A Last Word from the Pope!

On Shrove Tuesday the community here came together to reflect on the Pope’s Lenten Message. Little did we realise when we decided on this topic some weeks ago that we would be gathering a day after the Pope’s shock announcement of his resignation. So in our reflections the friars viewed the text as one of Pope Benedict’s last messages, one of his final words to us. Seen in that light we read the text even more closely!

For a man who has been portrayed so often as severe in his understanding of the Christian faith the message is wonderfully positive and attractive - “affirmative orthodoxy” at its best, emphasising  what our Christian belief says yes to and rejoices in. Even though it is a “word” for the Lenten journey there is no mention of sin or evil. These realities are not denied, but our eyes are turned toward the light of God’s love, not to the darkness.

Recently I heard a priest share who had given some time to read the Pope’s writings and talks. Like so many he has a jaundiced view of the Pope so he was very surprised to discover just how positive and attractive his teachings were, and that joy (in the Lord, in believing, in the experience of grace, in service) was such a constant theme throughout.

In his final Lenten Message, Pope Benedict writes of how faith leads to love in action. But the origin of faith is the response “to the revelation of God’s gratuitous and ‘passionate’ love for us, fully revealed in Jesus Christ.” The Church is hopefully being formed by “people who have been conquered by Christ’s love and accordingly, under the influence of that love” serve their brothers and sisters. The time of Lent is meant to renew “the first and indispensable contact with the Divine” that makes us “fall in love with Love.” As we enter more and more into this dynamic of Love, “we grow in it and we joyfully communicate it to others.”

This message, one of Pope Benedict’s last to us, is well worth reading!

Reading that Nourishes Faith

I have finished reading The Duty of Delight, an abridged version of the diaries of Dorothy Day (1897-1980), the founder the Catholic Worker and Houses of Hospitality. Her diaries span her entire adult life and they reveal the story of her spiritual path. Reading them I was struck by how serious she took her own “faith formation”. There are frequent references to reading on her faith and how it sustained her. As a young woman struggling with poverty, she realising “with intense joy, I will always have the torrents of pleasure promised by the psalms, the joy that come from reading, from study, from association with noble minds.”

Amid all the difficulties and loneliness she experienced in her pioneering work among the poor, she writes: “I do plenty of spiritual reading to refresh myself and to encourage myself. Reading is the oil that keeps the lamp burning.” Her reflection on the psalms was a constant blessing: “There is never a time when it is not balm to me for an aching heart.” Towards the end of her life: “Even with all the symptoms of old age and decrepitude my heart can still leap for joy as I read and assent to some truth of the faith enunciated by some great mind or heart.”

But none of this was dry intellectualism – she wanted to live the truth that enlightened her. “The difference between a dead-weight knowledge and a living rich experience can never be enough expressed. I must keep praying that great thoughts will click and pass into life!” As her faith grew stronger, so too did her confidence in God’s love: “Humanity went astray, but Jesus Christ was born and we are richer by that Fall. What a great mystery. The worst has already happened and has been repaired.”

Her desire to grow deeper in living faith meant that she listened to sermons with eagerness – not a very common attitude! “St Teresa said she so loved to hear the Word of God preached that she would listen with enjoyment to the poorest preacher. I know what she meant.” Dorothy writes of a parish mission she was attending in New York in 1939: “It is an exceptionally good mission and my heart is filled with gratitude that God has so blessed us this Lent.” The Jesuit priest preached “in a popular fashion yet dealing with profound ideas”.

We are called to love God “with our whole mind”. Countless times I have experienced that solid reading and Spirit-filled preaching have provided nourishment for my faith and a new energy for the Lord and His service.

New Year - New Beginning

St Francis used to tell his friars, ‘Let us begin again for up to now we have done little or nothing.’

He had the capacity to leave the past to God’s compassion and to look forward with hope, trusting in grace from the Lord.

Stepping out again in confidence, being willing to begin again, setting goals for the path ahead – this is what renews our energy and gives zest to life!

‘Make New Year's goals. Dig within, and discover what you would like to have happen in your life this year. This helps you do your part. It is an affirmation that you're interested in fully living life in the year to come.
Goals give us direction. They put a powerful force into play on a universal, conscious, and subconscious level. Goals give our life direction.

What would you like to have happen in your life this year? What would you like to do, to accomplish? What good would you like to attract into your life? What particular areas of growth would you like to have happen to you? What blocks, or character defects, would you like to have removed?

What would you like to attain? Little things and big things? Where would you like to go? What would you like to have happen in friendship and love? What would you like to have happen in your family life?

What problems would you like to see solved? What decisions would you like to make? What would you like to happen in your career?

Write it down. Take a piece of paper, a few hours of your time, and write it all down - as an affirmation of you, your life, and your ability to choose. Then let it go. 

The New Year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.’

Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go

Christmas: 'And is it true?'

Writing of London in the days before Christmas, John Betjeman's poem Christmas captures the rush and fuss that precedes the celebration. 

But then he asks the core question: Is it true? 

Is it true?

In this Year of Faith that question goes to the heart of our believing.

Is it true that God has come so close to us? Is it true that he now shares our humanity so we can share his divinity? Is it true that foolish love has led God to such astonishing means to reach us?

Is it true?

Wishing you light and joy unbounded as you ponder that question during these days of grace!

Christmas

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green...

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

John Betjeman (1906-84)

Advent - Mary's Full Yes

The beautiful lines below by Denise Levertov go to the heart of the mystery we celebrate in this season. 

Love - both divine and human - interact, open to one another.

Love - free, full and fruitful!

May Mary lead us so our consent, our yes, comes from an ever-deeper level. 

Then the 'enfleshing' of the Lord can continue even in our humanity.

 

Consent

This was the minute no one speaks of,
when she could still refuse.
A breath unbreathed,
Spirit,
suspended,
waiting.

She did not cry, "I cannot, I am not worthy,"
nor, "I have not the strength."
She did not submit with gritted teeth,
raging, coerced.
Bravest of all humans,
consent illumined her.
The room filled with its light,
the lily glowed in it,
and the iridescent wings.

Consent,
courage unparalleled,
opened her utterly.

                                Denise Levertov

Advent - Focus on the Essential

Elizabeth cried out: "Why should I be honour with a visit from the mother of my Lord?"

The Advent-Christmas season focuses us on what is at the heart of our faith. 

Jesus is Emmanuel - God with us, God for us.

The community of the Lord's disciples has as its primary role to witness to this God of love who has come in search of us.

So often the Church is seen only in the light of its problems - even by believers. Yes, there are issues and problems galore but all should be viewed in the light of the astonishing goodness that has been made known to us.

If we lose sight of Christ and who he is - what point is there in belonging to the faith community?  

Pope Benedict recalls how, "When I used go to Germany in the 1980s and '90s, I was asked to give interviews and I always knew the questions in advance. They concerned the ordination of women, contraception, abortion and other such constantly recurring problems. 

If we let ourselves be drawn constantly into these discussions, the Church is then identified with certain commandments or prohibitions; we give the impression that we are moralists with a few somewhat antiquated convictions, and not even a hint of the true greatness of the faith appears.

I therefore consider it essential always to highlight the greatness of our faith. God is Love - to the point that he completely humbled himself, assuming a human body and finally, giving himself into our hands as bread. We know that God is not a philosophical hypothesis, he is not something that perhaps exists, but we know him and he knows us.” 

The Pope points out: "Many seek meditation elsewhere because they think that they will not be able to find a spiritual dimension in Christianity. We must show them once again not only that this spiritual dimension exists but that it is the source of all things.”

Christ, Son of God and Mary's child, is our message. 

The Gospel of grace not moralism is our gift to the world.

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!