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 Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini. Show all posts
GospelMark 9:30-37(English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
Jesus and his disciples went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know,for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.”But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.
And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?”But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.”And he took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in his arms, he said to them,“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.”
Bishop Perry is an auxiliary bishop emeritus of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
From March 2020 people in most parts of the world were not able to take part in Mass in church on Sundays or weekdays while the Covid pandemic lasted. Parish priests were celebrating Mass in empty churches. Funeral Masses here in Ireland were open only to the immediate families of the deceased during the strict lockdown periods.
Many became used to online Masses, which were a great comfort to people and still are for many who cannot attend Mass in person because of illness or age. But have we come to see this as a normal way of participating in the Holy Sacrifice?
Families were communicating by Zoom, Facebook and the like, and these were truly a blessing in the situation we were going through. But this is not the same as meeting in person. (I recently heard of a priest who quipped that in the days of lockdown it was all 'gloom and Zoom'!)
In the video above Bishop Perry is talking about Sunday Mass in the context of the family. A number of times he says husbands and fathers or husband and father emphasising that in God's plan a man is meant to be a husband before he becomes a father. The same holds for a woman. She is meant to be a wife before she becomes a mother. Marriage is the primary vocation of a couple. They are first called by God to be spouses. As spouses they are then, in most cases, called to be parents. The Church honours St Joseph above all as the Husband of Mary. It was as such that in a very real sense he fulfilled the role of being a father to Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary.
Bishop Perry speaks of the importance of the husband/father leading the family by taking part in Sunday Mass. Though I have memories of my mother taking me to Mass when I was a young child, my abiding memories are of my father taking me to Sunday Mass - my mother would be taking care of my baby brother and went to a later Mass - and seeing him attend Mass every weekday morning before preparing my mother's breakfast and then going off to work.
Archbishop Moshe is now the Archbishop Emeritus of the Syrian Catholic Archeparchy of Mosul.
We want to be Christ's witnesses here. Words of Archbishop Youhanna Boutros Moshe of Mosul. He belongs to the Syrian Catholic Church, one of the Eastern churches in full communion with Rome.
Mass had been celebrated in Qaraqosh without break since the early days of Christianity until ISIS drove out its Christians - the majority in the town - in 2014. ISIS gave Christians three options: pay a tax, convert to Islam or be executed.
When churches were closed because of the pandemic none of us were faced with those choices.
Pope Francis visited Qaraqosh on 7 March 2021. Here is part of his address to the people there in the Church of the Immaculate Conception.
Our gathering here today shows that terrorism and death never have the last word. The last word belongs to God and to his Son, the conqueror of sin and death. Even amid the ravages of terrorism and war, we can see, with the eyes of faith, the triumph of life over death. You have before you the example of your fathers and mothers in faith, who worshipped and praised God in this place. They persevered with unwavering hope along their earthly journey, trusting in God who never disappoints and who constantly sustains us by his grace.
Now that we have returned to normality, maybe we can reflect on what it means to us to take part in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, particularly in Sunday Mass, whether we attend it on Saturday evening or on Sunday itself. We have before us the example of our fathers and mothers in faith. In the words of Bishop Perry, Sunday is the day when husbands and fathers can lead their families to the Lord.
Visit of Pope Francis to Iraq, 5-8 March 2021
Traditional Latin Mass
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 09-22-2022 if necessary).
'But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins'—he then said to the paralytic—'Rise, take up your bed and go home' (Matthew 9:6; Gospel).
GospelMatthew 21:28:32 (English Standard Version
Anglicised, India)
Jesus
said to the chief priests and elders of the people:
“What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the
first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’And he answered, ‘I will not’, but afterwards
he changed his mind and went.And he went to the other son and said the same. And he
answered, ‘I go, sir’, but did not go.Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the
prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.For John came to you in the way of
righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors
and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not
afterwards change your minds and believe him.
Columban Fr Ray Collier recalls that when he was eight or nine the parish priest of Clogherhead, County Louth, Ireland, came to the school in
October 1950 and announced to the assembled pupils and teachers the death in
Korea of Fr Anthony Collier. Earlier that year the young Ray had been serving
his uncle’s Mass daily. Father Tony was a Columban priest who went to Korea in
1939 and spent the World War II years in Korea under house arrest by the
Japanese who had occupied that country since 1910. Father Ray remembered his
uncle as easy-going and who delighted in making films of his family, unknown to
them, with his cine-camera, something rare at the time. He recalled too that
before he returned to Korea in the early summer of 1950 Father Tony told the
family that North Korea would probably invade the South.
This they did on Sunday morning 25
June, beginning a war that ended on 27 July 1953 with the signing of the Korean
Armistice Agreement.
After Sunday Mass on the morning of the invasion Fr Collier, who
was parish priest of Suyangno, Chunchon city, met with Monsignor Thomas
Quinlan, the Prelate of the Prefecture Apostolic of Chunchon and Fr Frank
Canavan. Father Tony turned down the offer of an American officer to take the
priests to safety saying, ‘I want to be with my parishioners’. Two days later
North Korean soldiers arrested him and Gabriel Kim, a parish catechist. They
tied them together, shot them and left, thinking both were dead. But Gabriel
survived and reported Father Tony’s death to the Columbans. The Clogherhead
priest was the first foreigner to die in the Korean War.
Six other Columbans were to die within
months as a result of the Korean War. They were Monsignor Patrick Brennan, Frs James Maginn, Patrick Reilly, Thomas
Cusack, John O’Brien Francis Canavan. All seven are included in a list of 84
martyrs of the 20th century, Korean and foreign, proposed for
beatification in a process initiated by the bishops of Korea in 2013.
You can find information about each of the seven here.
I see something of today's Gospel in the story of Fr Tony Collier. Like the two sons he made a decision. One of those, after telling his father that he would work in the vineyard, decided not to. The other, after telling his father that he wouldn't, decided that he would. The people listening to the story Jesus told understood very clearly which of them was doing their father's will.
Father Tony, who spent much of World War II as a prisoner of the Japanese in Korea, went back after a vacation in Ireland in 1950 knowing that war was probably imminent.
His parish was near the border with North Korea. Despite the danger he was in and despite the fact that he was offered a way of escaping to safety he chose to stay with his people, well aware that his life was in danger.
The alternative Communion Antiphon sums up Father Tony Collier's life: By this we came to know the love of God: that Christ laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for one another (1 John 3:16).
The Lord’s Prayer in Korean
Sung by
Rosa Jin Choi to a Korean folk melody
Traditional Latin Mass
Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost
The Complete Mass in Latin and English ishere. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 10-01-2023 if necessary).
Behold, the
wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are
crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the
ears of the Lord of hosts (James 5:4; Second Reading).
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia,
England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)
GospelMark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48(English Standard Version
Anglicised: India)
John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in
your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not
following us.”But Jesus said, “Do not stop
him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterwards
to speak evil of me.For the one who is not against us is for us.For truly, I say to you, whoever gives
you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose
his reward.
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in
me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round
his neck and he were thrown into the sea.And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it
off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go
to hell, to the unquenchable fire.
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in
me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round
his neck and he were thrown into the sea.And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it
off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go
to hell, to the unquenchable fire.
“And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better
for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be
thrown into hell,‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not
quenched.’”
In August
1982, after a year’s study in Toronto and before three months of Clinical
Pastoral Education in Minneapolis, I supplied in a number of parishes for short
periods in the Diocese of Boise, which covers the whole of the state of Idaho
in the western USA. One of my purposes for this was to visit the Abbey of Our Lady of the
Holy Trinity, Huntsville, Utah, where I had spent ten days or so in
August 1970. There I had met some of the monks who were to be part of the community that would open the first Trappist foundation in the Philippines, in Guimaras
island, now Our Lady of the Philippines Trappist Monastery.
I spent a
week in one parish where the parish priest was from India, there were
reservations of two different Indigenous American tribes, many
Spanish-speaking immigrants working on farms in the area. The majority of the
people in the town proper were Mormons. The local newspaper carried
photos of young Mormons from the area going on mission to other countries.
Just after lunch one day the doorbell rang. A young
woman asked me to go to the hospital where an old woman, a Catholic and a
relative of hers, had been in a coma for a long time, and was dying. I
immediately went to the hospital and, to my surprise, the patient was fully
awake and participated joyfully in the Last Sacraments, including Holy Communion, as
I had brought the Blessed Sacrament with me. I learned later that she died
about twenty minutes after I left.
The young woman who had asked me to go to the
hospital was a Mormon. I was able to thank her later.
When I was a child we lived in a street of terraced
houses in Dublin where no one had a telephone. One time one of our neighbours,
Jem Norris, got gravely ill in the middle of the night. Charlie Brooks who
lived across the street went for the priest, whose house was about a kilometre
away. (The Norris house is the one on the far left above. Ours was the one on the right.)
Charlie was a Protestant.
I have posted in Sunday Reflections before
about a Mass in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Germany, shortly after it was
liberated in 1945. The account, published in 2004 in The Daily Telegraph (London) but no longer online, is by James Molyneaux (1920 -2015), then a young officer in the Royal Air Force and later
leader of the Ulster Unionist Party in Northern Ireland. He wrote:
The most
moving experience came on the second morning as I was walking from what had
been the luxury SS barracks which our troops had transformed into a hospital.
My attention was drawn to two packing cases covered by a worn red curtain. A
young Polish priest was clinging to this makeshift altar with one hand, while
celebrating Mass. Between his feet lay the body of another priest who probably
died during the night. No one had had the energy to move the body.
I had no difficulty in following the old Latin
Mass, having been educated at St James's Roman Catholic School in County
Antrim, and, although an Anglican, I had gained a working knowledge of all the
rituals. Still supporting himself against the altar, the young priest did his
best to distribute the consecrated elements [Holy Communion]. Some recipients were able to stumble over
the rough, scrubby heathland. Others crawled forward to receive the tokens [Sacred
Hosts, the Body of Christ] and then crawled back to share them with
others unable to move. Some almost certainly passed on to another - probably
better - world before sunset. Whatever one's race or religion one can only be uplifted
and impressed by that truly remarkable proof of the ultimate triumph of good
over evil.
When I first
read this article I was deeply moved in a number of ways. I was surprised to
discover that the author had gone to a Catholic school in a community where, at
least since the latter 1800s, there has been a deep divide between Catholics
and Protestants, for historical reasons that are not entirely theological. But
here was an Anglican from that background giving a powerful testimony to the
Mass as the Holy Sacrifice. And he noticed how those who were barely able to
crawl shared the Body of Christ with those who couldn't move at all.
I find in the three stories above an illustration
of the response of Jesus to the complaint of St John, Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we
tried to stop him, because he was not following us.Jesus says,For the one who is not against us is for us.For truly, I say to you, whoever gives
you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose
his reward.
St John's complaint reflects that of Joshua to Moses in the First Reading. the response of Jesus reflects that of
Moses: Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them! (Numbers 11:29).
Memorial Stone, Bergen
Near the ramps where prisoners for Belsen were unloaded from goods [freight] trains. [Wikimedia]
James Molyneaux's article also illustrates the reality of hell that Jesus
speaks about today. He writes:
On arrival at Tactical Headquarters,
we had been briefed on the discovery of the Belsen prison camp nearby. In
company with our RAF medical unit and the two 2nd Army Field hospitals, we wasted
no time. Briefed though we were, the shock excelled all the horrors of the
battles of the 12 months since Normandy.
As we passed through the camp gates,
the Royal Military Police requested us to drive very slowly to avoid the
numerous disoriented prisoners. We were handed adhesive tape to put over the
vehicle horns in order to prevent them going off accidentally, lest the shock
would cause still more deaths. [This
little detail is surely telling.]
The British liberators were staggered
and shocked by the inhuman behaviour of some of the former guards, who
continued to abuse and torment prisoners nearing death when they assumed we
were looking the other way. I confess that on such occasions I may have
breached the Geneva Convention to prevent further ill treatment of helpless
victims. Their behaviour after we had arrived contradicted the excuse that the
SS had forced them to carry out orders. Our new orders to them were ‘Stop
acting like savages’.
The 'Thousand Year Reich' of Hitler
was in ruins after twelve years, and millions dead all over the world. These
deaths, like countless deaths since, were caused by persons who chose evil over
good. Each choice we make for sin is not at the level of choosing the evil of
Belsen but it moves us towards that. Other dictators have tried their hand at
their own version of Hitler's distorted vision and people have gone along with
them.
Each of us likes to have power. We
may not be conscious of this and in many instances there's no sin at all. I
remember once seeing in a Catholic magazine a
cartoon of people assembled for Mass where you were asked to
'spot the errors'. One was the proverbial 'little old lady' kneeling in the
middle of a pew instead of blocking it at one end. There are times, especially
as I grow older, when I can see the 'little old lady' in myself, trying to
subtly ensure that things are done my way. Indeed, in the parish in Idaho where
that kind young Mormon woman asked me to go to the dying elderly woman, the
housekeeper asked me what time I'd like to have dinner at each day. I told her
- but she always served it thirty minutes earlier.
But if I am a spouse, a parent, a
teacher, a boss, a priest who doesn't listen to the other, who rules my little
domain with a heavy hand, the words of Jesus are directed at me.
What is the 'hand', the 'foot', the
'eye' that causes me to sin, especially in the use of power?
Antiphona ad Communionem
Communion antiphon Cf Pas 118[119]:49-50
Memento etiam verbi tui servo tuo, Domine,
Remember your word to your servant, O Lord,
in quo mihi spem dedisti,
in which you have given me hope.
haec me consolata est in humilitate mea,
This is my comfort when I am brought low.
Choir of St Benedict's Monastery, São Paulo, Brazil
Traditional LaCtin Mass (TLM)
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 9-26-2021 if necessary).
Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond.
September
Song
Singer:
Ella Fitzgerald; pianist: Paul Smith
Lyrics
by Maxwell Anderson, music by Kurt Weill
Our span is seventy years or eighty for those who are
strong (Psalm 90 [89]:10, Grail translation).
Christ
Healing the Paralytic
