solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ.

Community Mass of Corpus Christi

Intro Mass Body and Blood of Christ, year B 2012

Today is the solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Body and Blood of Christ. It is also the beginning of the International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, which continues for the whole week.

The purpose of the Congress, as it is of today’s solemnity, is to celebrate and understand more fully the legacy left us by our Lord of his body and blood in the bread and wine of the altar. He imparts to us his risen life. That is what we receive and celebrate. It is not his physical, earthly, body and blood as he was then but as he became and is for us now in his risen life. This new life is forever a new beginning for us as we try to rise above our faults and sins.

1 Lord Jesus, you raise us to new life. - Lord, have mercy.

2 You forgive and free us from our sins - Christ, have mercy.

3 You reconcile us to one another in your own body.
- Lord, have mercy.

Prayer of the Faithful

Intro. As one body, let us prayer to our Father
who gives life to the world..

Concl. God our Father, may the gift of food we eat at this table make us strong, and may all of your gifts fill our lives as we seek your kingdom in heaven.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Novice Habit - Abbot's talk on the Reception Br. Seamus

Monday, 11 June 2012

Novice Habit - Abbot's talk on the Reception Br. Seamus

Sent: Sunday, 10 June 2012, 16:25
Subject: Talk on reception of the habit  

After Lauds, the Chapter of the Community was present for ceremony of the habit given to the Novice, Seamus Conway.  
The Reception of a Novice is a very practical activity but full of symbolism. On this occasion for the time, the Sacristan was asked to photograph the happy event, as the pictures attached.

 

Talk on the Reception of the Habit     

Seamus Conway          10 June 2012

Traditionally the abbot uses this talk to remind a postulant on the day he receives the habit what his vocation is about, what he has come to the monastery for.  God calls people to the monastic life by various roads but always to the same end.  That end is truly to seek God.  The means to it are many.  The chief of these are prayer and love of the brethren.  Unless we remind ourselves of the need to keep God in our sights and to keep walking with him, we will falter on the way.  

Our daily reading, our regular attendance at the Divine Office and our openness to the calls on our time at awkward moments – when others have a real need – are also means to keeping God before our eyes.  We need to plan our days and to work within the structures of the monastic timetable, but it’s amazing how often we have to drop our own plans because of other circumstances.  We can be busy doing God’s work and yet at the end of the day wonder what on earth we have been doing all day.  The time has flown and we don’t seem to have done anything constructive.  We must not use this experience, which hopefully won’t happen too often, as an excuse for not planning our day.  An ordered day does matter. It is pleasant to do the things that we like, but it is better to get on with the things we have to do whether we like them or not.  That is the way monasteries came to be built over the years and how holy monks came to be formed. 

and Br. Seamus

    

To grow as a person and to become steeped in monastic wisdom is not just about filling the mind with information, though that is important and part of our formation.  True growth is more of a mentality and a training of the heart.  Life can be hard.  In ancient monastic folklore and in the annals of monastic history it has been known for newcomers to the monastic life to be asked to do foolish or ridiculous things.  The famous one is being told to plant cabbages upside down.  Daily living in community is difficult enough without spending time creatively thinking of ways to make life more difficult for newcomers.  There are enough of us who can create that kind of situation naturally without trying.  Part of community living is to put up with such situations, though the community should try and put a stop to such things happening.  The funny thing is that we almost always think that some people do go out their way to make life difficult for us.
      

However these times in our lives can be the very ones that lead us closer to God because they force us to go to God like the psalmist, and plead for help.  We learn quicker our need of God.  These times are also moments when we can get a better awareness if we really do have a call to the monastic life.

Our fellow monks are there to help us on way to God.  We should not let any quirks or peculiar personal oddities they may have to throw us off course.  St John of the Cross, I think it was, said that if we want to have love in our lives, we should put love into life and then we will find it.
 

That, Seamus, is what you have before you.  You came to us with your own particular gifts and you will add to them by receiving the gifts that the other members of the community themselves possess.  Fullness of life comes from giving and receiving what we all have to share.
 

These are only some of the things that have drawn you to the monastic life.  Our vocation is to seek and find God, to hold fast to him in good times and bad.  That is the way offered to you.  After your experience over a number of months in this community, it is time for you now to decide if you wish to continue living with us as you continue to seek God’s will in your life. 

    

 

Holy Trinity

Sunday, 10 June 2012

Holy Trinity

Homily for Holy Trinity, 2012                                         

 11.00 Mass

When we think of the Holy Trinity, due to our upbringing and the particular focus of theological thinking in the Church of our time, most of us normally think of three Persons in the One nature of God.  Sometimes this can make our understanding of God seem far away and ‘up there’ - very remote from everyday life.

In fact the knowledge of God which Jesus gave his disciples was very personal.  He spoke to them of the experience he had with the Father.  His Father was not an idea but a Person.  That seems quite a concrete but because of the way he went on to talk of the Father, the disciples found it difficult to understand him at times.  We can find it difficult enough to understand each other so it is hardly surprising the disciples having this problem, too, on hearing Jesus’ words.

Jesus was an immensely attractive individual.  All sorts of people were drawn to him by the force of his personality and the compassion he showed to the poor and the needy.  Some looked to him for new life and others to find reasons for doing away with him because of the threat he was to their lifestyle.  So Jesus was someone who touched on the lives of others for good or for bad.  Life is never neutral.  During the course of it we will make choices for what is life-enhancing or what is ultimately selfish.  We cannot stand by and not take part in the drama of life.  Our lives are either increased or diminished by Christ’s coming on earth.

So what is it that made Jesus so different from the rest of humankind?  He was first of all concerned not for himself but for others.  He gave from what he himself had received.  That came from this close but mysterious ‘Father’ Jesus spoke about to the disciples.  They had lived with him during his years of ministry, so they knew him well enough to know that what he told them was somehow true, even though they may have found it hard to understand  him fully.  There was always room for misunderstanding.  But those grains of truth had been sown.  When he rose again from the dead those grains of seed came to life and bore fruit in their new awareness of who he was.

And who was this man Jesus?  He is the one who spoke of God as his Father.  No son was as close to his father as he was to his.  No married couple or closest of friends were as intimate as he was with his Father.  At times he spoke as if hewas the Father or that the Father was him.  At other times he said he was doing the work of the Father and that he did nothing that was not from the Father.  Jesus said that he must go to be where he was from the beginning.  It is all so unusual!

And then there is the mention of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus told the disciples that he had to go or the Holy Spirit would not be able to come to them.  When he came he would reveal the full meaning of all he had told them.  This Spirit was the expression of the love, of the being, of Father and Son

Jesus told us he was one with the Father.  But now there is a difference.  Jesus, true Son of God the Father and true son of man, has risen from the dead, and has ascended with this humanity into the Godhead. 

The Holy Trinity which we honour today now contains some of our humanity.  With the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, this same risen Jesus said he would return to be with us always.  But the Father would also be with us because Jesus said that he and the Father are one.  Together they would remain with us.  When we are alone in times of sorrow, or when we are feeling deserted, they would still be with us in their care and friendship.

The bishops and theologians in the early centuries of the Church’s existence were so convinced of Jesus’ words about the Father and the Holy Spirit that they stated clearly that there are three Persons in the One reality of God.  This is not a puzzle to be worked out but more a bond of love and relationship which embraces all of us.

Today’s readings at Mass do not give us the main texts of the gospel which speak of the relationship of Father and Son.  But they do speak of the mystery of God and of the mission to go and preach that good news to our world.  Grace, love and fellowship are the blessings we receive from Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit.  These gifts of such a marvellous God are what the Church proclaims to the world.   We are called to be true to them and to express them through the lives we lead.

Abbot Mark

Growing into Christ

21 Sunday, Year A, 2011         (11.00 am)   

Today we have the gospel passage of Peter’s profession of faith in who he believed Jesus was.  This section of the gospel is normally seen only as applying to Peter and his successors and of their importance in safeguarding the role and power of the Holy See and its care of the Church universal. 

Peter certainly meant what he said in his reply to Jesus’ question as to who the disciples thought he was.  And yet subsequent events showed that Peter did not really/fully understand what he was actually saying in this magnificent profession of faith.  Jesus himself told Peter that it was his Father in heaven who revealed the truth of what he had boldly stated.

Peter’s words were truly prophetic.  Jesus responded by praising Peter and guaranteeing his position and future role guiding and caring for the Church.  Jesus took this step in spite of Peter’s weakness and forthcoming betrayal of him.  Responsibility and weakness go hand in hand.  Peter spoke truthfully when he said who Jesus was.  However it is obvious that he had not yet fully understood its implications.  That is no different from the rest of us.  We all have to make our basic life commitments.  We know what we want to do but not necessarily what it will all lead to.  That is why once we definitively commit ourselves we need to remain open to all that unfolds for us in the future.  It is not possible to foresee what lies over the horizon.

We normally don’t realise want we are taking on.  We can probably see the positive gains but not realise the difficulty of acquiring them in practice.  Perhaps that is no bad thing or we might be too afraid to do what is the right thing.  Life and the various vocations within it, whether they are to marriage, to the priesthood, the religious life, or careers in nursing, teaching, or whatever, they are all enriching and challenging.   And they all demand ongoing change in us if we live them properly.  God never stops giving us new challenges and gifts.  If we respond to them we will grow more into what we are called to be.  The challenges may not be world shaking.  These may simply be small changes to the way we live with one another, to the way we pray, to responding more readily to the needs of those around us.  These are things that make our world go round and keep us faithful disciples to the Lord.

To be happy in our lives is to be confident in God’s presence and help, whatever the weaknesses we are aware of within our hearts.  In our following of Christ we needn’t necessarily feel more self-confident as life goes on.  But those who follow Christ look to him more than at themselves, knowing their ever-increasing need of God.  It is not unusual to find in the lives of the saints that they think ‘There go I –sinner - without the grace of God’.

Our vocation is to grow in confidence that Christ is with us, not that we are less in need of God.  Our faith therefore is a journey of growth.  That growth is an increase of God in our lives, which frustratingly is not very evident to us as we go about our lives.  I suppose it is others who are the only true witnesses to our nearness to God.  But, whether we know it or not doesn’t really matter in the end.

Peter grew into becoming the upholder and brother of his companions in the faith.  His story of budding faith and movement from faltering to full belief in Christ is a reflection of our own.  

The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

CNS photo - Baltimore Cathedral

Assumption, 2011                               Chapter Sermon                                                             

• The Assumption of our Lady into heaven is not just another feast of Mary which completes her CV.  Nor is it an anniversary which we remember each year and then go on with our own lives.
• Mary’s Assumption reaffirms our belief in the resurrection of Jesus, which is the bedrock of our faith.  As St Paul says in writing to the Corinthians, ‘If he has not risen then our faith is dead.’
• The Assumption of Mary expresses our belief that we are all on the road to heaven.  Heaven is the destination we are heading for.  Each morning when we awaken we are moving further along that route.
• Our Lady’s Assumption is the hook on which we hang our belief that she has ascended to be beside her Son in heaven and that our destiny lies in hers. 
• Jesus is truly risen.  That belief underpins our faith; Mary’s Assumption is the confirmation of that truth.  She is the first disciple of her Son.  And she is also the first to experience the full reality of what happened to her Son after his death.  He rose to new life.  She shares that reality in a much fuller way than we can appreciate.  We believe that we are saved through the death and resurrection of Jesus - but not yet!  We still have to battle with our demons and conquer them.  But the power of the risen Jesus is with us to guide and help us and the example of Mary and the saints are also there to encourage and assist us as we travel.
• On this feast of Mary we celebrate that mystery of faith.   We know that we are truly one with the risen Lord and must go on in faith believing that this is so. 
• When Jesus was speaking to the crowd about the bread of life, they didn’t or wouldn’t understand what he was saying and so went away from him.  It was a great act of faith they were being asked to make.  (What would have been our own response if we had been there?)  Jesus then asked his faithful band of disciples if they would go away as well.  Perhaps the disciples were not sure what Jesus was actually saying.  But they knew him and trusted him.  Peter’s reply, ‘Lord to whom shall we go?’ must be ours, too, as we stand before this other great mystery of life after death.  Mary now fully experiences that for herself.  It awaits all of us at the end.
• The road to that glorious place has been mapped out for us.  Sometimes in preparation for an important journey we like to drive over the ground ourselves to make sure we are on the right road.  We can then see what lies ahead and be more sure we are going in the right direction. 
• Unfortunately our own inner life journey doesn’t have that kind of precise and clear view of the road ahead.  What we do know is that we will get there if we learn from those who have gone before us.  They have shown us how they did it.  We also know that the way we live/the way we drive, the courtesy we show to the others we meet on the way as we go along, and the care we take as we travel, all affect how we get to our destination.
• Like most road maps in today’s world we can’t be sure if the exact route others took is still viable for us as we make the journey ourselves.  Even a satnav warns you to be wary as there may be diversions or road works ahead. So, even though we know where we want to go, we sometimes need to stop and check where we are.  We may have to turn round to get back on to the proper road, either because we took a wrong turning or the route has been altered slightly.
• Holiness and getting to heaven is not like a carbon copy which we adhere to blindly.  We have to apply the gospel to our life, to our vocation and personal circumstances, so that we finally arrive at the desired goal. 
• The funny thing is that we may all travel in different ways but those who arrive at the ‘pearly gates’ share an uncanny likeness.  They are all transfigured with the same glory that Peter, James and John saw shining on Jesus on the mountain.  That was a foreshadowing of the glory given to the risen Jesus and now to Mary in her assumption into heaven.  Please God it will be a foretaste of what lies ahead for all of us as we daily seek with Mary’s help to stay on that golden road to God.

Living Pentecost

Homily  - Pentecost, 2011

• Some people are so gifted that there seems to be no end to the variety and number of their activities. They act so confidently and naturally and succeed in the many things they do.  It’s not surprising therefore that we see the same in Christ.  In him we see a many-sided personality.  In the scriptures we find there many wondering who he is, both among his followers and those who want to destroy him.
  
• All sorts of people were attracted to him because of his teaching and also for his otherworldliness.   He seemed more than the historical person we know him to have been.  
  
• There was something different and hidden about him.  But it wasn’t really a long-kept secret, for Jesus did tell his disciples who he was but they did not understand what he had meant.  That’s not surprising as we often don’t understand each other.  We are not as open to others as we think.  
  
• The love and the care Jesus showed expressed in the pages of the scriptures were his but were more than his.  During the course of the past week in the daily gospel readings at Mass Jesus was seen talking about his intimate relationship with The ‘Father’.
• 
  
• He had a wonderfully close and understanding bond with the Father.  Married love or ‘best friend’ relationships could not be closer than this unity Jesus tells us he has with his Father in heaven.  It was so intimate that he spoke as if at times he was the Father or that the Father was like him.
  
• It wasn’t surprising then that in succeeding ages the bishops and theologians in the early Church eventually came to the conclusion that there is indeed something greater in Jesus.  He was not just a superhuman man.  They believed that there is in fact an immensely complex reality present in Christ, in God.  Somehow Jesus and his Father are one and have always been.  They are separate identities - Persons, and yet one because of their great love.  And it is this love that Jesus came to share with us.  Not as something we can take or possess, but share.  The nature of sharing is that you give something of yourself.  When Jesus and the Father give us of themselves it is the Holy Spirit, their Spirit, which comes to us.  That is what we see in the colourful words used in the Acts of the Apostles describing the first Pentecost.  The apostles were transformed.  They were taken out of themselves.  In a way they were like Father and Son going out in love to express their experience.  That is the way of all great experiences.  We want to share it.  We want others to see what we have been given.  
  
• This gift of God’s life contains so much of God that it became another expression of God, the Holy Spirit - another Person.  This Paraclete, this other helper; was one with the Father and the Son.  That is why the risen Jesus would be with us always through the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.  
  
• This realisation is so compelling that the Church has firmly stated that there are three Persons in the one reality that is God.  This is not a numbers game.  People have used ingenious explanations to try and reconcile the seeming contradiction of God being three but also one.  The gospel tells us not so much that God is out there and needs to be found by us as that God is in our lives and in our hearts.  There it is God who seeks us.  God is the breath we live by.
• 
  
• The Holy Spirit gave new life to the apostles in the upper room.  They became energised and courageous enough to proclaim the good news of Christ and his message.  This same Spirit has come to do the same for us making us one in the body of Christ the Church.  This vocation may be in the public arena or quietly in the way we live our ordinary daily lives.
  
• The Spirit’s coming upon us on this feast of Pentecost fills us with God’s life; through the Holy Spirit the presence of the risen Christ remains with us all the days of our lives.
  
• Some priests were holidaying in the north of Italy in the month of August.  They arrived in Milan for their final weekend. On the Sunday they went to the Cathedral to concelebrate Mass.  The colour of the vestments was red.  They asked the sacristan whose feast they were celebrating and he replied: ‘Today is Pentecost.’  (This was a very hot day at the end of August.) to all who would listen.   The sacristan went on to explain that in the Ambrosian Rite used in Milan they wore red vestments for Pentecost, and for the rest of the year.  The Holy Spirit given at Pentecost, he said, is still with us.  Pentecost is not simply the celebration of the anniversary of an historical event.  It is a permanent reality in the Church.

Parting

Nunraw - 'Nun's Walk'

Homily for 6th Sunday of Easter, 2011

This time of year in the liturgy we are living through the resurrection experience of Jesus. We are being shown how that burst of new energy and life was put into his followers.

We are being made more aware, at the same time, of Jesus’ imminent leave-taking. All departing can be difficult. Members of families leave the maternal home to set up a place of their own; loved ones go abroad, perhaps never to be seen again; and, there is the final parting of death.
Whenever we do experience a parting, a change takes place in those who are left behind. Parents must allow their children stand on their own two feet and look to the future. The young ones need to explore the world for themselves, hopefully with the experience and earlier training their parents gave them to guide them. Young married couples must be left to live their new life together and to learn from their own mistakes. In the case of death in a family, there is the responsibility of creating a new centre of focus for the family’s future.

Today in the gospel reading, Christ tells his disciples he must leave them. They had gone through the trauma of his death on the cross but he had come back to them. Now he tells them that he is now really going away for good. They had lost him but had found him again. Now they were going to lose him once and for all. Life is full of uncertainties and sometimes of false hopes. The disciples seem to have had more than their fair share of those. But human hope springs eternal. That is what the disciples have learnt through the Lord’s resurrection and ascension to his Father. We too have to learn that lesson.

We know now that death is a gateway to a fuller life. That all departing is another beginning for those who leave but also for those who are left behind.

The risen Lord had to go back to the Father. He had come from the Father. His return however was different because he took with him his risen human nature. And that difference allowed him to prepare a place so that we could be with him and with the Father.

After Jesus’ ascension his disciples were empowered to take his message of hope, love and service to their hearts. They would now grow in their understanding of their mission. Now they began to really understand what Jesus had taught them. Through their new-found conviction Jesus would speak through their words and live through their lives. They learned themselves as they preached to others. They would preach the message of reconciliation with God and with one another after sin had cut them off from each other. They proclaimed the good news of peace and joy that comes from hearing and putting into practice what Jesus had taught them before his death. The disciples realised that they had to die to self and put their lives at risk if they were to be faithful to the truth that he taught them. That truth is a golden stone that needs to be handed on and lived by if the world is to be saved and to become one in mind and heart.

Being with friends is a heart-warming experience. In taking leave of them we normally plan to meet again. That lessens any sorrow there may be in the parting. Christ’s going to the Father gives that same, but deeper, dimension to our lives. There is a feeling of losing something in the leave-taking but we have the assurance that what we will receive later will be immeasurably greater than what we seem to have lost now.

Jesus himself said that if he did not go the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will not come to us. We might think of it as Jesus’ physical appearance which has to give way so that we can receive the Spirit which in some mysterious way is the risen Lord’s inner presence in us. The life of the risen Jesus dwells in our deepest being. When we are given that then we will truly live with him and speak for him. That is how we will be able to give his message to the world.