Reality Magazine March 2022

QUIET SAINT: ST JOSEPH AND KNOCK

MARCH 2022

CARING FOR HIV VICTIMS IN BRAZIL

IRISH REDEMPTORIST CELEBRATES 100TH BIRTHDAY

INFORMING, INSPIRING, CHALLENGING TODAY’S CATHOLIC

ST PATRICK SEPARATING THE MAN FROM THE MYTH

ANSWERING THE CALL OF SERVICE

THE IRISH CHAPLAINCY LONDON AT 65

JOYFUL SEASON

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CELEBRATING THE SUNDAYS OF LENT

I N T P AT R I C

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IN THIS MONTH’S ISSUE FEATURES �� SAINT PATRICK The myths, the legends and his relevance today

By Patrick Comerford

18 A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS A tale of two encounters with Archbishop Eamon Martin

By John Scally

20 CELEBRATING THE SUNDAYS IN LENT The Sundays of Lent allow us to take a rest and remember what’s important

By Maria Hall

22 CARING FOR THE VICTIMS OF A CRUEL VIRUS Sr Margaret Hosty SSL has been caring for HIV/AIDS victims for over 25 years Interview by Anne Staunton and Pat O’Sullivan

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26 ANSWERING THE CALL OF SERVICE Marking 65 years of the Irish Chaplaincy in London

By Fr Gerry McFlynn

28 LETTER FROM THE PHILIPPINES A sport for everyone, whatever your passion!

By Colm Meaney CSsR

32 THE QUIET SAINT Knock Shrine and the central role of Joseph

By Fr Richard Gibbons

35 THE TRAUMA OF POVERTY AND INCARCERATION The ‘hidden Ireland’ depicted in Emer Martin’s novel

By Eamon Maher

37 HUNGARY’S IRISH MADONNA 17 -century miracle that remains a mystery

By Séamus Devitt CSsR th

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40

OPINION

REGULARS

11 EDITORIAL

04 REALITY BITES 07 POPE MONITOR 08 SAINTS IN THE CELTIC TRADITION 09 REFLECTIONS 40 TRÓCAIRE 45 GOD’S WORD

17 JIM DEEDS 31 CARMEL WYNNE 44 PETER McVERRY SJ

REALITY BITES DERRY

BLOODY SUNDAY ANNIVERSARY A TIME TO REMEMBER AND FORGIVE, BISHOP SAYS Fifty years ago, the Bloody Sunday massacre resulted in many reactions: lies, anger, and a misplaced desire to forget the past, Bishop Donal McKeown of Derry said. But only truth, remembrance, compassion, and forgiveness, through the grace of God, can overcome the legacy of the atrocity and other traumas in Northern Ireland.

During his homily at the 50th anniversary Mass of Remembrance for the victims of Bloody Sunday, Bishop McKeown remembered all those who died in the 1972 massacre, those who were scarred by their deaths and those who risked everything as they went to help the injured.

“Some are here tonight, and others died on that January afternoon. We remember heroism and strength of character in those who sought and fought for the truth. And, as people of faith, we remember that there is

more grace and goodness in the world than sin and evil.”

On Bloody Sunday, January 30, 1972, British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians protesting the internment without trial of suspected IRA sympathisers. Fourteen people died.

Bishop McKeown celebrated the Mass at St Mary’s Church in the Creggan area of Derry, the same church in which the funerals of those who died had taken place 50 years ago.

Many families of victims were present, as was Andrew Forster, the Church of Ireland Bishop of Derry and Raphoe.

“Tonight, we gather in faith as people have done here every year. In the Lord’s presence we are sensitive to where everybody is and to the still voice of God who speaks grace into pain and loss,” said the bishop.

“I hope that our celebrations this weekend will help us all to build a future full of hope

for our young people and not nourish them on bitter anger that can only kill and destroy.

A new society on the island needs big hearts.

It will not be created by small minds.”

Photo by Sonse, via Wikimedia Commons

WROCŁAW, POLAND

CITY NAMES 2022 THE YEAR OF EDITH STEIN This year marks the 100th anniversary of Edith Stein’s baptism in the Catholic Church.

The city where the philosopherturned-saint was born has launched a Year of Edith Stein to celebrate the life and legacy of the woman who was martyred at Auschwitz.

Stein was born in 1891 into a Jewish family in what is now Wrocław, southwestern Poland.

The city was then known as Breslau and located in the German Empire.

After declaring herself to be an

4 REALITY MARCH 2022

atheist at the age of 20, Stein went on to earn a doctorate in philosophy. She decided to convert to Catholicism after spending a night reading the autobiography of the 16 thcentury Carmelite nun St Teresa of Avila. “When I had finished the book,” she later recalled, “I said to myself: This is the truth.”

Stein was baptised on January 1, 1922, at the age of 30. She took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross when she became a novice Carmelite nun 12 years later.

Wrocław Auxiliary Bishop Jacek

Kiciński inaugurated the year on January 9, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, in the parish church where Stein used to come to pray.

Ten years after Stein entered the Carmelite convent, she was arrested along with her sister Rosa and the members of her religious community. She died in the Auschwitz concentration camp on August 9, 1942. Pope John Paul II canonised her in 1998 and proclaimed her co-patroness of Europe a year later.

Edith Stein

UKRAINE

UKRAINE DESERVES PEACE, SAYS POPE FRANCIS On the day Pope Francis established as a day of prayer for peace in Ukraine, he appealed for an end to all war and prayed that dialogue, the common good and reconciliation would prevail.

“Let us ask the Lord to grant that the country may grow in the spirit of brotherhood, and that all hurts, fears and divisions will be overcome,” he said.

“May the prayers and supplications that today rise up to heaven touch the minds and hearts of world leaders, so that dialogue may prevail and the common good be placed ahead of partisan interests,” he said.

With rising tensions in the region and the threat of a possible Russian-Ukrainian conflict spreading, Pope Francis had set January 26 as a day of prayer for peace in Ukraine.

“Let us make our prayer for peace in the words of the Our Father, for it is the prayer of sons and daughters to the one Father, the prayer that makes us brothers and sisters, the prayer of children who plead for reconciliation and concord,” he said.

SAN SALVADOR

EL SALVADOR WELCOMES FOUR NEW MARTYRS Unlike the spotless image of many holy men and women, a depiction of one of the new martyrs of the Catholic Church looks anything but polished.

The boy is hunched a little. His cuffed trousers are slightly too big for his small body.

His shirt, improperly unbuttoned, hangs just a bit longer on one side than the other. Bullet casings are at his bare feet.

That’s the image his parish in El Paisnal, El Salvador, presented to the world, with the message that the most simple and poor, like Nelson Rutilio Lemus, a teenage boy, are worthy of the grace of martyrdom. Lemus was assassinated in his rural hometown next to his

pastor, Jesuit Fr Rutilio Grande, and sacristan Manuel Solórzano on March 12, 1977.

Franciscan Fr Cosme Spessotto was shot dead as he prayed inside his church on June 14, 1980.

The four were beatified on January 22 in an outdoor evening ceremony attended by their families at Salvador del Mundo Plaza in San Salvador. Beatification is one of the final steps toward sainthood.

Salvadoran Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez, who presided at the ceremony, placed the martyrs’ role in the context of the country’s civil conflict in the 1970s and 1980s. The martyrs were among more than 75,000 civilians killed.

“Those of us who have lived this experience intensely, those who have experienced firsthand the drama of institutionalised violence, of the violence of the armed conflict and of daily violence, fill this square and its surroundings,” the cardinal said during the homily for the beatifications.

“In Latin America, martyrdom is related to the experience of the Gospel and the doctrine of the church above all after the Second Vatican Council,” and its adaptation to the realities the church in the region was facing, he said.

5

REALITY BITES CARLOW/CORK

CAPUCHINS TO CLOSE TWO IRISH FRIARIES The Capuchin Order in Ireland has announced the closure of two of its friaries. St Anthony’s Friary in Carlow and St Francis Friary in Rochestown, Cork are to close due to the ageing profile of the order and a shortage of vocations.

In addition, the order will withdraw from residency in the parish of Priorswood in Dublin.

The closures were announced by the Capuchin Provincial, Br Seán Kelly, following their most recent Chapter. In a statement he said the decisions “were not taken lightly, but only after much consultation and prayer” in order to ensure the order’s overall future in Ireland.

“At our last Chapter we took some time to really examine our ability to maintain our presence and apostolates in nine communities across the country with now only 65 friars with an average age of 78,” he said.

The friary in Carlow opened in 1978 as a house for postulants, in collaboration with the nearby Seminary of St Patrick’s College. However, the seminary has since closed and there have been no postulants in Carlow since the early 1990s.

The Rochestown friary was founded in the 1870s and is the site of St Francis College, where the friars will continue on as patrons.

In Priorswood, while the friars will no longer live in the parish, they will continue to provide clergy from their Raheny friary.

“In the midst of our sadness today we hope that you will also join us in gratitude for the many years we have lived and served amongst you all and for the many people; the staff, volunteers and benefactors who have made our way of life possible in Carlow and Rochestown and indeed Priorswood over the years,” said Br Kelly

GALWAY

FIRST IRISH REDEMPTORIST TO REACH 100

Fr Tony Mulvey CSsR

Born in the same year as the Irish Free State, Fr Tony Mulvey is the first Irish Redemptorist to reach 100 years of age. But achieving this milestone doesn’t mean he has retired, he says.

“There’s no retirement for Redemptorists. The

6 REALITY MARCH 2022

only place you retire is into the box when you’re carried down to the cemetery!”

Fr Tony entered the Redemptorist junior seminary in Limerick in 1937. He went on to the Redemptorist novitiate in Dundalk in 1942, followed by Cluain Mhuire in Galway, and was delighted to travel to Belgium as part of his studies. “I learned how different Europe is. I visited many places around Europe I would never have seen if I was a secular priest.”

After ordination, Fr Tony returned to Limerick to teach French in the Redemptorist College. “I was also very keen on Irish. Two of us took charge of a parish in Carraroe, all in Irish. I still love to get a chance to speak it.”

After Ireland entered the EEC in 1973, Fr Tony was assigned to Luxembourg to minister to the growing number of English-speakers.

He spent 12 years there. “I had 25 nationalities in my section of the parish,” he recalls. “A lot of people came to the English Mass to learn English. Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh was my parishioner, and the night before he left for

Ireland for his inauguration as president, we prepared his presidential speech together.”

In 1987, Fr Tony was summoned to Rome to work as a translator in the Redemptorist general house, where he remained for 24 years. On his return, he was stationed in Dundalk before moving to Esker, Co. Galway in 2016, where he currently resides.

Fr Tony Mulvey CSsR celebrates his 100th birthday with Fr Brendan Callanan CSsR, rector of Esker Monastery, and Fr Patrick O’Keeffe CSsR

N E WS

POPE MONITOR

KEEPING UP WITH POPE FRANCIS

HORRORS OF HOLOCAUST MUST NEVER BE FORGOTTEN, SAYS POPE The cruelty of the Holocaust must never be forgotten, or repeated, Pope Francis said on the eve of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. The day, celebrated on January 27, falls on the anniversary of the liberation of the AuschwitzBirkenau extermination camp complex in 1945.

At his weekly general audience at the Vatican on January 26, Pope Francis said, “It is necessary to remember the extermination of millions of Jews and people of different nationalities and religious faiths.

“This unspeakable cruelty must never be repeated. I appeal to everyone, especially educators and families, to foster in the new generations an awareness of the horror of this black page of history. It must not be forgotten, so that we can build a future where human dignity is no longer trampled underfoot,” the pope said.

The same day, the pope met with Belarus-

born Lidia Maksymowicz, 81, who spent 13 months at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where she and other children were subjected to Josef Mengele’s medical experiments.

It was her second meeting with Pope Francis who, at an outdoor general audience on May 26, 2021, had spoken with her, kissed her prisoner number 70072, tattooed on her left arm, and embraced her. That meeting inspired her to write her autobiography, La bambina che non sapeva odiare. La mia testimonianza (‘The

POPE TELLS CATHOLIC MEDIA: CHECK FACTS BUT ALWAYS RESPECT PEOPLE Meeting with members of the International Catholic Media Consortium on January 28, the pope called on journalists, especially Catholic media professionals, to remain faithful to the truth by always verifying facts while adopting a respectful attitude toward those who produce and consume fake news.

The consortium set up the ‘Catholic FactChecking’ website in early 2021. Pope Francis lauded the organisation’s goal of seeking to unmask “fake news and partial or misleading information” about COVID-19 vaccines and ethical questions related to them.

The group includes a scientific committee that draws upon the work of experts in epidemiology, theology, and bioethics. The Pope noted that people are increasingly influenced by mass media and that reporters must therefore employ a rigorous method.

He lamented the “infodemic” plaguing the world alongside the pandemic, calling it “a distortion of reality based on fear, which in our global society leads to an explosion of commentary on falsified if not invented news.

“To be properly informed, to be helped to understand situations based on scientific data and not fake news, is a human right. Correct information must be ensured above all to those who are less equipped, to the weakest and to those who are most vulnerable.

“Fake news has to be refuted, but individual persons must always be respected, for they believe it often without full awareness or responsibility,” he added.

This approach calls for Christian reporters to be “evangelical in style, a builder of bridges, a promoter of peace, also and above all, in search for truth.”

child who did not know how to hate. My testimony’) which was recently released in Italian. At their recent meeting, she gave the pope a copy of the book, which also contains a preface written by Pope Francis.

Even though she was only three years old when she and her young mother were taken to the extermination camp, she has explained that those memories are vivid and correspond with evidence found by researchers years later.

“One must not forget that more than 200,000 children died just at AuschwitzBirkenau,” she said.

INFLAMED KNEE LIGAMENT IS CURBING POPE’S MOBILITY Pope Francis acknowledged that he is experiencing mobility problems due to an inflamed ligament in his right knee, which makes walking and going up and down stairs painful.

He told his weekly general audience on January 26 that he had been informed that the inflammation only afflicts older people – “I don’t know why it happened to me,” the 85-year-old pope quipped, drawing applause from the crowd.

Pope Francis has long suffered from sciatica nerve pain resulting in a pronounced limp, and he cited the new knee pain in explaining why he would not go down the steps of the Vatican audience hall to greet the pilgrims in the crowd. Instead, a handful of guests were brought up to the stage.

The pope enjoys generally good health, though he had a section of his large intestine removed last July. He also had a part of one lung removed when he was a young man after a respiratory infection.

7

SAINTS IN THE

CELTIC TRADITION Reality

ST CUTHBERT: MARCH 20 It is unlikely that St Patrick will cavil at the choice of the March issue of Reality to introduce a new series on Celtic saints! We begin with the story of Cuthbert, a greatly loved saint of mediaeval England. Although Ireland, England and Scotland all lay claim to his birthplace, it is curious that St Bede, the historian of the English people, omits any reference to his nationality. Canon John O’Hanlon, having thoroughly investigated, says that “the weight of evidence tends to establish the probable conclusion, that he was born in our country” (ie Ireland) and goes on to favour Leinster, particularly the Kells area of Co. Meath, as Cuthbert’s birthplace.

Bede’s first reference to our saint is as an eight-year-old child living in the care of a widow in Northumbria. In his second reference Cuthbert, now in his late teens, abandons his work as a shepherd on the Lammermoor Hills on the borders of Scotland and England in favour of entering religious life. He gets on his horse, travels to Melrose and seeks admittance to the community. The year is 651. As the name indicates, Melrose is a bare promontory (Maol Ros) where the River Tweed loops around three sides of a spit of high ground chosen by St Aidan of Lindisfarne as the site of his second monastery in Northumbria.

Here under abbot Eata, Cuthbert was trained in religious life along the traditional lines of Irish monasticism. During the particularly bad outbreak of the Yellow Plague in 664, Cuthbert was stricken. The monks prayed hard for him, spending whole nights in prayer. On hearing this Cuthbert exclaimed: “What am I doing in bed? It is impossible that God should shut his ears to such prayer. Give me my staff and sandals!”

Though a contemplative monk, Cuthbert was the missionary par excellence who spent the best years of his life on horseback or on foot in the Borders and throughout Northumbria. Kind to rich and poor, he would visit homes, drop in to see an old woman who had been mother to him in bygone days, preach, give nuns’ retreats, celebrate the sacraments, encourage people in prayer and comfort them in their trials, all the while living his ‘life in Christ’.

At the stormy Synod of Whitby in 664, St Colman, then bishop of Lindisfarne, had been publicly ridiculed and morale in his community was low. There was no better person than Cuthbert to undertake such a sensitive task. Eata, the Saxon abbot of Melrose, sent him to Lindisfarne. The ever-gentle Cuthbert worked daily miracles of healing. Around 676, he set up a hermitage for himself on a tidal island – St Cuthbert’s Island – a stone’s throw from the front door of the monastery. The spot proved altogether too convenient for people seeking him out, and in consequence he moved to the innermost of the Farne Islands.

His hopes for peace and quiet were dashed once more when Cuthbert was appointed bishop of Lindisfarne. For two years he fulfilled the office faithfully and then, finding his health failing, he retired once more to the Inner Farne hermitage where he gave up his spirit to the Lord on March 20, 687.

Cuthbert’s body was buried in Lindisfarne and, after many translations, it finally rested in Durham Cathedral from the 10th-16th century. In 1537, the agents of King Henry VIII rifled the shrine of Durham, at which time the saint’s body was removed to a secret location known only, it is said, to some members of the English Benedictines.

John J. Ó Ríordáin CSsR

8 REALITY MARCH 2022

Volume 88. No. 2 March 2022 A Redemptorist Publication ISSN 0034-0960 Published by The Irish Redemptorists, St Joseph's Monastery, St Alphonsus Road, Dundalk County Louth A91 F3FC Tel: 00353 (0)1 4922488 Web: www.redcoms.org Email: sales@redcoms.org (With permission of C.Ss.R.)

Editor Triona Doherty editor@redcoms.org Design & Layout Tanika Design Sales & Marketing Claire Carmichael ccarmichael@redcoms.org Accounts Dearbhla Cooney accounts@redcoms.org Printed by W&G Baird Printers, Belfast Photo Credits Shutterstock, Trócaire, Wikimedia Commons REALITY SUBSCRIPTIONS Through a promoter (Ireland only) €20 or £18 Annual Subscription by post: Ireland €25 or £20 UK £30 Europe €40 Rest of the world €50 Please send all payments to: Redemptorist Communications, St Joseph's Monastery, St Alphonsus Road, Dundalk County Louth A91 F3FC ADVERTISING Whilst we take every care to ensure the accuracy and validity of adverts placed in Reality, the information contained in adverts does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Redemptorist Communications. You are therefore advised to verify the accuracy and validity of any information contained in adverts before entering into any commitment based upon them.

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

REFLECTIONS Morning, a time for fortitude to face the day, a time for resilience, to begin again and again, a time of happiness, a time for hope.

SR STANISLAUS KENNEDY

I’ve had heartbreak. I know what it is to fail and I know how hard it is to pick yourself back up after that. This is why I am who I am, and why I am here today, because I’m not afraid of failure.

I feel more and more the time wasted that is not spent in Ireland.

KELLIE HARRINGTON

LADY GREGORY

People ask me to smile for the camera, but somehow it always comes out gloomy.

May the roof above us never fall in. And may the friends gathered below it never fall out.

IRISH BLESSING

The more miserable I tell people I am, the funnier it is. There’s nothing as funny as unhappiness – there really isn’t. What makes it different, I suppose, is that somewhere in the comedy there are reflections of a more philosophical nature.

MICHAEL HARDING

If we want to reap the harvest of peace and justice in the future, we will have to sow seeds of nonviolence, here and now, in the present.

MAIREAD CORRIGAN MAGUIRE

I never thought in terms of being a leader. I thought very simply in terms of helping people.

JOHN HUME

STEPHEN REA

I was the big, bossy older sister, full of enthusiasms, mad fantasies, desperate urges to be famous, and anxious to be a saint – a settled sort of saint, not one who might have to suffer or die for her faith.

MAEVE BINCHY

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

Practise things you’re good at. Keep on top of things you’re not so good at, but be world-class at your best.

Never think, ‘I’m very good at this and that, I can leave those for a bit.

BRIAN O’DRISCOLL

I often sit back and think, I wish I’d done that, and find out later that I already have.

RICHARD HARRIS

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.

OSCAR WILDE

One of the very best rules of conversation is to never say anything which any of the company wish had been left unsaid.

JONATHAN SWIFT

I thought how wonderful life is even when everything is thrown at you. It is what you do with it and who you spend it with that matters and I was spending it with the people who matter most to me. And I hoped that [my godchild] would grow up accepting that life is difficult, but it is worth living and celebrating, every day, right to the end.

How quietly the great God does all his mighty works! Darkness is spread over us, and light breaks in again, and there is no noise of drawing curtains or closing shutters.

CATHERINE MCAULEY

VICKY PHELAN

9

EDI TO R I A L UP FRONT TRÍONA DOHERTY

LET’S TALK

T

wo videos caught my attention recently.

The first was a sketch from Irish comedy trio Foil Arms and Hog, entitled ‘Post Pandemic Traumatic Stress’. A teacher, sometime in the future, is teaching his class ‘early 21st century history’. After a recap of the main events of 2019, he announces “Right, today we’re going to move on to 2022.” “Eh Sir? You skipped 2020 and 2021,” pipes up a student. “Get out. Out now!” barks the teacher. Turning back to the class, he intones “All together now: it goes 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023…”

The second was the Disney film Encanto. The story centres around the Madrigal family who, after a terrible tragedy, rebuild their lives and share their various gifts with the wider community. The familia is not without its dark side, however. Bruno, the estranged son of the matriarch Abuela, was banished from the family home after his own gift proved problematic. The film has an important message about the effects of trauma. When issues are ignored or glossed over, the damage and division can last for generations. Encanto’s biggest musical number is the catchy ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’.

Having watched both productions within a couple of days of each other, I couldn’t help but hum a hybrid version to myself: ‘We don’t talk about Covid’. This March marks two years since COVID-19, coronavirus, lockdown, PCR and countless other terms forced their way into our vocabulary and our lives. Here in Ireland, shortly before the two-year mark, the announcement came that the majority of restrictions were being lifted. My immediate reaction, after giddily contemplating future visits and occasions, was “Thank God. Maybe now we won’t have to talk about Covid anymore.”

I know I’m not the only one who’s exhausted.

The losses, the isolation, the restrictions and the anxiety-inducing news cycle have taken their toll on all of us. It’s understandable that

we might not want to talk about Covid anymore, at least for another few years – if ever!

But one has to wonder how we will look back at the years 2020 and 2021. Will they be swept under the carpet, dismissed as ‘lost’ years in an attempt to move on and ‘get back to normal’? Will the scars we carry, however painful, heal in time? On an individual level, many people will need support as they step out into the post-pandemic world.

Our society, too, will bear the scars. In the western world, before the arrival of COVID-19, divisions were already pronounced. The climate crisis, political elections, social movements such as Black Lives Matter, the recent referenda facing Irish voters – all these issues polarised opinion, giving rise to aggression and in some cases even violence.

The pandemic brought new divisions as people rushed to take a stance on everything from vaccines to the remit of government and individual rights and responsibilities.

In our personal lives, when we are too tired or anxious to have the hard conversations, we find ways of papering over the cracks. We might add Covid to religion and politics as off-limit topics for dinner parties or family gatherings, but of course the chasms between us only widen if we don’t at least try to understand each other.

As a society, there are questions we need to ask ourselves. What have we learned in the past two years about who we are and what we value? What are our responsibilities towards others, particularly the most vulnerable members of society?

Our church is asking these questions too. We don’t know yet what the post-pandemic church will look like. It’s being shaped right now in our families, parishes and dioceses as we emerge from the strange chapter of online liturgies and socially distanced congregations.

The synodal journey announced by Pope Francis couldn’t have come at a better time.

The Irish Church has begun its own Synodal Pathway, asking the question: What does God want from the church in Ireland at this time?

Real consultation and listening must shape these processes. The difficult, awkward conversations are vital, including with those ‘on the fringes’ of the church, those who have moved away from the sacraments, those who have been hurt by the church and those who feel excluded. We cannot fall into the trap of ‘not talking about’ certain issues or acting as if they don’t exist; this will only cause harm in the long run.

The church is at a turning point, and there may be some false starts and missed opportunities. But my hope is that, when we look back on this time, we will see it as a new beginning when we read the ‘signs of the times’. I’m conscious, as I step into the role of editor of Reality, that we are part of this process.

It remains to be seen how the history books will judge this ‘early 21st century history’. But being at a turning point means there is hope, and that healing and change are possible.

Tríona Doherty Editor 11

C OVE R STO RY

SAINT PATRICK THE MYTHS, THE LEGENDS AND HIS RELEVANCE TODAY

12 REALITY MARCH 2022

COVER STO RY

WITH ST PATRICK’S DAY FESTIVITIES EXPECTED TO RETURN TO FORM THIS YEAR, WHAT DO WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT THE ‘APOSTLE OF IRELAND’? CAN WE SEPARATE THE MAN FROM THE MYTH AND DISCOVER A NEW RELEVANCE FOR IRELAND TODAY?

BY PATRICK COMERFORD

T

he promise of an extra public holiday next year to celebrate the life of Saint Brigid not only brings some balance to the celebrations of Saint Patrick, but also offers an opportunity to ask who St Patrick is for us today and to reflect on his significance.

Is it possible to separate the saint from both popular celebrations and popular mythology, and to ask whether his mission to Ireland was unique and what his place is in Irish church history?

During the extended St Patrick’s Day festivities this year there will be little, if any, mention of St Patrick, his spiritual message or the unique experience of Christianity in Ireland and the church in the centuries afterwards. With the lifting of pandemic restrictions, most of the fun will be at parades and festivals rather than in churches and cathedrals. It seems inevitable that we are going to be inundated with reports of public buildings and monuments around the world floodlit with fluorescent green.

In Ireland, Easter is often hijacked by the 1916 anniversary, St Patrick’s Day is hijacked by parades and pints, and Celtic spirituality is relegated to the ‘New Age Spirituality’ shelves in our bookshops or the glossy souvenirs in Dublin Airport’s duty-free ‘shopping experience’. But what do we actually know about St Patrick, his life, his teaching, his writings and his spirituality?

EARLY CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND Traditionally and romantically, St Patrick is said to have converted the entire population of Ireland from paganism in a very short period between 432 and 461, less than the span of one generation. These dates are of significance in the history of the wider church: St Augustine died in 430, the Council

Croagh Patrick, in County Mayo

of Ephesus met in 431 and the Council of Chalcedon met in 451.

Putting aside myth and romance, it is important to recognise that there were Christians in Ireland before St Patrick arrived and that Irish mythology was anxious to claim Irish connections with the Christian story long before Patrick. These include the stories of Altus, said to have been an Irish witness to the Passion and death of Christ; Conor Mac Nessa, King of Ireland, who died of a broken heart when he heard of Christ’s crucifixion; Cormac Mac Airt, who converted

to Christianity in the third century; and Mansuetus, said to have been an Irish bishop in 4th-century France.

But there is a realistic medium between these legends and the concept of a sudden conversion to Christianity at the hands of a single missionary. Tacitus (ca 55-120 AD) tells us that British or Gallic merchants had a reasonably good knowledge of Ireland’s ‘harbours and approaches’. The ‘Celtic’ people in Ireland were traders, raiders and plunderers, and there is evidence of Roman traders reaching Irish harbours and beyond

The ‘Celtic’ people in Ireland were traders, raiders and plunderers, and there is evidence of Roman traders reaching Irish harbours and beyond them up rivers such as the Nore and the Barrow, trading in wine, oil and wheat.

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them up rivers such as the Nore and the Barrow, trading in wine, oil and wheat. The Irish imported pottery, metalwork and brica-brac from Roman Gaul and Britain, and exported copper, gold, slaves, hides, cattle and wolfhounds.

By the end of the 3rd century, people from Ireland were establishing colonies in Wales, Cornwall and Scotland. By the 3rd or 4th century, there was regular commercial, mercantile and social contact with Roman communities in Britain and Gaul. There have been abundant finds of looted Roman coins all along the north and east coasts of Ireland, and Roman silver ingots with similar Christian provenance have been found in Kent and Limerick. Catherine Swift argues convincingly that many among the ruling class in Ireland adopted the cultural habits and social customs of Roman Britons. What is now Cathedral Hill in Armagh is an example of one of their temple sites.

Christianity probably arrived in Ireland in the 4th and early 5th centuries by a slow and gradual process from Britain and Continental Europe, probably from Gaul and what we now know as Germany, and perhaps even from the Iberian peninsula, including present-day Spain and Portugal.

Niall of the Nine Hostages commanded several raiding expeditions across the Irish Sea. British captives carried off by Irish raiders may have been yet another way of Christianity coming to have a presence on this island. Some educated continental Christians may also have sought refuge in Ireland during the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire at the start of the 4th century, bringing their Christianity with them.

Other points of contact include the contacts made by the Irish migrants in Britain and trade links with Roman Britain, Gaul and Spain. A gravestone for a 5th-century Irish Christian has been found in a Christian cemetery in Trier, and 5th-century Christians, some with Latin names, are commemorated on ogham stones in in Carlow, Waterford, Cork and Kerry.

In other words, many factors indicate the arrival of Christianity in Ireland long before 14 REALITY MARCH 2022

Patrick was captured as a slave, and there was a considerable Christian presence on this island before Patrick began his mission in 432.

PATRICK’S LIFE AND MISSION The traditional account of the life of St Patrick says he was born about 372 in Roman Britain in Bannavem Taburniae, perhaps in Cumbria or at a Roman outpost at Dumbarton in

Photo: Patrick Comerford

St Patrick seen in a window in St Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge, Dublin

Scotland. He says his father, Calpornius, was a deacon and his grandfather, Potitus, was a priest; both were from a relatively prosperous class of Romans.

At the age of 16, the young Patrick was captured in a great raid along with “many thousands of people” [Confessio 1]. According

to his own account, some of them were lukewarm Christians, and some could also have been committed Christians, perhaps even priests. His account of his escape from slavery at the age of 22 may be evidence of an escape network for fugitive slaves run by concerned Christians, more than 20 years before Patrick began his own mission [Confessio 17 and 18].

After his escape, Patrick had visions in which he heard the cry of the people in Ireland pleading to him to come back. It is an image that may have drawn on St Paul’s vision in Troy of a man calling him across the sea to Macedonia (see Acts 16:9-10). Most of the details we have of St Patrick’s life are from his Confessio, written in reply to the attacks on his character brought against him in England, and from his Letter to Coroticus.

Patrick arrived back in Ireland from Britain around 432. According to JB Bury, he landed in Wicklow, at the mouth of the River Vartry.

Traditions associate his early mission with the islands off the Skerries coast, Co. Dublin, and Saul, Co. Down. But there are traditions too of Irish saints who preceded St Patrick: St Ciaran of Seir Kieran, Co. Offaly; St Ibar or Iberius of Begerin, Co. Wexford; his nephew, St Abban of Adamstown, Co. Wexford; St Declan of Ardmore, Co. Waterford; St Declan’s friend, St Ailbe of Emly, Co. Tipperary; St Meltioc or Multose of Kinsale, Co. Cork, and so on.

Most of these saints are associated with the south and the south-east. Although there is no primary evidence to support these largely unreliable traditions, they underpin a truth that Christianity was in Ireland for generations before St Patrick arrived and that he was not the first person to bring Christianity to Ireland.

The background to St Patrick’s mission includes the presence of perhaps three heresies in Ireland – Arianism, Priscillianism and Pelagianism. Palladius was ordained by Pope Celestine, perhaps in 431, and was sent as the ‘first bishop’ on a mission to “the Scotti [Irish] who believe in Christ”. So, from at least the third decade of the 5th century, Irish Christians were numerically large enough to

COVER STO RY

Statue of St Patrick on the Hill of Tara

have a bishop sent from Rome, and Palladius is associated with several church sites in Leinster. His work was continued, perhaps, by figures such as Secundinus, Auxilius and Iserninus. His mission activities and those of Patrick may have been confused in later writings, so that much of the work and success of Palladius was attributed wrongly to Patrick.

The late Professor Patrick Corish of Maynooth, in The Irish Catholic Experience (1985), links the mission of Palladius in Leinster with, perhaps, three churches in Co. Wicklow. The circular letter known as The First Synod of Saint Patrick seems to provide evidence of a second-generation missionary church in Leinster, and this stream of Christianity in Ireland has been associated with the church in Kildare.

By the time Patrick began his mission, the foundations had been laid for a church in Ireland that in the centuries that followed

became a vibrant missionary church. But, while the missions of Palladius and Patrick may have overlapped, Patrick does not refer to Palladius. Patrick was working in fresh territory, while Roman missionaries in Leinster were consolidating the work of Palladius and others who, by 431, had ensured that there were many people in Ireland who were Christians.

PATRICK’S WRITINGS Two Latin works survive that are generally accepted to have been written by St Patrick.

These are the Declaration or Confession (Confessio), and the Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus (Epistola), from which we have the only generally accepted details of his life.

In his Confessio [51], Patrick shows he is aware of episcopal activity in other parts of Ireland, including baptisms, confirmations and ordinations. But he says he travelled to places in Ireland “where no one else had ever

penetrated, in order to baptise, or to ordain clergy, or to confirm the people” – suggesting there were places that had received episcopal ministry from other, earlier sources.

The dates of Patrick’s life are the subject of conflicting traditions. His own writings provide nothing that can be dated more precisely than the 5th century. Although Patrick’s writings quote from the Acts of the Apostles as they are rendered by the early 5th-century Bible translation known as the Vulgate, these quotations may have been added later to replace other quotation from an earlier Bible version and can therefore not be used securely to fix dates for St Patrick or his writings. For example, the Letter to Coroticus implies that the Franks were still pagans at the time of writing. Their conversion to Christianity is dated to the period 496-508.

In his writings, Patrick makes no references to the shamrock or snakes being driven out of Ireland, nor does he name the mountain where he tended animals as a slave. St Patrick did not teach about the Trinity using the shamrock. If he did use the shamrock, he was perilously close to the heresies of either tritheism, at one extreme, or modalism at the other.

The banning of snakes from Ireland is not mentioned by St Patrick in his own writings and does not appear in the stories about him until the 11th century. But, in the building of the nation myths, St Patrick was seen to require a legend parallel to St George slaying the dragon or St Marcel delivering Paris from the monster.

The Hill of Slemish and Croagh Patrick are not named, and Lough Derg is not mentioned

Over time, the cult and status of St Patrick took on such proportions that we depend less on historical narrative and more on hagiography for these folk tales and legends.

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(Photo: Patrick Comerford)

(Photo: Patrick Comerford)

(Photo: Patrick Comerford)

Seamus Murphy’s sculpture of the saint in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Co. Kildare

A stained-glass window in St Edan’s Cathedral, Ferns, Co. Wexford

St Patrick with mitre, crozier, Bible and shamrock at the chapel in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth

either. Nor is there any allusion to the Paschal Fire on the Hill of Tara near Slane, Co. Meath.

There is no reference to King Laoghaire either, nor to the baptism of his daughters.

All these elements in popular stories about St Patrick come from later writing and traditions. Over time, the cult and status of St Patrick took on such proportions that we depend less on historical narrative and more on hagiography for these folk tales and legends.

I could go on… St Patrick did not wear a mitre and green liturgical robes – certainly not in Lent – he probably never carried a crozier, he did not turn the people of Skerries into goats, he did not fetch water from a well in Nassau Street, Dublin, and he certainly did not build St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin – nor, for that matter, any St Patrick’s Cathedral.

There is a theory that there were two Patricks, although this may arise from a misreading of ‘the elder Patrick’, who died in 457, where elder might also be read as bishop or priest. Neither the canons attributed to him nor the Breastplate of Saint Patrick is his work. Later 7th-century documents speak of Patrick as the successor of Palladius. However, the O’Neill dynasty had Tireachan and Muirchu write spurious accounts of Patrick’s life to establish Armagh’s claims to primacy in Ireland.

When Brian Ború became High King ca 1000

AD, he had his secretary write into the Book of Armagh a confirmation of the right of Armagh to all church revenues in Ireland. It was at least another century, however, before Armagh’s claims to primacy were recognised throughout the Irish church.

But St Patrick is more relevant to Irish identity today, and too important to be relegated to the revelries of a long bank holiday weekend.

St Patrick was a unifying force for the varying strands of Christianity in Ireland. So often, every one of the churches in Ireland is so insecure in its identity that we tend to cling to the little things that make us different, instead of rejoicing in the truly important things that we have in common.

However, St Patrick is a shared figure in our ecumenical endeavours, celebrated not only by all church traditions but even revered among Muslims as a pre-Islamic holy figure.

He stands too as a reminder of the benefits of welcoming immigrants, challenging exploitation and celebrating our centuriesold links with our neighbours in Britain and across Europe.

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ST PATRICK’S RELEVANCE TODAY Our images of Celtic spirituality are often shaped by Victorian romanticism. Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, as we know it, is based on a manuscript from the late 11th century now in the library of Trinity College Dublin. But it was only published in 1897 by John Henry Bernard (1860-1927), later Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin (1915-1919) and Provost of Trinity College (1919-1927).

Sometimes, our images of Celtic Spirituality are intricately linked with the nation-statebuilding myths created by an Irish nationalism that was often narrow in its vision. But when we consider the long run of Christian history over 2,000 years, St Patrick’s Day is a reasonably late innovation, dating from the 17th century, and has only been a public holiday since 1903.

Indeed, the first St Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin was not held until 1931.

St Patrick’s Day is a good day for parades and parties, for trying to show each other we have a cúpla focal, for singing a few hymns and songs in Irish, and for breaking our Lenten fasts and forgetting our Lenten resolutions.

Revd Canon Professor Patrick Comerford is a Church of Ireland priest in the Diocese of Limerick, and a retired adjunct assistant professor in Trinity College Dublin.

COM M E N T WITH EYES WIDE OPEN JIM DEEDS

THE LITTLE RED BOOK

REDISCOVERING THE VALUE AND BEAUTY OF A CHILDHOOD TREASURE When I was young I found transitions difficult. I was an anxious wee being, and change often triggered that anxiety.

Moving from primary school to secondary school was one such transition I faced, way back in 1983. I had been at primary school for the previous seven years and I had grown to love being there. Still, after primary seven I had to move on.

I didn’t move too far. St Mary’s Christian Brothers Grammar School, my new educational home for the next seven years, was only a half mile further up the road. But of course moving school is not only about moving building, and while it was nearby, the new school was a million miles from the experience of being the big fish in the wee pond of primary school. I was now the tiniest of wee fish in the big pond of ‘big boys’ school’. Being an anxious sort of person, I struggled to settle into the new school, with its huge building, new uniform and strange subjects. I looked for reassurance at that time from my mother, who helped me enormously to cope with this difficult transition. Another source of reassurance was a book of the New Testament and Psalms which we were given at the start of our first year. It was red in colour and small enough to fit comfortably into the pocket of our school blazer.

I took it home with me and I remember reading and reading it, marvelling particularly at the Jesus story. I would sit and imagine myself back there

in Galilee witnessing all the miraculous works of Jesus and hearing his words – words I didn’t fully understand but which seemed to tell of a God who loved all of God’s children and gave us the reassurance of eternal life in heaven. How those sentiments were like a balm on my wound of anxiety! And how Jesus’ words of peace were at odds with the society around me, with bullets and bombs shattering lives and buildings on a daily basis. Still, the words from the Bible were of comfort to me, and I settled well into my new surroundings.

I read the little book so much that the pages began to come loose. Eventually I put it away in one of the drawers in my bedroom for safekeeping. And life went on.

As I grew through school and on into the world of work, I went through a period where I lost the practice of my faith. I didn’t stop believing, per se. I said my prayers.

But I stopped going to Mass and lost touch with Scripture, with the Jesus story that had so captured me in my school days. I was, as Pope Francis describes it, in the spiritual desert for almost a decade.

However, 20 or so years ago, having got married and when my children were only babies, I felt a stirring within me. It’s hard to describe it now as anything other than a prompting of the Spirit or a call from God to come home. But that’s me speaking about it now. Then, I just knew that something wasn’t right with me and something was missing.

All this came around the start of Lent that year. And so, from some deep part of my memory banks, I recalled the little red book of the New Testament and Psalms. I resolved to dig it out and to begin to read it, one page per day, as my Lenten promise. It had been years since I’d done anything for Lent, and then it was always a matter of giving something up. I would forgo chocolate or crisps or milk in my coffee. While there’s nothing at all wrong with doing these things, I must admit that I never emerged from Lent any more spiritually aware or particularly well prepared for Easter as a result. I had never before thought of taking something up for Lent.

So this was quite a departure for me and, looking back, it was quite an important moment in my life.

I went to my parents’ house and dug around in the little memory box my mum kept of some things from my (and my siblings’) childhood. Sure enough, wise woman that she is, she had kept the little red book.

That Lent the most remarkable thing happened. I began with the Gospel of Matthew, taking it one page per day. However, I quickly found that I was once again captured by the Jesus story. I started to read a couple of pages per day. Then I started to read a chapter per day. I moved on to Mark and read the whole Gospel in a few days – Mark is written with such pace and action! Before the end of Lent, I had got through all of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and had delved into the depths of the Gospel of

The author’s wee red book

John. I found that Easter to be one that I was really ready for. I purposely read the Passion and Resurrection narratives from all four Gospels ahead of Holy Week and went back to Mass that Easter Day. Little did I know then, but the seeds of my current vocation working in ministry and writing books on the spiritual life were sown that Lent in the rediscovery of the little red book that had brought me comfort in my anxious times as a schoolboy.

Lent is upon us again. What might we rediscover this year that would allow us to grow spiritually as we journey towards Holy Week? Could we take on something small and allow it to be a seed of faith that grows within us? I’m up for trying. Will you join me?

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

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A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS WHEN JOHN SCALLY INTERVIEWED ARCHBISHOP EAMON MARTIN RECENTLY, THEY ENJOYED A ROBUST DISCUSSION ON EVERYTHING FROM EDUCATION TO THE JOY OF THE GOSPEL. THE MEETING HAD AN ADDED SIGNIFICANCE FOR JOHN AS HE RECALLED AN ENCOUNTER FROM HIS STUDENT DAYS

Archbishop Eamon Martin

BY JOHN SCALLY

T

he first flinty hint of autumn’s breath was on the breeze, and after the quiet countryside of my home in Roscommon, Maynooth College’s waves of noise and movement seemed clamorous to me.

It was my first day in university. That morning, like so many students, I walked through the hallowed gates for the first time.

All around me there were little dramas playing out. In all the faces I saw depths of intensity and unfulfilled longings.

I knew nobody. Worse, I knew nothing. I had no idea where I was meant to be and I found mys elf lost , literally and metaphorically. I felt the bitter taste of panic forming in my mouth. In desperation I asked a passing priest for help. I would come to know him later as an icon of intellectual life in Ireland, the late Professor Ronan Drury who was editor of the influential journal The Furrow for many years. He listened patiently to my tale of woe and sensed the anxiety in my voice.

One sentence of his sticks with me to this day: “If only people got elected for doing acts of kindness, then politics would be very different.”

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FRIENDLY FACE A young seminarian was passing by and Professor Drury called him over and instructed him to ‘look after me’. This clerical student was clearly a veteran of Maynooth College life, and my anxiety quickly faded away like snow melting in a thaw. He brought me to the theology department and waited outside for me while I was registering. Then he took me to meet Mrs Kelly in the student accommodation office and I got my digs sorted out. From there he brought me back to his room and made me a lovely cup of tea with biscuits. We chatted away for a few hours. He told me about his upbringing in Derry during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. He expressed his hope that, as a priest, he would be able to bring a little light to the darkness. One sentence of his sticks with me to this day: “If only people got elected for doing acts of kindness, then politics would be very different.”

I quickly saw that he combined a deep sense of justice with an equally deep sense of compassion. It was impossible not to respect his judgement and integrity. For my part, I told him about my childhood on a small farm in Roscommon.

As it was approaching lunchtime, he brought me over to the refectory in the seminary and treated me to a delicious meal.

Then it was time for a thrilling tour around

the college. Suddenly I felt I was at home.

We shook hands and said goodbye like old friends afterwards. The time with him had given me the space to clear my head, and I returned to start my college adventure with renewed energy.

Such is the nature of college life that in my four years in Maynooth our paths barely crossed again. But I never forgot his kindness to me on that scary day. To this day, whenever I think of Maynooth, it is the kindness of that stranger that first comes to my mind.

Although we didn’t keep in touch, I never forgot him.

NEW PRIMATE Many years later I was watching the news and the announcement was made that the Catholic Church in Ireland had a new Primate.

His name was Eamon Martin from Derry. He was that young seminarian I had met on my first day in Maynooth.

Recently, I was delighted to have the opportunity to spend some time again with the man whose kindness had left such an enduring impression on me. This time around, our conversation covered some serious themes. As a former teacher and school principal, Archbishop Martin has a particular interest in education and he was eager to highlight Pope Francis’ recent reflections on the challenges facing young people.

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“Pope Francis cautions parents – and by extension, I expect, also teachers and schools – against being ‘obsessive’ in wanting to control their children’s every experience and movement. Much more important, he says, is ‘the ability to lovingly help them grow in freedom, maturity, overall discipline and real autonomy’,” the Archbishop reflected.

“It is a challenge for any parent or teacher to strike the correct balance between freedom and surveillance. With so many risks out there – alcohol, drugs, unhealthy relationships, the perils of the internet – striking the balance between being too strict and too lenient is not easy. How much should we hold on – keeping an eye on them, wanting to know their every movement and location? How much do we let go – trusting them to make their own decisions and giving them space to develop into the person God wants them to be?”

LOVING GUIDANCE Archbishop Martin believes loving guidance is crucial for young people as they grow and mature, and that this is an area where parents and schools can work together. “At times, families and schools will need to offer what Pope Francis calls ‘loving correction’, pointing out what is right and what is wrong, and where young people might be going astray.

Schools can assist families in helping young people to develop good habits, sound interior principles and ways of thinking, an awareness of boundaries, and the selfdiscipline of sometimes just saying ‘no’.

“As Pope Francis explains: ‘Responsible freedom is more than the capacity to choose this, or that. It includes the instinct to weigh up what is right and wrong, what is wholesome and healthy, what is in harmony with God’s will for our long-term happiness and the happiness of others. Responsible freedom helps young people to think beyond themselves and develop a heart which is moved with love – to see the world as Christ sees it – and to put themselves in the shoes of the least fortunate.’”

Archbishop Martin has often spoken of the importance of the family as a source of joy

and hope, something that was reflected in the theme of the 2018 World Meeting of Families in Dublin, ‘The Gospel of the Family: Joy for the World’. He continues to reflect on the witness of Pope Francis who attended the event.

“Not long before he came to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families, Pope Francis met with couples celebrating significant wedding anniversaries. He told them about how he once asked a couple celebrating their diamond anniversary, ‘Are you happy?’ To his surprise they replied with great emotion, ‘We are in love!’ And the Holy Father said to all those gathered: ‘See, love is possible! You can live your whole life in love, … despite the problems that come your way… This is beautiful.’”

Only a committed witness to the joy of love will attract young people to faithful, lifelong commitment and service of any kind.

CHRIST OUR HOPE When asked if he is dismayed that so many young people seem to have deserted the church, Archbishop Martin again takes inspiration from Pope Francis.

“He cautions us about reducing the Gospel to something dry, joyless, distant and separate from the reality of the lives of young people today. He says: ‘Let us ask the Lord to free the Church from those who would make her grow old, encase her in the past, hold her back or keep her at a standstill. But let us also ask him to free her from another temptation: that of thinking she is young because she accepts everything the world offers her, thinking that she is renewed because she sets her message aside and acts like everybody else. No! The Church is young when she is herself, when she receives ever anew the strength born of God’s word, the Eucharist, and the daily presence of Christ and the power of his Spirit in our lives. The Church is

young when she shows herself capable of constantly returning to her source.’

“We need to take this opportunity to ‘return to the source’ – to God who is love; to Jesus Christ our Saviour who died on the cross out of love and mercy for us, sinners; to our Risen Lord who is alive and who is the answer to the confusion and shallowness that bombards all of us nowadays – and especially our young people.

“Only a committed witness to the joy of love will attract young people to faithful, lifelong commitment and service of any kind.

As Pope Francis says to young adults: ‘Christ is alive! He is our hope … and he wants you to be alive!’”

Eamon Martin lives a very different, more high-profile life now to that day we first met as young students. The one thing, though, that has not changed is that he remains that same kind and hope-filled man.

A native of Roscommon, John Scally lectures in Theology in Trinity College Dublin.

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CELEBRATING THE SUNDAYS IN LENT “LENT IS A JOURNEY THAT INVOLVES OUR WHOLE LIFE, OUR ENTIRE BEING. IT IS A TIME TO RECONSIDER THE PATH WE ARE TAKING, TO FIND THE ROUTE THAT LEADS US HOME AND TO REDISCOVER OUR PROFOUND RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD, ON WHOM EVERYTHING DEPENDS. LENT IS NOT JUST ABOUT THE LITTLE SACRIFICES WE MAKE, BUT ABOUT DISCERNING WHERE OUR HEARTS ARE DIRECTED. THIS IS THE CORE OF LENT.” – POPE FRANCIS

BY MARIA HALL

ARE SUNDAYS PART OF LENT? In the early days of the church, spiritual preparation for Easter was varied. Irenaeus and Tertullian speak of a period of two days (or 40 hours), the time that Christ was in the tomb.

In the 3rd century, Dionysus records Christians undertaking a six-day fast, and Socrates writes that the Christians in Rome undertook a three-week fast. It wasn’t till the Council of Nicaea in 325AD that a formal period of time was set to 40 days. But even in these early days, Sunday was different! Even at the time of Nicaea, abstinence, fasting and other acts of penance did not feature on Sundays. In the 6th century, Pope Gregory preached that “we do not fast on the six Sundays.” Sunday has always been the Day of the Lord’s Resurrection and so always a day of joy!

Liturgically, Sundays are an integral part of Lent, but in terms of Lenten observances, we take a rest, reset, celebrate the Resurrection and remember what is important.

THE LITURGY In recent years, since Vatican II, the church has strived to emphasise the ‘twofold character’ of Lent: preparation and joy. The liturgy reflects both. The Scripture readings are an obvious place to start, but there are other gems within the Mass that would be worth focusing on: the Entrance Antiphons and the Psalm responses.

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Too often, the Entrance Antiphon is treated as an optional extra. But it is part of the text of the Mass and the primary resource for the Entrance Chant! “Its purpose is to open the celebration, foster the unity of those who have been gathered, introduce their thoughts to the mystery of the liturgical time or festivity, and accompany the procession of the Priest and ministers.” (General Instruction of the Roman Missal) So we should be using it in preference to, or as well as, a hymn. These are some phrases from this year’s Entrance Antiphons: When he calls on me… I will deliver him and give him the glory…

My eyes are always on the Lord…

You, O God are my strength…

These proclamations speak of the Lord as the focus of our trust and faith. They are beautiful phrases to pray during the week. They are great for the classroom too. Just repeat them three times. The same applies to the Psalm responses which are also positive in mood: The Lord is my light and my help!

Taste and see that the Lord is good!

What marvels the Lord worked for us; indeed we were glad!

They are words that remind us of the love of God, ultimately expressed in the joy of the Resurrection, which of course we celebrate every Sunday.

During Lent, the liturgy temporarily suspends words of rejoicing. Firstly, the Gloria, the song of the angels praising God. Without it, the Penitential Rite stands out stark and alone. Our preparation for Easter involves us trying to be better people, looking at our failings and examining our lives. In my parish this is the time of the year when we sing the Penitential Rite (also in Advent), giving it that added emphasis. The Alleluia, also an expression of joy, is also omitted. Then when Easter arrives, it is wonderful to sing it so many times over!

In Lent, the use of music is limited; any instruments should only be used to support singing. This has the effect of creating a very plain celebration, reminding us of the sombre aspects of the season.

The liturgical environment also has a part to play; the General Instruction of the Roman Missal says “During Lent it is forbidden for the altar to be decorated with flowers.

Exceptions, however, are Laetare Sunday (Fourth Sunday of Lent), Solemnities, and Feasts. Floral decoration should always show moderation and be arranged around the altar rather than on the altar table.”

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LAETARE SUNDAY This day has always been a busy Lenten Sunday.

In his book The Externals of the Catholic Church, John F. Sullivan says, “The Church has a note of joy in her liturgy… It is, as it were, a relaxation of the penance, a gleam of light in the gloom of the Lenten time.”

Its name comes from the entrance antiphon and mirrors Gaudete Sunday in Advent.

Gaudete is an exuberant joy while Laetare is an expectant joy. On this Sunday, the priest wears rose (not pink!) vestments to remind us and give us hope that the time for celebration is approaching. When Lent was only three weeks long, this Sunday would have been the day before it began, so it is possible that it was a day of feasting, similar to Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras.

This was also the time when catechumens received the texts of the Creed and the Our Father. It was a celebration of their journey towards Easter.

In ancient Rome, people wore flowers to celebrate the victory of spring over winter. This led to the pope blessing a real rose and presenting it to distinguished and worthy recipients as a sign of friendship and thanksgiving. The real rose eventually became an ornate golden one – Wilhemena of Brunswick’s rose in the 17th century weighed 20 pounds! Traditionally, recipients have been members of royalty and great leaders. Most recently, Pope Benedict began the custom of presenting a rose to shrines of Our Lady.

This ancient tradition is the probable origin for priests wearing the colour rose on this day.

I have seen photos of some parishes taking the theme to the extreme, where the entire Sunday congregation was dressed in pink. A little over the top!

Mid-Lent Sunday is also the origin of Mothering Sunday. The opening words of the Entrance Antiphon are “Rejoice Jerusalem”.

There is the historical city of Jerusalem, but this

also refers to the Holy City of God’s Kingdom, the Body of Christ, the Mystical Body and Mother Church to which we all belong. This concept of ‘mother’ has led to the development of many local customs. In the 16th century, the relaxation of fasting and observances gave those working in apprenticeship, or on the land away from home, the opportunity to visit their Mother Church and, of course, their own mothers (some would have left home as young as ten years old). When we give flowers to our mothers, we can also remember the beautiful spring symbolism of new life and new hope that occurs in Lent.

PASSION SUNDAY Before 1969, the Sunday before Palm Sunday was called Passion Sunday. Pope Paul VI renamed Palm Sunday, giving it the full title ‘Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord’. This was the day on which all statues and crucifixes in the church were veiled. In Germany it was known as ‘Black Sunday’, though in most places violet veils were used. Though the day is now called the Fifth Sunday of Lent, the practice of veiling is re-emerging in many places, providing a powerful visual reminder of the coming Passion.

PALM SUNDAY Waving palm branches dates back to the 4th century. It forms part of Egeria’s detailed account of Holy Week celebrations in Jerusalem. By the 7th century it was known in Western Europe as Palm Sunday. In the 9th century, Theodulph of Orleans was in prison (accused of conspiracy against Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne). He heard the palm procession from his cell and was inspired to sing his newly composed hymn ‘All glory laud and honour’. The story goes that as Louis processed past the cell, he heard the hymn and was so inspired that he ordered Theodulph’s immediate release!

RCIA The Early Christian Church used the period before Easter as a time of preparation for adult baptism. After centuries of decline in adult catechesis, this was restored by Pope Paul VI in 1972. The Rite of Election coincides with the First Sunday of Lent; then during Lent there are a series of three Scrutinies and the restored presentation of the Creed and Our Father. Being aware of this process can be a source of inspiration and renewal for us, especially if we are ‘cradle’ Catholics and never made a conscious decision to be members of the church. It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to scrutinise our own lives and seek to improve our relationship with God and with each other.

O Lord, make this Lenten season different from the other ones. Let me find you again.

Amen.

- Henri Neuwen Each year we are given the opportunity to prepare for and see the Paschal Mystery with a new vision. Pope Francis said, “Lent comes providentially to awaken us, to shake us from our lethargy.”

Let’s not see the Sundays just as a time to break the fast, but to celebrate the Sunday liturgy with noble simplicity. Let’s remember its place as the ‘primordial feast day’, and celebrate the hope and the joy that the season brings: Each year you give us this joyful season when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery with mind and heart renewed.

You give us a spirit of loving reverence for you, our Father, and of willing service to our neighbour.

As we recall the great events that gave us a new life in Christ, you bring to perfection within us the image of your Son. - Preface of Lent 1

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

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CARING FOR THE VICTIMS OF A CRUEL VIRUS: HIV ROSCOMMON-BORN MISSIONARY IN BRAZIL, SR MARGARET HOSTY SSL, HAS BEEN CARING FOR HIV/AIDS VICTIMS AND THEIR FAMILIES FOR MORE THAN 25 YEARS

BY ANNE STAUNTON AND PAT O’SULLIVAN Sr Margaret, you were a pastoral worker in a parish without a resident priest on the outskirts of Goiania, a large city in Midwest Brazil, as part of the Sisters of St Louis missionary team. Could you tell us a little about the circumstances that led you to found an NGO in support of HIV/AIDS victims and their families 25 years ago?

I

began working with people living with HIV/ AIDS in 1993 after a good friend died as a consequence of the virus. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought of getting into such work. I’m a trained teacher and had taught in Los Angeles and even for a little while in Brazil. In the early years, I also did pastoral work in the periphery of the city where we lived. A fellow worker John (fictious name), a seminarian, became mysteriously and seriously ill. When I expressed a wish to visit him at the seminary, I sensed a reluctance and hesitancy on the part of the rector. After much insistence I finally succeeded in visiting him and he eventually told me he was HIV positive. At the time, early ‘90s, I knew very little about HIV or AIDS. Shortly after visiting John at the seminary, he was admitted to a hospital where I was able to visit him every day.

My care and love for my friend enabled me to overcome my fear and lack of information.

I then realised that I was not the only one who lacked information about HIV. The rector of the seminary seemed to be in the same situation! The whole experience taught me

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an awful lot. The rector, myself and so many others lacked accurate and vital information – and we are university graduates! Fear and lack of information can lead to discrimination, prejudice, and even to poor judgment and erroneous decisions.

John died about three months after he was diagnosed. At the time I thought to myself “You did what you could for him… now get on with your life and the pastoral work in the parish.” However, a voice within me said “You knew almost nothing about AIDS a few months ago. You saw the discrimination that John suffered. So many are ill-informed and discriminate as a result. You need to do something about this.” And that was how I got into working with and for people living with HIV and AIDS and founded the NGO – the AAVE Group – 25 years ago.

The AAVE Centre

What are the main challenges of your service users and what are the day-to-day activities of the AAVE Centre?

Sr Margaret Hosty receiving a State award for human rights from Councillor Mauro Rubem

The service users (people infected or affected

by HIV) at the AAVE Centre are all poor, unemployed or self-employed with little or no formal education. So, without a doubt their main preoccupation is how to put food on the table during these Covid times. There is constant worry about household expenses: cooking gas, rent, utility bills, medications which the state does not supply, and bus fares. At the beginning of the school year,

A voice within me said “You knew almost nothing about AIDS a few months ago. So many are ill-informed and discriminate as a result. You need to do something about this.”

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poor are often left behind. In Brazil, those who live with HIV/AIDS are listed among the nobodies of society, especially if they are poor, female, homosexual, black or belong to a minority group.

While AAVE is an NGO, you and your team are also involved in the pastoral care of seropositive people and their families. What does that involve at parish and diocesan levels?

The AAVE team with Archbishop Washington Cruz of Goiania

which is January here in Brazil, there is the added expense of uniforms and school supplies for children. At AAVE, we get unending requests to help pay these expenses. We do what we can – which depends on the donations we receive. We try to offer opportunities and provide skills training; as Bishop Helder Camara said, quoting a Chinese proverb, “teach them how to fish” rather than giving handouts. Our centre provides income-generating activities such as computer classes, arts and crafts, a nail design course, a recycling project. We also donate second-hand clothes which the service users can sell in order to bring in an income. We consistently try to help people become more independent. We are motivated and influenced by Jesus’ words “I have come that they may have life, life in abundance” (Jn 10:10) and “That all may be one” (Jn 17:21) which is also the motto of the St Louis Sisters.

and a psychotherapist. We also have volunteer professionals but unfortunately not enough to meet the day-to-day demands at the centre.

Our work at AAVE covers three areas: •

Tell us about the team you work with to respond to today’s challenges.

Welcoming and supporting people living with HIV/AIDS, through the classes and activities held at the AAVE Centre; Disseminating accurate information in the community about HIV/AIDS and its prevention, through education/ prevention work in schools, church groups, businesses, factories – wherever we get an opportunity. We also avail of mass events during World AIDS Day, Carnaval, Independence Day, Corpus Christi, World Day of the Poor, etc; Advocacy and the defence of human rights, which means questioning and at times contesting public policies or challenging hospital administration. As human rights are often infringed or even denied, we affirm the right to health care, medication, powdered milk formula for babies born to HIV+ mothers (who must not breastfeed).

At AAVE, we employ professionals to provide the courses and skills training I mentioned. We also have a lawyer to enable the protection of human rights and entitlements, a social worker

Antônio Guterres, secretary general of the World Health Organization, says that, if we are to end AIDS, no one can be left behind.

However, what we see in practice is that the

•

•

Yes, we are involved in the pastoral care of seropositive people, some of whom are Catholic, some not. We don´t discriminate!

We visit people in their homes, in hospital and in prison. One member of the AAVE team is also the coordinator of the AIDS Pastoral Ministry at diocesan level, while another is a member of the National Coordination of the AIDS Pastoral Ministry within the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference. So yes, AAVE is a nongovernmental organisation but from the very beginning and throughout our 25 years of service, we have enjoyed the solid support of the Catholic Church and have provided an invaluable service to its seropositive members.

Since the beginning, many parishes in the Archdiocese of Goiania have been contributing financially to the AIDS Pastoral Ministry on a monthly basis while others have been providing basic food baskets. With Covid restrictions, many of these very vulnerable people have lost their already meagre sources of income. So, we have often called our local Archbishop: “Dom Washington, our people are hungry. We need food.” His response has always been extremely positive. Since the onset of the pandemic, the AIDS Pastoral Ministry together with AAVE have delivered over 2,000 food baskets which in truth have come either directly or indirectly from the Catholic Church.

Prior to the pandemic, the diocesan AIDS ministry coordinator visited the various parishes explaining the objectives of the Pastoral Ministry, invited parish members to get involved in the work and provided training for those who accepted the invitation. The work of the national coordinator was similar,

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Dom Washington and AAVE service users during a Bible service

With Covid restrictions, many of these very vulnerable people have lost their already meagre sources of income. So, we have often called our local Archbishop: “Dom Washington, our people are hungry. We need food.”

visiting the 12 dioceses in our region and following the same procedure: inviting adherence to the AIDS Pastoral Ministry, training leaders and preparing them in their respective dioceses for their work of supporting those who are seropositive, and providing accurate information about HIV and AIDS. When it is safe to do so, we hope to return to this very important aspect of our engagement.

What are the main challenges you face today?

We face two daunting challenges. The first is the fact that the discrimination and prejudice experienced by people living with HIV leads them to want to hide their condition. They are not willing to publicly admit that they are seropositive. In our advocacy work especially, we need people who are seropositive to talk to the press or on mass media. Finding someone who is openly willing to admit that they live with HIV is a real challenge. I think the longer they stay ‘in the closet’ as it were, the longer we are going to have to live with discrimination and prejudice.

The second great challenge is finding the funds we need to keep AAVE up and running.

We depend 100 per cent on donations and grants. Unlike some previous Brazilian

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Sr Margaret with Dom Washington

governments, our present incumbent is definitely not very supportive of the poor or minorities.

Can we in Ireland do anything to help?

Both Misean Cara (which receives financial aid from the Irish government) and Trócaire are very supportive of our work here at AAVE, as are many friends and family members. So, please continue your prayers for us; in your own neighbourhood and community, be supportive of those whom you know to be living with HIV. If you could make a donation for our work, we would be very grateful. Know that your valuable contribution would only be used to help those most in need.

FOR DONATIONS: Sisters of St Louis Central Brazil, current account number 83426380, IBAN IE96 BOFI 9007 5483 4263 80.

Anne Staunton, originally from Mayo, and Limerick-born Pat O’Sullivan are retired teachers and translators and former missionaries in Midwest, Brazil.

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Fr Gerry McFlynn

ANSWERING THE CALL OF SERVICE: THE IRISH CHAPLAINCY AT 65

WHILE THE NEEDS OF IMMIGRANTS HAVE CHANGED OVER THE DECADES, THE IRISH CHAPLAINCY LONDON STILL HAS A VITAL ROLE TO PLAY IN SUPPORTING VULNERABLE AND MARGINALISED PEOPLE IN BRITAIN

Fr Gerry McFlynn

BY FR GERRY McFLYNN

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his year, the Irish Chaplaincy celebrates its 65th birthday. Set up by the Irish bishops as the Irish Emigrant Chaplaincy in a very different social, political and cultural climate, it continues today to provide an outreach service to some of the most vulnerable Irish people in Britain.

Since 1957, successive teams of priests, religious and lay people have worked tirelessly to live the challenge of the Gospel – walking alongside and being a voice for the thousands of emigrants who left Ireland in search for a better life in Britain.

The story of their labours, and the problems and prejudices they experienced, are well documented in Patricia Kennedy’s excellent social history Welcoming the Stranger: Irish Migrant Welfare in Britain since 1957 (Irish Academic Press, 2015).

The rollcall of these dedicated people, throughout the decades, is a long one and it would be unfair to single out individuals. Suffice it to say that the continued success of the chaplaincy owes everything to the pioneering work of these people at a time when it was anything but ‘cool’ to be Irish in Britain.

three main groups: prisoners, Travellers and elderly Irish people.

Of these, the prisoners’ project is the oldest, dating back to 1985. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, some members of the chaplaincy were concerned about the problems facing Irish prisoners in England and Wales, particularly in relation to their families at home in Ireland. As a result of this concern, the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas (ICPO) was set up in

a Traveller background, it works closely with the Traveller Equality Project. This project has done sterling work in recent years in bringing Traveller issues to the attention of the Prison Service. Travellers have a very difficult time in prison. Most Travellers are used to living outside in the open which makes the confinement of imprisonment particularly difficult to cope with. In addition, many of them have learning difficulties which can cause added obstacles when dealing with a system that runs on paper.

The ICPO’s work is greatly appreciated not only by the prisoners themselves and their families but also by a wide range of caring agencies. At our 25th anniversary celebrations, President McAleese had this to say about our work: “Over the past 25 years, as many people turned away from prisoners and washed their hands of them, it was your unexpected and reliable hand of friendship which let them know that they had an innate dignity that no system could overwhelm and no act of their own could obliterate.”

Many of these people, who came to England in the 1950s and 60s in search of employment and a better life, today lead lives of quiet desperation, living alone, often without the social benefits to which they are entitled.

OUTREACH When I joined the chaplaincy team in the early 1990s, there were some ten diocesan priests working in the London area alone in places like Camden, Hammersmith and Lewisham. Today, the chaplaincy provides an outreach service to 26 REALITY MARCH 2022

1985, with former Irish President Mary McAleese one of its founding members.

Today, there are around 1,200 Irish nationals in custody worldwide with the majority (some 950-plus) in England and Wales, where they constitute one of the largest ethnic groups.

Indeed, there is scarcely a prison in England and Wales which doesn’t have an Irish prisoner!

The ICPO – now known as the Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas – is based in north London. It has a full-time London prison visitor/ caseworker, a full-time caseworker, a manager and an administrative assistant. With more than 40 per cent of Irish prisoners coming from

CHANGING NEEDS Another project of the chaplaincy is the Older Persons Project which provides a visiting and support service to the many housebound elderly Irish living in the London area. At the last national census in 2011, it was estimated that

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y n

Sitting in a cell with a prisoner listening to his/ her story and maybe offering practical help, even a word of hope and encouragement, can make such a difference. there were some 20,000 elderly Irish living in the London area alone. Many of these people, who came to England in the 1950s and 60s in search of employment and a better life, today lead lives of quiet desperation, living alone, often without the social benefits to which they are entitled.

To visit and spend time with them is to realise how lonely life can be for them. This project has a team of dedicated volunteers who visit these people, offering help and support and making life as comfortable and easy for them as possible.

Much has changed about the chaplaincy since those heady days in the 1960s when Irish emigrants were met at Euston Station in London by a team of priests, nuns and lay people waiting to help with accommodation and work. The number of people emigrating to England and Wales has declined dramatically in recent years and their needs have also changed. Today’s emigrants are more likely to be young and well educated, looking to better their employment prospects. Nonetheless, there are still enough people ‘not making it’ here, and the number of Irish people in prison has not decreased in recent years. That’s why the chaplaincy’s outreach programme is now confined to serving the needs of the three most vulnerable groups of immigrants: prisoners, Travellers and elderly Irish.

BEING PRESENT From time to time, I am asked why we do this work when there are secular agencies available to provide the same service. The question inevitably leads to others about the nature of the service we provide, and what makes it different from other agencies engaged in similar work. Such questioning can prompt a useful and timely reflection on the motivation and

A gathering held in a prison, July 2019

spiritual roots of the chaplaincy’s work. One answer to these and related questions can be found in a rather unlikely place.

The Old Testament Book of Ezekiel quotes the prophet as saying: “I sat where they sat” (Ez 3:15). The line refers to the Babylonian captivity experienced by the Chosen People during one of the most traumatic episodes in their long history. The prophet believed that the best way he could help people was by being close to them and sharing in some way their sense of desolation and near despair.

In many ways it is an accurate description of our outreach work in the chaplaincy, where the service often involves sitting with people, whether it is in a prison cell, a home or a caravan. Sitting in a cell with a prisoner listening to his/her story and maybe offering practical help, even a word of hope and encouragement, can make such a difference. It is similar with elderly people, especially those living alone; what a difference a visit can make for them, just to know that there are people who value them

and are willing to befriend them and help them.

I recall one elderly recipient of our service saying: “I would have gone downhill without the chaplaincy. Now I’m enjoying life again and getting out.” In the case of Travellers, a muchmaligned group in society today, their culture and way of life need to be better understood and valued.

This quiet, often hidden work is greatly understated but hugely important. It makes me think that the ‘smaller’ miracles Jesus worked – the unrecorded words of encouragement and hope he spoke to people – were just as important as the more spectacular ones of restoring sight, healing the lame, even raising the dead. I think this is ultimately what we are all called to do in life: to help one another to find our rightful place in the rich tapestry of life.

There is surely no greater calling. It’s what Dorothy Day termed the ‘Call to Service’. As always, it takes a poet to express it best: And so I always bear the cup If, haply, mine might be the drop Some pilgrim thirst to slake.

- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Fr Gerry McFlynn is a priest of the Down and Connor Diocese. He works with the Irish Chaplaincy in London where he manages the Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas project. He is also a vice-president of Pax Christi, the international Catholic Peace Movement.

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SPORTING NATION

FROM PROFESSIONAL BASKETBALL TO IMAGINATIVE CHILDHOOD GAMES, THE PHILIPPINES OFFERS UP A RICH TAPESTRY OF SPORTING PASSIONS Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao

BY COLM MEANEY CSsR

E

“

verybody needs a break, climb a mountain, jump in a lake”. Ah yes, the immortal words of one of our greatest wordsmiths, Christy Moore, from his wonderful ‘Lisdoonvarna’. The seemingly simple lyrics contain a profound truth: all work and no play make Jack a dull boy. A life bereft of relaxation or entertainment or sport is surely an unremittingly boring, repetitive life.

Sports, whether individual or team events, are of ancient provenance. The Greek Olympic games began in the 8th century BC; the game of hurling is at least 3,000 years in existence; chess has been played for at least 1,500 years.

Quite apart from any enjoyment experienced in playing games, there are also beneficial side effects: the discipline inculcated through regular training; the rewards, to self and others,

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of perseverance; the chance to be creative, to do the unexpected; the simple gain of getting exercise. Not to be scoffed at is the element of competitiveness, of wanting to win. This is not a vice but rather a measure of one’s dedication to the game – to not want to win is surely an indication of indifference. This is exactly what St Paul says in his letter to Timothy: “I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race” (2 Tim 4:7). And he says elsewhere: “So I run with purpose in every step; I am not just shadow-boxing” (1 Cor 9:26). And while, according to St Paul, what we are striving for is the crown that will never perish (1 Cor 9:25), nevertheless our worldly sports are surely a step, however humble, on that memorable path. Allow me to describe a few of the sports and pastimes beloved of Filipinos.

SPORTSMANSHIP The all-time popular team sport is basketball, thanks to the American presence here, officially for a good part of the 20th century and even more pervasively now in the era of the internet and social media. In Manila, there are professional teams, often including foreign players; but even in the most remote hillside village you will find a ring attached to a tree trunk or tacked onto the side of a building. There, a few of the local youngsters will practise their passing and scoring skills and will occasionally organise a league with neighbouring villages, especially if the annual fiesta of the village is approaching.

These games are taken quite seriously and the decisions of the paid referee are accepted as infallible. These can be quite touching affairs, when the organisers arrange for a simple sound-

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system to be provided so that there is a running commentary during the game. Around the basketball court are the nearby rice paddies, the corn fields, the distant hills, the setting sun, while the game is played under a floodlight or two, and the commentators make sure to praise every deft move of their own team, while not failing to note any lapse on the opposing side! But there is no ill-will, no rancour; all is in a spirit of enjoyable sportsmanship and honest competition.

The most famous Filipino sportsman of recent years is, of course, the boxer Manny Pacquiao. He came to prominence in the early years of this century: his goal, like any boxer, to apply as many injuries as he could to his opponent’s body. While this ‘sport’ may exhibit such estimable traits as dedication and fancy footwork (avoiding the opponent’s punches), I find the overall result somehow disappointing: the reduction of one man to the status of something demeaning of what we are made to be.

Do a nation’s sports reflect the character of that country? Hardly. I mean, the English love their bowling on the village green, surely the essence of placid civility; yet they also revel in their pitbull fighting (illegal), not to mention the rough-and-tumble of rugby. The Spaniards love their football, but also their bullfighting.

Sports, I think, reflect more the ethos of different groups in a society, rather than the nation as a whole.

SIMPLE GAMES The Philippines, also, can accommodate a variety of sports and entertainments, from the basketball and boxing already mentioned, to simple games, the fruit of childhood ingenuity.

It is the poorer children especially who exemplify the saying about necessity being the mother of invention. Without the wherewithal to buy expensive toys or gadgets, they create their own simple games, similar to ourselves as youngsters when we played conkers or marbles or kicked a football on the road. The girls have a game whereby they string rubber bands together until they stretch to 3 or 4 metres. These then are held between two girls and the contestant tries to catch the band with her foot, bringing it to

the ground. The band is then held increasingly higher, even reaching shoulder-high and the leaps of the contestant become progressively more acrobatic, all accompanied by whoops of glee from all involved.

For the boys, one of their games is called Sipa (literally ‘to kick’): it is a traditional native sport which predates Spanish rule. The aim of the game is to kick a soft ball, made from rattan fragments, back and forth over a net in the middle of the court. The sport requires speed, agility and ball control. The ball can only be struck using the foot and cannot touch the ground. It’s played on school playgrounds, but mostly in the rural areas.

My sense is that it’s a fast-disappearing pastime, what with the ever-increasing encroachment of the world of hi-tech gadgetry.

DARK SIDE OF SPORT Dispiritingly for a nation of gentle, welcoming people, some Filipino pastimes involving animals are transparently violent – although it must be said that the spectators are almost always males. Cockfighting is extremely popular all over the country. It goes back to at least the 4th century BC, and ranges from multi-millionpeso derbies in the big cities to informal bouts in the villages. The roosters involved in the bigtime fights are reared in customised air-conditioned coops and are fed specialised feeds. For the fight, a razor-sharp blade is attached to the cock’s foot and thus the violence is done: fowl play for sure. Blood is drawn pretty quickly and the

winning owner claims the dead bird as one of his trophies. Intriguingly, the man taking the bets for the fight is known as kristo because of the posture of having his two arms outstretched as he accepts wagers from all sides.

Much more deserving of the title Kristo is the main figure in Goya’s disturbing yet inspiring painting entitled The Third of May, 1808 – incidentally, another scene where copious amounts of blood are shed. The canvas depicts an execution scene, as members of the Spanish rebellion against Napoleon face a firing squad of robot-like troops. The main figure, dwarfing the others in size, his white shirt caught in the gleam of the lantern, has his arms stretched out Christ-like, in a gesture both of acceptance of his fate, yet defiance at the inhuman forces causing it.

The Third of May, 1808 by Francisco Goya

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

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REDEMPTORIST PARISH MISSIONS

BREAKING THE WORD IN MARCH/APRIL 2022

PLEASE PRAY FOR THE REDEMPTORIST TEAMS WHO WILL PREACH THE WORD AND FOR GOD’S PEOPLE WHO WILL HEAR THE WORD PROCLAIMED THIS MONTH IN:

OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL SUCCOUR, FOXROCK, DUBLIN

ST LAURENCE O’TOOLE PARISH, KILMACUD, DUBLIN

Triduum 25 – 27 March 2022

Triduum 10th – 13th April 2022

Preacher: Fr Laurence Gallagher CSsR

Preacher: Fr Laurence Gallagher CSsR

Friday: 10am Saturday: 10am & 6pm Vigil Sunday: 10am & 11.30am

For more details visit the parish website: www.kilmacudparish.ie

Visit parish website: www.foxrockparish.ie

CONTACT DETAILS FOR BOOKING A PARISH MISSION OR NOVENA:

Fr Laurence Gallagher CSsR, Email: largallagher@gmail.com Telephone: (+353) 061 315099

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The details above are accurate at the time of printing. If you have any views, comments or even criticisms about Redemptorist preaching, we would love to hear from you. If you are interested in a mission or novena in your parish, please contact us for further information. And please keep all Redemptorist preachers in your prayers.

COM M E N T

FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS CARMEL WYNNE

MIND OVER MATTER

WHAT WE BELIEVE TO BE TRUE CAN OFTEN BECOME OUR REALITY

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he concept of mind over matter is centuries old and research studies are proving that we can use our brains to manage our lives better. The first time I read that the perceived health of participants in a study was a better predictor of the state of their health than the amount of time they spent exercising, I dismissed it as New Age mumbo jumbo. That was until I realised that the study examined data from existing health surveys of more than 60,000 people.

In another study, volunteers were given a sugary drink and told it was a new type of sports drink that solidified in the stomach. Normally, sugary drinks don’t trigger a fullness response; they just add empty calories to the diet. However, the volunteers who believed the drink had solidified – which it hadn’t – responded as if they had eaten solid food. They had a healthier insulin response to the sugar, felt fuller and ate less later on.

What would it take for you to believe that if you were willing and determined to cultivate a positive mindset, you could think yourself fitter, slimmer and more youthful? The placebo effect that has been used in drug trials for decades is now being explored as a way to improve our general health and well-being.

In drug trials, half of the participants are given the drug that is being tested. The other half are given a placebo – a sugarcoated pill. Nobody, not even the

doctors who are conducting the trial, knows who gets which. The placebo effect is triggered by the participants’ expectations. The sugar pill should do nothing, but frequently it causes measurable effects, such as an easing of symptoms. It can also have negative effects, such as nausea and rashes. What is fascinating about this is that it can occur even when people know they are taking a placebo.

The great spiritual master, Anthony de Mello SJ, said that “Human beings react, not to reality, but to ideas in their heads.”

To illustrate this point, he told a story. A group of tourists, stranded somewhere in the countryside, were given old rations to eat. Before eating the food, they tested it by throwing some of it to a dog that seemed to enjoy it and suffered no illeffects.

The following day, the tourists learned that the dog had died.

Everyone was panic-stricken.

Many began to vomit and complain of fever and nausea. A doctor was called to treat the victims for food poisoning. The doctor began by asking what had happened to the body of the dog.

Enquiries were made. A neighbour said casually, “Oh, it was thrown in a ditch after being run over by a car.” What we believe to be true will often become true for us.

Isn’t it reassuring to learn that research on ageing informs us that a positive mindset can add

years to our lives? In a famous experiment that was conducted in 1981, researchers took a group of pensioners to a monastery in New Hampshire. They were told to act as if they were 20 years younger. The monastery was decorated in the style of the 1950s. All of the music, books and magazines in the house were from that era. There were no mirrors, only pictures of the pensioners when they were younger.

After only five days, the pensioners looked and felt younger. Their arthritis had eased and their posture had improved.

People were standing more upright and their performance on IQ tests had improved. What is so heartening about all these studies is the finding that people who view ageing positively, even before it affects them, live seven and a half years longer than those who associate it with frailty, illhealth and senility. There is a huge body of evidence that shows that a happy, positive disposition is correlated with good health and a longer life. A study of nuns found that those who had the most positive outlook as young women were the healthiest in old age.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, former professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts, is credited with bringing the concept of mindfulness through meditation into mainstream medicine and science. To meditate, sit quietly, focus on the breath, and when the

mind wanders, as inevitably it will, gently bring it back to the breath.

Do this over and over again.

The concept of prayer as meditation has been around for thousands of years. It’s hardly surprising that meditation has been receiving a lot of positive attention in the medical research field in recent years. As Queen Marie Antoinette so wisely said, “There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.”

Carmel Wynne is a life coach, crossprofessional supervisor and author based in Dublin. For more information go to www.carmelwynne.org

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THE THEQUIET SAINT

KNOCK SHRINE AND THE CENTRAL ROLE OF ST JOSEPH

QUIET SAINT

AS WE CELEBRATE THE FEAST OF ST JOSEPH ON MARCH 19, WE CONSIDER A MAN OF FAITH AND COURAGE, WHO INSPIRES US TO TRUST THAT GOD HAS A BETTER PLAN FOR US THAN WE CAN HOPE

KNOCK SHRINE AND

BY FR RICHARD GIBBONS THE CENTRAL ROLE

OF ST JOSEPH

M

y favourite St Joseph quote: “.......”

Apologies, I hope you smiled!

Not one word of Joseph is recorded in Scripture, yet we get a distinct feel for him: a man of honour who stands by Mary in what must be very confusing conception and pregnancy to his mind, a man of faith who trusts that the hand of God is guiding events, and a man who seeks to nurture, provide for and protect his young family.

These aspects of St Joseph mark

Photo: Sinéad Mallee

Detail from the statue of St Joseph at Knock Shrine

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him as a remarkable individual and a fitting foster father for Jesus. Of course, his calling as foster father was not without its difficulties and uncertainties.

Imagine his worry, along with Mary’s, when Jesus went missing, or perhaps his confusion over his son’s change in career at 30 years of age when, for that particular time, Jesus should have already settled down and had a family.

That is, of course, presuming that Joseph was still alive – we just don’t know. My point is, Joseph was an ordinary man trying to make sense of tectonic change, and as such he has a lot to say to us today.

‘GO TO JOSEPH’ Our lives have been transformed

by COVID-19, and even our relationships with one another have been affected. As I write this, I’m still trying to get in to see my mother in a nursing home – it is very difficult to keep a relationship going through a window! Knowing that the nursing home in question is an excellent one and simply trying

to keep staff and residents safe doesn’t take away from the sense of rupture of normal human interaction. For others, including those of you reading this, it may be the loss of a loved one whose funeral you could not attend, loss of a job, break-up of a relationship or a whole host of other changes which have taken place as a consequence of the pandemic. The true fallout from the pandemic from a human point of view has yet to be fully understood but the changes were, and are, tectonic. I see Joseph as an example in fortitude for us at this time: someone who may have felt out of his depth in raising Jesus but nevertheless had faith in God’s plan, even if he didn’t fully grasp it in its entirety. Joseph points the way for us to trust that God has a better plan for us than we can hope and imagine, even if we don’t fully understand it ourselves.

In recent years, statues of the ‘Sleeping St Joseph’ have become increasingly popular after Pope Francis admitted to keeping one beside his bed. If he has a worry

The interior of the Apparition Chapel at Knock Shrine, with St Joseph on the left

Photo: Sinéad Mallee

(I’m sure he has more than one!) he writes it on a note and places it under the statue at night – it’s St Joseph’s problem as well now.

I know from our own bookshop in Knock that we can’t keep them stocked due to demand.

These statues remind us that ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’: a prayer to St Joseph may just find a solution for the worry or anxiety. There is a tradition in Austria of ‘going to Joseph’, which means praying to St Joseph for

help with any worries or troubles.

I remember when Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna celebrated Mass with a group of pilgrims in the Shrine Chapel, his homily focused entirely on St Joseph, and his recurring advice was, no matter what your trouble, “Go to Joseph, go to Joseph!”

YEAR OF ST JOSEPH Knock Shrine is the home of St Joseph in Ireland. The apparition scene contains three figures

– St Joseph, Our Lady and St John the Evangelist. The figure of St Joseph is turned towards Our Lady with his hands joined together in prayer and his head bowed in reverence. The year of St Joseph dedicated by Pope Francis on December 8, 2020 helped us to focus once again on the importance of Joseph. During that year we had a number of celebrations including a triduum to St Joseph, as well as a new statue of St Joseph commissioned

Photo: Sinéad Mallee

Archbishop Michael Neary blesses the new statue of St Joseph during Mass on Saturday November 6, 2021

Photo: Sinéad Mallee

Fr Richard Gibbons, rector of Knock Shrine, with Frs Terence Harrington, Denis Harnett, Gerard Doyle and Steve McPhearson

for the parish church of Knock.

In that same year, the shrine was elevated by Pope Francis to international status, becoming Ireland’s International Eucharistic and Marian Shrine.

St Joseph in the apparition reminds us of the necessity of time apart from the world and its troubles, in stillness and quietness, in order to listen or to contemplate what the Lord wants of us. Joseph’s stance in the tableau is one of calmness, reverence and prayerfulness.

Places like Knock offer that peace to everyone who visits.

For pilgrims who have been away from the life of the church for some time, this may encourage them to take time out to refresh themselves by celebrating the sacraments. Even for those who simply wish to walk the grounds of the shrine, that aspect of otherness is present.

LETTING GOD IN One of the areas of transformation for people visiting Knock is the confessional, the Chapel of 34 REALITY MARCH 2022

St Joseph in the apparition reminds us of the necessity of time apart from the world and its troubles, in stillness and quietness, in order to listen or to contemplate what the Lord wants of us.

Reconcilliation – the ‘engine room’ of the shrine. It is wonderful to hear from the priest chaplains of the moments of utter transformation in people’s lives when they simply unburden themselves and hear that the Lord loves them and forgives them. Forgiveness is a tough business; sometimes the toughest thing to do is to forgive ourselves. We may feel that we’ve been away so long that we aren’t worthy of such exhuberant forgiveness, but we would be wrong! The example of Joseph’s prayerfulness and calmness speaks to us of an opportunity to take stock and open ourselves to God’s love and mercy. It speaks to us of learning to listen to the Lord and, like Joseph, to trust in his plan for us, even if we don’t fully understand it. It might take

a few visits to Knock!

The shrine, I would suggest, is the threshold of an encounter with the Lord that is out of our everyday experience. We need spaces like Knock where we have the time, space and calmness to let God in. It is these spaces that help people face the realities of life, with faith and without fear, allowing us to proclaim “...a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ps 103).

St Joseph, then, points the way to a better future, one of hope and trust in God’s plan for us; a future in which we can take time to hear the Lord’s voice, avail of his forgiveness and work towards making him known. St Joseph, pray for us.

Photo: Sinéad Mallee

The new statue of St Joseph in the parish church in Knock

Fr Richard Gibbons is parish priest of Knock and rector of Knock Shrine, Co. Mayo.

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THE TRAUMA OF POVERTY AND INCARCERATION EMER MARTIN’S 2018 NOVEL THE CRUELTY MEN TAKES READERS BACK TO A TIME WHEN THE IRISH CHURCH AND STATE HAD UNCONDITIONAL CONTROL OVER THE LIVES OF ORDINARY PEOPLE,

BY EAMON MAHER

A

close friend of mine had been singing the praises of the contemporary writer and artist Emer Martin (b. 1972) for a long time, which prompted me to read some of her Author Emer Martin fiction. I was not disappointed. Her first novel, Breakfast in Babylon, was published in 1995 and describes the experiences of a young Irish woman, Isolt, who escapes from the oppression and recession of 1980s Ireland and makes her way to Paris, where she lives as a down-andout with other immigrants, all of whom are addicted to drugs and/or alcohol.

In a revealing self-reflective essay, Martin explains why she is attracted to marginal figures: “Often my characters are hungry ghosts entangled in a great web of trauma, but soothing and devouring themselves with addiction, as they wait for the spider to come.” The first line of the novel itself is quite striking, as the main protagonist and narrator declares: “I am not Jesus Christ. I left home younger than he, walked further and stayed out in the wilderness longer.” Martin explained that this opening line was “a challenge to the once-immutable religious power as defined by my experience being raised in a rigidly Catholic society.” I think this explains where Martin stands in relation to organised religion: she is wary of any group

of people, religious or otherwise, being given unconditional power over society. This aspect is wonderfully captured in Martin’s third novel, The Cruelty Men (2018).

SENT AWAY The title comes from the name given to government representatives who went around the country trying to locate children who were born out of wedlock, or whose parents were deemed incapable of looking after them properly: single women who got pregnant, children who were found guilty of small misdemeanours or simply came from impoverished backgrounds. As a result of the close collusion between church and state, these people were sent to industrial schools, Magdalene Laundries or mother and child homes, where they were treated as though they were morally stained. Mary O’Conaill was the eldest child of a south-west Irishspeaking Kerry family, who were enticed with the gift of some land to relocate to the Meath Gaeltacht that was being established in an attempt to revive the national language. She and her siblings headed off with their father, leaving a heavily pregnant mother behind – the idea was that she would join them after giving birth to her baby – but they never saw her again. After a few months, not having heard any news of his wife, the father heads off to Kerry and he too disappears forever, leaving Mary with the task of raising her brothers and sisters on her own. She lives in daily fear of the cruelty men coming to take

the children into care but, by dint of much resourcefulness and backbreaking work, she manages to keep the family together, initially at least.

When the eldest son, Seamus, takes control of the farm and the family, he arranges to have his brother Padraig sent to an industrial school where his strange mannerisms and inability to speak result in his ending up in a psychiatric unit. There he undergoes gruesome electro-therapy and eventually dies at a young age. The attractive Maeve, who goes to work in a shop in the nearby town of Trim, is pursued by many men, one of them the son of a wealthy farming family.

Eventually she falls pregnant – it is not certain who the father is, as the son-in-law of the shopkeeper she works for regularly forces her to have sex with him also – and she ends up in a mother and baby home, a Magdalene Laundry and finally a mental home, where she suffers the same fate as her brother Padraig. Meanwhile Mary has to leave the family home because Seamus and his new bride, who is lazy to the core, make her life a living hell. She ends up as housekeeper and nanny to a lawyer and his wife, a teacher, also living in the area around Trim.

CONTROL Mary is desperately saddened by her inability to keep the family together, as her mother had requested, but circumstances (and a strong bias against the poor) ensured that she could not do so. Her focus then becomes 35

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ensuring that the youngest sibling, Seán, gets an education. He goes to the noviciate of the Christian Brothers and qualifies as a teacher.

He is offered his choice of the best private schools, but in the end decides he wants to work in an industrial school: “I feel they need changing and sorting out. I feel my mission would be most fulfilled there, and not among the children of the wealthy and powerful.”

Such laudable sentiments are not in keeping with the ethos of the school where he ends up. The principal, Br Peter, proudly declares that the Catholic Church in Ireland controls “all women, men, boys and girls of every class.

The people of Ireland are here, in the palm of our hands.” He goes on to describe the inmates of his school as “the detritus of our new independent society”.

When his own nephew Ignatius, Seamus’ son, arrives in the school, Seán tries valiantly to give him a chance in life, providing private tuition in his room and protection from the proclivities of some of the more unsavoury Brothers. In the end, Ignatius figures out why his uncle always appears fearful: “Did they get you when you were in the training school?” he asks him. “Is that why you sleep with the light on. Is that why you are afraid of them still?” Shortly after giving Ignatius a fearful beating in full view of the school, and getting a standing ovation from the Brothers later that evening, he is found hanging in his room, unable to take any more of a life full of pain and suffering.

The Cruelty Men contains graphic descriptions of life in some of Ireland’s most notorious institutions, but at times the religious are rather one-dimensional. The nuns working in the Laundries seem uniformly evil. Elizabeth, housekeeper (and mistress) to the local parish priest, Fr Lavin, describes her experience of the laundry where she ended up: “They drummed it into us that we were the spawn of Satan. We were taken because someone ratted to the priest that my mother (who had 13 children) had a boyfriend.” She shares her anger with her friend: “What is my crime, Mary? I wasn’t a bloody orphan. My mother wanted us. They stole her off us. They were waiting outside in a car to take us. The priest and the guards.”

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Undoubtedly, there were numerous shocking and cruel incidents like these in the Ireland of a few decades ago, but there are times in the book when caricatures of evil nuns, Christian Brothers and priests seem a little lacking in objectivity.

Fr Lavin and Seán O Conaill are the only redeeming religious figures in the novel, and even they find it impossible to break the mould and criticise the abuses they see happening in front of their eyes. Maeve, who, because of her rebellious streak and various attempts at escape, is the victim of particularly harsh treatment, says she feels as though she is “going underground”: “Under the thud and hum of the laundries. Under the heaps of banned books from exiled scribblers. Under the shoeless bloody feet of slave children in the obscene care of church and state – uncounted lives melted like snow off a ditch.” Many of the ills of Irish society are captured in these lines.

HIDDEN IRELAND The Cruelty Men lays bare the hidden Ireland that was exposed over the course of several decades, during which clerical sex abuse, the horror of life in institutions set up by the state and run by religious, the corruption of politicians and bankers, the various

When asked why he did not look for his aunt Mary and others when released from the industrial school, Ignatius replies: “When have the well fed ever understood the hungry?” revelations that showed how far we had strayed from the aspirations of the newlyestablished Free State, all came into the public domain.

When asked why he did not look for his aunt Mary and others when released from the industrial school, Ignatius replies: “When have the well fed ever understood the hungry?” In a sense, these words encapsulate the philosophy of Martin’s novel, which forces readers to think about what happened in Ireland’s recent past and to ponder the reasons behind it. The writer explains that her work is “a call to revolt against this despair, through examining the roots of the problem, facing it, protecting indigenous culture and rebelling against the authorities who have deemed it convenient to have problematic areas of the population consigned to haunt the fringes of humanity in a fog of poverty, addiction and inertia.”

That is no small challenge, but Emer Martin shows herself to be more than capable of meeting it. She is a significant voice in contemporary Irish letters.

Eamon Maher’s latest book, co-edited with Eugene O’Brien, is Reimagining Irish Studies for the Twenty-First Century, published

by Peter Lang.

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HUNGARY’S IRISH MADONNA THIS ST PATRICK’S DAY MARKS 325 YEARS SINCE MASS-GOERS AT THE CATHEDRAL OF GYÖR IN HUNGARY WITNESSED A PAINTING OF THE MADONNA AND CHILD ‘WEEPING’. KNOWN AS THE ‘IRISH MADONNA’ THE PAINTING HAS A MYSTERIOUS BACKSTORY

BY SÉAMUS DEVITT CSsR

O

n St Patrick’s Day 1697, in the side chapel of St Anne in the Cathedral of the Assumption in the Hungarian city of Györ, a painting of Mary and her Child began to shed tears of blood. The 6am Mass had just begun. There was consternation.

Word spread, and crowds of people – Catholic, Protestant, Jews – came running to the cathedral. The weeping continued until around 9am. Priests from the cathedral wiped the painting with pieces of cloth, but the weeping continued. Later, they took the painting off the wall, removed its frame, removed the stretchers holding the canvas and examined it thoroughly. They could find nothing to explain why their ‘Irish Madonna’ was weeping.

Walter Lynch, a Galway man and the exiled bishop of Clonfert, had lived in Györ 40 years earlier. When he died in 1663, this painting of the Madonna and Child was among his most precious possessions. The Irish bishop had travelled into exile from Inishbofin when that island, the last stronghold of the Irish, surrendered to the Cromwellian forces on February 17, 1653. The Irish commander of the island, George Cusack, was allowed to leave by ship together with a thousand of his soldiers. The Bishop of Clonfert was also allowed to leave. It is not known if he had the rolled-up canvas of this painting with him, amongst his few belongings.

Months later, in May 1653, he was in Belgium, reduced to penury and writing to Rome for financial assistance. Roughly two years later whilst in Vienna, he met the

Photo: Béla Szabó

‘Irish Madonna’ painting in the Cathedral of the Assumption, Györ, Hungary

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prayed before the painting in this, a national Marian shrine in Hungary. The following year, in March 1997 − the tercentenary of the event − great celebrations were held, covered by Magyar Television, the national television station in Hungary. The cathedral was packed for the three days of celebration.

Bishop John Kirby of Clonfert, and some other priests from that diocese, were invited guests for this celebration.

The Cathedral of the Assumption in the Hungarian city of Györ

bishop of the nearby diocese of Györ (pronounced ‘Jeour’) in Hungary, about 75 miles (125 kilometres) east of Vienna.

In that year (1655), Bishop János Püsky of Györ invited the homeless Irish bishop to his diocese and promised him a livelihood. He appointed Walter Lynch a canon in his cathedral and gave him an income. He also employed him as assistant bishop, and Bishop Walter Lynch lived and worked there for eight years.

Then, just as he was planning to return to his diocese of Clonfert in the West of Ireland, he died, aged 68, on July 14, 1663. It was said of him that ’In his life he was a model of the devout priest,’ that he spent his income on the care of the poor, and that he was greatly liked by the flock of Györ. He was buried in the crypt of the cathedral.

After his death, the people took his beloved painting and hung it in the cathedral. They

placed it ’with no particular interest or attention’ on the northern wall of the side chapel near the shrine of St Anne. It was there, 34 years later, that many people witnessed the painting weeping tears of blood, a phenomenon that continued for over three hours. A cloth that wiped the tears on that morning, March 17, 1697, is preserved to this day in the cathedral and is venerated by the public on certain days. However, almost 200 years passed before the story became known in Ireland.

The painting of the ’Irish Madonna’ or the ’Consoler of the Afflicted’ is venerated by the Catholics of Hungary and the people of Györ.

Just after the event, the military governor of Györ paid for a beautiful wooden altar to be placed at the shrine. Sixty or more years later, a magnificent marble altar was created, and the painting hangs there to this day. In 1996, during a visit to Hungary, Pope St John Paul II

They took the painting off the wall, removed its frame, removed the stretchers holding the canvas and examined it thoroughly. They could find nothing to explain why their ‘Irish Madonna’ was weeping.

38 REALITY MARCH 2022

THE PAINTING Painted on canvas, its dimensions are 26 inches in height by 20 inches in breadth (66cm by 50cm). There is no agreement among art experts as to what school of painting it came from, or from what country.

Some say it is Spanish in style, others Dutch.

Nor do we have any idea where or when Walter Lynch came into possession of it.

If it was a life-long treasure, he could have got it when a student in Lisbon, or later while studying in Paris and Caen. Or it could have come into Galway on one of the many trading ships from the Continent, during Lynch’s years as warden of St Nicholas’ Collegiate Church in the city. Or it could have been painted by some artist, local or foreign, in Galway itself. The answer is unknown.

While still in Ireland, Walter Lynch hosted a gathering of the Irish bishops at the Carmelite Abbey in Loughrea on December 7, 1650. The Cromwellian army was moving towards Connacht in the late 1650s; the noose was tightening, and there was great fear. In the Carmelite Abbey, the bishops consecrated Ireland – now in direst need – to the Mother of God, in perpetuity.

William St Leger, a Jesuit, wrote: “On the 7th of this December 1650, in an Assembly of the whole kingdom – a union of all Catholics − contrary to and against all hope, it was accepted and declared: That, because it happened on the vigil of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, it was accepted and publicly decreed by the unanimous vote of all, that the God-bearer Virgin under the title of the Immaculate Conception, should be Patroness of the kingdom, and that this day, both solemn and

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All Catholic bishops, all senior clergy and all male religious were to be out of the island of Ireland

by May 1 of the following year, under penalty for treason if they remained or returned. festive, should from now on be forever celebrated by the whole kingdom as a perpetual memorial of this.” There is no evidence that Bishop Lynch made use of the painting of the Madonna and Child at this event.

THE BACKGROUND When the Irish Madonna, the Consolatrix Afflictorum, wept tears of blood in 1697, Hungary was at war. The Austrian, Hungarian and other armies were still fighting the Ottoman Empire Turks, who had been driven from the gates of Vienna in 1683. The Hungarian people were suffering greatly.

And there were dark clouds gathering in Ireland. On February 6, 1697, William III appointed Henri de Massue, 2nd Marquis deRuvigny, a Frenchman and a Huguenot or Calvinist, as Lord Justice of Ireland. He was known as Lord Galway and was a hero from the Battle of Aughrim. He became, in practice, the Chief Justice. William asked him to reintroduce the Act of Banishment into the Irish Parliament – a bill that the king had blocked for two years.

William badly needed money to pay his army. He needed the Irish landowners (now mostly Protestant) on his side. DeRuvigny, now ‘Earl of Galway’, was William’s weapon to bring the divided Irish Parliament into line. He was a man to be feared. William was aware that ‘neither the sword nor the great seal could be trusted in Irish hands,’ so he entrusted them to the hands of his fellow-Calvinist, deRuvigny.

A letter in Vatican archives states: “Lord Galway…a powerful enemy of the Catholics, will have to be reckoned with, as he seeks nothing but the destruction of the catholic

religion and the persecution of all who profess it; by doing so, he hopes to take vengeance for the expulsion of the French Huguenots, and to gratify his followers by handing over to them the spoils of the Catholics, without which it would be impossible for his supporters to continue to reside in Ireland.”

The Frenchman arrived in Dublin on May 31.

His officials prepared the bills within three weeks, ready for sending to the Privy Council in London, as the law required: the bills were being prepared in great haste. News of the proposed bill, The Act of Banishment, caused consternation among the ‘Papists’, who quickly sent delegations to London and to Europe, to no avail.

The Dublin Parliament met on July 27. The bill, or Act of Banishment, was placed before the houses. It had its final reading in Dublin in the House of Lords on August 30, and in the House of Commons on September 10. William signed it into law on September 25, 1697.

The whole process happened with unseemly speed. All Catholic bishops, all senior clergy and all male religious were to be out of the island of Ireland by May 1 of the following year, under penalty for treason if they remained or returned.

“I have to fall in with the wishes of the Irish parliament which is well aware of the turbulent spirit of the regular clergy and has to take measures for the preservation of peace,” said the king. This, and the bills that followed, were intended ‘to prevent the further increase of popery’ in Ireland: with no more bishops, there would be no more ordinations, and eventually no more priests.

Without priests, the Irish would then become contented members of ‘the church by law established’; there would be no more Catholics in the kingdom. Such was the hope.

Was that the reason why the painting of ‘The Irish Madonna’, the Consoler of the Afflicted, wept for those hours, on St Patrick’s Day, in the year of 1697?

Historians can tell us the what. They can only speculate as to the why.

This St Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2022, marks 325 years since the weeping, that morning in Györ.

A copy of the ‘Irish Madonna’ in the Cathedral of Loughrea, presented by Bishop Lajos Pápai of Győr in 2003

This frame, preserved in the Cathedral of Györ, contains one of the cloths that wiped the tears of blood from the picture on the morning of March 17, 1697. The linen is now dark and discoloured as by faded blood stains. A certificate on the back states: “This is the very cloth, which dried the devotional picture at the Cathedral when it exuded blood on March 17 1697... Raab, (the German name for Györ) 20th May 1701.”

Séamus Devitt CSsR is curate in Assumption Parish in Ballyfermot, Dublin. A fuller study of this event, and of the life and times of Walter Lynch, Warden of Galway and later Bishop of Clonfert, is being prepared for publication.

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ZIMBABWE FACES DOUBLE THREAT OF DROUGHT AND COVID HAVING LOST HER HUSBAND TO COVID-19, THANDEKILE AND HER YOUNG FAMILY FACED DROUGHT AND HUNGER. TRÓCAIRE’S LENTEN APPEAL FOCUSES ON SUPPORTING FAMILIES LIKE THANDEKILE’S IN REBUILDING THEIR LIVES

BY DAVID O'HARE

T

rócaire’s 2022 Lenten Appeal launches on Ash Wednesday, March 2, and this year’s appeal is focusing on the challenges facing people in Zimbabwe who are dealing with the twin threats of drought due to climate change, and COVID-19.

Seven million people living in poverty, especially women, in drought-prone southern Zimbabwe have been disproportionately affected by the longterm impacts of COVID-19. Families were already unable to grow enough food to feed themselves because of drought and climate change, and now these challenges have been further exacerbated by the impact of the virus.

Women, who are the primary producers of food, have faced a massive increase in violent genderbased violence since the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Travel restrictions have also resulted in far fewer opportunities for people to earn a living and poverty levels have increased.

FACING HUNGER The face of the appeal this year is Thandekile (31).

Thandekile and her young family are facing hunger because the impacts of the pandemic have compounded the effects of drought and reduced the ways for people to earn a living.

Every day is a struggle for Thandekile whose only wish is to be able to provide for her children Nomatter (11) and Forward (8). The effects of climate change, including three droughts and a severe cyclone in the past five years, means that crops are failing, affecting the ability of the family to feed themselves.

40 REALITY MARCH 2022

Even before COVID-19, Thandekile and her family were facing hunger as droughts and heavy rainfall caused their plants and crops to fail. The family would often go nights without eating as food was not always available in their community.

In November 2020, the family’s already fragile world was turned upside down when COVID-19 hit. Thandekile’s husband Donovan (35) passed away from the virus while he was working in South Africa to earn an income to provide for his family.

Left widowed, now Thandekile’s greatest fear is that she will die from COVID-19 or hunger and there will be no one to look after her children.

“I live for my children and my wish is to be able to provide for all their needs. My greatest fear is to die whilst my kids are still young. I pray that the Lord keeps me so that I raise them until they are old enough to take care of themselves,” she says.

“The death of my husband hit me very hard and I was bed-ridden for days. I did not know how I was going to move on and raise my children without the presence of their father,” she says. “His death greatly affected my children too. Donovan was a good father to our children and a good husband to me.”

LIVING WITH LOSS Following the passing of Donovan, Thandekile struggled even more to provide food for her family, as grieving for her husband meant that she couldn’t engage in farming activities which delayed the planting of crops and made them even more vulnerable to heavy rainfall.

Thandekile holds a picture of her late husband Donovan

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Photo: Cynthia Matonhodze

Thandekile with her two children Nomatter (11) and Forward (8)

“I pray that the Lord keeps me so that I raise my children until they are old enough to take care of themselves” “Following Donovan’s death, my life was very hard financially since he was the breadwinner. It also affected my ability to earn an income as at times I would be so stressed and too sick to even go out and work. I did not have the means to pay school fees for the children, to buy uniforms and all our other basic needs because I had no source of income.”

“Due to COVID-19, a lot of businesses were shut down which made a lot of people unemployed. This worsened the ability for anyone to have access to money or at least get a job. Children could not go to school 42 REALITY MARCH 2022

because of the lockdown and you can tell that their progress has been greatly affected.”

Determined to provide for her two children, Thandekile began buying and selling women’s clothes in order to make money. “My wish is to be able to provide for all their needs, so I hope that my business will grow. My hope is that my children will be able to continue in school and be successful in life.”

Trócaire has been working in Zimbabwe since 1980 in areas such as humanitarian aid, food security, women’s empowerment and human rights issues. In Thandekile’s community, Trócaire operates community gardens with its partner Caritas Bulawayo in which locals can plant vegetables, store seeds and learn about watershed management and planting methods. The garden is also used for COVID-19 awareness training.

Thandekile said: “The greatest gift that

people can give to one another in life is food and money, because we need it to survive.

What gives me hope is that I am still alive despite all that we have been through as a family. Whatever the problems you have been through in life, it is important to dust yourself off and move on, have hope and work hard for the children even if it’s very difficult. I thank the people of Ireland for all the help you give to us, please do not tire.”

FIND OUT MORE To find out more about the appeal or to make a donation visit www.trocaire.org

THIS LENT THE UK GOVERNMENT WILL MATCH ALL PUBLIC DONATIONS TO THE LENTEN APPEAL IN NORTHERN IRELAND, POUND FOR POUND, DOUBLING THE IMPACT YOU CAN MAKE.

CO M M E N T REALITY CHECK PETER McVERRY SJ

CAN THE HUMAN RACE SURVIVE?

WITHOUT GLOBAL SOLIDARITY TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE, THE FUTURE IS GRIM.

W

arning: this article may be bad for your mental

health!

In 1977, NASA sent a spacecraft into outer space, with a gramophone record describing the diversity of life on earth.

If some aliens intercept this spacecraft, and have a record player, they may learn about this extinct species that used to inhabit a planet called Earth.

Can we save life on this planet?

COVID-19 can be considered a trial run for addressing global warming. COVID-19 is a global problem that requires cooperation and coordination between all nations and individuals on earth. But, instead, we have seen wealthier nations buying up 80 per cent of all the vaccines produced to ensure that their own populations are fully vaccinated, with boosters available, while poorer nations are left with the scraps from the table. We have seen greed replace sharing, in the refusal of the richer nations to allow poorer nations patent-free access to the vaccines which would enable them to produce their own vaccines at an affordable cost. We have seen COVID-19 deniers refusing to get vaccinated and putting their own and others’ lives at risk. We have seen disinformation propagated on social media. We have seen decision-makers refusing to implement restrictions, such as wearing masks, which could save lives.

If this is how we responded to a global crisis which we all

44 REALITY MARCH 2022

experienced, how will we respond to a crisis which most people have not yet experienced? For many, global warming is still a notional crisis, not yet real.

But the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), produced by hundreds of the world’s top experts from 66 countries, starkly warns that the crisis is

will we do it?

Like with COVID-19, we see influential decision-makers, usually in wealthier countries, deny the problem of global warming, for fear that their economic growth might be reduced, like former President Trump and current President Bolsonaro of Brazil who is allowing large parts of the Amazon forest

indeed real and, if nothing is done immediately, life on planet earth will be extinguished. The repeatedly ignored warnings over past decades have now become reality, Already, we have seen wildfires in Greece, Turkey, USA, Canada, Italy, Sicily, Algeria, and Siberia, unprecedented in our history. We have seen record temperatures in many parts of the world. Other places, such as England, Germany and South Africa, have experienced extreme drought or floods. Many changes due to past greenhouse gas emissions are already irreversible.

The world knows what to do, but

to be destroyed in order to graze cattle. We see the oil and gas industry, and their investors, paying expensive lobbyists to ensure that politicians will continue to support, and even expand, the use of fossil fuels.

We see interest groups trying to ensure that their sectors will not be adversely affected by any proposed environmental changes. Those who deny the science behind global warming believe that science will solve the problem!

The crisis is not only a scientific but also a moral one. Without global solidarity, the future is

grim. Unless every nation and every individual is willing to make the radical sacrifices needed, the wildfires, heatwaves, droughts and floods will only continue to get worse, leading to food production becoming impossible in parts of the world, leading in turn to social unrest and massive migration.

Hence the churches have a key role to play. Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ was a prophetic call to the values of caring and sharing, to a universal solidarity, in order to save the planet, a call that has gone unheeded by many decisionmakers. He reminds us that care for creation, over which God gave stewardship to us humans, is an integral part of our faith.

The indications are that too many are unwilling to make the individual, sectoral and national sacrifices needed. The world, post-Covid, is waiting to get back to normal! Already, many people are getting ready to fly around the world again on holidays, encouraged by the aviation industry and tourist destinations. But getting back to normal is exactly what we must not do.

We thought we could exploit our planet; but our planet is fighting back. Will the human race survive? I very much doubt it.

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

GOD’S WORD THIS MONTH A DRAMATIC ENCOUNTER On this first Sunday of Lent, we are taken back to the prelude to the ministry of Jesus. The FIRST SUNDAY Gospel tradition begins OF LENT with the figure of John the Baptist, the baptism of Jesus, then Jesus’ being tested. Luke and Matthew present a dramatic confrontation between Jesus and the devil. But we might note that Luke tells us in our Gospel reading today that it is the Spirit who sets up this encounter; Jesus is not ambushed in the wilderness, but rather the devil is acting, in a sense, as God’s agent, to find out how Jesus understands what it means to be the Son of God. He has been revealed as such at his baptism, but will he use this knowledge as a kind of short-cut to being the Messiah people are expecting, or will he be the Son that God has in mind?

The three tests present Jesus with a choice: he can use his divine power for his own advantage or to attract a popular following. In either case, his mission is doomed. Or, he can be the Son and Messiah whom God intends, and the proof of that is not human success,

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A GLIMPSE OF THE DIVINE The episode in today’s Gospel, which we usually call the Transfiguration of Jesus, marks, in dramatic SECOND SUNDAY form, the turning point OF LENT in Jesus’s ministry. Up to this point, he has been preaching and healing in Galilee: now he begins his journey towards Jerusalem and his destiny. The vision of Jesus in glory, which is granted to his closest male disciples – Peter, James and John – gives them, and ourselves, a glimpse of Jesus’ deepest being. We recognise the similarities between this incident and that of Jesus’ baptism: the cloud represents the

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Fresco of the Temptation of Jesus in St George Church in Antwerp, Belgium

but the cross. We will reflect on the final and crucial test at the end of Lent, in Holy Week.

Our Gospel reading hints at this, when it ends with the ominous warning that “the devil left him, to return at the appointed time” – that is, at the Last Supper, when the story of Jesus’ Passion begins.

divine presence and the voice of God, which declares Jesus as God’s Son, the Chosen One. Just as Jesus’ baptism stands at the beginning of his ministry in Galilee, so the vision of Jesus in glory marks the start of his journey towards Jerusalem, his ministry in Judea and the holy city, which leads to his Passion and death on Calvary.

Luke makes connections with the Jewish traditions found in the Hebrew Scriptures.

The two figures who appear in glory, in conversation with Jesus, are Moses and Elijah.

Moses received the Law from God on Mount Sinai and facilitated the Covenant between the Lord and the people of Israel. Elijah represents the prophetic movement within the story of

Today’s Readings Deut 26:4-10; Ps 90; Rom 10:8-13; Lk 4:1-13

Israel, which challenges the legal system and reminds the clergy and laity of the deeper meaning of the Law: that its purpose is to bring the person and nation into an intimate, personal relationship with, and commitment to, the Lord. It is this vision, in both senses, which is given to us as we continue our Lenten journey towards Easter.

Today’s Readings Gen 15:5-12. 17-18; Ps 26; Phil 3:17-4:1; Lk 9:28-36

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GOD’S WORD THIS MONTH

WHAT DID THEY DO TO DESERVE THAT? This is the second time that the name of Pilate has occurred in Luke’s THIRD SUNDAY narrative. This Roman OF LENT official had a reputation for ruthlessly dealing with anyone he saw as a troublemaker, so as we are in Lent, and following Jesus on his journey to Jerusalem, we have a hint of what is to come. The common attitude of the time was that misfortune was the result of sin, which Jesus seems to accept. But his teaching is that the tragic fate of these people of Galilee does not indicate that they were particularly guilty of any offence more serious than anyone else. Nor were

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46 REALITY MARCH 2022

those crushed under a toppling building in Jerusalem. Rather, Jesus is emphasising just how precarious human life can be; his listeners should not take life and health for granted, nor put off being converted and living a decent life under the Word of God. The second section of our Gospel reading concentrates on the fig tree which fails to produce fruit. A fruitful tree is a sign of God’s blessing, and we find examples of the fig, the olive, the grape-bearing vine as positive proof of God’s care for the people. We note that the person in charge of the garden argues, politely, with the landowner, to give the plant another and final chance. This echoes the message of the first passage, that no one can put off indefinitely the effort to reorder and reorient their lives.

Today’s Readings Ex 3:1-8. 13-15; Ps 102; 1 Cor 10:1-6. 1012; Lk 13:1-9

THE REALITY CROSSWORD NUMBER 2 MARCH ���� SOLUTIONS CROSSWORD No. 10 Across: 1. Verona, 5. Elijah, 10. Gehenna, 11. Blesses, 12. Nosy, 13. Bulls, 15. Inca, 17. Sam, 19.

Assisi, 21. Wailed, 22. Avatars, 23. Galway, 25. Yahweh, 28. Arc, 30. Adze, 31. Agnes, 32. Liar, 35.

Barista, 36. Egoists, 37. Escort, 38. Yearns.

THE PRODIGAL FATHER Our Gospel reading today is set in the context of Jesus’ critics muttering that he is associating with people considered less than acceptable, namely “tax collectors and sinners”. The former were FOURTH SUNDAY unpopular as they were regarded as collaborators OF LENT with the Roman occupiers, and anyone who was not observing the proper religious customs was deemed a ‘sinner’. This did not mean that the person concerned was particularly immoral but simply that, for whatever reason, they were not fulfilling the requirements of the Law. Yet these are the people who respond positively to Jesus and his message. Jesus shares food with them, a clear signal that they are welcomed and accepted by him. His critics understand the significance of his actions and that is what infuriates them.

Jesus uses the parable of the Lost Son to illustrate his message. A better title for this well-beloved story would be ‘The Prodigal Father’. Many people think that the word ‘prodigal’ means repentant or regretful, but in fact the basic meaning is wasteful. It is not the irresponsible young man who is the centre of the story; rather, it is the anxious parent who has been looking out for his return, casts aside his own dignity to rush to meet him, won’t listen to any words of apology, and throws an extravagant party to welcome him home. Jesus tells us that this is God’s attitude towards those who have made a mess of their lives; all that God can say is ‘Welcome home!’

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Down: 2. Ephesus, 3. Owns, 4. Abacus, 5. Embalm, 6. Ibex, 7. Arsenal, 8. Uganda, 9. Island, 14.

Lantern, 16. Isaac, 18. Nasal, 20. Ivy, 21. Wry, 23. Grabby, 24. Lazarus, 26. Whitsun, 27. Heresy, 28.

Aghast, 29. Celery, 33. Oslo, 34. Coma.

Winner of Crossword No. 10 Siobhan Lange, Ennis, Co. Clare

ACROSS 1. Kenyan fighters of the 1950s. (3,3) 5. Polynesian home of Paul Gauguin. (6) 10. Seven days given over to student fun.

(3,4) 11. A newly joined member or supporter. (7) 12. A standard measure used to calculate alcohol intake. (4) 13. Heavy block used by a blacksmith. (5) 15. A counterfeit item. (4) 17. Plunge quickly into a liquid. (3) 19. Sea between Greece and Turkey. (6) 21. Pick-me-ups. (6) 22. Location of wall destroyed by the Israelites. (7) 23. Repeating bird. (6) 25. Tooth covering. (6) 28. A piece of turf. (3) 30. Woodwind instrument. (4) 31. The older brother of Moses. (5) 32. Boast about an old form of poker. (4) 35. A wide mainly elevated level area of elevated land. (7) 36. The Greek painter of the Spanish Renaissance. (2,5) 37. Russian WWII leader. (6) 38. Line from the centre of a circle to its perimeter. (6)

DOWN 2. The sport of Isaak Walton. (7) 3. They shall inherit the earth. (4) 4. Cruel, not sympathetic. (6) 5. Widely cultivated vegetable. (6) 6. Animal joint corresponding to the human ankle. (4) 7. A large, often destructive, sea wave. (7) 8. A powerful shock that may have long-lasting results. (6) 9. Greek city, birthplace of democracy. (6) 14. A caller, guest. (7) 16. Military rank of more importance. (5) 18. This Daniel was an American frontiersman.

(5) 20. Openwork fabric used to trap fish. (3) 21. The most common written word in the English language. (3) 23. Remind an actor of a forgotten line. (6) 24. It’s read to those who have misbehaved badly. (4,3) 26. Famous French mime artist. (7) 27. Body of water cut off from the open sea by reefs or sand bars. (6) 28. Sixth planet from the sun. (6) 29. A folded-down corner of a page. (3-3) 33. Restore to health. (4) 34. Advanced in years. (4)

Entry Form for Crossword No.2, March 2022 The parable of the Prodigal Son depicted in St Mary Abbot’s Church, Kensington High Street, London

Name: Address:

Today’s Readings

Telephone:

Josh 5:9-12; Ps 33; 2 Cor 5:17-21; Lk 15:1-3. 11-32

All entries must reach us by Friday March 25, 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.2, Redemptorist Communications, St Joseph's Monastery, Dundalk, County Louth A91 F3FC