Since we are travellers and pilgrims in the world, let us ever ponder on the end of the road, that is of our life, for the end of our roadway is our home (St Columban, 8th sermon).
Showing posts with label Blessed John Paul II. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blessed John Paul II. Show all posts
On Easter Sunday afternoon in the chapel in the village where I live here in Bacolod City I baptized a girl born in January. At the celebratory dinner later a boy of nine, whom I'll call 'Carlos', approached me with a big smile on his face and told me that he wanted to be like me - a priest. But he had something even more in mind - he wanted to be Pope! And he knows the name he will call himself - Pope John Paul III.
'Carlos' is too young to have any real personal memories of Blessed John Paul but he must have heard, read and seen quite a bit about him for that pope to have made such an impression on him. He goes to Blessed Carmel Sallés School, named after the foundress of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of Mary who run the school. She was canonized last October but there are 'hoops' to be gone through before the Conceptionist Sisters can change its name.
The three Sisters at present in the community in Bacolod are Koreans and I am their confessor.
Young 'Carlos' insisted on speaking in English to me and spoke the language very well. I asked him why he would take the name 'John Paul III' and he said that Blessed John Paul was a 'success'. I'm not quite sure what he meant by that.
Later I asked him, 'What if there's a John Paul III before you?' 'Oh, I'll be John Paul IV', he said!
The first girl in the video above wonders if Pope Benedict when he was a youngster had the same idea as 'Carlos'!
I pray that 'Carlos' will grow strong in his faith and that if God is calling him to be a priest that he will answer that call.
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India
[optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)
Gospel
Mark 13:24-32 (Revised Standard Version – Catholic Edition)
Jesus said to his disciples, "But in those days, after that
tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and
the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be
shaken. And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power
and glory. And then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the
four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. "From the fig tree learn its lesson: as
soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer
is near. So also, when you see these
things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly, I say
to you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place. Heaven
and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. "But of that
day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but
only the Father”.
Connor Eberhard (left) with two friends after their graduation earlier this year at Blessed Trinity Catholic Secondary School, Grimsby, Ontario, Canada, earlier this year.
Connor Eberhard, 17, whose mother Cathy I have known since she was five, posted this on his Facebook last Tuesday, 13 November:
As some of you may well know, my family and I are battling through a very tough time. I have been diagnosed with a rare Liver Cancer. When I type it on a keyboard, it still doesn’t register. The past week has felt like a horrible nightmare, and I can’t wake up. Your thoughts and prayers have meant a lot to me, and I want to truly thank each and every one of you. Your continued support gives me the strength and courage I need to go on. Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul. It is a word, not a sentence.
Love always, Connor Eberhard
Connor's family are devastated. This Sunday's gospel speaks of such devastation affecting the whole community. Every experience of desolation in a community affects each family, each individual. The gospel speaks of Jesus coming again in judgment at an hour that 'only the Father' knows.
The gospel is one that can frighten us or that can encourage us to be always ready for an unexpected serious illness, for our death and for the return of the Lord at the end of time.
The texts for today's Mass are filled with joy and hope. The Collect reads:
Grant us, we pray, O Lord our God,
the constant gladness of being devoted to you,
for it is full and lasting happiness
to serve with constancy
the author of all that is good.
The response to the psalm reads, in the New American Bible lectionary, You are my inheritance, O Lord! and in the Jerusalem Bible lectionary, Preserve me, O God, I take refuge in you. The verses from Psalm 16 (15) are words of joy and hope: Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices . . . You will show me the path of life, fullness of joys in your presence, the delights at your right hand forever (NAB).
Jesus assures us in the gospel, Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
I have been blessed on a number of occasions to have been with persons in a situation like that of Connor. One was when I was working in a hospital in the USA. Another was with a dear friend still in her 20s. Neither situation was one of gloom but of hope, joy and, with my friend, even of celebration.
I know too that a situation like this is a time of very special grace to the individual, of God's presence in a family and in the wider family and social circle.
The Entrance Antiphon of today's Mass give us words of hope from Jeremiah: The Lord said: I think thoughts of peace and not of affliction. You will call upon me, and I will answer you, and I will lead back your captives from every place. Jeremiah is speaking to the Jewish people in a situation of calamity. But the word of God speaks to each of us, to our families, to our communities, in our particular form of 'captivity'.
Each Sunday Mass in Ordinary Time has two alternative Communion Antiphons, either of which may be used. The first is usually from the Old Testament and the second from the New. The first this Sunday is Psalm 72:28, a text of joy and hope: To be near God is my happiness, to place my hope in God the Lord.
That from the New Testament gives us words of Jesus himself encouraging us to pray in hope:
Communion Antiphon (Mark 11:23-24)
Amen, I say to you: Whatever you ask in prayer,
believe that you will receive,
and it shall be given to you, says the Lord.
Latin text:
Amen, dico vobis, quidquid orántes pétitis,
crédite, quia accipiétis,
et fiet vobis, (dicit Dominus). Connor's family have asked for prayer through the intercession of Blessed John Paul II and sent this prayer which has the ecclesiastical approval of the Diocese of Rome:
O Blessed Trinity,
we thank you for having graced
the Church with Blessed John Paul II
and for allowing the
tenderness of your Fatherly care,
the glory of the Cross of
Christ,
and the splendour of the
Spirit of love,
to shine through him.
Trusting fully in your
infinite mercy
and in the maternal
intercession of Mary,
he has given us a living image
of Jesus the Good Shepherd,
and has shown us that
holiness is the necessary measure of ordinary Christian life
and is the way of achieving
eternal communion with you.
Grant us, by his
intercession,
And according to your will,
the grace we implore:
Connor Eberhard's complete
healing,
hoping that he, Blessed
Pope John Paul II,
will soon be numbered among
your saints. Amen.
May I also suggest two other intercessors, both of them among the patrons for World Youth Day 2013 in Rio de Janeiro: Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901 - 1925), A Saint on Skis(above), and Blessed Chiara Luce Badano (1971 - 1990), The Saint Who Failed Math, an only child (below).
After the Way of the Cross on 19 August 2011 during World Youth Day in Madrid Pope Benedict said to the young people gathered:
Dear young friends, may Christ’s love for us increase your joy and encourage you to go in search of those less fortunate. You are open to the idea of sharing your lives with others, so be sure not to pass by on the other side in the face of human suffering, for it is here that God expects you to give of your very best: your capacity for love and compassion. The different forms of suffering that have unfolded before our eyes in the course of this Way of the Cross are the Lord’s way of summoning us to spend our lives following in his footsteps and becoming signs of his consolation and salvation. “To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves — these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself” (ibid.).
Let us eagerly welcome these teachings and put them into practice. Let us look upon Christ, hanging on the harsh wood of the Cross, and let us ask him to teach us this mysterious wisdom of the Cross, by which man lives. The Cross was not a sign of failure, but an expression of self-giving in love that extends even to the supreme sacrifice of one’s life. The Father wanted to show his love for us through the embrace of his crucified Son: crucified out of love. The Cross, by its shape and its meaning, represents this love of both the Father and the Son for men. Here we recognize the icon of supreme love, which teaches us to love what God loves and in the way that he loves: this is the Good News that gives hope to the world.
Both Blessed Pier Giorgio and Blessed Chiara Luce lived out these words joyfully through suffering. Blessed John Paul II had an extraordinary love for young persons. May the intercession of these three 'blesseds' obtain for Connor Eberhard the healing he and his family are asking for and a deepening and strengthening of their faith in Jesus Christ, a faith I have seen grow through many years of friendship.
Connor with his American cousin Caitlin Devlin. Caitlin's Dad, Peter, is a brother of Connor's Mom, Cathy.
One of the great contributions of the USA to popular culture is the Broadway/Hollywood musical. Among the masters at writing these were composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. Most of their works were produced first on stage and later made into movies. The exception was State Fair, a 1945 film for which they wrote the score. It Might as Well Be Spring, from that production, won the Oscar that year for best song.
I doubt that there is a better version than that of Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel in the video above. The words of Lorenzo in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice could surely be applied to anyone who doesn't enjoy this performance with its great melody, words and arrangement and a singer clearly enjoying himself:
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
(Apologies on behalf of the Bard of Avon for the 'non-inclusive' 'man'!)
Hammerstein was a superb lyricist and it's only as an adult that I've come to appreciate this. The dry humour of rhyming 'mope' and 'dope'. The line 'or a robin on the wing', though not original, reminds me of the immortal words of 'Anon' from Brooklyn:
De spring is sprung, De grass is riz; I wunneh wear de flowers is. De boid is on de wing --
Absoid! De wing is on de boid!
Another great contribution of Americans to popular culture is the Western. One of the classics is the 1953 movie Shane, the music for which was written by Victor Young. The opening line of Jack Schaefer's novel of the same title captures the reader from the start: He rode into our valley in the summer of '89, a slim man, dressed in black. Though the film follows the book closely Shane, played by Alan Ladd, doesn't wear black. The novel and movie, like To Kill Mockingbird, tells a story narrated by an adult from the vantage point of his childhood.
I studied in the United States for three years, 1968-71, shortly after my ordination in Ireland. They were three blessed years. I made many friends there and grew in the faith. I managed to do quite a bit of travelling, especially during the summer of 1970. I travelled through some of the beautiful wide open spaces that Victor Young's music evokes.
Today, as I thank you, Mother, for this presence of yours in the midst of the men and women of this land—a presence which has lasted two hundred years—giving a new form to their social and civic lives in the United States, I commend them all to your Immaculate Heart.
With gratitude and joy I recall that you have been honored as Patroness of the United States, under the title of your Immaculate Conception, since the days of the Sixth Provincial Council of Baltimore in 1846.
I commend to you, Mother of Christ, and I entrust to you the Catholic Church: the Bishops, priests, deacons, individual religious and religious institutes, the seminarians, vocations, and the apostolate of the laity in its various aspects.
In a special way, I entrust to you the well-being of the Christian families of this country, the innocence of children, the future of the young, the vocation of single men and women. I ask you to communicate to all the women of the United States a deep sharing in the joy that you experienced in your closeness to Jesus Christ, your Son. I ask you to preserve all of them in freedom from sin and evil, like the freedom which was yours in a unique way from that moment of supreme liberation in your Immaculate Conception.
I came across this delightful photo of Blessed John Paul II this afternoon. I presume it was taken in Australia and not in a zoo. He travelled widely long before he became Pope John Paul II. I think it's a kangaroo he's feeding and not a wallaby. He and the marsupial seem to be enthusiastically engaged in this 'inter-species dialogue'!
As someone living in the Philippines, where mangos are plentiful, I was interested in this little item from Fides, the Vatican-based news agency:
AMERICA / MEXICO - John Paul II an admirer of mango
Mexico City (Agenzia Fides) - Mango, tropical fruit that grows in Latin America, was without doubt one of the favourite fruit of Pope John Paul II, who tasted it for the first time during his trip to Mexico. Considering how much he liked it, in each of his following pastoral visits, those in charge of hospitality always prepared for the Pope fresh and different dishes using this fruit. Fr. Daniel Villalobos, who was one of the people closest to Cardinal Corripio Ahumada, Archbishop Primate of Mexico, witnessed not only how much the Holy Father John Paul II enjoyed this tropical fruit, but the concern of the Archbishop, who periodically sent to Rome, some boxes of mangos so there were always some on the Pope`s table
"Even when the Holy Father was already very sick - Fr. Villalobos said in a statement sent to Fides by the Archdiocese of Mexico on the occasion of the forthcoming beatification of John Paul II - Cardinal Corripio, through a friend, sent him mangos. To check that His Holiness had received them, he asked the present Cardinal Leonardo Sandri for information, who had been nuncio in Mexico, and at that time was Deputy Secretary of State. "In Mexico there are some popular sayings that connect Pope John Paul II with two states of Mexico: Oaxaca and Veracruz, and the mangos produced in their own land were sent to the Pope at the Vatican. (EC) (Agenzia Fides 28/04/2011)
Mangos from Sind, Pakistan, where Columbans work
Filipinos have a great love for Blessed John Paul II. I wonder why they let the Mexicans supply him with this delicious fruit?! The mango is indigenous to the Indian sub-continent and I presume it reached the Philippines before it did Mexico.
The Church in the Philippines was initially part of the Diocese/Archdiocese of Mexico.
