Week ending April 30th 2013
“Mayday, Mayday.” The words can refer to anything from a naval or airline emergency to a military parade in Moscow, a socialist march in Dublin or London, or a celebration of flowers in honour of Mary, mother of Jesus. For Roman Catholics it is also the feast of Saint Joseph the worker, which was probably created as an antidote to allowing socialists of communists to completely claim May Day as their own. This is a time of the year that church focus moves from Jesus, the second person of the Blessed Trinity to the Third Person we refer to as the Holy Spirit. We can’t catch the Spirit in our hands as you might grasp the dove that represents the Spirit in so many medieval paintings, or as you might catch one of the pigeons that is so fond of your vegetable patch, but in Christian belief we have all caught the Spirit in baptism and confirmation.
The Holy Spirit came in for some re-branding about fifty years ago, as it was known as the Holy Ghost when I was growing up. I suppose the word ghost had scary connotations and it could have been seen as implying something dead. Spirit on the other hand implies life. The Holy Spirit is the life-force of God which Christians see as living within us even if we are not always inclined to let it out. Just as we often allow the God-son Jesus remain boxed up in a fancy box called a tabernacle in the church, we are sometimes inclined to neatly file away the Spirit in a mythical box of its own in case it might bother anyone.
One of my smart-alecky jokes to anyone within earshot as I close a church door or gate at the end of the day is that I am doing so in case God escapes during the night. God knows it is a fairly tired joke at this stage, but sub-consciously it carries a grain of truth. It is handy for us to keep God stashed away at arms length. It is nice to have the power with us so long as it doesn’t bother us or anyone else too much. A place for everything and everything in its place, including God. We can be scared of what might happen if we were really to allow God get off the leash in case he might lose the run of himself.
It happened before, and where did he end up? Like a scarecrow on a cross between two thieves. Not very politically correct if you ask me. He pushed things to the limit altogether when he died and came back like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower, arriving in locked rooms or walking the roads with disciples who did not recognise him until he broke bread at table with him. He even went so far as to put on a barbeque for some of them, lighting a fire on the strand and cooking fish for them when they came ashore with a great haul of fish. Water into wine, walking on water, calming storms, there was always that touch of a showman about him. No wonder we like to keep him under wraps as much as we can. We don’t do show-off.
Then Jesus took off. Just like that. He had done all a person could do. God the human had lived and died, taught and showed the way, but as one of us he was confined by space and time and the constraints of this world. But he did not go away without making one of the great promises: “I will be with you always, yes until the end of time.” How was he to do that? The Holy Spirit, the Jesus Spirit, the Risen Jesus glorified and unrestrained, unconstrained, unconfined, unrefined in so far as he is the same incarnated, en-fleshed Godman who had walked the roads of Gallilee. He is back. Without a vengeance. “Come Holy Spirit. Fill the hearts of the faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love.”
The Holy Spirit came in for some re-branding about fifty years ago, as it was known as the Holy Ghost when I was growing up. I suppose the word ghost had scary connotations and it could have been seen as implying something dead. Spirit on the other hand implies life. The Holy Spirit is the life-force of God which Christians see as living within us even if we are not always inclined to let it out. Just as we often allow the God-son Jesus remain boxed up in a fancy box called a tabernacle in the church, we are sometimes inclined to neatly file away the Spirit in a mythical box of its own in case it might bother anyone.
One of my smart-alecky jokes to anyone within earshot as I close a church door or gate at the end of the day is that I am doing so in case God escapes during the night. God knows it is a fairly tired joke at this stage, but sub-consciously it carries a grain of truth. It is handy for us to keep God stashed away at arms length. It is nice to have the power with us so long as it doesn’t bother us or anyone else too much. A place for everything and everything in its place, including God. We can be scared of what might happen if we were really to allow God get off the leash in case he might lose the run of himself.
It happened before, and where did he end up? Like a scarecrow on a cross between two thieves. Not very politically correct if you ask me. He pushed things to the limit altogether when he died and came back like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower, arriving in locked rooms or walking the roads with disciples who did not recognise him until he broke bread at table with him. He even went so far as to put on a barbeque for some of them, lighting a fire on the strand and cooking fish for them when they came ashore with a great haul of fish. Water into wine, walking on water, calming storms, there was always that touch of a showman about him. No wonder we like to keep him under wraps as much as we can. We don’t do show-off.
Then Jesus took off. Just like that. He had done all a person could do. God the human had lived and died, taught and showed the way, but as one of us he was confined by space and time and the constraints of this world. But he did not go away without making one of the great promises: “I will be with you always, yes until the end of time.” How was he to do that? The Holy Spirit, the Jesus Spirit, the Risen Jesus glorified and unrestrained, unconstrained, unconfined, unrefined in so far as he is the same incarnated, en-fleshed Godman who had walked the roads of Gallilee. He is back. Without a vengeance. “Come Holy Spirit. Fill the hearts of the faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love.”
Week ending April 23rd 2013
Two years ago I was writing that I had heard the cuckoo before Easter, but then Easter was seldom as late as it was that year. May Day came just a week after Easter Sunday whereas the feast was a month earlier this year. I still await the 2013 cuckoo but it may well be singing (if you can describe its call as such) by the time this is in print. I hope it arrives without the traditional gairfeán na cuaiche (the cuckoo’s squall) While we had weeks of lovely dry weather recently we have had enough of the east and northeast winds which left March and early April much colder than we have become used to. It is not just the coldness of the wind itself that worries people, but the fact that it seems to start in Siberia and travel across all of Europe, binging with it every kind of flu or virus it can pick up along the way. I hope the cuckoo avoids bringing any of that kind of weather with her this year.
The early Easter was a pleasure for people like me, as holy week is one of the busiest in the year for clergy. It ends on a high note as the resurrection is celebrated, and we dine out on that feast for weeks afterwards, the faith and hope it generates for believers being almost tangible. The stories of the risen Lord flitting around like a butterfly raise the heart and open chinks of imagination about how different and wonderful an afterlife might be. On a more practical level it makes a break before the end of April a possibility, as May has a number of first holy communions and some June weekends have been booked for special Masses to celebrate ‘The Gathering.’ June July and August bring the Gaelgóirí, hundreds of students on Irish language summer courses. They are as welcome as the flowers of May, the cuckoo and the swallows all put together, from both a local economy point of view and the joy and brightness they bring, but there is extra work involved.
Before going anywhere I will need to pay some attention to the vegetable ridges I carefully prepared in March in order to free myself up for the various feasts that took place from Saint Patrick’s Day onwards. My Aran Island years got me in the habit of setting things early, but then the limestone land there got little frost. Foolishly perhaps, I set vegetable seeds in March, which have since tasted quite a bit of frost as well as attracting the attention of blackbirds and pigeons. Perhaps they will just have lain quietly for heat and rain to germinate them, but I will need to keep a close eye and reset if that is necessary.
Now that Easter is over and the long and hopefully balmy evenings stretch out in front of us, a clergyperson’s thoughts tend to turn to clerical changes in the forthcoming not-so-merry-go-round of parish-hopping that takes place year after year. After almost three years in Carna I feel that I have a certain immunity for this and a number of coming years. I have barely recovered from my 2010 change from Tourmakeady, so I intend to keep my head down and watch the tooing and froing from a distance. I don’t envy anyone who has to face packing bag and baggage and upping sticks to another parish. Between the emotional break involved and the physical sorting and shifting of a houseful of books and baggage, once a decade should be enough for anyone. When moving the last time I was asked on Radió na Gaeltachta where would I go next. “Heaven” was my reply, but then people around here probably think I am already there.
The early Easter was a pleasure for people like me, as holy week is one of the busiest in the year for clergy. It ends on a high note as the resurrection is celebrated, and we dine out on that feast for weeks afterwards, the faith and hope it generates for believers being almost tangible. The stories of the risen Lord flitting around like a butterfly raise the heart and open chinks of imagination about how different and wonderful an afterlife might be. On a more practical level it makes a break before the end of April a possibility, as May has a number of first holy communions and some June weekends have been booked for special Masses to celebrate ‘The Gathering.’ June July and August bring the Gaelgóirí, hundreds of students on Irish language summer courses. They are as welcome as the flowers of May, the cuckoo and the swallows all put together, from both a local economy point of view and the joy and brightness they bring, but there is extra work involved.
Before going anywhere I will need to pay some attention to the vegetable ridges I carefully prepared in March in order to free myself up for the various feasts that took place from Saint Patrick’s Day onwards. My Aran Island years got me in the habit of setting things early, but then the limestone land there got little frost. Foolishly perhaps, I set vegetable seeds in March, which have since tasted quite a bit of frost as well as attracting the attention of blackbirds and pigeons. Perhaps they will just have lain quietly for heat and rain to germinate them, but I will need to keep a close eye and reset if that is necessary.
Now that Easter is over and the long and hopefully balmy evenings stretch out in front of us, a clergyperson’s thoughts tend to turn to clerical changes in the forthcoming not-so-merry-go-round of parish-hopping that takes place year after year. After almost three years in Carna I feel that I have a certain immunity for this and a number of coming years. I have barely recovered from my 2010 change from Tourmakeady, so I intend to keep my head down and watch the tooing and froing from a distance. I don’t envy anyone who has to face packing bag and baggage and upping sticks to another parish. Between the emotional break involved and the physical sorting and shifting of a houseful of books and baggage, once a decade should be enough for anyone. When moving the last time I was asked on Radió na Gaeltachta where would I go next. “Heaven” was my reply, but then people around here probably think I am already there.
Week ending April 16th 2013
I write this at an in-between time of morning. I was up before dawn to a call from Carna Nursing Home where a woman I knew many years ago in An Cheathrú Rua (Carraroe) parish was passing from this world to the next. It is too late to go back to bed while being considerably earlier than my usual getting up time. I probably would not sleep anyway, as death, at any age musters thoughts and feelings that make sleeping difficult at the best of times. This was a happy death of a woman who had seen four score and nine years, with family and friends taking turns at her bedside all week. Memories were poured out, stories told, tears and laughter combined in a way that happens only on such occasions. Although I had not been part of their parish for a quarter of a century, and a whole new generation had grown up in the meantime, I felt at home in the company.
The quality of care in the Nursing Home was a frequent source of conversation, at a time when health services are often criticised. The words: “like a hotel” were frequently used, and the constant care and thoughtfulness of the staff came in for much praise. Even as I write this I am bolstered by the breakfast provided for myself as well as for family members before I came back to the presbytery. Those who had kept vigil through the long nights told of chicken and chips and other luxuries provided to help them cope. Perhaps I should not even mention this as the food and drink watchdogs may soon be checking up on such items as well as on how people in negative equity spend whatever money they have left when the banks have got their bite of the income cake.
Certain characters I have met down through the years remind me of the phrase: “the strong women of the Old Testament. The woman who has just died was one of those. A grandson told of how early in the morning she used to prepare for Sunday Mass, having the whole household awake hours before it was time to go to the church. He was sitting beside his quite deaf grandmother in the front seats one day when she suddenly asked him what the priest was talking about. Before he realised it he was answering her loudly: “I haven’t a clue what he is on about,” which drew laughter from both priest and congregation. This led to another story, about a priest who noticed a woman asleep during his sermon. He told the man beside her: “Wake that woman up so that she can hear me.” He replied: “You wake her up. It was you who put her to sleep.”
Other happy deaths come to my mind on such occasions, especially the woman in Inis Oirr forty years ago whose last request was for her pipe, and she went off in a puff of smoke. We talk of the tides and the moon and the strong belief in coastal areas that the most likely time for a person to slip from one life to another was at the turning of the tide. This is a very reasonable proposition as it is connected with the magnetism of the moon. It did not happen this time, but I was reminded of many times in which it did. The fact that we are in Easter season and that resurrection is in the air was a help especially in the case of a woman was of strong Christian belief. Ar dheis Dé go raibh sí.
The quality of care in the Nursing Home was a frequent source of conversation, at a time when health services are often criticised. The words: “like a hotel” were frequently used, and the constant care and thoughtfulness of the staff came in for much praise. Even as I write this I am bolstered by the breakfast provided for myself as well as for family members before I came back to the presbytery. Those who had kept vigil through the long nights told of chicken and chips and other luxuries provided to help them cope. Perhaps I should not even mention this as the food and drink watchdogs may soon be checking up on such items as well as on how people in negative equity spend whatever money they have left when the banks have got their bite of the income cake.
Certain characters I have met down through the years remind me of the phrase: “the strong women of the Old Testament. The woman who has just died was one of those. A grandson told of how early in the morning she used to prepare for Sunday Mass, having the whole household awake hours before it was time to go to the church. He was sitting beside his quite deaf grandmother in the front seats one day when she suddenly asked him what the priest was talking about. Before he realised it he was answering her loudly: “I haven’t a clue what he is on about,” which drew laughter from both priest and congregation. This led to another story, about a priest who noticed a woman asleep during his sermon. He told the man beside her: “Wake that woman up so that she can hear me.” He replied: “You wake her up. It was you who put her to sleep.”
Other happy deaths come to my mind on such occasions, especially the woman in Inis Oirr forty years ago whose last request was for her pipe, and she went off in a puff of smoke. We talk of the tides and the moon and the strong belief in coastal areas that the most likely time for a person to slip from one life to another was at the turning of the tide. This is a very reasonable proposition as it is connected with the magnetism of the moon. It did not happen this time, but I was reminded of many times in which it did. The fact that we are in Easter season and that resurrection is in the air was a help especially in the case of a woman was of strong Christian belief. Ar dheis Dé go raibh sí.
Week ending April 9th 2013
It is hard for some of us who have been around for a long time to believe that Easter 1916 is only three years away. Forty-seven years ago, while the fiftieth anniversary celebrations of the 1916 Easter Rising were in full swing, our Professor of Ethics in Maynooth raised the uncomfortable question of the morality of violence. Matthew O’Donnell was a priest of the Diocese of Galway and in many ways a breath of fresh air among colleagues in the Philosophy Department of that college at the time. He seemed to be an intensely private man, but he came out of his shell for the 1916 commemoration. He arranged for veterans of 1916 who had fought in the GPO or Boland’s Mills to speak to us about their experiences in an extra-curricular setting, from which we got firsthand accounts of that eventful week as well as hearing of experiences in Froncach prison camp in the aftermath of the Rising.
These were celebratory occasions in which those men, then in or about their seventies or older were roundly applauded for their bravery and courage. It was back in the lecture hall in ethics class that the question of morality was discussed. It smacked somewhat of undermining the bravura of the celebrations, but it was nevertheless an important question. Many of us concluded that the results of the 1917 elections in which Sinn Féin almost wiped the Irish Party of John Redmond off the map justified the Rising in which an unrepresentative minority had taken up arms to fight for a Republic. The Home Rule bill which had been delayed by the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 was seen as further justification.
Events of the following years brought those discussions about violence back into focus. The Civil Rights movement in the United States under the leadership of the Reverend Martin Luther King pointed towards the success of non violent politics even when met by violence. Anything seemed possible in those mid to late sixties as Civil Rights movements sprang up all over the place in much the same way as one Arab country after another has in recent years followed the example of Libya Tunisia and Egypt with different levels of success, especially in Syria. Change seemed possible in Northern Ireland in the sixties of the last century without violence other than that of the State, but this hope quickly foundered as faith was again put in the bomb and the bullet as a way to attain political ends.
This basically failed. The blood, sweat and tears were in vain. Lessons were learned the hard way, as Sinn Féin to their great credit followed the well worn path followed by among others, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Clann na Poblachta, and the various shades of Official Sinn Féin which ended up in The Labour Party. We now have Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland using the very same condemnations of the Real IRA used not long ago about himself and his comrades. I agree with every word he says in that context, and especially with regard to the will of the people as expressed in the aftermath of the Good Friday agreement of 1998, but can see how that will not convince those who feel that they and they only are the real deal
As we approach 2016 we will need to focus on the pain, suffering, bereavement and pain of the past century as well as what has been achieved politically in the meantime. The controversy about the flying of the Union flag showed us how frail some parts of the peace process really are; The Peace Process is just that, an ongoing process, far from finished. Between now and the centenery of the Rising we need another referendum, North and South to let the ‘Real IRA’ know just how unreal they are.
These were celebratory occasions in which those men, then in or about their seventies or older were roundly applauded for their bravery and courage. It was back in the lecture hall in ethics class that the question of morality was discussed. It smacked somewhat of undermining the bravura of the celebrations, but it was nevertheless an important question. Many of us concluded that the results of the 1917 elections in which Sinn Féin almost wiped the Irish Party of John Redmond off the map justified the Rising in which an unrepresentative minority had taken up arms to fight for a Republic. The Home Rule bill which had been delayed by the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 was seen as further justification.
Events of the following years brought those discussions about violence back into focus. The Civil Rights movement in the United States under the leadership of the Reverend Martin Luther King pointed towards the success of non violent politics even when met by violence. Anything seemed possible in those mid to late sixties as Civil Rights movements sprang up all over the place in much the same way as one Arab country after another has in recent years followed the example of Libya Tunisia and Egypt with different levels of success, especially in Syria. Change seemed possible in Northern Ireland in the sixties of the last century without violence other than that of the State, but this hope quickly foundered as faith was again put in the bomb and the bullet as a way to attain political ends.
This basically failed. The blood, sweat and tears were in vain. Lessons were learned the hard way, as Sinn Féin to their great credit followed the well worn path followed by among others, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Clann na Poblachta, and the various shades of Official Sinn Féin which ended up in The Labour Party. We now have Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland using the very same condemnations of the Real IRA used not long ago about himself and his comrades. I agree with every word he says in that context, and especially with regard to the will of the people as expressed in the aftermath of the Good Friday agreement of 1998, but can see how that will not convince those who feel that they and they only are the real deal
As we approach 2016 we will need to focus on the pain, suffering, bereavement and pain of the past century as well as what has been achieved politically in the meantime. The controversy about the flying of the Union flag showed us how frail some parts of the peace process really are; The Peace Process is just that, an ongoing process, far from finished. Between now and the centenery of the Rising we need another referendum, North and South to let the ‘Real IRA’ know just how unreal they are.
Week ending April 2nd 2013
Easter Sunday has just missed April Fool’s Day by a day, but there is a sense in which we celebrate the foolishness of God in a good sense in this feast, the seeming foolishness of a God who gives his all for us, but doesn’t just leave it at that. He overcomes death while he is at it. The words:“He is risen.” have raised many hearts in the past two thousand years. Throw in a few Old Testament Alleluias and the joys of Easter are celebrated with gusto. We toss around the word “unbelievable” nowadays to describe anything vaguely surprising. The idea of someone rising from the dead is very close to really being unbelievable, yet billions of people in recent days celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ in most parts of the world. Even people with little attachment to formal religion tend to be touched in some way by the magic of Easter.
Magic may not be the right word but it is not the wrong word either. A story which has a young man being hung out to dry or to die on a cross on a Friday, flitting around like a butterfly just escaped from its cocoon on the following Sunday has a quality of the Houdinis about it, only better. It is some jump from the ridiculed to the sublime in a matter of days. Not easy to believe but not too difficult either when we take into account the person involved. For followers of Jesus it has a logic of its own. How could you keep a good man down? It was not just the rock at the mouth of the tomb that was blown away. We all were.
Belief in the resurrection of Jesus is a matter of faith, but it is not without evidence that could stand up in court or in some kind of tribunal of inquiry. There is the matter of the empty tomb. “Who moved the stone?” was the title of a book on this subject that I read many years ago. A good barrister would suggest that anyone might have removed it as well as the body of Jesus. As for the angels reported to have been seen inside the open tomb, he or she (the Attorney) would probably decide to “rest my case” and leave it to the jury to decide on that one.
Then there are those lovely stories which are read in churches on the Sundays after Easter, stories of doubting Thomas and of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, not to speak of the one about Jesus having fish cooked on the shore when his followers returned from a fishing trip. (A barbeque without a hint of horse DNA) Proof of a kind, but more proof of the possibilities involved in the differences between the glory of the resurrection body and our earthed bodies in this life, bogged down as we are by the weight of the world and the confinements of space and time. Still a gentle nudge for the imaginitive who wonder about after-life.
The nearest we have to proof of the resurrection of Jesus is the change that came over his followers between Good Friday and Pentecost Sunday. Something happened that changed the craven cowards of Calvary (most of them chickened out on that journey) and the confident preachers of Pentecost, willing not to just live but also to die for their faith, something most of them did. This was in some ways the real resurrection, the one that changed cowards into champions of a faith, faith forged in brokeness and betrayal, fear and trembling, and yet un-put-down-able. He is risen. Alleluia. Happy Easter.
Magic may not be the right word but it is not the wrong word either. A story which has a young man being hung out to dry or to die on a cross on a Friday, flitting around like a butterfly just escaped from its cocoon on the following Sunday has a quality of the Houdinis about it, only better. It is some jump from the ridiculed to the sublime in a matter of days. Not easy to believe but not too difficult either when we take into account the person involved. For followers of Jesus it has a logic of its own. How could you keep a good man down? It was not just the rock at the mouth of the tomb that was blown away. We all were.
Belief in the resurrection of Jesus is a matter of faith, but it is not without evidence that could stand up in court or in some kind of tribunal of inquiry. There is the matter of the empty tomb. “Who moved the stone?” was the title of a book on this subject that I read many years ago. A good barrister would suggest that anyone might have removed it as well as the body of Jesus. As for the angels reported to have been seen inside the open tomb, he or she (the Attorney) would probably decide to “rest my case” and leave it to the jury to decide on that one.
Then there are those lovely stories which are read in churches on the Sundays after Easter, stories of doubting Thomas and of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, not to speak of the one about Jesus having fish cooked on the shore when his followers returned from a fishing trip. (A barbeque without a hint of horse DNA) Proof of a kind, but more proof of the possibilities involved in the differences between the glory of the resurrection body and our earthed bodies in this life, bogged down as we are by the weight of the world and the confinements of space and time. Still a gentle nudge for the imaginitive who wonder about after-life.
The nearest we have to proof of the resurrection of Jesus is the change that came over his followers between Good Friday and Pentecost Sunday. Something happened that changed the craven cowards of Calvary (most of them chickened out on that journey) and the confident preachers of Pentecost, willing not to just live but also to die for their faith, something most of them did. This was in some ways the real resurrection, the one that changed cowards into champions of a faith, faith forged in brokeness and betrayal, fear and trembling, and yet un-put-down-able. He is risen. Alleluia. Happy Easter.