St Joseph, the Janitor and the Fiddler

The Holy Family with a Bird, Murillo, 1650

I was assigned to Glasgow, Scotland, for five months in 2002. One day I went strolling around St Enoch Centre, a shopping malls in the city centre, and had need to use the men's room. The janitor, who was an immigrant, happened to be there. When I told him that it was the cleanest restroom I had ever seen in a public building anywhere his face lit up.

 St Enoch Centre, Glasgow

Late in 1981, when I was doing a year's study in Toronto, I went to a concert of Stéphane Grappelli (1908 - 1997). From the moment he walked out on the stage to a full house I knew I was in the presence of a man doing exactly what God had created him to do. Every fibre of his body was alive and every note he played expressed a deep joy.

St Thérèse of Lisieux wrote, Perfection consists simply in doing his will, and being just what he wants to be. Today's feast of St Joseph the Worker looks more perhaps at the 'doing' than at the 'being'. When we do what God wills us to do we are becoming perfect or holy. I do not know what part the Christian faith played in the life of the janitor in Glasgow or in that of Stéphane Grappelli but I do know that what they did was doing God's will. The janitor took pride in his work and by doing so served a public that was pretty much anonymous to him and he even more anonymous to them. Probably very few thanked him. Stéphane Grappelli was used to public adulation and people paid to see him at work. But on the stage he came across as a simple man with  a sense of having been given a special gift by God, a gift that he joyfully shared with his audiences. His music was his work but to me it was an expression of God's very life. That concert more than 30 years ago is still one of the most memorable moments in my life.

I am blessed to be doing work I love doing. Many are engaged in work that is simply a chore and many others are working in forms of slavery. Still others can't find work. In Spain right now 25 percent of the workforce have no jobs.

We can be certain that St Joseph experienced joy in his work even if sometimes, as Fr Ronan McGrath said to us in our first year in the seminary 50 years ago, customers surely complained on occasion. His work was an expression of his love for Mary his wife and for her Son Jesus, God-made-Man. St Joseph, the legal father of Jesus under Jewish law, surely took a quiet pride when he heard Jesus being referred to as 'the son of the carpenter'.

Fr McGrath also pointed out to us the importance of such persons as the milkman and the bread-man. When I was young we also had the egg-man. Today people buy their milk, bread and eggs at the supermarket but in those days those items were delivered to your door by someone you knew, just as letters are still delivered every working day. Today we can remember all of those persons and others whose daily work impinges on our lives in our prayers.

Stéphane Grappelli was 73 when I saw him play. He stood on the stage for the whole performance except when he played a couple of times on the piano. In the video below he was 84 when appearing in Tokyo and sat while performing. Sweet Georgia Brown was one of his standard pieces. I hope you enjoy it.

 

'God's children . . . that is what we are.' Sunday Reflections, 4th Sunday of Easter Year B.

From The Gospel of John (2003) Directed by Philip Saville. Jesus played by Henry Ian Cusick; narrator, Christopher Plummer.

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Second Reading 1 John 3:1-2 (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be called God's children; and that is what we are. Because the world refused to acknowledge him, therefore it does not acknowledge us. My dear people, we are already the children of God but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed;  all we know is, that when it is revealed we shall be like him because we shall see him as he really is.

An Dara Léacht 1Eoin 3:1-2 (Gaeilge, Irish)

A clann ionúin, breathnaígí cad é mar ghrá a thug an tAthair dúinn! go nglaofaí clann Dé orainn, agus is amhlaidh sinn. Sé an fáth nach n-aithníonn an saol sinne mar nár aithin sé eisean. chairde cléibh, is clann Dé cheana féin sinn, agus níor foilsíodh fós cé mar a bheimid; ach nuair a fhoilseofar é, is feasach sinn go mbeimid ina chosúlachtsan, mar go bhfeicfimid é mar atá sé.

Galway Bay

When I was 11, for the first time in my life I spent a period away from my family. I went to a place called Cnoch na hAille, on the northern shore of Galway Bay in the west of Ireland, in the heart of the Gaeltacht, the Irish-speaking area there. (The same term is used for other areas where Irish Gaelic is still the main vernacular). I was there for a month’s summer-school cum holiday/vacation sponsored by trade/labour unions in Dublin for their members’ children aged between 10 and 14.

 

I experienced many things for the first time during those four weeks. I smoked my first cigarette with two or three other boys behind one of the many stone walls in the area. I didn’t finish it nor did I become hooked. I experienced real bullying for the first time, from one of the two boys I shared a room with in the home of the family with whom I stayed. He was a year older than me. Sadly, he died as a young married man and whenever I think of him I pray for him. I ‘fell in love’ for the first time, with a dark-haired girl name Joan. We were together on the train back to Dublin and never contacted each other again. I established a lifelong friendship with the family with whom I stayed.

One incident made a huge impression on me. A family from Dublin were staying in the same house as I was. The husband/father, whom I had never seen before, asked me ‘Are you John Coyle’s son?’ I had often hear people say that I looked like my father, even though I didn’t yet understand why. It turned out that the man who asked me the question, Paddy O’Neill was hi name, had worked as a carpenter, maybe as an apprentice under my Dad, with my father some years before that, and held him in great respect. I felt a great sense of pride in telling Paddy that I was indeed the son of John Coyle.

 During the Mass a few months ago where I baptised and confirmed some girls and where they and some others made their First Holy Communion. 

This week I’ve had a couple of baptisms. I don’t do them very often, not being based in a parish. The parents of one of those I baptised are not in a regular situation, not at all uncommon. However, their son became a brother of Jesus, a son of the Father, through the waters of baptism. St John, in the second reading today, says to the two children I baptised and to each of us, Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be called God's children; and that is what we are. That is our extraordinary dignity, the wonder of what happens at baptism. Someone once wrote that the sacrament of baptism is in a sense the climax of our lives as Christians, after which it is ‘downhill all the way’. A slight exaggeration, perhaps, but containing a real truth.

Not only is St John stating our extraordinary dignity as Christians but he is also stating our vocation. Paddy O’Neill, a stranger, recognised me as the son of John Coyle. Would a stranger or, maybe more importantly, someone who knows me, recognise me as a son or daughter of God?

When I arrived home in Dublin I discovered that my parents had missed me much more than I had missed them. Do I really appreciate the love that the Father has lavished on us?

During the Mass some months ago when I baptised and confirmed some of these girls and where all made their First Holy Communion.

Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand

Group portrait of the Australian 11th (Western Australia) Battalion, 3rd Infantry Brigade, Australian Imperial Force posing on the Great Pyramid of Giza on 10 January 1915, prior to the landing at Gallipoli. The 11th Battalion did much of their war training in Egypt and would be amongst the first to land at Anzac Cove on April 25 1915. In the five days following the landing, the battalion suffered 378 casualties, over one third of its strength.

Today is Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand. The Anzacs were the members of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corp that landed in Gallipoli, Turkey, on 25 April 1915.

The trailer of Peter Weir's memorable 1981 movie Gallipoli.

Please remember in your prayers all who died in Gallipoli.

I posted on Anzac Day last year.

The Pope’s ‘final leg’ : a view from the Philippines' leading broadsheet

 

Pope Benedict XVI, 2010

Tomorrow, 24 April, is the seventh anniversary of the installation of Pope Benedict XVI. On the anniversary of his election, 19 April, The Philippine Daily Inquirer, the country's most popular broadsheet, published an editorial, The Pope's 'final leg'. Here is the text, with some parts highlighted and with [comments] added.

Pope Benedict XVI marked two milestones this week: He turned 85 last Monday and marked the seventh anniversary of his pontificate yesterday, making him the oldest pope in more than 100 years and one of only six popes in 500 years to reign past the age of 85. Elected when he was 78, Benedict was and still is not expected to reign long. In “Light of the World,” his 2010 book, he said that if a pope was “physically, psychologically or spiritually” unable to carry out his duties, he was obliged to step down. Yesterday he alluded to his own mortality during his homily in his birthday Mass: “I am facing the final leg of the path of my life and I don’t know what’s ahead.” But like John Paul II who labored as pope amid the infirmities of old age, Benedict indicated he would continue to lead the Roman Catholic Church in “God’s light,” which, he said, “is stronger than any darkness.”

20 January 2006

Although living on borrowed time in an era of great change, the Pope is expected to address key issues facing the Church, many of them difficult and divisive, such as women’s ordination and optional celibacy among the clergy. The ban on women priests and compulsory celibacy are seen to have issued from the alleged patriarchy and clericalism of the Catholic hierarchy, which may have also resulted in child abuse by the clergy and a decline in vocations. [There's no 'ban' on women priests. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, No 1577 teaches clearly that 'the ordination of women is not possible'. The refers to Nos 26-27 of Mulieris Dignitatem, the 1988 document issued by Blessed John Paul II, which explains why only men can be ordained to the priesthood. Howver, this is really a quibble with the editorial writer who is using a term widely used by journalists, similar to 'the priest saying Mass with his bck to the people'.] But other Christian churches that have married priests and women clergy have also experienced a precipitous drop in vocations and their own share of sex-abuse cases. The Anglican and Episcopalian churches continue to be afflicted by dissension, apathy, aging congregations, and negligible vocations. Thus, the Church of Rome shares with the Church of England and the other Christian denominations of the West the same problems of enervation and decline. Benedict has made the renewal of the European Catholic Church the centerpiece of his papacy, and he has done this largely through intellectual engagement with the secular forces of Europe that deny the foundational Christian contribution to Western civilization. [The Constitution of the European Union refers only to Europe's 'Religious and Humanist inheritance' despite the fact that the three founders of the European Economic Community, that developed into the EU, Alcide de Gaspari of Italy, Robert Schuman of France, though born a German citizen in Luxembourg, and Konrad Adenauer, were all leaders of the Christian Democratic movement and all had opposed Nazism and Fascism. the causes for the beatification of Alcide de Gaspari and of Robert Schuman have been introduced.]

Alcide de Gasperi (1881 - 1954)

Robert Schuman (1886 - 1963)

Konrad Adenauer (1876 - 1967)

He is perfectly suited for the battle. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he was a member of the prestigious Académie Française, where he was inducted in 1992 in the section for moral and political sciences by a country known for keeping God out of the secular realm. He has debated with European intellectuals like the German sociologist Jurgen Habermas. But while conserving the Church’s legacy in Europe, he is also looking to the future. He presided over the World Youth Day celebrations in Australia in 2008 and, more revealingly, in Spain in 2011, which saw two million youths mainly from heavily secularized Europe participating.

São Paulo, Brazil, May 2007

Benedict has also provided a counterweight to radical Islamism, criticizing its violent tendencies, as in his controversial Regensburg address in 2006, and generally working for the incorporation of rationality in Islamic teaching. “The important thing here is to remain in close contact with all the currents within Islam that are open to, and capable of, dialogue, so as to give a change of mentality to happen even where Islamism still couples a claim to truth with violence,” he said. His visit to Lebanon this year is expected to boost his engagement with Islam and reaffirm the Asia Minor roots of Christianity.

The Pope has likewise made credible gestures at engaging with the Catholic Church of the New World. His recent visit to Mexico, violent scene of last century’s secular battles, showed that Catholicism remains culturally entrenched in the world’s second largest Catholic country. His visit to communist Cuba may be seen as an effort by the Church to engage with Marxist modernity, and nothing could be more emblematic of this historically tortuous rendezvous than his meeting with former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who asked him for copies of his theological books. He will next go to Brazil for World Youth Day 2012 in order to make his presence felt in the world’s largest Catholic country.

Banner of Blessed Pedro Calungsod (c.1654 - 2 April 1672) by Filipino artist Rafael del Casal used at beatification in 2000.

Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, 1656 - 17 April 1680. Oldest known image, painted c.1690 by Father Chauchetière

Thus has the Pope fostered the catholicity of the Catholic communion. On Oct. 21 he will canonize Pedro Calungsod of the Philippines and Kateri Takakwitha, a Mohawk and the first Native American to be raised to the altar. All of this, of course, will not sugarcoat the problems facing Benedict and the Church. But like Saint Paul, this Pope is not one to shirk from “the good fight.” His long-time secretary, Msgr. Georg Gaenswein, describes him as “a man of great courage” who “doesn’t fear delicate questions or confrontations for the good of the Church and faithful.”

World Youth Day, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 23-28 July 2013