Week ending December 31st 2012
The much trumpeted “End Of The World” on the 22nd of December 2012 does not seem to have transpired, or if it has, it has happened unbeknownst to me. The Next World looks surprisingly like the Last. I seem to be as old as I was. I had great hopes of beginning again as as a baby in a world without cutbacks or budgets, bad banks or septic tank charges. On the other hand it would have seemed to an awful waste to have got Saorview just in time to view The End Of The World. That is not to say that an Apocalyptic type end would not have looked great in High Definition.
I had just finished in National School when word began to leak through from wherever rumours start that the world was to end in 1960. It was supposed to be connected in some way to the Third Secret of Fatima which was said to have been witheld because of its terrifying nature. There was talk of three dark days. People would light candles, and if your candle went out, you were a definite goner.
1960 came and went and most of us were still there. The world may have been rocking and rolling a bit more since the Beatles and Rolling Stones had outshone Elvis, but the old globe was still spinning.
The Millennium was definitely going to be the end of the world, according to some, but we are still here more than twelve years later. Up to now I had noticed that years with a nice round ring to them, 1960 or 2000 were touted as end of the world years. It came as somewhat of a surprise to find 2012 mooted in this context. Maybe it is somewhere in the small writing at the bottom of the page that the End Of The World is a moveable feast due to changes in the Gregorian and other calenders, and it might come back to haunt us yet. Personally I am of the view the End is most likely to happen when we pollute our world to the point it can no longer live, and we need to direct more of our attention to that.
Every New Year I make the point that there is one thing sure about political, economic and social predictions, and that is that most of them will be wrong. Life will take its usual twists and turns and surprise us. I hope the assurances that we are three quarters way through cutback hardship turn out to be true, and there are some small signs of slow but steady growth in our economy. Many of us do not agree with choices taken in matters like home carers hours and allowances, as we see the results as we go about our everyday work. Cabinet decision making is a tough and largely thankless task.
One of the big decisions right now is dealing with the question of limited abortion when the life of mother or child is at stake. I think the Government are right to take the advice of the expert group that recently reported on these matters. Details of the procedures and legislation involved will tell us a lot. Right now I have more confidence in the Government in this regard than leaders of my own church seem to have. Our elected leaders have to legislate for all of society and until I hear otherwise I expect them to be balanced and fair. Thin end of the wedge or end of the world as we know it scenarios are of little help. This Government has shown more courage in facing up to this question than predecessors did in the past couple of decades. Coinnigí bhur misneach – Be brave.
I had just finished in National School when word began to leak through from wherever rumours start that the world was to end in 1960. It was supposed to be connected in some way to the Third Secret of Fatima which was said to have been witheld because of its terrifying nature. There was talk of three dark days. People would light candles, and if your candle went out, you were a definite goner.
1960 came and went and most of us were still there. The world may have been rocking and rolling a bit more since the Beatles and Rolling Stones had outshone Elvis, but the old globe was still spinning.
The Millennium was definitely going to be the end of the world, according to some, but we are still here more than twelve years later. Up to now I had noticed that years with a nice round ring to them, 1960 or 2000 were touted as end of the world years. It came as somewhat of a surprise to find 2012 mooted in this context. Maybe it is somewhere in the small writing at the bottom of the page that the End Of The World is a moveable feast due to changes in the Gregorian and other calenders, and it might come back to haunt us yet. Personally I am of the view the End is most likely to happen when we pollute our world to the point it can no longer live, and we need to direct more of our attention to that.
Every New Year I make the point that there is one thing sure about political, economic and social predictions, and that is that most of them will be wrong. Life will take its usual twists and turns and surprise us. I hope the assurances that we are three quarters way through cutback hardship turn out to be true, and there are some small signs of slow but steady growth in our economy. Many of us do not agree with choices taken in matters like home carers hours and allowances, as we see the results as we go about our everyday work. Cabinet decision making is a tough and largely thankless task.
One of the big decisions right now is dealing with the question of limited abortion when the life of mother or child is at stake. I think the Government are right to take the advice of the expert group that recently reported on these matters. Details of the procedures and legislation involved will tell us a lot. Right now I have more confidence in the Government in this regard than leaders of my own church seem to have. Our elected leaders have to legislate for all of society and until I hear otherwise I expect them to be balanced and fair. Thin end of the wedge or end of the world as we know it scenarios are of little help. This Government has shown more courage in facing up to this question than predecessors did in the past couple of decades. Coinnigí bhur misneach – Be brave.
Week ending December 24th 2012
It is seventeen years since I wrote my first article for “The Connaught Telegraph.” It was my first Christmas in Tourmakeady, my first Christmas as a priest in my home County of Mayo after twenty four years in the islands and coastlands of Galway. It was not that I did not treasure those Christmasses. I remember the joy of driving the twelve miles from An Cheathrú Rua (Carraroe) to Leitir Mealláin on the other side of the parish for Midnight Mass. I soaked in the atmosphere of the candles lighting in nearly every window along the way to welcome the child Jesus, Mary and Joseph. I would stand on the hill on which that church is built and look across at the Aran Islands in which I had spent enjoyable Christmasses too, and think of the people there as they gathered to celebrate their Saviour’s birth. If there is such a think as spiritual magic, that was it for me.
The ritual of Christmas Eve at home in Ballydavock, about halfway between Belcarra and Clogher lives on in my memory and mind’s eye.. We would gather around the kitchen table on which the tall red candle was lit. There was a pause for a moment to pray for the living and the dead. My father would leave the table, take the tongs from the hearth and break a lighted sod of turf in the open fire. This was to signify the breaking of the devil’s back, the power of evil being overcome by the Christchild. It was a ceremony that lost some of its significance when we got a secondhand black Stanley range in the mid fifties, a year or two after the electricity and the radio. It made it easier to cook a turkey, but the poor devil was lost somewhere behind the bars of the range, as if caged and powerless.
It would be at about that stage too that the giblets on our plates on Christmas Eve would have been those of a turkey, rather than a goose, a duck or a hen. There was obviously a concerted effort made to turkey-ise Christmas at the time, and help the poultry industry at the same time. There was probably the American influence too, from newly acquired radios as well as from the comics and magazines that arrived at the bottom of the traditional parcels from cousins across the Atlantic. Disaster struck when the turkeys roosted with the hens, causing their breastbones to bend and leaving them virtually unsaleable. My worst Christmas period was probably the year in which we ended up with about five such turkeys and had to eat them ourselves. The eating part was fine. The plucking was probably the devil’s revenge for burning him in the furnace of the black range.
My earliest Santa Claus memory is the night our father took us with him to the barn so that he could clean the manure away from the cattle and give them some extra hay, a task he usually undertook on his own. We were walking slowly back to the house by the light of the lanthern when he suddenly pointed in the air and announced: “There goes Santa across the sky.” There may have been a falling star or a meteorite, but I could swear that I had seen a flying sleigh. The toys that awaited us when we got back to the house confirmed the sighting. It was bedtime soon afterwards as we had to be up early for Mass about dawn, a magical experience in its own way as our horse with the four white feet clip-clopped in front of the trap all the way to Belcarra where we would meet the newlyborn Jesus in the crib.
The ritual of Christmas Eve at home in Ballydavock, about halfway between Belcarra and Clogher lives on in my memory and mind’s eye.. We would gather around the kitchen table on which the tall red candle was lit. There was a pause for a moment to pray for the living and the dead. My father would leave the table, take the tongs from the hearth and break a lighted sod of turf in the open fire. This was to signify the breaking of the devil’s back, the power of evil being overcome by the Christchild. It was a ceremony that lost some of its significance when we got a secondhand black Stanley range in the mid fifties, a year or two after the electricity and the radio. It made it easier to cook a turkey, but the poor devil was lost somewhere behind the bars of the range, as if caged and powerless.
It would be at about that stage too that the giblets on our plates on Christmas Eve would have been those of a turkey, rather than a goose, a duck or a hen. There was obviously a concerted effort made to turkey-ise Christmas at the time, and help the poultry industry at the same time. There was probably the American influence too, from newly acquired radios as well as from the comics and magazines that arrived at the bottom of the traditional parcels from cousins across the Atlantic. Disaster struck when the turkeys roosted with the hens, causing their breastbones to bend and leaving them virtually unsaleable. My worst Christmas period was probably the year in which we ended up with about five such turkeys and had to eat them ourselves. The eating part was fine. The plucking was probably the devil’s revenge for burning him in the furnace of the black range.
My earliest Santa Claus memory is the night our father took us with him to the barn so that he could clean the manure away from the cattle and give them some extra hay, a task he usually undertook on his own. We were walking slowly back to the house by the light of the lanthern when he suddenly pointed in the air and announced: “There goes Santa across the sky.” There may have been a falling star or a meteorite, but I could swear that I had seen a flying sleigh. The toys that awaited us when we got back to the house confirmed the sighting. It was bedtime soon afterwards as we had to be up early for Mass about dawn, a magical experience in its own way as our horse with the four white feet clip-clopped in front of the trap all the way to Belcarra where we would meet the newlyborn Jesus in the crib.
Week ending December 18th 2012
However busy Christmas is, it is unlikely to be as busy for me as the weekend of the 7th, 8th and 9th of Decamber, when church holyday and Sunday came together. The Saturday was particularly busy as I had five Masses and a christening as well as an invitation to the local GAA dinner. The previous evening had begun with two evening Masses and the launch of three books published by Cló Iar-Chonnacht, one of them my own (Ar Nós An Pháiste), the others by local writers Máirtín Ó Catháin (Cpnamara agus Boston – triocha bliain anonn is anall) and Jackie Mac Donncha (Bróga Johnny Thomais). The good news is that the books, launched by local Independent County Councillor, Seosamh Ó Cúaig, sold out on the night. Sunday had two Masses, a christening, and a senior citizen’s party. Was I glad to be able to sit down and watch the murder and mayhem on RTÉ’s “Love/Hate afterwards? It would have taken a lot to shake me at that stage.
It was time to begin to concentrate on Christmas. Once again we struggle along the rocky road to Bethlehem. The donkey picks its steps carefully, not unlike the way that most of us learn to walk during the frosty spells.. Mary and Joseph are happy tp be away from the prying eyes of Nazareth. The gossip mongers had a field day when innocent little holy Mary began to show signs of her pregnancy. When was Joseph going to do the right thing and marry her? ‘Wasn’t he the dark horse all the same, and you would think that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.’ That’s if he was the father. Rumour had it that Joseph and herself had never been together. If not, who was the father? Where was DNA when you needed it? ‘Fair play to Joseph all the same. He was sticking by her which was more than a lot of young fellows would do.’
Here they were on their adventure far from home, enjoying the fresh air and the company of the people they met around the oases and watering holes, or at the open fires when they stopped for something to eat. They were returning to Joseph’s roots, going back for the census, a once in a lifetime event, a kind of pilgrimage to the past, back to the King David connection from centuries before that his people had always talked about. What was it about royalty that so many people wanted to be connected to? Anyway that was then and this is now. This baby was likely to come into the world far from home. They were ready for that. They wouldn’t be sleeping under the stars that night. They had the money for an Inn, tightly wrapped in a little handkerchief in the very middle of the swaddling clothes that Mary had brought with her to put around the baby as soon as it was born and washed.
Was it all a dream? Mary wondered sometimes. This baby from out of the blue. This baby from God as that vision had told her all of nine months ago. Could it have been some kind of a hallucination? The baby that had grown within her was real enough. But God? That was beyond a joke. Why me? What was God up to? If he was as great as people said couldn’t he have found a less complicated way to send his son into the world. Couldn’t he have just dropped him into some palace where he would have a bit of comfort. Why had he to go natural way, the full nine months, the birth? ‘He must be a glutton for punishment,’ she smiles to herself, worried, apprehensive and happy, all at the same time.’
Joseph tells himself that people must think that he is a right eejit, but he wouldn’t want it any other way. He trusts Mary. If she says this is a child of God, that is enough for him. He is not too sure what ‘child of God’ means, but if it is of God, sure it has to be good. He finds it hard to understand why Mary is so sure that her baby is going to be a boy. That’s what God’s messenger told her, apparently. Does that mean she will be disappointed if it turns out to be a girl? Whichever it is they are going to love it. And if it is a girl, what harm will it do her to know a bit of carpentry?
It’s a win/win situation.
It was time to begin to concentrate on Christmas. Once again we struggle along the rocky road to Bethlehem. The donkey picks its steps carefully, not unlike the way that most of us learn to walk during the frosty spells.. Mary and Joseph are happy tp be away from the prying eyes of Nazareth. The gossip mongers had a field day when innocent little holy Mary began to show signs of her pregnancy. When was Joseph going to do the right thing and marry her? ‘Wasn’t he the dark horse all the same, and you would think that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.’ That’s if he was the father. Rumour had it that Joseph and herself had never been together. If not, who was the father? Where was DNA when you needed it? ‘Fair play to Joseph all the same. He was sticking by her which was more than a lot of young fellows would do.’
Here they were on their adventure far from home, enjoying the fresh air and the company of the people they met around the oases and watering holes, or at the open fires when they stopped for something to eat. They were returning to Joseph’s roots, going back for the census, a once in a lifetime event, a kind of pilgrimage to the past, back to the King David connection from centuries before that his people had always talked about. What was it about royalty that so many people wanted to be connected to? Anyway that was then and this is now. This baby was likely to come into the world far from home. They were ready for that. They wouldn’t be sleeping under the stars that night. They had the money for an Inn, tightly wrapped in a little handkerchief in the very middle of the swaddling clothes that Mary had brought with her to put around the baby as soon as it was born and washed.
Was it all a dream? Mary wondered sometimes. This baby from out of the blue. This baby from God as that vision had told her all of nine months ago. Could it have been some kind of a hallucination? The baby that had grown within her was real enough. But God? That was beyond a joke. Why me? What was God up to? If he was as great as people said couldn’t he have found a less complicated way to send his son into the world. Couldn’t he have just dropped him into some palace where he would have a bit of comfort. Why had he to go natural way, the full nine months, the birth? ‘He must be a glutton for punishment,’ she smiles to herself, worried, apprehensive and happy, all at the same time.’
Joseph tells himself that people must think that he is a right eejit, but he wouldn’t want it any other way. He trusts Mary. If she says this is a child of God, that is enough for him. He is not too sure what ‘child of God’ means, but if it is of God, sure it has to be good. He finds it hard to understand why Mary is so sure that her baby is going to be a boy. That’s what God’s messenger told her, apparently. Does that mean she will be disappointed if it turns out to be a girl? Whichever it is they are going to love it. And if it is a girl, what harm will it do her to know a bit of carpentry?
It’s a win/win situation.
Week ending December 11th 2012
Our Professor of Sacred Scripture Maynooth in so far as the New Testament was concerned was a priest of the Archdiocese of Tuam, Fr. John O’Flynn. A native of Annaghadown by the shore of Lough Corrib not ten miles from Galway City, “Johnno” as we used to refer to him was at first sight a broken man by the time I reached the seminary. He had suffered from a stroke, wore dark glasses and walked with the aid of a stick. It was reported that he had lost years of scriptural study and a major thesis when fire destroyed the wing of the college in which he lived. He had not, however, lost his respect for sacred scripture, and I remember with fondness the respect with which he read ‘the word of God.’ I often think of him as I to make sense of the next week’s readings.
Two of my favourite Biblical characters, the prophet Isaiah and John the Baptist provide a bit of a double act during the season of Advent. They obviously didn’t know each other personally as they lived hundreds of years apart, but they seemed to know each other well with regards to prophecy. John certainly knew the words of Isaiah: “A voice cries in the wilderness: Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.” (Mt 3:3) John himself is seen as the voice crying in the wilderness, a voice we still hear echoing Isaiah’s words as we prepare a way for the Lord during Advent as Christmas approaches.
I have my own mind-pictures of Isaiah and John, partly from artistic representations, and partly from imagination. These pictures may be a long way from the mark with regard to the appearances of the men in question, but they help to personalise them. Like all heroes I suppose I see them as larger than life, Isaiah with a great shock of grey hair and a tangled beard surrounding those intense eyes. John, we are told was clothed in camel hair which suggest very rough garments. He ate locusts and wild honey. I wouldn’t know a locust if I got one as a Christmas present, but in my mind’s eye I can see the red bees with the wild honey we disturbed in haymaking days. No honey was sweeter, so I am pleased that rugged, badly done by John had the pleasure of that taste.
Neither Isaiah or John come across as honey-tongued, sweet-talking types. They told it like it was, or at least as they saw it. John’s “brood of vipers” barb echoes across the centuries, while his execution came about because he objected to King Herod marrying his brother;s wife. No politically correct, softly softly preacher he, and he paid for it with his life, the result of a whim and a foolish promise. Still he had made his mark, had pointed the finger in the right direction, had pointed out who Jesus really is, in words we still use in every Mass: “Behold the Lamb of God. This is the one who takes away the sins of the world.”
These words have a particular relevence when we look into the crib at Christmas. We ‘ooh’ and ‘aah,’ ‘coo’ and smile at the beautiful baby, but the reason we do so year after year can be summed up in the words of the Baptist: “This is the lamb of God, the one who takes away the sins of the world.” The baby born in that Bethlehem stable would be long forgotten if millions upon millions of people down through the ages had not believed the words of John. The Baptist is known as the Pre-cursor, which has nothing to do with cursing, but recognises the importance of John’s role in identifying who Jesus really was and is: “Behold the lamb of God…”
Two of my favourite Biblical characters, the prophet Isaiah and John the Baptist provide a bit of a double act during the season of Advent. They obviously didn’t know each other personally as they lived hundreds of years apart, but they seemed to know each other well with regards to prophecy. John certainly knew the words of Isaiah: “A voice cries in the wilderness: Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.” (Mt 3:3) John himself is seen as the voice crying in the wilderness, a voice we still hear echoing Isaiah’s words as we prepare a way for the Lord during Advent as Christmas approaches.
I have my own mind-pictures of Isaiah and John, partly from artistic representations, and partly from imagination. These pictures may be a long way from the mark with regard to the appearances of the men in question, but they help to personalise them. Like all heroes I suppose I see them as larger than life, Isaiah with a great shock of grey hair and a tangled beard surrounding those intense eyes. John, we are told was clothed in camel hair which suggest very rough garments. He ate locusts and wild honey. I wouldn’t know a locust if I got one as a Christmas present, but in my mind’s eye I can see the red bees with the wild honey we disturbed in haymaking days. No honey was sweeter, so I am pleased that rugged, badly done by John had the pleasure of that taste.
Neither Isaiah or John come across as honey-tongued, sweet-talking types. They told it like it was, or at least as they saw it. John’s “brood of vipers” barb echoes across the centuries, while his execution came about because he objected to King Herod marrying his brother;s wife. No politically correct, softly softly preacher he, and he paid for it with his life, the result of a whim and a foolish promise. Still he had made his mark, had pointed the finger in the right direction, had pointed out who Jesus really is, in words we still use in every Mass: “Behold the Lamb of God. This is the one who takes away the sins of the world.”
These words have a particular relevence when we look into the crib at Christmas. We ‘ooh’ and ‘aah,’ ‘coo’ and smile at the beautiful baby, but the reason we do so year after year can be summed up in the words of the Baptist: “This is the lamb of God, the one who takes away the sins of the world.” The baby born in that Bethlehem stable would be long forgotten if millions upon millions of people down through the ages had not believed the words of John. The Baptist is known as the Pre-cursor, which has nothing to do with cursing, but recognises the importance of John’s role in identifying who Jesus really was and is: “Behold the lamb of God…”
Week ending December 4th 2012
A recent initative by local people in Carna has led to a prayer and scripture gathering each week. Readings for the following Sunday are read, discussed and pondered on. Some of my favourite Scripture lines in the lead-up to Christmas we call Advent are those that will echo through next Sunday’s readings: “Prepare a way for the Lord., make straight his path, and all shall see the salvation of God.” Although this week’s gospel readings for Saturday night and Sunday Masses come from Saint Mark, the words themselves are much older. They are from the prophet Isaiah who lived approximately seven hundred years before the time of Christ. Some of the writings attributed to Isaiah may not have been his own. I am not suggesting that he stole them from others, but that he used quotations from other wise prophets of his own time or earlier. Either way the words we read or hear now are the best part of three thousand years old, and are none the worse for that.
I sometimes try to imagine Isaiah or other prophets. I’m inclined to see them in my mind’s eye at the marketplace, old, greybearded and rugged, their voices raised in the hustle and bustle going on around them, their ‘God-words’ getting lost in the din of those selling copper saucepans or rolls of silk. I may have it completely wrong. Isaiah was young once, and life expectancy was short at the time. He may have spoken quietly in the Synagogue, but either way his words have echoed across the centuries, urging is to prepare a way for the Lord, make his path straight. The phrase in Sunday’s reading: “Make a straight highway for our God” gives me a vision of God hurtling towards us down the motorway, but that is a far cry from the thought of the God-son being born in a quiet stable to a teenage girl, because there was no room for herself or her family “in the Inn.”
There is a further reminder of Mary, the mother of Jesus this coming weekend, because the Feast of her Immaculate Conception is celebrated on the eight of December. This feast is often confused with the notion of the virgin birth, but it has nothing to do with that. What it means is that Mary had no personal connection with sin at any stage of her life, a particular honour bestowed on the woman who was to bring together human and divine in the baby she bore. It is difficult for us in this day and age to grasp some of the concepts that have come down to us through writings and tradition that in many cases have a different mindset and understanding of the world than ours. We tend to belong to a Greek/Roman tradition that has a very different understanding than the more storied and subtle traditions we find in the Bible.
In a simplistic way this is basically the East/West divide that exists to this day which makes the solving of intractable problems in the Middle East so difficult. The names of towns and cities we hear from the conflict in Syria and Israel are familiar from the New Testament and the Bible generally. We find it difficult to understand each other’s mindsets or ways at looking at things. We have a similar problem on a smaller scale in our own peace process. Protestant and Catholic traditionally look differently at the meaning of words – in the Bible or outside it. Each view is as legitimate as the other, but it is more difficult to forge an agreement in such circumstances. In a similar way people with a logical Graeco/Roman/Enlightenment view of the world are inclined to dismiss the notion of a virgin birth or angels over Bethlehem, while those with a different imaginative approach see a delightful story that carries a beautiful message. For the next couple of weeks the message is: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight…”
I sometimes try to imagine Isaiah or other prophets. I’m inclined to see them in my mind’s eye at the marketplace, old, greybearded and rugged, their voices raised in the hustle and bustle going on around them, their ‘God-words’ getting lost in the din of those selling copper saucepans or rolls of silk. I may have it completely wrong. Isaiah was young once, and life expectancy was short at the time. He may have spoken quietly in the Synagogue, but either way his words have echoed across the centuries, urging is to prepare a way for the Lord, make his path straight. The phrase in Sunday’s reading: “Make a straight highway for our God” gives me a vision of God hurtling towards us down the motorway, but that is a far cry from the thought of the God-son being born in a quiet stable to a teenage girl, because there was no room for herself or her family “in the Inn.”
There is a further reminder of Mary, the mother of Jesus this coming weekend, because the Feast of her Immaculate Conception is celebrated on the eight of December. This feast is often confused with the notion of the virgin birth, but it has nothing to do with that. What it means is that Mary had no personal connection with sin at any stage of her life, a particular honour bestowed on the woman who was to bring together human and divine in the baby she bore. It is difficult for us in this day and age to grasp some of the concepts that have come down to us through writings and tradition that in many cases have a different mindset and understanding of the world than ours. We tend to belong to a Greek/Roman tradition that has a very different understanding than the more storied and subtle traditions we find in the Bible.
In a simplistic way this is basically the East/West divide that exists to this day which makes the solving of intractable problems in the Middle East so difficult. The names of towns and cities we hear from the conflict in Syria and Israel are familiar from the New Testament and the Bible generally. We find it difficult to understand each other’s mindsets or ways at looking at things. We have a similar problem on a smaller scale in our own peace process. Protestant and Catholic traditionally look differently at the meaning of words – in the Bible or outside it. Each view is as legitimate as the other, but it is more difficult to forge an agreement in such circumstances. In a similar way people with a logical Graeco/Roman/Enlightenment view of the world are inclined to dismiss the notion of a virgin birth or angels over Bethlehem, while those with a different imaginative approach see a delightful story that carries a beautiful message. For the next couple of weeks the message is: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight…”