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).
Joshua gathered
all the tribes of Israel . . . “Put away the gods that your fathers
served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lorð” . . . Then the people answered, “Far be it from us
that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods”. [First Reading].
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia,
England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)
GospelJohn 6:60-69(English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
When many of his disciples heard it, they said,
“This is a hard saying; who can
listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were
grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offence at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending
to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives
life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to
you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not
believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did
not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This
is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by
the Father.”
After this many of his disciples turned
back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said
to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter
answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal
life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you
are the Holy One of God.”
With my parents John and Mary and my brother Paddy
My father, who was widowed in 1970, spent six weeks with me in the Philippines from mid-February to early April 1981. He spent most of that time in Tangub City, Misamis Occidental where I had been parish priest for a few months and from 1979 to 1981 was in charge of Paul VI Formation House, part of the seminary programme in the Diocese (now Archdiocese) of Ozamiz but serving the neighbouring dioceses also.
One evening, along with some parishioners, we went to visit a family who lived maybe 400 meters from the church and the formation house. When we were walking back later, at a slow, relaxed pace, someone remarked that my Dad and I were walking in exactly the same way, with our hands behind our backs. I had never noticed that before.
When I thought about it later, I realised that I must have learned that from Sunday morning walks when I was a child with Dad and my brother Paddy in the Phoenix Park, near where we lived in Dublin.
The pond is knows to Dubliners as 'The Duck Pond' as there have always been ducks there along with some waterhens. On occasion, like countless other youngsters, I fed the ducks with bread.
My Dad often took me to soccer matches in Dalymount Park, about 20 minutes' walk from our home. This would be called 'bonding' today. But before I was of an age to attend football matches, when I was still a toddler, my Dad took me to Sunday Mass. My brother was a baby then and my mother would go to a later Mass. And on special days like Easter Monday and Whit (Pentecost) Monday Dad would take me to Solemn High Mass in the Dominican church or the Capuchin church. I didn't particularly appreciate that at the time, as I found those Masses very long. But I could see how important they were for Dad.
I also saw Dad go to early Mass every weekday morning before coming home to make his and my mother's breakfast. In the winter he would prepare the fireplace to be lit later in the day before cycling off to a long day's work on building (construction) sites. I was to join him on one of those during the summer before my ordination, when I was already a subdeacon. I saw there what I already knew, that he was a general foreman who respected the workers, never raised his voice to them and never swore, even though quite a lot of swearing went on. He led by example. And the workers deeply respected him, younger ones seeing in him a great mentor.
The First Reading tells us that Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israelput it to them to choose false gods or the God who had led them out of Egypt into the Promised Land. In the gospel we see Jesus challenging the Twelve Apostles after many of his disciples had walked away, unable to accept the teaching of Jesus: “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."
St Peter spoke on behalf of the Twelve: Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
The Apostle Peter in Prison
Rembrandt [Web Gallery of Art]
The Hebrew people listening to Joshua accepted the One True God. They included many young children who would not have understood. But as they grew older they did and made their parents' choice for them their own. When I was a small child and my Dad took me to Sunday Mass I didn't understand very much but I was part of a believing community and as I grew older I made the choice my parents had made for me at baptism my own. The solemnity of the High Masses that Dad took me to has left a positive impact on me to this day even though at times the actual experience of what for me was a very long Mass wasn't entirely positive.
As I grew older I made my own choices in the faith I had received in baptism because of my parents' decision to raise me in the Catholic Christian faith. I knew what I was doing when I went to confession for the first time and made my First Holy Communion at the age of seven. I knew even more clearly what I was doing when I was confirmed at the age of ten, then the age for receiving that sacrament in Ireland. And when I entered the seminary at the age of 18 I knew I was preparing for a life-long decision. My parents had given me the example of their own faith and their faithfulness to one another in marriage, which St Paul speaks about so eloquently and deeply in the Second Reading, and left me free to make my own decisions for my Christian life.
In a homily on the Solemnity of the Assumption in 2005 Pope Benedict XVI said, This was also the great temptation of the modern
age, of the past three or four centuries. More and more people have thought and
said: ‘But this God does not give us our freedom; with all his commandments, he
restricts the space in our lives. So God has to disappear; we want to be
autonomous and independent. Without this God we ourselves would be gods and do
as we pleased’.
Pope Benedict describes the contemporary Western world where God has to disappear, a world where each of us has to make the choice that Joshua asked of the Hebrews, that Jesus asked of the Apostles. We make this choice as individuals who are part of a believing community.
Benedict goes on to say, This was also the view of the Prodigal Son, who did
not realize that he was ‘free’ precisely because he was in his father's house.
He left for distant lands and squandered his estate. In the end, he realized
that precisely because he had gone so far away from his father, instead of
being free he had become a slave; he understood that only by returning home to
his father's house would he be truly free, in the full beauty of life.
St Peter's choice and that of most of the Apostles led to their martyrdom, which they freely accepted. God doesn't ask that of most of us. He asks us to make daily choices in little things that come from our faith in Jesus Christ, God who became Man, the kind of choices I saw my parents make each day.
They and the many others like them whom I knew and who probably would not be able to articulate their faith in words were revealing to me where true freedom and authentic life lie.
The response to the Responsorial Psalm today sums it up: Taste and see that the Lord is good.
The bottom panel shows the incident in the gospel in this Sunday's Traditional Latin Mass.
Authentic Beauty
Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond.
On finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it [Matthew 13:46].
In his Introduction to the Devout Life (1608), which was published in a Dutch translation in 1616, the mystic St Francis De Sales (1567-1622) wrote, 'Both now and in the past it has been customary for women to hang pearls from their ears; as Pliny observed, they gain pleasure from the sensation of the swinging pearls touching them. But I know that God's friend, Isaac, sent earrings to chaste Rebecca as a first token of his love. This leads me to think that this jewel has a spiritual meaning, namely that the first part of the body that a man wants, and which a woman must loyally protect, is the ear; no word or sound should enter it other than the sweet sound of chaste words, which are the oriental pearls of the gospel.' [Web Gallery of Art]
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia,
England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan,
Scotland, South Africa)
GospelMatthew 13:44-52 or 13:44-46 (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition)
Jesus said to his disciples:
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone
found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that
field.
‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine
pearls; on finding one pearl
of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.’
[‘Again,
the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught
fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into
baskets but threw out the bad. So
it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the
evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where
there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
‘Have you understood all this?’ They answered,
‘Yes.’ And he said to them, ‘Therefore every scribe who has been trained
for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of
his treasure what is new and what is old.’]
A couple of Sundays ago I took part in Mass, as a concelebrating priest, outside of where I live for the first time since Covid-19 restrictions were introduced in Ireland in early March. It was in the monastery of the Poor Clares in Dublin. The Mass was for a friend and former parishioner of mine in Tangub City, Misamis Occidental, Philippines, Mrs Sophronia Gelera, who died in June at the age of 86. Nang Ponying, as she was known, had lost her husband Fortunato, whom I never knew, in an accident when Gina, the youngest of their six children, was less than a year old. (Nang is an honorific used by Visayan-speakers when speaking or referring to a woman or girl older than themselves, including sisters). Jimmy, the second in the family and the eldest of three brothers, was killed in a motorcycle accident on 26 January 1980, a Saturday, a few weeks after his 24th birthday. Just a few hours after giving him Holy Communion at Mass that morning I was called to the hospital to give him the Last Rites. That was when I became really close to the Gelera family. Jimmy's funeral Mass was the most difficult I have ever celebrated. But I remember at the very end of the funeral in the cemetery Nang Ponying said a prayer in which she handed back her eldest son to God.
Gina's graduation from college, October 1983
Immaculate Conception College, Ozamiz City.
With her sister Grace, her mother and me.
None of Nang Ponying's children were in the Philippines when she died, though they were able to 'meet' her before she died through Zoom family gatherings. And because of quarantine restrictions none of the five were able to travel home for the funeral.
Gina works with the Poor Clares and at the end of the Mass she gave a beautiful testimony to her mother's faith. It wasn't the shallow 'canonisation' that has become all too common at funeral Masses, but something that showed me the depth of Nang Ponying's faith.
Gina told of how on one day not long after Jimmy's death her mother had run out of cash and the only food in the house was a bunch of bananas (probably of the kind you cook - something Westerners are not familiar with). At the time only two of the family were still living with their mother, Gina and Grace, both in their teens. Nang Ponying decided that they would have half the bananas for breakfast and the other half for lunch. As it drew near six in the evening Gina asked her mother what they would do, since they had no food, Nang Ponying said, 'We will pray the Rosary as we always do at this time'.
As they finished the Rosary there was a knock on the door. It was a neighbour who knew nothing of their situation bringing them newly-harvested rice as a gift.
After Mass on Nang Ponying's 80th Birthday
11 March 2014, with family and priests
Gina mentioned a number of times her mother's great trust in God's providence. Her words reminded me of a wonderful book called Self Abandonment to God's Providence by Fr Jean-Pierre de Caussade SJ, which I am re-reading at the moment for the fifth or sixth time. It was edited and put together more than a century after Fr de Caussade's death in 1751.
Nang Ponying had developed a form of dementia in recent years but still got up each morning at 5 to attend the parish Mass at 6. And Gina wrote on Facebook that her mother had once said to her, I
will not stop going to Holy Mass everyday even if my feet and slippers are worn
out. Gina spoke of her mother's great trust in the presence of Jesus the Risen Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. She went to the parish church and poured out her heart to the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament whenever she felt burdened. She truly believed the words of Jesus: Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30). Nang Ponying was not a Scripture scholar or a theologian. But she knew that God had given her two precious 'pearls' as gifts. One was the gift of her Christian faith through baptism. The other was the gift of Jesus the Risen Lord in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in the Blessed Sacrament. And by her example she continues to share these 'pearls' from God with her family and with many others, including myself. Solas na bhFlaithease uirthi - The Light of Heaven upon her.
The last photo of Gina with her mother
An Old Irish Prayer for the Dead
Abraimís
cúig Phaidir do na mairbh, le hanam ár n-aithreacha, agus ár máithreacha, ár
ndeartháireacha agus ár ndeirfiúracha, ár gcomhluadar agus ár ngaolta agus ár
ndaoine muinteartha go léir a d’fhág an saol seo. Gach
n-aon nach bhfuil duine
aige, guímid leis: go dtuga Dia cuidiú na guí seo dó agus dea-bhás dúinn féin
an lá déanach. Amen.
Let us say the Lord’s Prayer five times for the dead, for the
souls of our father and our mothers, our brothers and sisters, our family and
our relations and all the members of our community who have left this life. For
those who have no one, we pray: may God help them with this prayer and give us
a good death on the last day.
Across the Pacific from the Philippines is Chile where this video is from and where Columban missionaries have been working for nearly 70 years. The video intersperses footage of La Fiesta de Cuasimodo, held on the Second Sunday of Easter, now also known as 'Divine Mercy Sunday', with the singing of a Eucharistic hymn in Latin composed by St Thomas Aquinas, Adoro te devote. An English translation is on the video. Below is the Latin text. The priest, carrying the Blessed Sacrament, is taken in a horse-drawn carriage to bring Holy Communion to the sick and the elderly who were unable to attend the ceremonies of the Sacred Paschal Triduum (the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday to the Easter Vigil). This celebration takes place especially in communities near Santiago, the capital of Chile, some of which have now become part of the growing city. Again, it shows how the precious 'pearls' of the Christian faith and of the Blessed Sacrament are shared with the sick and the elderly while being passed from one generation to the next. The name Cuasimodo comes from the opening words in Latin of the Introit (Entrance Antiphon) on the Sunday after Easter: Quasi modo geniti infantes, alleluia - Like newborn infants, alleluia.
Adoro te
devote, latens deitas,
Quæ sub his
figuris vere latitas;
Tibi se cor
meum totum subjicit,
Quia te
contemplans totum deficit.
Visus,
tactus, gustus in te fallitur,
Sed auditu
solo tuto creditur.
Credo quidquid
dixit Dei Filius;
Nil hoc
verbo Veritátis verius.
In Cruce
latebat sola Deitas,
At hic latet
simul et Humanitas,
Ambo tamen
credens atque confitens,
Peto quod
petivit latro pœnitens.
Plagas,
sicut Thomas, non intueor:
Deum tamen
meum te confiteor.
Fac me tibi
semper magis credere,
In te spem
habere, te diligere.
O memoriale
mortis Domini,
Panis vivus,
vitam præstans homini,
Præsta meæ
menti de te vívere,
Et te illi
semper dulce sapere.
Pie
Pelicane, Jesu Domine,
Me immundum
munda tuo Sanguine:
Cujus una
stilla salvum facere
Totum mundum
quit ab omni scelere.
Jesu, quem
velatum nunc aspicio,
Oro, fiat
illud quod tam sitio:
Ut te
revelata cernens facie,
Visu sim
beátus tuæ gloriæ. Amen.
Salve Regina - Hail, Holy Queen
Produced by Canto Católico with 450 singers from 33 countries in April during the Covid-19 quarantine.
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