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 Filiino Sign Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Filiino Sign Language. Show all posts
Gospel, John 14:23-29 (English Standard Version
Anglicised: India)
Jesus said to his disciples:
“If
anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we
will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me
does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the
Father's who sent me.
“These
things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper,
the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach
you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace
I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give
to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. You
heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you
loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father,
for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before
it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe."
The late Bishop Bienvenido 'Benny' S. Tudtud of Marawi, Philippines, visited my Dad (below) in Dublin some time in the early 1980s. As it happened, Dad was about to leave for the wedding of a cousin of mine but he was able to entertain his unexpected guest for a while. Later on he told my brother, 'The bishop made me feel at home'. My brother laughed and said to him, 'You were the one supposed to make him feel at home!' But my Dad was always himself no matter whose company he was in and so was Bishop Tudtud, whose Christian name is the Spanish for 'Welcome'. They were both to die suddenly in 1987, Bishop Tudtod in a plane crash in the Philippines on 26 June and Dad at home on 11 August from a heart attack. He had been at Mass that morning, as he had been every day of his adult life. The photo below was taken a week before his death.
My father hadn't expected Bishop Tudtud. But he made him feel welcome. The bishop felt free to just turn up because I had worked with him and had asked him to drop by my Dad if he had time. I have found over the years that there are friends' homes to which I need no invitation. These are friends with whom I truly feel at home and who feel at home with me.
Sometimes we feel fully at home with someone whom we have just met. Sometimes that being at ease with each other comes after being together many times, maybe through working together.
In the gospel of this Sunday's Mass Jesus makes the extraordinary statement, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
The Father and Jesus are not only coming for a visit but to make their home with us. And the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Counselor/Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will come and will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.
Fr Anselm Moynihan OP, an Irish Dominican friar who died in 1998, wrote a short book in 1948 about the Blessed Trinity living in our hearts, The Presence of God. Here is an extract: Awareness of God, whether it come to us thus by a dazzling rending of the heavens or through the gentle whisper of his voice in our conscience, is at the beginning and end of our spiritual life, at the beginning and end of all religion. It is the root of what is truly the most radical division of mankind, one to which Holy Scripture constantly reverts, that between the 'wise' who keep God before their eyes and the 'fools' who ignore him. The first awakening of the soul to God's reality brings with it that fear of the Lord which is the 'beginning of wisdom'; the end of life should bring with it the 'wisdom of the perfect,' the fruit of charity, whereby a man will experience God's living presence within himself and be filled with longing for that full awareness of God which is the vision of his face in heaven.
The two disciples on the road to Emmaus invited Jesus to join them and they pressed him to have supper with them at the inn, as it was getting dark. It was through their welcoming him that they discovered who their unknown companion was, the Risen Lord. And, in the intimacy of the breaking of the bread when they recognised him and he disappeared from their sight, they felt his presence even more strongly, even more intimately. He was now dwelling in their hearts, just as he dwells in ours, with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Communion Antiphon John 14:15-16
Setting by Thomas Tallis (1505 - 1585)
Sung by Cantate Boys Choir
English text used by Tallis: If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth. (John 14:15-17a, King James Version).
Text in the Roman Missal (John 14:15-16): If you love me, keep my commandments, says the Lord, and I will ask the Father and he will send you another Paraclete, to abide with you for ever, alleluia.
Traditional Latin Mass
Fifth Sunday after Easter
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 05-22-2022 if necessary).
Gospel Mark 10:17-30(English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
Jesus was setting out on his journey, a man
ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do
to inherit eternal life?”And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.You know the commandments: ‘Do not
murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not
defraud, Honour your father and mother.’”And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from
my youth.”And
Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the
poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”Disheartened by the saying, he went away
sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
And
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have
wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”And the
disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of
God!It is easier
for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the
kingdom of God.”And
they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?”Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are
possible with God.”Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything
and followed you.”Jesus
said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one
who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or
lands, for my sake and for the gospel,who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time,
houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with
persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life".
This incident is also recounted in the gospels of St Matthew and St Luke. It is St Matthew who tells us that the man who approached Jesus was young. Luke describes him as a ruler or aristocrat, depending on the translation. But it is only St Mark who writes, Jesus, looking at him, loved him . . .
During my summer vacation in 1963, my second since enering the the seminary, the biggest story in Britain and Ireland was that of a senior member of the Conservative Party and of the British government,John Profumo. He had served with distinction in the British army in World War II, reaching the rank of Brigadier (General). He was independently wealthy. He became involved with a prostitute, Christine Keeler, who also had relations with the senior Soviet naval attaché in London. Profumo denied in parliament that he had an improper relationship with Keeler. This was later shown to be untrue. He was later forced to resign for having lied to parliament. Before resigning from all his positions he confessed to his wife, Valerie Hobson, and she stood by him.
John Profumo disappeared from public life and spent many years as a volunteer washing dishes and cleaning toilets in a place called Toynbee Hall, a charity in the East End of London. As time went by he was able to use his skills to raise funds for the charity. I do not know anything about the faith of John Profumo, whose paternal ancestors were Italian aristocrats. He had the inherited title 'Fifth Baron Profumo', though he didn't use it. But Lord Longford (1905 - 2001), a Labour politician and social reform campaigner whose Catholic faith - he was a convert from Anglicanism - was the bedrock of everything he did, was quoted as saying that he, felt more admiration [for Profumo] than [for] all the men I've known in my lifetime'.
Unlike the man in the gospel, John Profumo had sinned. He lost his reputation but regained it as people came to know what he had been doing after his downfall.
Last May Pope Francis approved the canonisation of Blessed Charles, usually referred to as 'Brother Charles' by those with a devotion to him. However, the date hasn't yet been set.
Fr Charles de Foucauld, was assassinated in the Sahara on 1 December 1916 when John Profumo was almost two. Like Profumo, he was born into wealth. Unlike the man in the gospel, he became a notorious playboy and was thrown out of the French army because of his behaviour. He went through a conversion experience at 28 and, again unlike the man in today's gospel, gave up everything. His subsequent journey in the Catholic faith led him to the priesthood and to the Sahara to live the life of Nazareth as he understood it.
Brother Charles, as he was known, died alone. He had drawn up a rule for a religious congregation to live the life of Nazareth in the desert. I once read that one person joined him for a short while. But in the 1920s his life and writings led to the founding of two religious congregations, theLittle Brothers of Jesusand theLittle Sisters of Jesus, both of which have communities in the Philippines. The Little Sisters have a community in Northern Ireland. Here is a lovely story about a Polish sister in that community: Sister Asia, the nun who closed an Irish pub.
There are a number of other congregations that have adapted the rule that Brother Charles wrote.
The Little Brothers and the Little Sisters live among the poor, support themselves by taking manual jobs. The January-February 2005 issue of Misyon, the Columban magazine in the Philippines of which I was then editor, carried an article, Working Sisters, in which Little Sister Goneswary Subramaniam LSJ from Sri Lanka writes about her job sewing in a garment factory in Quezon City, Metro Manila, and Little Sister Annarita Zamboni LSJ from Italy about working as a lavandera, a laundry woman. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is at the heart of the life of each community of the Little Brothers, some of whom are priests, and of the Little Sisters and neighbours are invited to join.
Blessed Charles was a diocesan priest, though definitely not a conventional one. But a more conventional diocesan priest, played a central role in his conversion, Fr Henri Huvelin.
Among the groups inspired by Blessed Charles is theJesus Caritas Fraternity of Priests, a movement that adapts his spirituality to the lives of pastoral priests, mainly diocesan, though not exclusively. [That website has links to other branches of the De Foucauld family, including the Little Brothers and the Little Sisters.]
Troubled by the
words of Jesus, Peter said, See, we have left everything
and followed you. Jesus replied, Truly, I say
to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or
mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel,who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and
brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with
persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.
Charles de Foucauld experienced the joy of doing God's will, with persecutions in his violent death, but the houses and brothers and sisters . . . didn't come till some years after his death. And when Cardinal José Saraiva Martins beatified Brother Charles in Rome on 13 November 2005 the Church confirmed that he had indeed attained eternal life from the moment of his death and that he was a model of holiness who could guide us as we try to follow Jesus.
Blessed Charles saw clearly what the young man in the gospel, who didn't sin but had no idea of the riches he was spurning, didn't see: that Jesus was looking upon him and loved him.
Prayer of Abandonment of Blessed Charles de Foucauld
Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures -
I wish no more than this, O Lord.
Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.
This prayer is recited in the Charles de Foucauld video above beginning at 3:38.
+++
The Rosary with the Great Artists
October is the month of the Holy Rosary. The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is celebrated on 7 October. Here are the links to the four sets of mysteries.
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia,
England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan,
Scotland, South Africa)
Gospel Luke 14:25-33 (New Revised
Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition, Canada)
Now large crowds were travelling with Jesus; and
he turned and said to them, ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and
mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself,
cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot
be my disciple. For which
of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the
cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not
able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able
to finish.” Or what
king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and
consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes
against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away,
he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if
you do not give up all your possessions.
I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus.I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment.
I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I wanted to keep him with me, so that he might be of service to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel; but I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced. Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.
So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.
Ingemar Johansson knocks out Floyd Patterson, 1959[Wikipedia]
Three times between 1959 and 1961, my last two years in secondary school, Ingemar Johansson, a Swede, and Floyd Patterson, an American, fought for the Undisputed World Heavyweight Boxing Championship. Johansson won the first while Patterson won the succeeding fights. Those were the days when the Heavyweight Boxing Championship was followed worldwide. I remember a few times getting up at around 3am to listen to a fight on a shortwave station from the USA, lots of static and sleepiness making it difficult to listen.
What I remember clearly about the fights between these two men, who became great friends later, was that my classmates and I were rooting for Patterson, even though he was a Black American and we were White Europeans, just like Johansson. The reason was that Floyd Patterson was a Catholic. Johansson, we presumed, was a Lutheran.
Those were pre-ecumenical days but nevertheless, without reflecting on it and with perhaps more tribalism than theology involved, we were expressing something of our deepest identity, being Catholics. That identity was more important to us that any identity from our nationality or from the colour of our skin.
Pope Francis at rehabilitation centre
World Youth Day 2013, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil[Wikipedia]
St Paul's Letter to Philemon is essentially about our deepest identity. Onesimus was a slave of Philemon - this relationship was not at all of the same brutality as that between African-American slaves and their White 'owners' - and for whatever reason had run away. He met St Paul, who was in prison at the time and who took care of him and led him to the Christian faith and baptism.
St Paul appeals to Philemon in very moving terms: I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus.I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment.
He speaks as a father of Onesimus, whose name means 'useful'. Indeed, St Paul was this young man's 'father in the faith' as Abraham is referred to in the Roman Canon (First Eucharistic Prayer). And as an old man who is a prisoner he is appealing for the young man's freedom.
But more than that, I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you . . . no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.
Paul is spelling out the implications of baptism - through that Sacrament we become brothers and sisters of each other as brothers and sisters of Jesus. This is shown explicitly, for example, in meetings of the Legion of Mary at all levels where members are addressed as 'Brother' or 'Sister'. At praesidium (branch) meetings of soldiers, for example, one may be 'General' outside, one 'Sergeant', another 'Private'. But during Legion activities they address each other as 'Brother'.
One of my culture shocks when I went to the Philippines in 1971 was that so many families had what I saw to be servants. In some cases these were younger relatives who were given board and lodging in exchange for work so that they could go to school. This was a way of enabling others within the extended family to get on in life. But wealthier families had, and still have, employed workers, a driver, perhaps, a cook and some housemaids. Some of these employees stay with a family for life and truly become part of the household. The majority don't.
I have a suspicion that some who employ a household staff would never miss Sunday Mass but, perhaps, don't give time to their workers to go to Mass or to church. While in the Philippines I occasionally mentioned in homilies that the Sunday Mass obligation includes enabling our workers to go also though, of course, we cannot force them to do so. And, along with that is our domestic workers' right to a proper wage and to proper time off.
St Paul, who speaks of the young man as my own heart, is asking of Philemon that he forgive Onesimus for any wrongdoing, that he make him a free man, no longer a slave, and above all that he accept him as a brother in Christ.
Can there be any more intimate expression of our deepest identity than to describe another Christian as my own heart?
Daryl, 2nd from the left beside
Fr Eamon Sheridan, is a Filipino-Irish parishioner in St Joseph's, Balcurris,
Dublin, which was a Columban parish for many years. The parish, which is
not a prosperous one, raised the funds to send Daryl to WYD 2016 as one of the
delegates of the Archdiocese of Dublin. Fr Sheridan has worked in Taiwan, in
Hong Kong as a member of the General Council and is now in Myanmar
(Burma). [Photo: FB of Fr Sheridan]
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 (Galatians 3:28).
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Supper at
Emmaus (detail) 1606
