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).
GospelLuke 23:35-43(English Standard
Version, Anglicised)
Brothers and
Sisters: Let us give thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in
the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of
darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have
redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
He is the image
of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were
created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him
and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
And he is the head of the body, the Church. He is the beginning, the firstborn
from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the
fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself
all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his
cross..
Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) is one of the top soccer teams in Europe. It gets its name from the suburb of Paris where it is located, Saint-Germain-en-Laye. It is also the birthplace on 6 April 1930 of Jacques Fesch. He was executed by guillotine on 1 October 1957 in Paris. In 1987 Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris, opened a diocesan inquiry into the life of Jacques and in 1993 formally opened the process for his beatification.
This caused considerable controversy in France because Jacques Fesch had been executed by guillotine for the murder of Jean-Baptiste Vergne, 35, a widowed policeman and father of a daughter aged 4, on 25 February 1954. There was no doubt whatever of Jacques Fesch's guilt nor did he show any remorse at his trial or after being sentenced.
How did this man come to be proposed for beatification by a French cardinal who was born Jewish and whose mother was murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz in 1943?
During the more than three years that he was in prison, in solitary confinement, Jacques Fesch experienced a profound religious conversion. We know this from the letters he wrote and from the diary he kept during the last months before his execution.
Jacques Fesch's conversion - he had been baptised a Catholic as an infant - was a gradual one, beginning with reading a book about Our Lady in October 1954 and coming to fruition by the following March, Around that time he wrote: At the end of my first year in prison, a powerful wave of emotion swept over me, causing deep and brutal suffering. Within the space of a few hours, I came into possession of faith, with absolute certainty. I believed … Grace came to me. A great joy flooded my soul, and above all a deep peace. [That quotation is from a comprehensive article: The Final Hours of Jacques Fesch].
In the context of this Sunday's Gospel, Jacques Fesch is both the criminal who mocked Jesus and the criminal who said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. Two persons in particular were channels of God's mercy in Jacques' conversion, Fr Devoyod, the prison chaplain, and his lawyer, a devout Catholic whose surname was Baudet and who expressed his concern for the immortal soul of Jacques.
Two months before his execution Jacques wrote in a letter to his mother-in-law: Here is where the cross and its mystery of suffering make their appearance. The whole of life has this piece of wood as its center. …We can have no genuine hope of peace and salvation apart from Christ crucified! Happy the man who understands this.
The last words he wrote in his journal were, In five hours I shall look upon Jesus.
From Commentary on St Luke's Gospel by St Ambrose: The Lord always grants us more than what we ask for. The thief merely asked to be remembered, but the Lord said: 'Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise'. The essence of life is to live with Jesus Christ. And where Jesus Christ is, there is his Reign to be found.
You can read more about Jacques Fesch, Servant of God, here, here, hereand hereand by googling.
GospelLuke 10:38-42 (English Standard
Version, Anglicised)
At that time: Jesus entered a village. And a woman named
Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat
at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with
much serving. And she went up to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my
sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.’ But the Lord
answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,
but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be
taken away from her.’
The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, ‘O Lord, if I have found favour in your sight, do not pass by your servant (Genesis 18:1-3, First Reading).
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I have used this story a number of times in Sunday Reflections and have told it on retreats. It is one that this Sunday’s gospel brings to my mind and has been for mewhat I call ‘an abiding grace’’.
One of the poorest man I've met in my life was Billy Smith. Despite his name, he was a Filipino, though as far as we Columban priests knew, his father was an American. He was known to all the Columbans in northern Mindanao where in the 1970s we had many parishes, all now staffed by Filipino diocesan priests. Billy would do his rounds of the parishes over a period of months and in each would get some food, some clothing, a little money and a place to sleep. He was tall and thin and in his latter years was going blind. He had a number of illnesses. He carried a sturdy staff. Sometimes children would make fun of him and even throw stones at him. Children can sometimes be cruel.
One afternoon about 45 years ago in a place where I had been parish priest for a couple of months, the last Columban to serve in that role, but was then in charge of a spiritual-pastoral formation year for seminarians from five dioceses, I heard the 'clump, clump, clump' of heavy boots coming up the stairs to the living quarters. It was Billy. At the time I had a visitor, a young friend named Patricia who was in Grade 5. She never knew her father as he had died when she was an infant. She 'adopted' me as a father and called me 'Tatay' (Dad) and often dropped by after class before heading home. (She is now a widowed grandmother and still calls me 'Tatay'.) The family lived in a small house built on stilts that looked as if it might fall over at any minute but Patricia's mother managed to make a living.
When Patricia saw Billy she immediately went over to him, took him by the hand, sat him down at a table and brought him something to eat and drink. I doubt if Billy had ever received such gracious service in his life. My young friend was unaware that I was taking all of this in.
Patricia had little in life and Billy had even less. But the young girl showed respect, kindness and hospitality to this man of the roads. She did this spontaneously, from the heart. When I told her about this incident years later she couldn't remember it.
The story in the First Reading of Abraham's welcome to the three strangers and the story of the welcome of Martha and Mary to Jesus in the Gospel show us how blessed we may be by hospitality. Abraham didn't know that the strangers were visitors from God, who blessed him and Sarah, childless and well beyond the normal age for having children, with a son, Isaac, within the year. It is through Isaac that we can refer to 'Abraham, our father in faith' in Eucharistic Prayer I (The Roman Canon).
God blessed Billy through the hospitality of Patricia, a child, and gave me a lifelong blessing through that incident.
Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me’ (Matthew 25:37-40).
In serving Billy Patricia served Jesus himself and revealed Jesus to me in Billy and in herself. And while reflecting on the incident and praying with the readings as a preparation for these Sunday Reflections, I was really struck by the inner freedom that this young girl had in the way she looked after Billy. Though a visitor, she felt truly at home. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house.
And as I typed the words of the alternative Communion Antiphon below - a text that expresses what happened so many years ago - it dawned on me that while Jesus, in the person of Billy, a destitute man of the roads, sat down at table in my house at the invitation of my young visitor, Patricia, I didn't join them there. Yet the Lord, in his kindness, has graced me with the abiding memory of his visit that day.
The recording above includes verse 21. The text of the words of the Communion Antiphon used at Mass are in bold both in the original Latin and in English.
Ecce sto ad ostium et pulso, [dicit Dominus],si quis audierit vocem meam, et aperuit ianuam, intrabo ad illum, et cenabo cum illum, et ipse mecum.
Qui vicerit, dabo ei sedere mecum in throno meo: sicut et ego vici, et sedi cum Patre meo in throno eius.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock, [says the Lord]. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door to me, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me.
The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne.
Traditional Latin Mass
Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 07-23-2025 if necessary).
GospelJohn 2:1-11 (English Standard
Version, Anglicised)
At that time: There was a wedding at Cana in
Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the
wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to
him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what does this have to
do with me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do
whatever he tells you.’
Now there were six stone water jars there for the
Jewish rites of purification, each holding seventy or one hundred litres. Jesus
said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to
the brim. And he said to them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of
the feast.’ So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now
become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had
drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said
to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk
freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.’
This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in
Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.
Back in the 1960s when I was in the seminary here in St Columban's, Dalgan Park, now the residence of about 70 retired Columbans, I contacted Molly and Jimmy who lived about ten minutes by car from here. I knew that Molly was related to me through my maternal grandmother and I remembered attending the funeral of her mother, known to my mother as Aunt Jane of Tara, in 1950 when I was seven. As far as I know Jane was a first cousin of my grandmother Annie Dowd, who married William Patrick Collins, my maternal grandfather. When my mother was young she would spend part of the summer with her Aunt Jane and her husband Owen. It was great for a child form the inner city in Dublin to be out in the countryside of County Meath. She often spoke of those days and would always smile when she mentioned her Uncle Owen. Jane was the stricter one and Owen was the 'softie'. But she loved both of them.
When I wrote to Molly and Jimmy I got an immediate response and they invited me to their home for Sunday dinner. Over the next few years I enjoyed many Sunday dinners with them. Molly's unmarried sister Maggie lived with them in a cottage near Tara, where the High Kings of Ireland once lived and which can be seen from the front of St Columban's.
Molly had been in very poor health since the birth of her second child Mary, known as Mae. Her first was William, known as Billy. He died in December 2017. Molly had spent three years on her back from some time after the birth of Mae. She never enjoyed robust health and in her latter days, when she lived in a nursing home, she had become blind.
What I remember most from visiting Molly and Jimmy was the warmth of their welcome and Molly's radiant smile. Jimmy worked for the Irish Land Commission, as I recall, and his salary was a modest, though adequate one. I remember him saying to me one time that he was happier in his cottage than Lord Dunsany was in his home, the nearby Dunsany Castle. The family name of the Lords Dunsany is Plunkett and they are related by ancestry to St Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, executed at Tyburn, London, in 1681, the last Catholic to be martyred in England.
For most of their married life Jimmy and Molly lived the sickness part of their vow in sickness and in health. As I get older more and more do I see couples living that vow to the full. Such couples to me are radiating God's love for us. The Sacrament of Matrimony is a reflection of the love of Christ as the Bridegroom for his Bride, the Church. The First Reading of the Mass, from Isaiah, tells us, as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.
The response to the Responsorial Psalm is, Proclaim the wonders of the Lord among all the peoples. That is what Jimmy and Molly were doing for me, without being aware of it. That is the vocation of every couple who have bestowed the Sacrament of Matrimony on each other. It is the bride and groom who do that, not the priest. He, as an official witness of the Church, does indeed bless the couple during the ceremony with the Nuptial Blessing but it is they who give Jesus Christ to each other as the foundation of their marriage, till death do us part.
In recent decades in the formerly predominantly Christian Western world both marriage and family have been undermined and even ridiculed. Marriage is the foundation of the family. Marriage is between man and woman. In the first chapter of the Bible we read, So God created man in his own image,in the image of God he created
him;male
and female he created them.And
God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ (Genesis 1:
27-28). The next chapter tells us, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh (Genesis 2:24). Jesus repeats this teaching in Matthew 19:5 and Mark 10:8 as does St Paul in Ephesians 5:31.
The science of biology tells us that each of us is either male or female and that it is impossible for anyone to change their sex.
It is only a man and a woman who can be fruitful and multiply. In recent decades many countries have rejected the truth of this reality, lived since we humans first emerged, and proclaimed as a 'right' that two persons of the same sex can marry. Such a relationship is intrinsically sterile and, objectively, is an affront to God the Creator who made us male and female. But our consciences have been dulled and corrupted by the powerful international lobby that promotes and celebrates this dangerous nonsense.
The profoundly intimate act of love that enables a couple to express their commitment to be one till death do us part and that enables them to be fruitful and multiply belongs only within marriage. In God's plan a couple marry before they have children. In God's plan if they are still of fertile age they pledge, at least in Catholic weddings, to be open to new life.
It has to be acknowledged that in most of the Western world it has become more and more difficult for a couple to welcome and raise children because of the prohibitive cost of housing. Decisions about house-building by national and local authorities are a moral issue, not a utilitarian one. And in many places dues to poverty and/or war living conditions are dire, making it impossible for families to live decently.
Jesus' miracle of changing the water into wine is a sign of God's unbounded generosity. The six stone water jars each held a large amount of water, as the video above correctly shows. The good wine that Jesus produced amounted to the equivalent of more than 400 bottles of wine according to Scripture scholars.
The gospel passage ends with, This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. St John uses the word 'sign' for miracle'.
Jesus did this to manifest his glory, that is, to enable people to see who he really was so that they would believe in him as God who became Man and so that each of us would have eternal life. Every married couple is called to manifest the glory of Jesus by the way they live their marriage, founded on the love of Jesus Christ whom they gave to each other on their wedding day. The Lord delights in such a couple and rejoices over them, as Isaiah tells us today. I know that God delights in couples like Jimmy and Molly because I saw in them their delight in one another as husband and wife. That grace remains with me to this day.
For Me and My Gal
Gene Kelly and Judy Garland
This song, written in 1917, was used in the 1942 movie with the same title. For me it reflects how most Western people a hundred years ago saw weddings and marriage. A wedding normally took place in a church: The parson's waiting for me and my gal. A couple was open to having children: We're gonna' build a little home for two or three or more. It involved the community: For weeks they've been sewing, every Susie and Sal.
These were the aspirations and hopes of most people then. They no longer are. We are all the poorer because of that. But the Alleluia verse gives us a clear direction: God called us through the gospel, so that we may obtain the glory of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
On the third Sunday of January the Church in the Philippines celebrates the Feast of the Santo Niño, the Holy Child. You will find Sunday Reflections for that Feast here.
Traditional Latin Mass
Second Sunday After the Epiphany
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 01-19-2025 if necessary).
GospelJohn 18:33-37 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?”Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?”Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?”Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”
The Kingdom of God breaks into our lives very often in quiet, apparently insignificant ways. More than 50 years ago, shortly after I was ordained, I was stopped by an elderly woman in a poor part of Dublin, just around the corner from where I had gone to school. She wasn't well dressed but didn't ask me for anything. She simply wanted to tell me how lonely she was. She kept repeating that. I never met that woman again but I have not forgotten her. I often pray for her soul and also pray that one day she will welcome me into the heavenly home that God wills for all of us. That encounter at a street corner in Dublin has been an on-going grace for me, an experience of the Kingdom of God breaking through in what would seem to have been a totally insignificant event. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, Jesus tells us at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3). Being poor in spirit means knowing one's need of God. The woman who stopped me in the street was expressing that because she saw that I was a priest and in some way a representative of the Lord. The only thing I could give that poor woman, who was old enough to be my grandmother, was a listening ear. But she gave me a glimpse into the Kingdom of God, a gift that has lasted all these years. My kingdom is not from this world, Jesus tells us in today's gospel as he stands before Pilate. But his kingdom is constantly breaking through in this world, in very ordinary, unplanned encounters when God gives us the grace to see and to hear - and we accept that grace. And our accepting of that grace is in itself a grace, a gift, from God.
The story of the old woman I met on a street corner in Dublin reminded me of a poem by Irish writer Padraic Colum (1881 - 1972), An Old Woman of the Roads. The words appear on the video blow to the background of Carolan's Farewell played on the harp. When Colum wrote this poem there were many homeless men and women in rural Ireland who would find a welcome for the night from families along their way. Today the homeless are in the cities and larger towns.
And I am praying to God on high,
And I am praying Him night and day,
For a little house - a house of my own
Out of the wind's and the rain's way.
Hail Redeemer, King Divine
Words by Patrick Brennan CSsR, music by Charles Rigby
Pope Pius XIestablished the Feast of Christ the King in
1925, to be celebrated on the last Sunday of October. When the
new Church calendar came into effect in 1969 it moved the feast, now a
Solemnity, to the last Sunday in Ordinary Time. Those who celebrate the
Traditional Latin Mass observe the feast on its original Sunday.
Traditional Latin Mass
Twenty-fourth and Last Sunday After Epiphany
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 11-24-2024 if necessary).
Epistle: Colossians 1:9-14. Gospel: Matthew 24:15-35.
From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near (Matthew 24:32; Gospel).
