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).
A work of art is the fruit of the creative capacity of the human being who stands in wonder before the visible reality, and who seeks to discover the depths of its meaning and to communicate it through the language of forms, colors and sounds. Art has the capacity to express and to make visible man’s need to go beyond what he sees; it manifests his thirst and his search for the infinite. In fact, it is like a door opened to the infinite — to a beauty and a truth that goes beyond the everyday. And a work of art can open the eyes of the mind and heart, carrying them higher. (Pope Benedict XVI).
Lucia Santos, left, and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto[Wikipedia]
On Saturday 13 May Pope Francis will canonise Blessed Francisco Marto (1908 - 1919) and his sister Jacinta (1910 - 1920) in Fátima, Portugal, on the 100th anniversary of the first apparition of the Blessed Mother there to the three children.
A good friend of mine who is a priest and a Scripture scholar once pointed out to me that in all the places where the Church has affirmed that our Blessed Mother truly appeared it was to poor people. We can see this in such places as Guadalupe (1531) in Mexico, La Salette (1846) and Lourdes (1858) in France, Beauraing (1932-33) and Banneux (1933) in Belgium, Fátima (1917) in Portugal and Knock (1879) in Ireland. I have been blessed by having taken part in pilgrimages to all of these except La Salette and Guadalupe.
Also on 13 May, for the first time in history, a beatification will take place in Ireland, that of Fr John Sullivan SJ (1861 - 1933), by Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. The ceremony will be held in St Francis Xavier Church, Gardiner Street, Dublin, a church that is closely associated also with the Venerable Matt Talbot (1856 - 1925). These two men grew up within walking distance of each other, but in totally different circumstances, John Sullivan in prosperity and Matt Talbot in poverty. God called both of them to sanctity, as indeed he calls each of us through our baptism. They responded to this call.
St Francis Xavier Church, Gardiner St, Dublin[Wikipedia]
For some reason, Dubliners rarely refer to their churches by their patronal name but rather by the street name. Had this ceremony been held in Dublin 50 or 60 years ago it would not have taken place in this or in any other church but in an open, public space. It will be interesting to see how the Irish media will cover the event.
Please pray this weekend for a renewal of the Catholic Christian faith in Ireland where to a large extent in recent decades it has been rejected or marginalised as a purely private matter, and despised by some.
"Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them.I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
Bishop Honesto F. Ongtioco of Cubao ordained Erl Dylan J. Tabaco to the diaconate on 30 April in the Columban House of Studies, Cubao, Quezon City. The new deacon is from Holy Rosary Parish, Agusan, Cagayan de Oro City. He spent two years, 2014 to 2016, on First Mission Assignment in Peru as part of his preparation for the Columban missionary priesthood. You can read about his work there with children who are profoundly deaf and with young persons with intellectual disabilities here.
Erl Dylan J. Tabaco with youngsters in Peru
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Bring Flowers of the Fairest, also known as Queen of the May, a very popular Marian hymn in Ireland, especially during the month of May, was written by Mary E. Walsh and is sung here by the late Irish tenor, Frank Patterson.
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven milesfrom Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened.While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them,but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad.Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?”He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth,who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people,and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning,and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.”Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!Was it not necessary that the Messiahshould suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them.When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within uswhile he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!”Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
When it was evening on that
day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples
had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and
said, ‘Peace be with you.’After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then
the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be
with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’When he had said this, he breathed
on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.If you forgive the sins of any, they
are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’
But Thomas (who was called
the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.So the other disciples told him, ‘We
have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails
in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his
side, I will not believe.’
A week later his disciples
were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were
shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your
finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not
doubt but believe.’Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’Jesus said to him, ‘Have you
believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet
have come to believe.’
We can read the words of Jesus to Thomas as a gentle rebuke that has led to the nickname he may carry for all eternity: 'Doubting Thomas'. But I prefer to see him as the one who understood that the Risen Lord must carry the scars of his crucifixion and who made the most explicit act of faith in the whole of Sacred Scripture: My Lord and my God!
The First Reading today (Ats 2:42-47) opens with the words They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 'The breaking of the bread' is an expression used for the celebration of the Eucharist. We can see in this sentence the essence of the Mass as we celebrate it today: listening to God's word, praying and sharing in the Sacrifice of Jesus and sharing his Body and Blood.
Some commentators say that the failure of Thomas was not to listen to God's word as related by his companions. Maybe he did fail here but did the others have the same awareness as Thomas had that the Risen Lord must carry his scars for all eternity?
InEvangelii GaudiumNo 7 Pope Francis writes: I never tire of repeating those words of Benedict XVI which take us to the very heart of the Gospel: 'Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction'. Thomas had been a companion of Jesus for two to three years but what he experienced in today's gospel was precisely what Pope Benedict describes as the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.
Servant of God, Fr Emil Joseph Kapaun (20 April 1916 - 23 May 1951) celebrating Mass with American soldiers during the Korean War [Wikipedia]
In hisgeneral audience in St Peter's Square on 31 October 2012
Pope Benedict said: I cannot build my personal faith in a private
dialogue with Jesus, because faith is given to me by God through a community of
believers that is the Church and projects me into the multitude of believers,
into a kind of communion that is not only sociological but rooted in the
eternal love of God who is in himself the communion of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit, it is Trinitarian Love. Our faith is truly
personal, only if it is also communal: it can be my faith only if it dwells in
and moves with the 'we' of the Church, only if it is our faith, the common
faith of the one Church.
Pope Francis re-echoes this inEvangelii GaudiumNos 264 - 268: We need to
implore his grace daily, asking him to open our cold hearts and shake up our
lukewarm and superficial existence . . . Sometimes we lose our enthusiasm
for mission because we forget that the Gospel responds to our deepest needs,
since we were created for what the Gospel offers us: friendship with Jesus and
love of our brothers and sisters . . . The word of God also invites us to
recognise that we are a people . . . Mission is at once a passion for
Jesus and a passion for his people. When we stand before Jesus crucified, we
see the depth of his love which exalts and sustains us, but at the same time,
unless we are blind, we begin to realize that Jesus’ gaze, burning with love,
expands to embrace all his people. We realize once more that he wants to make
use of us to draw closer to his beloved people. He takes us from the midst of
his people and he sends us to his people; without this sense of belonging we
cannot understand our deepest identity.
What both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis are saying is that while our faith is
in a person, Jesus Christ the Risen Lord, it can never be a question of 'Jesus
and me'. Pope Benedict says, faith is given to me by God through a
community of believers that is the Church and projects me into the multitude of
believers and Pope Francis emphasises that He takes us from
the midst of his people and he sends us to his people; without this sense of
belonging we cannot understand our deepest identity.
In other words, I can only know myself as a brother or sister of Jesus, as a
son or daughter of God the Father when I know myself as a member of their
family, which I have become through my baptism.
And that awareness of who I am is strengthened when I join other members of
God's family every Sunday as they devote themselves to the apostles’
teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
British soldiers at Mass in the Netherlands during World War II [Wikipedia]
Many Irish Columbans served as chaplains in the British Forces during World War II. One, Fr Patrick McMahon, died in action in Normandy, France, after rescuing a Canadian soldier on 14 August 1944.
In the Office of Readings, prayed by priests, monks, nuns and others as part of the Prayer of the Church, there are two readings. The first is from the Bible and the second usually from writers in the early centuries of the Church. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday of Easter Week the second reading is from Instructions to the Newly Baptized in Jerusalem also known as The Jerusalem Catechesis, written, as far as I know, by St Cyril of Jerusalem. The author says, Just as the bread of the Eucharist after the invocation of the Holy Spirit is no longer just bread, but the body of Christ, so when the Holy Spirit has been invoked on the holy chrism it is no longer mere or ordinary ointment; it is the gift of Christ, which through the presence of the Holy Spirit instils his divinity into us [Friday].
For the Saturday reading the author tells the newly-baptized: Do not, then, regard the bread and wine as nothing but bread and wine, for they are the body and blood of Christ as the master himself has proclaimed. Though your senses suggest otherwise, let faith reassure you. You have been taught and fully instructed that what seems to be bread is not bread, though it appears to be such to the sense of taste, but the body of Christ; that what seems to be wine is not wine, though the taste would have it so, but the blood of Christ.
When I celebrate Mass with
the Deaf here in Bacolod City, a group whose needs the late Columban Fr Joseph
Coyle was the first priest to respond to and whose vision is being carried on
now by many others, both Deaf and hearing, after the consecration of the bread
and again of the wine, I hear from speaking people who are present the words of
St Thomas, My Lord and my God. Just like St Thomas, they recognise
the presence of the Risen Lord in the bread and the winde that have no become
his Body and Blood.
Fr Emil Kapaun and Fr
Patrick McMahon recognised the presence of Jesus in the bread and wine that
became the Body and Blood of Christ each time they celebrated the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass. They also recognised the presence of Jesus in the wounds
of the soldiers they tended and in whose service they sacrificed their lives -
following the example of St Thomas who, according to tradition, was martyred in
India.
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Regina caeliis sung during the Easter Season at the end of the Church's Night Prayer (Compline).
Oremus. Deus, qui per resurrectionem Filii tui, Domini nostri Iesu Christi, mundum lætificare dignatus es: præsta, quæsumus, ut per eius Genitricem Virginem Mariam, perpetuæ capiamus gaudia vitæ. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. R. Amen.
Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia.
The Son whom you merited to bear, alleluia.
Has risen, as He said, alleluia.
Pray for us to God, alleluia.
V.Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia.
R. For the Lord has truly risen, alleluia.
Let us pray. O God, who through the resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ gave rejoicing to the world, grant, we pray, that through his Mother, the Virgin Mary, we may obtain the joy of everlasting life. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Early on the first day of the week, while it was
still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been
removed from the tomb.So she ran
and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and
said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know
where they have laid him.’Then Peter
and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb.The two
were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb
first.He bent
down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in.Then Simon
Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings
lying there,and the
cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but
rolled up in a place by itself.Then the
other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and
believed;for as yet
they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
I
remember as a young priest, maybe in the summer of 1968 about six months after
my ordination, celebrating Sunday Mass in the chapel of the Irish Sisters of
Charity (now the Religious Sisters of Charity)
in Stanhope Street, Dublin, where I had made my First Holy Communion on 20 May
1950. The beautiful chapel is no longer there.
I
remember clearly that my mother was at the Mass and that I preached about the
Resurrection, probably quite eloquently and certainly with conviction.
However,
it was only when my mother died suddenly less that two years later that I got
any real grasp of what the Resurrection is. Within hours of receiving the news
at breakfast time in New York, where I was studying, I felt its truth in my
very being.
I
preached again about the Resurrection in the presence of my mother's remains at
her funeral Mass, again with conviction and maybe with some eloquence as
before. But my conviction, my faith in the Resurrection, was now rooted in my
heart, not just in my head.
After
the Mass my father, a man of deep quiet faith who went to Mass every day of his
life right up to the day of his own sudden death in 1987, told me that he had
felt utterly desolate going into the church but now felt at peace. A cousin's
husband thanked me for speaking about what really matters. Nearly 40 years
later a fellow Columban, who had been presentwhile
a seminarian, told me that he still preaches in his funeral homilies in Japan
whatever I had said at my mother's funeral Mass. I really have no idea what I
said but I remember vividly the change in my understanding of the Resurrection
during those days.
Anniversary of 1994 genocide in Rwanda
But the hope that the Death and
Resurrection of Jesus is not only for us as individuals. It can bring hope and
reconciliation to a whole nation. In 1994 in Rwanda, an overwhelmingly Christian
nation, more than half of its then between seven and eight million people
Catholics, between 500,000 and 1,000,000, mostly members of the minority Tutsi
people, were slaughtered between 7 April and the middle of July.
In the video above a man who lived through it, probably as a child, says outside a church in Kigali, the country's
capital, Today's Mass was about Resurrection. And I believe that one
day the souls of the people we lost will resurrect. Sister Mujawayezu Marie
Anastasie, a survivor of the genocide, says, I think now that
things are like before, even better than before. People are good to each other,
talking. People trust each other. For what I see it seems OK but I do not know
what's inside a person's heart.
Sister Mujawayezu's words express some
uncertainty but trust and hope win out. This is a fruit of the Resurrection,
that God's love has conquered evil and death. And the Rwandan Genocide was the
result mainly of neighbour killing neighbour. There have been reports and
photos in the media in recent years of individuals who had killed other individuals
not only asking forgiveness of someone they had widowed but working with that
widow to enable her to have a livelihood.
It is acts such as these that remind us
of the truth of the Resurrection, of the presence of the Risen Lord among us,
still carrying the scars of his Crucifixion, as the people of Rwanda who have
asked for forgiveness or who have forgiven their former enemies still carry the
scars of 1994.
Thecivil war in Rwandawas
short and brutal.That in Lebanonlasted from 1975 to 1990 with an
estimated 120,000 deaths and about a million leaving the country. Today it is
affected by the ongoing civil war in neighbouring Syria.
The people of Lebanon are
Arabs, nearly 40 percent of them Christian. Most of those are Maronite
Catholics who have always been in full communion with Rome. The vast majority
of Christians in the Middle East are Arabs, in Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Palestine,
Syria. They are descended from the very earliest Christians. Islam originated
nearly six centuries after the death and Resurrection of Jesus.
Like the people of
Rwanda, the people of Lebanon carry the scars of their civil war. But the
Christians there also carry the living grace of the Resurrection of Jesus. I
have used the video below a number of times before but I know of no more joyful
proclamation of the Resurrection than Jesus is Risen, sung here in
Arabic in a shopping mall in Beirut three years ago at Eastertime.
No translation is
necessary, though you can switch on the English captions. You can see the look
of surprise on the face of a Filipina taking caring of a child and the look of
delight on the face of a young Muslim woman.
The truth and joy of the
Resurrection being proclaimed in Arabic by professional singers in a mall in
Beirut, Lebanon
