St. Patty's Day

There’s no doubt about it, there’s a lot of love for the Irish and the spirit of Ireland today all around the world. If you look at the social media and the main stream media, you will see pictures of many world famous landmarks turned green for the day that’s in it. The great statue of Christ the King in Rio De Janeiro, the Coliseum in Rome, and the Sydney Opera House to name a few. McDonald’s are making green milk shakes these days, and green Guinness is served in many pubs to mark the occasion.  The whole world is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.  

I ask myself the question, how much has the modern celebration of St. Patrick’s day actually got to do his bringing the faith to Ireland? Today we see Patrick represented on Parade Floats in billowing green vestments, swinging a crozier around his head. Is there a danger that this will pass into the realm of fairy tale along the lines of the departure of the snakes from the coasts of Ireland to drown in the sea? I notice today that people are more inclined to say ‘Paddy’s Day’ or even ‘St. Patty’s Day’ and dress up in oversized green furry top hats and fake beards saying ‘Top o’ the morning.’ Here’s a secret… We Irish never say that!

After dinner yesterday, I noticed someone left in a box of Shamrock for us. It is told that St. Patrick used the petals of the Shamrock to illustrate the relationship of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It was a simple and ingenious way of explaining that there are three persons in the one God, like there are tree leaves on the one stem, the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Today in Ireland, the fact that March 17^th is the Religious Feast Day of our National Patron is not central to the minds of many people I would argue.

Historically, the story of the bringing of the Christian faith to Ireland began before Patrick. Pope Celestine III appointed Palladius to go on a mission to the people of the Western Isles. Bishop Patrick came later on in the year 462 and it had more success, in a sense the wind was at his back. He lit a flame of faith in the people which has been passed down from generation to generation. Over the centuries that flame was a fire and at other times it was just a flicker. During the Penal Laws when the Political System tried to extinguish the Catholic faith altogether, the flame still burned. When Daniel O’Connell secured Catholic Emancipation in 1829 there was a resurgence of the Catholic Faith in Ireland. Remember, Patrick just lit the candle as it were, ordinary people have passed it on down through their families. As powerfully as Patrick handed on the Christian faith, and as generously as Irish missionaries travelled overseas with that faith, ordinary men and women passed it on too. Mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers brought their children to the church and told the children about Jesus Christ and it continues to this day. I see parents come to ask for their children to be baptized and I see grandparents bring them to the church to light a candle and say a prayer.

To quote Archbishop Fulton Sheen speaking in 1974; “I believe that we are now living at the end of Christendom. It is the end of Christendom, but not of Christianity. What is Christendom? Christendom is the political, economic, moral, social, legal life of a nation as inspired by the gospel ethic.” If you look around at what is happening currently in modern Ireland, I believe this is happening now and any attempts to ask why are being met by some with dismay, disagreement and even ridicule.

St. Patrick brought the faith to Ireland. The Irish monks brought the faith all over Europe. For generations; Irish religious; nuns, brothers, and priests travelled to developing countries to make a difference to the lives of the people there armed not just with the gospels but with teaching, nursing, medical, and other professional skills. But fundamentally this wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the generosity of mothers and fathers telling the stories of Jesus Christ to the children.  The future of the faith in Ireland will be smaller perhaps, but people will choose to be part of it. The flame burns still.

Cardinal Sean: Build a Better World | 2015 March for Life Opening Mass

Songs of Praise

In our history as Irish people, we have always loved to sing and make music. The Irish are renowned as perhaps the best musicians in the world. No need to mention U2/The Chieftans/One Direction/Westlife/Clannad/Hozier and of course Riverdance to name a few... 

Most young people love X-Factor and The Voice of Ireland. Each May-time we hope Ireland will win the Eurovision Song Contest like we did many times before. But these days in scripture we learn about some songs of praise…

Towards the end of Advent and now during this season of Christmas we hear three great songs being sung. The first is the song of Mary, the Magnificat in praise of God who has done great things for her.

The second song is the song of Zechariah who blesses God because something good is about to happen as his son, John the Baptist is to be the one to prepare the way for Jesus the Son of God.

The third song is sung by old Simeon in today’s gospel for the Feast of the Holy Family. He thanks God for the great gift of seeing the Christ-Child before he dies. Something wonderful is about to happen for the people and is still happening today in our time.

What song can we sing today for Jesus?

Christmas Day

Et Verbum Caro factum est

Nollaig Shona to all from Ireland.... 

The Driving Force

I sometimes look back to that September 1987 when I joined the Capuchins. Like most young people I loved music then and to this day, I associate some songs with the time I joined the order.  “Where the Streets have No Name,” by U2 would be one for example. Other artists charting that year would have been MAARS, George Michael and Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Mel and Kim, and even actor Bruce Willis had a hit.  I’ve just done a Google search and I note that in the UK, Rick Astley was No.1 in the U.K. charts with “Never gonna give you up” in the week I joined the Order. Around the same time in the U.S. Michael Jackson had released his single “I just can’t stop loving you.”

Now, as a 45 year old, it is almost impossible to get into the head of that 18 year old Bryan Shortall. I hear the ads on the radio, “Dear 30-year-old me…” And I wonder what I’d say to that lad if I could go back and talk to him.  But he wasn’t for talking to. He was full of it, and full of the habit, and full of the sandals, and the friary, and the sense of community even though he didn’t really know what it meant.  

He was sacred and emotional the day he joined. He missed his family, and his friends, and his girlfriends, and his breakdancing, and his dee-jaying. He didn’t miss school though, that was one good thing. He hadn’t a clue. He was going from sharing a room with his two brothers in suburban Dublin, with posters of the Beastie Boys on the wall, to sharing a religious house in the country with other men and pictures of the Pope and the General Minister of the Order.  The question he and the others who joined got asked a lot was “Have you settled in?” He used to hate being asked that question. What does ‘settled in’ feel like? And what’s the time line for settling in? He brought a selection of his LP records and it didn’t feel the same playing them in the sitting room of the Friary. The older lads didn’t wear white socks and they liked Dylan, and Jim Croce, and Neil Young, One of them couldn’t even say L.L. Cool J’s name properly.  Things were never going to be the same. Not bad though, just different.

Over the years, I went back to the books but it wasn’t like school. This time I had a choice in what I learned and I enjoyed this. I began to grow up and learn what it is to be in religious life and I began to learn about the vows I had taken temporarily and would one day take for life. I learned more and more about St. Francis of Assisi and his influence on the world of his time and how his powerful message is still relevant in our world today. So relevant that our present Pope has taken his name.

Most importantly, I found myself growing in my relationship with Jesus Christ. Not in an over-the-top holy-joe way. There were never apparitions or claps of thunder and even though I kind of knew that this vocation was from Jesus Christ at the beginning, it is only as I go on I know it is. I know it deep down – it’s the driving force. Like a couple who fall in love, it’s a vocation. They work on their relationship; they have their highs, and lows, and their joys and sorrows. For a religious, it’s a similar dynamic, but perhaps our way of life is little understood in today’s world I would argue.

How does our society make sense of the vocation to religious life today? What makes one thousand women and men religious, including myself, gather with the Archbishop of Dublin at a ceremony to begin the Year of Consecrated Life?  What language is there to explain why I still want to be a religious? I believe it is in me, and I can’t walk away. At the beginning and over the years, there weren’t any guns put to my head and I wasn’t forced to join. And I’m not being forced to stay. As the friars used to say to us, the friary is not a prison. The only reason why I’m still here is that I can’t go. I’m trying to find English language to explain it and I struggle, It’s like I had no choice and I still have no choice.

And how do we as religious put language on why we still want to be in this religious life? Or quite frankly how do we make the religious life attractive to people who may be discerning a way of life? I look around at meetings with other religious, and especially where there are younger religious and I don’t need to be convinced they believe, I can see it in their eyes, and the eyes are the mirror of the soul. St. Francis of Assisi once said, “Preach the Gospel, and if necessary, use words.” With God’s help, during this Year of Consecrated Life, we religious will help people to know who we are and witness to Jesus Christ by our example primarily.

Mass of Remembrance for the Road Safety Authority.

Below is the text of my Homily at the Mass of Remembrance for the Road Safety Authority, St. Teresa's Church, Clarendon St, Dublin 2. Sunday, November 16th, 2014.

For all, grief at the loss of someone we love, especially those who have died tragically is dreadfully painful, and only those who have felt it can properly understand this. For Christians, our grief is equally painful but it is not a hopeless grief because we will meet our loved ones again. We will all be together again.

It is fitting that we remember our loved ones in this month of November, the month of the souls. Yet the truth is, for those we’ve loved and lost, we never forget them. They are always with us. From the moment we wake up and begin the day, sometimes by the skin of our teeth, until we lie down and when we are asleep and when we can’t sleep, they are with us in our thoughts and prayers.

And they think of us too, they remember us in the presence of God. The first reading today tells us that the souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God. And the hands of God are a very safe place to be and surely we can be confident that they are in good hands.

The second reading is all about hope. St. Paul was reminding the people of Thessalonica that we’re different to those who don’t believe. Our faith, which was given to us by our parents and grandparents, brings the dead to life in Jesus Christ, by the power of His resurrection. The challenge therefore according to St. Paul, is to encourage one another. And I give thanks to God for the Road Safety Authority and to those who have organised this Mass. These are tangible ways of solidarity, support and encouragement, and this lights up the darkness.  

There is a thin skin between our world here and the next world. And there is a constant movement of prayers going between earth and heaven. We connect with our loved ones in Jesus Christ because He is the way. They connect with us, and they know we are with them too. Whenever we become quiet, light a candle, or say a prayer, we connect. And in modern language, this connection is always strong, and the signal never drops. It’s a kind of a celestial broadband that is always on and is always free.

In speaking about our faith in life after death, Pope Francis tells us that Jesus affirms that our pilgrimage, our journey, goes from death towards a fuller life. So, the Holy Father points out that death is in a sense behind us, not in front of us. In front of us is the God of the living, the definitive defeat of sin and death, the start of a new time of joy and endless light. But already on this earth – in prayers, in Sacraments, in the Mass – we encounter Jesus and his love, and so we can get a small taste of the risen life.

I was chaplain in a school in west Dublin after my ordination in 1997. In my second year there, we lost a lovely girl, a sixth-year pupil, following a road traffic accident. Two of her siblings were also pupils and the whole school was shocked and numb with grief. During the subsequent days, I witnessed such love and solidarity that I will never forget how the whole community came out to pray for the family left behind. One of the things I began to do then after Communion at every Mass was to pray the prayer to the Guardian Angel. This was reinforced when I later worked in the Chaplaincy Department of Beaumont Hospital in Dublin. There I saw the great care and skills of the emergency services, the nursing staff, the surgeons and medics, and the care staff, and other professionals. For me, the prayer to the Guardian Angel is just a small way of praying for safety on the roads and of supporting the great work of the Road Safety Authority. It is also to pray for all those who are left behind following the death or serious injury of someone involved in a road traffic accident.

 O Angel of God, my guardian dear,

To whom God’s love, commits me here,

Ever this day, be at my side,

To light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.

 

All Souls...

The Church's Feast Days of All Saints and All Souls are a nice entry point to the month of November, the month of the Souls. While November is a dark month in the northern hemisphere, there are reasons for hope and optimism. We are people of the resurrection and we continue to remember those who have died and gone before us. Gone before us, because one day it will be our turn, and in that moment they will assist us with their prayers.

The reason why we Christians have a lively devotion to the Souls is because it was instilled in us from the time we were children. The belief in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was handed on to us by many of those very people we pray for today - parents, grandparents, siblings, spouses, friends.

All year around people come to our Friary Office to have prayers and Masses offered for the souls of loved ones. In Ireland, we always had a great respect for the dead and the souls of the faithful departed. Again, it was instilled in us by our people and its part of our story. 

Humanly speaking, our death is a scary prospect and we don't like to think about it. It is a consolation that we know because of the promises of Jesus Christ that "I am going now to prepare a place for you and after I have prepared you a place, I will return to take you with me..." (John 14:3)

I believe that the distance between this world and the next world is a short one. The next world exists in the now. The souls of our loved ones are there now and there is two way traffic between both places - the souls pray and we pray. Jesus Christ is the bridge between this world and the next and in Him we can connect to them. In Him the souls of our loved ones can pray too.

This faith in the power of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, lightens the darkness of November and helps us to focus that death is the vehicle by which we all travel the short distance to the presence of Jesus Christ who lives in the here and now.

 

'May their sous, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God. Rest in Peace. Amen. '