Week ending 22nd.
Easter over, Job done. Christ alive. The words: “He is risen.” have raised many hearts and not a few spirits in the past two thousand years. Throw in a few “Alleluias” and the joys of Easter resurrection can be 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 enduring magic of the Easter story. It has none of the glitz or glamour of Christmas and is all the better for that. The echo of nail on hammer still rings in the air as we come to wonder as the disciples of Jesus did: “can this be real?”
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 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 quite a leap 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 that Sunday morning. 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 that rock. It might have been even an earthquake. As for the angels reported to have been seen inside, 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 a fish barbecue prepared on the shore when his followere returned from a fishing trip. Proof of a kind, but there is more proof of the possibilities invoved in the differences between the glory of the resurrection body and the earthed bodies we inhabit in this life, bogged down as we are by the weight of the world and the confinements of space and time. The stories told in the afterglow of Easter give a gentle nudge to the imaginitive who wonder about after-life and its possibilities.
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 and the confident preachers of Pentecost, who showed that they were 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. Jesus is just un-put-down-able. He is risen. Alleluia.
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 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 quite a leap 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 that Sunday morning. 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 that rock. It might have been even an earthquake. As for the angels reported to have been seen inside, 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 a fish barbecue prepared on the shore when his followere returned from a fishing trip. Proof of a kind, but there is more proof of the possibilities invoved in the differences between the glory of the resurrection body and the earthed bodies we inhabit in this life, bogged down as we are by the weight of the world and the confinements of space and time. The stories told in the afterglow of Easter give a gentle nudge to the imaginitive who wonder about after-life and its possibilities.
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 and the confident preachers of Pentecost, who showed that they were 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. Jesus is just un-put-down-able. He is risen. Alleluia.
Week ending 15th.
Forty-three Easters ago I got my first taste of Holy Week ceremonies as an ordained minister, and as it happened, it was in the parish in which I am now working. I went as a deacon to Cill Chiaráin in Carna parish in 1971, a few months before being ordained priest. I wanted to experience the ceremonies in the Irish language in which I was anything but fluent. There was an element of being thrown in at the deep end about it as the local priest, Father Tommy Treacy, had the flu and I found myself struggling through readings in a language which I the stranger did not know. It was a good baptism in both language and ceremonies in that I was celebrating the passion and death of Christ on my own the following year in Irish, on the Aran islands of Inis Oirr and Inis Meáin in which I had been curate since the previous September.
For the first time in the forty years since then I will be involved in the Easter ceremonies on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday in both sides of a parish, as there is now no resident priest in Cill Chiaráin. I will be relying on the parish pastoral council to give more help than ever, and I have no doubt that they will do so. Stations of the cross will be led by lay people rather than by the priest on Good Friday, and more and more of what were considered the duties of the ordained priest will be carried out by the people of the parish. I have mentioned in the past that the revival of the Easter ceremonies in their present form in the mid-fiffties was one of the best things done by the Roman Catholic Church in the last century. They have been remarkably well attended since.
My first experience of the Easter ceremonies was as a ten year old Mass server in Belcarra church. There would be a big wash-up each evening after a day spreading cow-dung in drills being prepared for potato setting. Off we would go to the church for ceremonies that were as new to the priests as to the people. Our own curate, Father Tommy Gibbons was usually joined by members of the staff of the nearby SMA college in Ballinafad at a time when clergy were anything but scarce. Space was made inside the altar rails for Minister for Lands and Clann na Talmhain Party leader, Joe Blowick TD. It had been reported on the radio that Archbishop John McQuaid had given similar honour to Taoiseach John A Costello in Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral. Anything Dublin could do, Belcarra could do better. At least our man in Belcarra was a Party leader. Mr Costello, although Taoiseach, was not leader of his party, Fine Gael when elected Taoiseach
I always enjoy Easter but none more so than when it is over. There is always an underlying fear that I will make a mess of things in that readings and prayers as well as the sequence of events are relatively unfamiliar, as a year has past since last dealing with them. The nerves leave when I remind myself that it is not about me. Whatever I do, or however I mess up will not prevent Jesus from rising from the dead. What I like best about it is that even though we know that the story will have a happy ending, many of us still get caught up in the emotion of it all, a good person wrongly convicted and put to death after a night of needless and senseless torture and violence. Worse things have happened in the world, of course, but the idea of the one who links us closest to God ending up on a cross of shame makes Good Friday one of the saddest days for believers. It also makes Easter Day one of the best.
For the first time in the forty years since then I will be involved in the Easter ceremonies on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday in both sides of a parish, as there is now no resident priest in Cill Chiaráin. I will be relying on the parish pastoral council to give more help than ever, and I have no doubt that they will do so. Stations of the cross will be led by lay people rather than by the priest on Good Friday, and more and more of what were considered the duties of the ordained priest will be carried out by the people of the parish. I have mentioned in the past that the revival of the Easter ceremonies in their present form in the mid-fiffties was one of the best things done by the Roman Catholic Church in the last century. They have been remarkably well attended since.
My first experience of the Easter ceremonies was as a ten year old Mass server in Belcarra church. There would be a big wash-up each evening after a day spreading cow-dung in drills being prepared for potato setting. Off we would go to the church for ceremonies that were as new to the priests as to the people. Our own curate, Father Tommy Gibbons was usually joined by members of the staff of the nearby SMA college in Ballinafad at a time when clergy were anything but scarce. Space was made inside the altar rails for Minister for Lands and Clann na Talmhain Party leader, Joe Blowick TD. It had been reported on the radio that Archbishop John McQuaid had given similar honour to Taoiseach John A Costello in Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral. Anything Dublin could do, Belcarra could do better. At least our man in Belcarra was a Party leader. Mr Costello, although Taoiseach, was not leader of his party, Fine Gael when elected Taoiseach
I always enjoy Easter but none more so than when it is over. There is always an underlying fear that I will make a mess of things in that readings and prayers as well as the sequence of events are relatively unfamiliar, as a year has past since last dealing with them. The nerves leave when I remind myself that it is not about me. Whatever I do, or however I mess up will not prevent Jesus from rising from the dead. What I like best about it is that even though we know that the story will have a happy ending, many of us still get caught up in the emotion of it all, a good person wrongly convicted and put to death after a night of needless and senseless torture and violence. Worse things have happened in the world, of course, but the idea of the one who links us closest to God ending up on a cross of shame makes Good Friday one of the saddest days for believers. It also makes Easter Day one of the best.
Week ending April 1st 2014
Easter is late this year, but not quite as late as it was in 1916, the year of the “Rising.” It is hard for some of us who have been around for a long time to believe that Easter 1916 is only two years away. Forty-eight 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. 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. Those of us who were not at the coalface of life there are not in a position to judge those who took that option.
This approach basically failed even though it scared the living daylights out of British and Irish Governments.. 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 taken by among others, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Clann na Poblachta, and the various shades of Official Sinn Féin/Workers Party/Democratic Left which ended up in The Labour Party. In recent years Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland used 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 last year about the flying of the Union flag as well as failed attempts to deal adequately with the past 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’ and other groups like it, 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. 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. Those of us who were not at the coalface of life there are not in a position to judge those who took that option.
This approach basically failed even though it scared the living daylights out of British and Irish Governments.. 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 taken by among others, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Clann na Poblachta, and the various shades of Official Sinn Féin/Workers Party/Democratic Left which ended up in The Labour Party. In recent years Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland used 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 last year about the flying of the Union flag as well as failed attempts to deal adequately with the past 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’ and other groups like it, know just how unreal they are.