Week ending 29th April 2015
It is hard for some of us who have been around for a long time to believe that Easter 1916 is only a year 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 which seems to have become an unmitigated disaster. 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 wellworn 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. In recent years we have heard 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 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’ and other versions of the ‘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 which seems to have become an unmitigated disaster. 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 wellworn 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. In recent years we have heard 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 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’ and other versions of the ‘IRA’ know just how unreal they are.
Week ending 22nd April 2015
It took the lark-song in the bog to unwind and revive me on Easter Sunday. Adrenalin had carried me through the Easter ceremonies on both sides of the parish, adrenalin and a lot of help from the parish pastoral council and people who seemed to come from nowhere to play their part in commemorating the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as told to us in the gospels. After more than forty years in the priesthood I should know better. Jesus would leave the tomb without my help, but we control freaks like to control even the Son of God. Come Sunday afternoon and there were no longer any preparations, rehearsals, ceremonies. This bogger set off to walk out the bog road in the direction of the Twelve Pins on one of the most beautiful days of the year. The larks, the angels, someone sang. I was in Alleluia mood as the weight of the world rolled from my shoulders.
I have loved Easter for as long as I can remember. Great joy comes from the belief in the resurrection of Jesus and the imaginative implications it can have for the rest of us. I love the gospel stories of Jesus risen from the dead flitting like a newly winged butterfly from place to place, appearing to apostles and disciples. He is the same but different. He still bears the marks of the crucifixion nails, as Thomas discovers, but he is unconfined, unrestricted by time and space, glorified. I hesitate to claim that Jesus is showing off in these stories, but so what if he is. Isn’t he entitled to. Has he not just broken one of the cardinal rules of nature and of life? He has risen from the dead. The fact that something so far-fetched, so unbelievable by what were at that stage fairly cynical followers in itself gives some credence to the resurrection story.
As many of us heard on a recent Sunday, the apostle Thomas was in no mood to swallow what could not be proven. He was a believe what you see kind of a guy. He had given years to this man, Jesus of Nazareth, and what he stood for. Like his fellow apostles his hopes and dreams had been dashed when Jesus was arrested, condemned, crucified and buried. Thomas was not going to put up with any more guff. Jesus didn’t expect him to. He showed him his hands and feet and invited him to probe the nail-holes with his fingers. Thomas believed. The wounds connected suffering and death with resurrection. Gethsemene and Good Friday had not been airbrushed from history. They are part of the same story of salvation. Hymns about “the old rugged cross” may have their sentimental elements, but they have their real and rugged and savage elements too. Pain and suffering are part of the reality of life, but so are happiness and glory.
What some of the resurrection stories do for me is hint at the possibilities of an afterlife that are for the most part beyond imagination. When we hear or read of Jesus risen from the dead and no longer constrained by space or time appearing here and there like a butterfly on a Spring day, we can begin to imagine worlds far beyond our wildest dreams. Those flights of fancy, those wild imaginings may be away off the mark, but so what? They give glimpses through or beyond the curtains of eternity. This in itself can be reassuring, in that it shows potential and possibility beyond the here and now. We can leave the exact details to the grave-breaker who prepared the way for us to follow.
I have loved Easter for as long as I can remember. Great joy comes from the belief in the resurrection of Jesus and the imaginative implications it can have for the rest of us. I love the gospel stories of Jesus risen from the dead flitting like a newly winged butterfly from place to place, appearing to apostles and disciples. He is the same but different. He still bears the marks of the crucifixion nails, as Thomas discovers, but he is unconfined, unrestricted by time and space, glorified. I hesitate to claim that Jesus is showing off in these stories, but so what if he is. Isn’t he entitled to. Has he not just broken one of the cardinal rules of nature and of life? He has risen from the dead. The fact that something so far-fetched, so unbelievable by what were at that stage fairly cynical followers in itself gives some credence to the resurrection story.
As many of us heard on a recent Sunday, the apostle Thomas was in no mood to swallow what could not be proven. He was a believe what you see kind of a guy. He had given years to this man, Jesus of Nazareth, and what he stood for. Like his fellow apostles his hopes and dreams had been dashed when Jesus was arrested, condemned, crucified and buried. Thomas was not going to put up with any more guff. Jesus didn’t expect him to. He showed him his hands and feet and invited him to probe the nail-holes with his fingers. Thomas believed. The wounds connected suffering and death with resurrection. Gethsemene and Good Friday had not been airbrushed from history. They are part of the same story of salvation. Hymns about “the old rugged cross” may have their sentimental elements, but they have their real and rugged and savage elements too. Pain and suffering are part of the reality of life, but so are happiness and glory.
What some of the resurrection stories do for me is hint at the possibilities of an afterlife that are for the most part beyond imagination. When we hear or read of Jesus risen from the dead and no longer constrained by space or time appearing here and there like a butterfly on a Spring day, we can begin to imagine worlds far beyond our wildest dreams. Those flights of fancy, those wild imaginings may be away off the mark, but so what? They give glimpses through or beyond the curtains of eternity. This in itself can be reassuring, in that it shows potential and possibility beyond the here and now. We can leave the exact details to the grave-breaker who prepared the way for us to follow.
Week ending 15th April 2015
I could see my parishioners wondering in equal measure had I lost it, or had I found Jesus when I announced that I had spent more time on my knees in the previous week than I had done for some time beforehand. I sometimes feel that the last thing they would want would be for me to go all holy on them, but I can assure them that is not likely to happen any time soon. I had found Jesus many years ago, but I tend to be more of a follower of the Jesus who was prepared to rough it than “gentle Jesus meek and mild.” The reason I was on my knees those particular days was that I was setting vegetable seeds, carrots, parsnips, onions, cabbage, beetroot and spinach. It is not that I have a farm or a market garden, just four grow-boxes which tend to grow enough to keep me in vegetables for the summer months. That said, I still have a basket of last year’s onions to consume yet. I like to describe it as old man rather than lazy man gardening, as the wooden surrounds greatly reduce the amount of weeding. The main thing from my point of view is that it works for me, and helps to feed me in the process.
Nature breaks out in those of us reared on the land as soon as there is a touch of spring. March had come in like a lion before becoming more lamb-like around Saint Patrick’s Day. The urge to sink spade and fingers in the soil could not be resisted. Every time I visited a beach since the beginning of the year, I brought back a bag or two of seaweed and allowed it rot away in my grow-boxes. The compost from a years vegetable and potato peelings as well as grass cuttings were added. I had seen a mixture of sand from the beach, seaweed and soil being used to make “land” many years ago in the smaller Aran Islands and I find that kind of mixture works well in the growing of potatoes and vegetables. Add the winter’s ashes and turf-mould to the mix and re-cycling is complete, The rhubarb is already beginning to break ground, and this “purgóid na manach” (monk’s purgative) as it used to be known, should be ready in mid-April.
I may have not done much actual praying while on my knees setting the vegetables, but it did give me time to meditate on what Jesus had said about the grain of wheat falling in the ground in a Sunday gospel towards the end of Lent: “I tell you most solemnly, unless a wheat-grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain, but if it dies, it produces a rich harvest.” (Jn 12:24) This could be applied to the seed of any plant, I told myself as I looked at the round hard onion and cabbage seeds, the flat flaky parsnip seed, the beetroot and beet spinach seeds that looked like little crumbs of bread and the even smaller carrot seeds. Most of them bore little resemblance in shape or colour to the plants they had the potential to become.
Jesus seems to have seen himself as the seed that was about to die, to be buried in the earth and to rise again, thereby producing much fruit. That is not to say he welcomed death, and he obviously feared it: “Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But it is for this very reason I have come to this hour.” (Jn 12:28)
In the Garden of Gethsemene, sweating blood in fear and trembling, he was to ask lo let “this chalice (of pain, suffering and death) pass.” His prayer was not answered in the way he wanted just then, but he went on to include the condition that is part of all prayer: “Not my will, but thine, be done.” It was time to face his demons.
Nature breaks out in those of us reared on the land as soon as there is a touch of spring. March had come in like a lion before becoming more lamb-like around Saint Patrick’s Day. The urge to sink spade and fingers in the soil could not be resisted. Every time I visited a beach since the beginning of the year, I brought back a bag or two of seaweed and allowed it rot away in my grow-boxes. The compost from a years vegetable and potato peelings as well as grass cuttings were added. I had seen a mixture of sand from the beach, seaweed and soil being used to make “land” many years ago in the smaller Aran Islands and I find that kind of mixture works well in the growing of potatoes and vegetables. Add the winter’s ashes and turf-mould to the mix and re-cycling is complete, The rhubarb is already beginning to break ground, and this “purgóid na manach” (monk’s purgative) as it used to be known, should be ready in mid-April.
I may have not done much actual praying while on my knees setting the vegetables, but it did give me time to meditate on what Jesus had said about the grain of wheat falling in the ground in a Sunday gospel towards the end of Lent: “I tell you most solemnly, unless a wheat-grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain, but if it dies, it produces a rich harvest.” (Jn 12:24) This could be applied to the seed of any plant, I told myself as I looked at the round hard onion and cabbage seeds, the flat flaky parsnip seed, the beetroot and beet spinach seeds that looked like little crumbs of bread and the even smaller carrot seeds. Most of them bore little resemblance in shape or colour to the plants they had the potential to become.
Jesus seems to have seen himself as the seed that was about to die, to be buried in the earth and to rise again, thereby producing much fruit. That is not to say he welcomed death, and he obviously feared it: “Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But it is for this very reason I have come to this hour.” (Jn 12:28)
In the Garden of Gethsemene, sweating blood in fear and trembling, he was to ask lo let “this chalice (of pain, suffering and death) pass.” His prayer was not answered in the way he wanted just then, but he went on to include the condition that is part of all prayer: “Not my will, but thine, be done.” It was time to face his demons.
Week ending 7th April 2015
Easter Sunday missed April Fool’s Day by five days, 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 followere returned from a fishing trip. (A barbeque without a hint of horse DNA) Proof of a kind, but more proof of the possibilities invoved 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 an un-put-down-able God-man. 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 followere returned from a fishing trip. (A barbeque without a hint of horse DNA) Proof of a kind, but more proof of the possibilities invoved 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 an un-put-down-able God-man. He is risen. Alleluia. Happy Easter.