Reality May 2017

DON’T CALL ME A SAINT

THOMAS CRANMER

DOROTHY DAY’S HUNGER FOR JUSTICE

ENGLISH REFORMER

MAY 2017

A WEEKEND TO SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE RETROUVAILLE OFFERS HOPE

Informing, Inspiring, Challenging Today’s Catholic

GROWING UP IN BETWEEN

ARCHBISHOP EAMON MARTIN ON PARISH, DIOCESE, AND FINDING A SENSE OF BELONGING

FATIMA CENTENARY THE APPARITIONS AND THEIR ENDURING LEGACY

www.redcoms.org

COULD THE BIBLE PREVENT ANOTHER CELTIC TIGER?

IN SEARCH OF A CHRISTIAN APPROACH TO ECONOMICS

Redemptorist-Communications @RedComsIreland �2.50 �2.00

SPRING

Ennismore Retreat Centre

Friday 2nd June - Sunday 4th June Meditating with the Breath.

Fr. Louis Hughes OP Cost: Res - €175/ Non Res €100 (Option of coming Saturday only is available - Please enquire at office) Sun 25th June – Thurs 29th June “So few things necessary, indeed only one” ( Luke 10:42) – Discerning the heart’s desire.

Martina Lehane Sheehan Cost: Res: €385 Sat 1st July – Thurs 6th July “The Three from Nazareth and their message for today”.

Fr. Benedict Hegarty OP Cost: Res: €400

ST DOMINIC’S

Sun 16th July – Fri 21st July Centering Prayer Intensive Retreat.

Sr. Fionnuala Quinn OP Cost: Res: €460 Sun 23rd July – Sat 29th July Individually Directed Retreat Sr. Peggy Cronin Cost: Res: €465 Mon 31st July – Thurs 3rd Aug “Meditation, Mindfulness and Mysticism”.

Dr. Stefan Reynolds Cost: Res: €440

PLEASE NOTE: Final applications being accepted for Autumn 2017 – 2018 Spiritual Accompaniment Training – (The Heart Network).

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.

Sat 5th Aug – Fri 11th Aug “A meditative retreat on the Trinity: God’s self-giving” Fr. Stephen Cummins OP Cost: Res: €440

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

IN THIS MONTH’S ISSUE FEATURES 12 GROWING UP IN BETWEEN Reimagining parish and diocese in Ireland

By Archbishop Eamon Martin

17 COULD THE BIBLE PREVENT ANOTHER CELTIC TIGER? Treasures from our Christian tradition offer an alternative view of economics

By Kevin Hargaden

22 FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF MARY Reflecting on the life of Mary, Mother of God

By Sarah Adams

24 CELEBRATING THE CENTENARY OF FATIMA One hundred years on from the apparitions, a look at the story and the legacy

By Seamus Enright CSsR

12

27 CAN A WEEKEND SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE? Rediscovering love with Retrouvaille weekend retreats

By Susan Gately

34 HEALING FOR EUROPE The miraculous medal and the origins of the European Union

By Richard Tobin CSsR

36 FROM RECORD TO REALITY A new chapter began in October 1966 when the Redemptorist Record was rebranded as Reality Reviewed by Brendan McConvery CSsR

38 THOMAS CRANMER: THE CAMBRIDGE REFORMER WHO SHAPED THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION Author of the first Book of Common Prayer, Cranmer was instrumental in the reforms of the 16th century

By Patrick Comerford

41 DEATH AND THE IRISH Salvador Ryan’s book investigates how Irish people deal with death.

Reviewed by Kate Green

24

34

OPINION

REGULARS

11 TRÍONA DOHERTY

04 REALITY BITES

16 DAVID O'DONOGHUE

07 POPE MONITOR

31 CARMEL WYNNE

08 FEAST OF THE MONTH

44 PETER McVERRY SJ

09 REFLECTIONS 32 PRAYER CORNER 42 TRÓCAIRE 45 GOD’S WORD

REALITY BITES RELIGIOUS LEADERS UNITE TO CONDEMN WESTMINSTER ATTACK LONDON

4 An injured woman is assisted after the attack on Westminster Bridge in London Courtesy of CNS/ Toby Melville, Reuters on March 22

CARDINAL CALLS FOR CALM

The Catholic Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols and Church of England Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby united in prayer with Jewish and Muslim leaders in the aftermath of the terrorist attack at Westminster, London on March 22. Five people – three pedestrians, a police officer and the assailant – were killed in the attack outside the Houses of Parliament.

The Archbishops were joined by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis; Sheikh Khalifa Ezzat, chief Imam at the London Central Mosque; and Sheikh Mohammad al Hilli, representing Shia Muslims. They led a minute’s silence in tribute to the victims who were killed and the many injured.

Cardinal Nichols called for prayer, compassionate solidarity and calm.

“No person and no event will drive a wedge between us, together we will prevail,” he said. In a letter to priests and parishioners of the Diocese of Westminster he also urged them to pray for the victims. “Let our voice be one of prayer, of compassionate solidarity, and of calm. All who believe in God, Creator and Father of every person, will echo this voice, for faith in God is not a problem to be solved, but a strength and a foundation on which we depend.”

Pope Francis sent a telegram expressing his condolences and “prayerful solidarity with all those affected by this tragedy”, and assuring the nation of his prayers.

HOLY SEPULCHRE IN DANGER OF COLLAPSE BISHOP BANS MAFIA GODFATHERS JERUSALEM

UNSTABLE FOUNDATIONS

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, originally built by Constantine above the Hill of Calvary and the tomb of Jesus, is at “very real risk” of “catastrophic collapse”, according to archaeologists and experts who recently completed restoration work of the Aedicule or Shrine in the church that encloses the remains of a cave that has been venerated since at least the fourth century as the tomb of Jesus. The experts recommend a £5.2-million project to shore up the unstable foundations of the whole church.

The complex of the Holy Sepulchre, according to Greek archaeologist Antonia Moropoulou, chief scientific supervisor of the restoration project, is threatened by “a significant structural REALITY MAY 2017

failure” and “the failure will not be a slow process, but catastrophic”.

The recent £3.2-million restoration project of the Aedicule shrine revealed that much of the shrine and the surrounding building are built on unstable foundations, formed from the crumbled remnants of earlier structures and honeycombed with tunnels.

SICILY

RECLAIMING THE ROLE

An archbishop in Sicily has banned known mafia criminals from taking on the role of godfather at baptisms, in an effort to reclaim the true meaning of the term. Michele Pennisi, archbishop of Monreale, near Palermo, issued a decree in March banning anyone who has been convicted of “dishonourable crimes” from acting as a godparent.

“The mafia has always taken the term godfather from the church to give its bosses an air of religious respectability, whereas in fact, the two worlds are completely incompatible,” he said.

Archbishop Pennisi's diocese takes in the notorious village of Corleone, made famous by Mario Puzo’s novel The Godfather and the hit films.

The archbishop previously made headlines after he crticised a Corleone priest's decision to let the son MICHELE PENNISI of an infamous Archbishop of Monreale mobster, Toto Riina, act as godfather. In 2008 he received death threats after refusing Crocefisso Emanuello, the head of a mafia family, a religious funeral.

However he added that repentence is open to all, even crime bosses: “If one of them admits to having done wrong, asks to be pardoned for the bad they have done - in that case we can discuss a path of conversion.”

N E WS

ORGAN DONATION AWARENESS MASS AT KNOCK SHRINE KNOCK

A MOVING CEREMONY

Pictured at the Organ Donation Mass were rector of Knock Shrine Fr Richard Gibbons and Monica Morley, director, Family Centre Knock Shrine, with organ donor recipients and their families. Photo: Sinead Mallee

Pictured, Fr Richard Gibbons; Monica Morley, director, Family Centre Knock Shrine; and Matthew McNeive (kidney transplant recipient) and his mother Bernadette, along with organ donor recipients and their families and volunteers. Photo: Sinead Mallee

CISTERCIAN COLLEGE SAVED FROM CLOSURE ROSCREA

RESCUE PACKAGE

There has been a last-minute reprieve for the Cistercian College in Roscrea, which was due to close its doors in June. A U-turn was made on the decision after an action group managed to raise sufficient funds to help keep the school open.

The well-known boys’ boarding school at Mount St Joseph Abbey announced in February that it was to close after 112 years, due to

falling student numbers – there are currently 167 pupils, a drop of 45 per cent in the past ten years. An action group of parents and past pupils was immediately established to devise a restructuring plan. The group managed to secure some €1.5 million in pledges, as well as work to increase enrolments and offer students more flexible boarding options.

Chair of the action group Ronnie Culliton said there is a new level of enthusiasm for the future of the school. "We are delighted that we can now offer this fantastic opportunity to a greater number of families. This is a wonderful place for young men to be educated, play sport, develop musical talents, and grow friendships that will last a lifetime.”

Dom Richard Purcell, Abbot of Mount St Joseph Abbey, said the news was “a small miracle”.

As part of Organ Donor Awareness Week 2017, Knock Shrine hosted Mass in the newly refurbished basilica. It was the first time such a gathering took place and over 2,000 people attended, among them many who had received organ transplants, others who are waiting for a transplant, and others who came to remember deceased loved ones who had donated their organs.

The moving ceremony, a blend of gratitude and hope, involved bringing symbols to the altar representing the different participants in the organ donor experience, and the distribution of purple ribbons in memory of all deceased donors. The idea for the celebration came from Bernadette McNeive, whose son Matthew received a kidney transplant at the young age of 11. It’s planned that this Mass will become an annual event as part of Organ Donation Awareness Week and will be one of many special events organised by the Family Centre at Knock Shrine.

Mount St Joseph Abbey

continued on page 6

5

REALITY BITES PRO-LIFE TEACHER SUSPENDED

BY CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY BELGIUM

RIGHT TO CHOOSE?

Dr Stéphane Mercier

6

A philosophy lecturer has been disciplined by a Catholic university after he distributed notes critical of the prochoice position on abortion to students taking his course at the French-language Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) in Belgium and inviting them to think about the issues. Dr Stéphane Mercier was suspended by the university administration after a protest from the feminist campaign group Synergie Wallonie. The group drew the university’s attention to the notes he distributed in association with his lecture, which questioned the concept of a “right to choose” an abortion.

In the notes, Professor Mercier argued that the abbreviation “IVG” (Interruption Volontaire de Grossesse – voluntary interruption of pregnancy) to describe abortion is comparable to the “Newspeak” of George Orwell’s novel 1984. The university undertook to investigate. It has announced that it has begun “disciplinary proceedings”, and has decided to suspend the two courses for which Stéphane Mercier is responsible until further notice. The university’s statement added that “in the spirit of the 1990 Act decriminalising abortion”, the University “respects the autonomy of women to make this choice, in the circumstances specified by the legislator”. Dr Mercier pointed out that Catholic bishops sit on the university’s board, and asked “How can another delegate from the university say that my pro-life stand is at odds with the values of the university? It doesn’t make any sense.”

REALITY MAY 2017

IRISH NUN RECOVERING FROM ASSAULT PHILIPPINES

MASKED MEN

An Irish Columban Sister is recovering after being assaulted outside her home in the Philippines. Sr Kathleen Melia suffered a broken leg after she was attacked as she stepped outside the convent, in the mountain town of Midsalip, to close a window at around 9pm.

Sr Kathleen was set upon as she opened the convent door to go out. Masked men applied a choke to her neck and hit her repeatedly before she fell backwards, breaking her right leg between her knee and thigh. Neighbours came to her aid and alerted the police, but the ordeal was only beginning for Sr Kathleen who had to endure a 90 kilometre ambulance ride to Ozamiz, followed by a 31-hour boat

Sr Kathleen Melia

journey to Manila, where the fracture was surgically repaired. Due to complications from a prior surgery, Sr Kathleen will not be able to put weight on her leg for three months, and will need to use a walker until the bone has healed. The Columbans request your prayers for her recovery.

FRIAR MOUSTACHE DONS THE HABIT BOLIVIA

FOUR-LEGGED FRANCISCAN

Although only a few months into his training, the newest recruit in a Franciscan monastery in Cochabamba, Bolivia has been causing a bit of a stir among visitors. While he tries hard to blend in, even donning the traditional Franciscan habit, there is just something different about Friar Carmelo – for a start, he has four legs, a wagging tail, and likes to hide things in the garden to confuse his confrères.

Friar Carmelo is a schnauzer who was adopted five months ago by the monks, and became something of an internet sensation when he was photographed wandering the cloisters in a traditional habit.

One of the friars explained how the dog, nicknamed Friar Moustache, had become an honorary member of the monastery. “Sometimes we brothers have a laugh among ourselves and there is a brother here that is also

Franciscan friar Jorge Fernandez with Friar Carmelo

called Carmelo, who has a moustache, so that was the inspiration. We had some puppets in the church that we used to amuse children, and one of the puppets was wearing a habit, so we thought we'd use it,” said the friar. To the disappointment of some visitors, Friar Moustache is not required to wear the habit on a daily basis, leaving the much-loved resident free to indulge his mischievous streak.

N E WS

POPE MONITOR KEEPING UP WITH POPE FRANCIS IF THE CAP FITS

POPE WILL DO “EVERYTHING HE CAN” TO VISIT IRELAND The Vatican has given its clearest indication yet that Pope Francis intends to travel to Ireland for the World Meeting of Families in August 2018.

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Holy See's Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, said it is hoped that the pontiff will travel to take part in the event, which takes place in Dublin from August 21-26, 2018. The visit would be the first by a pontiff since Pope John Paul II visited Ireland in 1979.

"If the pope is possibly able to be there, and circumstances around the world permit him to be able to go there, I'm sure he will do everything he possibly can, at least that's what he has expressed, to be there," said the cardinal. However, he pointed out that at this stage nothing has been decided in relation to the pope’s travel programme for next year.

Last November, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the pope had confirmed in a meeting between the two men that he plans to visit Ireland next August.

Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said the pope’s visit to Ireland would be a sign of “a church that reaches out, a church that touches peoples’ lives”, a church which cares for “families in difficulties”

Stealing the pope’s hat – and heart! Threeyear-old Estella Westrick from the US caught Pope Francis by surprise when she reached out and pulled off his white skull cap, or zucchetto, when her godfather Mountain Butorac brought her to met the pontiff in St Peter’s Square. The pope reacted with his trademark good humour.

PAPAL DAY TRIP TO MILAN

Pope Francis made a packed one-day trip to Milan on Saturday March 25. After arriving in northern Italy’s financial and fashion centre, he headed for the Forlanini housing project, where he visited the home of a Muslim immigrant from Morocco, Mihoual Abdel Karim, and his family. He then visited 82-year-old Nuccio Onete whose wife, Adele, had been hospitalised with pneumonia three days earlier, before he went to Milan’s large San Vittore prison, where he ate a

‘GOOD NEWS’ FOR WORLD COMMUNICATIONS DAY Sunday May 28 marks the 51st World Communications Day, and the theme for this year is ‘“Fear not, for I am with you”: communicating hope and trust in our time.’ In his message to mark the occasion, Pope Francis urges people to engage in “constructive forms of communication”.

“In a communications industry which thinks that good news does not sell, and where the tragedy of human suffering and the mystery of evil easily turn into entertainment, there is always the temptation that our consciences can be dulled or slip into pessimism,” he warns. “I ask everyone to offer the people of our time storylines that are at heart ‘good news’.”

For Christians, Pope Francis says, the lens through which we view life must be the Good News, the Gospel of Jesus Christ: “In Christ, even darkness and death become a point of encounter with Light and Life… Seen in this light, every new tragedy that occurs can also be a setting for good news, inasmuch as love can find a way to draw near and to raise up sympathetic hearts, resolute faces and hands ready to build anew.”

meal of risotto, schnitzel and artichokes cooked for him by inmates.

Afterwards, the pope headed to a park in Monza where he celebrated Mass attended by a million people. On the way he called at Milan’s Cathedral, Il Duomo, where he was greeted by Cardinal Angelo Scola and met priests and men and women religious. This was followed by a meeting with young people at the city’s San Siro football stadium.

Pope Francis eats lunch during a visit to San Vittore prison in Milan

7

FEAST OF THE MONTH ST COMGALL OF BANGOR

8

May 10

th

St Finian of Clonard in the Irish Midlands is credited with educating most of the Irish saints, but there are exceptions and St Comgall is one such. A Pict by birth and a native of Dal nAraide on the Antrim/Down coast, Comgall entered the monastery of Clonenagh in Laois and lived for years under the notoriously strict discipline and starvation diet enjoined by St Fintan. It was later claimed by some Bangor monks that the prostate problems and urinary retention that caused Comgall’s excruciating pain before death were due to this excessively rigorous regime in Clolnenagh which he continued to practice in Bangor where the daily meal consisted of bread, vegetables and water; gradually milk and milk products made their way on to the menu.

Having finished his training in Clonenagh, Comgall returned to Ulster and after ordination seemed to experiment with some form of religious life on an unidentified island in Lough Erne before going on to found the great monastery of Bangor on the south shore of Belfast Lough.

The Annals of Ulster give 517 as the year of his birth, 555 or 559 as the foundation date of Bangor, and 603 as the year of his death; the Martyrology of Tallaght adds May 10 as the actual day. This makes Comgall’s life more or less contemporaneous with that of Colmcille of Iona.

It is evident from Adomnán’s Life of Colmcille that the two men were life-long friends. When the abbot of Iona for example, failed in his first attempt to gain access to the court of Brude MacMaelcon, the Pictish king, Colmcille hyped up the delegation by adding Comgall and Canice, both Pictish speakers. This time all doors were open and Colmcille received permission to proclaim the Christian message with impunity. Perhaps it was on one of his visits to Iona that Comgall made a foundation in the Isle of Tiree, about 20 miles further out in the Hebrides than Iona.

Although Comgall is not specifically remembered in tradition as a great scholar, he must have met a lot of the scholars on their way home because about 640 Jonas of Bobbio wrote that Comgall was the teacher of their founder Columbanus. Besides, Comgall’s monastery in Bangor, together with Armagh, were to become the two greatest northern schools in early mediaeval times, while further south Clonard, Glendalough, Lismore, Clonmacnoise, and Clonfert enjoyed similar reputations for excellence.

What makes Bangor stand out in the pages of history is its international reputation. The others undoubtedly enjoyed a high regard not only at home but in England, Scotland and Germany as well. However the name ‘Bangor’ was revered throughout mediaeval Europe and residually down to the present day because of the impact made by Bangor’s two best known missionaries on the Continent, namely Columbanus – the ‘Glory of Bangor’ – and his intrepid companion St Gall, after whom one of Switzerland’s most beautiful cities is named and which houses many Irish manuscripts in its world famous Stiftsbibliothek.

Nor was the library in Bangor Abbey without its boasts. It was here between the years 680 and 691 that the manuscript popularly known as The Antiphonary of Bangor was produced.

Among other matters it contains a hymn praising St Comgall and a panegyric extolling his Rule; but perhaps more importantly for today, it has the world’s earliest known Eucharistic hymn, the Sancti Venite, to be chanted during the liturgy at Holy Communion.

During the Viking raids of the ninth and tenth centuries Bangor Abbey was virtually obliterated until it was reconstituted by St Malachy the leader of the 12th century Reform in Ireland. At heart Malachy was a contemplative monk but circumstances thrust this onerous task upon him. He undertook it on the understanding that as soon as the work was done he might retire once more to his beloved Bangor on the sea. In 2013 the Reverend Nesbit invited me to speak on the 12th century Reform at Bangor Church of Ireland which stands on the grounds of St Comgall’s foundation. Nothing of the original monastery remains, but a 12th century wall from Malachy’s day stands on the well-kept grounds.

John J O’Riordan CSsR REALITY MAY 2017

Reality Volume 82. No. 4 May 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 Tríona Doherty 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, Patrick Comerford 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.

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Redemptorist Communications is a ministry of the Irish Redemptorist Province in which lay people and Redemptorists collaborate to communicate the Gospel message – to inform, inspire and challenge through pastoral publications and other media

REFLECTIONS A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.

POPE FRANCIS

In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.

DOROTHY L SAYERS

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.

PD JAMES

Just as a mother finds pleasure in taking her little child on her lap, to feed and caress it, so does our loving God show his fondness for his beloved souls who have given themselves entirely to Him and have placed all their hope in His goodness.

ST ALPHONSUS LIGUORI

Christ asks for a home in your soul, where he can be at rest with you, where he can talk easily to you, where you and he, alone together, can laugh and be silent and be delighted with one another CARYLL HOUSELANDER

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.

GROUCHO MARX

DOROTHY DAY

MARGOT ASQUITH

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.

Faith is one foot on the ground, one foot in the air, and a queasy feeling in the stomach.

FRANK CAPRA

He has a brilliant mind until he makes it up.

Swift has sailed into his rest; Savage indignation there Cannot lacerate his Breast.

Imitate him if you dare, World-Besotted Traveller; he Served human liberty.

JONATHAN SWIFT

Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of God's new project, not to snatch people away from earth to heaven, but to colonise earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.

NT WRIGHT

I thought he was a young man of promise: it appears he was a young man of promises.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

The wish to pray is a prayer in itself. God can ask no more than that of us.

GEORGES BERNANOS

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.

ROBERT FROST

In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all.

MOTHER ANGELICA

Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway.

Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience.

Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.

KARL RAHNER

JOHN WAYNE

W. H. AUDEN

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EDI TO R I A L UP FRONT TRÍONA DOHERTY

A TIME TO MOURN… A TIME TO SPEAK

It’s

become a familiar image – the unobtrusive gate marked with a white cross, leading into the small grassy plot with a grotto in the corner; the heart-rending simplicity of the message inscribed on the plaque outside the wall: ‘In loving memory of those buried here. Rest in peace.’ The image has accompanied every news report and commentary on the St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam ever since events there came to light, yet is still has the power to stop us in our tracks.

On March 3, news broke that “significant quantities of human remains” had been discovered in underground chambers near the site of the former Tuam mother and baby home, following excavations by the Mother and Baby Homes Commission. The remains were found to date from the timeframe of the home, between 1925 and 1961. Historian Catherine Corless had previously discovered that there were no burial records for 796 children who died there, concluding that many of them were buried in an unofficial graveyard at the rear of the former home – the plot which has been lovingly tended by local people for decades. The investigation also revealed that more than 6,000 adoptions were recorded as having taken place in six mother and baby homes between 1950 and 1973.

Since the harrowing discovery came to light, women who spent time in the homes, and adults who spent parts of their childhood there or were adopted out of them, have been sharing their experiences, many of them heartbreaking. They are just some of the stories that fill in the gaps on the plaques and memorials dotted around the country.

It is difficult for many of us to imagine the horrific experiences of the women who felt they had no say in their own or their children’s lives, whose children passed away or were placed for adoption. For those of us

not personally affected, there is nonetheless a sense of hurt and outrage that such injustices could take place in our country’s recent past. Archbishop of Tuam Michael Neary has spoken of the “impossible difficulty” in attempting to understand the pain that women were forced to endure.

I was struck recently by the words of Baronness Eileen Paisley, widow of the late Reverand Ian Paisley, following the death of Martin McGuinness: “You don’t need to lose somebody belonging to you to feel for other people who have lost; your tears mingle with their tears.” In a similar way, the stories now emerging about Ireland’s mother and baby homes are painful for all of us. A recent statement from the support group for survivors of the Castlepollard home spoke poignantly of “our fallen brothers and sisters… our ‘crib mates’ [whom] we cherish from the deepest parts of our hearts”.

Of course fuller information must be found, and that process is underway by the Commission. There will also be questions about the role of church, state and society, both in the operation of the homes and in contributing to the cruel and unhealthy attitude to unmarried women who became pregnant. However it was disheartening to hear some commentators, in the days following the latest discovery at Tuam, argue over the numbers that could have been buried there and appear to downplay the role of the church, pointing out that such harrowing stories are not the preserve of Catholic Ireland. While such reactions no doubt stem from shock and upset at the revelations, to quibble over the relative severity of the experiences of Irish mothers seems distasteful. There will be time to discuss these issues, but to hear them brought up now, when events are so raw, must only add to the distress of the women and families affected.

It is important that people continue to speak out, and it is vital that we listen to their stories. There will come a time when we will be ready to contemplate how we move forward as a country, and indeed as a church.

But that time is not now. The women, children, families, and communities affected are still grieving. Their story is only in its early chapters, the events of the past century just beginning to come out into the open. We need to give it time, to allow ourselves to feel the pain and to cry, to grieve and to pray.

Jesus knew there was a time for talking and preaching, a time for righteous anger, a time to listen and a time to heal. Many times he listened to the stories of those who were suffering: the man whose daughter was sick, the bereft sisters of Lazarus, the woman caught in adultery. He was with them in solidarity with their pain. With a word or a touch he could also heal. As one of the most beautiful passages in the Old Testament reminds us: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven… a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance… a time to keep silence, and a time to speak…”

(Ecclesiastes 3).

Yes, the image of the Tuam plot and all that it represents is etched into our minds and hearts, and so it should be. This is a time of mourning for our country and church. Let us not rush the process, but for now, sit in solidarity with our hurt sisters and brothers.

Tríona Doherty Editor

11

C OVE R STO RY

GROWING UP IN BETWEEN A CONVERSATION ABOUT PARISH AND DIOCESE

BY ARCHBISHOP EAMON MARTIN

12

Every

year the diocese of Derry issues a directory listing all the priests of the diocese. It was with a sense of loss that I discovered in the January 2014 edition that, having moved to Armagh, I was no longer counted among the priests of Derry. It wasn’t that I hadn’t settled in Armagh, or even that I was pining for the town I loved so well! It was one of those moments when I realised that I was ‘in between’ – I’d moved on from the city of the oak grove to new pastures; I now had a new flock, new responsibilities and challenges in the orchard county and beyond.

The life of a priest is bound up with his diocese. At ordination we join a ‘presbyterate’, a brotherhood or fraternity of priests within REALITY MAY 2017

a particular local church or diocese, as co-workers with our bishop. We become members of a family whose ties are not from flesh and blood, but from the grace of Holy Orders which binds us together in spiritual and pastoral belonging to the people of the parishes in our diocese. That sense of belonging, consecrated by the laying on of hands at ordination, is still strong in me.

This connection was somehow disrupted when I made my way from the pastures of Columba and Eugene to the territory of Patrick, Malachy, Brigid and Oliver Plunkett.

Among my earliest memories as a pupil of St Columb’s College in Derry is hearing the sound of the college bell in Bishop Street.

Our first year English teacher reminded us

that was the same bell which Seamus Heaney had written of “knelling classes to a close” in his powerful poem, ‘Mid Term Break’. I remember thinking Heaney was around my age when he made that sad journey home for his younger brother’s funeral – only he was a ‘boarder’ who had to leave his beloved Bellaghy as a young boy to find himself far from home in the city. He has written about the unforgettable homesickness and grief he felt during his earliest schooldays at St Columb’s.

Heaney’s rootedness and attachment to his home place and family in Mossbawn was to stay with him all his life. So much of his poetry and thought sprung from his sense of belonging to place and people in the Bellaghy

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area. Here was his personal Mount Helicon – the source of his understanding of himself, the font of his poetic inspiration. His early poem ‘Personal Helicon’ draws this out in a striking way.

Life is full of curious intersections of events and places and people. In the chapel in Bishop Street I remember one of our teachers telling us that Heaney would have sat on those same pews as a young ‘first year’ like us – perhaps praying for his family and people at home, especially his grandfather, father and mother.

Perhaps this was the place that a homesick young County Derry boy noted in his mind’s eye the memories that would later brim over in his poetry – like peeling spuds with his mother; seeing her hang out the sheets to

dry; the sounds of his father digging, the smells and sights of the turf banks, cattle and fields around home. Links and connections are made in early life which last a lifetime.

In that same chapel, as a young member of the Gregorian ‘schola’, I chanted for the first time the words from the Christmas antiphon: ‘Cantate Domino Canticum Novum’ – ‘Sing a New Song to the Lord’, words I would later choose for my Episcopal motto.

and parishes has given me a greater sense of belonging to the wider, universal family of the ‘one, holy catholic and apostolic church’. I

In the chapel in Bishop Street I remember one of our teachers telling us that Heaney would have sat on those same pews as a young ‘first year’ like us

A FAMILY OF FAMILIES Moving to a new diocese with new priests

have come to realise that ‘parish’ ought never to be ‘parochial’ in the pejorative sense of the word. It is merely a gateway, threshold or opening to something beyond itself – the diocese, the universal church, and on to the eternal kingdom of God. Last year at the Synod of Bishops in Rome I had a strong sense

C OVE R STO RY

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of the universality of the church. The first bishops I met were from Lesotho, Darwin and Slovenia. I found myself sitting in the Synod Hall between a bishop from Fiji and another from Buenos Aires. I shared with the Fiji bishop that my mother’s cousin, a Columban missionary from Donegal, had worked for many years in Fiji. It turned out he knew of him! I was also able to share with my neighbour from Buenos Aires that my father’s cousin works there as a Christian Brother! There we were, three bishops from places thousands of miles apart, yet linked by a network of family, parishes and dioceses and by the missionary endeavour of the Irish church.

It’s difficult for me to understand the church without thinking of belonging, family and connections. Pope Francis has described the church as a “family of families”.

The family in Catholic tradition is the ‘little church’, or domestic church. Parish is a ‘family of families’ linked by faith, place, priest, land, tradition. Diocese is a family of parishes, and, in turn, the universal church links dioceses through faith in ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism and one God who is Father of all, with all, through all and within all’ (Eph 4:5).

Strong links between family and church are deep down in the spiritual psyche of Ireland. Unlike the continental model, in which church structure was based on the Roman Imperial administrative units of ‘dioceses’ normally centred on major cities,

monasticism in Ireland had facilitated more fluid, familial types of federations. The Irish words muintir (family or people) and mainistir (monastery) are closely linked.

Irish ecclesiastical territories were based around tuatha or tribes; the role of abbot was often passed down within families – and a lay leader (airchinnech or erenagh) often acted as administrative head of ecclesiastical units. When it came to the much needed 12th century reform at the Synods of Rathbreasail (1111) and Kells (1152) the church in Ireland was to some extent attempting to fit a continental system onto the pattern of ancient Irish ‘paruchiae’ that had emerged in the previous seven centuries.

A SENSE OF BELONGING My family had strong connections, growing up, with my local parish of St Patrick’s Pennyburn in Derry where I was an altar server, and later a reader and assistant sacristan. The priests of the parish were household names; home, school and parish closely cooperated in handing on the faith. Nowadays that sense of belonging is perhaps less significant in the life of the average Catholic, although this varies from area to area, from rural to urban. As bishop I’ve visited parishes where I’ve experienced a strong sense of identity and community, connection and belonging.

However few would disagree that all forms of community have taken a battering in a culture where individualism, personal

autonomy and choice are often paramount.

Although social media links us in a great global network, still it can be shallow and cosmetic, fleeting or superficial.

Last summer I spoke to the parents of a practising Catholic family with two teenagers and two younger children. On a typical weekend the teenagers go to the early Vigil Mass in their neighbouring parish. Dad brings the youngest boy to football training early on Sunday morning and later they both go to Mass in the chapel of a religious congregation. Meanwhile, mum and fiveyear-old daughter go the children’s Mass in their own parish. The family seldom gets the opportunity to attend Mass together except perhaps at Christmas and Easter Sunday.

It is time for us to “sing a new song to the Lord” – to re-imagine parish and diocese in Ireland. In The Joy of the Gospel (28) Pope Francis encourages a parish to be “a community of communities, a sanctuary where the thirsty come to drink in the midst of their journey, and a centre of constant missionary outreach”. The parish, he says “continues to be ‘the Church living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters’. This presumes that it really is in contact with the homes and the lives of its people, and does not become a useless structure out of touch with people or a selfabsorbed cluster made up of a chosen few”.

We might ask to what extent are our parishes living, worshipping ‘communities

It will be impossible for us to hold on to the ways we lived parish in the past. The parishes of tomorrow will be ‘communities of intentional disciples’ sustained by committed lay people.

REALITY MAY 2017

of the faithful’ (Canon 515) with a sense of belonging and connectedness? To what extent is a parish a ‘community of communities’, a family of families? We are in a transition time between the relative security and certainties of past times and discovering what the Spirit wants of the church in Ireland today and tomorrow. It will be impossible for us to hold on to the ways we lived parish in the past. The parishes of tomorrow will be ‘communities of intentional disciples’ sustained by committed lay people.

The key to this will be the formation of cells, or smaller gatherings, who meet and pray and develop together their understanding of faith, and who find there the courage to engage in mission and outreach. Many parishes already have prayer groups, lectio divina groups, adult faith groups, youth groups, or adoration teams. Each of these gives to its members a sense of belonging, identity, mission and vocation. Think also of baptismal teams, bereavement or Bethany groups – each of these is helping to build links and connections in which a person’s faith can grow, be expressed and strengthened.

What if we were to take this a step further?

What if a number of families were to begin meeting together to pray, share their joys and struggles in faith, read the Word of God together, talk about their personal faith journey, discuss and study together aspects of faith, commit to mission, and then, on Sunday join together with similar cells or ‘families of families’ in the parish Sunday Eucharist?

Something like this model is already being developed within the Neocatechumenal Way and in many of the new ecclesial movements springing up around Ireland. It will of course mean a certain amount of ‘letting go’ by priests and even bishops as the centre of life, worship and mission in the parish shifts from the parochial house or diocesan curia to the little domestic churches and gatherings on the ground. However the dividend for such a divestment could be more energised, connected families approaching Sunday Eucharist as the summit of their week and as the source of nourishment for the week ahead.

STEEPED IN TRADITION The more I read the poetry of Seamus Heaney, the more I sense his deep understanding of how people are connected to one another by their locality and their shared sense of place, history and tradition. Heaney develops his understanding of this ‘connectedness’ in his final volume of poetry, Human Chain (2010). He certainly saw his home place as a liminal space or ‘aperture’ connecting him as a person to the world at large, to times past in Ancient Ireland, Rome or Greece, and even to the infinite and transcendent.

As believers we are challenged to find ways of opening the lives of people to the transcendent, to the God who gives life its foundation and purpose. In one of my favourite Heaney poems, ‘St Kevin and the Blackbird’, the kneeling saint, with arms outstretched in prayer, shelters in his upturned palm the nest of a blackbird until its young are “hatched and fledged and flown”.

In an act of complete generosity, the saint links his whole being with the transcendent, eternal God, forgetting himself entirely.

Alone and mirrored clear in love’s

deep river, ‘To labour and not to seek reward,’

he prays, A prayer his body makes entirely For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird And on the riverbank forgotten the

river’s name.

There is an absence in the lives of so many people today of any sense of the eternal; there are few opportunities in this hectic world to connect with the infinite. Our task, as people of faith, is to share with others “the reason for the hope we have within us” – the joy of a personal, loving relationship with God. Seamus Heaney was not easily drawn on the subject of his own spirituality – perhaps it was a case of, as he quipped in ‘North’ (III), “whatever you say, say nothing”; “religion’s never mentioned here”. He was certainly steeped in the tradition, culture and mystery of the faith in which he was raised and, despite expressing occasionally his

doubts and lapse, he never once to the best of my knowledge, profaned or disparaged the religion of his youth. In ‘A Found Poem’ (2005), he shares so honestly: There was never a scene when I had it out with myself or with an other.

The loss of faith occurred off stage. Yet I cannot disrespect words like ‘thanksgiving’ or ‘host’ or even ‘communion wafer.’ They have an undying pallor and draw, like well water far down.

His son shared with us that, in the minutes before he died, Seamus Heaney sent a text message to his wife Marie saying Noli Timere – do not be afraid. Despite all the words he himself had written, he could think of no greater gift than the consoling Word, central to the Judeo-Christian tradition of an allloving, all-merciful God. Heaney has hinted that his love of words was nourished by the mystique and beauty of the liturgy like the Litany of the Blessed Virgin his family used to recite at home, connected together in prayer – “Tower of Gold, Ark of the Covenant, Gate of Heaven, Morning Star, Health of the Sick, Refuge of Sinners, Comforter of the Afflicted.”

On the day of his burial I had the privilege of walking with his loved ones in the funeral procession to his final resting place in a corner of St Mary’s Churchyard, Bellaghy. Just as the prayers ended I led, with the other priests present, the singing of the Salve Regina.

Marie and many around us joined in. For a moment we were all linked ‘in between’ – family, friends, neighbours, priests, believers and non-believers alike, “sending up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears”, but looking to heaven forgetting self, forgetting earthly barriers, forgetting Bellaghy even.

Eamon Martin is Archbishop of Armagh and the Primate of All Ireland

C OM M E N T THE YOUNG VOICE DAVID O’DONOGHUE

NO KINGS BUT CHRIST

WHY WE SHOULD BE WARY OF THE CONCEPT OF ‘CHRISTIAN LEADERS’

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The inception of this piece began the way much of my writing has begun lately: social media. The image that set off this spark was like so many others I see, not an original copy of a post by a user but an edited facsimile reproduced with redactions, edits and snarky remarks by any number of others who had come across it previously.

A statement covered in a cascade of dissenting and braying voices like marginalia blackening an old book. The original image showed United States president Donald Trump signing a bill into law backed up by a glowing image of Jesus Christ placing a paternal hand on his shoulder. The original comment read something to the effect “At last a man of God is back in the White House”.

The unending contradictions represented by this statement, that the election of Trump represented an ascension of Christliness to the US presidential office, have already been acidly enumerated in any number of sarcastic tweets and glib think pieces and that’s not what I wish to talk about in this column. Christians should always fight for policies of love, mercy and forgiveness and resist the policies and actions of any figure, whether president or local councillor, who wishes to defile those values. But more concerning than that to me is the phenomenon of venerating ‘Christian leaders’, whether in the world of politics or elsewhere.

The ascribing of messianic and Christ-like attributes to political leaders in the hopes of inspiring believers to strike a blow for God’s kingdom in electing them has REALITY MAY 2017

long been a strategy of political propaganda and has thrust everyone from ruthless dictators to populist reformers into political power. Unquestionably there is nothing particularly wrong with using our assessment of Christ’s moral mission in this world as a compass by which to evaluate potential political candidates in the process of casting our votes.

To pray and contemplate about such a vital duty in a democratic society is essential to the rituals of deliberation and moral consideration that are a feature of any healthy spiritual life. And, if we feel our chosen candidate or movement or party has aligned with those moral values we feel may lend to our world more of that compassion and kindness and equanimity which was the marker of Christ’s moral mission, then we can feel confident in casting our vote and in proselytising for our opinions. But we should never confuse those candidates and movements of which we have ascertained a positive moral sense with people who in fact have the divine and inerrable qualities of Christ.

This is a position which has seemed to have the most

troubling history in United States politics. The particular development of charismatic and evangelic Protestantism in the United States is a fascinating historical and sociological process as well as an invitation to discover the wonder, joy and ecstasy that can play a central part in modern Christianity, but its character has recently lent itself to a strange blend of religion and politics that exalts political leaders and movements to a level of Christlike devotion. I’m reminded of the brilliant and acclaimed documentary Jesus Camp, which offered viewers (often looking on with affluent, liberal and secular eyes) an inside look at the world of conservative evangelical Christians.

While the community engaged in traditional church practices like bible readings and theological discussions, more concerning was the way in which uncritical and factional political engagement was factored into their worship. In a memorable scene some of the Christian children were coached to direct their prayers to a cardboard cut-out of then Republican president George W. Bush for his commitment to “Christian values in America”.

This kind of blind worship of political and executive figures is deeply troubling. When we exalt our political leaders to the point of giving them divine attributes we fail to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God what is God’s”. We absolve ourselves of our own responsibility to act in kind, compassionate and Christly ways in our local communities in the name of ceding this moral duty to an outside force. We abdicate our need to be a light to the world and instead we place that moral light on the high shelf of the corruptible and vicious institution of earthly political office so that it does not shine at our feet to illuminate our path and light up our local communities. When we begin to see these earthly political institutions as having divinity identical to God’s Kingdom we will overlook their many faults and the many occasions on which they are compelled to violate Christ’s mission of pacifism, mercy and community.

We must remember that although, in our process of democratic deliberation, we might see a light of moral integrity around an earthly executive, we can never use this as an excuse to leave the light of Christ within us untended.

Otherwise we will plunge further into a political and moral world of darkness and strangers, where hatred and vitriol rule the day.

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.

F E AT U R E

COULD THE BIBLE PREVENT ANOTHER CELTIC TIGER?

IT CAN BE HARD TO MAKE SENSE OF ALL THE TALK WE HEAR ABOUT THE ECONOMY, BUT OUR SCRIPTURES AND OUR CHRISTIAN TRADITION ARE A GOOD PLACE TO START.

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BY KEVIN HARGADEN

The

defining moment of contemporary Irish society was surely the few chaotic days in September 2008 when we all slowly came to realise that the Celtic Tiger had died. For years there had been hushed conversations about property bubbles and soft landings, but when the end finally did come, it was sudden and confusing. The tidal wave of credit collapses in America landed on our shores and the eight years since then, as we have sought to recover, have been marked by brutal austerity, widespread unemployment, and a return to the emigration rates that we thought we had left behind in the 1980s.

LIVING ON THE EDGE OF RECOVERY We are commonly assured by those in the know that the recovery is almost complete. Even if all around us there are people struggling and barely coping, all the statistics seem positive.

Our politicians have a spring in their step and we can sometimes dare to look forward to a future where we spend more on health and education and where our young people do not have to go to London or Berlin or Sydney to find work.

Yet one of the most striking absurdities in Irish life today is that less than ten years after our entire economy collapsed because of a property bubble, we are currently caught in a vicious housing crisis. Renting the smallest of properties in our cities is almost out of reach of ordinary young people, and the number of homeless seems to grow with every passing month. If you are anything like me, you have read these headlines and pondered why it is that in 2008 the whole country could be thrown into turmoil because we had built way too many houses and in 2016 we find ourselves with way too few?

MAKING SENSE OF THE ECONOMY Questions like this abound whenever we think about the economy. We are assaulted on news broadcasts and newspaper frontpages with percentages and fractions that are very hard to interpret. Last summer, the Central Statistics Office announced that Ireland’s Gross Domestic Profit (GDP) had grown by 26 per cent in the previous year. We heard that news and wondered, “It doesn’t feel like there is 26 per cent more of anything around here!” It turns out that that figure is a statistical fact, and a meaningful one too, but only really for those few people whose work relies on such measurements. When our general discourse around the economy is dominated by these numerical narratives, most of us are left out of the conversation.

There must be some way to understand and engage these big economic questions, without

F E AT U R E

spending four years of our lives studying economics. It seems basically undemocratic to frame national conversations about something so vital in terms that can be only understood well by very few. It reminds me of the conversations around the Second Vatican Council about the role of Latin in the Mass.

Mass in Latin has many merits and virtues, and it has its place, but it is always to some degree an elite pursuit. For those who do not speak Latin, and for the children in the congregation, and for those with intellectual disabilities, Mass in the vernacular ought to be the normal way Catholic parishes worship.

Is it not exclusionary for discussion about the economy to be conducted in the technical language of the university economics departments? Shouldn’t something that makes such a difference in the lives of ordinary people be talked about in a manner in which ordinary people can participate?

There are increasingly good resources available for people who want to study

economics, without having to sign up to a four-year degree. There are free online economics courses, like the ones offered

by MIT (ocw.mit.educ/courses/economics) and there is a glut of excellent books written for a popular audience that introduce the key terms and basic ideas. Yet I long for the day when we can collectively discuss the value of the economy in terms that are not just determined by the bottom-line and in language that does not require an economics degree. Only when everyone has a chance to reason over what really matters, can we hope to solve the basic problems of economic justice facing Ireland.

THE TREASURES OF THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION It is in this respect that I want to suggest that Christians in Ireland have a remarkable asset that they are leaving unused. I am convinced that when it comes to thinking about money, our faith is so rich that it is essential we start

there. We can make sense of the economic problems we face by learning again about the treasures Christianity has its disposal for thinking about these issues.

Economic justice is a major preoccupation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Jubilee teaching is at the heart of Leviticus. Prophets like Isaiah, Amos, and indeed Jeremiah engaged in jeremiads against the excesses of the wealthy in their times. They speak in our time as well.

When addressing a crushed society drowning in debt as a result of a property bubble, the prophet Isaiah’s judgement in chapter 5 verse 8 would be a striking starting point for a reflection on economics: “Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land.” A revolutionary response to our current housing shortage could begin from reflecting on that verse alone.

In the New Testament the stakes are raised as the Gospel that Jesus brings is good news to the poor. Fully half of his parables hinge

Breaking the Word in May 2017 www.proclaim.ie

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

Kilkenny (3rd – 11th May 2017)

Birmingham, England (8th – 18th May 2017)

Novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help preached by Denis Luddy CSsR and Michael Kelleher CSsR

Novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help preached by Derek Meskell CSsR

Ballingarry, Co Limerick (6th – 12th May 2017) Mission preached by Laurence Gallagher CSsR & Kieran Brady CSsR

Novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help preached by Johnny Doherty CSsR & Ciaran O’Callaghan CSsR

St Gerard’s, Belfast (6th – 16th May 2017)

Foxock, Dublin (22nd – 30th May 2017)

Novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help preached by John Hanna CSsR & Johnny Doherty CSsR

Novena to Our Mother of Perpetual Help preached by John Hanna CSsR & Denis Luddy CSsR

Priorswood, Dublin (20th – 28th May 2017)

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

Fr Johnny Doherty CSsR, Email: dohertyjohnny@gmail.com Tel: +44 28 90445950

Fr Laurence Gallagher CSsR, Email: missions.novenas@redemptorists.ie Tel: +353 61 315099

The bottom line does not always have to be profit. There are treasures like generosity and solidarity that cannot be accounted for on balance sheets.

around economic matters. He himself takes on intentional poverty and has no good words for wealth. The subsequent texts in the New Testament continue in that path.

In Acts we read that the first Christians shared all things in common and in Paul we find a teacher calling us to lives of radical generosity. Perhaps most famously, James stridently attacks the rich, saying “Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you.” When was the last time Irish Christians heard homilies reflecting on how that passage applies to us today?

If we leave the Scriptures and consider the history of the church, we find remarkable economic thinking everywhere we look. The early church fathers and mothers preached constantly about the need for radical economic justice. John Chrysostom was singing from that hymnbook when he said, “The rich are in possession of the goods of the poor, even if they have acquired them honestly or inherited them legally.” Centuries later, St Francis and his “little brothers” gently reminded Christians that they waste their life if they try to hoard the good things they have.

Luther preached often about money and he was convinced that greed is born from a lack of faith in God. He taught his congregations that their increasing generosity was one of the clearest signs of God’s work in their life.

In recent times, the witness of figures like

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin has again taught Christians that if Jesus is Lord, then the market isn’t. Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, in different ways, have shown in recent encyclicals that they understand this. Perhaps it is time for Irish Christians to get on board?

TURNING TO ACTION As we read the headlines about GDP growth and government surpluses, and then turn to the expanding property sections of newspapers and see the prices rising, we are reminded of the “good old days” that turned out to have not been entirely good.

Thoughtful people might look at this recovery and worry that no lessons have been learned and we are heading, full-speed ahead, back into a bubble. The haves are benefitting and the have-nots are left wanting. Debt is increasing. We know from recent, painful experience that when economic growth is unbalanced and unjust, it eventually topples over, and when it does it is the weakest in society who suffer the most.

The Bible is not able to prevent another Celtic Tiger. But Christians whose faith is nourished by the Scriptures, and inspired by the tradition, can live out their convictions and stand as a testimony to another way of viewing the economy. The bottom line does not always have to be profit. There are treasures like generosity and solidarity that

cannot be accounted for on balance sheets.

As we gather on Sunday mornings to share Eucharist – which literally means to enact thanksgiving – we are dismissed for Monday mornings when we can work for values other than sheer profit. Up and down the island, Christians can be witnesses to the fact that Mammon is not the state religion.

For that to happen, the priests and the pastors need to have the courage to preach from the treasures we have warehoused in the Scriptures. They need to teach their flocks to pray for the Spirit’s inspiration in how to be a force for justice in their local place. The God who provided manna for the Israelites in the desert will provide the nourishment we need to be faithful in these fraught economic times. But we must have the faith to ask and the courage to act.

Kevin Hargaden has just finished his PhD in Theological Ethics at the University of Aberdeen. He is a social theology officer with the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice in Dublin. His first book, Beginnings, an edited collection of interviews between Stanley Hauerwas and Brian Brock, was published in February

by T&T Clark. He is a candidate for ordained ministry with the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

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DOROTHY DAY:DON’T CALL ME A SAINT AN ADULT CONVERT TO CATHOLICISM, DOROTHY DAY LOOKED FOR PRACTICAL WAYS TO CONFRONT INJUSTICES IN THE WORLD AROUND HER.

BY MIKE DALEY

In

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2015, Pope Francis visited the United States. One of the highlights of his trip was a speech to a joint session of Congress. In it, he both affirmed and challenged America as a nation of justice.

Pope Francis did this through the lens of four great Americans. The first two mentioned surprised no one—Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. The last two, however, left many people scratching their heads wondering who they were—Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day. Both were American Catholics.

Merton was a Trappist monk.

His writings, most notably The Seven Storey Mountain, continue to speak to the restless nature and spiritual longings of Americans. Day, however, could be said to be in a league all her own. College of the Holy Cross historian David O’Brien has described her as “the most significant, interesting, and influential person

in the history of American Catholicism”. No small praise.

Of her, Pope Francis said, “In these times when social concerns are so important, I cannot fail to mention the Servant of God Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement.

Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints.”

ASKING “WHY?” Day’s purpose, in a phrase, was “to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.” Though she said otherwise, it might just get her canonised as well.

From the beginning, in addition to directly responding to the needs of the marginalised, oppressed, and forgotten, Day was never afraid to ask the question, “Why?” Once when a group of college students visited her at St Joseph’s House on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Day shared that: “When I was your age women couldn’t vote— and the poor could fall back on nothing but the charity of the rich. I remember as a girl asking my mother why—why things weren’t better for people, why a few owned so much and many had little or nothing. She kept on telling me that ‘there’s no accounting for injustice, it just is’. I guess I’ve spent my life trying to ‘account’ for it, and trying to change things, just a little—and that is what I believe people like me ought try to do: we’ve been given a leg up in the world, so why not try to help others get a bit of a break, too!”

Given her revered status today, Dorothy Day’s beginnings were rather inauspicious. She was born in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York to a Christian, but religiously non-practicing family. Her father was a journalist whose writings

focused on the racetrack. His love of alcohol, though, compromised his ability to find and keep regular work.

After a brief stint in San Francisco (1904), the family ended up in Chicago (1906) where Day graduated from high school in 1914. Her college years were academically unremarkable such that she lasted only two years. What Day did develop there was an ever-increasing desire for justice and workers’ rights.

She soon found her professional calling in New York City, writing for a string of socialist newspapers. Personally, though, Day’s promotion of justice conflicted with her bohemian lifestyle.

As she remarked in her diaries, “Aside from drug addiction, I committed all the sins young people commit today.” Her life, literally, could have been a soap opera—toxic relationships, bouts of depression, suicide attempts, an unplanned pregnancy and, finally, an abortion.

A TURNING POINT OF GRACE In 1926, much to her surprise, Day and her common law husband Forster Batterham found themselves pregnant. This sparked within her, according to her friend, former Catholic Worker and editor of her letters and diaries Robert Ellsberg, “a mysterious conversion”. Overcome with gratitude, she felt called to baptise her newborn daughter Tamar and, soon thereafter, herself become Catholic.

This was not without consequences however.

Batterham, an avowed atheist and anarchist, and she separated. Some activist friends who saw religion only as the “opiate of the people” felt betrayed. In December 1932, while in Washington, D.C. to cover the Hunger March, she found herself at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. There she prayed that “some way would be opened up for me to work for the poor and oppressed”.

Returning to her apartment in New York City, Peter Maurin was waiting for her. Maurin was an itinerant French philosopher who sought to enflesh Catholic social teaching. Five months later, during the depths of the Great Depression, on May 1, 1933, the first issue of the Catholic Worker was published. Their guiding principles were not found in the Communist Manifesto, but in the Sermon on the Mount.

that this suffering will water the seed to make it grow in the future.”

Interestingly, Julie Hanlon, professor of Christian ethics at Saint Louis University, describes Day as a “loyal convert to a church she relentlessly challenged. She called the church ‘the cross on which Christ was crucified’ and mourned its distance from the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. She always acknowledged her own sin, which made it easier for her to see the need for a church, for other people of faith (living and dead) to inspire, support and challenge her”.

Michael Harrington, a former Catholic Worker and author of the classic book The Other American, offered this paradoxical portrayal of her in an obituary when she died in 1980 at the age of 83: “She was as theologically orthodox as she was politically unorthodox. In the ’50s she led a civil disobedience movement against airIn this regard, Day strongly believed that “it is by the works of mercy that we shall be judged”. As she once said in an interview, “If your brother is hungry, you feed him. You don't meet him at the door and say, 'Go be thou filled,' or 'Wait for a few weeks, and you'll get a welfare check.' You sit him down and feed him. And so that's how the soup kitchen started” – and houses of hospitality where Catholic Workers committed themselves to lives of voluntary poverty and not only served but lived side by side with the poor. For Day and Maurin, personal responsibility was key. Care for the ‘other’, who for them was ‘Christ’, wasn’t to be left to someone else, a group, or government agency.

If your brother is hungry, you feed him. You don't meet him at the door and say, 'Go be thou filled,' or 'Wait for a few weeks, and you'll get a welfare check.'

You sit him down and feed him.

DEFYING EXPECTATIONS In response to someone asking for advice about opening or operating a house of hospitality, Day, under no utopian illusions, wrote back: “So I don’t expect any success in anything we are trying to do, either in getting out a newspaper, running houses of hospitality or farming groups, or retreat houses on the land. I expect that everything we do to be attended with human conflicts, and the suffering that goes with it, and

raid drills; in the ’60s she was in the forefront of the struggle against the war in Vietnam; and in her 70s she was arrested as a participant in the United Farm Workers strike.” Like any good saint in the making, she defied expectation.

Yet, her legacy continues in the close to 250 Catholic Worker communities both in America and abroad. Her cause for canonisation proceeds as well. This in spite of Day’s own remark: “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.” Here, though, Robert Ellsberg argues that what Day opposed wasn’t the call to holiness, but being put on a pedestal and, in the process, being freed from the radical demands of the Gospel.

Mike Daley is a teacher and writer from Cincinnati, OH where he lives with his wife June, and their three children. He is a frequent contributor to Reality. His latest book is Vatican II: Fifty Personal Stories (Orbis).

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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

FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF MARY THE MONTH OF MAY IS A TIME OF SPECIAL DEVOTION TO MARY. WHILE SOMETIMES VIEWED AS A DOCILE FIGURE, THE GOSPELS DEPICT HER AS A WOMAN OF REMARKABLE FAITH AND COURAGE. HER ROLE IS ALWAYS TO LEAD US CLOSER TO JESUS.

BY SARAH ADAMS

It

22

is just over a hundred years since the world famous nurse, Florence Nightingale died. Florence Nightingale was an amazing woman, totally selfless and dedicated to caring for the sick and the vulnerable. A woman of great intellect and spirit, Florence believed that God had called her to a life of social action and service to those in need. In particular she believed, as a matter of faith, that the poor should receive the same quality of healthcare as the rich. She considered everyone to be created by God, and as such to be a part of God, to be treasured and cared for. Today, nursing and medicine in general have progressed far beyond what Florence might have imagined. New technology, medicines and expertise ensure that we are guaranteed medical care from the cradle to the grave. At

REALITY MAY 2017

one time this was all about keeping people alive as long as possible. Scientists search tirelessly for cures to cancer, Alzheimer’s and all kinds of other illnesses. Now people are fighting for the right to die when they choose and how they choose. The Western world in particular seems a little confused about its ‘body’.

During the month of May the church encourages us to give time to reflect on the life of Mary, Mother of God. Even in today’s world, there are still many of us who will do this by participating in May processions, crowning of statues, saying the Rosary more frequently, and singing hymns about Mary.

This external manifestation of our devotion to Mary confuses many who are not Catholics.

Indeed other Christians often mistake these devotions as a form of worshiping Mary. It is

misunderstood that Catholics worship God and venerate Mary. Always, Mary’s role is to lead us closer to Jesus.

A WOMAN OF FAITH We do not know a great deal about Mary.

Historically, we know that she was a young Jewish peasant girl living in first century Galilee.

Within the Gospels she is rarely spoken of.

For the writers of the Gospels, Jesus was the focus of their attention, the central figure and Mary is only included if it is because what she says or does points others to Jesus. Two key Gospels passages tell us a little about Mary; the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38) and the Visitation (Luke 1:39-56). In the first of these Mary receives a visit from an angel who announces to Mary that she is being invited to become the Mother

of God. We can imagine the shock that this would have been for Mary, bad enough that an ‘angel’ appears unannounced but to then be given such news would be too much for most of us. She was ‘greatly troubled’ by what she heard. Accepting this invitation to love would mean letting go of all her own plans, her own will. Anyone who has taken any radical step knows that letting go, dying to self, requires the utmost strength of character. It requires resilience and determination. Far from being passive or docile, as many commentators would have us believe, Mary has to have been a robust woman, able and willing to speak her mind and unafraid of making decisions (cf. wedding feast at Cana). Yes, she was a woman of her time, with everyday struggles, but equally a woman of great faith which sustained her throughout her life.

cultural background in which she lived and which today scarcely exists anywhere. She is held up as an example to the faithful for the way in which in her own particular life she fully and responsibly accepted the will of God, because she heard the word of God and acted on it, and because charity and a spirit of service were the driving force of her actions. She is worthy of imitation because she was the first and most perfect of Christ’s disciples. All this has a permanent and universal exemplary value.”

(Marialis Cultus #35) TOTAL GIVING Channel 4, a TV station in Britain transmits a programme entitled ‘How to Look Good Naked.’

It is a programme where the presenter seeks to help women feel good about their bodies with or without their clothes on. Like many reality TV shows the focus on the individual to look good or sing or dance well is very much about ‘me’ and what ‘I’ can do or be and almost implies that this is what it means to be successful or acceptable. The numerous magazines available to us add to this view that how we look or how successful we are is what matters. Sadly, the obsession that many of us have with our bodies is not always healthy.

It can lead to anorexia, bulimia, and illnesses which come as a consequence. Advertising campaigns are partly responsible for this. It may also be because we can have a tendency to think more about our own needs and our own lives than those of others. Wanting to look good and to be attractive is natural. Caring for our bodies is important. We have been given them

by God and as St Paul says, they are temples of the Holy Spirit, where God resides. This is important for, if we are in tune with the God who is living within us, we will not have time to be worrying about how we look on the outside.

We will be listening to the voice within and responding to that and not the cacophony of advertising gurus who would give us a different message. The body is important for it is a sign of God’s creation. We venerate Mary because she responded to what was inside her body, the Spirit of God. She gave her body in response to God’s invitation to her.

The joy of the two women is electrifying. Mary is full of praise for God who has ‘done great things’ in her Shortly after Mary becomes pregnant she visits her cousin Elizabeth to share her news that she is to bear a son who will be named Jesus. The baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy when she is greeted by Mary, and she is filled with the Holy Spirit. The joy of the two women is electrifying. Mary is full of praise for God who has ‘done great things’ in her. Mary’s response to Elizabeth’s joy is a song of hope for great things to come. God is at the heart of this prayer, a God who is to bring salvation to all and Mary is to be the bearer of the One who will bring about the justice that the poor have longed for. Mary’s joy reflects the inner longing she has had for the oppressed in her own country to be released from their pain.

She has given her unequivocal yes to God’s invitation to her. This is radical discipleship.

Pope Paul VI in his great document on the renewal of devotion to Mary, stated the following: “The Virgin Mary has always been presented to the faithful by the Church as an example to be imitated not precisely in the type of life she led, and much less for the socio-

As we contemplate the life of Mary during May, when we gaze on her statue or an image, we might consider going beyond her physical outward appearance to what it was that led her to respond so selflessly to the Spirit within her.

The absolute selflessness of Mary is something that Florence Nightingale tried to imitate in her own life and it is what we are called to imitate.

True discipleship leads us away from the voices that tell us how we should look and how we should think. True and radical discipleship leads us to action, to service, and to care for those who need our attention.

Many of the hymns to Mary tend to be devotional and often stem from popular piety.

Often they take us back to our childhood and conjure images of Mary, the docile one with lily white hands. ‘Tell out My Soul’ and other versions of the Magnificat do the opposite. They remind us that when we sing Mary’s words they are always about ‘what great marvels the Lord has worked for us…’ This year, as we experience a world which is deeply troubled, we could do no better than to spend time with Mary’s song, the Magnifcat. Let us ponder it, pray it and consider its profound message.

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

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, He looks on his servant in her lowliness Henceforth all ages will call me blessed.

The almighty works marvels for me Holy his name!

His mercy is from age to age, on those who fear him.

He puts forth his arm in strength and scatters the proud hearted.

He casts the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly.

He fills the starving with good things sends the rich away empty.

He protects Israel, his servant, remembering his mercy, The mercy promised to our ancestors to Abraham and his children forever.

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FAT I M A 1 9 1 7 -2 0 17

24 Portuguese shepherd children Lucia dos Santos, centre, and her cousins, Jacinta and Francisco Marto, are seen in a file photo taken around the time of the 1917 apparitions of Mary at Fatima.

CELEBRATING THE CENTENARY OF FATIMA PILGRIMS FLOCK TO FATIMA IN THEIR MILLIONS, WHILE THE TRAVELS OF THE PILGRIM VIRGIN STATUE BRING ITS MESSAGE TO COUNTLESS MORE. AS WE MARK THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST APPARITIONS TO THE ‘LITTLE SEERS’, WE TURN AGAIN TO OUR LADY’S WORDS AND ASK: WHAT IS HER MESSAGE FOR OUR WORLD?

BY SEAMUS ENRIGHT CSsR

Pope

Francis will visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima on May 12/13 to celebrate the centenary of the Apparitions of Our Lady to ‘the little seers’ – Blessed Jacinta Marto, Blessed Francisco Marto and the Venerable Lucia Santos. It is hoped that Pope Francis will canonise Jacinta and Francisco during his visit. He will be the fourth pope to visit Fatima as a pilgrim: Blessed Pope Paul VI visited at the end of

REALITY MAY 2017

the Second Vatican Council in 1967, St John Paul II made three visits and, most recently, Pope Benedict XVI was there in 2010.

Pope John Paul was especially devoted to Our Lady of Fatima and believed that Our Lady’s intercession saved his life when Mehmet Ali Agca attempted to assassinate him on May 13, 1981. It was the feast of Our Lady of Fatima: “It was a mother’s hand that guided the bullet’s path,” according to the

pope. The Holy Father placed the bullet – one of four to hit him – in Our Lady’s Crown when he travelled to Fatima on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving a year later.

As part of the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the apparitions at Fatima, Pope Francis blessed six copies of the Pilgrim Virgin to travel around the world. Welcoming the pilgrim statue to the Pro-Cathedral on March 12, 2017, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said:

“The statue helps us to reflect on the life of Mary herself, her joys and sorrows, her love for her son Jesus, and her compassionate love for all people.”

The core of the story of Fatima is a very simple one. Our Lady appeared to Lucia Santos and her two cousins, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, six times between May 13 and October 17 in 1917. Our Lady emphasised the importance of prayer, especially the Rosary, and penance, especially undertaken on behalf of sinners. The apparitions, apart from one, took place at the Cova da Ira in Fatima.

The bullet that wounded Pope John Paul II is placed inside our Lady's crown, pointing down from the centre.

A WOMAN BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN The first apparition took place on May 13.

The three children saw a woman “brighter than the sun, shedding rays of light”. She taught the children to devote themselves to the Holy Trinity and to pray the Rosary every day to bring peace to the world and an end to the war.

The reference to the war provides us with a context for the apparitions and the message of Our Lady. The world was in crisis. The first world war was raging and Portugal had recently entered the war on the side of the allies. Portugal itself was in the throes of a political crisis. The monarchy was overthrown in 1910 and the Catholic Church was being persecuted by the secularising republican governments. The sense of crisis

that the children be allowed return and that he would interview Lucia afterwards.

During the apparition the Lady told Jacinta and Francisco that they would be taken to heaven soon. She wanted Lucia to learn to read in order to “understand what I want of you”. They were to return on July 13.

Saint Pope John Paul II with Sr Lucia

would deepen with the Russian Revolution in October of 1917 and with the worldwide flu pandemic of 1918/20. The world, as people knew it, was passing away and it must have seemed to many people that it was coming to an end. The sense of crisis and impending doom gives an apocalyptic edge to what went on in Fatima, especially to the propagation of the message in the years after the apparitions.

Lucia, the oldest of the three children, wanted to keep the apparitions secret but word leaked out when Jacinta told her family.

Her disbelieving mother told the neighbours as a joke and soon the whole community knew that something unusual had happened at the Cova da Ira. The children told their families that the Lady wanted them to return to the Cova da Ira on June 13. Lucia’s mother turned to the parish priest for counsel and he suggested “The sun’s disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamour was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during these moments was terrible.”

Dr Almeida Garrett, Professor of Natural Sciences, Coimbra University

She taught the children to devote themselves to the Holy Trinity and to pray the Rosary every day to bring peace to the world and an end to the war.

SECRETS AND MIRACLES It was during the July apparitions that Our Lady revealed what came to be known as the secrets of Fatima to the children and that she mentioned the possibility of a miracle on October 13, which would be the last apparition, “so that all would believe”.

It is not possible to deal comprehensively with the secrets in a short article like this, especially as the third secret has generated so much controversy, as they all need careful explanation and interpretation.

The first secret refers to a vision of hell. The second secret recommends devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as a way to save souls and bring peace to the world. The third secret, which the Holy See revealed in 2000, is more enigmatic but it is generally accepted that it refers to the 20th century persecution of Christians that culminated in the failed assassination attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981.

Pope Benedict, writing as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, reminds us that what is important about the message of Fatima, including the secrets, is the exhortation to prayer and the summons to penance and conversion.

The Cova da Ira was becoming a popular place of pilgrimage. Thousands gathered there as word of the apparitions spread. The anti-clerical government was worried about

25

FAT I M A 1 9 1 7 -2 0 17

26

the impact of what was happening on the deeply conservative and Catholic people of the area. The local prefect intervened and arrested the children before the apparition due on August 13. He interrogated the children and threatened them. They told him everything except the secrets. Lucia promised to ask Our Lady for permission to reveal the secrets to him. He admitted defeat and released the children. The August apparition took place in the neighbouring village of Valinhas. Our Lady again asked the children to pray the Rosary, to pray a lot and to sacrifice a lot. She told them that many souls perish because nobody prays for them or makes sacrifices for them. Our Lady also talked to them about the October miracle.

Estimates for the size of the crowd that gathered in Fatima on October 13 vary from 30,000 to 100,000. The crowd included believers and unbelievers and there were many journalists and photographers present.

They came to witness what became known as the Miracle of the Sun. Accounts of what happened varied. According to witnesses the sun appeared, after a period of rain, as

Pope Paul VI with Sr Lucia

a spinning disc in the sky, duller than usual and casting multi-coloured lights across the landscape. Some people, including believers, saw nothing and others witnessed the dance of the sun at a distance of 40 km.

LASTING LEGACY This was the last of the apparitions. Both Jacinta and Francisco, who were beatified by Pope John Paul on May 13, 2000, died during the flu pandemic that raged from 1918 to 1920. Lucia went away to school, aged 14, and entered the Sisters of St Dorothy in 1928. She transferred to the Discalced Carmelites in 1947 and died, aged 97, on February 15, 2005. Their legacy endures in Fatima where millions of pilgrims gather every year.

I will leave the last word to Pope Benedict XVI, preaching in Fatima on May 13, 2010: “At a time when the human family was ready to sacrifice all that was most sacred on the altar of the petty and selfish interests of nations, races, ideologies, groups and individuals, Our Blessed Mother came from heaven, offering to implant in the hearts of all those who trust in her the Love of God burning in her own heart. At that time it was only to three children, yet the example of their lives spread and multiplied, especially as a result of the travels of the Pilgrim Virgin, in countless groups throughout the world dedicated to the cause of fraternal solidarity.”

In that same homily he gives voice to Jacinta and Francisco: “How much I delight in telling Jesus that I love him. When I tell him this often, I feel as if I have a fire in my breast, but it does not burn me.”

(Jacinta) “What I liked most of all was seeing Our Lord in that light which Our Mother put into our hearts.

I love God so much.” (Francisco).

Fr Seamus Enright CSsR is rector of Mount St Alphonsus, Limerick and director of the Solemn Novena

THE MESSAGE OF FATIMA Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: “A careful reading of the so-called third ‘secret’ of Fatima, …, will probably prove disappointing or surprising after all the speculation it has stirred. No great mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled. We see the Church of the martyrs of the century that has just passed represented in a scene described in a language which is symbolic and not easy to decipher. …. “‘To save souls’ has emerged as the key word of the first and second parts of the ‘secret’ and the key for this third part

REALITY MAY 2017

is the threefold cry: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!’. The beginning of the Gospel comes to mind: ‘Repent and believe the Good News.’ (Mk 1: 15) To understand the signs of the times means to accept the urgency of penance – of conversion – of faith. This is the correct response to this moment of history, characterised by the great perils outlined in the images that follow. Allow me to add here a personal recollection: in a conversation with me Sr Lucia said that it appeared ever more clearly to her that the purpose of the apparitions was to help people to grow

more and more in faith, hope and love – everything else was intended to lead to this. ….

“Insofar as individual events are described they belong to the past. Those who expected apocalyptic revelations about the end of the world or the future course of history are bound to be disappointed.

Fatima does not satisfy our curiosity in this way… What remains was already evident when we began our reflection on the text of the ‘secret’: the exhortation to prayer as the path of the ‘salvation of souls’ and likewise, the summons to penance and conversion.”

F E AT U R E

27

CAN A WEEKEND SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE? IF MARRIED COUPLES HAVE LOST THE SPARK OF LOVE THAT DREW THEM TO EACH OTHER IN THE BEGINNING, IS THERE ANY HOPE THAT IT CAN BE REDISCOVERED? RETROUVAILLE, A WORD THAT MEANS TO FIND AGAIN, OFFERS HOPE.

BY SUSAN GATELY

At

one point in his marriage, things were so bad that he thought the best thing would be for his wife or himself to die.

Anthony and Maria* had been married 17 years. How far they had come from the happy early days of their marriage? Where had it all gone wrong?

The couple had worked close to each other in Dublin's city centre and when they met, aged 20, they were inseparable.

Anthony's first impression of Maria was “Oh my God, she's gorgeous.” He was smitten. “I felt an immediate attraction too,” recounts Maria. In those days

they spent every spare minute together. Four years later they married.

After two years Maria became pregnant with their eldest daughter. Anthony had set up his own business in Meath and some years later two more children arrived in rapid succession.

MORTGAGE TROUBLE: MARRIAGE TROUBLE It was when their third child was born that things began to deteriorate. Ireland was in a deep recession and Anthony's business collapsed. The couple had a big mortgage, three young children and he was finding it

F E AT U R E

hard to get work. “It really hit me. There was a sense of being worthless and a failure, even with my family.” Maria was on autopilot with the children, trying to cope as best she could. “I remember using the Children's Allowance to pay business creditors. Things were tough.”

Anthony. “This isn't the guy I married,” she thought. When they were married 17 years, Anthony was thinking of death as the only out of his cold marriage. One day he announced to his wife “I'd leave you only I don't have the money.”

“I didn't want him to go,” says Maria. “I knew I loved him but there was all this muck in the way. How could I get rid of it?” In spite of this, on the outside they appeared a normal family - eating together, taking walks with the children, sleeping together. Maria worked part time and developed outside interests like hill walking.

It really hit me. There was a sense of being worthless and a failure, even with my family.

The couple didn't row much, but “we weren't connecting,” says Maria. Time passed, months became years. Anthony found work and Maria's life continued to revolve around the children but she noticed the change in

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Nick and Virginia O'Shea, who brought the Retrouvaille programme to Ireland

event when their daughter tried to commit suicide. Anthony had developed a particularly strong relationship with her, tending to confide all his fears and troubles concerning the marriage to her. “I remember even saying to her ‘Don't ever get married’'. I didn't realise she had been holding everything in and felt responsible for what had happened.” Even after her failed suicide attempt, she informed her parents “I'm going to do it. I don't like my life.” They were on complete tenterhooks, but the suffering did bring them together.

Their daughter was attending a therapist for her depression. One day the therapist took them to one side. “If you don't do something about your marriage, I'm wasting my time with your daughter,” was the ultimatum. She handed them a leaflet for Retrouvaille - the lifeline for marriage. Maria was on for going to an upcoming Retrouvaille weekend, but Anthony took convincing. If they couldn't fix their problems, he thought, nobody could. Eventually, apprehensively, the couple attended Ireland's first Retrouvaille weekend in October 1996.

LIFE-CHANGING WEEKEND Smiles settle on their faces as they recall that weekend. “It was amazing, life changing,” Anthony

recalls. “We were shown by the presenting couples how they dealt with their emotions in marriage and given the tools to help us communicate.” Anthony realised that he had not seen any of the things Maria had been doing. “All I could see was my own pain. It was like my eyes were opened to what Maria had been putting into our marriage and that she loved me. I hadn't felt that in years.”

Maria realised that she had been so busy being a mother to her children that she had forgotten to be a wife to Anthony. She understood she was repeating her own mother’s behaviour and gradually withdrawing from her marriage.

On the weekend, the couple forgave each other for the hurt and pain they had each caused the other and made a new start.

The atmosphere at home was transformed. Their teenage children could see the change.

“For a ‘f-ed up’ family, we are not doing too bad!” she told them candidly one day.

“I think what we were taught through Retrouvaille is that love is a decision. Falling in love is the love that brings you together.

But the love where you stand together is everlasting love,” says Anthony.

HOW IT BEGAN Retrouvaille grew out of Marriage Encounter in Canada in 1977.

Concerned about the growing number of troubled couples attending Encounter Weekends, a Canadian couple devised a weekend programme aimed at healing marriages. Over time, Retrouvaille (a French word meaning ‘rediscovery’ or ‘finding again’) became a ministry in its own right, spreading from Canada all over the world. Today it is present in 29 countries.

An Irish-American couple Nick and Virginia O'Shea, brought the programme to Ireland. Married in 1957, they settled down to married life with a clear plan - Nick was the provider, Virginia the home maker.

As the children arrived, Nick says Virginia's expectations of him grew.

“She was forever planning for me and the children like we were toy soldiers to be lined up for battle.

Every day, and even every hour, was accounted for. I felt trapped in a cage and I turned to others for my fun and good times. Eventually I had an affair,” he told a gathering in Dublin marking Retrouvaille's 20th anniversary.

Virginia suspected her husband's infidelity, which he denied. In the meantime their sixth child was diagnosed with leukaemia, and Virginia filed for divorce. Nick tried to stave it off. As they watched their daughter dying they decided to stay together for the sake of the children, but after her death their relationship worsened again. They were not communicating, and Nick drifted into another relationship.

Virginia was furious. “It was a black, hot anger. I longed for revenge and wished punishment on him.

It was a time of great darkness.” In 1989, they went on a Retrouvaille weekend.

“When I began to practise the exercises given by the presenting team I learnt that beneath that full anger, I felt discarded,” said Virginia. “But I admitted I wanted him in my life, not as a business partner but as a lover and spouse.”

The couple learnt to dialogue and communicate. “I am happier than I ever thought I could be and I believe this is due to the fact that we share regularly and stay focussed on the good points of one another,” said Nick with a loving glance at his wife.

Retrouvaille volunteers celebrate 20 years in Ireland

IT COMES TO IRELAND The couple got involved in the Retrouvaille ministry which Nick was anxious to bring to Ireland.

Eventually in October 1996, he got his wish, and with two other couples and Irish priest, the later Fr Martin Tierney, they ran the first Irish Retrouvaille weekend.

Since then over 800 couples have been through the programme, which is held twice a year in Ireland.

Over 5,000 couples attend Retrouvaille programmes worldwide each year.

Statistics compiled in the US estimate that 80 per cent of couples who attend Retrouvaille manage to rekindle their love. Through the workshops on the weekend, couples are given the tools to understand and communicate with each other in a safe way and at a deeper emotional level. Each weekend is followed by four ‘post’ sessions, where the skills learned on the weekend are further expanded and added to.

Afterwards, couples can continue to meet monthly if they wish.

“They learn that what people often believe to be the problems in marriages – affairs, addictions, unemployment – are often just symptoms,” says Retrouvaille volunteer Pat Duff.

The presenting couples, all of whom have been through their own troubles, witness many miracles.

They speak of the changes they see in the body language of couples, from

their arrival on Friday night at the start of a weekend, to their departure on Sunday. When they arrive, couples often sit in silence, some with their backs to each other. Around a third of them have already separated. By Sunday afternoon, the same couples are holding hands, smiling and laughing. “We are not magicians, we cannot do that. It is because Jesus is there,” says Anthony. At

Maria realised that she had been so busy being a mother to her children that she had forgotten to be a wife to Anthony the post weekend sessions four weeks later, people are sometimes so changed as to be almost unrecognisable.

But not all marriages can be saved. If abusive behaviour or affairs continue after the Retrouvaille weekend, it won't work out. The programme demands honesty and commitment, but “where both spouses want their marriage to succeed and do the work required and attend all of the Retrouvaille programme, then that marriage will recover,” says Anthony. “The couple will have a happy and loving relationship, without doubt, that is 100 per cent guaranteed, it cannot fail!”

Yes indeed, a weekend can save your marriage! *not their real names.

Susan Gately is a regular contributor to Reality For further information on Retrouvaille, including upcoming events, see www.retrouvaille.ie.

29

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COM M E N T FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS CARMEL WYNNE

ALTERNATIVE FACTS TO DEFEND THE INDEFENSIBLE

OUR TENDENCY TO JUDGE CAN ARISE FROM GENUINE CONCERN AND FEAR. During the first few weeks after Donald Trump became president of America I couldn’t let go of the question: how could any adult be so attached to having things all his own way? Trump seemed to believe that he had the power to do anything he wanted to, in the way that he wanted, regardless of the impact on people’s lives.

It was beyond shocking to listen to the blatant lies that were told by a president for no good reason other than to feed his ego.

Wasn’t it astonishing to witness the White House press officer Sean Spicer trying to defend the indefensible? To hear Kellyanne Conway coin a new term for blatant lies – ‘alternative facts’ – was horrifying.

Many of us might applaud the creativity in word usage of a young child trying to wriggle out of an obvious lie. But how do you explain to children the lies and wild accusations that emanate from the White House? A lie about a petty matter like crowd size may seem unimportant, except the source of the misinformation and other more serious lies about meetings with Russian diplomats, demonstrate that people in high office lack moral credibility.

Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m so incensed about this.

I was wondering this myself until I became aware of how judgemental I was feeling. My internal dialogue was peppered with the word should. Surely they should know better. They should be acting with integrity.

They should be truthful and

trustworthy. They should be honest. They should know right from wrong. They should not give bad example.

I classify should as a judgemental word that frequently hides a desire to control. If a person tells me what I should be doing, I feel like s/he is making a judgement about what I should do and how I should do it and taking charge, denying me the option of deciding for myself.

In most instances when I tell myself that I ought or have to do something, I’m making a demand on myself that puts me under pressure to perform.

By changing from should to choose or want to, the pressure is eliminated. My to do list can remain exactly the same but when I tell myself I want to do something, I’m in control, even if I’m not too happy about what is to be done.

There is no denying the judgment when I list off the lack of integrity, the lies behind

‘alternative facts’, the racism, the fake news coming from the White House, the conflicting statements that the president makes, the volatility that what he says today may be totally at odds with what he says tomorrow, and the serious accusations he made against his predecessor without evidence to back it up.

And behind the judgement is a genuine fear that the US president is not capable of behaving in a grown-up adult way. We live in a changing society, and it’s frightening to observe the chaos that is already happening when one of the most powerful leaders in the world appears to lack any moral compass and surrounds himself with like-minded people who put loyalty to him before any other value.

I feel genuinely sorry for many of the people employed in the White House who are afraid to challenge the lack of ethical behaviour because they could

not support their family if they lost their jobs. Each day in America millions of people who did not vote for Trump find themselves in a situation that they do not want. Over the next four years I assume it will not improve.

My initial reaction to the American president was critical and judgemental. A great believer, however, in looking for the positive intention that is behind everything we do and say, I was surprised to find how much sympathy I had for Trump. Life must be a nightmare for someone who is so arrogant, insecure and inadequate that he cannot deal with the truth, remains in denial when his lies are exposed, makes wild allegations for which there is no evidence, and persists in saying his version, the account he gives on the day, is right and everyone who says the contrary, even television footage that contradicts his story, is wrong.

Th e re is a f e el i n g o f powerlessness for many of us who look askance at the White House antics. But no matter how bad a situation is, no matter how helpless a person feels, there is always recourse to the Serenity Prayer for people of faith: Lord help me to accept the things I cannot change, give me the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

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

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P RAYE R

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.

prayer corner

Ascension

The disciples who gathered with Jesus for one last time after his resurrection must have experienced a mix of emotions – from grief and fear to confusion and hope. The meaning of everything that Jesus told them here would not become clear until after he sent his Spirit at Pentecost.

Read this meditation and keep your Bible handy, open at Acts of the Apostles chapter 1, verses 1-11.

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am one of the lesser known apostles and it’s better that I remain anonymous. I never learned to write properly and now I am old, so I have asked a good friend to take dictation. (Thank you, Silas!) I would like to share with you my recollections of the day that Jesus left this world. Even saying that he “left this world”, of course, is inaccurate.

He had told us while he walked with us that he would be with us to the end of time. As, indeed, he is - in the Breaking of Bread and in his Spirit and in the Good News story of his life, death and resurrection which John Mark, I hear, has written down. But I’m away ahead of myself. Let me get back to the day he left our world in his glorified human body and ascended to his Father.

Of course, we had come to realise that it must inevitably happen. But we couldn’t bear thinking about it. The last few years had been a topsy-turvy rise and fall of every emotion under the sun. For three years we walked with Jesus the length and breadth of Galilee and Judea. From day one we had been infatuated by the sheer magnetism of his personality, by the depth of his spirituality, by the authority with which he preached, by his fearless defence of the poor and the widows,

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by his courageously taking on the secular and spiritual authorities, by the freshness and immediate appeal of his message. For us rank and file it was liberating good news. Every day we saw him break down barriers of prejudice and injustice. We saw him cure the sick - even raise the dead to life; we saw evil spirits cringe and flee at his word; the religious fanatics who tirelessly tried to ensnare him were left in confusion with egg on their faces. Nature itself obeyed his command: at his word water blushed into wine, the angry sea cooled its rage. I was there.

Here was no ordinary man. Who was he? A prophet? Yes, but more than a prophet. Peter spoke for all of us one day when he declared “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” We were the first disciples of the longawaited Messiah. Each morning we woke to face a new day with our excitement at feverpitch. That was it: amazement, excitement, fear for the Master’s safety. Early morning crowds came carrying their sick in their arms, on donkeys (even on camels, at times), in small carts or in small boats whenever we were near the great lake. One day Jesus even fed a crowd of thousands with a few loaves and a couple of dried fish.

And what can I say about the day he sent us out to preach his message and exercise our God-given powers? That was simply incredible. We came back intoxicated, elated.

Even evil spirits, of whom we were terrified, fled at the mention of Jesus’ name.

FROM JOY TO HOPELESSNESS About seven weeks before what I am calling ‘The Lord’s Ascension’ occurred, our world of mystery and marvels was turned upsidedown. The turbulence began on the first day of Passover week. Jesus made a triumphant entrance into Jerusalem, crowds cheering and dancing and singing ‘Hosannas’. It looked like he was about to establish the earthly

Kingdom of God after all. It was the zenith of our joy and jubilation. By day five our Messiah was brutally tortured and crucified.

From zenith of joy to nadir of shame and depression! We were not there for him. One of us betrayed him, another denied him; only the young lad John had the courage to stand with Jesus’ mother on Calvary. The rest of us went into hiding, our hopes in tatters.

Yet three days later he rose from the dead and our hopes and expectations rose with him. We saw him, ate with him, accepted his gentle rebuke to us for our cowardice; he forgave the bumbling Peter and the rest of us who were no better than Peter.

While he came and went among us over the

following 40 days or so we regained some of our courage. At last we began to understand that God’s Kingdom on earth would not be political. Service, not power and domination, would be its hallmarks. Jesus’ resurrection also decided another disputed issue for us: there is life after death; we saw it with our own eyes. Jesus could and would fulfil for us what he had promised us at our last supper together; he had gone to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house. Our cup of hope was filling fast; our cup of courage more slowly. When Jesus returned to the Father where would that leave us? Cursing at broken nets and fish that refused to surrender to our night’s work was no preparation for preaching God’s Kingdom to all nations, to the ends of the earth. Without his presence would we fall back into the maelstrom of despair into which we had sunk in the days after the Lord’s crucifixion? He had promised that we would be baptised by the Holy Spirit; what could that possibly mean?

With mixed feeling like these we gathered as the Lord had directed us on the Mount of Olives. Some of our group embarrassed me. Calvary had taught them very little.

They asked Jesus, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the Kingdom of Israel?” I was angry inside but Jesus was his gentle self: “Stop trying to foretell times and date,” he said. “Just be patient. Stay in Jerusalem a little longer and when my Spirit comes he will give you a new power.” We chatted for a while. He seemed a lot more confident in us than we were in ourselves. Then, he started to elevate and, as had happened so often since his resurrection, he began to disappear slowly before our eyes – and then he was gone, his earthly, bodily life ended. We were all alone again.

A NEW KIND OF PRESENCE We stood there on the hillside our cheeks moist with tears – tears of joy that the Lord had risen and was alive, tears of sadness that a dear friend had gone from us. My own heart was about to explode with sorrow. We were lost in a maze of self-pity and confusion. Like Peter wanting to walk on the water with

Jesus, I wanted to leave this world and follow him straight away into his Father’s house.

Suddenly, two angels appeared and brought us down to earth where we belonged. “Why do you stand here staring into the sky?” they said. “Jesus will be back.”

Slowly we made our way down the hill in twos and threes. What did passers-by make of our motley party – grown men, some weeping, some looking grim and puzzled, some smiling as they remembered the extraordinary events of the past three years, and in particular of the last six weeks.

Mary, Jesus’ mother, who had been close to her son during his torture and crucifixion, now looked serene in the knowledge that his sufferings were over. He was safe now with his Heavenly Father, with his step-father Joseph, with the thief to whom he had promised paradise when they were both dying on their crosses. John walked close beside her and took her arm when they had to manoeuvre large rocks or slippery slopes. With us also were some of his relatives and some women who had come with us from Galilee and had been there to anoint the Lord’s body in the tomb.

We were a bedraggled-looking lot as we made our way back to the upper room and pondered what the future might bring. But we still had our memories. He had promised to be with us always and he never broke his promise. Over the days and weeks that followed we would come to realise that “in a mysterious way Jesus began to be more present to us in his Godhead once he had become more distant in his humanity.” * (Note: After I finished taking this dictation, I suggested to the disciple that he was leaving the story dangling in midair. He agreed to come back and talk about what happened during the following days and tell the climax of the story when Christ’s promise of the Holy Spirit was fulfilled. I look forward to taking his dictation.

– Silas) *This phrase is adapted from Pope St Leo the Great

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

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F E AT U R E

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HEALING FOR EUROPE THE ‘MIRACULOUS’ ORIGINS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

Seventy-

two years ago this month, in 1945, the Second World War came to an end. Five-and-a-half years of shooting and bombing had destroyed Europe: fine cities were reduced to rubble, industries and economies were wiped out, 50 million people were dead, and those still alive

were shattered and traumatised.

If ever there was need for healing, it was here.

As they set about the work of recovery, one big question exercised the minds of thoughtful people: what can we do to prevent this kind of thing from happening again? Fortunately some fine statesmen emerged in different European countries who began talking and negotiating and planning together for a peace that would last.

The new flag was officially unfurled on December 8, 1955, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

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BY RICHARD TOBIN CSsR

The first thing they tackled was the coal and steel industries, because coal and steel were the two principal requirements for making weapons of war.

After several years of patient negotiating they reached agreement, in the 1951 Treaty of Paris, on regulating the uses of coal and steel. Six countries signed this Treaty – France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

They pressed on, seeking further agreement, and in 1957 the same six countries signed the Treaty of Rome, which marked

the foundation of the EEC, the European Economic Community.

The Treaty of Rome was signed on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation.

The three principal statesmen involved in setting up the EEC were Adenauer in Germany, de Gasperi in Italy, and Robert Schuman in France – all of them deeply Catholic. In fact, two of them, de Gasperi and Schuman, have been proposed for canonisation. Their heroic work for peace and unity was inspired by their faith. They would make splendid examples

Some design proposals for a flag of Europe that were eventually rejected

for those involved in politics and public life.

Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, along with Britain and Denmark, bringing the number of members up to nine. Others followed in due course and there are now 28 members, soon to be 27. Ironically, in view of recent developments, Winston Churchill was the first statesman to propose a “United States of Europe” in 1946. His motive was peace; we might wonder at the motives of those engaged in recent events.

CIRCLE OF STARS Early on in the European project it was decided to have a common flag, and so an invitation went out for the submission of designs. Some 101 designs were submitted and the one they chose was the one we still have – the azure blue flag with its circle of 12 gold stars – so familiar to us and quite beautiful.

That design was by a man named Heitz who worked in the Post Office in Strasbourg. His full name was Arsene Heitz – the same Christian name as Arsene Wenger the football manager, who is also from Strasbourg and also a Catholic.

The new flag was officially unfurled on December 8, 1955, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Heitz said nothing at the time, but 30 years later he revealed that when he designed the flag he was engrossed in reading about St Catherine Laboure, through whom Our Lady had given the Miraculous Medal to France (and to the world) in troubled times. In fact, Heitz belonged to a Society of the Miraculous Medal, a kind of sodality.

The image of Our Lady on the Miraculous Medal is the one we find in chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament. There we read :

Signing of the Statute of the Council of Europe (London, 5 May 1949)

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“Behold, a great sign appeared in the Heavens – a woman radiant with sunlight, with the moon under her feet, and round her head a crown of twelve stars.”

All this was in Heitz’s mind and imagination as he worked on his design. And the flag is blue, Our Lady’s colour.

While you may not be wearing a Miraculous Medal, it’s most likely that you have a portion of it on your person – in your pocket or in your purse – because the stars on the flag have found their way into our European money. They are woven into the designs on our euros.

Next time you see the flag on the news, or draw your pension, or stand in line at the checkout to pay for your groceries, look at the stars in your hand and think of Our Lady spreading her mantle over her children; and say a ‘Hail Mary’ for Europe, for her continued healing and peace, and for her recovery of that Christian spirit that was there at her beginning.

Adapted from a sermon preached at the Advent Healing Mission, Esker 2016 Fr Richard Tobin CSsR is a native of Rosslare, Co Wexford and grew up in Dublin. He taught in the Philippines for six years and is currently a member of the Dundalk Redemptorist Community.

FROM THE ARCHIVES October 1966

FROM RECORD TO REALITY The October 1966 issue was the final one of Redemptorist Record under its old name. After 30 years, it was to be rebranded as Reality. The name was chosen by the editor, Fr Michael O’Connor, happily still a member of our Limerick community. It was intended to reflect an element of change in both the church and Irish society. April that year had seen the 50th Anniversary of the Easter Rising. Ireland’s first national television station had begun broadcasting just five years before. After more than 40 years of silence, the prime ministers of Northern Ireland and the Republic had begun to talk to one another. The Second Vatican Council had closed the previous December, leaving a series of weighty documents to be digested and put into practise by the local church. One of the principal documents, The Church in the Modern World, began with the words “The joys, the hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, are the joys, the hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.” It was, if anything, a call to the Catholic faithful to face the realities of social, political and economic life as believers and not to turn away from it into a kind of religious ghetto. The name change was welcomed by many, including Redemptorists and long-term readers, and letters of support were received from, among others, Cardinal William Conway of Armagh and Archbishop Joseph Walsh of Tuam. In the 50 years since the name change, Reality has attempted to remain faithful to the thinking that prompted it.

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37

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THOMAS CRANMER THE CAMBRIDGE REFORMER WHO SHAPED THE ANGLICAN REFORMATION

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FROM A STUDENT IN CAMBRIDGE TO COMPILING THE FIRST BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, CRANMER WAS A CENTRAL FIGURE IN THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.

BY PATRICK COMERFORD

This

year sees the fifth centenary of the Lutheran Reformation and th the 500 anniversary of Martin Luther (14831546) setting in process the Reformation when he nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church of Wittenberg on 31 October 1517.

But while Luther influenced the Anglican Reformation in many ways, 1517 does not mark the beginning of the Anglican Reformation, and if Anglicanism has any founding figures, then they must include Thomas Cranmer, but many other key figures too, including Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, as well as John Jewel, Richard REALITY MAY 2017

Hooker and Jeremy Taylor, who was Bishop of Connor, Down and Dromore.

Admittedly, the Lutheran Reformation strongly influenced the 16th century Reforms in the Church of England and while Thomas Cranmer was a student there, Cambridge became known as ‘Little Germany’ and the ‘Birthplace of the English Reformation’.

Long before Luther is said to have nailed his theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg in 1517, Desiderius Erasmus was at Queens’ College, Cambridge. There between 1511 and 1514, Erasmus translated his new Greek and Latin versions of the New Testament that would inspire the kind of

Bible study that created an interest in Luther’s writings and theology.

When Luther wrote The Babylonian Captivity of the Church in 1520, challenging the traditional sacramental system, Henry VIII was incensed and published his reply, An Assertion of the Seven Sacraments, in 1521, earning papal approval and papal honour as ‘Defender of the Faith.’

Although books were burned in Cambridge in 1520 and 1521 in efforts to suppress sympathies for Wycliffe, the Lollards and Luther, English merchants trading between London and Antwerp became a source for Luther’s writings, which were soon read

Cambridge became the nursery of the English Reformation, and many of the English reformers and some of the early martyrs were students and scholars there.

Jesus College, Cambridge. Thomas Cranmer was a student here and later a fellow

widely in the universities in Cambridge and Oxford.

Cambridge became the nursery of the English Reformation, and many of the English reformers and some of the early martyrs were students and scholars there. The White Horse Inn became the meeting place for these young scholars, and it became known as ‘Little Germany.’

A plaque at King’s College, Cambridge, marking the site of the White Horse Tavern or ‘Little Germany’

The Cambridge scholars who met at the White Horse from 1521 came to include Thomas Cranmer, future Archbishop of Canterbury; Robert Barnes, Prior of the Austin Friars in Cambridge and future martyr; Thomas Bilney, who would change Hugh Latimer’s views about the Reformation; Stephen Gardiner, later Bishop of Winchester; Miles Coverdale, translator of the Bible into English and future Bishop of Exeter; Matthew Parker, later Archbishop of Canterbury; William Tyndale, Bible translator;

Nicholas Shaxton, later Bishop of Salisbury; John Bale, later Bishop of Ossory; and the martyr Hugh Latimer.

Many of this group were influenced both by the new edition of the New Testament produced by Erasmus and by Luther’s writings.

Many also preached at the Church of Saint Edward King and Martyr, close to King’s College.

At the Midnight Mass in Saint Edward’s in Christmas 1525, Robert Barnes preached what was probably the first openly evangelical sermon in a church in England, and Saint Edward’s became ‘the cradle of the Reformation’ in England.

FINDING FAVOUR WITH THE KING Throughout the 1520s, Henry VIII and Luther remained estranged, and when Henry sought a divorce Luther concluded the king was bound under pain of eternal damnation to retain the wife he had married.

The divorce issue was settled for Henry in 1533 when Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, dissolved his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and declared the king lawfully married to Anne Boleyn.

Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556) was six years Luther’s junior, and was martyred 10 years after Luther’s death. At the age of 14, he was sent to the newly-founded Jesus College, Cambridge, where he may have been strongly influenced by the Benedictine tradition. As a student in Cambridge, Erasmus was one of his favourite authors, but it was Luther who drew his attention to the Bible.

Shortly after receiving his Master’s degree in 1515, he was elected to fellowship at Jesus College. Later, Cranmer found favour with the king in 1529, when he suggested that the king’s divorce was a problem to be settled by theologians and not by canon lawyers. The king sent Cranmer as his representative to the Italian universities and to the Emperor. In Germany, he made his Lutheran connections, and married a niece of Andreas Osiander of Nuernberg.

When Cranmer returned to England, he left his wife behind in Germany and became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1533. One of his first acts as archbishop was to declare Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon void and to validate his marriage to Anne Boleyn. After Cranmer’s consecration, Latimer’s fortunes changed, and he became Bishop of Worcester, in succession to four Italian absentee bishops who had been placed in the diocese, one after another.

In 1534, Henry VIII formally repudiated the authority of the pope. Latimer began to advise Cranmer and Cromwell on legislative measures, and became the royal chaplain to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. That year, Convocation called for a translation of the Bible into English, and the Ten Articles in 1536 marked the beginning of doctrinal reform. Since Tyndale was still considered a heretic, Myles Coverdale was enlisted as the translator of the Bible, with Cranmer writing the preface for this new translation.

Cranmer, however, continued to enjoy Henry’s favour until the king’s death in 1547.

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One of his first acts as archbishop was to declare Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon void and to validate his marriage to Anne Boleyn.

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Key figures in the Anglican Reformation in a window in Trinity College, Cambridge, from left (top row): Hugh Latimer, Edward VI, Nicholas Ridley, Elizabeth I; (second row): John Wycliffe, Erasmus, William Tyndale and Thomas Cranmer

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BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER Cranmer drew on Lutheran catechisms, litanies, and liturgies as he compiled the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549. But the Lutheran influence that was dominant in the early Reformation in England diminished during the reign of Edward VI, when England became a haven for religious refugees, including Martin Bucer from Strasburg, who had once tried to bring Luther and Zwingli together and who influenced Calvin’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.

When Edward VI died, his sister, Mary I, came to the throne in 1553.

She hated Cranmer, who by annulling the marriage of her mother Catherine of Aragon to Henry VIII had declared her illegitimate.

In 1554, papal commissioners began to examine Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley, former Bishop of London.

Latimer was burned at the stake in Oxford on 16 October 1555, alongside Nicholas Ridley, outside Balliol College. As the flames rose, Latimer is said to have said to Ridley: “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God’s grace shall never be put out.”

It was said he “received the flame as it were embracing it. After he had stroked his face with his hands, and (as it were) bathed them a little in the fire, he soon died (as it appeared) with very little pain or none”.

Cranmer had outlived Luther.

In the hope of saving his life, he signed a recantation. But he had been deceived, and he too was also burned at the stake at the same place in Oxford on 21 March 1556.

On the day of his burning, he publicly recanted his recantation, confessed his faith, and thrust into the fire the offending hand that he said had “written contrary to his heart”.

Of almost 300 people burned

The Martyrs’ Memorial at the south end of Saint Giles’ near Baliol College, Oxford

during Queen Mary’s reign, the most famous are the Oxford martyrs.

The Martyrs’ Memorial in the city centre, near the site of their execution, commemorates the ‘faithfulness unto death’ of these three martyrs.

But who was the real Cranmer? And what is his legacy? What did he really believe?

The ‘Prayer of Humble Access’ shows a man of humility, and he seeks to encourage weekly, Sunday Communion. His lasting legacy is often seen as the Daily Office of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, yet these are adaptations of the Benedictine Offices, effectively bringing daily prayer out of the cloisters and into the parish church.

Anglicans continue to debate whether he was he a Lutheran, or at heart what we might today call at Anglo-Catholic. Because of this paradox, he can be owned by all Anglicans, and is the nearest Anglicanism has when it comes to finding a founding figure.

Revd Canon Professor Patrick Comerford is Canon Precentor of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, Priest-in-Charge of Rathkeale, and a former lecturer at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.

UNDER THE MICROSCOPE DEATH AND THE IRISH: A MISCELLANY REVIEWED BY KATE GREEN In his introduction, editor Salvador Ryan writes with warmth, humour and respect of the “communal nature of Irish custom andritualsurroundingdeath”andhowthey normalised “death as an integral part of living”. This will surely resonate with many readers. Increasingly, however, the age-old traditions that once accompanied death anddyinghavebeenswallowedupinmore modernfuneralformats.Itisperhapstimely thatthismiscellanyservestoremindushow Irish people from all backgrounds and eras have dealt with the end of life.

The collection draws on the expertise and experienceofawidevarietyofcontributors, withtime-linesrangingfromearlyChristian times to present day. The multi-ethnic and changing faith demographic of modern Ireland is reflected in accounts of the death andfuneralritesofCatholics,Presbyterians,

Freemasons, Irish Jews, Muslims, and neopagans. The 75 offerings range from the academictothereflectiveandentertaining.

The opening chapter explores how beliefs about death are reflected in the Irish language. Our oral tradition, literature and aspects of Catholic faith show us to be people at ease with death and the supernatural. There are stories of ghostly interventionsfromBelfasttotheArctic,and recognitionisgiventothe beliefthroughthe centuriesinthevisitationsofthatharbinger of death known as the banshee.

The tradition and customs of the Irish wake are explored, with their plentiful offerings of tobacco, food and drink highlighting community support, and which perhaps gave rise to the description of someone as “good craic at a wake”.

Chapter 26 refers to the “grisly” and the

“quirky”, and examples of both can be found in the tales of ‘The Pickled Earl’, ‘The unlucky cabin-boy’, and ‘James Mc Nally: head crushed by elephant’.It has been said that Irish history is always tragic but never serious. Someaspectsofthatjuxtaposition can be found in the chapter dealing with deathandtheIrishuseofhumouraroundit.

Recognition is also given to the more regrettablereligiousmoresofthepastinthe chaptersdealingwiththose‘excluded’from burial in consecrated ground: the suicides, those guilty of sexual sin, and unbaptised infants who were given their own burial sites known as cillíní.

Contemporary attitudes and customs and the difficult human scenarios sometimes faced by parish priests and undertakers are recounted, and the brave new world of social media, and its use in lamenting

and remembering the dead, is given the final word.

The brevity of some of the chapters can be unsatisfying at times, giving the impression that they were drawn from a more extensive piece of writing, but this is a book that offers a rich and varied menu from which the reader may select at will and find enjoyment.

Death And The Irish: A Miscellany Salvador Ryan (ed.)

Wordwell, October 2016 ISBN: 9780993351822 Price: €25.00

Available from Redemptorist Communications

Denis McBride’s STATIONS of the CROSS

then and now

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

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

To Order: Call 00353 (0) 1 4922488, Email: sales@redcoms.org or go to shop at www.redcoms.org

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JOSIANE VISITS IRELAND TO SAY

42 This was Josiane's first trip outside Rwanda and the first time she saw the sea. Photo: Niamh McCarthy

THE GIRL WHO FEATURED ON THE TRÓCAIRE BOX 13 YEARS AGO DESCRIBES HOW HER LIFE WAS TRANSFORMED THANKS TO THE GENEROSITY OF IRISH PEOPLE.

BY DAVID O’HARE

Her

photo had already been in a million homes and schools across Ireland but Josiane Umumarashavu arrived here for the first time just recently (in March).

In 2004 she was the girl on the Trócaire Box and featured on over one million of the boxes that were displayed in homes around Ireland. Back then, she was 12 years old and struggling after the Rwandan genocide had claimed the lives of her father, sister and three brothers.

Trócaire’s 2004 Lenten campaign focused on Rwanda and highlighted the situation

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in the country ten years after the genocide of 1994.

Josiane was a toddler when the genocide took place in Rwanda. Between April and July 1994, almost a million people were murdered. It is one of the most harrowing periods in world history. Josiane says her earliest memory was when she was three years old and her family left their home to find a safe place to hide. Her doll was left behind and she remembers she cried a lot wanting to go back but it was impossible.

Her mother and two of her brothers survived that terrible time but in 2004, when

Trócaire first met the family, they were living in a village in southern Rwanda and her mother was really struggling to survive alone with three young children. They were living off a small piece of land and constantly facing the threat of hunger.

Josiane described how the 2004 Trócaire Lenten campaign changed her life. “When I was a child we struggled to find enough to eat and we faced hunger. Thanks to Trócaire supporters, families like mine were provided with the different farming equipment we needed to grow more food. The support from the people in Ireland continued to help me and my family long after that campaign had finished. Life is definitely better now. We have a home, a piece of land, cows and goats.

Because of the support we got, I was able to finish my schooling.

“Trócaire made my dreams come true. I wanted to finish my studies but didn’t really know how I would do it; my family was very

poor and could not afford the school fees.

I think without support I would just have finished primary school and then would have stayed at home to help my mother. Trócaire helped me to finish my studies.”

In 2015, Josiane graduated in accounting from university and now, aged 26, she is working for Trócaire in Rwanda!

“It is fantastic. I’m now working as an intern in Trócaire Rwanda. I get a monthly salary with which I help support my family. Trócaire has not only supported me but has also developed many Rwandans’ lives through different projects being implemented at community level and my village is part of that.”

Josiane has big hopes and dreams for her future. But she is very aware of the trauma children endure when they are caught up in conflicts around the world today.

“War affects children in all the ways it affects adults, but also in different ways. Children are dependent on the care, empathy and

attention of adults who love them. These attachments are disrupted in times of war, due to the loss of parents or because they are depressed or distracted. War affects the life trajectory of children. Many children who have come through war will never attain the potential they had.

“I still have a copy of the photograph from 2004 and the Trócaire box in my home. It makes me very happy to look at it and to think that people in Ireland saw my photo and thought about life in Rwanda. It was amazing to think that people from a different country were interested in my family. I was so happy to be able to visit Ireland to say thank you and I’m very happy to be now part of the Trócaire team making changes in people’s lives in Rwanda.”

Josiane’s visit to Ireland, her first trip outside of Rwanda, highlighted Trócaire’s Lenten campaign 2017 and the importance of the charity’s continued work in the poorest communities in the world. The campaign is focusing on how communities in the developing world can be made more resilient in the face of humanitarian catastrophes including drought, floods and conflict.

To donate or to find out more about the campaign, visit www.trocaire.org/lent.

Josiane Umumarashavu from Rwanda, visiting St Colmcille’s National School in Knocklyon. Photo: Mark Steadman

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CO M M E N T REALITY CHECK PETER McVERRY SJ

THE RICH JUST KEEP GETTING RICHER

THE EVER WIDENING GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR ROBS OUR SOCIETY OF ITS SHARED VALUES AND STABILITY.

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In 2014, Oxfam reported that the wealthiest 85 people in the world owned as much wealth as the poorest 3,500,000,000. In 2017, they reported that that had now reduced to eight people in the world. They estimate that, at the current rate at which the bulk of the wealth being created in the world is being transferred upwards to the wealthiest, at least one person (or, more accurately, one man!) will own $1 trillion by 2040. To spend $1 trillion, you would need to spend $1 million every day for 2,738 years.

Meanwhile, according to UNICEF, 22,000 children in our world die every day due to poverty.

According to the ver y reputable Spear’s magazine and the WealthInsight organisation, there are 32,000 millionaires living in Dublin, one in 40 of the population. (We are still some way behind Monaco where one in three of the population are millionaires!) WealthInsight defines a millionaire as a person with net assets of $1 million, excluding their primary residence.

Most of Dublin’s millionaires have earned their wealth from the tech industry, many attracted from Europe and the US. Meanwhile, according to the Department of Housing, there were 7,150 people registered as homeless in Ireland, including 2,500 children, in December 2016.

An eminent Irish sociologist used to say that in order to understand poverty, you have to analyse wealth. The poor have been analysed to death; bookshelves REALITY MAY 2017

magnet, most of the wealth being created today is being sucked up into the bank accounts of the already wealthy, supported by the structures of the global economy.

are full of studies on the causes of poverty, the consequences of poverty, and case histories of poor people.

But there is very little analysis available on the distribution of wealth. That is because there is so little data on wealth, as much of the wealth is hidden out of sight, with the help of an army of expensive lawyers and accountants. Occasionally, some data escapes.

The Panama Papers consisted of 11.5 million documents on 214,488 offshore accounts belonging to wealthy individuals and public officials. It was clear that some of these accounts were used for tax evasion and fraud.

The Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands (both British territories) are also well known for their ability to hide individuals’ wealth from prying eyes.

The use of Swiss bank accounts to facilitate tax evasion is also well known, due to the traditionally secretive nature of the Swiss banking system. Twenty Irish

people discovered to be holding Swiss bank accounts made a settlement with the Revenue for €4.55 million.

The investigation into the Ansbacher accounts found that around 200 wealthy individuals in Ireland had hidden their wealth in offshore accounts. However, the Revenue official investigating these accounts told the Dáil that there existed an even more secret set of accounts, whose details were kept in a ‘black briefcase’ whose contents had never been revealed.

Apart from hiding their wealth, the wealthy can also influence Governments’ fiscal policies, by paying big money to lobbyists, employing ‘experts’ to produce favourable reports, making large donations to political parties, or threatening to sabotage the economy by leaving the country and taking their wealth with them, with consequences for investment and employment.

It is clear from the little data which becomes available that, like iron filings attracted by a

Meanwhile, down on the ground, ordinary people see their tiny share of the world’s wealth under threat. There is downward pressure on wages (to make businesses “more competitive”), increased use of insecure contract employment, even for well qualified employees, and use of zero hours, or low hours, contracts for those on low wages.

Such injustice destroys the shared values that keep a society together, increases the righteous anger that ordinary people feel, threatens social stability, and increases crime. Workers paying over 50 per cent of their wages in taxes, people living in homeless shelters or those lying on trolleys for days waiting for a hospital bed, view, with dismay and even anger, the EU report on Apple, which revealed that they had paid a mere 0.005 per cent on their massive European profits.

If a poor person robs a wealthy person, they will be prosecuted and may well end up in jail; when a wealthy person robs a poor person, by evading taxes which pay for essential health, education and social services on which the poor depend, they will rarely be prosecuted and almost never end up in jail.

Where such inequality exists, there can be no lasting peace or stability.

GOD’S WORD THIS MONTH OUR GOOD SHEPHERD Today is Vocations Sunday.

We always celebrate it on the Fourth Sunday of Easter. It is a reminder that every FOURTH SUNDAY Christian has a vocation.

OF EASTER Every one of us is called.

For a lot of us, it may be marriage and raising a family. It may be living in the world as a single man or woman. But for some of us, it may involve a vocation to the priesthood or religious life.

The idea of a living this kind of life frightens many people today. There are so many other ‘vocations’ or careers we can choose that seem more exciting, and that pay better. Living a life of celibacy can seem off-putting, even a little crazy. Placing yourself under obedience to a

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NO NEED TO BE AFRAID Today’s Gospel forms part of Jesus’ final instructions to his disciples at the Last Supper.

FIFTH SUNDAY Judas has just left to betray Jesus OF EASTER to the Jewish authorities. Jesus will soon be arrested and put to death. He has only a few hours left with his friends.

Naturally, they are saddened by the thought of his departure and worried about the future.

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bishop or religious superior can seen like giving up your freedom. And the church isn’t exactly flavour of the month any more.

But Vocations Sunday is an invitation not to dismiss the idea of a religious vocation entirely out of hand. It also invites each of us to think about our fundamental vocation as Christians, which is to witness to the Gospel no matter what our status in life. And it invites us to pray for priests and religious everywhere, that they will live their vocation worthily, always leading people towards the good shepherd, Jesus Christ.

Today’s Readings Acts 2:14.36-41; Ps 22;1 P 2:20-25; John 10:1-10

Jesus consoles them. He asks them not to have troubled hearts but to trust in God, and to trust in him. He assures them that he is going to prepare a place for them where they too can join him, and that the way to get to that place - the Father’s house - is through knowing him and following him: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”

John wrote his Gospel about 60-70 years after the death of Jesus. It was a difficult time for the community for whom he wrote. They were being persecuted. Their future was uncertain.

Their situation was very similar to that of the disciples at the Last Supper. John wanted to strengthen the faith of his community. He wanted to assure them that, in the midst of their troubles and pain, God was with them, and that they could be certain there was room for everyone who wished to dwell in the Father’s house.

Like John’s community and the disciples at the Last Supper, many of us experience troubles and uncertainties today too. We may feel broken by depression or bad health. We may feel terribly lonely and alone. Someone close to us may have died. We may have family or financial problems.

We wonder if we can go on. The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel are meant for our ears also.

He asks us to go on trusting in the Father and in him - no matter how difficult it might be.

He assures us that he is there with us and for us - always. There is no need to be afraid.

Today’s Readings Acts 6:1-7; Ps 32;1 P 2:4-9; John 14:1-12

God’s Word continues on page 46

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GOD’S WORD THIS MONTH LOVE, ONLY LOVE Several times during his ministry, Jesus challenged his disciples on the extent to which they loved him.

SIXTH SUNDAY In today’s Gospel, Jesus OF EASTER returns to the same theme.

Speaking to the disciples, he tells them, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

The disciples had trusted in Jesus from the time he called them to follow him up until the events that led to his crucifixion – but still a certain amount of doubt remained. We know about their doubt from the story of Doubting Thomas, and also from the account of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

Now, the disciples are anxious about what

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will happen to them when Jesus finally leaves them. They are worried about what the future will be like without their teacher and friend. But Jesus reminds them that if they do as he has taught them, if they show their love for him, he will be visible to them through their love for one another. And he makes them another promise: he will send the Holy Spirit to comfort and guide them, and to be their advocate. The Spirit will be made visible through their actions and words, and through the Spirit they will know that Jesus is still with them.

Today’s Readings Acts 8:5-8.14-17; Ps 65;1 P 3:15-18; John 14:15-21

GO, MOVE, SHIFT It has been forty days since the wonderful events of Easter and now Jesus arranges to THE ASCENSION meet his apostles on a OF THE LORD mountainside in Galilee.

There, he prepares to depart from them, to return to his Father in heaven. But, before he goes, he offers the apostles some final words of instruction: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations,” he tells them.

Notice how Jesus uses the word “go.” There is urgency in his voice. The disciples mustn’t stand there brooding over Jesus’ departure – they must “go.” They mustn’t hang around talking about the good old days when Jesus was with them - they must “go.” They mustn’t waste time discussing strategy or a detailed plan of campaign – they must “go.”

They must get on with it. They must not delay. There is a job of work to be done, a world waiting to hear the Good News of the Gospel.

And the disciples did what Jesus instructed them to do. They left the mountain, went into the city, and, fortified by the Holy Spirit,

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REALITY MAY 2017

THE REALITY CROSSWORD NUMBER 4, MAY 2017

SOLUTIONS CROSSWORD No. 2 ACROSS: Across: 1. Rhodes, 5. Macaws, 10. Jericho, 11. Reverie, 12. Rota, 13. Ogham, 15. Chip, 17.

Yam, 19. Sacked, 21. Ripple, 22. Messiah, 23. Hebrew, 25. Gaucho, 28. Vet, 30. Beta, 31. Huron, 32.

Esau, 35. Teasing, 36. Pandora, 37. Isobar, 38. Rebuke.

DOWN: 2. Heretic, 3. Dock, 4. Stodgy, 5. Miriam, 6. Cave, 7. Warship, 8. Fjords, 9. Temple, 14.

Hamster, 16. Yemen, 18. Jihad, 20. Dew, 21. Rag, 23. Habits, 24. Betrays, 26. Cassock, 27. Ocular, 28. Vulgar, 29. Torpor, 33. Limb, 34. Snub.

Winner of Crossword No. 2 Billy Hannon, Killaloonty, Tuam, Co Galway

launched the greatest missionary undertaking in human history.

It’s what countless Christians have done down the centuries. They obeyed Jesus’ command to “go” and preach the Gospel. Some have been professional preachers and missionaries – but most haven’t.

They preached the Gospel simply by the witness of their lives.

Pope Francis says that church people must be “shepherds living with the smell of the sheep.” In other words, Christians must leave their comfort zones to make Christ present in all places and at all times. They cannot confine themselves to the security of their churches and sacristies and homes but must go out into the streets and alleyways to proclaim the Good News. There is an urgency to our task as Christians, because there is a whole world out there that is hurting, that is lost, that is abandoned, that is being oppressed or experiencing injustice, and that needs to hear the message of Jesus.

Our great commission is to “go.”

A popular ballad of some years ago was called 'Go, Move, Shift'.

It describes the discrimination that members of the Travelling community so often experience. But it also describes the instruction of Jesus to his disciples – and to all of us – on this feast of the Ascension.

We are to “go, move, shift.” We cannot hang around. There is a whole world out there waiting to hear the Good News.

ACROSS 1. Dung beetle regarded as sacred in ancient Egypt. (6) 5. Express admiration and approval of someone. (6) 10. Disregarded intentionally. (7) 11. A phrase used as an inscription on a tombstone. (7) 12. He reigned as Pope during WWII. (4) 13. German fascists (1933-'45). (5) 15. It is essential in solving mysteries and crosswords. (4) 17. Associate with others socially. (3) 19. The only book in the Bible which does not mention the word 'God.' (6) 21. A building devoted to worship. (6) 22. Excessive pride in oneself. (7) 23. He was 'a mighty hunger before the Lord.' (Genesis) (6) 25. A grey alloy of tin, copper and antimony. (6) 28. Explosive acronym. (3) 30. He wrote over half of the New Testament. (4) 31. The most prolific author of the Old Testament. (5) 32. Pope who opened the Second Vatican Council. (4) 35. Graceful and stylish in appearance. (7) 36. Smelling strongly and unpleasantly. (7) 37. The longest book in the Bible. (6) 38. The most recent. (6)

DOWN 2. Seek advice from an expert or professional. (7) 3. Not occurring very often. (4) 4. A scene of uproar and confusion. (6) 5. A word, letter, or number placed before another. (6) 6. This turns litmus paper red. (4) 7. Marine mollusc with a fan-shaped shell. (7) 8. Cloth headdress still worn by some nuns. (6) 9. Breathe with difficulty and with a whistling sound. (6) 14. Gemstones sometimes used as cheap alternatives to diamonds. (7) 16. A person, device or event used as a distraction. (5) 18. The first and longest-reigning Pope. (5) 20. Light flexible pole for fishing. (3) 21. The end of a pointed object. (3) 23. A male relative. (6) 24. Cats with a skill in catching small rodents. (7) 26. Region of the Earth around the Equator. (7) 27. Go back on a promise. (6) 28. Rich, multi-layered cakes. (6) 29. The capital of Iran. (6) 33. Weep or cry noisily. (4) 34. Familiar sound of a cat. (4)

Entry Form for Crossword No.4, May 2017 Name:

Today’s Readings

Address: Telephone:

Acts 1:1-11; Ps 46; Ep 1:17-23; Matthew 28:16-20 All entries must reach us by May 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. 4, Redemptorist Communications, Unit A6, Santry Business Park, Swords Road, Dublin 09 X651

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