregation for many years – it is his vocation as a teacher of theology that most deeply defines him.
Con studied and lectured for many years in Bangalore, India. Then, following completion of his licentiate in Rome, he went to Oxford to complete his doctorate with Herbert McCabe OP; Herbert became a great friend of Con’s and the work of Herbert, and through Herbert that of Thomas Aquinas, came to life in Con’s teaching.
The most important fruit of a theologian is their students. Con’s students are to be found throughout the world, in a variety of ministries, and have wonderful memories of his thought-provoking, challenging classes. At a recent conference in Münster, Germany, Con was accosted by one student who with joy proclaimed, “It is the Mitchelstown man.” Con’s face was a delight to behold on hearing this. He was delighted to meet a former student, to hear how clearly she had
remembered his teaching and to listen now to her story.
This was one of Con’s many strengths, to situate his theology in the real world – and Mitchelstown, the place of his birth, is a great site for theological discussion.
In the 1990s, Con was a founder member of the Kimmage Missionary Institute of Theology, an institute where people from all over the world studied theology. Subsequently he became president of KMI and in 2006, after his years as provincial, he was made acting president of the Milltown Institute of Philosophy and Theology. From there he became involved in the development of the Loyola Institute project, and from 2012 its founding director.
During his ten years of teaching at Trinity College Dublin, Con introduced many innovations. Key here was his work on the Book of Kells, developing a module for undergraduate students on the Book of Kells, and later a module on the MPhil programme on theology and the early Irish Church. On the MPhil he approached the classical
questions of nature, grace and sin from a new perspective, innovatively developing a module entitled ‘Violence and Grace in the Human Narrative’, described by one student as “the heart of theology”.
Students remember Con for his learning, his wisdom and for his kind patience as he sought to help people of all ages and abilities to immerse themselves ever more deeply in the mystery of God. Among his recent publications are the co-edited volume, The Church in Pluralist Society: Social and Political Roles (Notre Dame University Press, 2019), ‘The Case for Theology in the University’ (Studies, Spring, 2022), ‘How Deep are the Well-Springs of Hope?’ (Doctrine and Life, March 2020) and ‘Biblical Commentary in the Illustrations of the Book of Kells’ in The Cultural Reception of the Bible. Explorations in Theology, Literature and the Arts (Four Courts Press, 2019).
On Thursday May 19, 2022 Con gave a public lecture, ‘Theology in a Conversation About Hope’ to mark his retirement.
Catholic educators from Mary Immaculate College (MIC), Limerick enjoyed a private reception with Pope Francis in the Vatican recently during a research trip to Rome. The eight staff members, four students and eight graduates made up the majority of the 36 educators from the Global Researchers Advancing Catholic Education (GRACE) project who were in Rome to study Pope Francis’ initiatives in Catholic education.
The GRACE project is an international research-based partnership between MIC, Boston College (USA), the University of Notre Dame (Australia), and St Mary’s University (London). The project provides an opportunity for practitioners and scholars of Catholic education and theology to collaborate and respond meaningfully to challenges faced in the field. The GRACE academics spent four days in Rome discussing how to further the goals of the project.
Welcoming the group, Pope Francis said: “I trust that this study will inspire each of you to rededicate himself or herself with generous zeal
to your vocation as educators, to your efforts to solidify the foundations of a more humane and solidary society, and thus the advancement of Christ’s kingdom of truth, holiness, justice and peace… Educating is taking a risk in the tension between the mind, the heart and the hands: in harmony, to the point of thinking what I feel and do; feeling what I think and do; of doing what I feel and think. It’s a balance.”
Professor Eamonn Conway, head of the Department of Theology & Religious Studies at MIC, said: “It was an extraordinary gift that Pope Francis gave us a private audience and, setting aside his text, spoke to us heart to heart for over a half an hour about his passion for
Pope Francis has asked the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors to produce an annual report on what the Catholic Church is doing around the world to prevent the abuse of minors and vulnerable adults.
In an audience at the Vatican on April 29, the pope called on the commission to produce the annual audit to promote “transparency and accountability”.
“This might be difficult at the beginning, but I ask you to begin where necessary, in order to furnish a reliable account on what is presently being done and what needs to change, so that the competent authorities can act,” he said.
“This report will be a factor of transparency and accountability and – I hope – will provide a clear audit of our progress in this effort. Without that progress, the faithful will continue to lose trust in their pastors, and
preaching and witnessing to the Gospel will become increasingly difficult.”
Secretary of the commission Fr Andrew Small responded positively to the pope’s request. “Verifiable data has to be at the heart of rebuilding trust,” he said. “The idea of a report has been clearly working in the financial sector. Doing this in the safeguarding sector seems to be the only way to rebuild trust.”
The commission’s report will not deal with specific cases but will provide details on the status of safeguarding policies and procedures, according to Fr Small. This will include how effectively guidelines are being implemented. While noting that it will be ultimately up to the pope to decide whether the annual reports will be made public, he said: “I can’t imagine a world in which the report would not be published.”
education. While we met many inspirational leaders in Catholic education operating on the global stage, not least Pope Francis, what was most impressive was the calibre of our own young people, their personal faith as well as their passion for justice, truth and love and their commitment to their teaching vocation.”
Dr Daniel O’Connell, lecturer in Religious Education at MIC and GRACE project leader, said, “We were left with a renewed confidence in Catholic education and a sense of belonging to a wider community.”
Pope Francis is undergoing medical treatment for a torn ligament in his knee which has prevented him from standing or walking unaided during recent audiences and Masses. The 85-year-old pontiff said that his doctor had ordered him not to walk, and that he is to receive therapeutic injections to help with the pain in his right knee and leg.
On May 4, he remained seated during the traditional blessings of newlyweds and pilgrims at his Wednesday audience, and required assistance to walk up the ramp to reach his chair in St Peter’s Square. Before the final blessing, he said: “Unfortunately, I won’t be able to stop among you due to my knee injury. And for that, I apologise for having to greet you from a seated position, but it is a thing of the moment. Hopefully, it will pass soon and I will be able to come to you later in other audiences.”
In an interview published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on May 3, he said “I have been like this for some time, I cannot walk… It brings a little pain, humiliation.”
The pope’s mobility has been visibly more limited since February.
In 1558 James, the 14th Earl of Desmond, having had four wives and two religions, died at Askeaton Castle in west Limerick and was buried in the friary church nearby. His marriages were successive, and his religious affiliation depended on the political climate of the day. His son Gerald, 15th Earl of Desmond, took possession of the Desmond estates across Munster about the same time as Queen Elizabeth Tudor inherited England from her father King Henry VIII. The hostility between Elizabeth and Gerald was mutual, palpable and lifelong. On two occasions, in 1569 and 1579, the earl was in open revolt against Her Majesty, and it was while the earl, having lost his estates, was fighting for his life in the bogs of Sliabh Luachra on the Cork-Kerry border that I first encountered the earl’s faithful chaplain Fr Maurice MacKenraghty.
Although born in Kilmallock, Maurice’s family background was in the barony Iraghticonnor to the north of the Feale and Cashen rivers; and curiously in that part of Kerry the word Erraught/Iraght is anglicised Enright. Having taken his degree in theology, Fr Maurice was ordained, became a noted preacher in his native countryside and, probably in 1579 or earlier, the priest became chaplain to the earl and persevered with him until his own capture by Lord Roche in Duhallow in September 1583.
Earlier in the 1579 rebellion two Franciscans, Fr Conn O’Rourke and Bishop Patrick Ó Healy, newly appointed to the see of Mayo, secretly made their way back into Ireland and having arrived at Askeaton were welcomed by Countess Eleanor, wife of the earl. Some three days later, however, whether through fear for her husband’s safety or her own, having harboured the priest and bishop, Eleanor notified the authorities of the newly arrived friars. They were promptly arrested and jailed in Limerick before being taken to Kilmallock for execution by hanging on August 13, 1579.
The earl had an inconspicuous but substantial stone house and a drylined well built at his hideout in Muinganine, near modern Ballydesmond in western Duhallow. It was here that the earl, Eleanor, and Dr Saunders, the papal nuncio, were almost captured by Pelham, the lord deputy. The three effected a hairbreadth escape on ponies, the earl westwards into Kerry and the others north over the Limerick border. Mass vestments and a chalice were abandoned in their flight, items which Pelham sent to England as presents to his friends. The name of the hideout in Muinganine is still remembered as Réiteach an Íarla (the earl’s palace), a spot to which Mr Tom Walsh, a local farmer-historian from Glenlahan, guided me.
Fr Maurice MacKenraghty was one of the earl’s remaining supporters when he himself was betrayed by Murty Swiney, a deserter from Desmond’s army. The priest was conveyed to Clonmel where he died a martyr’s death on April 30, 1585 having been drawn at a horse’s tail to the place of execution. He was hanged from the gallows, cut down half-alive and then beheaded. Clonmel seems to be ‘the keeper of his bones’.
John J. Ó Ríordáin CSsRVolume 88. No. 5 June 2022
A Redemptorist Publication
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What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade.
GERTRUDE JEKYLL
Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.
WALT WHITMAN
Bright mornings bring the mountains to my doorstep. Calm nights give the rivers their say. Some evenings the wind puts its hand on my shoulders. I stop thinking. I leave what I’m doing and I go the soul’s way.
JOHN MORIARTY
It isn’t the big pleasures that count the most; it’s making a big deal out of the little ones.
JEAN WEBSTER
One child, one teacher, one pen, and one book can change the world.
MALALA YOUSAFZAI
Only ideas keep ideas flowing. When we close our minds to what is new, simply because we decide not to bother with it, we close our minds to our responsibility to ourselves – and to others – to keep on growing.
JOAN CHITTISTER
A journey becomes a pilgrimage as we discover, day by day, that the distance traveled is less important than the experience gained.
ERNEST KURTZ
And thus ever by day and night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another, move all we restless travelers through the pilgrimage of life.
CHARLES DICKENS
Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
Anyone can love peace, but Jesus didn’t say, ‘Blessed are the peacelovers.’ He says ‘peacemakers’. He is referring to a life vocation, not a hobby on the sidelines of life.
JIM WALLIS
Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future.
GAIL LUMET BUCKLEY
If you want to change the world, first try to improve and bring about change within yourself. That will help change your family. From there it just gets bigger and bigger. Everything we do has some effect, some impact.
DALAI LAMAI want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.
PHYLLIS DILLER
A family is a risky venture, because the greater the love, the greater the loss… That’s the trade-off. But I’ll take it all.
BRAD PITT
The informality of family life is a blessed condition that allows us all to become our best while looking our worst.
MARGE KENNEDY
My dear young cousin, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the eons, it’s that you can’t give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it.
RICK RIORDANHow wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
ANNE FRANK
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
The icon of the Mother of Perpetual Help is probably the best known of all the images of our Blessed Lady.
In this beautiful booklet, Fr George Wadding CSsR leads us into meditation on the various messages contained in the icon of the Mother of Perpetual Help and suggests a simple prayer after each meditation. Read each meditation slowly and in an atmosphere of prayer. You will find yourself drawn closer and closer to the hearts of Jesus and Mary.
Arecentdiscussion on Irish radio featured a caller from the US who was planning a move to Ireland. They wanted to know how easy it would be to make friends and become part of a community. What sort of experiences had other immigrants had, and how long had it taken them to feel settled and integrated into Irish society and life?
The responses were a mixed bag. Several people who had moved to Ireland from abroad spoke of how they had been welcomed with open arms and felt at home almost immediately. Many praised the friendly nature of people – always up for a chat – and their kindness, particularly in times of need. Others agreed that people were extremely friendly on a surface level but said they had found it difficult to develop deeper friendships. Irish people are ‘clannish’ suggested one contributor, and it takes a long time to shake off one’s ‘blow-in’ status.
Then there was the inevitable ‘rural versus urban’ debate. The general sense was that it’s easier to make friends in rural areas than in larger cities or towns where “people don’t know their next-door neighbours”. On the other hand, drivers in country areas were advised to “be prepared to develop tennis elbow from having to wave at everyone you pass!”
It was fascinating to hear the different perspectives on the topic. We like to think of ourselves as the land of the céad míle fáilte, but of course it’s not always the case, as evident from the many reports of racist incidents and abuse that sadly seem to be on the increase. And much has been written, particularly since the dawn of the pandemic, about the loss of community and the increase in loneliness and isolation. But, in the main, there is so much goodness around us. I’ve been following a few online communities aimed at helping Ukrainians arriving in Ireland. Some of the posts in the
groups are from Ukrainian people who are in temporary accommodation and looking for something more long term. Others are asking for specific items such as children’s clothes, toys, musical instruments. One Ukrainian woman was delighted to source a sewing machine for her elderly mother who had arrived in Ireland and was missing her usual activities.
Many of the messages are offers of help. There are job adverts and notices describing available accommodation. There are offers of language classes, haircuts, cinema trips, free dance or sport classes for children. Pop-up shops have been set up around the country, where donated goods are laid out for people to browse and take what they need, free of charge.
Connections are being made and local groups are forming, matching offers of help with needs. I’m aware of similar initiatives to match families living in direct provision with other local families to pass on clothes, toys and other items, and to develop friendships. Many of the initial messages in these online communities are simple words of welcome: “Welcome to Ireland”; “I hope you find what you need”; “I hope you’ll be happy here.”
Several Ukrainian people are expressing gratitude for the warm welcome they’ve received. Of course, the system is far from perfect, and the emergency accommodation provided is not at all ideal. But at grassroots level, kindness is overflowing. Every appeal for help seems to be met with a positive response. I read recently of the small village of Ballon in Carlow which has become a temporary home to more than 110 Ukrainian refugees, with a team of volunteers setting up a 70-bed rest centre. In Modelligo in Co. Waterford, a vacant parochial house has been renovated and transformed into a home for refugees.
Community is not always visible. The days
are certainly gone when we met all our friends and acquaintances at the local shop or pub, or outside Sunday Mass. Modern life is hectic and we might not have the time we once did to get to know our next-door neighbours. Some of our communities are virtual, like the online groups mentioned above. But it seems to me that the majority of people are just looking for ways to help. We saw it in the creative ways people supported each other during the pandemic, and we are seeing it again in the way individuals and groups are reaching out to refugees.
Every so often we get to see this community in action. I was in my local post office recently and the queue was crawling along, everyone minding their own business. Then, a commotion – someone had spotted an elderly woman with a walking stick and was ushering her towards the front of the line. One by one, each person stepped aside to let her past – “Go ahead there”; “Go on, you’ll be standing for ages otherwise.” Though she hadn’t intended to skip the queue, she was chuffed, thanking everyone profusely. It was lovely to see such ordinary, good-humoured kindness, the sort that is replicated all over the country, every day, in every village, town and city. Whether virtual or real-world, community spirit is alive and well.
Tríona Doherty Editor
DURING THE MONTH OF JUNE, GUIDED WALKS WILL TAKE PLACE ALONG IRELAND’S PASSPORTED PILGRIM PATHS. AS MORE AND MORE PATHS ARE OPENED UP TO MODERNDAY PILGRIMS, WE TAKE A LOOK AT WHAT’S BEHIND THE RESURGENCE OF INTEREST IN IRELAND’S SACRED TRAILS
BY JOHN G. O’DWYER
Seeking meaning beyond materialism, the number of 21st-century pilgrim walkers has increased exponentially. Almost every second person we meet nowadays seems to have been on, or is actively considering undertaking, a pilgrim journey. Why should this be the case: is it that pilgrimage somehow serves as a metaphor for life’s bewildering voyage? Do our lives take on a more profound meaning when viewed through the 20/20 prism of a reflective journey? Certainly, a characteristic of most ages has been a compulsion to seek deeper meaning by travelling to some sacred place vested by generations past with unique redemptive powers.
The medieval period immediately prior to the Reformation was the last great era of pilgrim journeying. The spiritual pioneers undertaking these excursions certainly needed fortitude in spades to complete the redemptive paths of the time. Mechanised transport had not yet arrived to defeat the idea of distance, yet medieval wanderers found the motivation, and not inconsiderable courage, to foot the great penitential trails to Rome, Palestine, Canterbury, Lough Derg and Santiago, along with many lesser-known sites.
Motivated in the main by a desire to save their souls or gain indulgences, penitents gladly undertook these arduous excursions into what must then have been a scarily unknown world without such modern, musthave fripperies as thousand-mile socks, Goretex jackets and iPhones. This meant they must regularly have felt tired, isolated, lonely and sometimes vulnerable to robbery, kidnap and even murder. Travelling in the relative safety of groups whenever possible, they pushed on each day driven by the hope of reaching the sanctuary of a monastery or an inn and thus avoiding the dangers of spending a night in the open.
Passports were unknown and so most pilgrims just carried a letter of credentials from a bishop or abbot establishing that they had received the sacraments before leaving and were journeying in a spirit of genuine penitence. A lucky few might have possessed sufficient wealth to complete their redemptive expedition on horseback. Others, among the better-off pilgrims, would have sailed from an Irish port such as Waterford, Kinsale or Dingle to A Coruña in Northern Spain, while those heading for Rome or the Holy Land might have boarded a ship at Marseilles or Venice.
These were the exceptions, however, for mostly pilgrims just walked and walked. Counting calories was not, we can safely assume, the prime concern for these medieval sanctity seekers as they toiled on relentlessly through unmapped and sometimes hostile lands. Strangers journeying in strange lands, they would have been out of touch for up to a year – no comforting Skype then – and mostly travelling through areas where people spoke indecipherable tongues. And it was not just the common people who went on pilgrimage; escaping hellfire proved a great medieval leveller. King Henry II of England undertook a redemptive journey to atone for the murder of Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, while Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV went on a barefoot
pilgrimage to the Italian town of Canossa, where he begged Pope Gregory VII to repeal his ex-communication from the Christian Church.
The late Middle Ages were the glory years of mass pilgrimage. Indulgences didn’t come cheap and there was money, power, prestige and, of course, genuine piety bound up with the penitential business. Those places lucky enough to possess the relic of a renowned saint could benefit substantially from penitential spending. Small wonder, then, that access to pilgrim sites was considered crucially important to the western church and that a succession of medieval pontiffs ordered several crusades to the Holy Land aimed at wresting back Jerusalem and the
reformation sectarian wars that quickly led to the virtual elimination of the trans-national spiritual excursion.
It is said, however, that the past never completely dies, but sooner or later comes to revisit us. So, the information age has been notable for a movement from the worship of conspicuous consumption towards heeding the ageless siren call of the long walk to a place of sanctity. In recent times, large numbers of often staunchly secularist people have come down with severe cases of pilgrim fever. Their motivations are, however, far more complex than medieval pilgrims, with the journey itself being the main objective.
holy places from Islamic conquerors.
Historians are now as one in telling us that the coming of the Reformation represented a watershed for Western Europe by breaking forever the power of the monolithic Roman Church. To this day, the enduring impression we have of Martin Luther and his fellow reformers is that they were unswervingly sincere in their beliefs but – shall we say – not exactly the life and soul of a party.
Unsurprisingly then, this rather severe and pragmatic bunch were little given to grand gestures. Believing that salvation could more satisfactorily be accomplished at home and, perhaps, also suspecting that pilgrims might slyly try to incorporate some pleasures of the flesh into their redemptive odysseys, they immediately dropped a spanner clattering into the smoothly oiled workings of the redemptive walks industry. But in the end, it was the destabilising effect of the post-
For most, pilgrimage, with its emphasis on simplicity, mindfulness and reflective experience, is as much a voyage of inner discovery and transformation as a physical challenge. Following a pilgrim path chimes with our greener, less materialistic times. It also offers many a deeper meaning beyond the sum total of the trail’s physical attributes, with personal renewal and selfknowledge coming not so much from the destination, as from the journey itself.
Until recently, most modern-day pilgrims headed for Spain in common with millions of summertime pleasure seekers. But eschewing the hedonism of the Costas, they journeyed instead along the Camino of St James, seeking spiritual understanding and personal meaning in following sacred tracks carved by the feet of medieval penitents.
Few of these 21st-century pilgrims would have imagined Ireland as an alternative destination for contemplative hiking. Conventional wisdom held that this country possessed little in the way of worthwhile penitential walks. The reality, however, is that Ireland has a dense network of mystical paths and a vibrant pilgrim tradition with most of these routes long predating the Camino . Clonmacnoise was undeniably one of Europe’s first pilgrim objectives, while Lough
Penitents gladly undertook these arduous excursions into what must have been a scarily unknown world without such modern, must-have fripperies as thousand-mile socks, Goretex jackets and iPhones.
Derg was, and still is, one of Europe’s foremost penitential destinations. Pilgrims also travelled to Glendalough, Skellig Michael, Gougane Barra and Croagh Patrick, while many also journeyed to venerate the true cross at Holycross Abbey.
Despite past popularity, however, Ireland’s sacred trails were almost totally forgotten for generations. Virtually nothing was done to maintain them or ignite awareness of their existence until a re-awakening took place when Pilgrim Paths Ireland (PPI) was formed in 2013 by representatives from Ireland’s principal pilgrim routes.
An avowedly non-denominational organisation, it welcomed people of all religious backgrounds and none, while organising its walking events exclusively on medieval paths with robust spiritual resonance. Renewal or giving thanks in a nondenominational sense is encouraged as part of each event, which is organised on a voluntary basis by the local community.
The new organisation’s first major ventures
were the National Pilgrim Paths Day of 2014 and 2015, which both took place on Holy Saturday. Conceived as a unifying event, emphasising Ireland’s common Christian inheritance, the invitation to rediscover almost forgotten pilgrim paths greatly exceeded expectations with over 3,000 people reacquainting themselves with 11 of Ireland’s mystical trails.
Encouraged by this success, the event was soon extended into the successful Pilgrim Paths Week, which takes place over the Easter period each year and offers a profound sense of reaching into the past. Another initiative from PPI is a passport offering an opportunity to explore a collection of penitential routes through some of the most captivating Irish scenery. To meet the requirements of the Irish Pilgrim Passport, walkers must produce evidence of having completed 120 km of Ireland’s foremost penitential trails, all coming with well-documented claims to have been used by pilgrims since ancient times.
While many walkers were happy to do this alone or with friends, others preferred the security and knowledge offered by a local
guide. Mindful of this, the latest venture from PPI takes place this year from June 18 to 25. It consists of a fully escorted journey along the passported pilgrim paths of Ireland.
This June, Pilgrim Paths Ireland are offering fully-guided walks along all of Ireland’s passported pilgrim paths. The routes which will be completed are:
• St Finbarr’s Path, Co. Cork (June 18/19)
• Cnoc na dTobar, Co. Kerry (June 20)
• Cosán na Naomh, Co. Kerry (June 21)
• St Kevin’s Way, Co. Wicklow (June 23)
• Tóchar Phádraig, Co. Mayo (June 25)
Guides will stamp pilgrim passports at the end of each walk. With five stamps, participants can then obtain a Teastas (completion certificate) at journey’s end in Ballintubber Abbey, Co. Mayo.
And recently an international dimension was added to the Irish pilgrim paths when the Cathedral of Santiago agreed to grant a Compostela of St James to pilgrims who complete the 75km from A Coruña to Santiago, if they have already walked a 25km pilgrimage in Ireland. Dubbed the Celtic Camino, this is the first time that pilgrim walking in Ireland has been recognised as part of the Spanish Camino.
To complete this route, the pilgrims must purchase the passport from the Camino Society in Dublin and then complete 25km on an Irish pilgrim route such as the Tóchar Phádraig, Co. Mayo, St Kevin’s Way, Co. Wicklow or St Finbarr’s Pilgrim Path, Co. Cork. The local organisation will stamp the Camino passport which will be accepted as evidence of completion. The pilgrim then recommences the pilgrimage from A Coruña, Spain and continues the 75km to Santiago while getting the required stamps along the way. In Santiago, the pilgrim passport is submitted with the stamps for Ireland and Spain in order to obtain Compostela of St James from Santiago Cathedral.
These initiatives mean things are looking good for the Irish pilgrim paths as we emerge
from Covid darkness to the sunny uplands of a post-pandemic landscape. This is likely to provide opportunities for the sacred trails of Ireland since it is probable that things will never be quite the same again – human habits have been altered by the crisis and what we seek from life will be different in the future.
One shift has been a new appreciation of the outdoors. People are not only walking in much greater numbers, but they are also seeking more interaction with our green and contemplative spaces. We are now likely to
see a reduction in demand for hugely expensive indoor attractions such as Titanic Belfast and the Guinness Storehouse, and more demand instead for greenways, blueways and pilgrim paths. It seems the pandemic may yet prove a blessing in disguise for rural tourism as outdoor attractions can be created on a highly cost-effective basis. Titanic Belfast required an investment of over £100 million, while this year’s reopening of St Declan’s Way linking Ardmore with Cashel cost a modest €250,000 and is already proving hugely popular with walkers.
Ireland’s pilgrim paths are fully waymarked and awaiting footfall. They are very much in step with the changing demands of presentday tourists, but despite valiant efforts by local communities, they are still relatively unknown to Irish people. And despite Ireland having an international reputation for spirituality reaching back to Celtic times, our mystical trails have never really been promoted overseas.
With almost 250 km of fully waymarked
pilgrim paths now available in Ireland, a golden opportunity exists to create a contemplative walking experience to rival the Camino. Relatively modest investment is required to build international awareness of Ireland’s mystical trails and to provide the necessary infrastructure to support the paths. Incentives should be provided to encourage the development of small rural guest houses and B&Bs that are close by the trails to allow for unsupported walking. Looking ahead to our new world, it may be from the past that we will find the answers for the future.
For more information:
Further information on walking the Irish pilgrim paths is available at pilgrimpath.ie.
With almost 250 km of fully waymarked pilgrim paths now available in Ireland, a golden opportunity exists to create a contemplative walking experience to rival the Camino.
Ioftenwalk my dogs to a pet shop that is part of a local shopping centre complex. The route takes us along the Andersonstown Road, here in West Belfast, before we enter the gates to the shopping centre. From there it is a short walk of three or four minutes, past the shopping trolleys, the big supermarket, a bank with an ATM and then the pet shop itself. The dogs know the route well and they get excited as we draw near to the shop – they know they get lots of attention and lots of dog treats in the shop. Sitting on the ground between the bank and a few metres before the pet shop you’ll find a young man, sitting on the ground, begging for money. He’s been there, on and off, for a few years. Originally from Eastern Europe, he came here with high hopes that haven’t been fulfilled. I’ve known him for about three years. I always stop to talk to him, to hear how he has been since we last met, and to hear of his plans. When I can I give him some money, which he assures me he spends wisely. I have no reason to doubt him, nor do I have any wish to judge what he does with what is then his money, not mine. At times, he stays in hostels or with friends. At other times, he has found himself on the streets. I have seen him at rock bottom, very worried and very sad. However, on other occasions, he’s seen me coming and happily told me that he’d got a job or a place to live full time. He’s then disappeared from my life for some months. Sadly, it never
seems to have worked out long term for him so far and he finds his way back to his spot on the ground near the pet shop. For the last year or so, he’s been back again and looking older and less healthy.
When he sees me and the dogs coming, his eyes widen and a big smile spreads across his face. Now, I have to be honest and say that it’s mainly because of the dogs, rather than me. He just
dogs. As he was petting them, this young homeless man pulled out a sandwich from his bag and asked the dogs to sit. He then fed them his sandwich. I lunged towards him and told him not to give his food away.
I knew from earlier conversations that he was now living in a tent under a bridge, just outside the city centre, as he waited for hostel accommodation. I was worried that he did not have enough to
loves my dogs. When he catches sight of them, he shouts, “my friends!” They run up to him and he embraces them in a big furry hug. If someone was going by in a car and didn’t know what was going on, I’m sure it looks like the three dogs are mauling the poor man! There is such affection in their encounter, though, both from him and from the dogs. It’s quite a sight to behold.
Just before Easter, on one of our regular encounters, I saw the most remarkable thing. We had approached him and he had seen us and, as always, he was pleased to get to cuddle the
be able to feed himself well, never mind give my dogs some of his food. And yet he told me that it was okay. “I want to do this,” he said. I looked on and saw that he was determined to do it. And he enjoyed it. It seemed to make him feel good to see these dogs be so attentive and so responsive to his generosity. I guess we all like the feeling of being able to be good to other people or, as in this case, to other creatures.
It was all I could do not to cry as I looked on. Such generosity beyond belief. It devastated me, humbled me and delighted me all at the same time. I felt the
devastation of knowing that our society is deeply broken when we have good young people like my friend living in tents under bridges. I was humbled by the generosity shown to my dogs and the challenge it presented me to be more generous in my life. And I was delighted to see my friend’s face light up with a sense of his own ability to be generous and to provide for his friends, my dogs. Happening, as it did, in the season of Easter, I was reminded of the powerful sculpture of the homeless Jesus; a curled-up figure hidden under a blanket (or is it the shroud?) lying on a bench, his feet sticking out from the blanket revealing the wounds of the crucifixion and, therefore, revealing his identity. The sculpture challenges us to see Jesus in those we meet, particularly those in need. I knew that in my encounter with my homeless friend I was encountering Jesus alive and well in him. How else could he have been moved to such selflessness in the midst of his own suffering?
WITH
EVEN WHEN WE HAVE VERY LITTLE, WE LIKE TO BE ABLE TO HELP OTHERSBelfast man Jim Deeds is a poet, author, pastoral worker and retreat-giver working across Ireland.
StDeclan’s Way hit the headlines on RTE’s All Walks of Life programme when former President Mary McAleese travelled the ancient trail along with Tánaiste Leo Varadkar in his mother’s native county of Waterford.
It was on the national airwaves again in September 2021, on the evening news, when the 115km way was officially opened following waymarking and remedial work. It became the sixth official ‘Way’ on the Pilgrim Paths of Ireland, and around 20-30,000 people are expected to walk it annually.
St Declan needs no introduction in Waterford and there are even some in the county who would say he arrived before St Patrick. Whatever the truth of the matter, it appears both saints brought Christianity to Ireland. St Declan was associated with bringing the faith to the Waterford and Munster area known as the Déise. Today, the saint’s church and a round tower in Ardmore, Co. Waterford are at the end of the trail which starts at another ancient ecclesiastical centre and seat of kings, Cashel in Co. Tipperary.
The trail includes sections that have been in existence for 1,500 years, according to Grainne Moynihan of the St Declan’s Way committee. She points out the importance of preserving trails such as St Declan’s Way, which our ancestors have walked. In recent years, modern farming methods and new roads and motorways can take over and fragment and damage such paths.
“There was a risk that 20-30 years down the line, parts of it could have been wiped out,” she says. For years now, a small local committee
drawn from villages along the trail have worked together to bring St Declan’s Way to where it is today.
“Now it is time to bring it to the next level, forming a strong network of volunteer groups, accommodation and transport providers all along the trail, so that the villages become the eyes and ears of the visitor experience, and everyone is watching out for these pilgrims and helping them along the way,” says Grainne.
St Declan’s Way combines ancient and medieval pilgrimage and trading routes such as the Rian Bo Phadraig (Track of St Patrick’s Cow), Bothar na Naomh (Road of the Saints), Casan na Naomh (Path of the Saints) and St Declan’s Road. The waymarked route retains as many ancient roadways as possible.
This route was taken by St Declan when going to Cashel to meet St Patrick in the fifth century. Over the centuries, pilgrims travelled it the opposite way to visit St Declan’s monastery, holy well and grave in Ardmore.
The trail begins at the carpark of the Rock of Cashel. It runs through Cashel, Cahir, Ardfinnan and Goatenbridge in South Tipperary. It goes on across the Knockmealdown Mountains into West Waterford and Mount Melleray, Lismore, Cappoquin and Aglish, finishing at St Declan’s Monastery in Ardmore, Co. Waterford.
St Declan’s Way is part of a renewed interest in walking in nature and reclaiming old paths used by pilgrims. Its popularity was boosted by the Covid pandemic when walking increased in popularity.
Individual walkers can download a brochure outlining the route and follow the way marking, but there is also increased interest in group walks and pilgrimages. Earlier this year, a formal group walk on St Declan’s Way was 60 per cent booked within a month. It offered five days walking the entire trail over St Patrick’s weekend, Easter Saturday and the May bank holiday weekend, with up to 200 pilgrims walking on each stage.
“People mentally made the decision: ‘I am going to do this and I am going to commit
THE NEWLY REVIVED AND WAYMARKED ST DECLAN’S WAY IS A MODERN WALKING ROUTE LINKING THE ANCIENT ECCLESIASTICAL CENTRES OF CASHEL AND ARDMORE.
to it’ regardless of the weather,” says Grainne, explaining that many people booked in January even though the first walk wasn’t until March. “There is a huge interest in walking in the company of others.”
The Cistercian Mount Melleray Abbey in the Knockmealdown mountains in Co. Waterford marks the half-way point along St Declan’s Way. “Melleray is very important in the context of the trail. It brings a modern-day focus to what is an ancient theme of going on a pilgrimage and pushing yourself to walk further than you would normally do,” says Grainne.
Mount Melleray Abbey has a special place in people’s hearts and over the years has attracted many visitors. “The achievement of the monks and the community which helped
build the monastery and helped build the farm and cultivate the land – that whole spirit of endurance, of pushing, working through difficult times, that resonates a lot with people,” she adds.
There are plans to open trails around the monastery and for a new hostel which will be part of what Grainne calls a ‘spiritual tourism’ project for the monks and the local community that works with them. Above all, those who are drawn to Melleray find their own spiritual experience and sense of peace there.
“Some people like to go to confession or Mass but some haven’t been to either in years. However, that same generation wants to still be in touch with their spiritual mind and inner self. It is there, we all have a conscience, we all
think deeply in different ways, we all want to connect with that,” she says.
“So whether pilgrims go to confession or go for a walk, everyone can find that inner peace in Melleray but just in different ways.”
Fr Denis Luke who runs the café in Melleray says that the monastery guest house has hosted many people over the years – for retreats, time out, to seek help in times of trouble or addiction. Visitors on Declan’s Way, or pilgrims as he likes to call them, will be different, not least because the time they spend will be shorter.
“It certainly will bring a lot more visitors or walkers here, but it will be a different type of people,” he says. The monks have held short
pilgrim walks around the abbey and grounds, and pilgrims finish by going to the church to light a candle or to attend a prayer service with the monks.
“No one objected to visiting the church” Fr Luke says. “The opposite in fact. People are very much open, when they are walking. They are open to one another. If they are alone, they are connecting with nature or the environment, and they have a chance to connect with themselves, and with God in prayer, to reflect.”
There is a pilgrim passport for those on St Declan’s Way and it can be stamped at Melleray. While people are stopped at the abbey, they will be able to avail of the 35-bed hostel which has been developed in what was once the noviciate. It has been delayed due to dry rot but when it opens it will offer bed and breakfast to pilgrims – not unlike what is on offer on the European Camino pilgrimage. Secondary school student groups are among those who walk St Declan’s Way. Fr Luke says it is a new experience for them to learn that they are walking on a path previously used by saints, scholars, soldiers and their ancestors for over a thousand years. They ask questions about the monks’ life and why they are in a monastery in the mountains. Likewise, Fr Luke hears what they think about the monastic life with their comments ranging from “boring” to “there have always has been monks”.
“Monasteries have come and gone but monastic life has continued,” he says. Melleray Abbey is there almost 200 years. There are fewer than ten monks at present, compared to 50 when Fr Luke arrived.
Just as St Declan’s Way is being developed, the monks have also received grant aid to develop five loop pilgrimage walks which are connected with St Declan’s Way or the monastery, or both. They range in length: for example, 4km to the Holy Year Cross, built in the 1950s by local people with the help of students in the now closed Melleray boarding school run by the monks. Other walks include The Well (2km), The Source (9km), Byrne’s Bridge (15km) and The Grotto (4km).
The Source is where, in 1887, Br Vincent Stapleton engineered the diversion of a river to supply water to Melleray Abbey and to help expand the farm herd. The engineering and the fact that the river appears to flow uphill are points of interest, as is the wild mountain landscape.
To help develop the loop routes, a Mountain Meitheal, a branch of the national Meitheal volunteer organisation, was set up. Sixty people attended an information evening and 20 have already started working on waymarking trails and placing steps and stiles to improve the walking conditions.
Fr Luke often meets groups, giving talks to them and walking some of the way with them. He points out the places and sites of interest, especially of the saints and early Christians and the rich monastic history on St Declan’s Way. There were monasteries in Cashel (Hore Abbey), Ardfinnan (Carmelite Abbey and association with St Finnian), Lismore (St Carthage cathedral and site of learning) and by the sea Ardmore (St Declan’s Monastery and Cathedral, burial place, well and stone) to name but a few.
In 1887, 50 years after the Cistercians arrived in Mount Melleray, their wells were running dry due to farm expansion.
Br Vincent Stapelton was no engineer, but he had some experience of diverting streams in his native Tipperary. Local lay workmen and monks began 3km away from the abbey where three streams met at the source of the Rough Glen River. They diverted it around the slopes of Knocknafalla at around 475m high, for about half a kilometre. This creates the illusion that the water is running uphill. It continues down the mountain via an open conduit, an earth and stone channel lined with clay, approximately one metre wide and half a metre deep. There are waterfalls, and the conduit cuts deep in places and elsewhere it is propped up. Modern-day engineers say it was the best possible route and the supply of water has never failed.
For other points of interest, the local communities and the brochure of St Declan’s Way provide all the information.
For more information:
www.stdeclansway.ie
mountmellerayabbey.org
www.mountainmeitheal.ie
IN SPITE OF CHANGING, AND OFTEN NEGATIVE, ATTITUDES TO THE CHURCH, THERE ARE PEOPLE COMMITTING THEIR LIVES TO FOLLOWING GOD IN THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
BY JOHN SCALLYThenoted Patrick Kavanagh scholar Sr Una Agnew captures the way the church in general, and religious in particular, are now portrayed: “The derision with which the word ‘nun’…has been spoken on Irish television has cut to the heart of many who have put their lives on the line for values that are foundational to human flourishing.”
In the face of such hostility, it is difficult to escape feelings of diminished energy and even demoralisation. Like a hidden grief that rises to grab the heart, many ordained people are occasionally ambushed by painful emotions, particularly as there has been such negative media coverage of the church in general, and religious in particular, for such a sustained period.
Many today experience the sentiment of Robert Frost in his poem Lodged: The rain to the wind said,
‘You push and I’ll pelt.’
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt. And lay lodged – though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.
Nonetheless, there are still people committing their lives to following God. A recent example is Sr Eileen O’Connell. Originally from Ballincollig in Cork, she became a Dominican Sister through a series of steps rather than through a dramatic experience.
“The story of my becoming a Dominican is quite a tangled tapestry. I’ll pick a few tiny threads from that tapestry – becoming a Dominican happened almost in a series of moments of greater clarity. While I was on pilgrimage in the Holy Land, I had a very sudden and very strong sense that God was calling me to something more, but without
a clue what that more was.
“So I took the advice of my good friend Fr Billy and began to say yes to things that seemed reasonable and practical and possibly of God, to see if that might throw light on what God had in mind for me. Not too much later, I had another moment of clarity and knew that I needed to learn about Dominican Sisters. From my first meeting, and with each subsequent meeting, more clarity came.
“My two-year novitiate was a time of many questions and much searching but also a time when I found more clarity and certainty. To make profession was a natural next step once I knew that it was where God wanted me to be. The years since have been a mixture of graces and blessings and wonderful experiences and of challenges and difficulties too but, ultimately, I think I’d say it comes down to trust and love.”
It is evident that Sr Eileen has a strong faith. “I trust in my strong sense of God’s call. I trust that God needs me just the way I am, and I trust that God is leading me where God wants me. And I’m sustained by love – the love of my family and friends, the love of my Dominican sisters – and I’m carried by knowing God’s immense love for me.
“The strongest thread, the one that runs right through it always, is God’s love for me – as I am – and my response to that love. My yes, my response to God’s call, is a response to the one who is love… and I respond, as best I can, in love. And because I truly know how much God loves each of us, I want my life to preach that love to others, I want my life to let others know that they are loved
madly by God – just as they are.” Last December, Sr Eileen was finally professed on what she recalls as a very special day. “On that day, I was not at all nervous (uncharacteristically) and was really excited and full of joy and happiness. It was the best of days. Thank God, the Covid situation at that time made it possible for some of my family
and some friends, and also others of the Dominican family, to be there.
“On the day after it, in texts to people who sent good wishes, I wrote: For me, it was a gorgeously joyful and happy and exciting and gratitude-filled day, one entirely infused with the ‘rightness’ and joy of this moment of ultimate commitment and self offering to
God. And it was fun too! I’m still beaming, and yesterday’s Mass was filled with thanksgivings for all God’s blessings. Today’s will be the same. Thanks be to God.”
Sr Eileen is part of an increasingly rare species: ‘the young nun’. Does it concern her that she is entering religious life when the age profile of religious is older? “Some sisters with
whom I connect speak of ‘young nuns’ as unicorns … yes, we are rare, but we are not mythical!”
In the Church of Ireland, too, people are continuing to offer themselves for ordination. Last September, Rev Philip McKinley was ordained by Bishop Pat Storey. The service took place in St Brigid’s Cathedral, Kildare, and the preacher was Philip’s father and rector of Whitechurch, Dublin, Canon Horace McKinley. Philip brings a lot of life experience to his new role. “I was born and raised in Whitechurch Parish and more recently I attended Holy Trinity Rathmines, both of which are located in the United Dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough. I have served with a variety of projects and committees within the local and national church. I am married to Julie, who works for the National Bible Society of Ireland and we have four children aged 16 to 3 – Cameron, Izzy, Eva and Tami. I am deeply inspired by the loving breadth and width of Christ’s embrace on the cross, which enfolds all of humanity,” says Philip.
Despite “a fair few” clergy in his family tree, he did not rush into the decision to get ordained. “Ultimately it was the death of
“Some sisters with whom I connect speak of ‘young nuns’ as unicorns … yes, we are rare, but we are not mythical!”
three ordained friends, Church of Ireland and Methodist, within a short space of time, that really got me thinking more deeply about a call that I had struggled for some time to shake off,” he reflects.
Philip has a national profile as a singer/ songwriter and cofounder of the Discovery Gospel Choir, an intercultural ensemble that reflects the cultural and ethnic diversity in Ireland.
“I went to Uganda in 2001, and you had the Lord’s Resistance Army, which was a Christian fundamentalist military group, and I met many refugees that were affected by that. Literally as soon as I came back, I started studying theology in Trinity College in Dublin, and I got involved on my first day in a homework club for unaccompanied minors who are here without their parents as refugees. The first student I was assigned in this St Vincent de Paul homework club was a Ugandan refugee who was fleeing the Lord’s Resistance Army. So as a young student, the global became the local, and twice a week, I was meeting this young student for homework grinds. Out of that homework club came the kernel of the group that formed the Discovery Gospel Choir. It’s grown and grown and grown, and has lots of different dimensions. The Discovery Gospel Choir is an intercultural choir for a new Ireland.”
Philip’s membership of his choir would serve him well during his ordination. In keeping with COVID-19 guidelines there was no congregational singing, and music was provided by an organist. During the service, several pieces were sung by a small group from the Discovery Gospel Choir. An Irish version of the Lord’s Prayer was also sung by a Japanese member of the choir. Memorably, members of the congregation were invited to do the Jerusalema dance in the cathedral grounds!
Philip has worked extensively in faith-based reconciliation and social initiatives for the Irish Council of Churches. He feels enriched because of his ecumenical contacts.
“I have worked across Christian denominations through the Irish Council of Churches, so this has been my heart’s work for about 20 years. I managed to connect with an incredible peace activist in West Belfast from a very famous street called Falls Road, Fr Martin McGill.
“He spoke at the funeral of a journalist who was murdered in Northern Ireland. Her name was Lyra McKee. She was just 29 years old. All the politicians – Theresa May, then the British prime minister, and all the Northern Irish politicians and Irish politicians – all gathered in the front row. The Northern Irish political institutions at the time had not been functioning. Fr Martin asked: ‘Why in God’s name does it take the death of a young woman to bring you politicians together?’ It got a standing ovation, and these famous words went worldwide, and it broke a deadlock; and, lo and behold, the politicians got back dialoguing together,” recalls Philip.
“It showed that things can happen when we bring people together and try to forge a better future; and helping to build a better future is what I hope my life as a priest will be.”
A native of Roscommon, John Scally lectures in Theology in Trinity College Dublin. Philip is ordained by Bishop Pat Storey Philip and friends dance the Jerusalema after his ordination
BY JOHNNY DOHERTY CSsR
It’s hard to believe that it is four years since the ninth World Meeting of Families took place in Ireland in 2018. There are all kinds of memories of that great occasion. Many of the public memories are of the visit of Pope Francis and these are a mixture of celebration and controversy.
My memories are of the few days in the RDS. Thousands of people gathered there to express their commitment to the vital importance of marriage and family life. This was not just a commitment in words. It was also shown by the variety of ways that people from around Ireland and other parts of the world are actively supporting every aspect of marriage and family life.
At the end of the meeting in Ireland it was announced that the next one would be held in the Diocese of Rome in 2021, following the arrangement that it would be every three years. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this had to be re-arranged for this year and will now take place in Rome on June 23-27, 2022.
The theme for this five-day gathering in Rome is ‘Family Love: A Vocation and a Path to Holiness’. Most of us will not be there for it. But all of us can be part of it by taking time to reflect on this theme and to pray, during this month of June, for those who will be present at it.
Until comparatively recently, the words marriage and family life went together and were clearly understood. Most women and men got married; they had their children; the vast majority made a success of their family life, not without problems of course, and at times with great sacrifices.
We now live in a different world and society and church.
• Most couples still get married, but it is no longer taken for granted that they will marry in church – many other venues are available for them today.
• Many marriages break up for various reasons. Some of the people involved in
these break-ups marry again.
• Many couples choose to live together. Some of them have their children and then decide whether to get married or not.
• And we now have the question of samesex marriage. That is a question that was unheard of until very recently. But it is an important question that has implications for all of us.
All of these changes in adult relationships give rise to a great variety of family combinations.
• There are married couples with children.
• There are married couples who do not have children.
• There are cohabiting couples with children or maybe without children.
• There are lone parents with children. Some of these may have been married, or divorced, or bereaved. Many of them may not have been married.
• There are divorced and remarried couples
with children, often with each person bringing children of their own into the new family and then having children together.
• There are single people who never had children and who live alone or perhaps with siblings.
• There are same-sex couples, some with children and some not.
These lists are not exhaustive but rather are indications of how things have changed and are changing in relation to family life. All this rapid change has serious implications for both church and state. The state responds to these changes mostly through legislation, at times with a lack of reflection on the effects they are having on family and society.
We too, as the church, need to respond to them. The questions and responses are not theoretical. Most, if not all, of the forms of relationships and families are present in every parish and faith community. Our responses
must be filled with love and respect while keeping an eye on how the legislation of the church can or cannot change to meet the new realities.
The common denominator of all these forms of relationships and families is undoubtedly love. It is that which makes them sacred in themselves. One of our strongest beliefs as followers of Christ is in the statement that “God is love. Those who live in love live in God and God lives in them.” This wonderful revelation does not have any if and buts. It applies to all situations of love and applies where there is faith and where there is none.
In the life of the church, many of us are inclined to exclude those who do not measure up to our ideals of marriage and family. In his letter Amoris Laetitia: The Joy of Love, Pope Francis had to face this tendency by addressing the question of those who are
divorced and remarried. There are those who say that people like this are excommunicated. He says clearly that they are not! The church community has a great responsibility to ensure that they can find their proper place within the community.
The same needs to be said about all those in other forms of relationship. Our main task must be to discover the ways in which all can find a home among us, because each form of family relationship is sacred.
For us as Catholics, there are several values that need to be held together as we look at the way things are today. I suggest the following.
1. The right to life and full dignity of every human person from the moment of conception to the time of natural death. This is central to all our considerations.
2. Every family, whatever its combination, is a sacred place where Christ lives. This is particularly true where there is baptism.
3. The marriage of a woman and man who choose to get married in and into the church is one of the seven sacraments of the church and, as such, is due particular reverence and support from all of us.
4. We are in communion with the universal church, the regional church, the diocese, and the parish. We take our lead in terms of teaching from this communion.
5. We can only deal with the complexity of today’s church and world when we bring it into prayer, especially as parish communities where people live their lives.
The main responsibility for a family is with the adults in the home. Parents are seen as the primary teachers of their children. They call on many other resources to help them in this, such as schools.
When parents bring their child to the church for baptism, this primary role is also recognised. They have to declare that they want this sacrament for their child. They then promise to bring their child up in the faith of the church. And I am sure that every parent at that time means it when they say that they will do this.
But they cannot do it on their own. Nor should they have to do it on their own. A very important part of every sacrament is that the community of the church promises to support these parents in every way possible so that they can fulfil their promise.
All the baptised have the same vocation – to be followers and disciples of Jesus Christ. This is lived out in a variety of ways – as married; as single, including children; as parents; as priests and deacons; as religious. It is in each family that this sense of purpose is nurtured and strengthened by the quality of love in each home.
That is why each family needs to experience the support of the parish community in their particular circumstances. Without that active support they can see themselves as not included.
So, we come back once more to the theme of the World Meeting of Families in Rome this June. Family, based on love as it is, is a major source of holiness for all involved. This holiness grows through the quality of love that is consciously developed by adults and children through giving good, regular, creative time to each other; through loving each person as s/he is, not how you might want them to be; by building a family in which praise, affirmation and thanksgiving are in the very atmosphere and where criticism is banned; where affection is freely expressed in word and in action – in other words, a family home where each person is glad to be. This takes effort and constantly making decisions to love.
When you see that heading, some may immediately think: ‘here comes the holy bit’! But part of the purpose of prayer is to help us all to know that our love is ‘the holy bit’. God is the origin of our vocation, God is where the path to holiness leads us, and ultimately God is the one in whose image we are made, individually but especially as a family. We need to develop:
• Couple prayer, so that those who are married may go beyond the limits of love that they set for themselves and constantly grow in love and affection for one another;
• Family prayer, so that we can know that Christ lives in us and among us in our homes;
• Prayer with the parish community, especially Sunday Mass, so that we make a new beginning each week in our love and in our faith commitments;
• Prayer by the parish community, so that we can grow in compassion for each person and each situation by praying regularly for one another.
‘Family love, a vocation and a path to holiness’ can and should become more than a theme for the World Meeting of Families in Rome on June 23-27. It can become the motto of each family and the aim of each parish community.
The questions and responses are not theoretical. Most, if not all, of the forms of relationships and families are present in every parish and faith community. Our responses must be filled with love and respect.
Do you think it is acceptable to tell lies if your motivation is to be kind? Most of us who answer “Yes” to this question are likely to genuinely believe that we have the best interests of others at heart when we are economical with the truth.
For many of us, our day-to-day life presents what comedian Jerry Seinfeld calls “must-lie situations”, in which people lie precisely because they believe it is the right thing to do. For example, if someone asks how they look going into a job interview, the only acceptable answer is “You look incredible,” regardless of whether this is true or not.
Earlier in my life I believed the loving thing to do was to protect the people I cared about from emotional pain. To spare a friend’s feelings, I avoided saying anything that might upset them, sound hurtful, appear disagreeable or lead to disagreement, conflict or a row.
Often I censored the truth and withheld information because I genuinely believed that it was the right thing to do. I made what I believed were informed decisions about just how much of the truth a friend or family member could handle.
My late husband Colm had a very different outlook. His belief was that it is not a sign of loving someone to withhold information you believe will cause pain or upset. It is understandable that you want to spare a person’s feelings. But when you truly love someone,
you tell them the truth. You want them to have all the available information to make the right decision.
In 1997 I was diagnosed with breast cancer the day before one of my four daughters was due to go on holidays to Germany. On the same day, her grandaunt Esther, who died from breast cancer, was buried. In our family cancer is ‘the big C’. Her paternal grandmother, two granduncles, uncles and a grandaunt died from cancer.
My maternal instinct was to protect her. Say nothing. Let her go to Germany and have a wonderful holiday. It would be time enough to break the news of the diagnosis on her return. Her dad had a different viewpoint and explained how withholding information might backfire
He said, “It’s your decision Carmel, but please stop and think. Because you love her, tell her the truth. I know this is hard on you but if you withhold information, you run the risk of destroying trust. And we both know that there is nothing either of us can do to make her trust us again, if she feels terribly let down that we concealed the truth and hid the diagnosis. Just imagine her alone, hurt, angry, and distressed if she finds out that you’re in hospital while she’s away.”
It was a shocking image that taught me a monumental life lesson that changed my outlook, my mindset and my behaviour.
And believe me, this made such an enormous difference seven years later, when our family faced a similar dilemma about health issues. The dilemma of how much to say, when you have to reveal bad news, may not be yours today, but it could be some day.
In 2014 my daughter’s father-inlaw, who lived abroad, had a stroke and was seriously ill. At the same time her own father was terminally ill and in hospice care. She was torn between travelling with her husband and child, and spending the last few precious days with her dad, who was an amazing father, a man of integrity who spoke his mind.
He felt that her place was with her husband and child. His promise to her if she made the decision to travel was, “Go, and I will try to be here when you get back.” He kept that promise. The day after she returned, he died.
Trust is fragile and easily destroyed. We all know that people lie. Some lie by omission when they conceal, censor and withhold information. Some tell little white lies. Others believe that certain lies are acceptable, but not fake news. I’ve known families who hide, censor and conceal so much information that they no longer remember what is true and accurate.
Even when the motivation is positive, the uncomfortable truth for all of us is that trust is broken if we’re wondering who or what to believe. There is absolutely
nothing anyone can do to repair the damage when someone betrays our trust.
The best advice I heard about how not to feel guilty about my own past mistakes, came from poet and philosopher Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. When you know better do better.”
Backin the day, we could more or less presume that any wedding or funeral celebrated in a Catholic church was intended for, and attended by, Catholics. But times have changed. Increasingly, people who attend are not active members of the church.
As a pastoral musician, I consider it a privilege to meet with families who are arranging the music for their wedding or the funeral of a loved one. I’m becoming more aware of the importance of that interaction with them, because for them, church is a foreign place. The truth is that to many people, the sacraments (also including baptism) are no longer familiar rituals. Purely ‘Catholic’ funerals are becoming increasingly rare. Congregations at weddings and funerals are diverse, comprising Catholics, nonpractising Catholics, Christians of other denominations, people of other faiths and people who have no faith at all. People attending might be apprehensive, reluctant, even fearful and the liturgy is likely to be a new experience. This presents us with fresh challenges, which can’t be ignored, but the worst thing we can do is nothing. The church needs, with urgency, to seize the opportunities presented, to welcome and to evangelise.
Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. (Rom 12:13-16)
In any walk of life, the welcome we receive leaves a lasting impression. A smile and a few friendly words can make all the difference. Pope Francis pulled no punches when he said, “We must recognise that if part of our baptised people lack a sense of belonging to the Church, this is also due to certain structures and the occasionally unwelcoming atmosphere of some of our parishes and communities.” (Evangeli
Gaudium 63)We aren’t members of a private club – quite the reverse! Our welcome is necessary and crucial. It starts with simple things like the way the parish phone is answered. In church, it involves saying “hello and welcome”, giving out orders of service, opening doors and indicating the toilets. It might include showing latecomers to their place and helping with the procession at the preparation of the gifts.
It is also essential that these helpers show by example that they are part of the worshipping community. They might be the first encounter someone has ever had with a member of the Catholic Church. How they respond and behave might determine whether or not a person decides to join the church. And the welcome must be for everyone! Christ’s focus was always on those on the margins of society. We must never look at people and think they don’t need a kind word and a smile. The ministry of welcome is more important than ever!
How hospitable is our parish?
Does our welcome reflect the Christian message?
Do we lead by example?
Do we provide opportunities for visitors to take away information; leaflets, prayer cards, etc?
It’s very challenging for a presider to cope with a congregation for whom even being in a church building might be alien. And there isn’t an easy answer, but there are lots of things we can do. Firstly, the church community can help by being an active part of the congregation, responsible for leading the postures, gestures, responses and singing. In my parish, funerals are generally at the usual midday Mass, so there is always a good number of regular worshippers. This helps enormously. If this isn’t possible, some guidance is needed from the priest. This might even be a good time to restore the role of commentator. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal still refers to this role, but it was really intended for post-Vatican II Masses where the congregation needed direction.
The commentator… provides the faithful briefly with explanations and exhortations so as to direct their attention to the celebration and ensure that they are better disposed for understanding it. The commentator’s remarks should be thoroughly prepared and notable for their restraint. In performing this function the commentator stands in a suitable place within sight of the faithful, but not at the ambo.
(GIRM 105)Though not its original intention, this is just what such liturgical celebrations need. Note that comments should be brief (very brief!) and not left to chance. It would be worth local bishops’ conferences or dioceses giving guidance on the wording. An order of service is also useful in this situation and reduces the need for spoken words. Written explanations can be really helpful.
I’ve been at too many weddings and funerals where people were left standing because no one told or showed them what to do. I also hear a lot of “please sit or kneel, whatever you are most comfortable with.” Are we not brave enough to ask people to kneel because we are at the most important and solemn part of our service?
One thing we seem to be getting right is the invitation to communion. It’s important to explain that practising Catholics may receive, and others are very welcome to come forward for a blessing. I see many approaching for a blessing, which is a good sign that the invitation works.
Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. (Col 4:2)
It would also be pastorally appropriate, on such occasions, to give a personal welcome to those most closely involved. Mentioning people by name shows care and concern which are crucial at such emotional times in our lives. This can be extended to those who are reading, who should also receive guidance and reassurance beforehand.
The homily, in addition to being crucial in explaining the Scriptures, is a perfect
opportunity to make the liturgy personal, relevant and meaningful, and to explain what we believe and how our faith is relevant in our lives. People say that religion is immaterial in the modern world and of course we know differently, but rarely have the chance to say why. This is a golden opportunity to reach out to people who might otherwise never step into a Catholic church. Pope Francis says:
The homily can actually be an intense and happy experience of the Spirit, a consoling encounter with God’s word, a constant source of renewal and growth… it has special importance due to its eucharistic context: it surpasses all forms of catechesis as the supreme moment in the dialogue between God and his people which lead up to sacramental communion.
(Evangelii Gaudium, 135)It can make or break a service! The homily must be directed to those who are listening; it must explain simply and clearly; it must use words that people understand and be short and to the point – a difficult but desperately important task.
The prayers of the faithful are another way of personalising the celebration in an appropriate way. They can include intentions for family members who have died, those who have cared for the deceased or helped the married couple in a significant way, and meaningful causes that are close to their hearts. They can also mention local and world events that might be relevant.
There are other, more practical issues that can spoil a celebration. The microphones (especially radio mics) should be tested to make sure everyone can hear clearly, the heating should be on and there should be enough orders of service or hymn books.
Responsibility for all of this can’t just lie with the parish priest and a small group of faithful welcomers. We all have a role to play in creating evangelising communities, and that comes firstly through prayer and reflection on Scripture. Faith and trust in the Holy Spirit is essential. Pope Benedict XVI said, “the true activity comes from God and only by inserting ourselves into the divine initiative, only begging for this divine initiative, shall we too be able to become – with him and in him – evangelisers.” We must strive to be good disciples and then we must go out and make disciples of others.
Does our parish community know what it is to evangelise?
Do we reflect the love of Christ in our words and actions to visitors?
Someone said evangelism will never be comfortable or convenient. In our parish, are we going the extra mile?
At weddings and funerals, we are presented with an amazing opportunity to show and explain how Christ is waiting for everyone to know him, and also how the liturgy is the source and summit of our lives, in grief and celebration. Both clergy and laity should be chomping at the bit to evangelise and to spread the Good News!
Do we call people by their name?
Is the funeral/wedding homily directed to its listeners?
Are visitors guided appropriately through the liturgy and made to feel included?
An evangelising community is filled with joy; it knows how to rejoice always. It celebrates every small victory, every step forward in the work of evangelisation. Evangelisation with joy becomes beauty in the liturgy, as part of our daily concern to spread goodness. The Church evangelises and is herself evangelised through the beauty of the liturgy, which is both a celebration of the task of evangelisation and the source of her renewed self-giving.
(Evangelii Gaudium 24)In1865, the global head of the Redemptorist congregation met with Pope Pius IX and was given the commission to “make her known”. The woman referred to is Mary, under the title of ‘Our Mother of Perpetual Help’, whose original icon is located in our Redemptorist church in Rome. To “make her known” meant to propagate devotion to the said image, and our efforts over the decades, including my own meagre ones, have reaped a plentiful harvest.
The picture is both simple and solemn, but ultimately revelatory of the unbreakable dedication of Jesus to God’s will. It depicts Mary cradling the infant Jesus and is a lovely portrayal of mother and child – surely one of life’s most intimate and peaceful scenes. Psalm 130:2 sums it up nicely: “As a child has rest in its mother’s arms, even so my soul.”
Yet there is a dark side to this lovely image; its solemnity or gravity lies in the presence of two archangels at either side of the couple, holding between them the implements of the adult Jesus’ passion and death: a spear (which pierced his side) and a sponge (the wine offered to the dying Jesus), a
cross and nails. The infant is given a foretaste of his future suffering and death, and how does he respond? In his fright, he grasps tighter onto his mother, but cannot prevent one of his sandals from slipping, due to a nervous shaking of his foot. As an infant, understandably fearful, but as an adult, he faced down those fears and uttered some of the most powerful and hallowed words ever spoken: “Father, you can remove this cup of suffering from me. However, not my will, but yours be done” (Mk 14:36).
Mary looks out at us, with an expression of the utmost sadness, for had she not heard the prediction of Simeon, that a sword would pierce her soul, on account of her son’s mission? (Lk 2:35). She is given the title ‘Mother of Perpetual Help’ because, as she was a refuge to her infant son in his moment of anxious fright, so she will provide solace for us when we face life’s cruelties, absurdities and inhumanities.
Devotions vary from country to country; in the Philippines the weekly novena is held on Wednesdays and draws truly
massive crowds, especially in Manila and Cebu, with devotions continuing from early morning until the evening. The annual fiesta, then, is held in June – in Manila always on the 27th, in Cebu on the nearest Sunday. That fiesta day is quite special, yet it is preceded by many days of preparation.
Apart from nine days of devotions in the church, much paperwork has to be done: a permit is needed to have a citywide procession; requests for police presence mostly for traffic control; paramedics, in case of any emergencies, especially due to the crowds and the intense heat; reminders are sent to various groups associated with the event (schools, bands, fraternities like the Rotary Club and others). Early on the fiesta day, the vans and the sound systems need to be readied. The various statues need to be cleaned and placed on their
wagons. Apart from the regular Sunday Masses, there is a pontifical Mass with the local bishop and other ecclesial bigwigs, followed by a festive lunch in the monastery refectory and along many corridors, so large is the crowd. There is also a packed takeaway lunch for many hundreds of parishioners coming from a somewhat lower rung on the social ladder – which does seem to be somewhat inconsistent with the Lord’s teaching on organising a party: “When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” (Lk 14:12-15)
At 3pm, the crowd begins to gather for the procession, which will become a massive sea of people wending its way along the
27 MARKS THE FEAST DAY OF OUR MOTHER OF PERPETUAL HELP. DEVOTIONS VARY FROM COUNTRY TO COUNTRY, BUT THE ANNUAL FIESTA IN CEBU DRAWS HUGE CROWDS
streets of uptown Cebu (the country’s second city). The entire event is another truly magical occasion. Wagons, pulled and pushed by eager devotees, carry images of Our Lady as well as some of our congregation’s saints (Alphonsus, Gerard) and saints popular in the country (San Isidro, patron of farmers, and St Anthony of Padua). At the start of the procession, bands from various colleges in the city take up their positions. Festooned in colourful attire, they will play hymns in between the mysteries of the Rosary which are broadcast from vans, placed at various points in the slowmoving sea of humanity. Students from the various nursing schools in the city (some of whom work in Ireland now) gather by school, instantly identifiable by their distinctive, starched uniforms.
At 4pm the head marshal gives
the signal: the Rosary begins, the first wagon moves off and the crowd follows. Intrepid vendors mingle among the people selling two items: candles and water. The latter is necessary in the intense humidity of late June; the former will be lit around sunset and the effect will be truly mesmerising. As the human tide moves along the streets, many families watch from their homes and set up little altars for the occasion. We cross a major boulevard, but because the procession is always held on a Sunday, traffic is light. We pass a fire station, an expensive private hospital, a cheaper public, government hospital, then we arrive at a major intersection, a rotunda in fact, the Fuente Osmeña (named after a local political family). It is now dusk (of short duration, because the Philippines is quite near the Equator) and the candles are lit;
furthermore, the lights on each wagon are switched on (generatorpowered).
From the Fuente (literally: fountain), the street dips downwards and extends for half a mile, as we move towards the end of our solemn walk. The sight of the procession from the Fuente is truly beautiful in its serenity: amidst the balmy, tropical dusk, the shimmer of the candles and wagon lights, from a distance of a couple of hundred yards, could hardly evoke anything apart from the magnificent, world-changing line of John’s Gospel: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness could not overcome it.”
(Jn 1:5)
It reminds me of an incident some years ago in a rather remote village in the hills of Negros, called Uwakan (‘the place of the crows’).
In one townland of the sprawling area, I had visited the 18 houses scattered among the hills, and
then later that evening a few of the adults gathered for our prayer meeting (singing and sharing about the Gospel and life). There was fog as thick as pea-soup and no electricity in the area. There we were with our Manila-paper hymns hanging on pegs and our rechargeable flashlights straining against the surrounding, enveloping darkness; the atmosphere was somewhat dull. Then, lo and behold! A voice from the outer darkness: “We have arrived!” Well, it was reminiscent of the Gospel cry “The bridegroom has arrived.” It was the moment to re-think our reality: not darknessengulfed, but promise-expecting. The voice came from one of a group of 15, from another part of Uwakan, at least 45 minutes’ walk over hills and dales, in pitch-black darkness, in the dead of night. One of the men had a hurricane lamp, a most welcome addition to our gloomy assembly. It saturated the encroaching darkness with a luminosity that enlightened our hearts and our gathering for the next two hours. And then around 9pm the 15 ‘prayer warriors’ set off again to return to their homes. As I walked to the house where I was staying (ten minutes away), I could see the glow of the hurricane lamp as the group wound its way over the hills: “the darkness could not overcome the light.”
If you listen to any of U2’s albums you will hear stories that are about grief, faith and justice. Lead singer Paul Hewson, a.k.a. Bono, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. both lost their mothers during their teenage years. In 1976, just over a year after Bono’s mother died, the band had its first meeting in the kitchen of Larry’s family home. About ten teenagers turned up to audition. Adam Clayton talked himself into the set-up by claiming he could play bass – which he couldn’t – and Dave Evans, a.k.a. The Edge, and his brother Dik, got in because they had built their own guitar and were the only ones who knew how to work an amp. Initially, the group were known as ‘Feedback’, then later, after a year or so, the name changed to ‘The Hype’, and eventually, when Dik left, and five became four, they settled on the name U2. A close friend of the band had suggested the name based on the fact that on May 1, 1960 (ten days before Bono was born) a USA U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces deep inside Soviet territory. There were other suggestions too, but the
band choose U2 and the rest is history. In their successful career to date, many of their songs have explored personal stories and experiences of grief, faith and interpersonal/political issues concerning justice. In this article, I will explore these themes in a number of songs from the early, middle and most recent periods of their career.
Bono was just 14 when his mother died at the graveside of her own father’s funeral. It was a shocking and life-changing experience of grief that he has written about many times. Take ‘Iris’, a song named after his mother on Songs of Innocence (2014). It reflects on his earliest memories of her, which are intertwined with his grief over her death.
The ache in my heart
Is so much a part
Of who I am.
Iris standing in the hall
She tells me I can do it all
Iris playing on the strand
She buries the boy beneath the sand
These lines show the impact his
memories of her have on him, even 40 years after her death. Another song that deals with his mother’s death is ‘I Will Follow’ from the band’s debut album Boy (1980). Written from the perspective of Bono’s mother, the song explores what he understands as “the unconditional love a mother has for her child”. The chorus captures this with the lines:
an upturned bicycle, and bottles falling over and smashing on the ground, all of which make what Bono called “the underlying instrumental colouring” of the song. It also sounds like four teenagers trying to keep a house party under control.
A boy tries hard to be a man
His mother takes him by his hand
If he stops to think, he starts to cry
Oh, why?
Even though she is no longer with him, he wants her to follow him. The song opens with two notes played repeatedly on guitar accompanied with syncopated drums and random notes played on a glockenspiel. If you listen on a good pair of headphones you will hear in the background sounds of cutlery rubbing against the spokes of a spinning wheel of
In all of this organised musical chaos, a boy misses his mother and longs for her to follow him. It is as if he is telling himself in his grief that it is okay because he believes she will look after him. For Bono, it seems that the flipside of grief is faith, and this idea is evident across all of the band’s albums.
FAITH
This undercurrent of faith is evident in ‘Gloria’, the opening
The grief that is expressed in so many U2 songs usually ends up staring itself or God in the face and asking ‘why?’
track on October (1981). The chorus, sung in Latin, with a reference to Psalm 30:2, is a shout of faith to God after the singer confesses his incompleteness in music and fame and recognises, with reference to Colossians 2:9-10, that only in God is he complete.
I try to sing this song
I, I try to stand up
But I can’t find my feet
I try, I try to speak up
But only in you I’m complete.
Gloria, in te domine
Gloria, exultate
Gloria, gloria
Oh Lord, loosen my lips.
In the second verse, there is an interesting reference to doorways
(James 5:7-9). Again, Bono is trying to sing his way through something, but has a block of sorts which is only resolved in a gesture of hospitality from God.
I try to sing this song
I, I try to get in
But I can’t find the door
The door is open
You’re standing there
You let me in.
There is an immediacy between
Bono and God in ‘Gloria’ that is almost identical to that between the boy and his mother in ‘I Will Follow’. Both songs are about searching for connection, for support, for hope and for love. In these songs the band are realising that life is difficult, it is supposed to be difficult, and we never make it through the difficulty on our own. U2 were singing in the early 1980s about what Karl Rahner had named over ten years earlier in one of his interviews:
I am convinced that such an immediacy between God and the human person... is of greater significance today than ever before. All the societal supports of religion are collapsing and dying out in this secularized and pluralistic society.
If, nonetheless, there is to be real Christian spirituality, it cannot be kept alive and healthy by external helps, not even those which the Church offers, even of a sacramental kind...but only through an ultimate, immediate encounter of the individual with God.
For U2, and for Rahner, God is experienced often unknowingly in our ordinary and everyday life. The first way that we can
experience God is through our stories and our experiences, our beliefs and our questions, all of which take place in the mystery of who we are.
However, the band’s songs are not just about experiencing God at the level of interiority. For U2, faith is rooted in a communal action of protest for justice.
The last track on The Joshua Tree (1987), ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’, is a lament about the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a group of Argentinian women whose children were forcibly disappeared by the Argentinian military government in the 1970s and 1980s.
Midnight, our sons and daughters
Cut down, taken from us
Hear their heartbeat
We hear their heartbeat.
In the wind we hear their laughter
In the rain we see their tears
Hear their heartbeat
We hear their heartbeat.
The children were young people who had opposed the
government during the so-called Dirty War in Argentina. Bono could relate to these mothers from his own experience of losing his own mother when he was a boy. The grief that is expressed in so many U2 songs usually ends up staring itself or God in the face and asking ‘why?’ Take ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ the opening track from War (1983). It is known for its signature militaristic drumbeat introduction, harsh guitar riffs and electric violins. The band have always stressed that it not a so-called rebel song, but it is political. The song describes the horrific events during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, primarily focusing on the 1972 Bloody Sunday incident in Derry where British troops shot and killed unarmed civil rights protesters. Commenting on the song, the band’s drummer, Larry Mullen Jr., said that the band are “into the politics of people”.
You know people are dying every single day through bitterness and hate, and we’re saying why? What’s the point? And you can move that into places like El Salvador and other similar situations – people dying!
And this song could easily be about the war in Ukraine as we hear more and more disturbing news each passing day.
I can’t believe the news today
Oh, I can’t close my eyes and make it go away
How long, how long must we sing this song?
How long? How long?
Broken bottles under children’s feet
Bodies strewn across the dead-end street
But I won’t heed the battle call It puts my back up, puts my back up against the wall.
This song is a protest for justice. The question “how long must we sing this song?” expresses frustration at history repeating itself, or what Pope Francis calls “the end of historical consciousness”. In Fratelli Tutti (2020) the pope critiques a deconstructionism whereby the modern idea of human freedom claims to create everything from zero which results in a growing loss of the sense of history. The pope offers the younger
generations of the world the following advice:
If someone tells young people to ignore their history, to reject the experiences of their elders, to look down on the past and to look forward to a future that he himself holds out, doesn’t it then become easy to draw them along so that they only do what he tells them? He needs the young to be shallow, uprooted and distrustful, so that they can trust only in his promises and act according to his plans. That is how various ideologies operate: they destroy (or deconstruct) all differences so that they can reign unopposed.
The danger of such a society is that everyone ends up wilfully blinding themselves to reality and to the possibility of genuinely thinking for themselves. ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, for its part, calls out this attitude of cultural indifference and hood-winking:
And it’s true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality.
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while
tomorrow they die.
The song is not without hope, however, and the chorus sings about the possibility of peace and unity:
‘Cause tonight we can be as one, tonight Tonight, tonight Tonight, tonight Alright, let’s go Wipe the tears from your eyes Wipe your tears away.
There is an urgency in these songs to protect hope for oneself and for others. Bono has often said that the death of his mother inspired him to become a rock star. To deal with his grief he decided to sing about it. “I didn’t know at the time, as I filled it with music. I became an artist through her absence and I owe her for that. I thought the rage I had was a part of rock ‘n’ roll but the rage was grief.” In many of U2’s songs, as is often the case in life, the other side of grief is a faith that is realised in a community of individuals working together to create a better world for everyone.
In these songs the band are realising that life is difficult, it is supposed to be difficult, and we never make it through the difficulty on our own.
In this series, contributors reflect on their understanding of God and how it
Untilmy mid-20s, my idea of God was of the old white man in the sky, with a long beard, who could see absolutely everything about me. It wasn’t until a nun asked me “Do you ever pray – and I don’t mean just saying the Hail Mary?” that I began to reassess that image.
My faith life had been a patchwork of true faith when in primary school, to the teenage angst of off-again on-again belief, to a healthier scepticism about the meaning of life and what to trust.
And yet the fear remained that somehow God did see my every move; that this mostly old guy, often wielding a stick, was just waiting, suspended up there above the cumulous, to catch me out the minute I stepped out of line. The notion of a God who set me up for failure was hard to shift. I considered myself mature in my mid-20s and yet this was the God I believed in sporadically, but convinced at other instances that such an entity couldn’t possibly exist.
Thus, for a nun to say “And I don’t mean Hail Marys” was, to me, almost bordering on blasphemy. It was a shock, as I had been educated by fully veiled nuns in habits, figures who were authoritarian and distant. They didn’t exude common sense or speak in ordinary language.
That moment of questioning my prayer life was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with that nun, and a lifelong adventure between me and my God. Firstly, the nun loaned me The Cloud of Unknowing, which was another eyeopener. I was lucky to work with her for about 12 months, which allowed time for many discussions about God, Scripture and the Mass. This nudged my understanding of God to a greater maturity.
It also was timely as I’d always been a curious and, hopefully, non-judgemental person. In the past when opportunities had arisen to speak to people who weren’t raised Catholic,
God, life, death, and the whole meaning of the universe.
So, you could say that by my mid-twenties God had well prepared the ground of my being for the ‘Cloud of Unknowing’. All along, God put people in my path and planned that I would come to experience him on a different level. My know-it-all self of that period was completely unprepared for this God, the authentic one, to play any part in my life.
I’d relished them. So, the Jehovah’s Witnesses weren’t sent packing when they rang my bell at a bedsit in the city. They were welcomed in, given tea, and pestered with questions. None of the answers convinced me of the existence of God. But these interactions did show an eagerness to know more about religion and faith.
Later, I worked with a woman of great faith. A ward sister on a very busy, intense male medical ward, she was a committed Baptist. While she never evangelised or proselytised, she did speak of her conviction of God at work in her life. Again, my innate curiosity meant I peppered her with questions about
It was hard to admit I didn’t have all the answers, that I was but a novice on the road to knowing God. I began attending daily Mass and communion. I had the enormous privilege of living near a small community of nuns who invited me to join them for daily Mass. Again, this was another revelation. Gathered around an ordinary kitchen table, practically within touching distance of the elevated host, made the ceremony very real and concrete. I find it hard to put in words what that experience was like.
Instead of half paying attention, or almost dozing off during Mass, as had been my norm, I now listened to the words and to the prayers as they were offered up. From then onwards, God became an active and real part of my life.
‘Me and my God’ is something I thought would be simple and straightforward to write about. But when it came to siting down and
When peers and colleagues and friends ask “But what about the scandals, the abuses, the laundries?” sometimes I’m just flummoxed and unable to answer.Mary Rose McCarthy
has evolved.
doing it, the realisation dawned that it’s not something I have ever put a structured, coherent narrative on. Articulating clearly who and what God is in my life is not my strong point. I far prefer listening to others’ stories rather than talk about myself.
One of the stumbling blocks in speaking about God is that my version of God is different each day, depending on which version of myself wakes in the morning. When life is running smoothly, the sun is shining and there are no reports on Morning Ireland of any atrocities, it is easy to see God everywhere. Each bird song, or piece of music on Lyric FM, or smile of the checkout person in Aldi, are all signifiers that “God’s in his heaven and all is right with the world.”
On days that begin with rain and wind, and rejections for writing projects in my inbox, the doubts that are never far below the surface raise their ugly heads. The headlines are full of atrocities, and it is easy to question what kind of God could allow such misery and suffering.
Many days I disagree with him and argue with him as I might a friend. Our conversations are usually one way, me doing much giving out. His response: silence. Sometimes it seems like he’s on holiday or is taking time out. But never have I doubted the faith I formed back in my 20s that keeps me practising as a Catholic through all the upheavals and scandals the church in Ireland and around the world has faced.
But just like the little child who wanted ‘God with skin on’, there are moments in life when something more tangible is needed than words translated from Greek. Those are the moments when the sublime majesty of poetry, good music, nature and birds resonate – not in words but in something deeper and more interior. In the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, “for all this… there lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” I’m never sure if Hopkins is referring to green shoots in the garden or inner human growth. I like to interpret it as both.
In an increasingly secular world, it is sometimes hard to defend why I remain a practising Catholic. When peers and colleagues and friends ask “But what about the scandals, the abuses, the laundries?” sometimes I’m just flummoxed and unable to answer. On those occasions I feel defensive and somehow as if I’m not being asked about my own faith but to justify atrocities that should never have been committed.
Secular society now seems to think that the church is a punchbag, that anyone associated with church can be shouted down, jeered or held culpable for the sins of the fathers.
The simple answer is: I believe in God because there is no other explanation for the beauty of nature, for the song of the collared dove, for the spine-tingling sound of mixedvoice choral choirs.
Recently, I sat with a book in the warm April sunshine. Goldfinches appeared almost beside me. They seemed oblivious to my existence, and I remained immobile for minutes in their company. It reminded me of the sacredness of being near the elevated host. In a different way, the feeding birds were God manifest right in front me.
The late evening rays illumined them as they bobbed and ate and checked for predators. The red band around their heads glowed iridescent in the sun. There is no language to convey that colour, highlighted by the solar rays. That, to me, is God.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Having gone round in circles living in London, Sierra Leone and Dublin, Mary Rose McCarthy is now back where she started in West Cork. She has worked in a variety of social and health care settings and is an award-winning short story writer and journalist. She writes in an attempt to make sense of the world.
Probablybest known for his novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2006), which was made into a successful film, John Boyne has also written about the negative influence of Catholicism on his life from an early age. Being gay in an all-boys school, Terenure College, in the 1980s, the writer described how he was molested by a lay teacher (not the convicted paedophile John McClean, whose trial in 2021 brought to light his decades of abuse in the same school), after which he was left with “a complicated, unhealthy relationship towards sex that continues to this day”. In a hard-hitting Irish Times article published in November 2014, Boyne noted how he was drawn into the orbit of the Catholic Church when he became an altar boy and witnessed how superficial the faith of many of those attending church services was: “….[I]t was rare to find true believers. Everyone knew which priests offered the shortest Masses and the briefest sermons, and no one ever told the truth at confession.” Worse than that, however, was the marginalisation of homosexuals by a church that purported to be continuing the work of Christ: “It’s not easy to be a young, gay teenager and to be told that you’re sick, mentally disordered or in need of electroshock therapy, particularly when you
hear it from someone who groped you on the way to class the day before.”
The points raised by Boyne are completely valid and capture the hurt experienced by many from the position of the Catholic Church in relation to homosexuality, which it has portrayed as deviant, “disordered”, unclean and sinful. Expressing anger at that position in a newspaper article is perfectly acceptable, but there are times when in his fictional portrayal of Catholicism, Boyne
someone who has lived in a clerical bubble for far too long, with the result that he fails to question his role as a Christian witness in society or the actions of his fellow priests. He is aware of the antipathy that exists towards men of the cloth when they are seen in public in the wake of the revelations surrounding clerical sex abuse: “To be among crowds while wearing my (Roman) collar could be a demoralising experience.”
lacks the objectivity and impartiality that are hallmarks of good literature and tends to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’, a ‘cardinal’ sin for a novelist, if you’ll excuse the pun.
A History of Loneliness was published in 2014 and shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year, which is an indication of the widespread critical acclaim it received. The novel recounts the career of a Fr Odhran Yates, a man who could scarcely be described as a monster. Rather, he is shown to be
But the inability or refusal to confront the reality that one of his closest friends in Clonliffe seminary, Tom Cardle, was a paedophile ends up in the latter abusing Yates’ nephew, who will carry the scars of that horrific experience throughout his life. In his attempt to assuage the guilt he feels about this, Yates poses the following question: “And who, in 1980, ever had cause to distrust a priest?” The response is quite simple: it is incumbent on us all to be vigilant, especially when one has the type of knowledge of a person’s failings and leanings as Yates had of his fellow seminarian. But Yates was a product of clericalism and groupthink, someone who put the church’s reputation and his own standing as a priest on a pedestal:
The fact is that I was a believer. I believed in God, in the Church, in the power of Christianity to
“You knew it, you kept it secret and this whole conspiracy that everyone talks about, the one that goes to the top of the Church, well it goes to the bottom of it too, to the nobodies like you, to the fella that never even had a parish of his own and hides away from the world, afraid to be spotted.”
promote a better world. I believed that the priesthood was a noble calling, a profession filled by decent men who wanted to propagate kindness and charity. I believed that the Lord had chosen me for a reason. I didn’t have to search for this faith, it was simply a part of me. And it would never change.
But change it did, and not for the better. Moved from the comfortable leafy suburbs of Terenure College to work in a parish, Fr Yates begins to despair about what the future might hold for him and his fellow priests. The ‘noble calling’ which had inspired his initial vocation slowly gave way to disillusionment, as he began to see that there was a disconnect between his vision of church and the lived reality for many people, including priests. As a young boy he was marked by the abuse he endured at the hands of a priest who had been invited into the house by Yates’ mother, worried that the attraction he was feeling for a young girl in the neighbourhood might pose a threat to his vocation. Although he unsuccessfully struggled to erase the abuse from his memory, it regularly came back to haunt him: “There he was; he was standing next to me now, his foul breath in my ear, his arm around my shoulder, pulling me to him, his hands tugging at my pants, reaching inside. I pressed my hands against my ears. He was there. He was all over me.”
The powerlessness he felt in terms of revealing this exploitation to anyone – his pious mother in all likelihood would not have believed him, nor would the police or any others he may have approached – is matched by Odhran’s failure to share his suspicions about Tom Cardle’s proclivities. Strangely, he goes to collect him when Cardle is released from prison after serving his sentence for child abuse.
Cardle blames the training in Clonliffe for imbuing in him a feeling of unworthiness: “They told me everything that made me human was shameful and dirty,” he says in an attempt to exculpate himself. It’s clear that he is unrepentant and far from grateful to his ‘friend’ for the support he is offering him. He
even goes so far as to accuse Odhran of imperilling his nephew by allowing Cardle to stay in his sister’s house the night of their mother’s funeral, thus allowing him access to the unsuspecting boy. He continues:
“You knew it, you kept it secret and this whole conspiracy that everyone talks about, the one that goes to the top of the Church, well it goes to the bottom of it too, to the nobodies like you, to the fella that never even had a parish of his own and hides away from the world, afraid to be spotted. You can blame me all you like, Odhran, and you’d be right to, because I’ve done some terrible things in my life. But do you ever think of taking a good look at yourself? At your own actions? At the Grand Silence that you’ve maintained from the very first day?”
These lines are closer to a public pronouncement on the part of the novelist than a realistic exchange between the two priests. For that reason, I would lean towards the view expressed by Fr Martin Boland in The Irish Times (November 14, 2015), who began his critique of A History of Loneliness with the following warning:
Please pray for the novelist who attempts to create a priest character. He needs our prayers if he is to avoid resorting to hackneyed stereotypes of pantomime villain caricatures. The challenge, strewn with traps and pitfalls, is to portray a truly convincing priest, a man who lives out a deep interior reality.
‘THE GENUINE PRIEST’ Priest characters offer great possibilities for the novelist in terms of the potential drama provided by their struggle with tortured souls and their own quest for salvation (authors such as Georges Bernanos, Graham Greene and Edwin O’Connor immediately spring to mind in this context). However, there is also the danger of falling into the trap of hagiography or demonisation. To do the subject justice requires a full understanding of the clerical function and all that it entails.
According to Boland, Boyne’s Fr Yates is never allowed to mature into a fully rounded person: “As a priest character, he is spiritually stunted. There is no sense that this man has
a vocation, that he is a priest who, in all his human frailty, is nevertheless sustained by the imperceptible movements of grace.”
While part of me accepts this evaluation, I also believe that Boyne was actually sincere in saying that his desire was to write a novel about “the other priest, the genuine priest, the one who has given his life over to good works and finds himself betrayed by the institution to which he has given everything.”
I wonder how many priests ministering in Ireland today experience the “imperceptible moments of grace” spoken of by Boland. It is possible that Boland’s own clerical status impinges on his impartiality in this regard. After all, it would take a novelist of the stature of Bernanos or Greene to put into the world flawed priests who accede to those moments of deep spiritual revelation that can turn them into saints.
For Boland, Yates is ‘Godless’, whereas for Boyne he is a victim of the institutional church to which he has given his life. For me, the answer lies between these two positions. Yates too often becomes a vehicle for the novelist to pronounce on issues that are close to his heart (most particularly clerical sex abuse and the gross mishandling of same by the Catholic hierarchy), but the absence of any real inner life or empathy for his fellow human beings renders Boyne’s character largely uninteresting, and somewhat stilted at times. Whereas the subject matter of A History of Loneliness contains within it the germ of a very worthwhile novel, on balance it falls somewhat short of the task it sets itself. Notwithstanding, it is still a most interesting and readable book.
Taking
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BELFAST MAN DAVID O’HARE, TRÓCAIRE’S COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER, RECENTLY VISITED ZIMBABWE WHERE HE SAW THE DEVASTATING IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND COVID-19 ON COMMUNITIES
BY DAVID O’HARELife is a daily struggle for mother-of-two, Thandekile, and her community in the Bulawayo region in southwest Zimbabwe. The community was already struggling to provide for their families because of the disastrous effects of climate change and the challenges of COVID-19. But the situation has become much worse. Most of the people in the region depend on rain-fed agriculture to feed their families. The latest rains have failed. Instead of fields full of maize and other crops ready to be harvested, when I was there, there were vast swathes of stunted or dead plants.
“It’s going to be a very difficult year ahead,” the 32-year-old widow told me when I met her on my visit to the southern African country. “I was given some land by my late husband’s uncle and I was growing groundnuts, sorghum, millet, maize and melons. Now it looks like I will only harvest two or three bags
of the grains and some melons. I would usually be expecting a yield of twelve bags,” Thandekile told me.
I saw at first hand the challenges facing people and the supports Trócaire and our partners are providing to help overcome these challenges.
The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned of an impending food crisis in the country after global and regional food prices spiked upwards following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And according to the Zimbabwe National Vulnerability Assessment Report, chronic malnutrition is already endemic throughout the country. An estimated 60 per cent of Zimbabweans – or 7.5 million people – face acute food insecurity. Basic food prices keep increasing to such an extent that most urban residents cannot afford to buy food.
With donations made in Ireland, north and
south, Trócaire is working with Thandekile’s community and many others in Zimbabwe to try to ensure that they are able to survive these latest shocks.
Thandekile’s community benefits from a community garden which has been funded by Trócaire and sees each family able to cultivate four beds each. We have installed a solar pump that ensures the garden is kept irrigated despite the lack of rain. Thandekile said that she has been able to grow kale, spinach, beetroot, tomatoes and carrots.
“This means that the children are able to eat a more balanced diet and I even have some produce left over to sell. If we didn’t have the garden, things would be even more difficult for us,” she told me.
Several other projects can be seen in the
village. Hleziphi Nkomo (43), a farmer in Bidi, explains the ‘Mopane worm’ initiative. “Mopane worms are actually the large edible caterpillars of a species of emperor moth that feed on the leaves of the Mopane tree in this area. They are seen as a delicacy and fetch good money in the capital Harare. They are also a good source of protein here. We have an ongoing project supported by Trócaire that has enabled us to make the most of this natural resource.
“We are able to harvest the worms from the Mopane trees twice a year. Once they are cooked and dried we have been supported to package them and sell them direct to markets which means we are able to make more money for ourselves rather than it going to a middle-man. The money we make is so important as it means we have money to buy essentials for our families like cooking oil, salt, grains and schoolbooks for the children.”
Another initiative in Bidi is the village seed bank. Farmers have been able to sell any extra seeds they had to the ‘bank’ since it opened in 2019. It is managed by a committee made up of community members. The advantages of the seed bank are that the seeds are properly stored and so can last a lot longer compared
with storing them in inadequate containers at home. There is a quality control system in place and the seeds at the seed bank have received organic accreditation.
Fenita Mangwiro (57) is a single mother with six children and a member of the management committee, and she says the seed bank has made a huge difference. “A lot of the seeds are indigenous drought-resistant varieties. We have millet, sorghum, cow peas and many other varieties. Farmers who need seeds can come to the seed bank and know they are buying high quality seeds. The fact that the bank is here in the village means there are no transport costs and hence the price can be kept low. This is extremely important when farmers have lost crops because of the weather and have no seeds of their own to replant.”
Trócaire has also supported agricultural training in the village through a learning centre and savings and loan schemes. Lead farmers have been trained and provided with bicycles so they can travel around the local farms and pass on their knowledge.
“Now it looks like I will only harvest two or three bags of the grains and some melons. I would usually be expecting a yield of twelve bags.”
FIND
To find out more about Trócaire’s work visit www.trocaire.org
David interviews ThandekileThe amazing Mopane worm
WhenI was growing up, Hell was very much a part of our religious education. Missing Mass on Sunday, or entertaining an impure thought, or robbing £5 from a poor person were mortal sins (stealing from a rich person was only a venial sin!), which, if not confessed before you died, condemned you to Hell for all eternity.
The God that was taught to me was a God who is all-loving and all-caring, provided we do what God wants, but, if we fail to do so, then God’s anger would be aroused and we could be banished into Hell for all eternity, with no hope of repentance. Such a God is like an abusive partner (usually, but not always, a man) who uses violence, or the threat of violence, as the means of getting his partner to do what he wants. However, when she does what he wants, he becomes all loving and caring – this is the ‘loving phase’ of an abusive relationship. The person abused often comes to believe that they have justly earned the abuse by their own behaviour.
The existence of Hell was justified by various arguments, such as, we have justly earned it by our own behaviour; it is not God who has rejected us, it is we who have rejected God.
But we cannot be accused of rejecting something if we do not know what we are rejecting. And here on earth, our human concepts are incapable of knowing who God is, or how much God loves us. Imagine two
children looking up at the stars on a clear night. One child says, “I bet those stars are five miles away.” The other says, “Don’t be stupid, they must be ten miles away.” The children are trying to express the fact that the stars are a long way away. But they have no concept of 40,000,000,000,000 kilometres! So they use concepts,
reject the inadequate images of God which human concepts have created in our minds. We will only come to know God, and fully understand the love of God, when we finally meet God face to face, and the “cloud of unknowing” is removed. So instead of being forgiven after we have repented, perhaps we
five miles and ten miles, which, in their mind, mean ‘a long way away’. But these concepts are totally incapable of expressing how far away the stars are. So too, we are incapable of understanding God’s love, as it is infinitely greater than any human experience of love.
Between us and God, there is a “cloud of unknowing”. We cannot reject God; we can only
repent after we have come face to face with God, when we will then know and understand the infinite love and forgiveness of God.
A young homeless man once robbed €50 from me. When I discovered that he was the culprit, I confronted him. However, he refused to admit it. He was afraid that I would reject him and tell him I never wanted
to see him again. However, I told him that I knew it was him, but I was willing to forget about it and I hoped he wouldn’t rob me again. That young man became my most loyal supporter and promised to beat up anyone who would think of robbing me! I didn’t forgive him because he repented, he repented because he saw that he had been forgiven. To sin, then, is not to reject God, because we cannot reject God; to sin is to reject other people, to fail in love. In our criminal justice system, restorative justice is now widely recognised as a better way of addressing the harm inflicted by one person on another than assigning guilt and imposing punishment. It seeks to bring together the victim and offender in order to bring about healing. In restorative justice, people forgive and are forgiven. But to forgive and to be forgiven is at the heart of the Gospel and therefore is an indispensable characteristic of the Kingdom of God. “How often must I forgive?” asks Peter. “Not seven times but seventy times seven,” replies Jesus. Hell, then, is empty and does not need to exist.
For more information or to support the Peter McVerry Trust: www.pmvtrust.ie info@pmvtrust.ie +353(0)1 823 0776
Our readings from Romans and John’s Gospel offer a wonderful description of how the Holy Spirit can directly impact on our lives if we allow this to happen.
St Paul is very clear that the Spirit lives in us and this is not to be questioned. We are after all “heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” and therefore the implication is that the people of God are considered an inextricable part of this unity. The demand for us believers is to live by the Spirit, to live within the Spirit that has been given to us freely. Arising out of our witness to the Spirit, the Spirit will in turn give us life as it gave life to Jesus in
raising him from the dead. Then John’s Gospel presents us with the great promise of Jesus. We no longer need let our hearts be troubled by fear or anxiety, for the Spirit has been sent to us by a loving God. The context for Jesus’ promise, of course, is the recognition that there are testing times ahead for this group of followers. But the idea of an interactive relationship between God and his people is a new one. Up to this point, the faith of the people was very much hierarchical in nature. Staring up into the heavens, prayers were spoken and offerings were made. This Spirit of John’s Gospel encourages a reciprocal relationship between God and all believers: “love our Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father will love you in return.”
Today’s Readings
Acts 2:1-11; Ps 103; Rom 8:8-17; Jn 14:15-16. 23-26
The Gospel extract for our feast today is taken from Jesus’ final speech to his disciples, in which he promises that the Holy Spirit will assist them in reaching a deeper understanding of his teaching, He emphasises the unity between himself and the Father, a theme which has occurred before in John’s account. It may well mean that the Spirit will lead the disciples “into the very heart of all truth”: we remember that Jesus has described himself as “the way, the truth and the life”. Jesus is the Word of God, God’s most direct way of reaching out to human beings to invite us into a personal relationship, characterised by friendship.
When we think about the Holy Trinity, we talk about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. ‘Father’ and ‘Son’ are masculine terms and figures. ‘Spirit’ in the Hebrew Scriptures is feminine; in the Christian scriptures, it is neuter, neither masculine nor feminine. So, is
there perhaps something missing in our idea of the Godhead? We might recall that the most conservative writer in the book of Genesis points out – twice, in case we might miss the point – that God created woman in God’s image and likeness. So where is that teaching mirrored in our understanding of the Blessed Trinity? As we contemplate the mystery of the Holy Trinity, we might take this wider biblical perspective into account.
Today’s Readings
Prov 8:22-31; Ps 8; Rom 5:1-5; Jn 16:12-15
Jesus’ initial reaction to the arrival of the crowds is to welcome them, teach them and cure those in need of healing. There is no suggestion that the people concerned are actually hungry and the episode can be read, as all the ‘miracle’ stories can be understood, as symbolic, that is, that there is a deeper meaning to these actions of Jesus. The mention of twelve baskets reinforces this idea.
The way in which we refer to this incident is important: it is better to describe it as ‘the feeding of the crowds’ rather than ‘the multiplication of the loaves’. The latter phrase concentrates on the ‘miraculous’ aspect of the event, but the New Testament uses the expression ‘works of power’, emphasising that this is the power, the kingdom of God breaking into the lives of people in need. The scriptural background to this story is God’s providing food for the people of Israel during their journey through the wilderness from Egypt to the Promised Land: there is a hint about this in the disciples’ remark to Jesus that “we are in a desert place here”, rather than “a lonely place” as our text renders it. Jesus is thus echoing God’s concern by providing food for the people, and the disciples share in his ministry by distributing the bread to those present, who number five thousand men: interestingly, in his account of the same incident, Matthew adds “to say nothing of women and children”.
We might note how Luke describes Jesus’ actions: he takes the bread, says the blessing, breaks it and gives it: this is the language we find used at the Last Supper in connection with the institution of the Eucharist. The feeding of the crowds foreshadows the institution of the Eucharist, which, in its turn, anticipates the banquet in the final Messianic Kingdom.
SOLUTIONS CROSSWORD No. 3
Across: 1. Cherub, 5. Gdansk, 10. Gabriel, 11. Arugula, 12. Ibid, 13. Latin, 15. Snap, 17. Due, 19. Mosaic, 21. Kraken, 22. Tolstoy, 23. Adieus, 25. Isaiah, 28. Auk, 30. RSVP, 31. Adder, 32. Spur, 35. Walloon, 36. Leagues, 37. Ad-libs, 38. Remedy.
Down: 2. Hobbits, 3. Ruin, 4.
JUNE 26
13TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
One of the features of Luke’s narrative is the idea of Jesus journeying to Jerusalem, the place of his destiny and the achieving of God’s plan. In our Gospel reading today, Jesus is presented as setting out resolutely on the way to the holy city. The obvious route was through the region of Samaria, the mountainous area between Galilee in the north and Judea in the south, but this was inhabited by people whose claim to share Jewish identity was rejected by those who lived in the other parts of the country. Hence the hostility to pilgrims and travellers passing through on the way to Jerusalem and the refusal of hospitality to Jesus and his disciples. Earlier, Jesus had instructed his followers that, in the event of their being rejected in any town, they should leave and shake off the dust of the place from their feet as a sign to the citizens. James and John propose to copy the example of the prophet Elijah, who called down fire from heaven to devour the troops sent to arrest him, but Jesus shows that, although he may be a prophet in the line of Elijah, his method of dealing with hostility and rejection does not take violent form.
Jesus’ setting out on his journey is accompanied in our reading today by three somewhat uncompromising statements about the cost of being his disciple. This must take priority over any other consideration, either human comfort or ties of kinship.
Winner of Crossword No. 3 Billy
Today’s Readings
Kgs 19:16. 19-21; Ps 15; Gal 5:1. 13-18; Lk 9:51-62
ACROSS
1. He killed 1,000 Philistines with the jaw bone of a donkey. (6)
5. Hat, canal and country. (6)
10. Presented as an act of worship or devotion. (7)
11. Tornado and game or contortionists. (7)
12. Central parts of wheels and regions. (4)
13. Jesus changed his name from Simon. (5)
15. Relatively small in extent from one surface to the other. (4)
17. Lair or shelter of a wild animal. (3)
19. A wide street or thoroughfare. (6)
21. A form of the Hebrew name of God used in the Bible. (6)
22. German city known for china. (7)
23. Line with abrupt alternate right and left turns. (6)
25. Water nymphs in classical mythology. (6)
28. Employment for the nice guy with bad luck. (3)
30. Yearn for a coniferous tree. (4)
31. African country, formerly Dahomey. (5)
32. Move about aimlessly. (4)
35. People after which things are named. (7)
36. Angel who appeared to the Virgin Mary. (7)
37. A yacht named after medieval China. (6)
38. Gave off a strong offensive odour. (6)
DOWN
2. Friendly, good-natured and easy to talk to. (7)
3. Arrange systematically. (4)
4. Prodded gently with one’s elbow. (6)
5. Illicit Irish whiskey. (6)
6. For want of this a kingdom was lost in a rhyme. (4)
7. One of the Apostles. (7)
8. The sixth book of the Old Testament. (6)
9. A division of a tree. (6)
14. Mental or emotional strain. (7)
16. NE African country, capital is Khartoum/ (5)
18. Hackneyed, trite and boring. (5)
20. A unit of work or energy. (3)
21. A strong desire for Japanese currency. (3)
23. Slide fastener! (6)
24. Venetian canal boat. (7)
26. Undergo great mental pain through worrying about something. (7)
27. Small part intended to show what the whole is like. (6)
28. Knitted garment with long sleeves. (6)
29. Of greater size. (6)
33. A traditional or legendary story. (4)
34. A musical instrument that is shaped like a tube. (4)
Entry Form for Crossword No.5, June 2022
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Telephone: All entries must reach us by Friday May 24, 2022
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.5, Redemptorist
