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).
And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again (Mark 8: 31; Gospel).
Readings(Jerusalem
Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)
GospelMark 8:27-35(English Standard Version, Anglicised)
Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea
Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”And they
told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one
of the prophets.”And
he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.”And he strictly charged them to tell no one
about him.
And he began to teach them that the
Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and
the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise
again.And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and
began to rebuke him.But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and
said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not
setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come
after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.For whoever
would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my
sake and the gospel's will save it.
On 28 August 2001 my Columban confrere and friend Fr Rufus Halley, was ambushed while on his motorcycle from Balabagan to nearby Malabang, his parish in Lanao del Sur, Philippines, and murdered. This was in the the Prelature of Marawi, sometimes called the Prelature of St Mary's in Marawi, in a predominantly Muslim area of Mindanao, the southern island that is larger than Ireland.
After spending ten years or so in a rural parish near Manila he felt called by God to go to the Prelature of Marawi around 1980 where he learned Cebuano, the language of the Christians there, and Maranao, the language of most of the Muslims. He became fluent in both, as he was in Tagalog, now the basis of the national language, Filipino.
Father Rufus chose to live in a situation where for centuries there had been tension and, at times, violence. Ten years before he went to Marawi there had been civil war in the area.
At the heart of his life each day was the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and an hour's adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Both Christians and Muslims saw him as a man of God. He was deeply influenced by the spirituality of St Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), a French priest who spent most of his priestly life living among Muslims in the Sahara, spending much time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and welcoming the Muslims who knocked on his door looking for help.
Father Rufus was an active member of the Jesus Caritas Fraternity of Priests, an international movement inspired by the spirituality of St Charles. St Charles was murdered in the Sahara on 1 December 1916.
He was very aware of the possible danger he lived with daily but was deeply respected and loved by those who knew him, Christian and Muslim. On one occasion he was invited to mediate between two warring Maranao clans, a truly extraordinary situation. With God's help he succeeded.
This heroic priest, who came from a wealthy background in County Waterford, Ireland, chose to live very frugally. In a letter to his father he explained, My needs are few and one of the things I feel called to do is to make my life a little simpler. This vision, if that's what you'd call it, comes from trying to be a follower of a poor man, and also, from the poverty on a grand scale which I've seen in the Philippines.
St George Maronite Cathedral and Mohammad Al-Amin Mosque, side by side in Beirut
Pope Benedict XVI visited Lebanon from 14-16 September 2012. Lebanon is a country that has seen much conflict down the centuries. Roughly 60 percent of the people are Muslims and 40 percent Christians. In his homily on the last day of his visit, which used the readings of this Sunday's Mass, some of his words might have been about Father Rufus: Following Jesus means taking up one’s cross and walking in his footsteps, along a difficult path which leads not to earthly power or glory but, if necessary, to self-abandonment, to losing one’s life for Christ and the Gospel in order to save it. We are assured that this is the way to the resurrection, to true and definitive life with God.
Choosing to walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, who made
himself the Servant of all, requires drawing ever closer to him, attentively
listening to his word and drawing from it the inspiration for all that we do.
Prayer of Abandonment of St Charles de Foucauld
The Prayer of Abandonment of St Charles de Foucauld was central to the life of Fr Rufus Halley.
Traditional Latin Mass
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 09-15-2022 if necessary).
Gospel Mark 7:31-37(English Standard Version, Anglicised)
Then Jesus
returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of
Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis.And they brought to him a man who was deaf
and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on
him.And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he
put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue.And looking up to heaven, he
sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha”, that is, “Be opened.”And his ears were opened, his tongue was
released, and he spoke plainly.And Jesus charged them to tell no one.
But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.And they were astonished beyond
measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and
the mute speak.”
In the Second Reading today St James asks in his blunt way, For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in,and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place”, while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there”, or, “Sit down at my feet”,have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
In the autumn of 1982 I spent three months working in a hospital in a city in the the US Midwest. I noticed that a particular nurse always wore a pro-life badge, for which I admired her. But in the three months I was there as chaplain to patients and staff on the floor we both worked on she never spoke to me except at a weekly staff meeting. I was curious rather though not hurt by this and before I finished the programme I asked her if we could meet. I told her what I had noticed and expressed my admiration for her quiet pro-life stand. She was quite taken aback, as she had never been conscious of ignoring me. It turned out that she had once had a bad experience with a priest and had 'tuned out' on all priests. We had a very good conversation and ended up hugging each other.
The nurse had been making distinctions but was far from being a judge with evil thoughts. We can be such, by deliberately shutting out another person or group of persons from our life. But very often we are unaware of others or of their needs.
Fr Joseph Coyle
(28 February 1937 - 18 December 1991)
One group of persons largely ignored in the Church, is the Deaf. (Those who are profoundly deaf refer to themselves as a group as 'The Deaf', with an upper-case 'D'. Nor do they describe themselves as 'hard of hearing'.) One of my late Columban colleagues, Fr Joseph Coyle from the city of Derry in Northern Ireland, worked for many years in what is now the Diocese of Kabankalan, in the southern part of the province of Negros Occidental, Philippines. Early in his time in remote parishes he became aware of the needs of persons who had lost limbs and helped many to get artificial limbs.
But later he noticed that there were persons who were more or less totally isolated, even from their own families - persons who were profoundly deaf from birth or from early childhood. They did not even have a common language with their parents or siblings. Their deafness was experienced as an affliction by themselves and their families. They felt a sense of powerlessness.
In English the word 'dumb' has come to mean 'stupid' because of the perception in the past that those who used to be described as 'deaf and dumb' were stupid.
Fr Joe Coyle then focused his ministry on the Deaf. In the late 1980s he set up a residence in Bacolod City, Welcome Home, for out-of-town students so that they could attend schools with special education for the Deaf. That particular need is now being met more and more in public schools in other cities and towns.
One of the services of Welcome Home Foundation, Inc. today is to send catechists to local public schools where there are profoundly deaf students. Some of these catechists are themselves profoundly deaf. Welcome Home also strongly encourages parents of profoundly deaf children to learn Sign Language and holds classes for them.
While based in Bacolod City from 2002 until 2017 I regularly celebrated Mass in Welcome Home, using my limited Sign Language and with the help of interpreters, some of them profoundly deaf. On the first three Sundays of each month the Deaf participate with interpreters in Mass in churches in Bacolod City, on the third Sunday in San Sebastian Cathedral. On the fourth (and fifth) Sundays Mass is in the Fr Joseph Coyle Chapel in Welcome Home. The celebrant is Fr. Dominic Derramas, a diocesan priest who studied Sign Language while in the seminary.
But I know that there have been times when parishioners and priests in various places have complained that signing interpreters were a 'distraction'. In some instances the Deaf have been made clearly unwelcome at Mass. Maybe some of those who made them feel such are already in 'St James territory' (Second Reading).
I do not know the source of the sorrow of the old man in Van Gogh's painting above, which expresses very painful isolation. But isolation is what many profoundly deaf persons feel, especially if they are seen as 'dumb' in the modern sense. And what must deaf persons feel if some don't even want to welcome them at the celebration of Holy Mass, our most important act of worship as Catholic Christians to our loving Father?
As in so many of the healing stories in the Gospel, we see Jesus giving his full attention to the person in need. We see him engaging physically with that person, using his very spittle in the act of enabling the man to hear and to speak clearly.
Again, as in so many of the healing stories, Jesus is bringing someone back into the circle. The man's deafness and speech impediment, the latter a direct result of the former, isolated him to a large degree from his own family and community. Now he was fully part of them again.
'E.T. phone home' scene
I remember seeing the movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestial with a young friend, Glenn, who is profoundly, though not totally deaf, due to Usher's Syndrome, which also affects his sight. At the time he was about the same age as Elliott, the boy in the clip above. I watched the movie through Glenn's eyes, with a deeper appreciation of what is involved when a profoundly deaf person and a hearing person are trying to communicate. It can be very hard work, but rewarding.
About thirty years ago I saw something very beautiful at the Home of Joy in Tayuman, Tondo, Manila, a home for children run by the Missionaries of Charity. I was looking for a particular girl who was profoundly deaf. I'll call her Maria. I found her playing with a group of other girls, all of them using Sign Language. But only Maria was deaf. Without being aware of it, she had invited her friends into her world of silence - and they, without being aware of it, had invited her into their world of sound. All were equal.
A very important detail in the gospel is that not only did the deaf man's friends bring him to Jesus but they begged him to lay his hand on him.
Many churches in the western world have what is called a 'loop system' whereby those who are hard of hearing and use hearing aids can participate fully in Mass and other services. Being hard of hearing is something that very often comes with growing old, and I am experiencing that myself now - I've been using hearing aids for nearly seven years now - but it is a very different reality from profound deafness, especially if that deafness has been there since birth or early childhood.
The soul of a profoundly deaf person yearns for the living God just as much as the soul of a hearing person. But do we, the majority who are hearing, really allow/enable the Deaf to participate fully in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?
The Last Rose of Summer
from Leroy Anderson's Irish
Suite (1947)
Last Sunday, 1 September, autumn officially began here in Ireland, according to MetÉireann, the Irish meteorological service. We've had a rather poor summer but today the sun is shining and it is 20C here coming up to noon. Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day and it reached 24C here in the afternoon. However, I think that today is 'The Last Rose of Summer' weatherwise here and I thought I'd add this arrangement of the old Irish melody by Leroy Anderson. It captures for me the sadness of a farewell. But autumn has its own attractions and thank God for the four seasons in this part of the world which seldom experiences extreme weather of any kind.
May the glory of the Lord endure for ever; may the Lord rejoice in his works (Psalm 104[103]: 31).
Traditional Latin Mass
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 09-08-2022 if necessary).
One sabbath when Jesus went to dine at the house of a ruler who belonged to the Pharisees, they were watching him. And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy (Luke 14:1-2; Gospel).
Moses said to the people: “And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live, and go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you." [First Reading].
Readings(Jerusalem
Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)
Gospel Mark 7:1-8, 14-15; 21-23 (English Standard Version, Anglicised)
Now when the Pharisees gathered to Jesus, with some of
the scribes who had come from Jerusalem,they saw
that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is,
unwashed.(For the
Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash[a] their hands, holding to the
tradition of the elders,and when they come from the market-place, they do not eat
unless they wash.And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the
washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not
walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat
with defiled hands?”And he said to them, “Well did
Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
“‘This people honours me with
their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the
commandments of men.’
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the
tradition of men.”
And he called the
people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand:There is nothing outside a person that by going into him
can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”
For from within,
out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality,
theft, murder, adultery,coveting, wickedness,
deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.All these evil things come from within, and
they defile a person.”
And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels . . . [Today's gospel].
This reminds me of all the rules and regulations that we had during Covid-19. Thank God that they have not become a tradition. However, we cannot argue with the good sense of the Jewish traditions about washing utensils and washing hands before eating.
Today's First Reading opens with these words: Moses said to the people: “And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you, and do them, that you may live . . . Moses is offering the Hebrew people life, life from God, through the commandments that God has given them through him, most basically the Ten Commandments. The people will have life if they observe them, even if on the face of it they are restrictive - Do not do this, do not do that.
80 "Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move towards the same goal. "Each of them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ, who promised to remain with his own "always, to the close of the age".
. . . two distinct modes of transmission
81 "Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit."
"And [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching."
Tradition, with an upper-case 'T', is fundamental to our Catholic faith. But traditions, with a lower-case 't', can help us know and live our faith, can strengthen our sense of identity as a community of faith. Traditions too can give us a sense of identity as a family or a nation or any group to which we belong. Connected with traditions are symbols. National flags and anthems are examples. These help us to know who 'We' are. That doesn't mean being over and against others. When we are secure in our own communal identity we can honour and identify with other groups in theirs.
I am inclined to think - this is only my opinion - that one of the reasons for the exodus from the Catholic Church and the rejection of the Christian faith itself by so many in recent decades in the Western world is the abandonment of traditions and symbols by the Church after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), none of them mandated by the Council. We abandoned the universal Friday abstinence from meat. We abandoned the Lenten fast. Catholics were encouraged to choose their own penances instead - Whatever you're having yourself, as we say in Ireland in a slightly different context. The communal aspect of traditions that had help bring the life of God himself to the Church for most of its existence was abandoned.
Everyone used to kneel at the altar-rails to receive Holy Communion. Altar-rails were taken out of so many churches. I could go on. A 2019 study in the USA shows that only thirty percent of Catholics there believe that in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass the bread and wine become the 'body, blood, soul and divinity' of Christ. They see only symbols of Jesus Christ the Risen Lord in the Holy Eucharist. (The notes to the painting above touch on this).
This is not what the Tradition of the Church and Sacred Scripture teaches us. It was precisely on this issue that many of the disciples walked away from Jesus in last Sunday's gospel.
I'll conclude with the opening words of Pope Benedict's Angelus talk on 2 September 2012 when he spoke about today's readings, with my emphases: The theme of God’s Law, of his commandments, makes its entrance in the Liturgy of the Word this Sunday. It is an essential element of the Jewish and Christian religions, where the complete fulfilment of the law is love (cf. Rom 13:10). God’s Law is his word which guides men and women on the journey through life, brings them out of the slavery of selfishness and leads them into the 'land' of true freedom and life. This is why the Law is not perceived as a burden or an oppressive restriction in the Bible. Rather, it is seen as the Lord’s most precious gift, the testimony of his fatherly love, of his desire to be close to his People, to be its Ally and with it write a love story.
GospelJohn 6:60-69(English Standard Version, Anglicised)
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.”
My ordination day, 20 December 1967
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 when I was a child from Sunday morning walks 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 clear out the fireplace and then prepare it 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.
Dad rarely spoke about his faith but I do remember telling me when I was still a child that the Apostles' Creed was very important.
The First Reading tells us that Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel,put 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 in last Sunday's Gospel: “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 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 my own the choice my parents had made for me at baptism. 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 have known 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 apparent loss of freedom
to two individuals who marry gives them the freedom to truly love each other as
spouses and, as parents, to love their children and bring the whole family closer
to God.
The response to the Responsorial Psalm today sums it up: Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Panis
Angelicus
Words
by St Thomas Aquinas, music by César Franck
Sung by Patricia Janečková (1998 – 2023)
The
Janáček Chamber Orchestra
Panis angelicus[Thus Angels' Bread is made]
fit panis hominum;[the Bread of man today:]
Dat panis cœlicus[the Living Bread from heaven]
figuris terminum:[with figures dost away:] O res mirabilis![O wondrous gift indeed!] Manducat Dominum[the poor and lowly may] pauper, servus et humilis.[upon their Lord and Master
feed.]
Traditional Latin Mass
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 08-25-2022 if necessary).
Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Matthew 6:26; Gospel).
Mocking of Christ
