'If ever you take your neighbour's cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down.' Sunday Reflections, 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

 

The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix)

Van Gogh [Web Gallery of Art]

You shall love your neighbour as yourself (Mt 22:39; Gospel).

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

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Matthew 22:34-40 (English Standard Version Anglicised, India)

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan 

Archbishop of Seoul (1922 - 2009)

Earlier this year the Archdiocese of Seoul formally opened the cause for the beatification of Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan. Many of my Columban confreres in Korea knew him well. He inspired many priests in the Philippines by being a great pastor. I have used the material here before but have no hesitation about using it again.

This time nine years ago I visited Korea to attend the ordination to the priesthood on 1 November of Fr Lee Jehoon Augustine, a Columban who spent two years working in the Manila area as part of his preparation for the priesthood. He is now serving in Myanmar.

While there I went with two Columban priests, Fr Liam O'Keeffe, a classmate from County Clare who returned to Ireland last year, Fr Con Murphy from County Cork, who came back to Ireland in 2018 after 57 years in Korea, and a woman named Pia to visit the graves of five Columbans in a cemetery owned by the Archdiocese of Seoul, but outside both the city and the archdiocese.  One of the five Columbans buried there, Fr Mortimer Kelly from Gort, County Galway, was a classmate of Father Liam and myself. Pia had known Fr John Nyhan, from Kilkenny, Ireland, another of the five, since her childhood.

The cemetery is on a hillside, as is the Korean custom. A little higher on the hill where my companions are buried is the grave of Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan, a man who was revered in Korea, not only by Catholics but by nearly all South Koreans.

While we were there Father Con told me of a homily that Cardinal Kim once preached at a Mass in a Catholic university. He took out two daily newspapers and began to speak in such a quiet voice that those present had to strain forward and 'eavesdrop'. Cardinal Kim was flipping over the pages of both newspapers and some were thinking he was unprepared. Then he came to a particular story about young women working on the railways who collected the fares of last-minute passengers and helped 'push' people into trains at rush hour.

The report in both papers was about accusations by higher authorities that some of these young women were perhaps pocketing some of the fares. Cardinal Kim's voice grew stronger as he spoke about this. Then he began to remind the students of how privileged they were, getting higher education and an opportunity to find better jobs than the young women working for the rail company who were at the bottom of the heap.

Cardinal Kim, who was noted for his love for the poor and who knew many poor people personally, now speaking in a very strong voice, asked the students if they were going to treat others with the contempt that some showed towards the young women in a menial job or if they were going to use their professional qualifications in the service of others.

Cardinal Kim

In that homily the late Archbishop of Seoul was bringing together the two Great Commandments that Jesus gives us in today's gospel and between which there is no conflict. In the First Reading, to which the Gospel is linked by theme, God reminds the Hebrew people of how they are to treat those who are poor or different - aliens, widows, orphans. If ever you take your neighbour's cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down (Exodus 22:26; First Reading), That cloak was what a poor person slept in.

In other words, Jesus is asking us to see each person through his eyes. GK Chesterton in his biography of St Francis of Assisi, if my memory is correct, has a wonderful image of a huge crowd looking up at God on a balcony, rather as in St Peter's Square when the Pope is on the balcony there or at his window for the Sunday Angelus. However, Chesterton didn't see himself among the crowd but with God on the balcony, looking down on the people and seeing them as God sees them.

Cardinal Kim was doing something similar. He was looking at both the university students and the railway workers through the eyes of God. Rank means nothing to God as he looks on his children. As Psalm 149 so beautifully expresses it, God takes delight in his people [Grail translation].

Frank Duff, Founder of the Legion of Mary

7 June 1889 – 7 November 1980 [Photo]

On pages 296-297 the Handbook of the Legion of Mary, nearly all of which was written by its founder the Servant of God Frank Duff, quotes from Chesterton's biography of St Francis. St Francis only saw the image of God multiplied but never monotonous. To him a man was always a man, and did not disappear in a dense crowd any more than in a desert. He honoured all men; that is he not only loved but respected them all. What gave him his extraordinary personal power was this: that from the Pope to the beggar, from the Sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers crawling out of the wood, there was never a man who looked into those brown, burning eyes without being certain that Francis Bernardone was really interested in him, in his inner individual life from the cradle to the grave; that he himself was valued and taken seriously.

This is how members of the Legion of Mary, which is strong in Korea, are told to look upon each person they meet, indeed to see them higher than themselves. Fr Bede McGregor OP, former Spiritual Director of the Concilium, the central body of the Legion of Mary in Dublin, tells how Frank Duff himself lived that. When he was postulator of the cause for the beatification of Frank Duff he interviewed a man who lived in the Morning Star Hostel, run by the Legion of Mary in Dublin for men who are down on their luck. Father Bede explained tp the man that he was seeking testimonies for the Vatican and needed him to swear on the Bible that anything he said concerning Frank was true. He added that the man was an alcoholic and had lived a tragic life. The man agreed and then he said these beautiful words: Frank Duff was the only man who ever looked up to me. 

The Legion was born in the slums of Dublin in 1921 and to this day is involved to a large degree in serving people who have little or nothing.

God is constantly blessing the Church and the world through persons who embody the Gospel in their lives. I know from my friends in Korea in particular that Cardinal Kim embodied the Two Great Commandments; he was an embodiment of what each of us is called to be in virtue of our baptism in the different situations in which we find ourselves.

Cardinal Kim's grave 

평화의 기도 The Prayer of St Francis (in Korean)

이승희 SeungHee Lee Composer

▫서울가톨릭싱어즈 Seoul Catholic Singers ▫

지휘 유근창 Conductor Simon, Geun-Chang Riu ▫

반주 남효주 Pianist Angela, Hyo-Ju Nam ▫

2019. 6. 29 @신천동 성당 SinCheon-Dong Church

Traditional Latin Mass

Feast of the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 10-29-2023 if necessary).

Epistle: Colossian 1:12-20. Gospel: John 18:33-37.

Christ Before Pilate

Mihály Munkácsy [Web Gallery of Art]

Pilate entered the praetorium again and called Jesus, and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” (John 18:33; Gospel)