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).
A study of
abortions in the United States from 1995-2011 found that
67% of women who were told their baby would have Down syndrome decided to
abort. This number is much higher in other countries. BBC reports that 90% of
women in England whose babies are diagnosed with Down syndrome choose to abort .
. . We see that trend in other countries as well. For instance, the Life Institute reports that in Iceland, nearly 100% of babies with Down syndrome are
aborted. And in Germany, more than 90% of babies with Down syndrome are aborted.
Pope Francis
Since everything is
interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with
the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of
concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they
may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is
uncomfortable and creates difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity
towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance
that are valuable for society also wither away” (Laudato Si’, No
120).
Lala with Jordan
L'Arche, Cainta, near Manila. I have known both for many years.
Second Reading. 1Corinthians
1:26-31
For consider your
calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not
many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.But God chose what is foolish in the
world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the
strong;God chose what is low and despised in the world,
even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,so that no human being might
boast in the presence of God.And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who
became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification
and redemption,so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts,
boast in the Lord.”
Lala and Hachiko, each looking more content than the other!
Sadly, this beautiful dog died not long afterwards, choking on a chicken bone.
Traditional Latin Mass
Fourth Sunday After the Epiphany
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 1-29-2023 if necessary).
An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said,
“Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt(Mt 2:13).
Feast of the Holy Innocents, Martyrs
28 December
GospelMatthew 2:13-18 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
Now when the wise men had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egyptand remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
Then Herod,
when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he
sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who
were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from
the wise men.Then was fulfilled what was
spoken by the prophet Jeremiah:
“A voice was
heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she
refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Since everything is interrelated, concern for the
protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion.
How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable
beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect
a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates
difficulties? “If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the
new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society
also wither away”.
This very old carol originating in Coventry, England, tells the sorrow of the mothers of the infants massacred on the orders of Kong Herod. The history of the song and its lyrics are here.
Rachel's Vineyard
Rachel's Vineyard is a safe place to renew, rebuild and redeem hearts broken by abortion. Weekend retreats offer you a supportive, confidential and non-judgmental environment where women and men can express, release and reconcile painful post-abortive emotions to begin the process of restoration, renewal and healing.
GospelMark 4:35-41(English Standard Version, Anglicised)
On
that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across
to the other side.” And leaving the
crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats
were with him.And a great windstorm arose, and the
waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling.But he was in the stern, asleep on the
cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we
are perishing?”And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the
sea, “Peace! Be still!” And
the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.He said to them, “Why
are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?”And they were filled with great fear and said
to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea
obey him?”
The very first pastoral visit outside of Rome of Pope
Francis was to the small island of Lampedusa, the most southerly part of Italy.
He went there on 8 July 2013 because of his concern about the plight of many
migrants and refugees trying to get from North Africa to Europe through
Lampedusa and the many who died in trying to do so. The vast majority of these
were exploited 'boat people' who had spent all they had, handing over their
money to unscrupulous persons who were becoming rich by living off the poor and
not caring whether they lived or died.
In his homily that day Pope Francis asked, Has any one of us grieved for the death of
these brothers and sisters? Has any one of us wept for these persons who were
on the boat? For the young mothers carrying their babies? For these men who
were looking for a means of supporting their families?
The question the Pope asked in a way echoes that of the
Apostles in the boat to Jesus: Teacher, do you not care that
we are perishing?
In May 2015 LÉ
Eithne, the flagship of the Irish Naval Service with a crew of 55, engaged in Operation Sophia in the Mediterranean along with ships of navies of other European Union countries, in
an effort to rescue 'boat people' trying to cross from Libya to Europe. Between May and November that year this
small vessel rescued 8,592 men women and children. By the time Operation Sophia ended in 2017 Irish naval vessels had rescued more than 10,000 refugees. At
the moment the Irish Naval Service has a total personnel of fewer than 1,100, with
only five of its nine ships in service due to a lack of recruits.
It is estimated that between 2014 and the present around 21,000
undocumented immigrants have died trying to reach Italy from North Africa, 2016 being the worst year
So this Sunday's gospel speaks to us of a situation that is all too common in
the contemporary world.
The Apostles discovered that Jesus did care: he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' And he shows that
same care to the refugees in the Mediterranean and in other parts of the world through
the authorities, agencies and individuals who are trying to alleviate their
immediate dangerous situations while others try to deal with the roots and
causes of those situations.
There is an expression in the English language, 'We're all in the same boat', meaning especially in a difficult or dangerous situation that all are
equal and all are responsible in some way for changing that situation. In
his encyclical, Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis
echoes this (No 13): The urgent challenge to
protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family
together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know that
things can change. The Creator does not abandon us; he never forsakes his
loving plan or repents of having created us. Humanity still has the ability to
work together in building our common home.
We can and should pray for all those caught up in the
human tragedy of refugees and asylum seekers desperately seeking a better life
as they flee from areas of conflict and hopelessness, being exploited
ruthlessly by others in their plight - surely an expression of the reality of
evil, of sin and of the Devil that Pope Francis frequently speaks about - and
often losing their lives in the process. And we can and should pray for those working with refugees, whether in emergency situations or at the level of administration where important decisions are made about the future of individuals and families.
And the Second Reading, though it's not thematically related to the First Reading and the Gospel which are related, gives us some points to consider. The Jerusalem Bible translation reads, The love of Christ overwhelms us. Other versions give, The love of Christ controls us / urges us on / compels us / impels us / presseth us / is a compelling motive . . . But the Jerusalem Bible evokes for me, in the context of the other two readings, a great wave of God's love as distinct from a wave of destruction.
The Second Reading
also speaks of creation: From now on,
therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once
regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore,
if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed
away; behold, the new has come. By
virtue of our baptism each of us is a new creation. And by virtue
of the mission that Jesus gave all of us who are baptised to Go into
all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation (Mark
16:15) we are called to let every human being know that God wants each of them
to be in Christ so as to be a new creation.
We are called not just to rescue people in danger of drowning but rather to invite people to join us on the Barque of Peter - the ship that is the Church - so that they may come to know the Lord Jesus who, through his Holy Spirit, wants to lead us to our eternal home. We must never lose sight of our central mission as Church.
To mix metaphors, I conclude with a quotation from the Eighth Sermon of St Columban that I use at the top of the homepage of this blog: 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.
Responsorial Psalm [NAB - Philippines, USA]
Fr John Moran (22 June 1926 - 11 June 2021)
Please pray for Columban Father John Moran who died last week in Bristol, Rhode Island. We were together in the Columban college formation program in Cebu City in the early 1990s. He was a delightful person to live with, a true Christian gentleman and a great example to our seminarians.
Father John loved sailing and
had a small boat in Bristol, where the Columban retirement home, formerly a
seminary, is by the sea. The name of the boat is Santo Niño (Holy Child). May the Lord who rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!" welcome Father John into a safe harbour.
Sailing
By
Composed
by Ronald Binge
Played
by The Perry-Gardner Orchestra
Extraordinary Form of the Mass
Traditional Latin Mass (TLM)
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
The Complete Mass
in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of
that page to 6-20-2021 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.
The village of St Dennis, where the band is from, is 25 minutes by car from Padstow and 45 minutes from Carbis Bay, where the recent G7 summit meeting was held. These places are all in Cornwall in south-west England. The Volunteers of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) have saved countless lives off the coasts of Britain and Ireland down the years.
Today, New Year's Day 2019, is the darkest day in the history of the independent Ireland (the Republic of Ireland) that came into being in 1922. Starting today, it is now legal in Ireland to kill an unborn baby for any reason whatever up to 12 weeks. After that the unborn child may be killed for specific reasons related to the health of the mother or to the perceived chances of a baby being born dead or not likely to live more than 28 days after birth.
It will still be a serious crime to take the life of a child after 12 weeks except within the circumstances where the law allows abortion, though not in the case of a woman ending her own pregnancy.
Early abortions will be carried out mainly by General Practitioners (GPs) who are willing to do them.
Doctors and other medical personnel may refuse to carry out abortions but, as far as I know, doctors will be expected to refer the mother to a doctor who is willing. Many GPs have said that they will refuse to do that.
A referendum last May removed the Eighth Amendment from the Constitution. This had forbidden abortions except in extremely limited situations. The referendum result paved the way for the new legislation. What shocked many people was the sight of so many dancing and rejoicing over the result of the referendum, in effect rejoicing at the prospect of unborn children having their lives taken. This celebrating took place mainly at Dublin Castle, the former seat of British administration in Ireland, an administration that persecuted Catholics in Ireland for centuries and that opposed the independence of Ireland. The new persecutors of the Irish are the Irish themselves.
A report last week, showed that the birth rate in Ireland is continuing to fall. Though it's not mentioned there, the birth rate was said to be 1.8 children per woman of childbearing age, the third highest in the European Union but way below the maintenance rate of 2.1 children. In the early 1960s the rate was more than 4.0 children per woman of childbearing age. While the population will continue to rise it will lead to a far higher percentage of elderly people, as has happened in countries such as Japan. In other words, Ireland has now opted for a slow demographic suicide, now to be accelerated by abortion on demand.
I feel utterly sickened by all of this and I feel helpless. (One area where I'm not utterly helpless and can do something is by not voting in the next general election for the three TDs - members of parliament - who represent the area where I live.) I feel a sense of rage also at the corruption of language in the whole campaign of those promoting abortion. The new law has been described as 'care and compassion' and the taking of the life of an unborn human being as a 'service'. Fathers don't enter into the picture at all. They have no rights or responsibilities for their children. This is a 'health service' for women, even though the health of the mother is not an issue at all for early abortions. According to one journalist Ireland has shown itself to be a more enlightened place.
Ireland is no longer a Christian country, though Irish people are still remarkably helpful and generous, as I have experienced on many occasions since I came back to live in Ireland in 2017.
But when it comes to the basic human rights of unborn children there is a blindness, a blindness that I believe is very deliberate in many cases, particularly in the case of the politicians who have pushed for abortion, of journalists who have campaigned for it and doctors who are willing to take life.
A recent articleon thecatholicthing.orgby David Carlin compares the collapse of the Catholic Christian faith in Quebec a few decades ago with that in Ireland more recently. There is something perverse when a country where more than 80 percent of the people in the 2016 census described themselves as Christians and 78.8 percent specifically as Catholics introduces abortion on demand on the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, in the middle of the Christmas Season. There is something almost blasphemous about this. Pope Francis in Laudato Si'No 120 states (my emphasis added): Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? 'If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away'. This paragraph has been largely ignored by many concerned about care for the earth and social justice. The new law in Ireland is anti-care for the earth and a rejection of social justice. The Irish word gin(hard 'g') means 'begetting' or 'birth'. The Irish word for a procured abortion is ginmhilleadh, which literally means the destruction of what has been begotten, a very accurate term. Please pray for us in Ireland, especially for women who find themselves in pregnancies that, for whatever reason, are difficult for them and that they and their children will find practical help. Pray too that fathers will stand up for their rights and take full responsibility for their children before and after birth, as St Joseph does for Mary his wife and her unborn child, the Son of God, in the painting below.
Then Jesustold them a parable
about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.He said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither
feared God nor had respect for people.In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and
saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.”For a while he refused; but later he said to himself,
“Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone,yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her
justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.”’And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the
unjust judge says.And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry
to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet,
when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’
Last Sunday's story about the ten lepers healed by Jesus and only of whom came back to thank him, a Samaritan, a 'foreigner', told us the importance of gratitude to God for everything, especially for the gift of life itself and the gift of faith.
Today's First Reading and Gospel - the two are always linked by a common theme - stress the importance of prayer as an expression of faith. Prayer is the expression of being in a living relationship with God, an expression of a living faith.
But the gift of faith can be lost by an individual, by a whole community, by a whole section of the world. In the early centuries of Christianity North Africa had a vibrant Church and produced great bishops and theologians such as St Augustine of Hippo, which is in Algeria. Today there is only a handful of Christians in that country, nearly all either missionaries or workers from other countries.
St Augustine Washing the Feet of Christ, Bernardo Strozzi, 1629
A hundred years ago European countries such as Belgium, Netherlands and Ireland were sending Catholic missionaries all over the world. These countries now to a large extent have rejected the Christian faith. In both Belgium and the Netherlands not only is abortion legal but so is euthanasia. Recently a minor, a 17-year-old boy, was euthanised in Belgium.
My own Irish ancestors received the grace of faith through St Patrick and other missionaries in the fifth century and sent missionaries such as St Columban, the patron saint of Columban missionaries, to rekindle the faith in mainland Europe where it was being rejected.
The founders of the European Economic Union, the EEC, that developed later into the European Union, the EU, had a vision for a Europe at peace that came from their strong Catholic faith. They had experienced the destruction brought about by Nazism and Fascism before and during World War II. Their political vision came from their Catholic Christian faith. They weren't working 'for the Church' but living out as politicians the Gospel of Jesus Christ that they had received through the Church, living out a faith nourished by the Church, especially through the Mass and the sacraments.
That Christian vision of Jean Monnet (France), Konrad Adenauer (Germany), Alcide de Gasperi (Italy) and Robert Schuman (Luxembourg/Germany/France) has been largely lost. Schuman, described by Adenauer as 'a saint in a business suit', had a great devotion to St Columban. Both he and de Gasperi have been proposed for beatification.
Yet so many 'Catholic' politicians and voters in the Western world proclaim themselves, for example, as being 'personally opposed to abortion' but then vote otherwise. Their values are not rooted in their Christian faith. Christian voters in the USA are now faced with a huge moral dilemma when it comes to voting for the country's next president a few weeks from now.
Massacre of the Innocents (detail), Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565-57
How many of us take to heart the words of Pope Francis in his encyclical on 'On Care for Our Common Home', Laudato Si' No 117: Neglecting to monitor the harm done to nature and the environmental impact of our decisions is only the most striking sign of a disregard for the message contained in the structures of nature itself. When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities – to offer just a few examples – it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected. Once the human being declares independence from reality and behaves with absolute dominion, the very foundations of our life begin to crumble, for 'instead of carrying out his role as a cooperator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature'?
Prayer essentially leads us into desiring to do God's will and, with his grace, actually doing it, so that we can say with St Paul, But we have the mind of Christ (I Corinthians 2:16). The first part of the Opening Prayer of today's Mass reads: Almighty ever-living God, grant that we may always conform our will to yours . . . To the extent that, with God's grace, we have the mind of Christ, to that extent we are persons of faith. May the Son of Man find each of us to be such now and at the hour of our death!
+++
When the Son of Man comes, will he find life in Aleppo?'
The story of Abu Wad, 'Father of the flowers', and his 13-year-old son Ibrahim is both heartbreaking and hope-filled. May we continue to pray for peace in Syria, especially in Aleppo.
Holy Mass and Canonization of the Blesseds James Berthieu, Pedro Calungsod, John Baptist Piamarta, Carmen Sallés y Barangueras, Marianne Cope, Kateri Tekakwitha, Anna Schäffer Saint Peter's Square, 21 October 2012 - 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Antiphona ad introitum
Entrance Antiphon Cf Ps 16 [17]: 6, 8
Ego clamavi, quoniam exaudisti me Deus;
To you I call; for you will surely heed me, O God;
