'Those who do what is true come to the light.' Sunday Reflections, 4th Sunday of Lent, Year B

From The Gospel of John (2003) directed by Philip Saville

[Today's Gospel begins at 2:02 and ends at 3:10]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

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

Gospel John 3:14-21 (New Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, Canada) 

Jesus said to Nicodemus:

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,  that whoever believes in him may have eternal life^.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.  And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

Nicodemus, Unknown Flemish Master

Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, Belgium [Web Gallery of Art]

The Pharisees generally have a bad name and the adjective 'pharisaical' is defined in Merriam-Webster as marked by hypocritical censorious self-righteousness. Those words could certainly describe most of the Pharisees we meet in the gospels. But they do not apply to Nicodemus. He was patently a good man who said to Jesus when he met him at night, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God (John 3:2). He was also with Jesus at the end helping to prepare for the burial. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds (John 19:39).

This good Pharisee can help us come to the light, especially when that involves walking through the darkness. Physical darkness is part of the reality that God has given us and can protect us from the cosmic powers of this present darkness (Ephesians 6:12), as it did Nicodemus when he came by night to visit Jesus.

God has given us many examples of persons willing to confront the cosmic powers of this present darkness even at the risk of their lives. One such person is Patience Mollè Lobè, a 57-year-old widow and member of the Focolare Movement. An engineer, she became a very senior official in the Department of Public Works in Cameroon. She saw at first hand the powers of darkness in the corruption she encountered there. Here she relates how attempts were made three times to kill her.

[There's a transcript of the video here] 

Patience Mollè Lobè is yet another example of a layperson living fully the vision of Vatican II. So many have the idea that carrying out a particular kind of liturgical service, eg, being a reader, is what being a good lay Catholic is all about. It's much more than that. It is a way of life in following Jesus, living every moment according to the Gospel, bringing the values of Jesus into every human situation. In the words of St Paul in today's Second Reading: For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life (Ephesians 2:10).

Here in the Philippines many of us have known persons like Patience Mollè Lobè, some of whom have died for confronting the cosmic powers of this present darkness. Their witness to Jesus and the Gospel brings us the light of hope and proves the truth of his words today, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Antiphona ad introitum  Entrance Antiphon  Cf Isaiah 66:10-11

Laetare, Jerusalem, et conventum facite, omnes qui diligitis eam; 

gaudete cum laetitia, qui in tristis fuistis,

ut exsultetis, et satiemini ab uberibus consolations vestrae.

Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who love her.

Be joyful, all who were in mourning,

exult and be satisfied at her consoling breast.

+++

On 11 March it was announced that the the poem below by Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1939 - 2013) had been chosen as Ireland's best-loved poem of the last one hundred years.

When all the others were away at Mass 
by Seamus Heaney

In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984

When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.

They broke the silence, let fall one by one

Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:

Cold comforts set between us, things to share

Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.

And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes

From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside

Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying

And some were responding and some crying

I remembered her head bent towards my head,

Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–

Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

'You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.' Sunday Reflections, 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

Columban Fr Aedan McGrath speaking about his time in solitary confinement in China, 1950-53

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)                                  

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

Gospel Luke 14:1, 7-14 (Revised Standard Version – Catholic Edition)

One sabbath when Jesus went to dine at the house of a ruler who belonged to the Pharisees, they were watching him. 

Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he marked how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, "When you are invited by any one to a marriage feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest a more eminent man than you be invited by him; and he who invited you both will come and say to you, 'Give place to this man,' and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, 'Friend, go up higher'; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted." He said also to the man who had invited him, "When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just." 

Altar used at all Legion of Mary meetings

I remember the homecoming of Fr Aedan McGrath from China to Ireland in 1953 when I was ten. It was front-page news and there was a photograph on the now defunct Irish Press of the President and Prime Minister of Ireland greeting him along with thousands of others at Dublin Airport, much smaller than it is now.

Father Aedan had been imprisoned by the authorities of the People's Republic of China who had come into power in 1949 for his work with the Legion of Mary. He spent nearly three years in solitary confinement.

I had no idea in 1953 that one day I would be a Columban missionary priest like him and that he would become a good friend. I was also to discover that we both spent our early years in Holy Family Parish, Aughrim St, Dublin.

Dublin Airport Terminal as it was in 1953

Father Aedan told me in the Philippines that when his plane landed in Dublin and he saw the thousands of people on the observation deck he said to himself, 'There must be someone important on board'. It never crossed his mind that he was the VIP. Friend, go up higher.

One of the parishioners in St Brigid's, Blanchardstown, in the Archdiocese of Dublin, to which I've  been going home since 1981, is Lawrence Wren, now 89. From 1983 to 1987 he was Commissioner of An Garda Síochána, ie, Chief of Police in the Republic of Ireland. Before, during and after that period he was an active member of the Society of St Vincent de Paul in the parish. The society helps families and individuals in difficult financial circumstances. Once a month members stand outside the church after all Sunday Masses holding collection boxes. Until a few years ago Lawrence Wren was always among them, even when he was head of the Irish police. A stranger would have no idea who he was. When you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you.

The greater you are, the more you must humble yourself; so you will find favor in the sight of the Lord, the Book of Sirach tells us in the First Reading. 

Seamus Heaney (13 April 1939 - 30 August 2013)

When I had reached this point in preparing these Sunday Reflections I learned of the death of Seamus Heaney, the poet from Derry, Northern Ireland, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. Here he is reading his own poem, St Kevin and the Blackbird, which ties in with today's readings and with the story of Fr Aedan McGrath and the bird that used to visit him in prison in China. There was, for me, an extraordinary connection between Father Aedan's experience with the bird and his burial in St Columban's, Dalgan Park, Ireland, a few days after he died suddenly at the age of 94 at a family gathering in Dublin on Christmas Day 2000. You can view A Heavenly Farewell here or read it here.

In Seamus Heaney's poem the prayer of St Kevin, To labour and not to seek reward, reflects today's gospel: But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. 

In his introduction the poet speaks of Doing the right thing for the reward of doing the right thing. Father Aedan was prepared to go to prison for doing the right thing, even if it meant death, as it did for Fr Beda Chang SJ, a Chinese priest who was jailed with him. For Garda Commissioner Wren Doing the right thing for the reward of doing the right thing meant carrying out his professional duties to the best of his ability at a particularly difficult time in Ireland and serving the poor as a member of the St Vincent de Paul Society almost anonymously.

Thank God for the many Aedan McGraths, Beda Changs and Lawrence Wrens among us and for the Seamus Heaneys who can put words on the lives of so many who quietly serve even the least of God's creatures, who do the right thing for the reward of doing the right thing and who will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.

ST KEVIN AND THE BLACKBIRD

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
and Lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

*

And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in Love’s deep river,
‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.

Seamus Heaney
The Spirit Level (1996)

St Kevin's Bed, Glendalough, Ireland, the cave where the saint lived as a hermit.

Please pray for the repose of the soul of Seamus Heaney.

Photos from Wikipedia. Poem taken from The Poetry Place.