Fullerton T
RELIGION LITURGY AND LIFE
THE FEASTDAY OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST
JOHN THE BAPTIST
Birthdays are a special time to remember and give thanks for the blessings that have come our way in our lives family, friends faith or whatever. In many churches of the East and West the birth of John the Baptist is remembered on this day. St Augustine points out that The Church observes the birth of John as in some way sacred; and you will not find any other of the great men of old whose birth we celebrate officially. We celebrate John’s, as we celebrate Christ’s. Augustine also points out that this point cannot be passed over in silence, and he states if I may not perhaps be able to explain it in the way that such an important matter deserves, it is still worth thinking about it a little more deeply and fruitfully than usual. So in the spirit of St Augustine let us stop for a moment to think about this feast a little more deeply
John was born of an old woman who is barren; Christ was born of a young virgin woman. That John will be born was not believed, and his father is struck dumb; that Christ will be born was believed, and he is conceived by faith. The Gospel of this day recalls that great figure: John the Baptist. We hear in our gospel that Zachariah regained his speech when they came to name the child John. John’s task was to announce the coming of Jesus and to point to him when he came.
John’s work was extraordinary. He was called to reawaken a sense of expectation among a people that had grown tired and distant from God as many have done in our present generation. John was called to bring renewal to institutional expressions of religion which, at the time, had so often become fossilised into mere formulae or external ritual. He attracted thousands to come out into the desert to see him. Tradition sees the desert as the place where God speaks to the heart of his people. It is from this solitary place of spiritual combat, the desert bordering the Jordan, that John appears “with the spirit and the power of Elijah” (Luke 7:17). By his word and his baptism with water, he must call the children of the covenant back to the Lord their God as he calls us today to come back to the Lord our God.
John was a man who stood out. His strange dress the wild camel hair shirt and the leather girdle was not chosen as a publicity gimmick or a trademark as many things today are chosen because they are a trademark and gimmicky. His message was one that spoke of rising above conventional ways of thinking, conventional expectations and attitudes. He shunned the external amenities of a comfortable life because he wanted to show his absolute dependence on God. His detachment from life’s comforts gave him the freedom to truly recognise the message of Jesus and who he was the Son of God. John is not only the fiery preacher of judgement He also appears as the friend who leads the bride to the bridegroom and then withdraws. He relentlessly directs hearts and minds OUR hearts and minds toward Jesus. Then he seeks to decrease so that the Jesus may increase. Thus is the servant conformed to his master.
The figure of John serves as a warning to us today, to all believers, to the Church and to Church organisations of every age of our need to draw our strength from Christ alone, rather than identifying with the cultural patterns or the Fads and fashions of the time, which in any case come and go.The Church is here to proclaim and live out the message of Jesus in every generation in season and out of season whether people at large like it or not. It is not there in any way to be inward looking. The Church that is the people of god, you and I are called to constant renewal, to tear ourselves away from conventional expectations, attitudes and superficialities and centre ourselves completely on God. The Church in every age must become like John the Baptist, an uncomfortable reminder of how we must allow the truth of Jesus to break into our lives to enlighten the darkness that can at any moment enter into our lives or the life of the Church.
The Christian message always has the ability to fascinate and challenge everyone in every age. It calls on all of us to interpret correctly the meaning of Christ’s coming for our lives and for the society in which we live. Young and old that is all of us one and all need to hear Christ’s message in its clarity with all its demands and challenges. We need to see that the true foundation of the meaning and the hope we have comes in its entirety from the message of Jesus: of whom john said “He is the one”. Like John the Baptist, the Lord invites each of us to make our life a free-will offering to God. God wants to fill us with his glory all the days of our lives, from birth through death. Today then let us renew the offering of ourselves and our lives to God and give him thanks for his mercy and favour towards us as we celebrate the birthday of John the Baptist
ELEVENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME
Our Gospel story today is the parable of the sower and we see how the farmer (GOD) has sown a tiny seed (FAITH); we see how he watches and waits for it to bear fruit. Jesus makes a comparison between the small and negligible start and the extraordinary results and we see many of these results in the spiritual lives we are celled to lead. The farmer is in no hurry; he simply sits, waits and lets things happen having sown the seed. Whatever happens will take its own time and the farmer must certainly not hurry its growth. He does not try to find out how this happens, but allows things to develop as they will. From God’s perspective, things are often not what they appear to be at first. The tiny mustard seed may seem small and insignificant, but within it looms something so very valuable, a vital part of creation. This parable helps us to realize that size can be deceiving? It helps us to understand that out of a small thing can come something wonderful and Spiritually powerful. The Church grew from a small mustard seed into what it is today that is something wonderful and Spiritually powerful in every generation past present and moving on into the future. Of course there are those within the Church who have let us all down in many ways and not least in recent years through the various scandals that have taken place, the life of faith is never easy. In this parable, Jesus spoke about the truth that smallness has its strengths, advantages and possibilities. Smallness is a theme to which Jesus returned again and again in his ministry. And we know, too, that smallness was the basis on which the church began and in which the church continues to flourish.The church operates best when it carries into larger ministries the insights and techniques of smallness. We are at our best when we engage as individuals in reaching out to the other person because we have but one ministry as an example – that of Jesus himself. He gathered around him a small band of followers, totalling at best two dozen people. He worked closest with a select band of 12 who gathered with him at the Last Supper and heard his message of servanthood. When the church began as a small mustard seed, it was empowered by the Holy Spirit on the first Pentecost to carry the good news of Christ out into the world. It found expression in a small group of 11 who became empowered by the risen Lord in the upper room and grew into such a faith filled group of people. The people Jesus chose to carry on his work were, by the world’s standards, small men – fishermen, unlearned, probably illiterate. One was a despised tax collector. They were simple ordinary people. Some of his band of followers were the very rejects of society. By all outward signs and appearances, they were small people. This, of course, was based on the judgment and standards of quantity, wealth education and worldly power. But in God’s eyes, they can be seen as the greatest of people. And we learn that, in the midst of the world that has a culture that idolizes the big the bold and the beautiful whilst waiting on the next BIG THING to come along, for us Catholic and Christian people generally there is a faith that honours the smallness and stillness in life that is the kind of smallness and stillness with which Jesus worked. This smallness means maintaining concern for individuals, providing opportunity for looking after everyone, promoting a feeling of worth and good in everyone, we meet making sure that all are interconnected, so that, for example, there is somebody to miss you when you are absent for whatever reason and then somebody to say how are you, to ask where you have been and how you are doing when you return. The Stillness means that we stop from time to time to recharge the batteries of faith so that the Mustard Seed of Faith can grow as the father intended. From the right kind of “small thinking and stillness of soul and spirit” can flow the values and mission that Jesus gave to his first followers who have passed it on to us. down through every generation to the present time.
The parable of the sower is all about you and me when we stop to really think about things we see how God has sown a tiny seed that is the seed of faith within each of us and we see how he watches and waits for it to bear fruit in us and through us for other people. This particular parable reminds us it is not the size of the seed planted that is important, but what counts is what grows up from that tiny seed. And what grows up from the tiny seed should be a life filled and lived in Faith and hope.
As I write this we are in the middle of the 80th Eucharistic Congress Week. I hope that all who have taken part in the week by their attendance or for those who were unable to be there in person spiritually by their prayer will be richly blessed. The Church in Ireland that is one and all of us have begun our Journey along the road of renewal. Yes it is our journey along a road less travelled with all its bumps and turns good and bad some better than others and some simply awful. On this day we recommit ourselves to renewal of our faith renewal of spirit and Soul. The faith from the tiny mustard seed, The faith of the upper room, the faith of Jesus Christ this is such a rich inheritance for us in our time may we not be afraid to embrace it in our generation and pass it on so that future generations will have the faith, that is faith in God and one another
THE FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI
THE FEAST OF CORPUS CHRISTI
On Sunday 10th June we celebrate the feast of Corpus Christi, that is the Body and Blood of Christ. It is so very apt that we are reflecting on the theme of the Eucharist on this particular day as we in Ireland begin the 80th Eucharistic Congress week – a week in which we make a spiritual journey in Communion with Christ and with one another. (cf www.iec2012.ie)
The Israelites celebrated the first Passover in Egypt. The Lord ordered that they should celebrate it every year and that they should explain to their children and to their children’s children, from generation to generation, what this Passover signifies (Ex 12:25-27). The awareness of what it is, is absolutely necessary for appreciating this celebration and for celebrating it as it should be celebrated.
The same applies to the Eucharist, the Passover of the New Testament. Jesus celebrated the first Passover of the New Testament, when at the Last Supper he changed bread and wine into his Body and Blood and gave them to his Apostles as food and drink, and then the next day dying on the cross he offered himself as victim to his Father. Each time his followers celebrated the breaking of bread in his name, they would re-present, no longer the lamb of Egypt that saved the Israelites but the sacrificial death of Jesus that offers us liberation through his blood. In the Holy Mass, Jesus is offering himself, in the form of bread and wine, through the ministry of the priest, to God the Father, reminding us of his death and resurrection and what it means for us as people of faith.
From the very beginning, the Church believed these truths and taught them and upheld them against all errors and heresies. St Thomas Aquinas, expressed beautifully the Eucharistic faith of the Church in the hymn “Adoro te devote”, which he composed for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi and is still sung today. Along with him let us also say: ‘We cannot know you through seeing or touching or tasting, but we believe in you through hearing what you have said. We believe whatever you have said, for nothing is more true than your word. On the cross only your divinity was hidden, but here in the Eucharist also, your humanity is hidden. But we believe and proclaim both, i.e., that both your divinity and humanity are present in the Eucharist, and we make the same request of you as the penitent thief Lord remember me in your kingdom’.
If the sacrifice of the Mass is the same as the sacrifice of Calvary, but offered in an un-bloody manner, how devoutly should I celebrate it or participate in it? In the early Church, public sinners and non-Christians were not admitted to the Eucharist. The faithful were taught, that to be able to receive communion worthily and to benefit from it, one must be free from grave sin. St Paul had given a warning: You must examine yourselves before you receive the Body and Blood of the Lord. If one receives the Eucharist unworthily, one is bringing judgment upon oneself (I Cor 11:27-29). If you are at Mass and are also aware that you have committed a grave sin, do not go for Communion and bring judgement on yourself. Today let us resolve to worship the Lord in the Holy Eucharist and never to offend and dishonour him as so many people do in so many ways. When we receive from the Lord’s table we unite ourselves to Jesus Christ, who makes us sharers in his body and blood.
Ignatius of Antioch (35-107 A.D.) calls it the “one bread that provides the medicine of immortality, the antidote for death, and the food that makes us live forever in Jesus Christ” (Ad Eph. 20,2). This supernatural food is healing for both body and soul and strength for our journey heavenward. When we approach the Table of the Lord, what do we expect to receive? Healing, pardon, comfort, and rest for our souls? The Lord has much more for us, more than we can ask or imagine. The principal fruit of receiving the Eucharist is an intimate union with Christ. As bodily nourishment restores lost strength, so the Eucharist strengthens us in charity and enables us to break with disordered attachments to things and creatures and leads us to be more firmly rooted in the love of Christ. Jesus shared himself with his disciples in many different ways before offering himself to them as food and drink at the Last Supper. Jesus nourishes us in so many ways, spiritually and of course especially in the Eucharist. Those, who have a deep sense of the presence of God, in the whole of creation, will not have great difficulty in believing, that He is present in a very special way in the Eucharist. God alone can satisfy all the longings and hunger of our hearts because He alone can give us the bread of eternal life. Without it we would not have the strength to follow Christ. By receiving the Eucharist, we are nourished, and enabled to nourish others through the example of our lives and the way we live them.
We do not live in the Kingdom, even though we live in constant expectation of God’s reign. However, the Eucharist we celebrate makes the Kingdom real because the Lord in truly present what is called the ‘real presence’. He is with us at Mass so he can be one with us in our daily lives and living. Our struggles, our pain, our happiness and our sorrow and our anticipation of the Kingdom become his. And the gift of his self-giving becomes ours in order that we may pass it on to others as they see us living our lives as faith filled Christian people.
So let us remember on Sunday at the start of the 80th Eucharistic Congress that this is the day that the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it – rejoicing that we are in communion or rather trying to be in communion with Christ and with one another.
TRINITY SUNDAY
Today is Trinity Sunday and this feastday was popularized by St. Thomas a Becket centuries ago. The feast of the Trinity became so important that until recently Anglicans numbered the long summer Sundays as “Sundays After Trinity”. This feast is unique in that the focus of our celebration is not an aspect of the history of salvation, but reflection on the nature of God as we believe it has been revealed to us as Christians. It is worth reflecting that today’s focus is the very essence of Christian identity. We begin every liturgy by stating that we are acting ‘In the name of the Father …’ and that is a declaration of our basic faith, not just an opening formula.
In 324 A.D., the gathering of bishops at Nicaea declared doctrine of the Trinity. Their declaration was in response to a false teaching that the Son and Spirit were merely creatures. If the Son and Spirit were creatures, then the relationship of all believers to the Father would be distant. The bishops rejected this teaching and reaffirmed God’s intimacy with his faithful. As Catholics, we profess the Nicean Creed every Sunday at Mass. We are living in an age of information overload – driven by means of communication which have profoundly changed the nature of our relationships with one another and our lives and the way we live them. You can even have a “best friend” you have never met through the internet and other computerised ways of communication– and before you scoff, we need to hit the “pause” button to reflect on how we relate to God, Father Son and Spirit one. Our world seems locked in battle between contending parties and groups, and division and tension have even got into the churches as we are divided over so many different issues and some of the issues that have divided us are so very hard to deal with at so many different levels. Common sense tells us God exists and Jesus gave us a new look into nature of God. As creator, God is “Father.” Jesus made that distant concept close intimate and personal to us all. The Father became “Our Father” who cares for each and every one of us his creatures with an intense, personal love he has called each one of us by name and we are his.
As he showed us God as this loving Father, Jesus revealed himself as the only Son of the Father. As the Son, he became our model and connection with the Father. Through the Son we touch the warm embrace of the Father. The Spirit continues the mission of the Son through the Church. The Spirit moves us to intimacy with the Father. It moves us to prayer and worship, witness and evangelization, community and service. Through the Spirit, the strangers become friends, friends become believers, and believers come close to God. Hence, we believe God is Trinity (three divine persons in one God) simply because we experience divine power in the words, deeds, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And we experience divine life in the Spirit. In both we find what we call “God.” In both, we experience the Father as a personal, intensely loving, and compassionate God. The Church receives new believers “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.” The singular term “name” referred to the ancient notion that God in substance (nature or essence) is one, but three in person (or “hypostasis”). The family acts as an easily understood analogy of this mystery. There is only one family, but many members. Just as grace is given from the Father through the Son, so there could be no communication of the gift to us except in the Holy Spirit. So whenever we say In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit let us remember the love of the Father, the grace of the Son and the fellowship of the Spirit himself given freely to all of us.
Always rejoice in the Lord
Last Saturday morning the following reading was in the office of readings for the daily office of the church for feast of Saint Phillip Neri there is much within it to reflect upon about rejoicing in God..
From a sermon by Saint Augustine
The Apostle commands us to rejoice, but in the Lord, not in the world. For, you see, as Scripture says, whoever wishes to be a friend of this world will be counted as God’s enemy. Just as a man cannot serve two masters, so too no-one can rejoice both in the world and in the Lord.
Let joy in the Lord win and go on winning, until people take no more joy in the world. Let joy in the Lord always go on growing, and joy in the world always go on shrinking until it is reduced to nothing. I do not mean that we should not rejoice as long as we are in this world, but that even while we do find ourselves in this world, we should already be rejoicing in the Lord.
Someone may argue, “I am in the world; so obviously, if I rejoice, I rejoice where I am”. What of it? Because you are in the world, does it mean that you are not in the Lord? Listen to the same Apostle in the Acts of the Apostles, speaking to the Athenians, and saying about God and about the Lord, our Creator, In him we live, and move, and are. Since he is everywhere, there is nowhere that he is not. Is it not precisely this that he is emphasising to encourage us? The Lord is very near; do not be anxious about anything. This is something tremendous, that he ascended above all the heavens but is still very near to those who dwell on earth, wherever they may be. Who can this be that is both far away and close at hand, except the one who became our near neighbour out of mercy?
The whole of the human race, you see, is that man who was lying in the road, left there by robbers, half dead, who was ignored by the passing priest and Levite, while the passing Samaritan stopped by him to take care of him and help him; and when the Immortal, the Just, was far away from us mortals and sinners, he came down to us to become – that far distant being – our near neighbour. He has not treated us according to our sins. For we are his children. How do we prove this? The only Son died for us so that he would not remain the only child. He did not want to be alone, who died alone. The only Son of God made many children for God. He bought himself brothers and sisters with his blood; rejected, he accepted us; sold, he bought us back; dishonoured, he honoured us; killed, he brought us life. So then, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord, not in the world; that is, rejoice in faithfulness and not in iniquity; rejoice in the hope of eternity and not the brief flower of vanity. Rejoice thus, and wherever you are here, as long as you are here, the Lord is very near: do not be anxious about anything.
Saint Augustine
There is so much in our lives in these days of instant communications to make us anxious worried and afraid. Anxious and worried about the present times and afraid of the future but we have to remember in him that is in God in whom we live, and move and have our being and nothing is impossible to our heavenly Father. I know that there is a great spirit of rejoicing for many people for many reasons all over the place whilst there is also a spirit of fear and trepidation for many more in these uncertain times financially and otherwise. Let us pause and remember as we continue our daily lives that the Lord is very near to us as we journey along our pilgrim path and as a result we should not be anxious about anything because everything is in the hands of god. So then let us rejoice in the Lord, not in the world; that is, rejoice in faithfulness and not in iniquity; rejoice in the hope of eternity and not the brief flower of vanity that is our daily lives and living.
Rejoice thus, and wherever you are here or there , remember that the Lord is very near do not be anxious about anything our hope and our salvation are at hand.
PENTECOST SUNDAY
Pentecost is here and This Sunday is what everything has been leading up to – Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Ascension: the coming of the Holy Spirit, the descent of the Paraclete, the pouring down of the fullness of love proceeding from the Father and the Son. New vitality for a weary people and we certainly need a new vitality in our present day and age with so many people searching for something lasting for their lives. The Holy Spirit is Like a bonfire that makes your heart leap up; like a heat wave in July(Heres Hoping)! after a cold and cloudy April May and June. Like a spring of clear water deliciously refreshing. Like a white dove that inspires perfect gentleness; like a mighty March wind that invigorates the first green growth.
Pentecost is the fruitfulness of the Church as Mother in the midst of the Apostolic Community, overshadowed and filled as once before with the Power from God, bringing forth again – but in a different form – the body of Christ, the Church. It is a dazzling spectacle of sound and light, of wind and fire, tongues and voices, a joyful cacophony of ecstasy and praise, of preaching and proclamation. In this upper room the local Church and the Universal Church are perfectly united one in heart and mind. This is not just a revelation of the Church’s beginnings. It is an apocalyptic vision of the end, of how things will be when Christ comes again in his glory at the consummation of the ages.
But the vision is momentary. The Church of the Holy Spirit must bear in its body all the wounds that were borne in the body of its Saviour on the cross and in our present situation here in Ireland we certainly see the wounds of the Church being borne by Jesus on the Cross. Not until the eschaton would the Christian community experience in its’ outward appearance, the inner perfection of what it really is. Instead it would be racked by division, scarred by sin, torn apart by heresy and schism, humiliated by the world, betrayed from within, judged from without – and yet would endure as a sign of salvation on earth when all other societies, systems and ideologies had passed into the history books.
What is it about the Church that causes it to continue from the first Pentecost right up until 2012? Impoverished in its sinful members, often without influence; its authority frequently ignored and still it goes on, proclaiming the gospel, celebrating a crucified Christ, dragging itself along the way of the cross, looking towards the future with a hope that never deserts it. It has no earthly reason for doing so. Only a divine Spirit accounts for its touching courage. The indwelling Paraclete is a restless Spirit; it will not let you rest and that is why our hearts are restless until they rest in God.
For us as the Church we are on a pilgrimage which I often refer to the pilgrimage of life and it is the Spirit’s mission to bring the pilgrim Church home. Pentecost is a reminder of how this all began, who it is that leads us. It is also a foretaste of the future, of what has already been accomplished and lies in store at the journey’s end. In the tension between the `already here and now’ and the `not yet but to come’, we live by the Spirit who once led Jesus to the desert and the cross and who leads us still in the certain conviction that he who began this good work in us will indeed bring it to completion.
Ascension of the Lord
Today we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus to the Father in Heaven. There is an air of finality about today’s festival but as we know it was end and a beginning. Our focus is on the retelling of a story declaring that Christ has returned to the Father, and so we think of it as the ‘end’ of the Christ event or the ‘end of Easter’ – in times past there was a custom of extinguishing the Paschal Candle after the gospel to signify: ‘he is gone’. That said he is gone but at the same time we believe that he is truly here with us. The ascension was an end As well as a beginning. While it was the end of Jesus’ physical presence with his beloved disciples, it marked the beginning of Jesus’ presence with them in a new way. Jesus promised that he would be with them always to the end of time (Matthew 28:20) and he is with us too in the Eucharist, that is also called the real presence of Jesus in the blessed Sacrament. Now as the glorified and risen Lord and Saviour, Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father in heaven, and he promised to send the Apostles the Holy Spirit who would give them his power on the Feast of Pentecost.
Why did Jesus leave his disciples forty days after his resurrection? Forty is a significant number in the scriptures. Moses went to the mountain to seek the face of God for forty days in prayer and fasting. The people of Israel were in the wilderness for forty years in preparation for their entry into the promised land. Elijah fasted for forty days as he journeyed in the wilderness to the mountain of God.
For forty days after his resurrection Jesus appeared numerous times to his disciples to assure them that he had risen indeed and to prepare them for the task of carrying on the work which he began during his earthy ministry. When the Lord Jesus departed physically from the apostles, they were not left in sorrow or grief. Instead, they were filled with joy and with great anticipation for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ last words to his apostles point to his saving mission and to their mission to be witnesses of his saving death and his glorious resurrection and to proclaim the good news. As I have said before I wonder what those same apostles would say if they realised that 2012 years later we in our own time would be writing and talking about the ascension of Jesus their friend and ours .Their task in their time was to proclaim the gospel – the good news of salvation – not only to the people of Israel, but to all the nations. This is also our task to proclaim the good news of salvation to those around us by what we say, and how we live as Christian and Catholic people.
We remember that God’s love and gift of salvation is not reserved for a few or for one nation or one particular person alone instead gods salvation is for the whole world – for all who will accept it. Today as we celebrate the Ascension let us pray that we proclaim the good news of that Jesus is with us in our lives and daily living to those around us by what we say, and how we live as Christian and Catholic people. The gospel is the power of God, the power to release people from their burden of guilt, sin, and oppression, and the power to heal, restore, and make us whole. Do we believe in the power of the gospel in our lives in 2012? All believers are given a share in this task – to be heralds of the good news and ambassadors for Jesus Christ. Next Sunday we celebrate the feast of the coming of the Holy Spirit as we celebrate Pentecost Sunday, and sing Come Holy Spirit creator come we remember that We have not been left alone in this task, for the risen Lord works in and through us by the power of his Holy Spirit.
THE SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
In our gospel reading for this Sunday Jesus tells his disciples, this is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. The language of commandment is deliberate; the author of John’s gospel is making an explicit reference to God as law-giver to accomplish at least two purposes: to affirm Jesus’ divine mandate, and to help readers to understand the weight given to loving one another. As Peter discovered when he went to the home of Cornelius, we do not have anything like exclusive access to God’s truth, God’s Spirit or God’s love. We have a piece of the puzzle, and others – people who in all likelihood don’t look or talk like us – have other pieces. God is bigger than we are, and by definition, not comprehensible in full by humans. It takes all of our puzzle pieces – and more – to begin to comprehend the reality of the Holy among us. There is a humility required of us if we are going to manage to love one another as we are commanded to do in this gospel reading. If a person believes that he or she has all the answers and there are many people in the Church, the country and the world at large who think in this way, those people have no need of community, except perhaps to make them feel superior as they lord it over other people.
If, however, we understand ourselves to be limited beings, loving an unlimited all loving God, we might choose to seek God wherever God might be found – in the least and the greatest, in the communities of which we are a part, and outside their borders. We might find ourselves stretching our boundaries of mind and heart, to bother personally and in community, to include the multiple voices of so many harmonizing on the same theme: love of God and things of the spirit, and love of one another united body and soul in the church. It might be helpful to remember that Jesus loves us all and gave up his life for the love of his father and all of us. Jesus loved Peter, a Galilean fisherman with a tendency to speak first and ask questions later. Jesus loved Cornelius, a devout Roman soldier. Jesus loves you, and Jesus loves me with all our lumps and bumps and all the things that we don’t want other people to see and hear about us. Jesus doesn’t love me any more than you, or vice versa. By grace, we are all beloved, sons and daughters of the father and all have the opportunity to exercise that love in how we treat others. In the world of today and in our own country we see the Church getting such a hammering as a result of a number of clergy and religious doing so much damage from within. There are so many who have been hurt by the misdeeds of the few and we have a duty to remember them in prayer and in our care for their needs. Showing the love of God to all those who feel the hurt of betrayal, by our prayer and our action and reaction to all of them they will see the love of god given to all through us.
It is human nature to want to draw a circle around ourselves and maintain borders that define who is part of us, and who is not. It is the Holy Spirit’s nature to push us past our borders, and ask us to grow. If there’s a sure-fire test for whether the Spirit is prompting us or not, it’s this:
if we think we are called to shrink our borders, include fewer people, be more selective in our society, we can be absolutely sure that those feelings don’t come from God.
God’s desire for us is that we expand our understanding, make the effort to love people who are not like us and to accept with grace the fact that our vision of God and God’s kingdom is limited. We need to hear about the vision of others to broaden our perspective and perhaps eve broaden their outlook on the world. We need to stop and listen to the stories of those who were hurt in times that are long past in order to help them to heal their brokenness and in their brokenness we one and all will see the Church that we are meant to be an all caring place where everyone will be valued as a son or daughter of God. The film ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ has a particularly good line spoken by one of the main characters several times during the film when things had not worked out quite as people hoped: ‘Everything will be all right in the end, so if is not all right then it is not yet the end.’ For us it is not the end for at this time we certainly are in a Mess but for us as people of faith all things will work out for the good of this we can be sure.
Being a person of faith is not easy at the present time but this is our calling as members of the Church, which is the body of Christ. In June Ireland will host the 50th Eucharistic Congress, 80 years after the Eucharistic congress was held here in 1932.
There have been many changes in Ireland in the intervening period of the last 80 years and a great number of these changes were not for the better. The contemporary context of modern Ireland is very different in so many ways. The style, purpose and outcome of Eucharistic Congresses have also altered considerably over the years. In recent times an International Eucharistic Congress is more like a festival of faith, consisting of seminars, concerts, workshops, exhibitions and most importantly and above all else the daily celebration of the Mass.. From the 10th to the 17th June many people will come to Dublin from all over the world in celebration of their faith that is faith in God in communion with Christ and one another. As I said at the start of this and I repeat this again In our gospel reading for this Sunday Jesus tells his disciples, this is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. This is what Eucharist is all about loving one another as Jesus loves us no one has ever sent his or her son into the world to die for all of us and yet that is exactly what our father in heaven did he sent Jesus his son into our world to give his life as a ransom for many, and though we are many we are one. We cannot forget the great sacrament of the body of Christ, Corpus Christi the sacrament Par excellence instituted on that first Holy Thursday in the upper room what love and joy there are within this great sacrament. This Sacrament of the Body of Christ truly shows the love of the Father not as some far off thing or person away out there somewhere but as a person that we can see in the eucharistic bread who has a part to play in our daily life and living.
My hope is that we will listen to the voice of Jesus in the broken hearts, and in the victims of our society the people out there who are hungry or lost, lonely or frightened, helpless or sick; and then in the days, weeks months and years ahead we can truly say that we are In loving communion with Christ and one another
In our gospel reading for this Sunday Jesus tells his disciples, this is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. The language of commandment is deliberate; the author of John’s gospel is making an explicit reference to God as law-giver to accomplish at least two purposes: to affirm Jesus’ divine mandate, and to help readers to understand the weight given to loving one another. As Peter discovered when he went to the home of Cornelius, we do not have anything like exclusive access to God’s truth, God’s Spirit or God’s love. We have a piece of the puzzle, and others – people who in all likelihood don’t look or talk like us – have other pieces. God is bigger than we are, and by definition, not comprehensible in full by humans. It takes all of our puzzle pieces – and more – to begin to comprehend the reality of the Holy among us. There is a humility required of us if we are going to manage to love one another as we are commanded to do in this gospel reading. If a person believes that he or she has all the answers and there are many people in the Church, the country and the world at large who think in this way, those people have no need of community, except perhaps to make them feel superior as they lord it over other people.
If, however, we understand ourselves to be limited beings, loving an unlimited all loving God, we might choose to seek God wherever God might be found – in the least and the greatest, in the communities of which we are a part, and outside their borders. We might find ourselves stretching our boundaries of mind and heart, to bother personally and in community, to include the multiple voices of so many harmonizing on the same theme: love of God and things of the spirit, and love of one another united body and soul in the church. It might be helpful to remember that Jesus loves us all and gave up his life for the love of his father and all of us. Jesus loved Peter, a Galilean fisherman with a tendency to speak first and ask questions later. Jesus loved Cornelius, a devout Roman soldier. Jesus loves you, and Jesus loves me with all our lumps and bumps and all the things that we don’t want other people to see and hear about us. Jesus doesn’t love me any more than you, or vice versa. By grace, we are all beloved, sons and daughters of the father and all have the opportunity to exercise that love in how we treat others. In the world of today and in our own country we see the Church getting such a hammering as a result of a number of clergy and religious doing so much damage from within. There are so many who have been hurt by the misdeeds of the few and we have a duty to remember them in prayer and in our care for their needs. Showing the love of God to all those who feel the hurt of betrayal, by our prayer and our action and reaction to all of them they will see the love of god given to all through us.
It is human nature to want to draw a circle around ourselves and maintain borders that define who is part of us, and who is not. It is the Holy Spirit’s nature to push us past our borders, and ask us to grow. If there’s a sure-fire test for whether the Spirit is prompting us or not, it’s this: if we think we are called to shrink our borders, include fewer people, be more selective in our society, we can be absolutely sure that those feelings don’t come from God.
God’s desire for us is that we expand our understanding, make the effort to love people who are not like us and to accept with grace the fact that our vision of God and God’s kingdom is limited. We need to hear about the vision of others to broaden our perspective and perhaps eve broaden their outlook on the world. We need to stop and listen to the stories of those who were hurt in times that are long past in order to help them to heal their brokenness and in their brokenness we one and all will see the Church that we are meant to be an all caring place where everyone will be valued as a son or daughter of God. The film ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ has a particularly good line spoken by one of the main characters several times during the film when things had not worked out quite as people hoped: ‘Everything will be all right in the end, so if is not all right then it is not yet the end.’ For us it is not the end for at this time we certainly are in a Mess but for us as people of faith all things will work out for the good of this we can be sure.
Being a person of faith is not easy at the present time but this is our calling as members of the Church, which is the body of Christ. In June Ireland will host the 50th Eucharistic Congress, 80 years after the Eucharistic congress was held here in 1932.
There have been many changes in Ireland in the intervening period of the last 80 years and a great number of these changes were not for the better. The contemporary context of modern Ireland is very different in so many ways. The style, purpose and outcome of Eucharistic Congresses have also altered considerably over the years. In recent times an International Eucharistic Congress is more like a festival of faith, consisting of seminars, concerts, workshops, exhibitions and most importantly and above all else the daily celebration of the Mass.. From the 10th to the 17th June many people will come to Dublin from all over the world in celebration of their faith that is faith in God in communion with Christ and one another. As I said at the start of this and I repeat this again In our gospel reading for this Sunday Jesus tells his disciples, this is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you. This is what Eucharist is all about loving one another as Jesus loves us no one has ever sent his or her son into the world to die for all of us and yet that is exactly what our father in heaven did he sent Jesus his son into our world to give his life as a ransom for many, and though we are many we are one. We cannot forget the great sacrament of the body of Christ, Corpus Christi the sacrament Par excellence instituted on that first Holy Thursday in the upper room what love and joy there are within this great sacrament. This Sacrament of the Body of Christ truly shows the love of the Father not as some far off thing or person away out there somewhere but as a person that we can see in the eucharistic bread who has a part to play in our daily life and living.My hope is that we will listen to the voice of Jesus in the broken hearts, and in the victims of our society the people out there who are hungry or lost, lonely or frightened, helpless or sick; and then in the days, weeks months and years ahead we can truly say that we are In loving communion with Christ and one another
MALTA LOURDES 2012
Since the earliest times people have had special places to which they traveled where they have withdrawn in search of the sacred.Ireland is rich in holy places, going back to prehistoric times. The Jewish tradition had many holy places where they worshipped the one who had appeared to Moses in the burning bush, revealing Himself as Yahweh, I Am — not the one who was or who will be, but the God of Now. The medieval pilgrims of Christianity traveled to Jerusalem until the expansion of Islam made that impossible and, later, to the great shrine of St. James at Compostella. Their tortuous and dangerous routes into Spain took them across the mighty Pyrenees through high narrow passes. On their way up into the mountains, many of them would have passed a hamlet clustered round a rocky outcrop at the bottom of a valley, where the mighty mountains subsided into the great gentle plains of France, Centuries later, and this inauspicious and forgotten little place was to become a centre of pilgrimage for all the corners of the world. In 1858, a sickly illiterate 14-year old from an impoverished family, Bernadette Soubirous, had eighteen visions of a beautiful lady in a niche in a rock at the old dump of Massabielle, there was a light, and in the light a smile.’
To that place, the lady called people to come in pilgrimage, to go and wash at the spring which appeared on the spot where Bernadette dug with her hands in the ground. And like the gushing waters that sprang up there, people have streamed unceasingly, seeking to come through Mary to Jesus, to wash at the fountain as they pray for renewal and healing. It is a holy place where the rough mountains of suffering lose their pride before the fertile plains of faith, in the presence of the of the God who Is.
On Sunday 6th May many members of the Order of Malta and ambulance corps members from Ireland and all over the world will descend on the holy city of Lourdes with our sick and infirm brothers and sisters for the 2012 International Lourdes Pilgrimage. I know that the members from the American associations are already there and we hope all will go well for all the pilgrims but especially for the Malades who are simply the royalty of Lourdes. There in Lourdes we see generous service given to our brothers and sisters who through their illness give all of us such a great example to all of us.
Lourdes and places like it are important because I feel that they offer the thing most needed by every human being: spiritual assurance, real solid spiritual ground to stand on. And certainly in Lourdes we see the rock of faith and also that faith in action. Lourdes is run for and by people who believe in the love of god for his people and they as a result of this belief are prepared to go that extra mile in service of those who need them. The people who are involved there also believe in the dignity of every individual no matter whether they are disabled in any way in mind, body or spirit. They also have a passion for life and for living and for loving, living their daily lives in the spirit and the love of God. Lourdes helps us to believe in God despite the mess we see around us. The advert for Red Bull says that it gives you wings and makes the world go round but really its love that makes the world go round, and that love is present in those who serve the sick or disabled whether working in the hospitals, hotels, shops or the cafes along the streets.
Personally I often think that anyone who comes to Lourdes should think of their pilgrimage in terms of giving themselves away, in that giving yourself away to all those who need you get so much more than I can ever tell you about back from those you care for especially from those who have any type of disability. We are all called to make a pilgrimage to those special places where god dwells that means we make a prayerful journey, with no rewards or results guaranteed. The true pilgrim may seek to have specific needs met, but is open to whatever God chooses to grant, knowing that there will be graces and gifts, but trusting, trusting that the giving is in the hands of God. This is certainly my experience of Lourdes 32 years after my first pilgrimage those friends I made are still very much part of my life.
I said above Lourdes is run for and by people who believe in the love of god for his people and they as a result of this belief are prepared to go that extra mile in service of those who need them that too is our vocation as members of the Order of Malta to serve those who need us whether in Lourdes or wherever we are called to be and not be afraid of going that extra mile in service of our Lords the Sick and the poor and defense of our Faith.
Fullerton T 
