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).
Showing posts with label Blessed Fra Angelico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blessed Fra Angelico. Show all posts
Gospel Matthew 18:21-35 (English Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England &
Wales, Scotland, India)
At that time:
Peter came up and said to Jesus, ‘Lord, how often will my brother sin against
me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not
say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.
‘Therefore the
kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with
his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten
thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be
sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made.
So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, “Have patience with me, and I
will pay you everything.” And out of pity for him, the master of that servant
released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he
found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing
him, he began to choke him, saying, “Pay what you owe.” So his fellow servant
fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” He
refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his
fellow servants saw what had taken place they were greatly distressed, and they
went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master
summoned him and said to him, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt
because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow
servant, as I had mercy on you?” And in anger his master delivered him to the
jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do
to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.’
Today's gospel brings us in touch with what is perhaps the most difficult demand for Christians: to forgive. El Greco's painting shows us St Peter praying with hope and trust in God's merciful and forgiving love.
An example of forgiveness is found in an extract from a letter of Fr William Doyle SJ, an Irish priest who died in August 1917 in Passchendaele, Belgium, while serving as a chaplain in the British Army in World War I. The extract is taken from a post on the website The Father Willie Doyle Association, the official site for the canonisation cause of the Servant of God Fr Willie Doyle SJ.
Father Doyle wrote to his father in Dublin about events of 5 September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme in France [emphasis added]:
In the bottom of one hole lay a British and a German soldier, locked in a deadly embrace, neither had any weapon, but they had fought on to the bitter end.Another couple seemed to have realised that the horrible struggle was none of their making, and that they were both children of the same God; they had died hand-in-hand praying for and forgiving one another. A third face caught my eye, a tall, strikingly handsome young German, not more, I should say, than eighteen. He lay there calm and peaceful, with a smile of happiness on his face, as if he had had a glimpse of Heaven before he died. Ah, if only his poor mother could have seen her boy it would have soothed the pain of her broken heart.
To Father Doyle no German soldier was an enemy. Indeed, one of the remarkable things in the literature that came out of the Great War, as the First World War was known until the Second World War began, is that soldiers didn't seem to have hatred for the official 'enemy'. It was more often against their own generals and bullying corporals. Photos and videos from the war show prisoners of war, especially wounded ones, being treated with the same kindness and consideration as others.
Father Doyle's description of the British and German soldiers holding hands in death illustrates poignantly and powerfully what Jesus asks of us in this Sunday's Gospel. Pray for the souls of all who died in that terrible conflict.
The Banks of Green Willow
Composed by George Butterworth
Played by the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields
Conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
George Butterworth, an officer in the British army, was killed in the Battle of the Somme. 5 August 1916, a month before the event described by Fr Willie Doyle in his letter to his father. Pray for the souls of all who died in that terrible conflict, The Great War / First World War.
The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread (1 Corinthians 10:16-17; Second Reading).
Corpus Christi Sunday, Year A
The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Year A
In most countries this solemnity, formerly celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, is now observed on the Sunday after Trinity Sunday, this year replacing the Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Readings(Jerusalem
Bible: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand)
Readings(English
Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, Scotland, India)
Gospel John 6:51-58 (English
Standard Version, Anglicised)
At that time:
Jesus said to the Jews, ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If
anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever. And the bread that I will
give for the life of the world is my flesh.’
The Jews then
disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’
So Jesus said
to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of
Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and
drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For
my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh
and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me,
and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live
because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread
the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live for ever.’
John and Pam are a couple who live in the parish of the Assumption, Howth, in the Archdiocese of Dublin whom I have come to know very well through Worldwide Marriage Encounter since I came back to Ireland from the Philippines nine years ago. John was seriously ill in hospital three years ago and shared some reflections with me in emails which I thought would be good to share on Sunday Reflections with his permission for the feast of Corpus Christi. He has kindly given me permission to use his reflection again this year. Please pray for Stephen, the sone of John and Pam who is recovering from serious surgery.
From a small swelling below my left knee I developed sepsis and suffered septic shock late at night in which my vital signs: heartbeat, pulse, disappeared. My guardian angel must have been watching over me because Pam, my beloved of 53 years [now 56], was sitting beside me and her nursing training acquired 60 years ago, sprang into action as she gave me the kiss of life and applied CPR.
Fortunately, Pam’s action was successful. I came to and the ambulance brought me to Beaumont Hospital where I received extraordinary care from a dedicated team for 3½ weeks as they worked to bring the infection under control, which has been a slow business. Thankfully I have now been discharged and continue to recover at home under Pam’s dedicated care.
It has been a time for reflection. Our wonderful parish community - the Body of Christ - has been praying for me as has our faithful Marriage Encounter family.
53 years ago, Pam and I vowed to live as one body as Jesus called us in Matrimony to do. Now Pam, who is an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion in our parish, has been bringing me the Body of Christ, broken for us on the Cross and risen to Easter glory, to receive in my hospital bed and now at home. It has been extraordinarily profound for both of us. St Paul links the various meanings of ‘body’ together.
I have to assume that the Lord still has some task for me that I may neither know nor understand at this moment.
I was pretty poorly in hospital and had some dark nights of the soul, unable to sleep and wondering if I would ever really recover. However there were always others more ill than me in the ward.
As expected, we’ve had extraordinary love and prayers from our Marriage Encounter Family. One couple, Mike and Rose, have kindly been keeping everyone up-to-date on my faltering progress.
However what has been perhaps less expected has been the outpouring of love and prayers from our daily 10:00 Mass community in our parish church in Howth that I join every day via the webcam. I have had a real tangible experience of belonging to a community who truly love me and Pam. It has been an alive experience that St Luke describes so vividly in Acts referring to the early Christian communities. Both Pam and I feel humbled by it all and this outpouring of love, prayer and support has so buoyed me up especially through the darker moments.
The idea of Body is a strong theme running through St Paul’s letters. There is Jesus offering his Body broken on the Cross to be gloriously raised on Easter Day. Jesus himself tells us [in today’s gospel] that unless we eat his Body and drink his Blood we shall not have his life in us. He it was who raised marriage to be a Sacrament by calling Pam and me and countless others to live as One Body.
Paul develops this by identifying the Christian Community as Christ’s Body with the members looking out for other members. We have experienced this in huge and tangible measure pressed down and over-flowing.
Pam and I are Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion and if asked, we stand in the middle of the church and it has often occurred to me that we as a married couple called to be one body by Jesus, are serving his Body to the Body of Christ in our parish. This became a deep thought in my present illness, watching Pam receive the pyx with the Blessed Sacrament in it at the end of Mass to bring the Lord to me on my sick bed.
He was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him (Matthew 17:2-3; Gospel).
Readings(Jerusalem
Bible: Australia, Ireland, New Zealand)
Readings(English
Standard Version, Catholic Edition: England & Wales, Scotland, India)
GospelMatthew 17:1-19(English Standard Version, Anglicised)
At that time: Jesus
took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high
mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone
like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared
to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it
is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for
you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ He was still speaking when, behold,
a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my
beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’ When the disciples
heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came and
touched them, saying, ‘Rise, and have no fear.’ And when they lifted up their
eyes, they saw no one, but Jesus only. And as they were coming down the
mountain, Jesus commanded them, ‘Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man
is raised from the dead.’
Like Peter, James and John, I caught a glimpse of something of the Purity of God on a hill. Tradition tells us that Jesus was transfigured on Mount Tabor, Israel. My 'Mount Tabor' was a hotel at the top of a hill in Lourdes, France.
During Holy Week 2001 I took part in the international pilgrimage of Faith and Light to Lourdes which takes place every ten years. Faith and Light was born of a desire to help people with an intellectual disability and their families find their place within the Church and society. This was the main purpose of the organized pilgrimage to Lourdes at Easter of 1971.
I was based in Britain at the time and travelled with a group from the north of England. However, before I left the Philippines for Britain in 2000 I had been invited to be chaplain to the small contingent from the Philippines, as I had been involved with Faith and Light in the Philippines, mostly on the fringes, between 1992 and 2000.
The Filipinos were staying in a hotel at a distance from the shrine and at the top of a hill. There was also a group of Faith and Light pilgrims from Hong Kong, including Fr Giosue Bonzi PIME, an Italian, in the same hotel. (I was with the English pilgrims in a hotel close to the shrine.)
One of those from Hong Kong was Dorothy, a girl of about eleven with Down Syndrome (Trisomy 21). Her father died suddenly when she was very young. Dorothy's face had the delicate beauty of Chinese ceramics. But she had an extraordinary inner beauty, a purity that could have come only from God. Though I had no Cantonese and she had no English, we were able to communicate simply by looking at one another. She showed complete trust in me. She had a vulnerability that called forth the deepest respect.
Fr Giosue
Bonzi PIME with Dorothy, now an adult, in Hong Kong
In Irish there's an expression used for a person
with a severe mental or learning disability, duine le Dia, 'a
person with God'. Dorothy was such for me, in a very full sense of that phrase:
she was a clear expression of the beauty and of the purity of God to me.
The Opening Prayer of today's Mass reads:
O God, who have commanded us
to listen to your beloved Son,
be pleased, we pray,
to nourish us inwardly by your word,
that, with spiritual sight made pure,
we may rejoice to behold your glory.
Through . . .
When Peter, James and John went up Mount Tabor
with Jesus they had no idea that would see the divinity of Jesus there. They
had no idea they would hear God the Father say This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well
pleased; listen to him. The Entrance Antiphon, taken from Psalm 26 [27], prays, It is your face, O Lord, that I seek; hide not your face from me. I have no doubt that I saw the face of the Lord in that young girl with
Down Syndrome from Hong Kong whom I met in Lourdes in Holy Week 2001.
Jesus may speak to us at any time,
unexpectedly, as he revealed his presence to me in that hotel at the top of a
hill in Lourdes. May we make the Opening Prayer our own so that, with
spiritual sight made pure, we may rejoice to behold your glory.
Immaculate
Mary (The Lourdes Hymn)
Traditional
Pyrenean melody arranged by James Doig
He was still speaking, when lo, a bright cloud overshadowed them,
and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with
whom I am well pleased; listen to him' (Matthew 17:5; Gospel).
Stretcher Bearers, Passchendaele, Belgium, 1917
Madonna of Mercy
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