'And anchor at peace with God.' Sunday Reflections, 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Christ in Majesty

Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Montmartre, Paris

[Wikipedia; photo]

 Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

June is the month of the

Sacred Heart of Jesus

Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee

Rembrandt [Web Gallery of Art]

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 (Mark 4:37-38; Gospel).

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

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel  Mark 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?”

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

St Colman’s Cathedral, Cobh, Ireland

[Wikipedia; photo]

Fr James Wilson was born in Cobh (KOHV), then known as Queenstown, on the south coast of Ireland in 1890. For many years it was the main port from which liners left for the USA. It was the last port from which Titanic left on 11 February 1912 on its fatal maiden voyage, bound for New York City. On 7 May 1915  a German U-boat torpedoed Lusitania as it was on a voyage from New York and was quite near Queenstown. Most of the 1,197 dead and the 763 survivors were taken to that port. 

Father Wilson was ordained in June that year for the Diocese of Cloyne of which St Colman's is the cathedral. He joined the Columbans in 1920 and spent most of the rest of his life teaching Columban seminarians in Ireland and in the USA. I was in our seminary from 1961 to 1968 in the building where I am now living, St Columban's, Dalgan Park. However, we were nearly 200 seminarians then, and now we are about 60 retired missionary priests and no seminarians. 

Fr Wilson was retired here during my student days and had become rather 'forgetful'. This venerable priest had a dignity that his mental decline could not hide and he had a great love for Cobh. Every time he met a student on the corridor he would talk about St Colman's Cathedral and would finish with the last two lines of a poem that I think he wrote himself: When St Colman's bell rings its last farewell and we're laid beneath the sod, / We'll raise the harbour at sunset and anchor at peace with God.

What called Fr Wilson and the last lines of his poem to my mind was this Sunday's First Reading, Responsorial Psalm and Gospel. In the First Reading the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and asked him, who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb . . . and said, 'Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed'?

The Responsorial Psalm, 106 [107], echoes this, as is its purpose: For [God] spoke, he summoned the gale, tossing the waves of the sea up to heaven and back into the deep. And God responded to those who were terrified: Then they cried to the Lord in their need and he rescued them from their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper: all the waves of the sea were hushed. They rejoiced because of the calm and he led them to the haven they desired. Let them thank the Lord for his love, the wonders he does for men.

Rembrandt, in his only seascape, captures the terror of the Apostles in the Gospel. And we can barely see Jesus in the dark, sleeping in the stern of the boat. That is so often where he seems to us to be. But the Apostles are awestruck when they see the power of Jesus: 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?'

Right now we are going through a very stormy period in the life of the world and of the Church. There are a number of regional wars that could develop into something much bigger. There are great divisions in the Catholic Church and the rejection of some of its teachings by some bishops and priests, especially in the area of human relationships and of family, a non-acceptance of the biological reality that each of us is either male or female from the moment of conception. And, as the Book of Genesis teaches, each of us is made in the image of God.

Yet history teaches us that in the midst of the greatest darkness and evil, God has raised up people of extraordinary love and heroism. In so many ways God touches us gently when we sin and leads us to conversion and to accept his forgiveness, especially in the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Penance, Confession). And Rembrandt's painting shows a break in the black clouds, for me an expression of the hope we are called to place in Jesus our Risen Lord.

For all of this, as the response to the Responsorial Psalm says, O give thanks to the Lord, for his love endures for ever.

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When Fr JamesWilson died on 9 January 1970 in a hospital in Dublin, his grave was dug here in Dalgan Park - before his will was read. In that he asked that he be buried in his beloved Cobh. So he had a funeral Mass here, and another in Cobh in St Colman's Cathedral.

When St Colman's bell rings its last farewell and we're laid beneath the sod, We'll raise the harbour at sunset and anchor at peace with God.  When our lives come to an end may all of us raise the harbour at sunset and anchor at peace with God.

Home from the Sea

Words and music by Phil Coulter

Sung by Liam Clancy

The Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) was founded 200 years ago. It has stations on the coasts of Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands and is staffed by volunteers who have saved countless lives. And more than 600 volunteers have died in rescuing others.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).

Traditional Latin Mass

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 06-23-2024 if necessary).

Epistle: 1 Peter 3:8-15. Gospel: Matthew 5:20-24.

The Mass of St Basil

Pierre Subleyras [Web Gallery of Art]

So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift (Matthew 5:23-24; Gospel).

Week of Prayer for persons with dementia, 12 - 19 March 2018

Painting owned by Pastoral Care Project

Pastoral Care Project © Charity No. 1094766.  All rights reserved.

There is more on this painting by Sr Annie Bromhan IBVM along with reflections on the Pastoral Care Project website here.

This is an edited version of a post published on 13 March 2013. May I ask anyone who reads this to check out the website of Pastoral Care Project. This wonderful ecumenical ministry, initiated by Mrs Frances Molloy in the Archdiocese of Birmingham, England, focuses on the spiritual needs of persons with dementia.

This is the tenth annual Dementia Prayer Week initiated by Pastoral Care Project.

Long ago I used to be a young man

and dear Margaret remembers that for me.

The Dutchman is a song written by Michael Peter Smith in 1968. It's about an elderly couple living in Amsterdam, Margaret and the title character. The unnamed Dutchman has dementia and Margaret cares for him with a sadness over what has happened to him over the years. It's a story of unconditional love.

Portrait of an Old Man with Beard, Van Gogh [Web Gallery of Art]

Pastoral Care Project logo

I became involved with The Pastoral Care Project in the Archdiocese of Birmingham, England, while based in the Columban house in Solihull from September 2000 to April 2002 when I moved to Glasgow, Scotland, though I stayed there for only a few months before returning to the Philippines. The mission statement of the Project is above. I first got involved when the founder of the Project, Mrs Frances Molloy, invited me to celebrate Mass in a home for old people.

The mission statement of the Project is above. The focus is on the spiritual needs of those who are frail, especially mentally. The Project also works with carers, not all of whom would understand the spiritual needs of those they are looking after. And the carers themselves need some care too as their work can be very demanding.

Michael Peter Smith's song, sung with such feeling by the late Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem, captures something of what is asked of those taking care of a person with dementia, who is very often a spouse or a parent, in the lines, Long ago I used to be a young man / and dear Margaret remembers that for me.

The Project's Dementia Prayer Week runs from 12 March and ends on the Feast of St Joseph, 19 March. 

I studied Shakespeare's As You Like It in school. (Stratford-on-Avon is in the Archdiocese of Birmingham and not far from the office of The Pastoral Care Project.) I always liked the famous speech of Jacques, The Seven Ages of Man or All the world's a stage. But a 15-year-old cannot fully understand these closing lines:

Last scene of all, 

That ends this strange eventful history,  

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,  

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

FrMichael McCarthy

(28 October 1939 - 5 March 2018)

Last Friday, on a beautiful early spring day, we Columbans buried one of our confreres, Fr Michael McCarthy, in our cemetery at St Columban’s, Dalgan Park, Navan, Ireland. In his funeral homily his classmate and great friend Fr Noel Daly said, But surely, the biggest challenge he faced was to do all this while fighting bouts of illness and to keep going to the end despite the onset of dementia. And that’s what he did and he did it in style.

Father Noel then told us what Fr Ji Kwang-kyu Peter, a young Korean Columban working in the Philippines who was in Ireland recently to study English, had told him. Father Peter had been a seminarian in Korea when Father Michael was a member of the formation team.

At one of his first meals with the students in the Formation House where people were introducing themselves, the one thing that they remembered Father Michael saying was that he was really looking forward to learning about young people and the new Korea.

Father Noel went on to say, Just a few months ago when Kwang-kyu (Father Peter) came to meet again with Father Michael here in Dalgan, Michael could not remember him. All he said was, ‘I am sorry I cannot remember you now but thank you – I received so much love from people in Korea – I was very happy there’. Father Peter could only say that he hoped he’d be able to say that after a life on mission.

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The contact details of Pastoral Care Project are here.

Dementia Prayer Week 12-19 March 2016. 'Long ago I used to be a young man and dear Margaret remembers that for me.'

Long ago I used to be a young man

and dear Margaret remembers that for me.

The Dutchman is a song written by Michael Peter Smith in 1968. It's about an elderly couple living in Amsterdam, Margaret and the title character. The unnamed Dutchman has dementia and Margaret cares for him with a sadness over what has happened to him over the years. It's a story of unconditional love.

Portrait of an Old Man with Beard, van Gogh, December 1885 

Riksmuseum Vincent van Gogh Amsterdam [Web Gallery of Art]

I became involved with The Pastoral Care Project in the Archdiocese of Birmingham, England, while based in the Columban house in Solihull from September 2000 to April 2002 when I moved to Glasgow, Scotland, though I stayed there for only a few months before returning to the Philippines. The mission statement of the Project is above. I first got involved when the founder of the Project, Mrs Frances Molloy, invited me to celebrate Mass in a home for old people.

The mission statement of the Project is above. The focus is on the spiritual needs of those who are frail, especially mentally. The Project also works with carers, not all of whom would understand the spiritual needs of those they are looking after. And the carers themselves need some care too as their work can be very demanding.

Michael Peter Smith's song, sung with such feeling by the late Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem, captures something of what is asked of those taking care of a person with dementia, who is very often a spouse or a parent, in the lines, Long ago I used to be a young man / and dear Margaret remembers that for me.

The Project is once again holding Dementia - Prayer Week, 12-19 March 2016. 

I studied Shakespeare's As You Like It in school. (Stratford-on-Avon is in the Archdiocese of Birmingham and not far from the office of The Pastoral Care Project.) I always liked the famous speech of Jacques, The Seven Ages of Man or All the world's a stage. But a 15-year-old cannot understand the closing lines in the way the late Richard Pasco does here: 

Last scene of all, 

That ends this strange eventful history,  

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,  

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Portrait of an Old Woman, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c.1564 Alte Pinakothek, Munich [Web Gallery of Art]

Prayer for Healthcare Professionals © 

O Lord we pray for all those whose work is dedicated
to the assessment and care of those who experience
confusion and profound memory loss.
For all who work as Healthcare Professionals in
everyday care and research into the causes of
Dementia of many kinds.
May they be strengthened in their work of service
with individuals, families and friends.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Written in 2009 for the Pastoral Care Project by Rev’d Canon Edward Pogmore, Chaplain Co-ordinator, The George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust and North Warwickshire Primary Care Trust.

Dementia - Prayer Week has been going on for some years now. Introducing that of 2013 Bishop McGough, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Birmingham and lead Bishop for the Pastoral Care Project said, I am pleased to commend the national week of prayer and awareness of dementia. Few of us can imagine the isolation, and consequent anxiety, that this affliction brings both to those who suffer and their families. Through prayer let us ground ourselves in our communion with the Lord, making ourselves one with the many who suffer and those who care for them.'

Everyone can participate in this week by visiting  www. pastoralcareproject.org.uk using the resources to organise an event or to join in existing event locally.    

Carers too need support. When a former elderly carer whose wife with dementia was hospitalised he would visit and help feed her and give her drinks and ensure she was well cared for, even though he was frail himself. He would sing songs, hymns and pray with her. After her death he found comfort  through praying and writing poetry; by donating the poems to the Pastoral Care Project he felt solidarity with people with dementia and those in similar caring situations.

The Washing of the Feet, Sieger Köder

The following poem was composed by him as he reflected on the painting of the Washing of the Feet by Fr Sieger Koder, a German priest who died on 9 February 2015, during one of the Pastoral Care Projects’ Quiet Day for Carers.

The Water of your Blessing©

Do not kneel, My Lord.
It is for me to kneel
At your feet.
With your loving hands you
Touch my feet…
Loving, gentle hands
Which made those who ail and hurt
Whole and well.
You washed your feet with
Water cool and soothing…
The water of your
Blessings.
You dried my feet with
Linen pure; and gentleness.
But infinitely you washed
My heart…
A heart ‘oft grieved and saddened.
You drew me close and called me Son,
And filled me with your grace,
Your great Amen.

Dementia - Prayer Week 12-19 March involves us all – because everyone knows someone who is affected by dementia. 

Bishop David McGough, St Augustine's Church, Solihull, Archdiocese of Birminghan

26 September 2015

'Long ago, I used to be a young man / And dear Margaret remembers that for me.'

When I was in Britain, from 200 to 2002, I got involved, on the fringes, with Pastoral Care Project, founded by Frances Molloy, who's originally from Rathlin Island, off the coast of County Antrim in Northern Ireland.

Frances (above) explains on the website of Pastoral Care Project how she got into ministry to persons with dementia and to those who take care of them:

In 1989, I was leading a Spiritual Development programme (Light Out of Darkness written by Sr Kathleen O’Sullivan SSL) and the theme of that particular week was ‘finding God in my weakness’, Romans 8:26-27. I met a lady with dementia in an EMI (Elderly and Mentally Infirm) Ward at the George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton, while visiting as a church volunteer. She was also blind and yet seemed to have an awareness which captured my attention.

She couldn't remember her name – and yet she had this great awareness of God and others. Reflecting on the scripture and the visit, I became aware of how special and unique each person is. The visit highlighted that God still communicates his love through people with dementia and that listening was the way of understanding and meeting their spiritual needs. This was an inspirational visit, which led to the Project taking off in 1994, after many years of prayer and research.

Irish singer Liam Clancy (1935-2009) sings The Dutchman, written by Michael Peter Smith, the only song I know of that deals with dementia. At the heart of the various forms of dementia is loss of memory, sometimes a total loss. That can be very distressing for those close to the person. But they remember. The song captures this poignantly: Long ago, I used to be a young man /And dear Margaret remembers that for me.

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As happens with ballads, the singer's words are not always exactly the same as the original lyrics.

The Dutchman's not the kind of man
Who keeps his thumb jammed in the dam
That holds his dreams in,
But that's a secret that only Margaret knows.

When Amsterdam is golden in the summer,
Margaret brings him breakfast,
She believes him.
He thinks the tulips bloom beneath the snow.

He's mad as he can be, but Margaret only sees that sometimes,
Sometimes she sees her unborn children in his eyes.

Let us go to the banks of the ocean
Where the walls rise above the Zuider Zee.
Long ago, I used to be a young man
And dear Margaret remembers that for me.

The Dutchman still wears wooden shoes,
His cap and coat are patched with the love
That Margaret sewed there.
Sometimes he thinks he's still in Rotterdam.

And he watches the tug-boats down canals
An' calls out to them when he thinks he knows the Captain.
Till Margaret comes
To take him home again

Through unforgiving streets that trip him, though she holds his arm,
Sometimes he thinks he's alone and he calls her name.

Let us go to the banks of the ocean
Where the walls rise above the Zuider Zee.
Long ago, I used to be a young man
And dear Margaret remembers that for me.

The winters whirl the windmills 'round
She winds his muffler tighter
And they sit in the kitchen.
Some tea with whiskey keeps away the dew.

And he sees her for a moment, calls her name,
She makes the bed up singing some old love song,
A song Margaret learned
When it was very new.

He hums a line or two, they sing together in the dark.
The Dutchman falls asleep and Margaret blows the candle out.

Let us go to the banks of the ocean
Where the walls rise above the Zuider Zee.
Long ago, I used to be a young man
And dear Margaret remembers that for me.

Lord, thank you for your presence this moment, 

holding us in your love.

Help us to share your love with those who live among us with dementia,

that we may see your beauty in them. 

Amen.