'By your endurance you will gain your souls.' Sunday Reflections, 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Nave of the Archbasilica of St John Lateran [Wikipedia]

The Cathedral of Rome, the 'Mother of all Churches'

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel Luke 21:5-19 (NewRevised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition) 

When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, Jesus said,  ‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’

They asked him, ‘Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?’ And he said, ‘Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and, “The time is near!” Do not go after them.

‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.’ Then he said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.

‘But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defence in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.

Earthquake destroys Basilica of St Benedict on 30 October 2016

Norcia (or Nursia) is the place where St Benedict was born c.480

This Sunday falls between two celebrations of church buildings in Rome, the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica on 9 November and the Optional Memorial of the Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul on 18 November. When the former falls on a Sunday its celebration takes precedence over the Sunday. The official name of the Lateran Basicilica is the Archbasilica of the Most Holy Saviour and of Saints John the Baptist and the Evangelist and is the Cathedral of the Diocese of Rome.

In the gospel Jesus speaks of the future destruction of the Temple where he had worshipped all his life, where he had been presented to the Father as an infant by Mary and Joseph, from which he threw the moneylenders because they were turning it into a market.

On 30 October the Basilica of St Benedict in his birthplace Norcia in Italy was destroyed in seconds by a powerful earthquake as if fulfilling the words of Jesus today, all will be thrown down.

Destroyed Basilica of St Benedict [Source:The Monks of Norcia]

In today's gospel Jesus warns us of wars and insurrections . . . great earthquakes . . . famine and plagues . . . You will be hated by all because of my name.

We are seeing all of these things in our time. They can lead us to lose hope - if we forget the closing words of Jesus in today's gospel: But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.

On 4 October this year Hurricane Matthew caused great destruction in southwestern Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. But the Sunday Examiner, the weekly newspaper of the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong carried the following report in its issue for 30 October.

Port-au-Prince. Survivors of Hurricane Matthew put on their Sunday finest as they picked their way through rubble and downed power lines to gather in ruined churches on October 9, just three days after the devastating storm ravaged their homes. 

Photographs posted on news websites show pews in the open air, with the rubble from the hurricane piled to one side, as a neatly clad congregation in suits and ties, smart slacks and dresses made a colourful scene in what had once been churches with roofs.

Mass celebrated in Qaraqosh, Iraq, after its recent liberation

Archbishop Youhanna Boutros Moshe is the Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Mosul

In 2104 Christians were driven out of Mosul and nearby cities in Iraq by ISIS, also known as Daesh. For the first time in nearly 2,000 years Mass could not be celebrated in the area. But on Sunday 30 October Mass was celebrated again in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Qaraqosh, near Mosul.

A church building is where Christians gather to celebrate the Eucharist, the Holy Mass, where they meet and receive the Risen Lord. Down the centuries Christian communities have built churches that are beautiful in order to draw people into the beauty and life of the Blessed Trinity. And even if the building is destroyed by an earthquake as in Norcia, by a hurricane as in southwestern Haiti, or by persecution  as in Qaraqosh, Iraq, the Lord is still present to and among the Christian community, especially when believers come together on Sunday, as Jesus Christ has asked us to do, to celebrate his life, death and Resurrection, and our hope in eternal life, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

By your endurance you will gain your souls.

Grave of Bishop Edward Galvin

St Columban's, Dalgan Park, Ireland

'But the spiritual edifice is, I think, intact.'

Since posting this week's Sunday Reflections I received the November 2016 issue of Far East, the magazine of the Columbans in Ireland and Britain, which has the following story that is connected so much with this Sunday's gospel.

After being expelled from China, September 1952

In the January/February 2006 issue of Far East, Fr Dan Fitzgerald recalled the following of Bishop Edward Galvin (Co-founder of the Columbans with Fr John Blowick):

Bishop Galvin was my bishop in China for six years. Three of us Columban priests arrived in Hanyang in central Chine in July 1946. We were the first Irish priests to arrive there after the war had ended in 1945.

The man we met on that July day looked older and more worn than his 64 years would suggest. He didn't look like a bishop either. He was in an old crumpled cotton Chinese shirt and pants, with perspiration running down his face and chest. Only for the plain episcopal ring he had on his finger, he might have been the gate-man. There was something about him that suggested one who had lived through a lot, had suffered and had survived.

His exile for Christ ended in September 1952. As he arrived in Hong Kong he said, They have taken our churches, schools, hospital and mission compounds, but the spiritual edifice is, I think, intact. I blessed the compound and the cathedral, the whole diocese, its Sisters, priests and people. I put then under the protection of Our Lord and His Blessed Mother, and of St Columban, the patron of the diocese and the cathedral. It was all I could do, but it was enough.

Fr Daniel Fitzgerald

(1916 - 2016)

Antiphona ad Communionem   

Communion Antiphon  Mark 11:23-24

Amen dico vobis, quidquid orantes petitis, 

Amen, I say to you: whatever you ask in prayer,

credite quia accipientis, et fiet vobis, [dicit Dominus]. 

believe that you will receive, and it shall be given to you, [says the Lord]. 

'Concessions on abortion are no cause for rejoicing' - Bishop Robert Vasa

The Adoration of the Shepherds, El Greco

When I was young and still living in Ireland many were advocating a change in the law that labelled children born outside of marriage as 'illegitimate'. Some coined the slogan 'There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents'. The law was eventually changed.

Those advocating the change rightly pointed out that children should not be punished or stigmatized because of the sins or their parents. Nobody would advocate going back to the old days on this particular issue.

But at a more basic level many do want to regress to the past in a more radical way. They want to prevent 'unwanted' children from being born. Even in the old days nobody advocated that 'illegitimate' children should be killed. Not only are many advocating that 'unwanted' children should not be born, but they are advocating that the mother has the 'right' to have her pre-born child killed.

Bishop Robert Vasa of Baker, Oregon, USA, faces this in his weekly column in Catholic Sentinel, the Catholic weekly in the state of Oregon, dated 21 January. He writes in the context of the ongoing debate in the USA about the Health Care Reform Bill. Here is Bishop Vasa's article. I have highlighted some parts of it and made some [comments].

Concessions on abortion are no cause for rejoicing

By Bishop Robert Vasa

BEND — There has been a bit of jubilation over the claim that the Health Care Reform Bill would not use federal dollars to pay for abortion except in those very rare cases of a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when the life of the mother is in danger. Whether abortion funding will be limited to these remains to be seen. While including restrictions on federal funding for abortion except in these cases sounds very much like a Pro-Life victory it is important for us to recognize that it is not a victory at all. In truth, these exceptions are concessions which deserve no rejoicing at all. I am a realist and I recognize that the concession of these more difficult situations may be deemed necessary in order to gain a law which protects at least some of the pre-born community but such a concession is no cause for rejoicing.

Consider the cases of the following women. Woman A is with child, she is married but she and her husband find the timing for the child to be inconvenient. Woman B is with child, she is not married and she and her boyfriend never intended the child. Woman C is with child and the child’s father is also the child’s grandfather. Woman D is with child and the child’s father is her rapist. Woman E is with child and she is very ill with a pregnancy-related illness. Woman F is with child and her husband has unexpectedly become critically ill.

Which of these children can we sacrifice on the altar of political expediency?

It is common and expected to focus on the plight and anxiety of the women in these cases and the situations are undeniably heart-rending. The key question, however, is: “How are these children different from one another?” All of these children, without exception and in all that essentially matters, are identical. Each of these children is a human being. Each of these children is vulnerable. Each of these children is entirely dependent. Each of these children is completely innocent. Each of these children is beloved of God. Each of these children, without exception, possesses a human dignity. Each of these children has a God-given right to live. Each of these children has a soul. Each of these children is an entirely unique and irreplaceable member of the human family. The external circumstances under which these children were conceived certainly vary but those circumstances do not, in any way, touch the dignity or worth of the child. No one of these children should be viewed or treated any differently from any other of them. There is no justifiable reason to view the children conceived by rape or incest as somehow less worthy of protection than any other child. The Church, with its preferential option for the poor, cannot ever give even the slightest appearance of having abandoned or neglected these poorest of the poor.

The late Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou-Hwan of Korea with a young friend. The cardinal's paternal grandparents were sentenced to death during a persecution in Korea. His grandfather was killed but the persecutors spared his grandmother because she was pregnant. The child in her womb was the Cardinal's father.

It may be politically expedient and even necessary to recognize that we may not be able to exclude rape, incest or the life of the mother from an insurance plan but we must never concede these or broker a deal with the children in these situations as the pawns. I am not suggesting that we adopt an all or nothing modality, only that we never rejoice over sacrificing one to save more. It is especially important that we never glibly dismiss the children with less than desirable beginnings or still worse, rejoice that we had to sacrifice only these unfortunates in order to save others. The politically expedient decision to carve out these exceptions belies the foundation of our Pro-Life stand. We are not Pro-Life because the circumstances surrounding a child’s conception are voluntary or societally acceptable. We are Pro-Life because every child has a right to life and the circumstances of his or her conception are irrelevant. [When people worked to get rid of the category of 'illegitimate children' they did not make any exceptions, recognising the dignity of each child.]

I want to repeat that: In terms of a child’s right to life, the circumstances of his or her conception are irrelevant!

This in no way implies that the woman’s distress or confusion are irrelevant in themselves. They are only irrelevant in that they in no way affect the humanity of the child.

There is also a danger in seeming to accept the exceptions. When these exceptions are incorporated into law, seemingly with ecclesial approval, then the impression is given that a woman’s individual circumstances determine whether abortion is morally justifiable or not. Each woman is then, in effect, given permission to determine if her circumstances are difficult enough to justify an abortion because abortion then is focused on the woman’s circumstances rather than on the individuality and personal right to life of her child. The circumstances of rape, incest and life of the mother are certainly factors which tend to cloud the ability to see and recognize the child as a unique “other” but these circumstances change nothing about that unique otherness of the child.

Baby born after Haiti earthquake

There is an ongoing educational initiative known as “No child left behind.” This same commitment certainly under girds the thoughts and efforts of all in the Pro-Life Community. Abortion is a tremendous source of and cause for extreme grief in our country. Recent efforts to improve the nature of health care in the United States shows a certain degree of appropriate concern for the underserved, the uninsured and those with compromised health. The pre-born children in every one of the examples I cited above need and deserve good pre-natal care. It is unconscionable that some of them are deemed worthy of health care while others of them, due solely to a circumstance entirely beyond their control, should be marked for death. Insult is added to injury when we consider that these left behind children are not only marked for death but marked for death at government, translated our, expense. [In what way is the policy of using state money to kill children different from that of the Third Reich where the taxes of the German people were used to exterminate Jews and other 'undesirable'? One difference is that the scale of killing is far worse in the USA and in some other countries that it was under Hitler. Close to 50,000,000 pre-born Americans have been legally killed since Roe v Wade in 1973, many of them during the process of birth.]

Anyone who rejoices that a health care bill may be achieved and that its achievement may only cost the lives of the pre-born children conceived in rape or incest fails to properly value human life. I hope that some good can come from this massive health care reform work but I have great reservations for a number of reasons the major of which is that, at its very foundation, the effort fails to take full account of human worth and dignity. It was intended to cover every abortion as a right and Pro-Life efforts got that reduced but the lack of reverence for life has not changed. Any law which excludes, intentionally leaves behind or, God forbid, pays for the killing of any child, is not a cause for rejoicing.

Pediatrician-sister of Cardinal Arns of Brazil dies in Haiti earthquake

Dr Zilda Arns Neumann

Zilda Arns, the 75-year-old sister of  Paulo Evaristo Cardinal Arns OFM, retired Archbishop of São Paulo, Brazil, was one of the victims of last Tuesday's earthquake in Haiti. She was the founder of International Pastoral da Criança (Pastoral of the Child).

Zenit reports the death of the doctor:

Nobel Nominee Killed in Haiti

Zilda Arns, an Expert in Reducing Infant Mortality

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, JAN. 14, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Zilda Arns, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and founder of the International Pastoral da Criança, was killed Tuesday in the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti.

The 75-year-old Brazilian pediatrician and aid worker was killed while walking the streets of Port-au-Prince alongside two soldiers. She was in Haiti studying the implementation of her program -- which is one of the world’s most successful at reducing infant mortality -- on the island.

Born to German immigrants, Arns was the 12th of 13 children. Her brother, Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, retired archbishop of São Paulo, Brazil, was one of five siblings who had priestly or religious vocations.

In a note, Cardinal Arns stated, "I received with sorrow the news that my very dear sister has suffered with the good people of Haiti the tragic effects of the earthquake."

He continued: "May God in his mercy receive in heaven those who on earth fought for children and the defenseless. It is not the moment to lose hope."

A mother of five and a widow since 1978, Arns dedicated her life to Christian charity. In 1983, shortly after she lost her husband, she started the pastoral care of children program at the request of the Brazilian bishops' conference.

The program has one of the greatest success rates worldwide in reducing infant mortality rates. It currently has some 261,000 volunteers in Brazil (the majority women), who take care of more than 1.8 million children (from birth to 6 years of age), and 95,000 pregnant women, in more than 42,000 communities and 4,066 municipalities.

In a previous interview with ZENIT, Arns explained that the program teaches families "very simple things -- they are generally people with very little education -- but indispensable for the children's health: nutrition of pregnant mothers, breast feeding, oral hydration, vaccinations."

She continued: "We take care of the education of 1.6 million children from birth to 6 years of age. Moreover, every year we teach 32,000 adults, almost always mothers, to read and write."

Legacy

Due to the program's success, representatives from other countries visited Brazil to learn about its methods in order to develop a similar model for their own homelands. The International Pastoral da Criança network now includes 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean that have implemented the program. (The website of the International Pastoral da Criança notes that the Philippines is one of the countries that has introduced a smiliar programme).

She had been visiting Haiti to discuss plans about implementing the program in the poor communities there.

Arns also helped the bishops' conference develop a pastoral program for AIDS victims, which currently cares for 100,000 patients, supported by 12,000 volunteers from 579 municipalities in 141 dioceses of 25 Brazilian states.

In response to Tuesday's tragedy, the conference sent its secretary-general, Bishop Dimas Lara Barbosa, to Port-au-Prince.

In 1997, Arns received the Humanitarian of the Year prize from the Lions Club International. She was honored by Rotary International with the "Paul Harris" medal in 2001. The following year she was chosen by the Pan American Health Organization for the "Public Health Hero of the Americas" prize.

Dr Zilda Arns Neumann

May this wonderful woman, whom I had never heard of until now, rest in peace and may her work for mothers and children flourish.

Desperate situation in Haiti

'Bottlenecks and infrastructure damage have been holding up aid efforts in Haiti, where a devastating earthquake has left as many as 45,000-50,000 dead' reports the BBC about the earthquake in Haiti last Tuesday.

The overwhelming tragedy wrought by the few brief seconds of the earthquake’s duration is poignantly summarised by a photo taken in the rubble of the cathedral in Port-au-Prince: Jesus hangs on the Cross in the midst of his people. (H/T to Fr Tim Finigan).

I have often wondered how priests and religious seem to survive disasters such as this, though there are often individual casualties. But Father Finigan shows that it is otherwise in Haiti, qhoting Papal Nuncio Archbishop Bernardito Auza:

I have just returned this morning. I found priests and nuns in the streets, without homes. The Rector of the seminary survived, as did the Dean of Studies, but the seminarians are under the rubble. Everywhere, you can hear cries from under the rubble. The CIFOR - Institute of Studies for the Men and Women Religious - has collapsed with the students inside, participating in a conference. The nunciature building has withstood the earthquake, without any injuries, but we are all amazed! So many things are broken, including the Tabernacle, but we are more fortunate than others. Many family members of the staff were killed, their homes destroyed. Everyone is calling for help. We will have problems of water and food before long. We cannot enter or stay inside the house much, as the earth continues to shake, so we are camped in the garden.

Father Finigan further quotes Mgr John Dale, National Director of Missio for England and Wales:

Haiti’s loss at the moment is made even more difficult because so many clergy, Religious and seminarians are amongst the dead and so cannot give the pastoral care that is so urgently needed at this time.


Missio has always supported the Church in Haiti, helping it to grow and develop in its own distinctive way. We will remain in the country, helping it to rebuild and find hope. Missio is not an emergency aid organisation, but just as we have been present for the Haitians in the past, we will be there for their future as they try to reconstruct their homes and lives. In the present, the people of Haiti are in our thoughts and prayers. We pray for those who died and may those who survived the earthquake be given all the comfort, strength and help that they need.

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, Port-au-Prince, after the earthquake

The Cathedral in 2007

Among the countless victims of the earthquake in Haiti on 12 January was Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot who died instantly when he fell off a balcony when the quake struck.

Pope Benedict with Archbishop Miot of Port-au-Prince

UN Headquarters, Port-au-Prince, in which many died

The Vatican-based Agenzia Fides carries a report that quotes the Papal Nuncio to Haiti, Archbishop Bernardito Auza, extensively. (I tried to copy and past the report but for some reason each time I attempted this Internet Explore simply closed down.

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I phoned the CICM missionaries (also known as the Scheut Missionaries and, in the USA, Missionhurst) here in the Philippines this morning to ask if their missionaries in Haiti were safe. A message they received yesterday from their Superior General said there were no reports of any casualties. but their headquarters in Port-au-Prince were destroyed.

In the May-June 2007 issue of Misyon, which I edit for the Columbans in the Philippines, we carreid an article, Witnessing to Hope in Haiti, by two young Filipino priests, Fr Andrew Labatoria CICM from Zarraga, Iloilo, and Fr Edito Casipong CICM of Victorias City, Negros Occidental. We're in the process of putting all our back issues online but haven't reached that issue yet. Please remember them in your prayers.