'If ever you take your neighbour's cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down.' Sunday Reflections, 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

 

The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix)

Van Gogh [Web Gallery of Art]

You shall love your neighbour as yourself (Mt 22:39; Gospel).

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Matthew 22:34-40 (English Standard Version Anglicised, India)

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan 

Archbishop of Seoul (1922 - 2009)

Earlier this year the Archdiocese of Seoul formally opened the cause for the beatification of Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan. Many of my Columban confreres in Korea knew him well. He inspired many priests in the Philippines by being a great pastor. I have used the material here before but have no hesitation about using it again.

This time nine years ago I visited Korea to attend the ordination to the priesthood on 1 November of Fr Lee Jehoon Augustine, a Columban who spent two years working in the Manila area as part of his preparation for the priesthood. He is now serving in Myanmar.

While there I went with two Columban priests, Fr Liam O'Keeffe, a classmate from County Clare who returned to Ireland last year, Fr Con Murphy from County Cork, who came back to Ireland in 2018 after 57 years in Korea, and a woman named Pia to visit the graves of five Columbans in a cemetery owned by the Archdiocese of Seoul, but outside both the city and the archdiocese.  One of the five Columbans buried there, Fr Mortimer Kelly from Gort, County Galway, was a classmate of Father Liam and myself. Pia had known Fr John Nyhan, from Kilkenny, Ireland, another of the five, since her childhood.

The cemetery is on a hillside, as is the Korean custom. A little higher on the hill where my companions are buried is the grave of Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan, a man who was revered in Korea, not only by Catholics but by nearly all South Koreans.

While we were there Father Con told me of a homily that Cardinal Kim once preached at a Mass in a Catholic university. He took out two daily newspapers and began to speak in such a quiet voice that those present had to strain forward and 'eavesdrop'. Cardinal Kim was flipping over the pages of both newspapers and some were thinking he was unprepared. Then he came to a particular story about young women working on the railways who collected the fares of last-minute passengers and helped 'push' people into trains at rush hour.

The report in both papers was about accusations by higher authorities that some of these young women were perhaps pocketing some of the fares. Cardinal Kim's voice grew stronger as he spoke about this. Then he began to remind the students of how privileged they were, getting higher education and an opportunity to find better jobs than the young women working for the rail company who were at the bottom of the heap.

Cardinal Kim, who was noted for his love for the poor and who knew many poor people personally, now speaking in a very strong voice, asked the students if they were going to treat others with the contempt that some showed towards the young women in a menial job or if they were going to use their professional qualifications in the service of others.

Cardinal Kim

In that homily the late Archbishop of Seoul was bringing together the two Great Commandments that Jesus gives us in today's gospel and between which there is no conflict. In the First Reading, to which the Gospel is linked by theme, God reminds the Hebrew people of how they are to treat those who are poor or different - aliens, widows, orphans. If ever you take your neighbour's cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down (Exodus 22:26; First Reading), That cloak was what a poor person slept in.

In other words, Jesus is asking us to see each person through his eyes. GK Chesterton in his biography of St Francis of Assisi, if my memory is correct, has a wonderful image of a huge crowd looking up at God on a balcony, rather as in St Peter's Square when the Pope is on the balcony there or at his window for the Sunday Angelus. However, Chesterton didn't see himself among the crowd but with God on the balcony, looking down on the people and seeing them as God sees them.

Cardinal Kim was doing something similar. He was looking at both the university students and the railway workers through the eyes of God. Rank means nothing to God as he looks on his children. As Psalm 149 so beautifully expresses it, God takes delight in his people [Grail translation].

Frank Duff, Founder of the Legion of Mary

7 June 1889 – 7 November 1980 [Photo]

On pages 296-297 the Handbook of the Legion of Mary, nearly all of which was written by its founder the Servant of God Frank Duff, quotes from Chesterton's biography of St Francis. St Francis only saw the image of God multiplied but never monotonous. To him a man was always a man, and did not disappear in a dense crowd any more than in a desert. He honoured all men; that is he not only loved but respected them all. What gave him his extraordinary personal power was this: that from the Pope to the beggar, from the Sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers crawling out of the wood, there was never a man who looked into those brown, burning eyes without being certain that Francis Bernardone was really interested in him, in his inner individual life from the cradle to the grave; that he himself was valued and taken seriously.

This is how members of the Legion of Mary, which is strong in Korea, are told to look upon each person they meet, indeed to see them higher than themselves. Fr Bede McGregor OP, former Spiritual Director of the Concilium, the central body of the Legion of Mary in Dublin, tells how Frank Duff himself lived that. When he was postulator of the cause for the beatification of Frank Duff he interviewed a man who lived in the Morning Star Hostel, run by the Legion of Mary in Dublin for men who are down on their luck. Father Bede explained tp the man that he was seeking testimonies for the Vatican and needed him to swear on the Bible that anything he said concerning Frank was true. He added that the man was an alcoholic and had lived a tragic life. The man agreed and then he said these beautiful words: Frank Duff was the only man who ever looked up to me. 

The Legion was born in the slums of Dublin in 1921 and to this day is involved to a large degree in serving people who have little or nothing.

God is constantly blessing the Church and the world through persons who embody the Gospel in their lives. I know from my friends in Korea in particular that Cardinal Kim embodied the Two Great Commandments; he was an embodiment of what each of us is called to be in virtue of our baptism in the different situations in which we find ourselves.

Cardinal Kim's grave 

평화의 기도 The Prayer of St Francis (in Korean)

이승희 SeungHee Lee Composer

▫서울가톨릭싱어즈 Seoul Catholic Singers ▫

지휘 유근창 Conductor Simon, Geun-Chang Riu ▫

반주 남효주 Pianist Angela, Hyo-Ju Nam ▫

2019. 6. 29 @신천동 성당 SinCheon-Dong Church

Traditional Latin Mass

Feast of the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 10-29-2023 if necessary).

Epistle: Colossian 1:12-20. Gospel: John 18:33-37.

Christ Before Pilate

Mihály Munkácsy [Web Gallery of Art]

Pilate entered the praetorium again and called Jesus, and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” (John 18:33; Gospel)

Columban Fr Tony Collier: the first foreigner to die in the Korean War. Sunday Reflections, 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Fr Anthony Collier

20 June 1913 - 27 June 1950

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Matthew 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.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Monsignor Patrick Brennan

Prefect of Kwangju (now Archdiocese of Gwangju)

13 March 1901 – 24 September 1950

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.

Columban Martyrs of Korea

[Source]

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 is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 10-01-2023 if necessary).

Epistle: 1 Corinthians 1:4-8. Gospel: Matthew 9:1-8.

Christ Healing the Paralytic

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini [Web Gallery of Art]

“Rise, take up your bed and go home.” And he rose and went home (Matthew 9:6-7; Gospel). 

Death of another Columban priest

 

Fr Owen Doyle

28 June 1934 - 13 April 2022

Another Columban priest died peacefully last Sunday afternoon, Fr Owen Doyle. He spent most of his life as a priest in Korea. Please remember him in your prayers.

Father Owen's obituary is here.

He was the fifth Columban here in St Columban's, Dalgan Park, to die within 16 days. May they all rest in peace. Please keep our community in your prayers.

Grave of Bishop Edward Galvin, Co-founder of the Columbans

St Columban's Cemetery, Dalgan Park, Ireland

'We cannot but speak about what we have seen and heard.' Sunday Reflections, 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

 

Christ Healing the Blind (detail)

Lucas van Leyden [Web Gallery of Art]

Behold, I will bring them from the north country and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, among them the blind . . .  (Jeremiah 31:8; First Reading).

World Mission Sunday

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Mark 10:46-52 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)

As Jesus was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart. Get up; he is calling you.” And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” And the blind man said to him, “Rabbi, let me recover my sight.” And Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Christ Healing the Blind

Nicolas Colombel [Web Gallery of Art]

World Mission Sunday is observed on the second-last Sunday in October. This year's theme is We cannot but speak about what we have seen and heard (Acts 4:20).

Bartimaeus, the blind beggar in today's gospel, is an example of someone who cannot but speak about what he has heard, though not seen. He proclaims to the crowd who Jesus is: And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 

Clearly, Bartimaeus had heard from others about Jesus, individuals who lived by the words yet to be writtine in the Actos of the Apostles, We cannot but speak about what we have seen and heard. Bartimaeus was a person on the fringes of society but with a determined streak in him. Though initially rebuffed by some who were following Jesus, he was encouraged by others when Jesus said Call him. They encouraged him: Take heart. Get up; he is calling you. Then Jesus showed Bartimaeus the exquisite courtesy of asking him, What do you want me to do for you? Jesus didn't say, I will restore your sight. He invited the blind man to articulate his need.

This tells us something about prayer of petition. God invites us to express our need, even though He knows what it is. And, as in a number of other healing stories where someone approached him Jesus said to Bartimaeus, Go your way; your faith has made you well. But St Mark indicates that he didn't 'go his way'. Rather, he followed him on the way.

In this incident Bartimaeus, without being aware of it, is a missionary. Having heard about Jesus from other 'anonymous missionaries', he cannot but speak about what he has seen and heard.

In 2005 I had an experience something like this, not from a blind beggar but from a 14-year-old girl whom I will call 'Gloria' - not her real name - who was the daughter of a blind beggar. I met her in a home for girls in Metro Manila run by the Capuchin Tertiary Sisters of the Holy Family. Most of the 25 or 30 girls there had been living on the streets with their families.

I knew from the Sisters that Gloria suffered from asthma and that her family had been living on the streets. Later, after my conversation with her, they told me that her father was a blind beggar, like Bartimaeus. 

I was totally unprepared for the question Gloria asked me expressing her need: How can I offer my life to God? It is a question that still stuns me more than 16 years later. Not the question itself but the fact that it came from a young girl with absolutely nothing in life.

I tried to tell her that in time God would show her what He wanted her to do with her whole life but that right now He was asking her to do everything she did out of love for others. When she was cleaning or setting the table or washing the dishes or sweeping the floor she could do this with love for the other girls and the Sisters. I was trying to share with her the 'Little Way' of St Thérèse of Lisieux as I understood it. These were ways in which she could offer her life to God right now.

I also told Gloria that by taking care of herself, of her body, she would be doing what God wanted her to do right now. 'Even in the bathroom?' she asked. 'Even in the bathroom', I responded.

I have told the story of Gloria in places as far from each other as the Cathedral of Mary Immaculate Parish in Nelson, British Columbia, Canada, to parishes in Melbourne, Australia, and Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, Canada. God granted me the grace to experience His presence in Gloria and in her question. The words We cannot but speak about what we have seen and heard were spoken by St Peter and St John when they were brought before the religious authorities for healing a lame beggar in the name of Jesus at the gate of the Temple. Acts 4:13 shows how the religious authorities perceived the two apostles: Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.

These men were hostile to the apostles but they saw the truth, though they rejected it. I too saw the reality of Gloria's background of utter poverty. And in my astonishment at her question I recognized that she had been with Jesus. Through her question she was sharing with me her faith in Jesus. And I, in trying to respond, was sharing my faith in Jesus with her.

I've no idea where Gloria is now. I know that a year or two after our conversation she went to live with relatives in one of the provinces near Manila. She is about 30 now. I often pray for her and invite you to do the same.

Fr Sean Brazil, a Columban who died on 8 October at the age of 89, tells a lovely story from his time in Korea starting at 2:43 in the video here.

Father Sean started fundraising for a new church. The first donation he received was a piggy-bank from a girl of about ten. He asked her why she had brought this gift for the new church. She answered, When I'm a grandmother and we walk by that church with my grandchildren, I can say I put the first brick in that church.

Each of us can make the same request of Jesus that Bartimaeus did: Rabbi, let me recover my sight - and we might add 'my hearing'. I mean the grace to see and hear God's presence in the fabric of our daily life. This is the life that Jesus lived for thirty years before beginning his public mission. So many around us, like Gloria and the little girl in Korea, without being aware of it, are living the words of the Acts of the Apostles and the theme of this year's World Mission Sunday, We cannot but speak about what we have seen and heard.

African Credo - I Believe

Composed by Jude Nnam

Catholic Television Nigeria

Thanks again to The Catholic Thing for drawing this to my attention to this video filled with the joy of our faith.

Columban Fr Seán F. Doherty RIP

Fr Seán F. Doherty

22 March 1935 - 21 October 2018

Fr Seán F. Doherty was born on 22 March 1935 in Knockagulla, Lisdoonvarna, County Clare, Ireland. He was educated at Rathbane National School, Lisdoonvarna, and St Mary’s College, Galway. He entered St Columban’s, Dalgan Park, Navan, in September 1953 and  was ordained priest on 21 December 1959.

Lisdoonvarna Main Street [Wikipedia]

Father Seán was assigned to Korea and after initial language studies he served as assistant on Heuksando (Heuksan Island), then in Jang Seung and later in Muan - all in the southern Diocese of Kwangju. On returning to Korea after his first home visit to Ireland in 1967, he served as pastor in Shin Chang, on Cheju Island, and later in Tjang Heung in Chollanamdo Province.

Heuksando, Korea [Wikipedia]

In May 1971 he returned to Ireland. Over the next four years he did supply work in a variety of locations: in Glengormley Parish, Belfast in the Diocese of Down and Connor,  in Killavil, Cloonloo and Foxford in the Diocese of Achonry, and in Castleisland in the Diocese of Kerry.

There followed a further four years in Korea, from 1975 to 1979 serving as pastor in Hwa Sun near Kwangju. Returning to Ireland, he served as chaplain to the Sisters of Charity in Donnybrook and spent periods in the Cathedral in Monaghan; in Beleek, County Fermanagh; in the Cathedral in Newry; in Latton, County Monaghan; in Dromard, Skryne, Killala; in Scotshouse, County Monaghan, in Lahinch, County Clare, and in Belcoo, County Fermanagh.

Finner Camp in the distance [Wikipedia]

In between these many assignments he spent six months with the Irish Army at the Curragh, County Kildare; a summer as temporary chaplain to the US Army in Frankfurt, Germany; six month with the Irish Air Corps in Gormanston, County Meath; and a two-year period with the Irish Army at Finner, County Donegal. Father Seán had a particular gift for working with men and seemed to have enjoyed these assignments.

He was very intelligent, well-read, and with a wide range of interests. It could be said that he did not suffer fools gladly, but he was also a very kind person. He had to suffer long bouts of illness during the course of his life and particularly in his final years.

He is buried in St Columban's Cemetery, Dalgan Park.

May he rest in peace.

Crucifix, St Columan's Cemetery, Dalgan Park

Quick March of the Defence Forces Ireland

The logo is that of the Defence Forces