Week ending May 28th 2013
I spent a couple of days earlier this year trying to contact a telecommunications provider on a matter of some urgency to me. It was obviously of no urgency to the company as I was left dangling for hours listening to inane music, occasionally interrupted by the message that they appreciated my call. “Why don’t you answer it if you appreciate it that much?” I shouted at the receiver while the intervening music began to sound like ironic laughter. Eventually a human voice told me I was ringing the wrong number. I had a surge of gratitude when told they would put me through to the correct department. The music changed, then quickly stopped as the phone appeared to be switched off or hung up. By now I began to really understand the phrase: “It would make your blood boil,” as my blood pressure was threatening to blow off the top of my head. An amusing piece in the Maynooth monthly “The Furrow” recently reminded me that dealing with inanimate voices while trying to do business is a worldwide phenomenon. It this case it was used to send up what it would be like if it was part of prayer. The quotation is from a book by a Jesuit priest, Fr’ Richard Leonard: “Why Bother Praying” (New York Paulist Press) p 30:
“Thank you for calling Heaven. Please select one of the following options:
Press 1 for Requests.
Press 2 for Thanksgiving.
Press 3 for Complaints.
Press 4 for all other personal enquiries.
Press 5 for information on the wherabouts of deceased family and friends
Press 6 for Your Heavenly Reservation.
Heaven is closed for the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Sabbath & Holy Days: Please pray again on Monday morning at 8.30am. If you need emergency assistance while this office is closed, contact your local priest, rebbi or imam.
Then, while waiting, we would hear on a never ending loop, King David sing a psalm, Mary sing the Magnificat, or Miriam belt out her Red Sea hit with the original tambourine accompaniment. Every twenty seconds a familiar voice would cut back in, “I’m sorry, “Heaven is busy helping other sinners right now. However, your prayer is important to us, and will be answered in the order it was received, so please stay on the line.
After fifteen minutes the voice would say: “Our computers show that you have already prayed three times today. Please hang up and try again tomorrow.”
I will keep this piece within easy reach of my landline telephone and read it to amuse myself the next time I have to deal with being passed by pillar to post by those who “appreciate my calls” but do not want to listen to them or do anything about them. It will keep me from breaking into unparliamentary and ungodlike language as frustration gets the better of me.
“Thank you for calling Heaven. Please select one of the following options:
Press 1 for Requests.
Press 2 for Thanksgiving.
Press 3 for Complaints.
Press 4 for all other personal enquiries.
Press 5 for information on the wherabouts of deceased family and friends
Press 6 for Your Heavenly Reservation.
Heaven is closed for the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Sabbath & Holy Days: Please pray again on Monday morning at 8.30am. If you need emergency assistance while this office is closed, contact your local priest, rebbi or imam.
Then, while waiting, we would hear on a never ending loop, King David sing a psalm, Mary sing the Magnificat, or Miriam belt out her Red Sea hit with the original tambourine accompaniment. Every twenty seconds a familiar voice would cut back in, “I’m sorry, “Heaven is busy helping other sinners right now. However, your prayer is important to us, and will be answered in the order it was received, so please stay on the line.
After fifteen minutes the voice would say: “Our computers show that you have already prayed three times today. Please hang up and try again tomorrow.”
I will keep this piece within easy reach of my landline telephone and read it to amuse myself the next time I have to deal with being passed by pillar to post by those who “appreciate my calls” but do not want to listen to them or do anything about them. It will keep me from breaking into unparliamentary and ungodlike language as frustration gets the better of me.
Week ending May 21st 2013
My favourite line in all of the Bible is the Ascension promise of Jesus: “I will be with you always, yes until the end of time.” How is he with us? Through his Spirit, the Holy Spirit whose feast we celebrated last weekend at Whit or Pentecost. There is usually a little confusion at this time of year as the June Bank holiday is often referred to as ‘Whit weekend,’ while the church’s ‘Whit’ is, like Easter, a moveable feast that moves one way or another fifty days after the feast of the resurrection of Jesus, This is where the ‘Pente’ (five) part of Pentecost comes from.
Those of us born and reared in the past century still associate the word Thursday with Ascension, as Ascension Day was on a Thursday for centuries, exactly forty days after Easter. In more recent times the importance of such literal associations has been relaxed, with the feast moving to the following Sunday. You can only go so far with such changes, so there is little likelihood of Ash Wednesday being moved to a Thursday, or Easter Sunday moving to a Monday anytime soon. Still anything is possible with the continuing scarcity of priests. We already have ‘Sunday’ Mass on Saturdays as well as on various weekdays in some places as there are not enough priests available to go around.
Pre-Ascension promises are that Jesus will not abandon us; “I will not leave you orphans, I will come back to you.” At Pentecost Jesus comes back as Spirit to be with us always. I have heard someone recently use the metaphor of radio waves to give a sense of how the Spirit lives with and in us. It has often fascinated me that radio waves were always there but in a sense were only drawn down when instruments to do so were invented in the past century or so. The old folktales of people hearing fairy music may have a fairly simple scientific explanation. A combination of metreological factors may have led to radio waves being accessed, with music from a far-off session being picked up inadvertantly on air.
A TG4 programme about Hy-Brasil a couple of years ago gave a somewhat similar explanation of how an illusion of a faraway city on the horizon may in fact be a picture of a real place transported by athmospheric conditions in something the same way as a television picture. The air waves or whatever it is that gives us the worlkwide web many of us use every day of the week must have always been there but we did not know how to, or did not have the equipment, to plug into it. Many would see the Spirit of God as being with us in a similar sort of way. All we have to do is to decide to access it by our prayer.
It is never a great idea to try and explain any mystery, but some human pictures and experiences give us hints about such matters. That is all. When I was a child at Clogher National school I could never understand how teachers and others considered the Holy Trinity to be a mystery. Nothing was simpler in my little mind. My approach was that if God was all he was cracked up to be he could be anything he liked. No need for further explanation. Ah yes: “Unless we become as little children…”
Those of us born and reared in the past century still associate the word Thursday with Ascension, as Ascension Day was on a Thursday for centuries, exactly forty days after Easter. In more recent times the importance of such literal associations has been relaxed, with the feast moving to the following Sunday. You can only go so far with such changes, so there is little likelihood of Ash Wednesday being moved to a Thursday, or Easter Sunday moving to a Monday anytime soon. Still anything is possible with the continuing scarcity of priests. We already have ‘Sunday’ Mass on Saturdays as well as on various weekdays in some places as there are not enough priests available to go around.
Pre-Ascension promises are that Jesus will not abandon us; “I will not leave you orphans, I will come back to you.” At Pentecost Jesus comes back as Spirit to be with us always. I have heard someone recently use the metaphor of radio waves to give a sense of how the Spirit lives with and in us. It has often fascinated me that radio waves were always there but in a sense were only drawn down when instruments to do so were invented in the past century or so. The old folktales of people hearing fairy music may have a fairly simple scientific explanation. A combination of metreological factors may have led to radio waves being accessed, with music from a far-off session being picked up inadvertantly on air.
A TG4 programme about Hy-Brasil a couple of years ago gave a somewhat similar explanation of how an illusion of a faraway city on the horizon may in fact be a picture of a real place transported by athmospheric conditions in something the same way as a television picture. The air waves or whatever it is that gives us the worlkwide web many of us use every day of the week must have always been there but we did not know how to, or did not have the equipment, to plug into it. Many would see the Spirit of God as being with us in a similar sort of way. All we have to do is to decide to access it by our prayer.
It is never a great idea to try and explain any mystery, but some human pictures and experiences give us hints about such matters. That is all. When I was a child at Clogher National school I could never understand how teachers and others considered the Holy Trinity to be a mystery. Nothing was simpler in my little mind. My approach was that if God was all he was cracked up to be he could be anything he liked. No need for further explanation. Ah yes: “Unless we become as little children…”
Week ending May 14th 2013
After forty-two years as a priest I have at last had the opportunity to actually hammer on a pulpit. Well, more podium than pulpit, maybe, but you know what I mean. There I was, claw hammer in my hand in the middle of Mass, hammering away. I had often heard of pulpit thumpers among the clergy but have always resisted the advice given by a Meath Parish priest as I learned to preach: “Denounce them, lads. It’s the only thing they’ll listen to.” I was not denouncing anyone now either, just meditating on the passion of Jesus Christ. I was using a hammer and a couple of nails driven into a piece of timber to remind my audience which included Radio na Gaeltachta listeners online throughout the world what sound Jesus heard as the nails were driven through his hands and feet into the wood of his cross. It is quite probable that the nails were put through his wrists and ankles as the steel would cut through the flesh below the fingers when the weight of a man’s body came to hang on his hands.
I imagined Mary his mother as the sound of hammer on nail sounded over Calvary, each blow echoing in her heart and seeping to the marrow of her bones. It was a sound she knew well as her husband Joseph was a carpenter, a trade learned from him by his son. Jesus would have had more skill with a hammer and nails than his crucifiers, young Roman soldiers far from home, nervous, as they, like British soldiers in this country in recent times, did not know where the next attack might come from. Hammer blows could have been hit and miss, bouncing off flesh and bone as often as hitting the nail on the head. Perhaps that is why Jesus remarked as he forgave them: “they do not know what they are doing.” Amazingly I have had more reaction from those four hammer blows than from most sermons I have preached. The nail must have been hit on the head in more ways than one.
Radio na Gaeltachta was broadcasting Sunday Mass from Carna as part of Féile Joe Éinniú. Seosamh Ó hÉanaigh was one of the greatest sean-nós singers of them all. His repertoire included English as well as Irish songs and he is reputed to have had a big influence on the Dubliners in their heyday. For many followers, Carna is the home of sean-nós singing and dancing. The mainly male-voice choir that comes together on special occasions and funeral Masses is in itself a unique sound. It was heard all too often that weekend as there were a number of funerals. It amazes me year after year how many people seem to manage to last the winter only to pass away as it ends. On a happier note I am delighted that local young musicians play their instruments at Saturday evening Masses in the local church, leaving Sunday Mass to the organ and accompanying singers.
This was the first Mass broadcast from Carna since Radio na Gaeltachta celebrated their forty years in existence last year. I took the opportunity to praise them for all that they have done for traditional singing and music down through the years, as well as for their ongoing support for the Irish language itself. The more mischevious side of me produced a cheque I had received from the radio station in 1977. It was a cheque for ‘Aon phunt glan’ – ‘one pound’ that I have never cashed. The cheque is made out to: “An tSiúr Standún,” – Sister Standún, proof, if proof is needed, that I am the first woman priest of the Roman Catholic church.
I imagined Mary his mother as the sound of hammer on nail sounded over Calvary, each blow echoing in her heart and seeping to the marrow of her bones. It was a sound she knew well as her husband Joseph was a carpenter, a trade learned from him by his son. Jesus would have had more skill with a hammer and nails than his crucifiers, young Roman soldiers far from home, nervous, as they, like British soldiers in this country in recent times, did not know where the next attack might come from. Hammer blows could have been hit and miss, bouncing off flesh and bone as often as hitting the nail on the head. Perhaps that is why Jesus remarked as he forgave them: “they do not know what they are doing.” Amazingly I have had more reaction from those four hammer blows than from most sermons I have preached. The nail must have been hit on the head in more ways than one.
Radio na Gaeltachta was broadcasting Sunday Mass from Carna as part of Féile Joe Éinniú. Seosamh Ó hÉanaigh was one of the greatest sean-nós singers of them all. His repertoire included English as well as Irish songs and he is reputed to have had a big influence on the Dubliners in their heyday. For many followers, Carna is the home of sean-nós singing and dancing. The mainly male-voice choir that comes together on special occasions and funeral Masses is in itself a unique sound. It was heard all too often that weekend as there were a number of funerals. It amazes me year after year how many people seem to manage to last the winter only to pass away as it ends. On a happier note I am delighted that local young musicians play their instruments at Saturday evening Masses in the local church, leaving Sunday Mass to the organ and accompanying singers.
This was the first Mass broadcast from Carna since Radio na Gaeltachta celebrated their forty years in existence last year. I took the opportunity to praise them for all that they have done for traditional singing and music down through the years, as well as for their ongoing support for the Irish language itself. The more mischevious side of me produced a cheque I had received from the radio station in 1977. It was a cheque for ‘Aon phunt glan’ – ‘one pound’ that I have never cashed. The cheque is made out to: “An tSiúr Standún,” – Sister Standún, proof, if proof is needed, that I am the first woman priest of the Roman Catholic church.
Week ending May 7th 2013
I was on standby for a call from Pope Francis during a welcome twelve day break recently. It is not that I was expecting a cardinal’s red hat, but I thought he might need help to move his bags and baggage into the papal apartment in the Vatican. The Pope seems reluctant to go there. Perhaps he fears that the Irish property tax may be expanded to contaminate the rest of Europe, but then I am not sure how the Vatican, as an independent entity, stands with regard to EU law. I was about to call the Irish Embassy to the little state to seek information when I remembered that he is not allowed to live there no more. Maybe our Foreign Affairs Department has scared even the Pope out of house and home. Hang in there Francis. The Irish have only two more months of European Presidency left.
The real story is that Pope Francis is as happy as Larry in the Domus Santa Maria, the P&B in which he stayed before being elected Pope. Papal spokesman and fellow Jesuit, Fr. Federico Lombardi acknowledged recently that “Papa Francesco is very comfortable there.” As a Jesuit, an order priest as distinct from a diocesan one like myself living on his own, Pope Francis has lived in community for most of his life, so he may be staying on for the company of the many priests, religious, bishops and cardinals who stay in the Domus Santa Maria from time to time. On the other hand he may fear that the Vatican apartment may be haunted, or worse again, bugged by the ‘baddies’ in the Roman Curia who obviously made life very difficult for his predecessor, Pope Benedict.
The same Curia cardinals have reason to fear that Pope Francis will pass up on the traditional red leather slippers worn by other Popes in favour of a pair of strong red hobnails of the FCA of old variety. Argentinian rugby has a reputation for producing hard hitting front row forwards, and a look at the papal shoulders suggest that the new Pope will be no pushover in the spiritual scrum. To mix metaphors he may use his hobnails to kick metaphorical donkey in the next few months. He might even do it with a softshoe shuffle, as Argentinians like Lionel Messi or Diego Maradona have proven themselves nifty movers on the field of life, selling dummies left and right while bamboozling massed defences. Curia chiefs may have more to fear from the foot rather than the ‘hand of God.’
As with all nine day wonders media focus has rightly switched from the novelty of the new papacy to issues like the Boston bombing or the appalling tragedy of the collapsed factory in Bangladesh. Pope Francis has not been in the news as often as he was in the earlier days of his papacy but he has been quietly getting on with his work and with his own agenda. One significant move has been the unblocking of the beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered in El Salvador in the eighties. Popes John Paul 11 and Benedict seem to have felt that such a move would spell approval for radical ‘liberation theology’ but Pope Francis sees it as a boost for ‘the church of the poor,’ which he has highlighted again and again since his election. A new advisory council to help the Pope includes only one Italian, but has nominees from Latin America, North America, Australia, India, Germany and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Church administration is becoming more representative of the universal (the catholic) church.
The real story is that Pope Francis is as happy as Larry in the Domus Santa Maria, the P&B in which he stayed before being elected Pope. Papal spokesman and fellow Jesuit, Fr. Federico Lombardi acknowledged recently that “Papa Francesco is very comfortable there.” As a Jesuit, an order priest as distinct from a diocesan one like myself living on his own, Pope Francis has lived in community for most of his life, so he may be staying on for the company of the many priests, religious, bishops and cardinals who stay in the Domus Santa Maria from time to time. On the other hand he may fear that the Vatican apartment may be haunted, or worse again, bugged by the ‘baddies’ in the Roman Curia who obviously made life very difficult for his predecessor, Pope Benedict.
The same Curia cardinals have reason to fear that Pope Francis will pass up on the traditional red leather slippers worn by other Popes in favour of a pair of strong red hobnails of the FCA of old variety. Argentinian rugby has a reputation for producing hard hitting front row forwards, and a look at the papal shoulders suggest that the new Pope will be no pushover in the spiritual scrum. To mix metaphors he may use his hobnails to kick metaphorical donkey in the next few months. He might even do it with a softshoe shuffle, as Argentinians like Lionel Messi or Diego Maradona have proven themselves nifty movers on the field of life, selling dummies left and right while bamboozling massed defences. Curia chiefs may have more to fear from the foot rather than the ‘hand of God.’
As with all nine day wonders media focus has rightly switched from the novelty of the new papacy to issues like the Boston bombing or the appalling tragedy of the collapsed factory in Bangladesh. Pope Francis has not been in the news as often as he was in the earlier days of his papacy but he has been quietly getting on with his work and with his own agenda. One significant move has been the unblocking of the beatification of Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered in El Salvador in the eighties. Popes John Paul 11 and Benedict seem to have felt that such a move would spell approval for radical ‘liberation theology’ but Pope Francis sees it as a boost for ‘the church of the poor,’ which he has highlighted again and again since his election. A new advisory council to help the Pope includes only one Italian, but has nominees from Latin America, North America, Australia, India, Germany and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Church administration is becoming more representative of the universal (the catholic) church.
