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).
Gospel Mark 10:2-16 or 10:2-12(English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”He answered them, “What did Moses command you?”They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.”And Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife,and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh.What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter.And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her,and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
[And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them.But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.]
Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it (Mark 10:15; Gospel).
I have been involved with Worldwide Marriage Encounter since 1981, initially in Canada and then from 1984 until 2017 in the Philippines and now in Ireland. The most important reality that I have come to see very clearly through Marriage Encounter is that the relationship between husband and wife in the Sacrament of Matrimony is the foundation of the Christian family.
Nineteen or twenty years ago we in Worldwide Marriage Encounter in Bacolod City, Philippines, held a family day. One of the last activities was for the pre-teen children. They were asked to share what they loved most about their parents. One boy, aged about ten or eleven, told us that what he loved most about his parents was that they were always together.
He didn't mean, of course, that they were tied to each other 24/7. But he saw that for his father and mother the most important reality in their lives was to be husband and wife and he felt drawn into the love that they had for each other. Jesus in today's Gospel quotes from today's First Reading: 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).
In my closing remarks at the family day I picked up on what the boy had said and pointed out that he had articulated that the foundation of the family is the relationship between husband and wife. If that relationship is sound the other relationships in the family will normally be sound too. Children won't feel left out but rather will feel drawn into the love their parents have for each other, the very love that brought them into life in the first place. In God's plan, it is as husband and wife that a man and a woman are called to become father and mother. It is God's plan that their children be drawn into the love they have for one another. This is the foundation of the family. And perhaps this can give us some idea of the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity where the Father, Son and Holy Spirit draw us into the circle of their life, having given us life through our parents.
A young journalist, a single man, happened to be present at our family day that afternoon and approached me afterwards. He had never heard marriage being described that way before and really wanted to know more. For him it was truly an experience of hearing the Good News for the first time in this context.
It is God who joins together a man and a woman when they exchange their marriage vows. In the Sacrament of Matrimony they are giving Jesus Christ himself to each other. This is far more than a 'blessing by the priest', as so many misunderstand the Sacrament. It is the bride and groom who confer the sacrament on each other, who give Jesus himself to each other. This is such a profound and sacred union, as Jesus teaches us so clearly today: What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. Today's gospel is very clear on that. Jesus spells out what the sin of adultery is: Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her,and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.
So often in visiting Catholic schools in the Philippines I was struck by the fact that so many students in their teens knew by heart the words that the bride and groom exchange: For better, for worse; for richer . . . These words, etched into their hearts, express their deep-down sense of the words of Jesus in the gospel today, God made them male and female . . . so they are no longer two but one flesh. They also express their dreams and aspirations for their own future, dreams and aspirations that have been placed in their hearts by God himself. For to such belongs the kingdom of God.
In worldly terms, Chiara Corbella’s life (1984 - 2012) was not a success story: two children dying shortly after birth, herself ravaged by an aggressive cancer, which killed her at the young age of 28, leaving a beloved husband and a small son behind. This is not the kind of material dreams are made of. Yet when one listens to the testimonies of her friends, husband, and spiritual director, and hears more about her story and looks at her radiating, beautiful face on photographs and in video clips, one can’t help but feel that hers was an extraordinary life. Each saint has a special charisma, a particular theme, some facet of God, which he reflects, due to his particular character, call and story. Hers, I’d say, is to be a witness to joy in the face of great adversity, the kind which makes the heart overflow despite the sorrow over loss and death.
Meet Chiara Corbella Petrillo: A Story of Joy & Hope
Salut
d’Amour (L0ve’s Greeting)
Composed
by Sir Edward Elgan
Played
by Esther Abrami, violin, and Iyad Sughayer, piano
In the photo at the top Chiara is holding a violin. She would have been familiar with Salut d'Amour, composed by Sir Edward Elgar in 1888 as an engagement present for his future wife Alice. She was disinherited by her family for 'marrying beneath her' and for marrying a Catholic.
Maybe Chiara played this accompanied by Enrico on the piano.
Behold, the wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts (James 5:4; Second Reading).
Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland)
GospelMark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48(English Standard Version Anglicised: India)
John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me.For the one who is not against us is for us.For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea.And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea.And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.
“And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell,‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’”
In August 1982, after a year’s study in Toronto and before three months of Clinical Pastoral Education in Minneapolis, I supplied in a number of parishes for short periods in the Diocese of Boise, which covers the whole of the state of Idaho in the western USA. One of my purposes for this was to visit the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity, Huntsville, Utah, where I had spent ten days or so in August 1970. There I had met some of the monks who were to be part of the community that would open the first Trappist foundation in the Philippines, in Guimaras island, now Our Lady of the Philippines Trappist Monastery.
I spent a week in one parish where the parish priest was from India, there were reservations of two different indigenous tribal nations, many Spanish-speaking immigrants working on farms in the area. The majority of the people in the town proper were Mormons. The local newspaper carried photos of young Mormons from the area going on mission to other countries.
Just after lunch one day the doorbell rang. A young woman asked me to go to the hospital where an old woman, a Catholic and a relative of hers, had been in a coma for a long time, and was dying. I immediately went to the hospital and, to my surprise, the patient was fully awake and participated joyfully in the Last Sacraments, including Holy Communion, as I had brought the Blessed Sacrament with me. I learned later that she died about twenty minutes after I left.
The young woman who had asked me to go to the hospital was a Mormon. I was able to thank her later.
When I was a child we lived in a street of terraced houses in Dublin where no one had a telephone. One time one of our neighbours, Jem Norris, got gravely ill in the middle of the night. Charlie Brooks who lived across the street went for the priest, whose house was about a kilometre away. (The Norris house is the one on the far left above. Ours was the one on the right.)
Charlie was a Protestant, a member of the Church of Ireland (Anglican). Earlier this year I met his eldest child, David, for the first time in more than 60 years. He told me that his Dad read the Bible every day of his life.
I have posted in Sunday Reflections before about a Mass in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Germany, shortly after it was liberated in 1945. The account, published in 2004 in The Daily Telegraph (London) but no longer online, is by James Molyneaux (1920 -2015), then a young officer in the Royal Air Force and later leader of the Ulster Unionist Party in Northern Ireland. He wrote:
The most moving experience came on the second morning as I was walking from what had been the luxury SS barracks which our troops had transformed into a hospital. My attention was drawn to two packing cases covered by a worn red curtain. A young Polish priest was clinging to this makeshift altar with one hand, while celebrating Mass. Between his feet lay the body of another priest who probably died during the night. No one had had the energy to move the body.
I had no difficulty in following the old Latin Mass, having been educated at St James's Roman Catholic School in County Antrim, and, although an Anglican, I had gained a working knowledge of all the rituals. Still supporting himself against the altar, the young priest did his best to distribute the consecrated elements [Holy Communion] Some recipients were able to stumble over the rough, scrubby heathland. Others crawled forward to receive the tokens [Sacred Hosts, the Body of Christ] and then crawled back to share them with others unable to move. Some almost certainly passed on to another - probably better - world before sunset. Whatever one's race or religion one can only be uplifted and impressed by that truly remarkable proof of the ultimate triumph of good over evil.
When I first read this article I was deeply moved in a number of ways. I was surprised to discover that the author had gone to a Catholic school in a community where for centurie there has been a deep divide between Catholics and Protestants, for historical reasons that are not entirely theological. But here was an Anglican from that background giving a powerful testimony to the Mass as the Holy Sacrifice. And he noticed how those who were barely able to crawl shared the Body of Christ with those who couldn't move at all.
I find in the three stories above an illustration of the response of Jesus to the complaint of St John, Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us. Jesus says, For the one who is not against us is for us.For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.
St John's complaint reflects that of Joshua to Moses in the First Reading. the response of Jesus reflects that of Moses: Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them! (Numbers 11:29).
Memorial Stone, Bergen
Near the ramps where prisoners for Belsen were unloaded from goods [freight] trains. [Wikimedia]
James Molyneaux's article also illustrates the reality of hell that Jesus speaks about today. He writes:
On arrival at Tactical Headquarters, we had been briefed on the discovery of the Belsen prison camp nearby. In company with our RAF medical unit and the two 2nd Army Field hospitals, we wasted no time. Briefed though we were, the shock excelled all the horrors of the battles of the 12 months since Normandy.
As we passed through the camp gates, the Royal Military Police requested us to drive very slowly to avoid the numerous disoriented prisoners. We were handed adhesive tape to put over the vehicle horns in order to prevent them going off accidentally, lest the shock would cause still more deaths. [This little detail is surely telling.]
The British liberators were staggered and shocked by the inhuman behaviour of some of the former guards, who continued to abuse and torment prisoners nearing death when they assumed we were looking the other way. I confess that on such occasions I may have breached the Geneva Convention to prevent further ill treatment of helpless victims. Their behaviour after we had arrived contradicted the excuse that the SS had forced them to carry out orders. Our new orders to them were ‘Stop acting like savages’.
The 'Thousand Year Reich' of Hitler was in ruins after twelve years, and millions dead all over the world. These deaths, like countless deaths since, were caused by persons who chose evil over good. Each choice we make for sin is not at the level of choosing the evil of Belsen but it moves us towards that. Other dictators have tried their hand at their own version of Hitler's distorted vision and people have gone along with them.
Each of us likes to have power. We may not be conscious of this and in many instances there's no sin at all. I remember once seeing in a Catholic magazine a cartoon of people assembled for Mass where you were asked to 'spot the errors'. One was the proverbial 'little old lady' kneeling in the middle of a pew instead of blocking it at one end! There are times, especially as I grow older, when I can see the 'little old lady' in myself, trying to subtly ensure that things are done my way. Indeed, in the parish in Idaho where that kind young Mormon woman asked me to go to the dying elderly woman, the housekeeper asked me what time I'd like to have dinner at each day. I told her - but she always served it thirty minutes earlier.
But if I am a spouse, a parent, a teacher, a boss, a priest who doesn't listen to the other, who rules my little domain with a heavy hand, the words of Jesus are directed at me.
What is the 'hand', the 'foot', the 'eye' that causes me to sin, especially in the use of power?
Antiphona ad Communionem
Communion antiphon Cf Pas 118[119]:49-50
Memento etiam verbi tui servo tuo, Domine,
Remember your word to your servant, O Lord,
in quo mihi spem dedisti,
in which you have given me hope.
haec me consolata est in humilitate mea,
This is my comfort when I am brought low.
Choir of St Benedict's Monastery, São Paulo, Brazil
Traditional Latin Mass
Dedication of St Michael the Archangel
The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 09-29-2024 if necessary).
I try to mark Lala's birthday every year. Fewer and fewer persons with Down Syndrome are being born in European countries. This is because more and more children with Down Syndrome are being aborted. Below, with some minor changes, is what I posted last year and the year before.
+++
I first wrote this post in October 2008 and used it again in 2011 under the title Lala and Queen Elizabeth II. I have re-posted it a number of times, with variations, because Lala's story is one that should be told over and over again. This year I am re-posting what I posted the last two years and also five years ago, with a couple of updates on ages. As I post this it is already Lala's birthday in the Philippines, 27 September, the feast of St Vincent de Paul. No doubt, the occasion will be marked at Punla, Ang Arko, where Lala lives, the only L'Arche community in the Philippines, in Cainta, Rizal, part of the metropolitan sprawl of Manila.
The Pope's Universal Prayer Intention for September 2014 was:That the mentally disabled may receive the love and help they need for a dignified life. The truth is that persons with mental or learning disabilities can teach the rest of us about the dignity of life, as the photo above of Lala helping Jordan with his meal shows.
Let us show our service to the poor, then, with renewed ardour in our hearts, seeking out above all any abandoned people, since they are given to us as lords and patrons. (St Vincent de Paul, used in the Office of Readings for his feast day, 27 September.)
St Vincent de Paul,(24 April 1581 - 27 September 1660)
Lala has have two birthdays, the real one and the official one, as did the late Queen Elizabeth. Lala’s official birthday is 27 September, the feast day of St Vincent de Paul, and she turns 47 this year. Queen Elizabeth’s official birthday was celebrated in 53 Commonwealth countries, but not on the same date. Only the Falkland Islands observed her official birthday on her real one, 21 April. In the United Kingdom her official birthday could be on the first, second or third Saturday in June. She turned 96 on her most recent birthday, to be her last. May she rest in peace.
While there’s no confusion about the date of birth of Queen Elizabeth, there is about that of Lala. The young Princess Elizabeth was born in a palace in London. Lala was found shortly after birth in a trashcan in Cebu City in the central Philippines. Those who found her took her to the Asilo De La Milagrosa, the orphanage of the Daughters of Charity there. The Sisters noticed that the little girl had Trisomy 21 (Down Syndrome) and took her in and raised her. Since they didn’t know who her parents were they had to choose a name for her.
The Sisters chose 'Vicente' as her family name, in honour of St Vincent de Paul, and 'Louella' as her Christian name, in honour of St Louise de Marillac. The two saints founded the Daughters of Charity in France in 1633. Lala, as all her friends know her, probably has something else in common with St Louise. She was almost certainly born out of wedlock, as the saint was, and, like St Louise, never knew her mother. I suspect that Lala’s mother, probably very young and unmarried, panicked – her panic possibly added to when she saw that her daughter wasn’t 'normal' - and left her baby where someone could find her and take care of her.
And the Sisters made the feast of St Vincent de Paul, 27 September, Lala's official birthday.
St Louise de Marillac (15 August 1591 - 15 March 1660) [Wikipedia]
I first met Lala in Cebu in 1992 at a Faith and Light celebration. We had just begun a community there, after a retreat given by the co-founder of the movement, Jean Vanier, a Canadian layman, in Holy Family Retreat House, Cebu City, in October 1991. During the retreat he gave a public talk in the auditorium of St Theresa’s College, as I recall, and a group of interested people got together after that. The gathering at which Lala was present included members of Faith and Light from Manila who had come to tell us more about the movement.
I could see immediately that Lala had a special gift: she’s a natural 'ice-breaker'. Though she seldom says anything, she lights up any group into which she comes, unless she’s in a bad mood, which happens from time to time.
Lala became a member of our Faith and Light community in Cebu but I lost contact with her when I went to Lianga, Surigao del Sur, in 1993 as parish priest and to Manila the following year to become vocation director of the Columbans. But one day when I visited the L’Arche community in Cainta, Rizal, known as 'Ang Arko', I was surprised to see Lala there. L’Arche, the French for 'The Ark' as in Noah’s Ark, was founded by Jean Vanier, in 1964 when he invited two men with learning disabilities, Raphael Simi and Philippe Seux, who had been living in an institution, to join him in a small cottage he had bought and was renovating in the town of Trosly-Breuil, France. Jean had no intention of founding anything, but he realized very quickly that he had made a commitment to these two men. One of them, I forget which, chose to live independently some years later, something he could never have done had he stayed in the institution and not met Jean. Out of these small beginnings has grown an international movement of about 130 residential communities where those with learning disabilities are enabled to live in a family-type situation and to develop their abilities to the greatest extent possible.
Jordan and Raymon, another young man, were welcomed by Ang Arko when they were very young. Both have physical as well as learning disabilities. Others have also been welcomed down the years. The original house was in Manila but the community moved later to Cainta.
Lala and Hachiko, each looking more content than the other!
Sadly, this beautiful dog died not long afterwards, choking on a chicken bone.
In Holy Week 2001 I attended the international pilgrimage of Faith and Light to Lourdes as chaplain to the group from the Philippines. Lala was one of the twelve or so Filipinos. I was based in England at the time and travelled with a group from there
The Easter Vigil was celebrated in the underground basilica. Some of the Old Testament Vigil readings were dramatized. During the account of creation when the words God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him were read, a spotlight shone on a young man in a wheelchair. But what moved me most was when Lala was part of a group dramatizing the reading of the Exodus.
I simply marveled at the fact that a young woman who should never have been born, according to the 'wisdom' of so many, left after birth among garbage, was on the other side of the world helping to proclaim the Word of God to thousands of people, many like herself, and doing so with the joy that permeates her soul.
Queen Elizabeth, Queen of Canada, in Toronto in 2010[Wikipedia]
Ever since I was a small child I've just loved the scarlet jackets of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the 'Mounties'. I used to draw Mounties with crayons but never developed into an El Greco or a Van Gogh!
Queen Elizabeth was blessed by God with a long and healthy life in which she continued to serve her people with dignity until her death. Though she was among the richest people in the world, Lala, also with her two birthdays, enjoys even greater riches, because the words of Mary’s prayer, the Magnificat, have been revealed in her life: 'God has lifted up the lowly'.
The version above is an adaptation of the text of the prayer. Below is the translation in the Breviary used in the Philippines and in the USA during Evening Prayer (Vespers).
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children for ever.
'The clouds parted and Your light, oh Lord, shone down upon us.'
Christ (Toledo Cathedral)
