Reality December 2017

The Challenge of Advent

The Catholic Vision in Hollywood

Christmas 1946 in the Holy Land

Informing, Inspiring, Challenging Today’s Catholic

DECEMBER 2017

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THE ICON FOR THE YEAR OF THE FAMILY

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CELEBRATING make her

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OF DEVOTION TO OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HELP

The first Irish copy of the Icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help arrived in Mount Saint Alphonsus Limerick on December 28, 1867 and has been venerated there ever since.

The Limerick shrine was the centre from which devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help spread throughout Ireland.

Redemptorists setting out on mission from Mount Saint Alphonsus took copies of the Icon with them to Australia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India and, most recently, Mozambique.

150th JUBILEE CELEBRATIONS AT MOUNT SAINT ALPHONSUS, LIMERICK Thursday, December 28 @ 7.15pm Most Rev. Fintan Monahan, Bishop of Killaloe

Friday, December 29 @ 7.15pm Most Rev. Kieran O’Reilly, SMA Archbishop of Cashel and Emly

Saturday, December 30 10am: Very Rev. Noel Hession, OSA Prior, St Augustine’s, Limerick 7.15pm: Most Rev Donal Murray Bishop Emeritus of Limerick

Sunday, December 31 12 noon: Most Rev Brendan Leahy Bishop of Limerick 7.15pm: Very Rev Dan Baragry, CSsR Provincial of the Irish Redemptorists

IN THIS MONTH’S ISSUE FEATURES 12 THE ICON FOR THE YEAR OF THE FAMILY A new icon will express in vivid colour some of the deepest truths about the Christian vision of the family By the Sisters of the Most Holy Redeemer

17 MEET THE PARENTS Matthew’s Christmas story has some dark tone, but it has much to teach us, especially about the role of Joseph

By Dr Jonathan Burroughs

20 WAITING IN SILENCE The Challenge of Advent

By Sarah Adams

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22 THE CATHOLIC VISION IN HOLLYWOOD JOHN FORD AND ALFRED HITCHCOCK Christmas often brings us some cinema classics.

The roots of two Hollywood “greats” were deeply Catholic and they brought a Catholic vision to the screen

By María Elena de las Carreras Kuntz

26 CHRISTMAS IN THE HOLY LAND Fr Joseph Murphy CSsR spent Christmas 1946 as a military chaplain in the Holy Land

32 PRAYING WITH THE ROSARY A new series on how to use the mysteries of the Rosary for meditation: Third Joyful Mystery: The Birth of Jesus

By Fr George Wadding CSsR

34 A CONVERT, AN ICON AND A CONFRATERNITY As Rector of Mount St Alphonsus, Fr Thomas Edward Bridgett installed the first copy of the icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help for public veneration on December 28, 1867. A week later, the Holy Family Confraternity held its first meeting.

By Fr Brendan McConvery CSsR

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34

OPINION

REGULARS

11 BRENDAN McCONVERY

04 REALITY BITES

16 DAVID O'DONOGHUE

07 POPE MONITOR

31 CARMEL WYNNE

08 FEAST OF THE MONTH

42 PETER McVERRY SJ

09 REFLECTIONS 38 TRÓCAIRE 41 UNDER THE MICROSCOPE 43 GOD’S WORD

REALITY BITES EIGHT HUNDRED YEARS SERVING THE HOLY LAND

THE HOLY LAND

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AMBASSADORS OF THE ENTIRE PEOPLE OF GOD

For 800 years, the Franciscan order has been present in the Holy Land, serving as “ambassadors of the entire People of God”, according to Pope Francis. In a message celebrating the anniversary, Pope Francis commended them for their “willingness to accompany the steps of pilgrims from every part of the world through welcome and guidance”. It was St Francis himself who

established the first mission to the Holy Land in 1217. In 1342, the friars were declared the official custodians of the holy places by Pope Clement VI. Father Michael Perry OFM, Minister General of the Friars Minor, said that St Francis wanted to visit the Holy Land, but got only as far as Damietta in Egypt. “The Custody’s vision,” he

said, “is to promote dialogue and harmony among people and to promote humanity’s integral development.”

The territory of the Holy Land Custody includes Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, parts of Egypt, Cyprus and the Greek island of Rhodes.

It serves dozens of holy places like Nazareth, Gethsemane and Capernaum, sharing the Church

STUDENT LEADER REMOVED FOR ANTI-ABORTION STANCE DUBLIN

KATIE ASCOUGH

REALITY DECEMBER 2017

STANDING BY PERSONAL VIEWS

Almost 70 per cent of the students at University College Dublin have voted to impeach their Students' Union president, Katie Ascough. Calls for her removal came after she withdrew information on abortion services from a student magazine, despite the information being previously available in UCD. Re-printing the magazine cost the union €8,000. In her defence, Ms Ascough said she had received legal advice that printing the information was illegal. Speaking after the result of the ballot was announced, she thanked her campaign team and said: "I have fought the good fight. I have been open and

honest. I have respected the law. I feel confident that I've done all that I could do for the students that I have been elected to represent. This is a sad day for me." A member of the 'Students for Life' organisation, she was elected following a ballot of students last March.

"It was clear from the outset that some students didn’t want to give me a chance as SU president because of my views on abortion," she said. The Students' Union has already committed itself to running a 'Repeal the 8th' campaign. It first decided not to remain neutral on the issue in 2014, and the stance was voted on again last year.

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of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem with monks of the Orthodox and Armenian Churches. The Custody has about 300 friars, and about 100 sisters, drawn from many nations. In addition to providing a liturgical presence and pilgrim hostels at the main sanctuaries, the friars run a seminary, a centre for advanced biblical study in Jerusalem (Studium Biblicum Franciscanum), and operate many parishes and schools throughout the Holy Land

and elsewhere in their vast custody. In the very difficult circumstances in which today's Christian Palestinians find themselves, caught between Israeli controls on the one hand and increasing Islamicisation on the other, they encourage the local Christian community to remain on in the land of Christ’s birth.

The annual collection “for the Holy Places” at the Good Friday liturgy and the offerings of pilgrims are the main supports of their work.

MARTYRDOM OF FR HAMEL INSPIRES RETURN TO FAITH PARIS

5 FR MICHAEL PERRY OFM Minister General of the Friars Minor

Patrick Canac

TIME TO RETHINK WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT

Patrick Canac was baptised a Catholic, but drifted away from the church over time.

The successful French businessman has had a change of heart and returned to the regular practise of the faith. The catalyst was the murder of the elderly Fr Jacques Hamel in August 2016 by ISIS jihadists as he was celebrating Mass in the small French town of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray. “Last year, the murder of Fr Jacques Hamel in a church near Rouen really hit me,” Canac said. “Terror making its way into that church reminded me of the darkest times of our civilisation. I had an immediate, reflex reaction as if they had killed my brother. That someone can go into a church today and kill the celebrant is

just terrible, it's horrific, it's the devil going into a church.” He had an instant reversion to the faith, realising, “we all have Judeo-Christian roots” which “must be defended and saved”.

“I think it's important for our Western countries, including France, to be evangelised, that people be encouraged to return to the Church again, because the Church is the cradle of our civilisation,” Canac said. “I think of the first Christians, those who were pioneers, those missionaries and martyrs that spread the Gospel throughout the world.

And that's why I have put my business success to work by helping with the building project for the Redemptoris Mater seminary in Avignon.”

Fr Jacques Hamel

A plaque in tribute to Fr Hamel

continued on page 6

REALITY BITES DENYING CATHOLIC BURIAL TO MARRIED GAY PEOPLE? Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois has asked his priests to refuse Holy Comunion, and even funeral rites, to people in same-sex unions unless they show “some signs of repentance” before death.

His ruling also said that people “living publicly” in same-sex marriages may not receive the sacrament of confirmation, or be admitted to the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults as converts to the church. Children living with a Catholic parent in a same-sex marriage may be baptised, but priests cannot bless same-sex couples, church property cannot be used for ceremonies, and diocesan employees may not take part in the celebrations.

Bishop Paprocki’s stance is not universally shared by his brother bishops. Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin CSsR, the archbishop of Newark, recently welcomed dozens of gay and lesbian Catholics to worship. “I am

Josephyourbrother,”hetoldthem,“Iamyourbrother, as a sinner who finds mercy with the Lord.” A book by the well-known Jesuit writer and commentator Fr James Martin, Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the L.G.B.T. Community Can Enter Into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion and Sensitivity also calls for a greater sensitivity. Commenting in a Facebook post, he said: “If bishops ban members of same-sex marriages from receiving a Catholic funeral, they also have to be consistent. They must also ban divorced and remarried Catholics who have not received annulments, women or men who have childrenoutofwedlock,membersofstraightcouples who are living together before marriage, and anyone using birth control, for those are all against church teaching as well. Moreover, they must ban anyone who does not care for the poor, or care for the

6 NEW LIBRARY FOR BENBURB

Professor Gerry McKenna MRIA(left), chairman of the Library & Museum Management Board, with Dom Hugo O’Neil

REALITY DECEMBER 2017

environment, and anyone who supports torture, for those are church teachings too. More basically, they must ban people who are not loving, not forgiving and not merciful, for these represent the teachings of Jesus, the most fundamental of all church teachings.

To focus only on LGBT people, without a similar focus on the moral and sexual behaviour of straight people is, in the words of the Catechism, a “sign of unjust discrimination".

ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF RITE OF EXORCISM PUBLISHED

The new library

The Servite Order has built a new library and museum at its Benburb Priory in County Tyrone. It will hold books, some dating from the 16th century, and the Order’s Irish archives. It cost £1.4m and received assistance from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Among the books of special interest are more than a hundred dealing with the O'Neills of Tyrone, donated by a current clan chief, Dom Hugo O'Neill, who lives in Portugal. The library has a section dealing with the family's history and links to the area. The priory is located near the site of the Battle of Benburb, where in 1646, Owen Roe O’Neill led the Irish Confederate army to victory over the Scots Covenanters.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois

Paper conservator Seán Madden got the job of restoring the most important items. Some were bound with leather or wood which posed a particular challenge."They've had to deal with the ravages of bad handling, insects, damp, bad light, you name it, it has happened to them," he said.

A smaller item on display will be a cigarette case that saved the life of an army chaplain in World War I. Fr Aloysius Bouchier, from County Waterford, was carrying the case when he ventured into 'No Man's Land' to retrieve the wounded. He was shot but the silver cigarette case in his breast pocket took the force of the round and saved his life. He was later awarded the Military Cross for bravery.

The first official English-language translation of the ritual book Exorcisms and Related Supplications has been published by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Its circulation however is limited to bishops, though exorcists, other clergy, scholars and seminary professors can obtain a copy with the permission of a bishop. The main part of the book is the rite of major exorcism, and it also includes an introduction outlining criteria for its use. The text affirms the reality of evil in the world and more so affirms the sovereignty of Jesus to overcome all evil. According to canon law (Canon 1172), only those priests who receive permission from their bishops can perform an exorcism after proper training. Bishops automatically have the right to perform an exorcism and can share that authority with other priests. An appendix to the book, “Supplications Which May Be Used by the Faithful Privately in Their Struggle Against the Powers of Darkness”, was published separately in November as a prayer book for common use as Prayers Against the Powers of Darkness.

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POPE MONITOR KEEPING UP WITH POPE FRANCIS CENTENARY OF ORIENTAL INSTITUTE – TESTIMONY TO CATHOLIC DIVERSITY On October 12 last, Pope Francis visited the Pontifical Oriental Institute to celebrate the centenary of its foundation and of the establishment of the Congregation of the Oriental Churches. The Orientale is a specialist postgraduate institution for the study of the non-Roman churches of the Catholic community, their traditions, history and patristic heritage. They include the Greek, Arabic and Slavic members of the Byzantine rite, those belonging to the Maronite, Syrian, and Chaldean rites in the

Middle East, and the Syro-Malabar and Malankara communities of India as well as the many faithful in the worldwide diaspora of these communities. Attached to the Orientale is the Russicum, established in 1929 for the education of Russian students. The liturgy is celebrated daily according to the Slavonic Byzantine rite in its church, and it is esteemed for the high quality of its liturgical music. In the garden of the Institute, the Pope blessed a cypress tree, and then in the Aula Maxima,

he met the students and the Jesuit Community. Following the visit, Pope Francis presided at Mass in the nearby Basilica of St Mary Major. In the course of his homily, the Holy Father said: “Today we thank the Lord for the founding of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches and the Pontifical Oriental Institute, the work of Pope Benedict XV one hundred years ago, in 1917. The First World War was raging at the time. Today, as I have already had the occasion to say, we are living in

THE POPE AND THE ASTRONAUTS

Pope Francis conversed by means of a special link with astronauts orbiting earth on the International Space Station on Thursday, October 26. They discussed questions as diverse as humanity’s place in the universe, the fragility of life and the planet, and international cooperation. His first question was: “What are your thoughts on our place in the universe? Astronomy makes us contemplate the horizons of the universe and raises questions in us: Where did we come from? Where are we going?”

An Italian astronaut, Paolo Nespoli replied that is a “complex question”, especially for him since his specialties are in the technical realm, but that being in space has helped him to realise that the more humanity learns, the more clearly we can see how much we still do not know. “I would love for people like you, Holy Father, not just engineers or physicists, but theologians, philosophers, poets, writers to come here into space. I would love them to come here to explore what it means to have a

human being in space.” The space station has a crew of six astronauts - three Americans, two Russians and one Italian.

Pope Francis asked the team what motivated them to become astronauts, and what they enjoy about being in space. American Randolph Bresnik said that what gives him the greatest joy in space is being able “to look outside and see creation maybe a little bit from God’s perspective. People cannot come up here and see the indescribable beauty of our earth and not be touched in their souls. There’s an incredible peace and serenity to our planet when you see it in orbit, he said, and there are “no borders, no conflict, it’s just peaceful.” The Pope said that he loved that answer for it pointed out the earth’s fragility, how it’s a “passing moment", the earth turning at a rate of 10 km per second.

Another American crew member, Mark T. Van de Hei, said his spiritual preparation for his space journey included daily prayer and regular Mass attendance (see “Reality Bites” June, 2016). He had suggested that NASA, which arranges for occasional calls with celebrities during flights, might include one with Pope Francis. This is the second time a pope has had a conversation with a space crew. Pope Benedict chatted with the crew aboard the ISS in May 2011 in a 20-minute conversation.

another world war, if a piecemeal one. We see many of our Christian brothers and sisters of the Oriental Churches who experience dramatic persecutions and an increasingly troubling diaspora.”

POPE CONDEMNS DEATH PENALTY Pope Francis, addressing an audience that included cardinals and ambassadors from many countries, declared the death penalty “contrary to the Gospel”. “However grave the crime that may be committed, the death penalty is inadmissible because it attacks the inviolability and the dignity of the person”. The pope was speaking at an event on October 10 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. He explained there had been a development of doctrine in the church regarding capital punishment. Commentators have suggested that a revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church may be forthcoming to reflect this new development in the church’s theology. “One has to strongly affirm that condemnation to the death penalty is an inhuman measure that humiliates personal dignity, in whatever form it is carried out. Of itself, it is contrary to the Gospel, because it is freely decided to suppress a human life that is always sacred in the eyes of the Creator, and of which, in the final analysis, God alone is the true judge and guarantor,” Pope Francis said.

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FEAST OF THE MONTH ST FINNIAN OF CLONARD DECEMBER 12th

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My first visit to the site of Clonard Monastery in Meath was disappointing. For years beyond number I had heard of the glories of Clonard and how everybody and anybody with ambitions in the areas of holiness and education had gone there from all over the country and beyond.

So famous was St Finnian, its founder, that he is known in tradition as ‘the teacher of the saints of Ireland’, and his twelve most distinguished disciples have been dubbed ‘The Twelve Apostles of Ireland.’

It must be noted however, that there is a certain elasticity in naming the twelve but nobody has any serious objections to the flexibility of the enumeration process. Sure to be included however, are such high profile figures as Ciaran of Clonmacnoise, Kevin of Glendalough, Colmcille of Iona and Brendan the Navigator. The number of 6th century saints that were trained under St Finnian led Irish hagiographers to conclude that a way of copper fastening the reputation of their subject, was to state that he had been a pupil of the founder of Clonard.

What disappointed me in my first visit was the absence of any trace of the monastery, the church, the burial place of the founder or other reminders one might expect to find. Of Clonard, nothing remained but “a tottering wall or a tumbling fence” as Psalm 62 so graphically expresses the sense of destruction. Where this, one of the greatest centres of Christian life and scholarship once stood, there is now a Norman motte and the ruins of a small post-reformation Protestant church. If any grave-markings, ancient or modern, survived within the narrow confines of the perimeter fence, they were overgrown by the luxurious vegetation of the upper Boyne valley.

It was here then, at Cluain Iraird (Eraird’s meadow), in the first decades of the 6th century that St Finnian found ‘the place of his resurrection’. It was here, too, that he established a power-centre of spirituality that fired the Irish nation for centuries to come. The site was geographically suitable, being as it was central to the whole island, and convenient to the two great communication routes, namely the Esker Riada highway running east-west and the north-south-flowing Shannon River.

Details of his life, particularly the earlier part of it, are skimpy and not wholly reliable. We are told that he was from Leinster (Lagin) and born in Moyshal, Co Carlow, about 480 AD. Clonard was in Lagin up to 515 when conquered by the Uí Neill. The monastery was founded before or not long after that event, and it is natural that its early associations were with the churches of Leinster.

One legend holds that his mother was from Britain and that Finnian spent some years there, in the course of which he had encountered three spiritual heavyweights from Wales, namely David, Gildas and Cadoc. This is unlikely to say the least. There is, however, a persistent link with Gildas in relation to the Penitential of Finnian. According to our own St Columbanus of Luxeuil and Bobbio, Finnian consulted Gildas on the matter of discipline, and Columbanus himself draws very extensively on the penitential of Finnian when it comes to composing one of his own. As Kenney says in his Sources for the Early History of Ireland: “There must be some foundation for his reputation as head of the great religious movement of sixth-century Ireland, and if so, this [the penitential] is such a document as we might have expected him to have composed" (p.240).

Finnian’s Penitential is important in the history of penitential literature. Not that it was the first. St Caesarius of Arles is generally credited with that, but by the middle of the 6th century, it is fully developed in Wales and Ireland. A penitential was a sort of pastoral guide for an abbot, an anam-chara or a confessor in coming to a reasonable assessment of an appropriate penance for breaches of monastic discipline or moral faults. The penitential of Gildas has penances for monks only, whereas that of Finnian caters for the misdemeanours of cleric and lay. In 549, according to the Annals of Ulster, the great Finnian fell victim to the yellow plague.

John J O’Riordan CSsR REALITY DECEMBER 2017

Reality Volume 82. No. 10 December 2017 A Redemptorist Publication ISSN 0034-0960 Published by The Irish Redemptorists, Unit A6, Santry Business Park, Swords Road, Dublin 09 X651 Tel: 00353 (0)1 4922488 Web: www.redcoms.org Email: sales@redcoms.org (With permission of C.Ss.R.)

Editor Brendan McConvery CSsR editor@redcoms.org Design & Layout David Mc Namara CSsR dmcnamara@redcoms.org General Manager Paul Copeland pcopeland@redcoms.org Sales & Marketing Claire Carmichael ccarmichael@redcoms.org Administration & Accounts Michelle McKeon mmckeon@redcoms.org Printed by Nicholson & Bass, Belfast Photo Credits Catholic News Service, Shutterstock, Trócaire, WMOF2018 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, Unit A6, Santry Business Park, Swords Road, Dublin D09 X651 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.

When you have finished with this magazine, please pass it on or recycle it. Thank you.

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Promoters: We keep all of our promoters in our prayers and thank them for their loyal service in selling Reality. We remember in our prayers sick and deceased promoters and their families. Happy Christmas to you all.

REFLECTIONS I was nine or ten years old, and my father was sacked on Christmas Day. He was a manager, the results had not been good, and he lost a game on December 22 or 23.

On Christmas Day, the telephone rang and he was sacked in the middle of our lunch.

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.

JOSE MOURINHO

PHILIP YANCEY

From the beginning, my Church has been what it is today, and will be until the end of time, a scandal to the strong, a disappointment to the weak, the ordeal and consolation of those interior souls who seek in it nothing but myself. Yes, whoever looks for me will find me there; but they will have to look, for I am better hidden than people think. I am more difficult to discover than I was in the little stable at Bethlehem for those who will not approach me humbly, in the footsteps of the shepherds and the Magi.

If you want to find me, do as they did and ask for the only thing you need— a star and a pure heart.

Christmas, it seems to me, is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.

GEORGE BERNANOS

For many, Christmas is also a time for coming together.

But for others, service will come first.

QUEEN ELIZABETH II

GARRISON KEILLOR

Yet as I read the birth stories about Jesus, I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.

GRAHAM GREENE

Far into the night, at the coldest time of the year, in a chilly grotto, more suitable for a flock of beasts than for humans, the promised Messiah – Jesus – the saviour of humankind, comes into the world in the fullness of time.

There are none who clamour around him: only an ox and an ass lending their warmth to the newborn infant; with a humble woman, and a poor and tired man, in adoration beside him.

ST [PADRE] PIO

Christ is the Morning Star, who, when the night of this world is past, gives to his saints the promise of the light of life, and opens everlasting day.

VENERABLE BEDE

Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won't make it 'white'.

BING CROSBY

There were so many things that mother used to do, things that everyone took for granted. At Christmas time she would fill the house with holly boughs.

Father used laugh and say it was like living in a forest.

Mother used to go to town and buy presents ages before Christmas and there was never a trace of them around the house.

MAEVE BINCHY

Love conquered you, Great God, love tied your hands, A captive here for me, in swathing-bands; And love, strong love, awaits your latest breath, To make you die for me a cruel death.

ST ALPHONSUS LIGUORI

Every year we celebrate the holy season of Advent, O God. Every year we pray those beautiful prayers of longing and waiting, and sing those lovely songs of hope and promise.

KARL RAHNER

Once in our world, a stable had something in it that was bigger than our whole world.

CS LEWIS

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This Christmas

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EDI TO R I A L UP FRONT BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR

COMING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS By a strange coincidence, two young French people had a life-transforming incident the same Christmas, to which they both looked back as a conversion experience. A young girl, the rather spoiled youngest child of a middle class family who had lost her mother at the age of four, always looked forward after Midnight Mass to checking her slippers left by the fireside in the certainty of finding attractive Christmas gifts in them. This year, she overheard her widowed father say, “Well, thank goodness this is the last year for this.” Crestfallen, she went upstairs to take off her hat. Her elder sister, who had become her substitute mother, tried to dissuade her from going downstairs again in case she be hurt and disappointed. But trying to be grown up, down she went. As she later described it in her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, “Therese was no longer the same; Jesus had changed her heart! Forcing back tears, I descended the stairs rapidly; controlling the poundings of my heart, I took my slippers and placed them in front of Papa, and withdrew all the objects joyfully. I had the happy appearance of a Queen. Having regained his own cheerfulness, Papa was laughing; Celine believed it was all a dream!

Fortunately, it was sweet reality; Therese had discovered once again the strength of soul which she had lost at the age of four and a half, and she was to preserve it forever!” The 13-year-old girl’s newly discovered strength of soul would lead her to enter a Carmelite convent at the age of 15, and when she died nine years later, to become one of the most popular saints in the Catholic Church as Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower.

That same Christmas of 1886, a rather lonely young man of 18 called Paul Claudel, bored and looking for something to do, attended Midnight Mass at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris just to see what religious ritual meant. Paul was a bookworm, who

devoured modern poetry and philosophy, and despite his devout Catholic family, he had been an unbeliever since his early teens. That Christmas Day "was the gloomiest winter day and the darkest rainy afternoon over Paris," he wrote. Having nothing better to do, he returned to the Cathedral for Vespers. Till the end of his life, he remembered exactly where he stood that afternoon – near “the second pillar at the entrance to the choir, to the right, on the side of the sacristy" with a statue of the Mother and Child on the pillar.

"Then occurred the event which dominates my entire life," he wrote. "In an instant, my heart was touched, and I believed. I believed with such a strength of adherence, with such an uplifting of my entire being, with such powerful conviction, with such a certainty leaving no room for any kind of doubt, that since then all the books, all the arguments, all the incidents and accidents of a busy life have been unable to shake my faith, nor indeed to affect it in any way." Paul went on to become a diplomat and one of the leading poets of his time whose work was saturated by the intensity of his faith.

Christmas is home-coming time. Airports are crowded with families awaiting the return of a son or daughter, brother or sister, sometimes with a new baby to show off to the family for the first time, or with a new partner to introduce. Home-coming is a return to roots, to friendship, to places of memory. But it is not without its pains. Old wounds can reopen painfully, unresolved tensions can unexpectedly spring to life around the Christmas table, despite earlier resolutions to say nothing.

As the stories of Paul Claudel and the Little Flower show, Christmas can also be a time for spiritual homecoming. The memories entwined with Christmas carols, the Crib, the story of a homeless young couple giving birth to a baby in extreme poverty, then fleeing as

refugees, can generate memories. For many young Irish men and women, returning home at Christmas may be returning to the embers of a faith, and finding that it might not be totally dead, but still has power to warm the heart. It may have been last Christmas or a wedding or funeral since they last set foot in church, but it remains home. As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in".

I extend to all our readers and promoters the good wishes of Redemptorist Communications for a Happy Christmas and a good New Year. St Alphonsus invites us to enter the cave of Bethlehem, but reminds us that “if we go without faith we will see nothing but a poor infant, who moves us to compassion by seeing him so beautiful, but shivering with cold and crying from the itchiness of the straw on which he lies. But if we enter with faith, we will believe that this child is the Son of God, who loved us so much that he came down to earth and endured so much to pay for our sins. How could we not thank him and love him?”

Brendan McConvery CSsR Editor

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C OVE R STO RY

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THE ICON FOR THE YEAR OF THE FAMILY A SPECIALLY WRITTEN ICON OF THE HOLY FAMILY WILL BE THE CENTREPIECE OF THE CELEBRATIONS OF THIS YEAR’S WORLD MEETING OF FAMILIES IN DUBLIN. THE ICON WAS BLESSED AND ANOINTED ON AUGUST 21, THE FEAST OF OUR LADY OF KNOCK, IN THE BASILICA AT KNOCK SHRINE. HERE WE TELL THE STORY OF ITS ORIGINS.

BY THE SISTERS OF THE MONASTERY OF ST ALPHONSUS

Icons

usually follow the age-old traditions of the Eastern Churches. While the liturgical memory of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is preserved in the festal icons for Christmas, Epiphany and the Presentation of REALITY DECEMBER 2017

Jesus in the Temple, there is no icon akin to the pictures of the Holy Family common in western Catholicism since the Middle Ages. The first challenge facing Mihai Cucu, invited to write the icon for the World Meeting of Families, was

to propose the themes and images that might form an icon in the traditional style. These suggestions were approved by the organising committee of the Dublin meeting, and by the Pontifical Council for the Family.

The icon doors at the beginning of the process with just the gold leaf painted

THREE PART ICON The icon is in the form technically known as a triptych. It has a large central panel with two smaller panels on either side of the same height, but half the breadth, and attached to the central panel by hinges. These panels can be closed to protect the icon, especially when moving it from place to place.

The reverse sides of the panels of the icon carry images of the two archangels, Michael and Gabriel, visible when it is closed. It stands on a wooden plinth carrying the title of Pope Francis’s 20016 apostolic exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love).

The icon is painted on lime-wood, covered with a layer of fine linen. On this is laid gesso, an undercoat of chalk and glue which creates an absorbent surface for the natural colours.

When the gesso is dry and smoothed, the image is drawn on it. Fine gold-leaf is then applied to form the background and the halos of the sacred personages before the colours are applied in successive fine layers.

PASSOVER WITH THE HOLY FAMILY The central panel of the icon depicts the Holy Family seated at the table celebrating the Passover meal, the highlight of the Jewish liturgical year. Passover is a family celebration in which the father explains the meaning of the special foods and why they are eaten in answer to questions from the children.

“And when your children ask you, 'What

does this ritual mean?' you will tell them, 'It is the Passover sacrifice in honour of the Lord who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, and struck Egypt but spared our houses'" (Exo 12:26-27).

On the table, there are three round pieces of unleavened bread, three bunches of bitter herbs, three small bowls containing the ritual foods eaten at

the Passover meal and a single large cup. The most important food of the Passover, the lamb offered in sacrifice, is not on the table.

Jesus, the Lamb of God, is the new Paschal Lamb, as St Paul reminds us: “our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed” (1Co 5:7).

If you look closely at the right hand of Jesus, you will see that his fingers are raised in the way in which a priest of the Byzantine rite holds his fingers when giving a blessing. In his other hand, he holds a scroll, open at the angel’s Christmas proclamation to the shepherds at Bethlehem: “See, I bring you news of great joy to all the people”.

The mother of Jesus and Joseph are seated on the other sides of the table. Mary’s right hand points to her Son. In the icon tradition,

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C OVE R STO RY

On the left, the inside door with just a bare pencil drawing. On the right, the finished product

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this is known as ‘pointing the way’ – Mary points the way to Jesus. Her left hand is raised to her face in a gesture of attentive listening and also of a mother’s concern for her child.

Both St Joseph’s hands are stretched out in a gesture of prayer.

The third side of the table is open. It suggests that we, as we contemplate the icon, are invited to take our place at the table with the holy ones. The composition of our icon reflects the famous icon of the Trinity seated at table by the great Russian iconographer, Andrei Roublev (1370-1430). Our icon suggests that the Holy Family is the earthly counterpart of

Sr Alena and Sr Maria

REALITY DECEMBER 2017

the heavenly Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit and that our communion with them is through the Eucharist, represented by the chalice that stands at the centre of the table. It is a reminder that every family is a domestic church, in which every meal shared in love has marks of eucharistic communion.

THE SIDE PANELS The side panels represent Gospel scenes, so the iconographer was able to draw on traditional themes. The one on the left represents the Gospel story of the raising to life of the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:22 ff and Luke 8:41ff). This may seem like an unusual choice, but this incident is specifically mentioned by Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia (1:15,21) as an example of “the presence of pain, evil and violence that break up families and their communion of life and love”.

As often happens in icons, we see two scenes at once. At the top, the mourners are

gathered outside the house. In the bottom part of the picture, Jesus, accompanied by his disciples, Peter, James and John, takes the girl by the hand and raises her from the bed as her parents look on, the position of their hands showing their amazement. Over the scene is spread a red veil. This symbol if often used in icons to indicate the mysterious divine power at work in this scene.

This panel will be a comfort especially to parents who have lost a child, or whose child suffers from a serious health condition.

The right hand panel depicts the Marriage Feast of Cana. Pope Francis has written that “the marriage liturgy is a unique event, which is both a family and a community celebration. The good wine, resulting from the Lord’s miracle that brought joy to the beginning of a new family, is the new wine of Christ’s covenant with the men and women of every age” (Amoris Laetitia 6:216).

Two aspects of the miracle are depicted here. In the centre, Jesus is seated at the table with the young bride and groom (wearing crowns as in the marriage ceremony of the Byzantine Rite) and their young companions.

Servants bring food, an older man, possibly the chief steward, is drinking a cup of wine, while the Mother of Jesus draws him aside and explains to him the embarrassing shortage of wine that has arisen. In the lower part of the scene, one servant fills the stone jars with water while another carries a carafe of wine with two wine vessels.

THE ICONOGRAPHERS Mihai Cucu is a Romanian iconographer.

Born in Northern Romania, he grew up in a region in which there were many monasteries and churches covered in frescoes. As a child, he was fascinated by the images of saints and incidents from the Gospel story depicted by the icons. He began to study artistic conservation, and during his course of studies, he was expected to produce an icon. His first efforts were those of a beginner, but he eventually realised that if he were to understand the depth of the icon tradition, he would have to study it where icons were not simply decorative features but part of

Iconographer Mihai Cucu

the symbolic world of meaning. For the next five summers, he spent time in a different monastery learning from teachers who were active icon writers and learning first hand techniques for writing and restoring icons.

He came to Ireland in 2000 to exhibit in Christchurch Cathedral Dublin. Since then, he has directed courses in icon-writing throughout Ireland.

One of the places where Mihai has regularly given courses is the Redemptoristine Monastery in Drumcondra. The monastery’s retreat space provided an ideal space in which to work on a large-scale icon. Two of the sisters of the monastery, Sr Alena and Sr Maria worked along with Mihai and under his direction. All the sisters of the community shared in the writing of the icon. Some helped with the work, and all held it in prayer. Many of the visitors to the monastery were invited to paint at least one small stroke, so that it might be said to represent the work of the larger believing community. The oldest Sr Jacinta OSsR, is celebrating 70 years in the community, while the youngest was a child of four. May their work and prayers contribute to the success of the World Meeting of Families this coming August.

Sr Jacinta making her contribution

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CO M M E N T THE YOUNG VOICE DAVID O’DONOGHUE

FREEDOM TO THE CAPTIVES

IS A PRISONER A FORGOTTEN SOUL? HOW LETTERS TO PRISONERS LEAD TO THINKING ABOUT BIGGER ISSUES IN OUR SOCIETY TODAY.

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I got the strangest of urges the other night, the kind of half-hallucinatory thought of manic fever that seems always to strike whenever I have work early the next morning. It was the kind of thought that simply did not have the patience or decorum to wait for a more suitable hour, and even as it arranged itself into a final form, my brain was fizzing over steadily counting down the potential hours of restless sleep I might get before another ten- hour shift of heavy lifting. But these are the moments that simply cannot wait for, as the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King put it, a “more convenient season”, but strike with an intensity of passion and urgency. So I bought some stamps and envelopes, tore a couple of ragged pages from my journal, and began to write to some prisoners.

I’ve often been enraptured by the notion of the special Christian mission to those who are imprisoned. I often eyed with special interest the callings of religious figures I admire who have worked with prisoners, such as Chris Hedges, a minister and journalist who before his vital work uncovering human rights abuses in Latin America cherished a religious mission in US prisons which he has explained illuminated his understanding of Christianity as foremost a mission of comfort, understanding and liberation, especially to those most despised by popular sentiment.

The work of so many Catholic REALITY DECEMBER 2017

organisations against the death penalty and cruel conditions of confinement has long been an inspiration to me, and reading stories of Christian figures who have campaigned against capital punishment was one of the things that first started to turn my teenage mind away from a binary view of religion as regressive and the secular world as progressive, and closer to my current understanding of the two as entities which overlap, differ and interact in their attempts to promote different worldviews, guard certain traditions and uphold certain values.

LETTERS TO PRISONERS I wrote letters to non-violent offenders, taking note of cases and circumstances from prisoner welfare organisations, and kept my communiques as light and breezy as possible. They contained that light that you, dear reader, might recognise as the flame of passion for social justice, but kept on a low heat in the form of warm curiosity. The responses I received were cordial, polite, erudite and most of all seemed delighted at my having taken an interest in these people’s lives. The correspondence has been a totally illuminating experience and a meeting point for my abilities as a journalist, and as someone interested in constructing and promoting a faith-based social justice. These are the worlds into which we in ‘polite society’, if I may so dare to call myself a member of such a thing, rarely see. These are the dark and unilluminated corners of our

world to which we banish those who we deem to have committed awful mistakes, whether by wilful malice or woeful circumstance.

We hope that in banishing them from our sight we can banish them from our minds too.

We are bombarded constantly with negative images of the Irish prison population and, in the global media, of prisoners more generally. We refer to them as ‘scum’ or ‘sickos’, and lament when they are afforded even the most meagre comforts of living. But many of the prisoners I spoke to seemed to legitimately appreciate the opportunity to improve themselves and their lives given by rehabilitation programmes. They use their time behind bars to attend classes and achieve qualifications, as well as to explore interest in the arts or other pursuits they might otherwise have never been afforded the time or resources to pursue. Many described a flourishing sense of faith and a rediscovered connection with the spiritual that helped them to carry on in their darkest hours.

How many campaigners for justice have found the wellspring of their understanding and belief grow stronger when faced with the four walls of the cell, from Nelson Mandela to Dr King, his famous and rousing “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” I quoted above.

obscured by a popular call for retribution. Many would call it an “Old Testament” kind of mentality, but for me this is a misnomer, as the Old Testament contained so many stories of God’s desire to free his peoples from captivity and bondage even before Christ came along to preach “freedom to the captives”, with his ministry so drenched in the imagery of throwing off yokes of oppression, breaking chains and visiting the Lord in the jail cell. The Christian commitment to a prison ministry is not only important because it is in keeping with a Christianity built on a sense of liberation and sympathy with suffering, but in the way that it takes us to the dark and invisible places of suffering in our society that, although officially sanctioned, still require the light of witness. It is an exercise in empathy that I recommend to everyone, allowing us to exit our own narrow view of the world and view the world through the eyes of someone coming from an entirely different set of circumstances. In the end this is an act of growing empathy and understanding, which are the twin fountains that water faith.

SETTING CAPTIVES FREE The prison is the invisible necessity of a society where the values of empathy and forgiveness can often be

David O'Donoghue is a freelance journalist from Co Kerry. His work has appeared in The Irish Catholic, the Irish Independent, and The Kerryman. He is the former political editor of campus.ie and holds an abiding interest in all things literary, political and spiritual.

CHRI ST M A S

s t n e r a P the Meet Matthew’s Annunciation Story (Matthew 1:18-25)

LUKE’S STORY OF THE BIRTH OF JESUS CAPTURES THE IMAGINATION THROUGH ITS HIGHLY VISUAL STORY THAT HAS INSPIRED POETS, HYMN-WRITERS AND ARTISTS. MATTHEW’S STORY IS DARKER, BUT IT HAS MUCH TO TEACH US, ESPECIALLY ABOUT THE ROLE OF JOSEPH

BY JONATHAN BURROUGHS

Matthew

b e g i ns h is Gospel with a genealogy that lists the ancestors of Jesus (see Matt 1:1-17). The genealogy opens with a line that refers to Jesus as a son of Kind David: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (1:1). Near the end of the

genealogical list, it is stated in 1:16 that “Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.” The careful reader of Matthew’s Gospel will notice that the genealogy traces the lineage of Jesus through Joseph (that is, not Mary). This raises an important question: if Joseph is not the biological father of Jesus,

and his mother Mary is not said to be a descendent of David, how is Jesus part of the ancestral line of David? In other words, how can Matthew begin his Gospel by referring to Jesus as a son of David? Matthew’s account of the annunciation of Jesus’ birth to Joseph (1:18-25) takes up this difficulty and weaves into a narrative to explain how Jesus is a son

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C H RI STM A S

of David. In so doing, Matthew’s reader is introduced to (or meets) the parents of Jesus: Mary, Joseph and, of course, God the Father.

But, what in particular does Matthew tell us about Jesus’ parents in his annunciation story?

Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss [or divorce] her quietly” (1:19). The nearness of betrothal to marriage is evident in the narrator’s designation of Joseph as “her husband” who plans to “dismiss” her, in other words, to “divorce” her. For Mary to be with child before they lived together would have been understood as dishonouring Joseph and is reason for divorce or even, although it was rarely carried out in the first century, execution by stoning (see Deut 22:13-27). It is important to note that it is only with the intervention of the angel of the Lord in the next verse (1:2021) that Joseph is informed that the child is from the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is implied that Joseph intends to divorce Mary as he suspects her of having had sexual intercourse with another man. The narrator’s designation of Joseph as a “righteous man”, that is, a law-abiding Jew, is linked to his intention to divorce Mary quietly: seeking divorce in cases of adultery was not optional but practically automatic according to Jewish law (see Deut 22:13-27). It is this atmosphere of scandal that forms the background to Matthew’s annunciation story.

The careful reader of Matthew’s Gospel will notice that the genealogy traces the lineage of Jesus through Joseph

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MARY AND JOSEPH’S BETROTHAL SITUATION The focus of Matthew’s annunciation story is on the circumstances surrounding the origin of a child, not on the birth itself. It begins with Mary, who is betrothed to Joseph but not living with him, being found with child from the Holy Spirit (1:18). Here, the characters of Mary and Joseph are introduced into the narrative and their situation is indicated. Betrothal is not the equivalent of a modern engagement; it possesses stronger legal dimensions and nearly constitutes a marriage contract, with possibilities of adultery, divorce, and widowhood. At an early age (sometimes at twelve or twelve and a half years) a girl is promised by her father to her future husband, which results in a period of betrothal preceding the marriage (see Deut 20:7). During that period, the betrothed woman continues to live with her parents and the marriage is not yet consummated. Nevertheless, the woman is deemed a “wife” (see 2 Sam 3:14; Judg 14:15; 15:1). It is during this interim period that the drama of Matthew’s annunciation story is set. The reader is to understand that Mary and Joseph, although betrothed to one another, are not yet residing together. Thus, the narrator, at the beginning of the passage, is implying that Mary’s pregnancy is not the result of a physical act between Mary and Joseph.

JOSEPH’S INITIAL REACTION In 1:19 the narrator outlines the initial reaction of Joseph to Mary’s situation: “Her husband REALITY DECEMBER 2017

THE HOLY SPIRIT AND GOD THE FATHER An angel of the Lord, by echoing the narrator’s earlier statement in 1:18 that the child is from the Holy Spirit, removes the suspicions of Joseph and makes Mary acceptable to him (1:20-21). Through a dream, the angel intervenes and tells Joseph not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, as the child is from the Holy Spirit (1:20). The angel of the Lord is a messenger of God, who reveals the origin of the child to Joseph. It also communicates to the reader that Jesus is the result of divine intervention into human history: through the Holy Spirit, God is at the origin of Jesus. Divine intervention in the birth of God’s chosen ones was a convention in the Jewish Scriptures (see, for example, Isaac in Gen 18:1-15 and 21:1-7; Jacob in Gen 25:21; Samuel in 1 Sam 1:4-20; Samson in Judg 13:2-25). In his story of the annunciation, Matthew goes further than these biblical accounts. Unlike any other biblical character, there is no male involved in Jesus’ conception; he is “from the Holy Spirit”. In all other biblical accounts of births that involve the Spirit, a male is involved.

Matthew narrates something different and unique; the Holy Spirit does not take the place of a male. In other words, the Evangelist does not suggest, however asexually, that the Holy Spirit fulfils the sexual role of the male.

Moreover, the Evangelist is concerned with

the origin of Jesus rather than the details of his conception. By ascribing Jesus’ origin to the Holy Spirit, Matthew shows that Jesus is different from every other biblical character.

name but is a title descriptive of Jesus’ role in bringing God’s presence to his people. For Matthew, when Jesus is active, God is with his people.

JESUS AS EMMANUEL The second part of the angel’s message to Joseph shifts the focus of the passage from the present situation to events that will occur later in the Gospel: “She will bear a son, and you will name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (1:21). Mary’s child will be the Saviour of his people. The saving activity that is prophesied about the child offers further encouragement for Joseph to take Mary as his wife and accept the child as his own. The angelic dream sequence (1:20-21) is followed by a quotation from Isaiah 7:14 that expresses the significance of what is happening: the child will be called “Emmanuel, which means, ‘God is with us’” (1:22-23). This is a direct address to the reader, and it is implied that no character, including Joseph, hears these words. While the earlier references to the Holy Spirit (1:18, 20) indicate that Mary’s pregnancy is not the result of sexual activity, it is the fulfilment quotation that explicitly identifies her as a virgin. The question of whether Mary remains a virgin after childbirth is one that has been extensively discussed by biblical scholars,

JOSEPH AS JESUS’ LEGAL FATHER Due to the intervention of the angel in 1:20-21, Joseph revises his initial reaction of divorcing Mary quietly. Matthew’s annunciation story concludes with Joseph following the commands of the angel by taking Mary as his wife and naming the child (1:24-25). In so doing, Joseph, who is earlier addressed as “son of David” (1:20), acknowledges the child as his own and brings Jesus into the ancestral line of David. Joseph therefore accepts fatherhood of Jesus according to Jewish law and, in essence, adopts Jesus. As the annunciation story unfolds, Joseph emerges not as the biological father of Jesus, but as Jesus’ legal father. In this way, Jesus is a son of David through the law. There is a shift regarding the righteousness of Joseph: he moves from planning to dismiss Mary quietly to naming and becoming the legal father of Jesus. Matthew shapes his narrative in such a way that Joseph is the first character in his story that is required to commit himself to Jesus for the purposes of God.

For Mary to be with child before they lived together would have been understood as dishonouring Joseph and is reason for divorce or even, although it was rarely carried out in the first century, execution by stoning

the Holy Family as an unconventional one: for example, Mary and Joseph were not living together, Mary was pregnant before wedlock, and Joseph was not the child’s biological father.

There is also, in effect, an adoption dimension to the story: Joseph adopts, in a legal sense, the son of God. This results in Jesus having paternity at two levels: (1) God the Father and (2) Joseph.

In the build up to the World Meeting of Families in 2018, it may be worth reflecting on how Matthew’s annunciation story can inform the conception of what constitutes family today. Reflecting on the unconventional and precarious situation of Mary and Joseph as narrated in 1:18-25 may, as Pope Francis exhorts in the final paragraph of Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), help to keep “us from judging harshly those who live in situations of frailty” (AL 325).

As we discern what values underpin family, the example of the Holy Family may make us aware, when discussing the current reality of the family, not to rigidly propose “a far too abstract and almost artificial theological ideal of marriage, far removed from the concrete situations and practical possibilities of real families” (AL 36).

however, it is not Matthew’s main concern here. Actually, Matthew is attempting to show how Jesus is a son of David despite the virginal conception! The primary reason for the use of Isaiah 7:14 is not due to the prophecy of a virgin birth; rather, it is due to the promise that the child will be called Emmanuel. Emmanuel is not a personal

Dr Jonathan Burroughs is a Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at Mary Immaculate College, St Patrick’s Campus, Thurles. Jonathan’s PhD dissertation was a narrative-critical investigation of the Spirit in the Gospel of Matthew. Jonathan and his wife Elaine are the parents of a baby girl called Faye

THE HOLY FAMILY AND THE WORLD MEETING OF FAMILIES Matthew’s annunciation story is told from the viewpoint of Joseph (for example, he receives the announcement of the birth and names the child), which gives the story, to a certain extent, an androcentric and patriarchal nature. On the other hand, Mary is arguably the most important character: being with child from the Holy Spirit (1:18, 20), and subsequently bearing the child (1:21, 25), are the key to the entire passage. All other events in the passage are based around this primary event. Behind this primary event is God the Father: the Holy Spirit, the angel of the Lord, and the quotation from Isaiah are biblical ways of speaking about God. Matthew characterises

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In Tune with the Liturgy A series that highlights some of the features of the Church’s worship in the month ahead

Waiting in Silence…

T H E C H A L L E N G E O F A DV ENT

Waiting in silence, waiting in hope, we are your people, we long for you Lord, God ever with us, Emmanuel, come Lord Jesus, Marantha. (Carey Landy) IT IS THE BEGINNING OF DECEMBER, AND WITHIN THE CHURCH IT IS THE START OF A NEW LITURGICAL YEAR. THE BEAUTIFUL SEASON OF ADVENT IS UPON US AND WITH IT COMES THE PROFOUND INVITATION TO PREPARE OURSELVES FOR 20 THE COMING OF CHRIST AT CHRISTMAS.

BY SARAH ADAMS

REALITY DECEMBER 2017

Advent

comes from the Latin adventus meaning ‘coming’ or ‘arrival’. We speak of the ‘advent of technology’ but for the Romans, Advent had a special religious association, referring to the coming of a god or goddess to take up residence in a temple. When Christians began to use this term, they used it to refer to what they celebrated at Christmas: the advent of our God in poverty, his continuing advent, especially in the sacraments, and his final advent when he will appear visibly and definitively among his people. In other words, ‘Advent’ refers to the coming of deliverance, to the presence and power of our God among us – past, present

and future to deliver us out of death and from the "winter of our discontent".

WAITING IN SILENCE The words at the start of this reflection "waiting in silence, waiting in hope", come from a beautiful Advent carol. It touches the heart of the season of Advent, when we are invited to give time to reflect on what it is we are waiting for and to consider what it is that we hope for. Within the music of the song, there is a stillness to the melody.

It presents a picture of a place where it is deeply quiet. The usual sounds of life are absent. It is a place where God can be heard, if we take the time to listen. In the run-up to Christmas, however, finding that space can seem impossible because everyone seems to be so busy ‘doing’: rushing from one shop to another, busy in the kitchen, anxiously checking this and checking that, just to ensure that the one day that has become ‘Christmas’ is a real success. In the consumer world in which many of us in the western world live, Advent has become a long shopping spree and the birth of our Lord has been reduced to a one-day breather before the sales begin!

Over the past year the world has witnessed catastrophe upon catastrophe from terrorist attacks and mass murder to terrible natural disasters and a host of other painful events which have left many wondering if there really is a God. Equally such events can highlight a real sense of longing and hoping for God to be more present in our lives and in our world.

“There is a longing in our hearts O Lord, for you to reveal yourself to us. There is a longing in our hearts for love, we only find in you, our God,” writes the composer Anne Quigley. It is another beautiful hymn, very suitable for Advent because it expresses that deeper longing we have for God to break through the barriers which we can all erect to keep God out. This beautiful season is a particular opportunity for us to take stock and reflect on what might be getting in the way of allowing ourselves to experience the intimacy of God who longs to console us, to wrap arms around us, to hold us and to bring us to new life.

EXPECTANT – LIKE MARY Susan Monk Kidd in her book When the Heart Waits writes “When you are waiting, you are not doing nothing. When you are waiting, you are doing the most important something there is. You are allowing your soul to grow up. If you can’t be still and wait, you can’t become what God created you to be”.

The theme of waiting in Advent is so strong because it reflects the expectant waiting of Mary. In the Orthodox liturgy, Mary, known as Theotokos – the bearer or Mother of God – is the one who accepts the invitation to carry the child Jesus in her womb. This particular pregnancy makes Advent a pregnant month, full of pregnant images. Pregnancy is usually a precious time for a mother-to-be, and the carrying of a baby within the body is a beautiful thing to think about in Advent.

When a woman carries a baby in the womb, she carries that baby close to her heart, protected and sheltered by her own body, and so it is with Mary. She carries the One who will come into the world and, by his life, death and resurrection give us everlasting life.

ENTERING THE CAVE Following the aftermath of September 11 in 2001, the caves of Afghanistan were searched for international terrorists. From those obscure places, fear had descended on the earth, dreams had been shattered, lives had been ended. But what has that

got to do with Advent, season of light and tinsel? Quite simply, Advent is a time for us to seek out and enter another cave, an obscure Middle Eastern cave, originally a shelter for livestock. It was in such a cave that an event took place some two millennia ago that forever changed the world. From the darkness of this cave, there shone forth "the true light which enlightens everyone".

From this cave came forth the living Word of God, and with the advent of that Word, was sung the praises of God, "a joyful noise reaching to the ends of the earth: ‘Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.’"

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ at Christmas we are not looking for the baby to be born in a cave, but for the baby to be born in our own hearts and lives.

We are asking Christ to come to us - to come into our world and to be with us. To really celebrate this we need to prepare, to take care, to take time and to make ourselves ready to receive the Christ-child once more, just as Mary was ready to receive the seed of Christ into her womb.

IDEAS FOR FAMILIES In families, the pressures are such that the frenetic nature of pre-Christmas preparations take over the spiritual preparation, and children in particular may not be helped to appreciate the true nature of the season.

There are however a number of small creative and prayerful things which families can do which will enable the whole family to fully celebrate the true meaning of Christmas.

These include: Good Deeds Manger: This is an ideal way for families to prepare together. Instead of putting your crib up with all the figures long before Christmas arrives, put an empty manger in a prominent part of the house. By the side of the manger place some straw or something similar. Each evening, try to come together as a family and talk about the good things that each one has done for others during the day – it may simply be sharing of sweets or helping mum in the kitchen without being asked. For each good deed

that is done, the person who has done the good deed places a piece of ‘straw’ into the manger. On Christmas Eve the baby Jesus is placed in the manger on the soft bed that has been made with the family’s good deeds.

Make a Jesse tree: The Jesse tree tells about the ancestry of Christ through symbols and relates Scripture to salvation history, progressing from creation to the birth of Christ. The tree can be made on a poster board or be a large twig sprayed silver.

Throughout Advent members of the family can make the symbols which apply to each of Jesus’ ancestors and then place the symbols on the tree. A relevant piece of scripture could be read or a prayer said.

Make a Christ candle: Any large white or red candle can be used for the Christ candle.

The idea is to decorate it with symbols for Christ. Use old Christmas cards, sequins, holly, etc. The candle can be lit on Christmas Eve to show that the Light of the World has arrived. Then continue to light the Christ candle throughout the year at Sunday dinner to remind your family of our waiting for Christ, as well as celebrating his birth and Resurrection.

Light an Advent Candle: Make a point of eating together in the evening. Have a candle marked with the days of December up to Christmas Eve. Lighting the candle each day and saying a prayer as a family shows the passing of the days leading up to Christmas.

Taking just one of these traditions (and there are many more on the internet) and making this time to remember each day, will enable our waiting and hoping to become a real part of the anticipation of Christmas and the opportunity for God to enter more deeply into our lives.

Sarah Adams studied liturgical theology at Maynooth. She now lives in Devon, working for the Diocese of Plymouth as a Religious Education adviser. She enjoys hiking on Dartmoor and the surrounding countryside.

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CHR IST M A S

THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS PROVIDE TIME FOR VIEWING CINEMA CLASSICS. THE ROOTS OF TWO OF HOLLYWOOD’S GREATS WERE DEEPLY CATHOLIC AND THEY BROUGHT A CATHOLIC VISION TO THE SCREEN

BY MARÍA ELENA DE LAS CARRERAS KUNTZ

The

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cinema of John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock bears the mark of a Catholic identity. These directors of the classic Hollywood studio system excelled in a visual medium eminently suited to the Catholic concept of art as beauty incarnated in an imperfect world, susceptible to redemption.

Ford (1894-1973) came from an Irish background which shaped his life and work. A complex personality, Ford was a man of faith, sentimentality, and deeply held convictions. Hitchcock (18991980) was born in London into a middle-class family, of English and Irish descent. He attended St. Ignatius College: “It was probably during this period with the Jesuits that a strong sense of fear developed – moral fear – the fear of being involved in anything evil.

I always tried to avoid it,” he told French director François Truffaut .

and beliefs are rendered in their films: communion, mediation, sacramentality and original sin.

COMMUNION Created to God’s image and by virtue of becoming his children, we are all, the living and the dead, part of the same body – the communion of saints – held together by the redeeming power of love.

The idea of communion - be it the celebration of community or the union between the living and their dead - is a visual hallmark of Ford’s films.

Weddings, burials, dances, and meals cement the links amongst the community and create memorable moments: the Irish rituals of courtship in The Quiet Man (1952); thanksgiving dances in Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), and the cavalry trilogy: Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950).

Burials have a moving solemnity in The Lost Patrol (1934), The Long Voyage Home (1940), The Battle of Midway (1942), and They Were Expendable (1945).

Characters often talk to their dead at their graves, as in Judge

Ford was a man of faith, sentimentality, and deeply held convictions Both directors were reluctant to discuss the content of their cinema, or their faith. So to assess the Catholic outlook we should explore how key Catholic ideas REALITY DECEMBER 2017

The Catho in Holl JOHN FORD AND A

Priest (1934), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), and The Sun Shines Bright (1953). Or the ghosts of the loved ones accompany the living in their journey, as in 3 Bad Men (1926), How Green Was My Valley (1941) and 3 Godfathers (1948).

MEDIATION Mediation is the idea that people need someone or something – a person, nature, symbols – to resolve conflicts. Christ is the mediator par excellence.

Ford, like Frank Capra [Reality, December 2016], consistently uses mediating figures.

The Fordian hero – a Christlike figure - is characterised by his willingness to be a mediator,

to the point of self-sacrifice, for the good of family, community, and also nation. The hero, a man or a woman, even a child like Shirley Temple in Wee Willie Winkie (1938), strives to moderate intolerance (social prejudice, war, discrimination) by mediating between the opposing forces of chaos (the lawlessness of the West) and repression (the letter of the law).

Never larger than life, they are contradictory and flawed: Tom Joad becomes a union organiser in The Grapes of Wrath; Nathan Brittles averts war with the Apaches in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon; an astute Lincoln defends innocent people

olic Vision lywood LFRED HITCHCOCK

from a lynch mob in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939); an idealist pastor confronts rigid traditions in How Green Was My Valley (1941).

In The Fugitive (1947), Ford transforms Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory into an allegory of Christ’s passion, death and resurrection.

In the context of the Cold War, Ford wrote to producer Darryl F. Zanuck that “my heart and my faith compel me to do it”.

Three of the more complex Ford heroes are Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (1956), and Ransom Stoddard and Tom Doniphon in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

For them, the American West

is a moral landscape where they discern good and evil - civilised behavior is better than lawlessness and revenge - but they cannot succeed as mediators without sacrificing themselves to a nameless limbo “between the winds”.

SACRAMENTALITY Sacramentality is the capacity of material things – people, objects, places, the cosmos – to carry the presence of God, or to see God in and through His creation.

Like Capra, Ford shows an undisguised affection for the dispossessed: the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath, expelled from their land; the Mexican peasants

who keep the Catholic faith in spite of brutal persecution in The Fugitive; the Mormon families searching for a promised land in Wagon Master (1950). Ford’s particular fondness for the sinner translates into the recurring characters of drunkards and Mary Magdalenes: the drunken doctor and saloon girl of Stagecoach (1939); and the fallen woman who helps the priest in The Fugitive; Doc Holliday and Chihuahua in My Darling Clementine (1946). Interestingly, Ford and screenwriter Dudley Nichols transformed the renegade Irish Communist of Liam O’Flaherty into the vulnerable brute Gypo Nolan of The Informer (1935).

Ford also utilises the landscape in a sacramental manner. In the lingering shots of Monument Valley, which he turned into a universal symbol of the American West, the director conveys a unique sense of beauty and mystery, establishing a sacramental relationship between man and landscape.

It is a primordial space to face the basic issues of life: family, community, solidarity, justice and mercy. “Ford’s poetic way of conveying the transcendence of the eternal over the temporal,” as critic Joseph MacBride has written.

H I TC H CO C K TA L E S O F ORIGINAL SINNERS The typical Hitchcockian situation involves an ordinary man or woman suddenly involved in an out-of-the-ordinary situation. This disruption is caused by some manifestation of evil: a malevolent person, a secret organisation, a sinful

past of sexual origin, or an unbridled element of nature.

The plot confronts these good flawed heroes, with the forces of destruction, unleashed against them. Except for a few instances of ambiguous endings – Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963) - good triumphs over evil and the moral balance is restored. The protagonists do not come out of these ordeals unscathed; they pay a price, either in a loss of innocence ( Re b e c c a , 1 9 4 0 ; Fo re i g n Correspondent, 1940; Shadow of a Doubt, 1943), the acquisition of guilt (Blackmail, 1929; Sabotage, 1936), or more disturbingly, through their contamination with evil (Torn Curtain, 1966; Topaz, 1969, Frenzy, 1972). In later films, not untouched by hints of despair, evil is clearly presented as the absence, or the slaughter, of love: Rear Window (1954), Vertigo, Psycho, and Marnie (1964), studies of isolated or obsessed individuals confined in emotional or pathological traps.

In the two films with specifically Catholic subject matter, I Confess (1953) and The Wrong Man (1957), the protagonists are men of faith: one a priest (Montgomery Clift), and the other a New York musician (Henry Fonda). Accused of crimes they have not committed - a Hitchcockian motif - neither can prove his innocence until the intervention of providence.

The horrific consequences of evil are also a constant in Hitchcock. Like Job, the characters confront an evil whose origin or magnitude they don’t understand, like the shy new mistress of Manderley

23

C H RI STM A S

nearly destroyed by the obsessed housekeeper in Rebecca. In Rope (1948), two college graduates murder a friend in an aesthetic attempt at moral emancipation.

Psycho offers a chilling picture of hell in the guise of a journey into the mind of the psychopathic murderer Norman Bates. A psychotic son acts as if a pact to exchange murders has really taken place in Strangers on a Train (1951). The Birds can be seen as a doomsday ecological parable.

The most effective evildoers are invariably seductive gentlemen.

Since one of Hitchcock’s techniques to create suspense is to provide the viewers with information withheld from the characters, the design of malevolent men is particularly interesting: the amoral killer of rich

moral weakling portrayed by Farley Granger in Strangers on a Train; the unfaithful wife in Dial M for Murder (1954); and an irresponsible Cary Grant in North by Northwest (1959).

Interestingly, when a scene shows a killing committed by a decent character, Hitchcock skillfully dissociates the act from the perpetrator. In the Cold War spy drama Torn Curtain, an American scientist kills a communist secret agent … in a gas oven.

Ford directing on the set of Stagecoach

ladies in Shadow of a Doubt, the ruthless Nazi agents in Secret Agent (1936) and Notorious (1946).

Good and evil, however, are not interchangeable. In Hitchcock’s universe there are moral absolutes, framed by a Judeo-Christian

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worldview. His films show not only the moral dimension of a key act but also the character’s awareness: Claude Rains deciding to poison his wife in Notorious; and the mothers who must choose between the lives of their kidnapped children or disrupting an act of sabotage in both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934 and 1956).

The Hitchcockian hero is noticeably imperfect: the guilt-ridden protagonist of the psychological thriller Spellbound (1945); an obsessively curious James Stewart in Rear Window; the

THE MORAL EPIPHANIES IN JOHN FORD Ford’s films are built around family, community, duty and tradition. The director favours three archetypal narratives: journeys of ascension toward home or promised lands; journeys of descent from lost paradises; and isolated communities or individuals facing dangers of a physical or spiritual nature.

Ford sets his characters in a moral universe where right and wrong have an objective existence. The tragic moment is the crisis of an individual conscience, the moment when characters take stock of who they are, a moment that “allows

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Kim Novak with Hitchcock on the set of Vertigo

them to define themselves’” as Ford once remarked.

These moral epiphanies are always blended into the action. In The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), Dr. Mudd, unjustly condemned for the Lincoln assassination plot, saves his jailors from the plague. Mary Stuart will face death rather than give up her Catholic faith in Mary of Scotland (1936). In Stagecoach and Sergeant Rutledge (1960), the outlaw Ringo Kid and the brave black

soldier choose to stay and fend off the Apache attacks. Ethan Edwards breaks away from a cycle of revenge by not killing his “contaminated” niece, brought up as a Comanche in The Searchers. A compassionate doctor forgoes a lucrative practice to help the poor in Arrowsmith (1931).

In The Fugitive, the persecuted priest returns to martyrdom, for the salvation of one soul.

Redemption is omnipresent in Ford: the unfaithful wife in Flesh

John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man

25

(1932), the amoral flyer in Airmail (1932), the possessive mother in Pilgrimage, the pathetic Judas in The Informer; the misguided French governor in The Hurricane (1937); the martinet commander in Fort Apache; and the cynical doctor in 7 Women (1965). In 3 Bad Men and 3 Godfathers, two wonderful allegories about the Three Magi, the outlaws are also the good thieves of the Gospel.

The films of Ford and Hitchcock

offer fantastic entertainment still today. They remind us that popular culture can be an apt vessel to experience beauty and goodness in the midst of our busy lives.

A Fulbright scholar from Argentina, Maria Elena de las Carreras Kuntz has a PhD in Film Studies from UCLA. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband Jonathan and their daughter Rebecca.

FROM THE ARCHIVES December 1962

AN ARMY CHAPLAIN LOOKS BACK

Fr

Joseph Murphy was a Redemptorist who volunteered for chaplain duty with the British Army during the Second World War. When the war in Europe ended, he found himself in Palestine as chaplain to the First Brigade of Guards. Post-war Palestine was an uneasy place.

It had been under the British Mandate since the end of World War I, but in the “Balfour Declaration”

26

REALITY DECEMBER 2017

of 1917, the British had recognised the right of the Jewish people to a permanent homeland in Palestine. Jewish survivors of the Holocaust began pouring into the country after World War II, and Zionist militants were demanding that the British Government deliver immediately on its promise of a “Jewish Homeland”. Relations between Arab and Jewish populations grew increasingly tense.

In July, 1946 the Irgun, a Zionist terrorist group, blew up the King David Hotel, the Jerusalem headquarters of the British administration, killing 92 people. Fr Murphy’s article describes the tense Christmas immediately following this. As Catholic chaplain, he was responsible for Catholic soldiers over a wide area. Few of the men, Catholic or Protestant, wanted to miss the once-in-a-lifetime

TO CHRISTMAS IN THE HOLY LAND of celebrating Christmas in Bethlehem. About 3,500 soldiers were given permission to go Bethlehem for services organised by their own denominations. Fr Murphy led about 100 Catholic soldiers from his area near Nazareth to Midnight Mass in Bethlehem.

They left on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, he heard their confessions, attended the midnight Mass, said his own private Mass in the crypt, then

headed back north, with a halt for Mass at another camp on the way. His flock at Nazareth could find plenty of Masses there, so he celebrated his third Mass for another camp at Safed, a hill town even further north. Fr Murphy was a biblical scholar by training, so he enjoyed the Holy Land very much.

He continued as a chaplain in North Africa, serving for a time in the Suez Canal Zone, finally leaving

the chaplaincy service in 1955. He took part in the first “Mission to Non-Catholics� in Clonard. He remained a faithful member of the British Legion, and was one of the first priests in Ireland to take part in a Remembrance Day service. He died in 1972 and is buried in the Redemptorist Cemetery in Esker, Co Galway.

Brendan McConvery CSsR

27

FROM THE ARCHIVES December 1962

28

REALITY DECEMBER 2017

29

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COM M E N T FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS CARMEL WYNNE

MOURNING CAN CAUSE CONFLICT

SOME PEOPLE DREAD THE ARRIVAL OF CHRISTMAS. WHILE TRYING TO PUT ON A GOOD FRONT, THE WOUND OF A RECENT BEREAVEMENT OR ONE THAT OCCURRED DURING THE CHRISTMAS PERIOD CAN BRING SAD MEMORIES AND A CONFLICT OF EMOTIONS. Have you ever thought about the people who are in mourning or depressed as we approach another Christmas? Has it every struck you that someone you think of as a 'killjoy' could be dealing with a personal loss you know nothing about?

It’s not uncommon for families who have lost a loved one to find the weeks coming up to Christmas difficult. There is a widespread belief that grief unfolds in recognisable stages.

That may be true for some but not for everyone. People cope with grief in different ways.

Mourning takes as long as it takes.

Some people are so overwhelmed with sadness that they descend for a time into despair and hopelessness.

Others keep over-busy with activities, listening to music, watching television; using any distraction to avoid dealing with their painful loss. Others still are so afraid of breaking down and sobbing that they withdraw and refuse invitations to protect others from their grief.

It is devastating when anyone in a family is unable or unwilling to offer comfort and support.

One could assume that family members would be there for each other, offering comfort, seeking to ease the pain of shared loss in the healing intimacy of loving and supportive relationships.

A friend told me about someone she knows whose two daughters will not speak to their mother.

The girls say their mother couldn’t have loved their father because if she had she would be crying for him. The mother hasn’t been able to cry because she is still in shock.

The unfortunate woman found her husband dead in bed.

One could judge her children for demanding that she grieve in a way that meets their expectations.

Some people lack the empathy gene. They fail to recognise the intensity of pain, the feelings of anguish that accompany the mourning process. There may or may not be a lack of sensitivity in people who have set beliefs about how one should mourn, or who have a timescale for how long grieving should last. To be judgementally angry because any family member fails to meet the self-imposed criteria of another family member looks harsh but venting at those you feel closest to is also a recognised stage in grieving.

In the recent past there was an Irish custom. People wore a black sleeve patch after a family bereavement. I’m not sure if a symbol to show one is in mourning would make life easier or harder. It could be a protection for a person who doesn’t want to be pressurised into attending a social event they want to avoid.

It’s easy to understand why disappointment about wills and

legacies would be a catalyst for family conflict. It’s harder to understand why some family members react badly and act offended and upset when others don’t grieve in “the right way”.

It’s not true that the deeper you love a person the longer you grieve. What a tragedy if a person delayed healing for fear of upsetting family members if they stopped grieving.

People in mourning have good days and bad days. Even though there are books on how to cope with grief, there is no formula, there really are no guidelines for how one should feel in the weeks, months and even years after a much loved person dies.

There are, however, guidelines on what not to say to a bereaved person. It’s less than helpful to say; •You’ll get over it – we all have to go sometime.

•You’ve an angel in heaven.

•You should be grateful that you can have other children.

•At least you have your memories.

•You’ll have more freedom now to do what you want to do •At least you have your family.

•It’s wonderful how it brought you all together.

Can you imagine how unhelpful the last two comments would be if the bereaved person was dealing with family conflict?

Christy Kenneally, author of Life

after Loss, suggests that praising the bereaved for their show of calm or control can put further pressure on them to grieve the way society wants!

Family and friends may not have the skills or patience to give the necessary support to a person in mourning. Organisations like The Bethany Bereavement Support Group have volunteers who are trained to understand and be there for those who feel the pain, loneliness and grief for a loved one who died.

People who are heartbroken, grieving and in pain will often conceal their misery behind a laugh and smile. Understanding that the 'killjoy' who refuses an invitation may be dealing with bereavement, depression or social anxiety could ease the pressure to party. Kindness and respect are priceless Christmas gifts that will offer comfort to many who need understanding and acceptance.

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

31

prayer corner

In this series, Fr George Wadding invites us to take an imaginative look at some familiar Gospel stories, imagining how the characters might have told their story if they were alive today. Using the imagination can be a powerful way of entering into reflective contemplative prayer. Find a quiet corner, read the article slowly a few times, think about it and pray as the spirit leads you.

Praying With The Rosary THIRD JOYFUL MYSTERY – THE NATIVITY

In this meditation, we are invited to listen as Mary and Joseph describe their experience of the birth of Jesus. Keep you Bible open at Luke 2 and conclude by praying the Rosary prayers

“I

32

was almost at full term in my pregnancy when the Romans decided to take a new census. We have mixed feelings about censuses here in Israel. Moses conducted a detailed census of Israel’s military strength before entering the Promised Land, but that was at God’s command; and besides, the tribes had to be organised to determine the amount of land each tribe would need (Numbers 1). But when King David organised a census of his military strength - against the advice of Joab, his commander-in-chief - the prophet Gad was sent to reprimand him. David had become arrogant and proud – pride in his own mighty army while forgetting that his real strength had always come from God (I Chronicles 21).

The purpose of the Roman census was to facilitate military conscription and tax collection.

Now, we Jews were exempted from joining the Roman army, but we could not avoid paying Roman taxes. The disruption the census caused was enormous, people wandering like refugees all over the country. Besides, in my case, as I said, I was almost full term. Still, we had to conform and obey the law. My family stayed put, but I had to accompany my husband Joseph to register at Bethlehem, the town of David, Joseph’s tribal town. God’s timing is incredible. Seven hundred years before this census was even conceived, the prophet Micah (5:2) had foretold that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (even though his parents lived in Nazareth).

Naturally I was very anxious but not nearly as anxious as poor Joseph. I kept recalling the angel’s words: “Don’t be afraid, Miriam… All things are possible with God.” Joseph’s family took good care of me and kept me as comfortable as possible on the long journey south.”

REALITY DECEMBER 2017

JOSEPH SPEAKS (Joseph continues…) “Why wouldn’t we! Miriam and I had been entrusted with a precious jewel which we would guard with our lives. Still, poor Miriam was pretty exhausted when we arrived in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is a small village and, because of the census, every available accommodation was taken up. As Miriam was very near to her confinement, we urgently needed a place of privacy. In Palestine, we keep our animals in small, covered-in stalls at the back of the house or under it. We eventually found a vacant one which had been cleaned up, but still had its manger attached to the wall. We were glad to get a place to ourselves, and the manger would serve as a little cradle for our child. Here in this makeshift home, after some days, the Messiah, the Son of God was born. The weather was still mild though the evenings were getting just a little chilly.

Need I say, our humble home was an oasis of indescribable joy. Apart from the profound love Miriam and I had for each other, we were overwhelmed by our responsibility for the divine child entrusted to us, and the staggering mystery unfolding daily before our eyes. Every whimper, every cry of hunger or discomfort brought us quickly to Jesus’ side. It was especially when Miriam suckled Jesus that the profound mystery of the Messiah Saviour, helpless and totally reliant on God’s handmaid for his very survival, hit home!

I watched in amazement and gently kissed my wife and baby in quiet reverence.

Soon after the birth of Jesus, a group of shepherds arrived breathless at our stable. They told us of another extraordinary angelic visitation.

Against the dark night sky, an angel of God had appeared to them and said, 'I bring you wonderful

good news: the infant Messiah has come among you; you will find him in a stable, wrapped in his swaddling clothes and asleep in a manger.' And then the heavens erupted, and a multitude of angels appeared singing their hearts out; and the words of their song were ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will.’

'Yes,' whispered Miriam, 'peace, not war, peace on earth! So may it be!'

These poor, hard-working men stayed awhile and worshipped the baby in the manger before rushing back to their flocks.

STRANGE VISITORS "More excitement was to come in the weeks that followed. Some Magi visited us from Eastern lands.

We’d heard of such learned scholars of philosophy and medicine who were also renowned as soothsayers and astrologers. Their research led them to our hut where we had not as much as an easy seat for them to rest their exhausted bones. They presented us with token gifts which expressed their own discernment of the event they had come to explore: a few gold coins – gold was for a king; frankincense – a gift for a priest; myrrh – for embalming the dead. So far, these Gentile Magi had discerned our child’s destiny very well. But Isaiah never mentioned myrrh. What terrible secret were the Magi hinting at? Was it that other chilling statement of Isaiah that the Messiah ‘would bear the sins of the people and be brought like a lamb to the slaughter’? (53:7).

For a fleeting moment, a dark cloud cast a shadow over the serene joy in our poor stall. I shivered.

Our Wise Men from the East were not so wise after all. On their way to our stable they had sought directions about where they might find

the 'new king of the Jews'. King Herod got to hear of it through his spies. Now, Herod was a ruthless, vindictive tyrant. The Magi’s enquiry rang alarm bells for him. At the hint of a rival king, his anger exploded. He quickly summoned together a group of priests and lawyers to enquire of them where this Messiah, this ‘usurper’ would be born.

'In Bethlehem,' they told him. Herod would take no chances. Feigning piety, he gave orders that if these foreigners actually found this new-born king they should let him know so that he could come and worship as well. Fortunately for all of us, an angel appeared to the Magi and told them to go home by a different route.

We were about to leave for Galilee ourselves when the angel returned in a dream to warn me to get out of Herod’s jurisdiction completely, 'Don’t delay,' he said, 'leave immediately.' And so we found ourselves in a convoy heading for Egypt with little more than a few tools and the clothes we stood up in. Months later we heard what King Herod did in Bethlehem. Realising that the Magi had tricked him, and not sure precisely where or

when the Messiah baby was born, he allowed himself a safe margin of error and ordered the slaughter of all male babies of two years or under in and around Bethlehem. We were distraught.

Our tears mingled with the tears of Bethlehem’s mothers. Being exiles ourselves, we remembered Rachel, the figurative mother of Israel’s northern tribes. These tribes were being carried into exile by the Assyrians. With the prophet Jeremiah (31:15), we pictured her crying for the exiles at Ramah, a staging point of deportation: A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more.

My lovely wife, Miriam, is a ponderer. One evening in Egypt, Jesus was fast asleep in the little cot I made for him. Miriam and I sat in the cool of the evening looking up at the myriad stars in the dark sky.

'Joseph,' she said, 'I’ve been thinking.'

'Nothing new there,' I said, 'tell me more.'

'I’ve been thinking of the visitors to our hut in Bethlehem.'

'And…?'

'It occurs to me that all the peoples of the world came to worship our child in those two visits.'

'How do you figure that out?' I asked.

'Well,' she said, 'the shepherds represented the Jews, the poor and the uneducated; the Magi represented the Gentiles, the rich and the educated classes. And that about covers everybody… what do you think?'

'Miriam,' I said, 'you’re special and I love you dearly. When Jesus is grown up, though, will all these diverse people listen to his message and follow him!'

'We must trust, Joseph - all things are possible with God.'"

Father George Wadding CSsR is a member of the Redemptorist Community, Dun Mhuire, Griffith Avenue, Dublin D09 P9H9

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A N N I V E R S A RY

A CONVERT, AN ICON AND A CONFRATERNITY Celebrating two Limerick anniversaries

34

ON DECEMBER 28 THIS YEAR, WE CELEBRATE THE ARRIVAL OF THE FIRST COPY OF THE ICON OF THE MOTHER OF PERPETUAL HELP IN LIMERICK. THREE DAYS OF PRAYER WERE HELD TO CELEBRATE THE SOLEMN RECEPTION OF THE PICTURE. THIS WAS FOLLOWED BY A 'MISSION FOR MEN', DRAWING MEN FROM ALL OVER THE CITY. AT THE END OF THE MISSION, NAMES WERE TAKEN OF MEN AND BOYS WILLING TO JOIN THE NEW CONFRATERNITY OF THE HOLY FAMILY. IN TIME, IT WOULD BECOME THE LARGEST ASSOCIATION OF ITS KIND IN THE CATHOLIC WORLD. AS WE CELEBRATE ITS 150TH ANNIVERSARY, WE REMEMBER ITS REMARKABLE FOUNDER, FR THOMAS EDWARD BRIDGETT.

BY BRENDAN McCONVERY CSsR REALITY DECEMBER 2017

The

first generation of Redemptorists in Britain and Ireland were a remarkable group of men.

Although two young Irish emigrants had entered the congregation in the New World in 1848, the first Irishman to join with a view to serving the missions in his own country belonged to the very small number of aristocratic Catholic families. His name was William Plunkett (1824-1900), son of the Earl of Fingall, of the same family as the martyred St Oliver Plunkett. He was professed in 1850, and ordained four years later. Among his fellow novices in St Trond in Belgium was a young Englishman convert, five years his junior, Thomas Edward Bridgett (1829-1899).

Two of the first Redemptorists to preach in Ireland were also converts - Robert Coffin (18191885), a former Anglican rector of St Mary Magdalene in Oxford, and Edward Douglas (1819– 1898), a Scottish aristocrat who had become a Catholic priest.

It is not surprising that three of these early Redemptorists were converts. This was the famous 'Second Spring' of English Catholicism, heralded by yet another convert whom they all knew, Blessed John Henry Newman (1801-1890).

Newman’s 'Oxford Movement' also had followers among convert members of the landed gentry of County Limerick. Some of them, like Lord Dunraven of Adare, William Monsell, the local MP (later Lord Emly) and Aubrey de Vere of Curraghchase became friends and supporters of the Redemptorists when they settled in Limerick.

Fr Thomas Edward Bridgett

Confraternity procession forming outside Mount Saint Alphonsus, Limerick 1928

THE CAMBRIDGE STUDENT Thomas Bridgett was born in Derby, where his family had a successful silk-manufacturing business. His family did not belong to the mainline Church of England. His father was a Baptist and his mother a Unitarian, and Thomas was not baptised until he requested it himself as a schoolboy, but he quickly developed a deeply Anglican religious outlook. In 1847, he entered St John’s College,

Cambridge with a view to taking holy orders as an Anglican.

Although the feverish religious disputes that wracked Oxford at the time were less keenly felt in Cambridge, young Bridgett was no stranger to the controversy Newman had stirred up nationally.

Apart from an occasional holiday abroad, he knew little about Catholicism. Later in life, he described his first brush with Rome. With a fellow student, he

decided to visit the small Catholic chapel in Cambridge. Returning the key to the Irish labourer who looked after it, Bridgett’s friend joked: "Why Paddy, do you think you have the truth all to yourselves down this little back street and that our learned doctors and divines in the university are in error?" The Irishman answered: "Well, sir, I suppose they are all very learned, but they can’t agree together, while we are all one." The answer stuck in the young student’s mind, as its very simplicity reduced the complex debates of the time to their essence.

Leaving for the holidays in the summer of 1850, Bridgett remarked to some of his friends: "It is not likely that I shall return to Cambridge.

If I do, I shall be a thorough Protestant, and not a High Church Anglican." During the vacation, he attended Newman’s ‘Lectures on the difficulties of Anglicans’ in London. Within a month, Thomas was arranging to be received into the Roman Catholic Church. He says that he stumbled into the house attached to the London Oratory, and "stammered out that I wanted to be a Catholic.

I was alarmed when the words were spoken." The priest simply told him to return the following day to make his confession. He was 21 years of age. As he had foreseen, he did not return to Cambridge, since as a Catholic, he could not take his degree.

Instead, he made a retreat with the Redemptorists. He had gone to Cambridge intending to be ordained. The vocation to priesthood remained, but it could now only be fulfilled in the Catholic Church. An uncle had prophesied, even before he became a Catholic, that his nephew would end up a continued on page 37

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ST. MARY’S MONASTERY

REDEMPTORIST CENTRE FOR SPIRITUALITY St Mary’s Monastery, Kinnoull, Perth overlooks the city which is renowned as the ‘Gateway to the Scottish Highlands’. It is an international, multi-cultural, ecumenical place situated within its own extensive grounds and woodland and offers its visitors the opportunity for relaxation, renewal, and rest.

The accommodation in the Monastery is simple but comfortable with 28 single en-suite room, 2 twin en-suite rooms and 4 single rooms with shared bathrooms. There is step free access with a lift to all rooms and free Wi-Fi throughout the building.

PROGRAMME 2018 5th - 9th Feb

Theology of Body

£

9 - 11 Feb

Young Adults Retreat

£

26 Mar - 1 Apr

Holy Week Retreat

£

th

th

th

st

345*

Fr. Jim McManus C.Ss.R.

110**

Fr. Peter Morris C.Ss.R.

380*

Redemptorist Community

345*

Sr. Sheila Burke RSM, Fr. Martin Gay C.Ss.R., Fr. Ronnie McAinsh C.Ss.R.

3950

Kinnoull Sabbatical Team

430

Fr. Jim McManus C.Ss.R.

345*

Fr. Peter Morris C.Ss.R.

155*

Sr. Sheila Burke RSM

23rd - 27th Apr

Silent Guided Retreat

£

14th May - 28th Jun

Sabbatical Course

£

9 - 16 Jul

6 Day Retreat for Religious

16 - 20 Jul

Retreat for Laity

£

th

th

th

th

£

3rd - 5 Aug

A Retreat for the Second Part of Life

£

13th - 17th Aug

Holiday in Scotland

£

345

19th - 24th Aug

Retreat for Religious

£

370

Fr. Ronnie McAinsh C.Ss.R.

10 - 14 Sept

Retreat for Priests & Deacons

£

345

Fr. Jim McManus C.Ss.R.

30 Sept - 5 Oct

Mid/Long– Life Directions Workshop

£

365*

Sr. Sheila Burke RSM

22 Oct - 6 Dec

Sabbatical Course

£

14th - 16th Dec

Advent Retreat

£

th

th

th

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th

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th

All accommodation is in single en-suite rooms with full board

3950

Kinnoull Sabbatical Team

155*

Redemptorist Community

* Concession rates on request ** Youth concession rate

St. Mary’s, Kinnoull, Hatton Road, Perth PH2 7BP, UK

www.kinnoullmonastery.co.uk | info@kinnoullmonastery.co.uk

+44 (0)1738 624075

ANNIVE R S A RY

Jesuit but Thomas was determined to disappoint him. Nor did he feel any attraction for Newman’s Oratory, whose members, he thought, were trying too hard to be Catholic. He said he “wished to be thoroughly Catholic, but among those to whom it came easily and harmoniously". By the following September, three months after his reception into the church, 21-yearold Thomas was on his way to the Redemptorist noviciate in Belgium.

He was professed the following year, then studied theology in Holland for a further five, and returned to England in 1856.

FR BRIDGETT AND OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HELP The years 1862 to 1871 were spent in Ireland, giving missions and retreats.

Fr Bridgett was appointed rector of Mount St Alphonsus, Limerick in 1865. At 36, he was a relatively young man, with less than ten years of priestly experience behind him. The church had been opened a mere three years previously, and was still incomplete. The departure to Rome of Fr Douglas, who had offered to defray the cost of the building from family money, had left the community with a serious financial problem. Lay benefactors had to be found among the wealthier Limerick Catholics. So it was that the new rector was able to replace the temporary high altar with one finely carved in Caen stone along with a matching pulpit. Altar and pulpit were the benefaction of two Limerick merchants, John Quin and Michael Sheehan.

The rediscovered icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help had been placed in the new Redemptorist church of St Alphonsus in Rome, which had been built thanks to the family money of Fr Douglas. Authentic

copies were soon making their way to Redemptorist communities throughout the world. Limerick received its copy in December 1867. It was solemnly unveiled by Fr Bridgett on 28 December, and it was proposed to build a new Lady Chapel to house it. It was opened for worship on the feast of the Assumption 1869, most of the cost being defrayed by members of the confraternity, and has been continuously embellished throughout the almost 150 years of its life.

A MISSION AND A CONFRATERNITY The Redemptorist church, popularly known as 'the Fathers', was becoming a centre of popular devotion. The continuous round of devotions and the availability of confession all day long, made it a place of perpetual mission, much as St Clement Hofbauer’s St Benno’s in Warsaw was.

The Redemptorists in Belgium, the mother province of Britain and Ireland, had discovered something that appealed especially to working class urban men. The Confraternity of the Holy Family had been founded in Liège in 1844 by a devout military engineer called Henri Belletable (1813–55) to promote a more Christian lifestyle of the men with whom he worked on the railways. Belletable brought small groups of men together each week for prayer. His project was confided to the Redemptorists: within a few years, it had spread through Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. The Redemptorists had already founded several Irish branches in the course of their parish missions, notably at Ennistymon and Wexford town.

The political climate of the time

probably added some urgency to founding a confraternity in Limerick. The previous year there had been Fenian uprisings throughout Ireland and England, including one in Limerick. The church took a very dim view of Fenianism: David Moriarty, the Bishop of Kerry, for example, had declared that, ”Eternity is not long enough nor Hell hot enough for those miscreants” who had led the rebellion.

The 'Mission for Men' was launched on the New Year’s Day 1868. The men’s enthusiasm was unexpected but remarkable. Their tramping feet as they made their way to Mass at 5.30 each morning woke many. The monastery chronicler wrote: Much alarm was felt at the beginning of the mission by the Protestant residents in Limerick at seeing such crowds of men passing through the streets, many of them with measured step. Thoughts of the Fenians, of insurrection, of fire and slaughter presented themselves to their minds, and many a door was bolted and barred. But when they learned the peaceful nature of the work which was being accomplished, their fears were dissipated and they joined heartily in promoting the work of the mission, sending those in their employment and giving them the time and opportunity to avail themselves of the mission.

One measure of its success was that 1,333 men and boys received the sacrament of Confirmation on the final Sunday. Confirmation was often neglected in 19th century Ireland. The chronicler went on to record that "many who had not

kneeled to a priest in their lives" came to confession, and the crowds at the sermons were so large that some benches had to be removed from the church to create more space.

Thoughts of the Fenians, of insurrection, of fire and slaughter presented themselves to their minds, and many a door was bolted and barred About 1,300 men gave their names as prospective members of the new confraternity. Within a few weeks, a second division on another night had to be found for those who could not gain entry to the church. The history of the Limerick confraternity is a long and distinguished one, and we shall return to it in a later issue.

Fr Bridgett spent a further term in Limerick as rector (1881-1884).

Illness prevented him from going on missions, but he was an indefatigable writer of books, especially on the history of England’s Catholic heritage. He had a makeshift desk fitted in his confessional in Limerick.

When there were no penitents, he continued to read and write.

A memorial to the great mission and the founding of the confraternity still stands in the grounds of Mount St Alphonsus.

It is a large wooden crucifix which was presented by a group of young men, the drapers’ apprentices in some of the large men’s outfitters of the town, who raised the money for it among themselves.

Brendan McConvery CSsR is editor of Reality.

He is also author of The Redemptorists in Ireland and of The Church of Mount St Alphonsus: 150th year Anniversary Guide

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DE V E LOP M E N T I N ACTION

NEW KITCHEN GARDENS HAVE BIG IMPACT IN RWANDA HOW TRÓCAIRE HELPED A COMMUNITY IN RWANDA TO DISCOVER A WAY OF MAKING THEIR TINY PLOTS OF LAND MORE EFFICIENT FOR GROWING FOOD AND GAINING ADDITIONAL INCOME FOR THEIR FAMILIES

BY DAVID O'HARE

Rwanda

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is one of the most densely populated countries in Africa: with over 11 million people living in a country less than a third the size of Ireland, access to land is a big problem.

Many communities fear they will struggle to grow sufficient food from their small plots of land, usually half a hectare or less. But in the village of Nyarugeti, the community has implemented a strikingly effective solution.

Nyarugeti is teeming with 65 ‘kitchen gardens’, each with a corresponding water tank. The kitchen gardens, so called because they are built directly outside houses and near the cooking area, are usually built with a mix of compost, rocks, bamboo, and wires or sticks.

Francine Mukandamage (36) is one of the villagers who has seen a big change since she got her kitchen garden going in January 2017. She has planted onions and cabbages. She now has extra income for school fees for her nephew in addition to pens, books and clothes. She can also buy salt, beans and sweet potatoes.

With the help of Trócaire partner UNICOOPAGI, the community has built 23 water tanks with mud bricks and plastic sheeting. These tanks harvest rainwater from the roofs of houses. Each tank has capacity for 10 cubic metres of water. These water tanks make it possible for communities to water the kitchen gardens they have built outside their home.

REALITY DECEMBER 2017

The villagers of Nyarugeti village, Nyamagabe, Rwanda celebrate the achievement of their kitchen gardens.

Photo: Alan Whelan, Trócaire

In a country where a lack of land and soil erosion are a huge challenge for small farmers, the kitchen gardens are life-changing. Some 80 per cent of Rwanda’s agricultural land is on slopes and hilly terrain. Because of this 1.4 million tonnes of soil is lost to erosion each year. This lost soil could feed 40,000 more people a year.

While the country benefits from two rainy seasons because of its location in the equatorial region, climate change

has had a big impact with rainfall becoming erratic and the rainy seasons becoming shorter. Water harvesting and kitchen gardens like these help maximise the use of the water and soil that are available.

The immense sense of community pride in this project is palpable.

Cyprien Rwamdamga, 55, chairman of Nyarugeti's water village committee, says:

Francine Mukandamage (36) in Nyarugeti village, Nyamagabe, Rwanda. Photo: Alan Whelan, Trócaire

WINTER

“I mobilise the local community. The gardens require mud bricks so getting people to work on that was a big part of my job. We have a monthly meeting with local government officials and the water village committee. My job is to let people know that it’s on and encourage them to attend.

We have seen an improvement in nutrition. In the committee we sign a performance contract where we commit to getting results for the community. I mediate between the people in the village and the committee and the local government officials. I’m very happy with the project. Eating vegetables has made a big difference. I didn’t know myself before how important it was to eat things like carrots. We have got good education on that.”

The initial work involved in constructing the garden and gathering soil and bags is the most demanding. After that, the gardens need 40 litres of water twice a day during the dry season. The community are now growing carrots, cabbages and onions. They sell around 60 per cent of their produce and consume the rest.

Francine says she depends on the kitchen garden and working as a labourer on other people’s farms.

“It used to be a lot more difficult to get water. There was a 30-minute walk to get to the water point and often when I got there, there were long queues and arguments and jockeying for position.”

She was unmarried and living with her parents

when they died 14 years ago. Her family worried she would be lonely and her brother asked her if she would like to raise his son Elisa. Elisa has lived with her since he was a small baby.

Francine says she is more hopeful for their future since she got the kitchen garden. She sells her produce at a small market near the village that is open every day and a larger market that is open Tuesdays and Fridays, a one-hour walk from her house.

One of the Christmas Trócaire Gifts this year is the gift of Water Pumps and Irrigation. Clean, safe, healthy, fresh water is the gift that keeps on giving, year in and year out. Dirty water kills millions of children around the world every year. Clean drinking water means less disease, fewer deaths and happier, healthier families. Irrigation systems, including water conservation and recycling, also help families to grow more fruit, grains and vegetables so they have better harvests and a variety of healthy food.

For more information on Trócaire Gifts visit www.trocaire.org

Ennismore Retreat Centre ST DOMINIC’S

Sunday 26th November 3.00 – 6.00 pm ‘Transforming Our Losses & Building Resilience’ Patrick Sheehan MIAHIP Friday 8th – Sunday 10th December Residential €175 - Non Res. €100 Advent Weekend Retreat Fr. Benedict Hegarty O.P. Wednesday 13th December €10/Donation Advent evening of Reflection 7.30pm – 9.15pm Martina Lehane Sheehan All Day Retreats include 4 course lunch Vouchers available at Reception in values of €25 & €50 redeemable towards any of the events on our programme.

Newly Released: ‘Surprised by Fire; Become who you are meant to be’, by Martina Lehane Sheehan.

Ennismore Retreat Centre is set in 30 acres of wood, field and garden overlooking Lough Mahon on the River Lee. It’s the ideal place for some time-out, reflection and prayer.

For ongoing programmes please contact the Secretary or visit our website Tel: 021-4502520 Fax: 021-4502712 E-mail: ennismore@eircom.net www.ennismore.ie

From Redemptorist Communications

ONE MAN, ONE GOD The Peace Ministry of Fr Alec Reid C.Ss.R.

By Martin McKeever C.Ss.R. Fr Alec Reid made an extraordinary contribution to the Northern Ireland peace process.

As a member of the Clonard community for over forty years, Fr Alec’s peace ministry emerged from a religious community deeply rooted in west Belfast.

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

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

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€14.95 £12.95 plus p&p

PINK PRAYER BOOK Breast cancer: coping… healing… surviving… thriving…

Inspired and written by breast cancer patients and survivors, their mothers, daughters, sisters and friends. The Pink Prayer Book provides prayers, scripture and quotations offering support for women moving through diagnosis and treatment towards recovery and hope of lasting remission.

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UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

BOOK REVIEW BY KATE GREEN

A PRIEST NOVELIST ON THE IRISH CHURCH A Lost Tribe by William King. Lilliput Press, Dublin 2017.

244 pages. € 15.00 ISBN 9781843517146

The Lost Tribe by William King, parish priest of the Church of Mary Immaculate in Rathmines and a published author, is a fictionalised account of seminary and parish life in Ireland before Vatican II and up to the present day. It is a story of two Irelands, each radically different from the other in every way. Loosely based on real places and, I imagine, actual characters, its source purports to be the diaries of the protagonist, Fr Galvin, whose narrative voice speaks in the present tense, thereby drawing the reader into his memories, thoughts and experiences. They are not happy ones, nor indeed are those of his circle of seminarian friends and acquaintances. The seminary is described by some as "a prison”, and by others in equally negative and earthier terms. The rector and the dean of discipline are somewhat caricatured, the rector a patronising, legalistic snob, the dean one who " lurks" and "slinks" and "hisses, My job is to get rid of the half of you before June." The archbishop enjoys the sobriquet of "the High Command". All are obsessed with preserving a seminary training little changed from the 19th century. They are men of their time, unwilling

and unable to face the emerging challenges of the 'Swinging 60s', nor to respond with understanding and compassion to the young men supposedly in their care.

Interspersed with these seminary memories, are chapters regaling a week's retreat for the remnant of these "boy-priests" who have stayed the course.

Now middle-aged, lonely, dispirited survivors of the child-abuse and sex scandals, they gather at mealtimes to reminisce and share their experiences of how they try to endure the church's fall from grace in an Ireland where the good and faithful priest is lumped with the "pervs". The coarseness of language reflects their disillusion.

Sex, or rather its lack, the "deluge" of priests who left, many to marry, illustrate the real problem for so many priests then and now: the human need for personal intimacy and connectedness, and a healthy attitude to women in contrast to that of the archbishop: "Don't they know that women, bless

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them, are...capable of leading any man astray?"

Galvin himself experiences his own crisis of faith and is the one in whom some of his priestly friends confide their struggles.

Careerism in the church and class and educational snobbery rear their heads throughout the book. But there are moments of hope. The archbishop, at the end, repents his past failures. Galvin re-commits to his vocation or does he? Not a book to lift the heart, but one that tries to provide some explanation for the dearth of priestly vocations in our time. Perhaps the author has

tried to cover too many issues and portray too many priestly 'types' for us to emotionally engage with them. Poignant, disturbing yet humorous in parts, and proof that the Holy Spirit has his work cut out for him in the Irish church.

Kate Green is a former teacher of English and Religious Education in Belfast. She works closely with the Redemptorist Congregation, mainly in Clonard Monastery. Now retired, and recently widowed, she enjoys many interests, chief of which is honing her skills of Christian grandparenting with Oran and Fiachra.

CO M M E N T REALITY CHECK PETER McVERRY SJ

THE CHRISTMAS STORY

CONSUMER CHRISTMAS IS DRIVEN BY MAKING US WANT MORE THAN WE NEED AND OFFERING US NEEDS WE HAD NEVER IMAGINED. THE REAL MEANING OF CHRISTMAS IS HOW A GOD OF INFINITE RICHES BECAME A HUMAN BEING WHO HAD NOTHING BUT SHARED EVERYTHING WITH US.

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“Happiness consists in having everything you want.” This sounds so obviously untrue, and so contrary to the Christian message, but actually it is both true and very much at the heart of the Christian message! And it captures the meaning of Christmas.

Many rich celebrities have ever ything anyone could possibly want, several homes in different countries, a selection of expensive cars, Porsches, Lamborghinis, BMWs, outside their door, perhaps even their own private jet, yet some of them are intensely unhappy, and end up committing suicide or becoming addicted to drugs to escape from the painful reality of their lives.

“Wanting” is the word that drives the global economy. We are pressured into wanting more and more, so that we will go out and spend money, and spending money keeps the economy growing. If we stopped wanting, we would stop spending, and the economy would go into recession. In order to make us keep wanting, and spending, we are made to feel that getting what we want will bring us more happiness and fulfilment, or make our future more secure.

As the ad goes: “You wanted to drive a Mercedes Benz one day?

That day is now.” The problem is, that once we have obtained what we wanted, we are made

REALITY DECEMBER 2017

Ultra High Definition, 4G, Smart TV? However, suppose we reduce our wants! Suppose we wanted only what we needed. Suppose our needs and our wants were one and the same thing. Then we could be happy, as we could have all that we want. The unhappiness which comes from not having what we want would (for most of us) not exist.

to feel dissatisfied again and to want more. If “unhappiness is the gap between what I have and what I want”, then, for most of us, since our wants keep expanding, we are never fully happy. This dissatisfaction with what we have is what drives rich people, who already have a lovely mansion and five top-of-the-range cars, to go out and buy yet another house or yet another car.

It drives not just rich people, it drives most of us. We are all infected with the virus that tells us that our happiness is bound up with what we possess.

Promising happiness has become an industry, and we have all been, to some extent, fooled.

When I was growing up, there were only two types of televisions: a 14-inch black and white TV and

a 17-inch black and white TV. I was glued to our 14-inch TV for hours on end, watching all the children’s programmes. Then I went to England on holidays with my family and I saw colour TV. When I came back home, I wanted a colour TV – how could you enjoy watching a football match on a black and white TV? Then we got a big TV – 32-inch! Then we had to get a flat screen TV, because everyone else was getting a flat screen TV. Then it was a High Definition TV. Then it became necessary to watch programmes with billions of pixels on an Ultra High Definition TV. Then it was a Smart TV. Today the happiness industry tries to persuade us that you could not possibly enjoy your evening at home if you do not have a 55-inch, curved,

At Christmas the God of infinite riches became a human being who had nothing but shared everything with us. Christmas reminds us that “letting go” is at the heart of the Christian message. “Letting go” is the spirituality for our time. The one billion people on our planet who go to bed hungry every night cannot escape from their poverty unless we, in the rich world, let go of our excessively consumption-driven lifestyle, chasing our expanding wants.

Those who are homeless, or waiting on social housing lists, will not be housed unless the rest of us let go of our NIMBY–ism (Not In My Back Yard), fearful for the value of our own houses.

“Letting go” is not only the path to a more just world but is also the path to happiness.

The lesson of the Christmas story, which is the model for our Christian lives, could be summed up as: “Live simply, share generously.”

GOD’S WORD THIS SEASON DECEMBER

BE ON YOUR GUARD!

For many of us, the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Advent is the coming of the FIRST SUNDAY Christ-child at Christmas.

OF ADVENT The liturgy of these four Sundays, however, takes a wider perspective. It focuses on the three-fold coming of the Lord – his historical coming as a child born of Mary, his future coming as glorious Son of Man at the end of time, and his sacramental coming through Word and Sacrament in the liturgy of Christmas. It is the

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future coming that is particularly prominent in the first weeks of Advent. As the nights grow longer and darker, the instinct of the human body is normally to take more rest. The liturgy of Advent, however, emphasises Jesus’ call to watchfulness in today’s Gospel. Spoken originally to the disciples on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem at the beginning of the last week of his life, it was intended to alert them to the dangers which lay ahead in the Passion. Later, in the finished written Gospel, it may have been intended to alert the followers of St Mark of an approaching crisis of faith when Jerusalem fell to the Roman armies.

The simile of the man going on a journey and giving instructions to his disciples before his departure anticipates the return of Christ.

Risen and ascended into heaven, he will return.

He left no timetable for that return however, and so an attitude of watchfulness should be built into the life of his followers. They should be ready for him whatever time of the day or night he will return.

Today’s Readings Isaiah 63:16-17; 64:1,3-8; 1 Cor 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37

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DECEMBER

10

PREPARE A WAY FOR THE LORD

Today’s Gospel consists of a short “title” to the Gospel of Mark, the SECOND SUNDAY opening words of a OF ADVENT scroll which would have summarised its contents“the Good News about Jesus Christ”. It is another reminder that this year, Mark will be the staple of our Sunday Gospel reading.

It then quotes the prophet Isaiah who says that God is about to send his messenger to prepare the way. The first words about sending a messenger, however, are not from

Isaiah: they are taken from another prophet Malachi (3:1). This prophet’s name is, quite literally “my messenger” (malaki which can also be translated as "my angel"). Both Isaiah and Malachi are reminding their audience that something momentous is about to take place. The tone of the reading now becomes more conversational: it speaks about an earthly messenger, a “wild man” with little respect for fine clothing or elegant food: John the Baptist, for he is the wild man, is like another of Israel’s great prophets of the past. Like Elijah, he wears an unconventional cloak and calls for repentance, symbolised by immersion in the waters of river Jordan. His

message is not about himself but about a still more mysterious figure who will follow him and who will baptise with the Holy Spirit.

Advent is a call to renewal, to repentance.

One way of putting today’s Gospel into practice during this week might be to make in an unhurried fashion our Christmas confession – taking time to look back on the year that is past, noting our failures but also the times of grace when God drew us closer to himself.

Today’s Readings Isaiah 40:1-5,9-11: 2 Peter 3:8-14: Mark 1:1-8

GOD’S WORD THIS SEASON DECEMBER

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JOHN CAME AS A WITNESS

The presentation of John the Baptist in the Gospel according to John is rather THIRD SUNDAY different from what we OF ADVENT find in the other three Gospels. It is not clear, for instance, whether John baptised Jesus.

What is important for John the Evangelist is that his namesake, John the Baptist, appears as a witness for Jesus. Much of the language in today’s Gospel is straight from the law court – testify, give witness, question, confess, did not

deny. In a sense the whole Gospel of John is a courtroom drama that comes to a climax in the trial before Pilate who is forced to declare him innocent 'I find no case against him” (Joh 18:38).

In this scene on the banks of the Jordan, that long court case begins with the interrogation of the first and leading witness, the prophet John the Baptist. His interrogators are priests and levites from Jerusalem, the same members of the political elite of the temple who will conspire against Jesus, but at this point in the story, Jesus has not appeared yet. What they want to know is who is John and by what right does he come disturbing the peace. They try

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DECEMBER

24

THE HEIR OF DAVID’S THRONE

The Annunciation scene must be one of the Gospel scenes that has Y figured most in the art FOURTH SUNDA OF ADVENT of the West. Often, the painter tries to indicate

REALITY DECEMBER 2017

how the angel has interrupted the normal flow of Mary’s life. Sometimes a piece of weaving or embroidery is still in her hands, needle or spindle poised for use. Sometimes a book is open and laid to one side – either a Bible or a book of hours to show that her contemplation has been interrupted. It is probably beyond our imagining to picture

various possibilities – is he the Messiah? No: Elijah the prophet then, who was supposed to prepare the way for the Messiah? No. They need an answer – they are only servants of the chief men of the temple hierarchy. John’s answer is even more mysterious: he is the voice crying in the wilderness that Isaiah foretold many centuries before to the exiles in Babylon, sent to prepare a way for the Lord who is on his way.

Today’s Readings Isaiah 61:1-2,10-11; I Thess 5:16-24; John 1:6-8,19-28

this scene as it really happened. Like all the Bible stories of announcements of birth, it follows a strict pattern. An angel appears, addresses the person by name. The person is frightened but is told not to fear. The angel delivers the message – a child will soon be born and it will be given a special name. The one who is to father or give birth to the child asks how this will be, as they are either too old or in the case of Mary, still unmarried.

The angel provides a sign that this news will come to pass, here it is the pregnancy of Mary’s kinswoman, Elizabeth. There are clear echoes too in this story of a promise made to David. He had become king of Israel, had conquered Jerusalem, and now planned to build a temple for the Lord. In the night, his prophet and advisor, Nathan, receives a vision – we read it in today’s first reading.

David will not build a house for the Lord, but the Lord will build a house for David. David’s line had been interrupted for more than 500 years. Now a village girl from Nazareth will ensure that the broken links of that chain are joined again in the son she will bear in nine months’ time.

Today’s Readings 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8-12,14,16; Romans 16: 25-27; Luke 1: 26-38

DECEMBER

A GRACE-FILLED MEETING

St Luke seems to have confused two distinct Jewish traditions here.

One of them was the ritual FEAST OF THE bath of a mother after HOLY FAMILY childbirth, the other was the 'redemption of the firstborn' by which every firstborn male child was dedicated in a special way to God and then 'redeemed' or bought back by an offering.

The modern Jewish father still performs the rite of 'redemption of the firstborn'.

The story of Mary, Joseph and Jesus coming

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JANUARY

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to the Temple is a symbolic meeting of two generations of devout Jews. Joseph and Mary are young parents. Simeon and Anna represent the older generation who had spent many years observing the Law, hoping and praying that they would live to see the ‘consolation of Israel’ – the joy that would accompany the arrival of the Messiah. It is this consolation they glimpse in the fragile form of this baby. While they welcome the child and his parents and greet him as the coming light of revelation, they also add a more sombre note: “this child is destined for the rising and the falling of many in Israel.” He will be rejected

and the pain of that rejection will strike like a sword into the heart of his mother. Yet this child is also “a light for the Gentiles”. Isaiah, their greatest prophet, welcomed the birth of another royal child with the words, “the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; on the inhabitants of a country in shadow dark as death light has blazed forth" (Isa 9:1). In the midst of winter, we also catch the promise of the light.

Today’s Readings Genesis 15:1-6,17:3-5, 21:1-7; Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, 17-19; Luke 2:22-40

YOU ARE MY SON, THE BELOVED

We met John the Baptist at the beginning of Advent, and we meet THE BAPTISM him again as we take OF THE LORD our leave from the Christmas season. John was a prophetic figure, calling his fellow Jews to a renewal of their ancient covenant with God. There were other religious movements in Jesus’ day. Some of them took to the desert: some, like the Pharisees, tried to encourage people to apply the Law in all its details to their lives as best they could. John calls for radical spiritual renewal and repentance, symbolised by immersion in the flowing waters of Jordan. It is to John that a young carpenter from Nazareth comes, perhaps on his way to one of the annual pilgrimage feasts.

As he emerges breathless from the water, he sees the heavens torn apart and the Spirit like a dove descend on him and hears himself proclaimed as God’s beloved Son. Later in his life, he will have a similar moment of revelation and vision on a mountain in the company of three disciples. One more time he will be proclaimed as the Son of God: this time in a dark afternoon by the centurion who has just presided at his execution and just after the tearing of the temple curtain that separated the holiest sanctuary from the human world.

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Old Testament leaders and prophets were called in a moment when God revealed himself to them and charged them with a mission. The baptism is the story of Jesus’ call or his vocation. It is also a reminder to us that our most fundamental vocation is our baptismal calling to follow Jesus of Nazareth along his way. That takes precedence over any other vocation, even to priesthood or

religious life, which are at their simplest, a deepening of the baptismal vocation the priest or religious shares with every other Christian.

Today’s Readings Isaiah 55:1-11; 1 John 5:1-9; Mark 1: 7-11

God’s Word continues on page 46

GOD’S WORD THIS SEASON JANUARY

COME AND SEE

John’s account of how the first disciples came to follow Jesus is rather different from what we find in the other 2ND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME G osp els . It b egins when two disciples of John the Baptist hear him identify Jesus as the Lamb of God and leave John to go in search of Jesus. One of them is identified as Andrew, Peter’s brother: the other, rather intriguingly, is not named and we might be left wondering whether he might not perhaps be the author of the Gospel. When Jesus sees the two following him, he asks a rather obvious question: “what are you

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looking for?” The first words of Jesus in each of the Gospels strike the key to the distinctive picture of Jesus this Gospel wishes to present.

"What are you looking for?" is a question for every reader of the Gospel, as well as of the would-be follower. It is a challenge to take

radical stock of your deepest desires and aspirations. The question is unanswered, or at least only answered by another question –“Rabbi, where do you dwell?” This in turn is answered, not by giving an address or directions how to get there, but by an invitation to "come and see".

A second distinctive feature of John’s version of the gathering of the first disciples is that they call one another - Andrew will call his brother Simon by telling him that he has discovered the Messiah.

Today’s Readings 1 Samuel 3:3-10,19; 1 Corinthians 6:1315,17-20; John 1:35-42

JANUARY

FOLLOW ME!

There are three brief subunits in today’s Gospel. The first is a short summary of Jesus' message as he returns 3RD SUNDAY IN to Galilee after being ORDINARY TIME baptised by John. Then follow two brief accounts of the call of the first four disciples, two sets of brothers. There may be a slight social contrast implied in the two stories. Simon and Andrew are casting a net from the shore into the sea (because they cannot afford a boat?), while the Zebedee brothers and their father have not just a boat but hired labour to man it. The Sea of Galilee was one of the most important sources of wealth in the province. Recent archaeology has brought to light numerous small harbours dotted around the lake and the town of Magdala has begun to yield a rich harvest of discoveries. Both sets of brothers follow instantly and unquestioningly.

Their example might inspire us at the beginning of a new year to make our own the advice of St Benedict to his monks: “let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may he lead us all together to life everlasting."

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Today’s Readings Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

REALITY DECEMBER 2017

THE REALITY CROSSWORD NUMBER 10, DECEMBER 2017

SOLUTIONS CROSSWORD No. 8 ACROSS: Across: 1. Ararat, 5. Saigon, 10. Calvary, 11. Recover, 12. Lear, 13. Ensue, 15. Aria, 17. God, 19. Swedes, 21. Rupees, 22. Samoyed, 23. Hiccup, 25. Xanadu, 28. Roc, 30. Nile, 31. Banal, 32.

Stew, 35. Emerald, 36. Thermos, 37. Fathom, 38. Samosa.

DOWN: 2. Release, 3. Roam, 4. Trying, 5. Shroud, 6. Inch, 7. Obverse, 8. Scolds, 9. Friars, 14.

Solomon, 16. Jesus, 18. Judas, 20. Sap, 21. Rex, 23. Handel, 24. Caldera, 26. Artemis, 27. Unwise, 28. Random, 29. Cactus, 33. Oath, 34. Helm.

Winner of Crossword No. 8 Mary Nolan, Priorswood, Dublin 17

Jesus curing the man with the withered hand: detail from a Greek Orthodox church at Caperaum

HE TAUGHT THEM AS ONE HAVING AUTHORITY

JANUARY

Having gathered his disciples, Jesus’ mission begins in earnest. The scene in the Capernaum synagogue will become typical of one aspect of the ministry. The village synagogues of Galilee were favourite places for Jesus’ ministry. The synagogue often doubled as 4TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME the village school, and while the men might meet there for daily prayer, it was on the sabbath that it attracted most of the village. There were two main celebrations on the sabbath – evening prayer at sunset on the eve which “welcomed the sabbath” as a time of joy and peace, and the longer sabbath morning service which included reading from the scriptures and an exposition of their meaning by anyone who knew enough Hebrew and was willing to speak. Rabbis presiding over congregations still lies in the future and it is thus that Jesus is presented in the Gospels as teaching on the sabbath.

A good teacher would be expected to link the reading from the Law with the shorter reading from the prophets and apply them to daily life.

As someone expounding the Law, Jesus shows authority. His authority is mentioned twice in today’s Gospel passage: firstly, in their response to his exposition of scripture, and secondly in response to how this authority is confirmed by the expulsion of the unclean spirit. Authority is not a matter of throwing one’s weight around but of the way in which conviction is conveyed quietly and with assurance.

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Today’s Readings

ACROSS 1. A priest or religious leader. (6) 5. Star of the silent screen. (6) 10. A twin founder of Rome. (7) 11. Beats Ed in arguments. (7) 12. 500 sheets of paper. (4) 13. French Impressionist artist famed for his dancers. (5) 15. A set of two things. (4) 17. Bowl-shaped utensil used in Chinese cooking. (3) 19. This Apostle was also called Didymus. (6) 21. Spiritual messenger from God. (6) 22. A brisk massage and cleaning after exercise. (7) 23. Shawl or blanket worn by people in Latin America. (6) 25. Frames for an artist's work during painting. (6) 28. Wash gravel in a pan to separate out gold. (3) 30. Gain unauthorised access to computer data. (4) 31. Artificial waterway. (5) 32. A person of supposed supernatural insight. (4) 35. A systemic gathering together of people or animals. (7) 36. The three persons of the Christian Godhead. (7) 37. They turn envelopes into letters. (6) 38. A small wave on the surface of water. (6)

DOWN 2. Pain in the muscles and joints of the lower back. (7) 3. Exercise power over an area and its people. (4) 4. Edible kidney-shaped nut. (6) 5. The largest brown bear. (6) 6. White vestments worn by priests. (4) 7. An extremely strong reaction of anger, shock or indignation. (7) 8. Mount where Noah's Ark settled. (6) 9. Takes power illegally or by force. (6) 14. Knotty problem solved by Alexander the Great. (7) 16. Plucked stringed instruments. (5) 18. A record of the events of one year. (5) 20. Institute legal action against a person. (3) 21. A feeling of reverential respect mixed with wonder. (3) 23. The world's largest hot desert. (6) 24. Enlist someone in the armed forces. (7) 26. Bible book which records the six visions of its prophetic author. (7) 27. Moves aimlessly away from the right course or place. (6) 28. Fertile South American lowlands. (6) 29. Talk casually about unimportant things. (6) 33. The original man. (4) 34. A gait impeded by injury or stiffness. (4)

Entry Form for Crossword No.10, December 2017 Name: Address: Telephone:

Deuteronomy 18:15-20; 1 Corinthians 7: 17, 32-35; Mark 1: 21-28 All entries must reach us by December 31, 2017 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.10, Redemptorist Communications, Unit A6, Santry Business Park, Swords Road, Dublin 09 X651

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