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).
Congratulations to Fr Dan Fitzgerald, born in the city of Cork, Ireland, on 28 June 1916 and ordained on 21 December 1939. He is the first Irish Columban to reach the venerable age of 100 and the second Columban to do so. Fr Bernard Toal from the USA turned 100 on 17 October last year.
May God continue to fill the hearts of both with joy.
Ad multos annos! To many years!
Collect for Priests
O God, who made your Only Begotten Son eternal High Priest,
grant that those he has chosen
as ministers and stewards of your mysteries
may be found faithful in carrying out
the ministry they have received.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
When
the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to
Jerusalem.And he sent messengers ahead of him. On
their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him;but they did not receive him, because his
face was set toward Jerusalem.When his disciples James and John saw it,
they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and
consume them?”But he turned and rebuked them.Thenthey
went on to another village.
As they were going
along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the
air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”To another he said, “Follow me.” But he
said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”But Jesussaid to
him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the
kingdom of God.”Another said, “I will
follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.”Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a
hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Columban Fr Rufus Halley (1944 - 28 August 2001) with friends in Mindanao
Jesus speaks clearly to us in Sunday's gospel about the cost of following him. Christians are still prepared to give up their very lives to follow Jesus. One example is Fr Franҫois Mourad, a Catholic priest, murdered in Syria on 23 June 2013, asVatican Radio reports.
One who paid the same price, on 28 August 2001 in the Philippines, was a very close friend and Columban confrere, Fr Rufus Halley, from County Waterford in Ireland. He entered the Columbans one year after me. Father Rufus came from a relatively wealthy family but lived very simply and chose to spend the last twenty years of his life in a predominantly Muslim area in Mindanao, an area where for centuries there has been distrust, and sometimes open hostility, between Christians and Muslims.
Many of us tend to react as James and John did in a 'them and us' situation. Not Father Rufus. He chose the path of dialogue, learning two new Philippine languages in order to do that - he was fluent in Tagalog, the language spoken in central Luzon where he had worked for many years - Maranao, the language of most of the Muslims in Lanao del Sur where he was based, and Cebuano, the language of most of the Christian minority there.
He was ambushed and shot dead while riding back to his parish in Malabang from the neighbouring parish of Balabagan. He had been at a meeting of Christian and Muslim leaders. Though the killers happened to be Muslims, both Christians and Muslims mourned him.
Here is an article written by a great friend of Father Rufus, who was known to many as 'Father Popong', Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, Archbishop Emeritus of Manila, published in Misyon in August-September 2006. I've made some minor changes in the text.
A young Bishop Rosales, seated, 2nd from left, with Fr Bernard Jagueneau of the Little Brothers of Jesus, 1st left, another close friend of Father Rufus
Pareng Rufus
By Gaudencio B. Cardinal Rosales
The author, after ten years as Archbishop of Lipa, his native diocese, was appointed Archbishop of Manila by Pope John Paul II on 15 September 2003 and created cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI on 24 March 2006. He retired on 13 October 2011.
I first met Father Rufus Halley in the mid-1970s when I was appointed auxiliary bishop in Manila with responsibility for Rizal Province, the area that became the Diocese of Antipolo in 1983. The Columbans had been working in parishes there since before the War. Father Rufus was in Jalajala at the time. Father Feliciano Manalili, a diocesan priest, introduced me to him. Father Manalili is now a Trappist monk in Mepkin Abbey, South Carolina, USA, where he is prior.
New friend
At first I knew Father Rufus in a formal way, as one of the parish priests under my jurisdiction. But I gradually began to know this man with an open personality and a wonderful sense of humor as a person. On one occasion he invited me to a barrio in his parish that was 45 minutes by boat from the centro. He had forewarned me that this would be a different kind of pastoral visit. We set off in the afternoon. The house where we stayed was on a duck farm and some of the birds were waddling around the house. There was no electricity. After dinner we walked around the village. I saw the people at their usual occupations that included drinking and gambling games such as bingo. Father Rufus introduced me as ‘my friend from Manila,’ which wasn’t untrue, as we were in the Archdiocese of Manila.
Back at the house we chatted for a long time and prayed together. We decided we’d celebrate Mass the next day back at the centro. We slept on the floor. As we were leaving next morning people came to see us off and it was only then that their parish priest told them that I was the area bishop. Though there was some embarrassment, especially among those who were members of Church organizations, there was a lot of laughter at the realization that the bishop had met them as they really were.
Tagalog-speaking Irishman
By this time Father Rufus and I were close friends and I called him ‘Pareng Rufus’ and he called me ‘Pareng Dency.’ I felt free to drop in on him at any time and to go through the back door of his convento (presbytery/rectory). Sometimes I wouldn’t find him in the office or upstairs and would then realize that, despite his red hair and blue eyes, I had passed him in the kitchen, where he was chatting with the staff. (His baptismal name was Michael but his parents always called him ‘Rufus’ because of his red hair). What threw me was that I’d hear only pure Tagalog while walking through the kitchen. My Irish friend spoke the language perfectly.
Another trademark of Father Rufus was his bakya(wooden clogs). I learned from the late Father Patrick Ronan, then parish priest in Morong, that Father Rufus came from a privileged background. That was a revelation to me, as I had always been struck by the simplicity I saw in his life. Father Ronan, another Irish missionary with a great sense of humor and known to his fellow Columbans as ‘Pops’, had spent time in jail in China after the Communist takeover in 1949.
Around 1980 Father Rufus felt called by God to leave the security of living in an overwhelmingly Catholic community to work in the new Prelature of Marawi, which includes all of Lanao del Sur and part of Lanao del Norte, where 95 percent of the people are Muslims. He was very aware of the long history of tension and occasional outright conflict between Christians and Muslims. He also became fluent in two other languages, Maranao, spoken by the Muslims in the area, and Cebuano, spoken by the Christians.
Bishop Gaudencio B. Rosales when Auxiliary Bishop of Manila (1970s)
His kind of dialogue
I too moved to Mindanao, becoming Coadjutor Bishop of Malaybalay in 1982 and succeeding Bishop Francisco Claver SJ in 1984. On one occasion, after spending about a week on retreat in the Benedictine Monastery of the Transfiguration in Malaybalay, Pareng Rufus came to spend a night at my place. He spoke of a ‘brother Muslim’ whom he loved very much and told me that he had been hired to work in a store in the market in Malabang, Lanao del Sur. ‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘This is my kind of dialogue,’ he told me. He was pushing Christian-Muslim dialogue to the limit. When the late Bishop Bienvenido Tudtud, first bishop of the then Prelature of Iligan, which covered the two Lanao provinces, told Pope Paul VI of the conflict there and of his vision of a ‘dialogue of life’ between the two communities, the Pope encouraged him to the extent of dividing the prelature and transferring him to Marawi. Bishop Tudtud died tragically in a plane crash in 1987.
Fr Rufus Halley
Male-dominated Maranaos
My friend Rufus wanted not only to know the faith and culture of Muslims but to ‘befriend the culture of our brother Muslims.’ More than that, he wanted to understand the culture of the Maranaos. This involved trying to understand aspects of that culture that went against his own warm nature and that didn’t seem to be in harmony with the Gospel. For example, he noticed that among Maranao men it wasn’t seen as proper to show any public signs of softness, even if a child of theirs was hurt. He noticed how stiff Maranao men are in their dances which many Filipinos are familiar with. Men sometimes carry a krisas a sign of power. He was well aware that many men, Christian and Muslim, carry a gun for the same reason, and not only in Lanao. He asked himself if there were any areas of tenderness in the macho culture of the Maranaos and stressed the importance of trying to find ways in which the Gospel could enter into dialogue with that culture.
I knew of the intensity with which Father Rufus lived his own Christian faith, how he began each day with an hour of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, the centrality of the Mass in his life. A big influence on him was the life of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, 1858-1916, beatified on 13 November 2005. This Frenchman was also from a privileged background. Unlike Pareng Rufus, he lost his Catholic faith and became a notorious playboy before re-discovering it, partly through the example of Muslims living in North Africa. He spent many years as a priest living among the poorest Muslims in a remote corner of the Sahara, pioneering Christian-Muslim dialogue by discovering himself as the Little Brother of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and as the Little Brother of the Muslims who came knocking at his hermitage door.
Hermitage of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, Algeria[Wikipedia]
Death of a peacemaker
On 1 December 1916 Charles de Foucauld died at the hands of a young gunman outside his hermitage and on 28 September 2001 Pareng Rufus died at the hands of gunmen who ambushed him as he was riding on his motorcycle from a meeting of Muslim and Christian leaders in Balabagan to his parish in Malabang. The local people, both Christian and Muslim, mourned for him deeply. The grief of the Muslims was all the greater because the men who murdered my Pareng Rufus happened to be Muslims. This great missionary priest brought both communities together in their shared grief for a man of God, a true follower of Jesus Christ.
Entrance Antiphon Psalm 46 (47):2
All people, clap your hands.
Cry to God with shouts of joy!
Antiphona ad Introitum (Ps 46 (47):2 [Latin]
Omnes gentes, plaudite manibus,
iubilate Deo in voce exsultationis.
The video above is a setting of the Entrance Antiphon in Latin by contemporary Croatian composerBranko Stark. It is sung by The Thai Youth Choir. In Thailand the vast majority of people are Buddhists. The setting also includes verses 3, 6 and 7 of the psalm:
Quoniam Dominus Altissimus (excelsus), terribilis, rex magnus super omnem terram.
Ascendit Deus in iubilo, et Dominus in voce tubae. Psallite Deo, psallite; psallite regi nostro, psallite. For the LORD, the Most High, is terrible, a great king over all the earth. God has gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King, sing praises! (RSV Catholic Edition) Sacrosanctum Concilium (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy) 36. 1. Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites. Vatican II, while it introduced the use of the mother tongue, did not banish Latin from the Mass and other liturgies!
Once
when Jesuswas
praying alone, with only the disciples near him, he asked them, “Who do the
crowds say that I am?”They answered, “John the Baptist; but others, Elijah; and
still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen.”He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter
answered, “The Messiahof God.”
He sternly ordered and
commanded them not to tell anyone,saying, “The Son of Man
must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and
scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
Then he said to them all, “If any want to become my
followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their
life for my sake will save it.
On 12 June 2013 the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of the Republic of
Ireland stated in the Dáil (parliament) in the context of
legislation that the government eventually pushed through that allows abortion
in certain situations: I am proud to stand here as a public
representative, as a Taoiseach who happens to be a Catholic but not a Catholic
Taoiseach. A Taoiseach for all of the people – that's my job.
A number of columnists and writers of letters to the editor in
Ireland praised Mr Kenny for this and contrasted it with words spoken by Labour TD (Member of Parliament) Brendan
Corish in the Dáil in 1953: I am an Irishman second, I am a
Catholic first, and I accept without qualification in all respects the teaching
of the hierarchy and the church to which I belong. This statement has been
frequently, incorrectly attributed to a previous Taoiseach of the same Fine
Gael party as Mr Kenny, John A. Costello. However, Mr Costello, as Taoiseach, said in 1951: I, as a Catholic, obey my Church
authorities and will continue to do so, in spite of The Irish Times or
anything else . . .
Today's second reading,
Galatians 3:26-29) is very relevant to all of this, and not only in Ireland. St
Paul says to us: for in Christ Jesus you are all
children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ
have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek,
there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all
of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are
Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise. (NRSV-CE).
Though the Second Reading on Sundays in Ordinary Time isn't linked
thematically with the Gospel, as the First Reading is, St Paul's words tie in
with the question Jesus put to the Apostles and puts to us now: But who
do you say that I am?
Who is at the centre of my life? Pope Benedict frequently reminded
us that our faith is above all in a Person, Jesus Christ, God who became Man.
And Pope Francis, in his homily on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus
Christ) 2013 said, So let us ask ourselves this evening, in adoring
Christ who is really present in the Eucharist: do I let myself be transformed
by him? Do I let the Lord who gives himself to me, guide me to going out ever
more from my little enclosure, in order to give, to share, to love him and
others?
1955 All-Ireland Football Final programme[Wikipedia]
St Paul's words challenge us to ask ourselves, 'What is my deepest
identity?' We have many levels of identity, each of which has its own
importance. I remember my first All-Ireland Football Final in Croke Park,
Dublin, in September 1955. Dublin were playing against Kerry. I was there, aged
12 and standing on an orange-box, with my father, John, like myself a true
'Dub', and a neighbour and friend just a few doors up the street, Denis
Stritch, who died in 2013, God rest his soul. Denis was from Kerry. During the
game, the result of which was disappointing for me and my Dad, we identified
with Dublin and Kerry, rivals but not enemies.
But if Denis and my Dad had ever visited me in the Philippines
they would have identified themselves as Irish. However, if they had attended
Mass in Bacolod City they would have identified themselves as Catholic
Christians, as would everyone else present. As
many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There
is no longer Jew or Greek . . .
This is our most basic identity. Have this mind
among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, St Paul tells us in
Philippians 2:5. When Jesus puts his question to the Apostles, But who
do you say that I am? Peter answers clearly. The Messiah of
God.
Whether I am a janitor or a journalist, a priest or a politician,
I am called by my baptism to live out of my identity as a son or daughter of
the Father, a brother or sister of Jesus, in the service of all my brothers and
sisters. Pope Francis concluded his Corpus Christi homily with these
words, Brothers and sisters, following, communion, sharing. Let us pray
that participation in the Eucharist may always be an incentive: to follow the
Lord every day, to be instruments of communion and to share what we are with
him and with our neighbour. Our life will then be truly fruitful. Amen.
In most situations there is no conflict
whatever between my various levels of identity. My being a Catholic Christian
is not in conflict with my being an Irishman. But if I take my baptism
seriously I can never leave 'the mind of Christ' at home or outside. In most
areas of life Christians may legitimately disagree on issues while living their
baptismal faith with all their hearts. Sometimes I have to yield on matters
that I may not be happy with but that aren't fundamental. Politicians, for
example have to do this all the time, as do the rest of us on many occasions.
But when it comes to matters of life and death I cannot, as a Christian, put
the Gospel aside, as if 'the mind of Christ' was a T-shirt that I wear now and
again.
St Thomas More (1478 - 1535), patron saint of statesmen,
politicians and lawyers, whose feast day is this coming Wednesday, 22 June,
gave his life because he put his identity as a Catholic Christian before
anything else. Just before his execution he said, I die his Majesty's
good servant, but God's first. He recognised his erstwhile friend King
Henry VIII as King of England but not as head of the Church.
That was St Thomas's response to St Paul's words this Sunday, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God
through faith, to the question of
Jesus, But who do YOU say that I am?
How do I answer that question?
Antiphona at introitum Entrance Antiphon Cf Ps 27[28]:8-9
Dominus fortitudo plebis suae,
The Lord is the strength of his people,
et protector salutarium Christi sui
est.
a saving refuge for the one he has anointed.
Salvum fac populum tuum, Domine,
Save your people, Lord,
et benedict hereditati tuae,
and bless your heritage,
et rege eos usque in saeculum.
and govern them for ever.
Ad te, Domine, clamabo, Deus meus,
To you, 0 Lord, I call; 0 my God,
ne sileas a me:
be not deaf to me,
ne quando taceas a me,
lest, if you heed me not,
et assimilabor descendentibus in lacum.
I become one of those going down into the pit.
Gloria
Patri et Filii et Spiritui sancto
Glory
to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit
Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper
As
it was in the beginning, is now
Et
in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
And
will be for ever. Amen.
Dominus fortitudo plebis suae,
The Lord is the strength of his people,
et protector salutarium Christi sui est.
a saving refuge for the one he has anointed.
Salvum fac populum tuum, Domine,
Save your people, Lord,
et benedict hereditati tuae,
and bless your heritage,
et rege eos usque in saeculum.
and govern them for ever.
The video has the longer
version of the Introit as used in the Mass in the Extraordinary Form, often
referred to as 'The Traditional Latin Mass' or 'TLM'. The text used in the
Ordinary Form of the Mass is in bold, in Latin and in English.
