Category: Fr Rory Writes

“Every day as long as this today lasts, keep encouraging one another” Heb 3.13 from the divine office.

Last Sunday was the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus who was baptised in the river Jordan, by John the Baptist.  This highlights an idea, “that actions speak louder than words”.  But words are so important, as they give meaning to the events.  In this case, no sooner has Jesus come up out of the water, then He saw the heavens torn apart, and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on Him, and a voice came from heaven “you are my son, the beloved, my favour rests on you”.  This gives us a clear picture of the Life in the Holy Trinity of God, which is at the heart of our faith.

Largely, because of the coronavirus, I have spent a lot of hours here in the church.  At the moment, when life is dark and difficult for all of us, for me it is one of the silver linings in the dark clouds of the moment.   Here in the church the sanctuary lamp stands out in the coming darkness.  It is there as a powerful expression of what we hold to be true.  The living presence of Jesus is the Holy Eucharist through His promise “The bread that I shall give you is my flesh for the life of the world”.  The sanctuary lamp and the stations of the cross have a very special memory for me.  Brian Winter was so involved with the decision to bring them forward from the old church, they contribute to the beautiful atmosphere that is in the new church.  A Sister who comes to holiday with us for a week each year, mentioned so firmly that she could spend the rest of her life here in this church.  We are truly blest with it.  So a thank you to Brian, Billy O’Rourke and the team that was with them – a lovely legacy.

A Christmas card made a strong memorable and lasting impression on me this year.  It was a picture of Mary with her child sitting on an ass when Joseph as the scripture tells us “to escape, Herod had to take them down to Egypt”.  This grounds us in real life when there are so many refugees having to leave their homes.  The idea that life is a journey of faith for everybody helps us with our present circumstances.  When we were in the seminary, we were full of hope after the Second Vatican Council that a great  opportunity was in store for us.  Now I draw a lot of consolation from that Christmas card, and the nature of journeys.   They tend to be down to earth.  But inspiration and consolations are important, and highlights again and again that primarily we are a community of faith, and like Joseph and Mary, willing witnesses to our faith in the Christ child.

Here we go again, a New Year.  In my homily on Sunday I presented what I thought were two powerful images.  The darkest night following the shortest day, followed by the image when the tide has gone out to its furthest distance.  Since then I was introduced by a friend to a more pertinent and purposeful image when he spoke of his garden.  This has been very much confirmed with proper care and attention; already even in the harshest cold, new signs of life are ready to break forth.  Even now the occasional flower is scattered throughout the emerging bulbs.  Life is always getting ready for its opportunity to come to life and to bear fruit.

The Prime Minister spelt out the reality of the moment, with the virus and the numbers affected by it spiralling, with the instruction, stay safe and stay at home.  That is central to our attention.  At the same time we have essential needs, and shopping for food expresses one of our needs.  Other needs surface as life has a multi purpose agenda to it, part of it work.  For us in our Catholic faith there is also a wider agenda and spiritual nourishment is a true reality.

Unlike the spring lockdown, churches can remain open for worship and prayer.  This has its risks and responsibilities, and a reality for me was having to isolate just when we were ready to celebrate our Christmas Masses.  I really know what it is to be in the dark.  Indeed  quite a difficult dark year –  but also receiving a lot of kindness, help and support.  A last moment opportunity to stream a Christmas morning mass, and like the new buds, signs of life to come.

First, the challenge.  We are very short of stewards and cleaners, and we have to really, really appeal for help.  For us to return to our masses will not be easy, but with fresh help, like the buds, life gets ready to begin. 

Please God, days lengthening, tides turning and new life in abundance will come again.

I recently found this prayer from Saint John Henry Newman which speaks of the real grace we receive in the miracle of Christmas.

              “Dear Jesus, help me to spread your fragrance wherever I go. Flood my soul with your spirit and life. Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, that my life may only be a radiance of yours. Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel your presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus! Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be a light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from you; none of it will be mine. It will be you, shining on others through me. Let me thus praise you the way you love best, by shining on those around me. Let me preach you without preaching, not by words but by my example, by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to you. Amen.”

May the Light that is Christ shine upon you, and the peace of the Christ Child be yours this Christmas.  Fr Rory and I, wish you all a happy and holy Christmas, and may God bless everyone, your families and your friends. Amen.

Let us celebrate the Feast of Christmas this year, with the fruits of our journey through Advent.

Christmas comes just after the shortest, darkest and sometimes bleakest days of the year.  It celebrates God’s salvation, which has come into our world.  The coronavirus at this time has a particularly powerful hold on us, and does represent an awareness of the greater kingdom of evil that Jesus came down from heaven to redeem and save us from.  It is always important to keep our attention on the amount of goodness and people of great goodwill who are always at work among us.

At the moment life is very challenging and difficult.  So a simple, “thank God”, for the vaccine with the hope that it brings light at the end of the tunnel.   I remain with my old faults of communication, and particular difficulty with visiting in place, so I ask for patience and understanding.

I am grateful for all the help that is provided to our parish, helping with our celebration of Mass, providing the essential service of our parish, and help with streaming, which remains a particular challenge.  Thanks be to God and to you all that financially and administratively our parish is functioning very well.  I am very grateful to you for your gifts, greetings and donations to me this Christmas.

So sincerely, thanks be to God for Christmas and for salvation, for the fruits of our journey through the Sundays’ Advent Prayers.  The First Sunday with its focus upon ‘hope’, the second ‘peace’, the third ‘joy’ and last Sunday ’love’.  Let them be the fruits of our Christmas and Bishop Richard has presented us with a vision and a challenge for the next few years, so let us give it our full attention when we return in the new year.

Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat.  If you have not a penny a halfpenny will do. If you have not a halfpenny, well God bless you. 

I just realised that in nearly seventy years I had not heard or said this rhyme coming up to Christmas.  When growing up as a child it was part of Christmas.  This Christmas is so different in many ways, but its reality is much more important.  For us to realise that salvation is coming into our world, and all the children’s plays at Christmas are about this most important message.  “A Saviour is born, this day in Bethlehem”.  The Gospel with its message is what should never be lost.  Reality the world over, from the reaction to the American Presidential Election, to the advice that is given on how to respond to the virus, the human response remains the same.  Jesus addressed this by “their fruits you shall know them”.

Family is a great blessing to life.  I have a nephew who is returning from Japan and a niece returning from France for Christmas.  Obviously they have taken into consideration the requirements to isolate and parents and family are happy with it.  The outcome will be the key factor when the final verdict is in place.  Certainly the challenge that the virus has presented, with the benefit of what hindsight will bring through the validation of decisions will give greater guidance for our future.  How to be more prepared, how to give appropriate value to human dignity.  How to care for those most vulnerable, the care for children, and the different needs of the young, people with mental issues and the importance of health and wellbeing are all very important factors in life.

What about us in the life of the church?  Please God, this has presented us with a learning curve.  The challenge for us is great, confronted with our age profile, many would say it is impossible.  With the age requirements that were needed to facilitate the use of our churches for prayer, masses and sacraments, we were very short of volunteers.  Exposing a  failure which is ours.  What can we do about it is our only hope.  What I see as a two fold failure of those in authority in the church.  First, the importance of baptism with its meaning for our lives, without it, it is like trying to build houses without foundations.  The second is ministry within the church.  What the ministry of the eucharist, readers, cantors and other ministries can bring.  How a body made of many parts working together, is the key to our future in the life of our church.

In Ireland there was a well known poet, who was greatly loved and appreciated.  He was blind and his name was “Raftery an File”.  For the winter he used to move down into the south of Ireland, the prosperous part where I lived, but he really thought we were a lot of mean old people, but he much preferred to live with his own people out in the west of Ireland.

So he used to really look forward to his return there.  He left us a great rich legacy.  A poem in Gaelic.  The words were “anois teacht an earraigh”.  Now with the coming of Spring I will raise up my sail and tar eis na feil Bride… and after the Feast of St Bridget – 1st February – he would take off for happier summer grounds.  I very much identify with his sentiments.  After this most difficult year, and we still have quite a time to go to survive, we can all look forward like Raftery an File, we can also be prepared to lift up our hearts and re-launch our lives once again.

For the moment “grace and peace”.   May this holy season bless, strengthen and restore us.  I am most grateful for all the help that I am getting in spite of or maybe on account of the difficulties that we have been going through.

“These are the trials by which we triumph through the power of Him who loves us”.  I am receiving help to prepare a letter from some persons from our leaven group at St George’s.  This will be sent  out to members of our parish.  This gives me a chance to say thank you to them and to all who have helped me through the years.  Also to acknowledge how reliant I am upon receiving that help.  One of the fruits from the pandemic, is a deeper awareness of the solid foundation that our faith is built upon.

Returning to our first lockdown in March, when a stringent isolation process helped me to focus clearing upon our churches liturgy.  From the end of Lent, giving the Holy Season my fullest attention; on through Holy Week, then the celebration of the Ascension and the great promise of Pentecost .  This promise  “I am with you always”, this was so well echoed by Springwatch.  The great challenge that will be ours, when we climb our way out from the grief caused by the pandemic, there will be a great challenge from global warming that will be the consequences of human greed and exploitation.  For our church this may be more drastic, as we have experienced a great loss of credibility. 

I keep returning to a privileged time when I was in the seminary in the late sixties.  The second Vatican Council had ended and one professor in particular, together with all of us in the seminary, was inspired with the spirit of the council.  It reflected a time of great hope, but the seeds for the opposite to happen were deeply ingrained.  So the fact that the seminaries have emptied is a very important consideration and sets the scene for life following on from the coronavirus.

Again, the great assurance “I am with you always”.  We are deeply and unconditionally loved by the living God.  Our sure hope, our sure foundation, and our sure point of reference as we continue our journey of faith.  Let us have love one for another.

With the help of God we will see the beginning of the end for this pandemic with the coming of the new year.  Christmas will be very much part of the experience for this year.  So it is a very important time.  Sin in its truest, deepest  nature is recognised in the doctrine of original sin, otherwise expressed as the sin of Adam, when an evil fallen nature became part of our inheritance.  Jesus gave us its focus, and a measuring point for our human behaviour “by their fruits you shall know them, good trees bear good fruit”.

Recently, those in authority in the Catholic Church are trying to make renewed attempts to make atonement for the grave sins that were endemic in the church on account of the paedophiles, who were part of the establishment.  Some Bishops have made public penance as an acknowledgement of the injury and damage done to the lives of the faithful.  The slowness of the response adds to our grave difficulties.

Now we are presented with a great challenge, and with the help of God’s grace a new window of opportunity.  We need to identify with Christ, when after the crucifixion he called upon His disciples as He tried to impower them for His mission to bring God’s salvation.  Forgiveness is a key component of His mission.  When St Peter returned to his day job, after the shock of the crucifixion, they had fished all night and caught nothing.  They were so confused and at odds with life; they did not recognise Him.  After the miraculous catch of fish,  Peter recovers and Jesus anoints him:  “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church”.

Today we return to Peter in the person of Pope Francis; his successor, and pray for him.  Some have been very disappointed with him, especially with his visit to the church in Ireland, we must look forward to a new era in the life of the church.  From morning prayer in the divine office today the scripture reading from Romans 8.35, 37 “Nothing can come between us and the love of Christ, even if we are troubled or worried, or being persecuted, or lacking clothes or being attacked.  These are the trials through which we triumph , by the power of Him who loves us”.   As we begin the first week of Advent, let us sow the seed of hope and trust in our hearts.  Let us be prepared for a new era with life in it, and it is only all of us together that can bring that life.  Please God, bring us the grace to begin again.

The Feast of Christ the King:  In time this will be the greatest Feast in the church’s year.  I leave the question why?

Thanks be to God, and again thanks be to God.  The first one is for the vaccine for the coronavirus which holds out light for the end of the tunnel.  The second one is for the return of my driver’s licence.  Also, thanks be to God, my insurance has not cost me an arm and a leg.  I hope and pray this will help me on the road.

On that road are two essentials:

One: Belonging:  Through the waters of baptism we belong to Jesus who has come down from heaven for our salvation.  Recognising the implications and the effects of the coronavirus can help us with the reality of the effects of sin or evil and help us deal with its consequences.  In my heart I have a constant conversation.  It focuses us upon the words “responsibility and reasonable”.  Alongside these are the essential elements a) human dignity and b) by their fruits you shall know them.

Two: Nourishment:  We see the best expression of this in providing food for our bodies, keeping the shops open and the food flowing.  I am hugely impressed by all the people who go the extra mile, indeed miles to feed those in need, they put me to shame.  When it comes to spiritual nourishment in this picture, improving this bleakness, and I have to include myself very much in this picture.  This is certainly our challenge.  This challenge has been with us for the past fifty years, and with the closing of seminary after seminary we will soon have to make an attempt to answer that question.

Our focus must be “The love of God” as first and foremost and forever.  Please God, we may be able to do this and the greatest time for us to begin is here and now.  The first week in advent begins at the end of this week.  Please God, may we make this journey truly worthwhile as we continue on our way.  Our true home is in heaven.

To be continued ………………

Please God, a real ray of light is appearing with the announcement that a vaccine for protection against the coronavirus, which is fit for purpose, is on the horizon.  This vaccine has received the necessary assessment of its potential and the pitfalls that surround it.  Having heard much of the commentary, my compass remains firmly…… Please God.

Live and learn; the capacity to never learn is real.  When a final post-mortem on this episode with the coronavirus is carried out, it will reveal that some major afflictions might have been avoided.  Some great sense of loss and emotional damage and injury will be a legacy.  From the beginning I have recognised the reality of evil that accompanies this and indeed all of the viruses.  The capacity to turn all things to good is part of the legacy that has been left to us by Jesus.  Conscious of my failures makes me very sad.  Our failures as a parish community gives us a real opportunity to live and learn together.  Let us begin to reach out to prepare for, and to embrace the opportunity that will now come our way.

When I came to this parish, I introduced “Leaven Groups”, which I hoped would serve our parishes and build up our communities.  I still believe that this is possible.   For different reasons, and the loss of some great parishioners, has left us with a lot to do.  We reached a place where “A Missing Link” to help with communication was being prepared.  Prior to this lockdown progress was being made, and we will return to this.  During lockdown the Great Feast of Christ the King will pass and Fr Kieran will  help me with the celebration this year. Then a new Advent, when I hope and pray we can begin again to live a new life of faith.

Speaking of prayers; and with my heart and soul focused upon them, a great, great sadness.  Noelle, a real treasure in our parish has died.  After a long, long battle with cancer, shared by Marianne Patel, who died two years ago.  They were outstanding witnesses to our faith and above all life.  They battled for the greater part silently with it, with strong mutual support.  Noelle had just accepted to be chair person of our Leaven Group, and then she received this devastating news.  She quietly battled; and what a battle this year has turned out to be.  Consolation, she has united with her own and our family of saints, who have reached their true home which awaits us in heaven.

Her husband, Brian, and children, Aiden and Rosin (only again for the pandemic) would have celebrated her First Holy Communion this year.  Please God, a legacy of inspiration is left to us from Marianne and Noelle that will inspire us to build better liturgies and to communicate the gifts that faith can bring.   At this time I know you would just want me to let them know that we want to offer all the love and support that our parish could bring to them at this most difficult time.