Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny, chats with Friar Pat Lynch at the official opening of the Riverbank Centre, Dublin, on 21 November.
 
Merchants Quay Ireland's (MQI) new centre for homeless and drugs services provides nearly 7,000 hot meals a week, along with a warm welcome, counselling, medical and dental services and a needle exchange programme. 

Clients comment: “I was abused. A lot of my childhood was snatched away from me. If MQI wasn’t there, I would have killed myself through overdose” (Niall).

“If I need to get a phone or need a letter, MQI helps me with that" (Miora). 

“The staff at MQI give you their ear, they are thoughtful. They remember your name. Fairly simple stuff, but it was big to me at the time” (Brendan). 

"My teeth were gone. Every simple little thing, now I have my health, I am able to walk around” (Martin).

Minister Provincial, Hugh McKenna, invokes the blessing.

On Saturday 24 November, the blessing of Riverbank  was celebrated with Dublin Orchestral Players giving a concert in Adam and Eve's Church, Merchants' Quay, Dublin.

May the Centre be a place of warm Franciscan welcome and healing grace for all who enter its doors!

Hearts Wide Open to Beauty!

 

As our brothers and sisters in the United States celebrate Thanksgiving - a prayer of joyful gratitude for the blessings and beauty of the world around us.

O God, we thank you for this earth, our home;

For the wide sky and the blessed sun,

For the salt sea and the running water,

For the everlasting hills

And the never-resting winds,

For trees and the common

grass underfoot.

We thank you for our senses

By which we hear the

songs of birds,

And see the splendor of

the summer fields,

And taste of the autumn fruits,

And rejoice in the feel of the snow,

And smell the breath of the spring.

Grant us a heart wide open to all this beauty;

And save our souls from being so blind

That we pass unseeing

When even the common thornbush

Is aflame with your glory,

O God our creator,

Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

                           Walter Rauschenbusch

 Happy Thanksgiving!

Growing in Faith

I have a have personal responsibility for my own journey of faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of a “faith that seeks understanding. It is intrinsic to faith that a believer desires to know the One in whom he has put his faith, and to understand better what the Lord has revealed. A more penetrating knowledge will in turn call forth a greater faith, increasingly set afire by love.”

 We are warned that while faith is “an entirely free gift that God gives to a person, we can lose this priceless gift. To live, grow and persevere in the faith to the end we must nourish it, and beg God to increase our faith.” 

Jesus calls us to love God “with our whole mind.”  An Irish Cistercian nun writes: “For me the surest path to contemplation does not involve emptying my mind but rather filling my mind with the marvels that God has done for us in Jesus. Reflection on the mystery of Christ is for me the surest path to praise, thanksgiving and contemplation. Using my mind, not suppressing it, leads to prayer and union with God.” 

Many of us discover as we get older that the certain understandings that guided our youth are insufficient to light the next stage of our life. Many would like their faith to be deeper, better informed, richer. They realise it needs to grow more mature or to be purified of alien elements so that they can live it more faithfully and help steady their uncertain steps.

 

St Paul tells the Christians in Corinth: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in faith. Test yourselves.” But then he adds, “Do you not realise that Jesus Christ is in you?” (2 Corithians13:4). Our faith can only become what it is meant to be when we realise how magnificently Christ is in us, unceasingly inviting us to respond to the grace of the Spirit. 

Then during this Year of Faith we can be gifted with a faith that is living, lived and life-giving.

Disciples and Apprentices

The New Testament word mathetes is usually translated “disciple”. At that time, however, it could also mean an “apprentice”. This humbler term reminds us that we are always apprenticed to the “Master” – “You have only one master, the Christ” (Matthew 23:10). 

The Gospels refer to the Lord’s public ministry as “teaching” some 150 times. He still remains our supreme Teacher who enlightens our minds and instructs us. 

St Augustine said to his people in one of his sermons: “Christ lives in the heart of each one of us, and He is our best teacher. I, the preacher, am pouring out a torrent of words in your ear. My words are meaningless unless He who dwells within you reveals their sense to you. Your true teacher will always be the teacher within. It is He who enables you to understand, in the depths of your being, the truth of what is said to you.” 

The Lord’s outreach and in-breaking into our lives is unrelenting, if we but realised it. Pope Benedict speaks in one of his encyclicals of “the life-less reduction of religion to duty without joy or energy.” He contrasts that with the awareness that “we stand before the astonishing experience of Gift”. 

This Gift is the gratuitous outpouring of divine love that is the source of our creation and redemption, a gift we glimpse when mind and heart are touched by Christ’s light. 

During this Year of Faith may our minds and hearts indeed be touched by that transforming light.

"Speak, Lord, your servant is listening!"

NEW BOOK ON FRANCISCAN SPIRITUALITY!

A NEW BOOK ON FRANCISCAN SPIRITUALITY

Glimpses of the Franciscan Way

By Mark Davis and Francis Cotter, OFM,

with photos by Ged Barrow.

“This wonderful book touches the soul. These pages give a glimpse of

the divine beauty that so captivated the hearts of Francis and Clare.”

Sr Colette, Abbess, Poor Clare Monastery, Galway City.

“Sometimes the text is fine, sometimes the pictures are lovely,

but here they are both brilliant! Here you may use

your mind, your eyes, your heart, and your imagination

to be led into a better, bigger and so much needed world.”

Richard Rohr, OFM,

Center for Action and Contemplation, Albuquerque.

Hardcover, 83 pages – SPECIAL OFFER in our Irish friaries, only €12.

 Available at Franciscan friaries in Ireland

and from

Assisi Bookshop,

Franciscan Friary,

Merchants’ Quay, Dublin 8.

 Phone: 01.6771128

Or contact fjcofm@yahoo.com

 Also available in VERITAS bookshops throughout Ireland.

The Year of Faith

 The Year of Faith has begun.

As with Pope Benedict, John Paul II spoke often of the necessity of an ongoing journey of faith: “It is true that being a Christian means saying ‘yes’ to Jesus Christ, but let us remember that this ‘yes’ has two levels: It consists in surrendering to the Word of God and relying on it in the initial act of faith. But it also means, at a later stage, endeavouring to know better and better the profound meaning of the faith received.” 

He emphasised that this access to deeper faith is a right. “Every baptised person, precisely by reason of being baptised, has the right to receive from the Church instruction and education enabling him or her to enter on a truly Christian life." 

Few would doubt that this catechesis (Greek for teaching), this adult faith formation is a deperate need.

Thomas H. Groome, in his book Will There be Faith?, writes of a teaching dynamic that leads people from life to Faith to life. It is an approach to adult catechesis that goes far beyond merely passively receiving information. He speaks of a way that can inform, form, and transform. 

Inform – educate people to know, understand and embrace with personal conviction Christianity’s core beliefs and values. 

Form – deepen people’s sense of Catholic identity through active engagement in and experience of a Christian community of prayer and service.

Transform – open people to a life-long journey to conversion toward holiness and fullness of life for themselves and “for the life of the world” (John 6:51). 

It is a call to a faith that entails knowledge, relationship and commitment. Groome writes of the faith being embodied in a discipleship of “the head, the heart and the hands”.

In this time of grace may we be open to a deepening of the gift of faith, a faith that embraces all of life.

A Franciscan Blessing

I do not know the origin of this 'Franciscan' blessing but, as we celebrate the feast of St Francis, it is a good counterbalance to the cosy 'Francis of the birdbath' spirituality! 

At the heart of Francis' Gospel vision is delight in the Lord.

However Francis understood most clearly that if our joy in the Lord is to be authentic it must lead to compassion that flowers into action.

May this uncomfortable invocation open us to a more profound Gospel life.

May God bless you with discomfort,
At easy answers, half-truths,
And superficial relationships
So that you may live
Deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger
At injustice, oppression,
And exploitation of people,
So that you may work for
Justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears,
To shed for those who suffer pain,
Rejection, hunger and war,
So that you may reach out your hand
To comfort them and
To turn their pain to joy

And may God bless you
With enough foolishness
To believe that you can
Make a difference in the world,
So that you can do
What others claim cannot be done
To bring justice and kindness
To all our children and the poor.

Amen