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).
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers (Acts 1:12-14).
First Reading, Mass of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.
In October 2014 I published here a series of posts on the Rosary under the general title The Rosary with the Great Painters, each post featuring five mysteries. Here I give links to each of those posts.
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son ofJames. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers (Acts 1:12-14).
First Reading, Mass of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary.
In October 2014 I published here a series of posts on the Rosary under the general title The Rosary with the Great Painters, each post featuring five mysteries. Here I give links to each of those posts.
Gospel Mark 10:17-30(English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
Jesus was setting out on his journey, a man
ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do
to inherit eternal life?”And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.You know the commandments: ‘Do not
murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not
defraud, Honour your father and mother.’”And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from
my youth.”And
Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the
poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”Disheartened by the saying, he went away
sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
And
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have
wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”And the
disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of
God!It is easier
for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the
kingdom of God.”And
they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?”Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are
possible with God.”Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything
and followed you.”Jesus
said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one
who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or
lands, for my sake and for the gospel,who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time,
houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with
persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life".
This incident is also recounted in the gospels of St Matthew and St Luke. It is St Matthew who tells us that the man who approached Jesus was young. Luke describes him as a ruler or aristocrat, depending on the translation. But it is only St Mark who writes, Jesus, looking at him, loved him . . .
During my summer vacation in 1963, my second since enering the the seminary, the biggest story in Britain and Ireland was that of a senior member of the Conservative Party and of the British government,John Profumo. He had served with distinction in the British army in World War II, reaching the rank of Brigadier (General). He was independently wealthy. He became involved with a prostitute, Christine Keeler, who also had relations with the senior Soviet naval attaché in London. Profumo denied in parliament that he had an improper relationship with Keeler. This was later shown to be untrue. He was later forced to resign for having lied to parliament. Before resigning from all his positions he confessed to his wife, Valerie Hobson, and she stood by him.
John Profumo disappeared from public life and spent many years as a volunteer washing dishes and cleaning toilets in a place called Toynbee Hall, a charity in the East End of London. As time went by he was able to use his skills to raise funds for the charity. I do not know anything about the faith of John Profumo, whose paternal ancestors were Italian aristocrats. He had the inherited title 'Fifth Baron Profumo', though he didn't use it. But Lord Longford (1905 - 2001), a Labour politician and social reform campaigner whose Catholic faith - he was a convert from Anglicanism - was the bedrock of everything he did, was quoted as saying that he, felt more admiration [for Profumo] than [for] all the men I've known in my lifetime'.
Unlike the man in the gospel, John Profumo had sinned. He lost his reputation but regained it as people came to know what he had been doing after his downfall.
Last May Pope Francis approved the canonisation of Blessed Charles, usually referred to as 'Brother Charles' by those with a devotion to him. However, the date hasn't yet been set.
Fr Charles de Foucauld, was assassinated in the Sahara on 1 December 1916 when John Profumo was almost two. Like Profumo, he was born into wealth. Unlike the man in the gospel, he became a notorious playboy and was thrown out of the French army because of his behaviour. He went through a conversion experience at 28 and, again unlike the man in today's gospel, gave up everything. His subsequent journey in the Catholic faith led him to the priesthood and to the Sahara to live the life of Nazareth as he understood it.
Brother Charles, as he was known, died alone. He had drawn up a rule for a religious congregation to live the life of Nazareth in the desert. I once read that one person joined him for a short while. But in the 1920s his life and writings led to the founding of two religious congregations, theLittle Brothers of Jesusand theLittle Sisters of Jesus, both of which have communities in the Philippines. The Little Sisters have a community in Northern Ireland. Here is a lovely story about a Polish sister in that community: Sister Asia, the nun who closed an Irish pub.
There are a number of other congregations that have adapted the rule that Brother Charles wrote.
The Little Brothers and the Little Sisters live among the poor, support themselves by taking manual jobs. The January-February 2005 issue of Misyon, the Columban magazine in the Philippines of which I was then editor, carried an article, Working Sisters, in which Little Sister Goneswary Subramaniam LSJ from Sri Lanka writes about her job sewing in a garment factory in Quezon City, Metro Manila, and Little Sister Annarita Zamboni LSJ from Italy about working as a lavandera, a laundry woman. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is at the heart of the life of each community of the Little Brothers, some of whom are priests, and of the Little Sisters and neighbours are invited to join.
Blessed Charles was a diocesan priest, though definitely not a conventional one. But a more conventional diocesan priest, played a central role in his conversion, Fr Henri Huvelin.
Among the groups inspired by Blessed Charles is theJesus Caritas Fraternity of Priests, a movement that adapts his spirituality to the lives of pastoral priests, mainly diocesan, though not exclusively. [That website has links to other branches of the De Foucauld family, including the Little Brothers and the Little Sisters.]
Troubled by the
words of Jesus, Peter said, See, we have left everything
and followed you. Jesus replied, Truly, I say
to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or
mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel,who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and
brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with
persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.
Charles de Foucauld experienced the joy of doing God's will, with persecutions in his violent death, but the houses and brothers and sisters . . . didn't come till some years after his death. And when Cardinal José Saraiva Martins beatified Brother Charles in Rome on 13 November 2005 the Church confirmed that he had indeed attained eternal life from the moment of his death and that he was a model of holiness who could guide us as we try to follow Jesus.
Blessed Charles saw clearly what the young man in the gospel, who didn't sin but had no idea of the riches he was spurning, didn't see: that Jesus was looking upon him and loved him.
Prayer of Abandonment of Blessed Charles de Foucauld
Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures -
I wish no more than this, O Lord.
Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.
This prayer is recited in the Charles de Foucauld video above beginning at 3:38.
+++
The Rosary with the Great Artists
October is the month of the Holy Rosary. The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is celebrated on 7 October. Here are the links to the four sets of mysteries.
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia,
England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan,
Scotland, South Africa)
Gospel Matthew 22:15-21 (English
Standard Version Anglicised)
Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his
words.And they sent their disciples to him, along
with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and
teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's
opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances.Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to
pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites?Show me the coin for the tax.” And
they brought him a denarius.And
Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription
is this?”They said, “Caesar's.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God
the things that are God's.”
Readings for Irelandfor World Mission Sunday. John 17:11, 17-23 replaces the Gospel above. The other readings are the same.
The reflection below is based on Matthew 22:15-21;
Mission is a free and
conscious response to God’s call. Yet we discern this call only when we have a
personal relationship of love with Jesus present in his Church.
A denarius from 44 BC showing the head of Julius Caesar and the goddess Venus [Wikipedia]
In the time of Jesus a denarius was a day's wage for an ordinary working man.
I spent three months in the latter part of 1982 working in a hospital in Minneapolis as a chaplain. I was one of seven doing a 'quarter' of Clinical Pastoral Education. One day I had to go to a bank and got chatting with an employee at the information desk. When he heard I was based in the Philippines he told me that in the previous elections in the USA he had considered, among other things, what impact his vote would have on the lives of Filipinos and others outside the USA.
I was very struck by his attitude. We never got into partisan politics nor did we discuss religion. The man was almost certainly a Christian, probably a Lutheran if he was from Minneapolis or a Catholic if from St Paul, the other 'Twin City'. I saw in him a person reflecting the teaching of Vatican II.
One of the major documents of that Council, Gaudium et Spes, addresses the political life of society. No 75 says: All citizens, therefore, should be mindful of the right and also the duty to use their free vote to further the common good. The Church praises and esteems the work of those who for the good of men devote themselves to the service of the state and take on the burdens of this office . . .
All Christians must be aware of their own specific vocation within the political community. It is for them to give an example by their sense of responsibility and their service of the common good. In this way they are to demonstrate concretely how authority can be compatible with freedom, personal initiative with the solidarity of the whole social organism, and the advantages of unity with fruitful diversity. They must recognize the legitimacy of different opinions with regard to temporal solutions, and respect citizens, who, even as a group, defend their points of view by honest methods. Political parties, for their part, must promote those things which in their judgement are required for the common good; it is never allowable to give their interests priority over the common good.
A politician of the last century who may be
beatified one day is the Servant of God Robert
Schuman, one of the founders of what is now the European Union. His
politics of reconciliation in post-World War II Europe flowed from his deep
Catholic Christian faith. Yet he was never an 'agent' of the Catholic Church.
He was an embodiment of the vision of Gaudium et Spes, promulgated
by Pope Paul VI in December 1965.
Incidentally, Robert Schuman, when Foreign Minister
of France - he had been Prime Minister in 1947-48 despite having been born a
German citizen in Luxembourg - said at a congress in
1950 to mark the 1,400th anniversary of the birth of Ireland's greatest
missionary saint: St Columban, this illustrious Irishman who left his
own country for voluntary exile, willed and achieved a spiritual union between
the principal European countries of his time. He is the patron saint of all
those who now seek to build a United Europe.
Robert Schuman's deepest identity was as a
Christian. It was as such that he became a patriotic Frenchman and a visionary
European. St Thomas More was one of the greatest Englishmen in the history of
his country. However, he was His Majesty's good servant - but God's
first. In 2000 St John Paul II proclaimed him patron saint of politicians and statesmen.
Jesus doesn't give us any detailed way of being
involved in the political life of whatever country we belong to. But he gives
us the values to live by. We cannot leave those values at the entrance to the
polling booth or at the entrance to the legislative chamber if we happen to be
elected to public office. Nor can we leave them at the door of the church after
Mass on Sunday.
As voters and politicians Catholic Christians may
have very different views on most matters of policy. But there are certain
issues on which we must all take a Gospel stand. We may never advocate abortion or 'assisted suicide' or support the very new idea of 'marriage' between two persons of the same
sex. As I prepare this it is reported that the Netherlands is about to legalise euthanasia for children under 12.
In 2013 a member of the Irish parliament who voted
in favour of legalising abortion in certain circumstances was aggrieved when
his parish priest told him that he could no longer be an extraordinary minister
of Holy Communion. It is far more important to try to live as Gaudium
et Spes teaches - All Christians must be aware of their own
specific vocation within the political community - than to be an
extraordinary minister of Holy Communion or a lector, important though these
roles may sometimes be. But they are simply roles. No one has a 'vocation' to
be either of these or to take on similar roles. But the Council tells us that
each of us has a specific vocation within the political community.
Robert Schuman lived that vocation to the full. St
Thomas More was martyred because he lived that vocation to the full.
Last week I quoted Fr Emil Kapaun, an American army chaplain who died in a prisoner of war camp in 1951 during the Korean war. I will end with that same paragraph as I think he was thinking of what today's Gospel is about.
In a broadcast in Japan on 21 April 1950 Fr Kapaun said: We can be sure to expect that in our own lives there will come a time when we must make a choice between being loyal to the true faith or of giving allegiance to something else which is either opposed to or not in alliance with our faith.
This Sunday, 18 October, is the Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost in the calendar that uses the TLM. The complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 10-18-2020, if necessary).
Last May I updated a series of posts on The Rosary with the Great Artists. Here areThe Sorrowful Mysteries.
Authentic Beauty
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.
Performed by the Gimnazija Kranj Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Nejc Bečan
This youth orchestra is located in Slovenia. Smetana wrote this piece in 1874 when he was 50 and had lost his hearing. Here is his description of the work.
The
composition describes the course of the Vltava, starting from the two small
springs, the Cold and Warm Vltava, to the unification of both streams into a single
current, the course of the Vltava through woods and meadows, through landscapes
where a farmer's wedding is celebrated, the round dance of the mermaids in the
night's moonshine: on the nearby rocks loom proud castles, palaces and ruins
aloft. The Vltava swirls into the St John's Rapids; then it widens and flows
toward Prague, past the Vyšehrad, and then majestically vanishes into the
distance, ending at the Labe (or Elbe, in German).
