THE CARPENTER FROM NAZARETH - Fr. Donal McCarthy sac

                        

Balinvreena Hill in South County Limerick looks down on a verdant and fertile plain, not used much for tillage but providing lush grass for the dairy herds so prevalent around. The parish of Bulgaden-Martinstown goes right up to the foot of the hill. This is where I spent many a happy summer as a small child in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Things were simple then. One of the parishioners was a man called Patrick Corkery. With his brother “Little Jim” he had a carpenter’s shop and a few acres of land. The house was always a happy place where their sister, Nellie, kept a pot of boiling water over the open fire ready to make a fresh pot of tea for any visitor who came in through the open door.

For a child the shop was a source of wonder and delight. All sorts of things were being made and repaired – doors, windows, wheels for horse-carts, “floats” – hay carts used for drawing in wynds/trams of hay into the barn at the end of the summer.

In the chapel of the Pallottine College in Thurles there is a stained glass window of Jesus and Joseph working in another carpenter’s shop but this time in Nazareth. What was it like? Did they have a sign over the door? “Joseph and Jeshu’a” or even “Joseph and Son”? What did they make? We have some idea from the sayings of Jesus – wooden pitchers for water; tables; chairs; tubs (containers for seeds and foods); and lamp stands. Did they, by any chance, make or repair boats by the Sea of Galilee; make wooden ploughs for farmers; oxen yokes; or frames for carrying two pails of water at the one time? Were they also coopers – making barrels?

It is possible that Joseph and Jesus went from town to town repairing or building houses made of stone. In the speech of Jesus there are building metaphors – “splinter in your brother’s eye”, the “log in your own eye”. He talks about digging firm foundations and “building a house on a solid rock”.

And, while we never think of this, we know that Joseph and Jesus sold things. They got paid for their work; otherwise how could they survive? We don’t think that it is “nice” to think of Jesus handling money but he must have been a good business man. He spoke of coppers, shekels, a denarius, talents and silver pieces.

So the romantic Jesus of our imagination turns out to be a real working man. Not as poor as we always imagined him but honest, hard-working and dependable. Educated by Joseph and the other men of the village, Jesus had an oral knowledge of the Old Testament scriptures and a speaking knowledge of Syro-Aramaic and, most probably, Greek, the commercial language of the Roman Empire.

St. Vincent Pallotti always had a devotion to the “hidden life of Jesus”. In this he gives us a good insight. The sheer ordinariness of the life of Jesus should be an inspiration and an encouragement to us all, especially in these dark days of recession when many young people from our cities, towns and villages, have to leave home to find work. Some of them are our own relatives. Jesus too left home and transferred from Nazareth to Capernaum, where he may have lived in the house of Simon and Andrew or built his own house. To complete his work he needed a new headquarters so that he could be free for the mission given him by his Father.

It is hard to make sense of a mystery. We believe that Jesus came because he loved us.  The Apostle Peter tells us that “evil men” put him to death by hanging him on a tree. Jesus could have used his godly powers to crush those people. That is what we would have done. But he didn’t. Why? Surely he was giving an example for us to follow. Evil is not overcome by counteracting it with more evil. It is only overcome by more and more good acts.

Pope Paul VI in an address on 5 January 1964 stated that the home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus. God in Jesus revealed himself to the world through the use of a place, Nazareth in Galilee. Jesus came at a certain time, 6.00 b.c to 28 a.d. approx. He practised the Jewish life-style and observed its customs. Most probably he spoke with an accent, the rough dialect of the Galileans. He engaged in certain religious practices, pilgrimages to Jerusalem and so forth.

Montini held up for us the value of silence, detachment from the noise of this world, which in turn gives us more time to reflect on spiritual things.  He further went on to praise family life, and stated that the formation received at home is gentle and irreplaceable. The Pope would have liked also to restore the awareness of the nobility of work and its intrinsic value when it is considered in the context of those for whom it is undertaken.  Pope Paul held up Jesus as the model for all the workers of the world. He is truly their brother in God.

Donal McCarthy, S.C.A.

IF ONE MEMBER SUFFERS: Pope Francis

Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis to the People of God

“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it” (1 Cor 12:26). 

These words of Saint Paul forcefully echo in my heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons. Crimes that inflict deep wounds of pain and powerlessness, primarily among the victims, but also in their family members and in the larger community of believers and nonbelievers alike. Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated. The pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.

1. If one member suffers…

In recent days, a report was made public which detailed the experiences of at least a thousand survivors, victims of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and of conscience at the hands of priests over a period of approximately seventy years. Even though it can be said that most of these cases belong to the past, nonetheless as time goes on we have come to know the pain of many of the victims. We have realized that these wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death; these wounds never go away. The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced. But their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or sought even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity. The Lord heard that cry and once again showed us on which side he stands. Mary’s song is not mistaken and continues quietly to echo throughout history. For the Lord remembers the promise he made to our fathers: “he has scattered the proud in their conceit; he has cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty” (Lk 1:51-53). We feel shame when we realize that our style of life has denied, and continues to deny, the words we recite.

With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them. I make my own the words of the then Cardinal Ratzinger when, during the Way of the Cross composed for Good Friday 2005, he identified with the cry of pain of so many victims and exclaimed: “How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to [Christ]! How much pride, how much self-complacency! Christ’s betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his body and blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us! (cf. Mt 8:25)” (Ninth Station).

2. … all suffer together with it

The extent and the gravity of all that has happened requires coming to grips with this reality in a comprehensive and communal way. While it is important and necessary on every journey of conversion to acknowledge the truth of what has happened, in itself this is not enough. Today we are challenged as the People of God to take on the pain of our brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit. If, in the past, the response was one of omission, today we want solidarity, in the deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present and future history. And this in an environment where conflicts, tensions and above all the victims of every type of abuse can encounter an outstretched hand to protect them and rescue them from their pain (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 228). Such solidarity demands that we in turn condemn whatever endangers the integrity of any person. A solidarity that summons us to fight all forms of corruption, especially spiritual corruption. The latter is “a comfortable and self-satisfied form of blindness. Everything then appears acceptable: deception, slander, egotism and other subtle forms of self-centeredness, for ‘even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light’ (2 Cor 11:14)” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 165). Saint Paul’s exhortation to suffer with those who suffer is the best antidote against all our attempts to repeat the words of Cain: “Am I my brother's keeper?” (Gen 4:9).

I am conscious of the effort and work being carried out in various parts of the world to come up with the necessary means to ensure the safety and protection of the integrity of children and of vulnerable adults, as well as implementing zero tolerance and ways of making all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable. We have delayed in applying these actions and sanctions that are so necessary, yet I am confident that they will help to guarantee a greater culture of care in the present and future.

Together with those efforts, every one of the baptized should feel involved in the ecclesial and social change that we so greatly need. This change calls for a personal and communal conversion that makes us see things as the Lord does. For as Saint John Paul II liked to say: “If we have truly started out anew from the contemplation of Christ, we must learn to see him especially in the faces of those with whom he wished to be identified” (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 49). To see things as the Lord does, to be where the Lord wants us to be, to experience a conversion of heart in his presence. To do so, prayer and penance will help. I invite the entire holy faithful People of God to a penitential exercise of prayer and fasting, following the Lord’s command.1 This can awaken our conscience and arouse our solidarity and commitment to a culture of care that says “never again” to every form of abuse.

It is impossible to think of a conversion of our activity as a Church that does not include the active participation of all the members of God’s People. Indeed, whenever we have tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the People of God to small elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological approaches, spiritualities and structures without roots, without memory, without faces, without bodies and ultimately, without lives. 2 This is clearly seen in a peculiar way of understanding the Church’s authority, one common in many communities where sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience have occurred. Such is the case with clericalism, an approach that “not only nullifies the character of Christians, but also tends to diminish and undervalue the baptismal grace that the Holy Spirit has placed in the heart of our people”.3 Clericalism, whether fostered by priests themselves or by lay persons, leads to an excision in the ecclesial body that supports and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today. To say “no” to abuse is to say an emphatic “no” to all forms of clericalism.

It is always helpful to remember that “in salvation history, the Lord saved one people. We are never completely ourselves unless we belong to a people. That is why no one is saved alone, as an isolated individual. Rather, God draws us to himself, taking into account the complex fabric of interpersonal relationships present in the human community. God wanted to enter into the life and history of a people” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 6). 

Consequently, the only way that we have to respond to this evil that has darkened so many lives is to experience it as a task regarding all of us as the People of God. This awareness of being part of a people and a shared history will enable us to acknowledge our past sins and mistakes with a penitential openness that can allow us to be renewed from within. Without the active participation of all the Church’s members, everything being done to uproot the culture of abuse in our communities will not be successful in generating the necessary dynamics for sound and realistic change. The penitential dimension of fasting and prayer will help us as God’s People to come before the Lord and our wounded brothers and sisters as sinners imploring forgiveness and the grace of shame and conversion. In this way, we will come up with actions that can generate resources attuned to the Gospel. For “whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world” (Evangelii Gaudium, 11).

It is essential that we, as a Church, be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others. An awareness of sin helps us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the past and allows us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a journey of renewed conversion.

Likewise, penance and prayer will help us to open our eyes and our hearts to other people’s sufferings and to overcome the thirst for power and possessions that are so often the root of those evils. May fasting and prayer open our ears to the hushed pain felt by children, young people and the disabled.  A fasting that can make us hunger and thirst for justice and impel us to walk in the truth, supporting all the judicial measures that may be necessary. A fasting that shakes us up and leads us to be committed in truth and charity with all men and women of good will, and with society in general, to combatting all forms of the abuse of power, sexual abuse and the abuse of conscience.

In this way, we can show clearly our calling to be “a sign and instrument of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race” (Lumen Gentium, 1).

“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it”, said Saint Paul. By an attitude of prayer and penance, we will become attuned as individuals and as a community to this exhortation, so that we may grow in the gift of compassion, in justice, prevention and reparation. Mary chose to stand at the foot of her Son’s cross. She did so unhesitatingly, standing firmly by Jesus’ side. In this way, she reveals the way she lived her entire life. When we experience the desolation caused by these ecclesial wounds, we will do well, with Mary, “to insist more upon prayer”, seeking to grow all the more in love and fidelity to the Church (SAINT IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, Spiritual Exercises, 319). She, the first of the disciples, teaches all of us as disciples how we are to halt before the sufferings of the innocent, without excuses or cowardice. To look to Mary is to discover the model of a true follower of Christ.

May the Holy Spirit grant us the grace of conversion and the interior anointing needed to express before these crimes of abuse our compunction and our resolve courageously to combat them.

Vatican City, 20 August 2018

FRANCIS

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1 “But this kind [of demon] does not come out except by prayer and fasting” (Mt 17:21).

2 Cf. Letter to the Pilgrim People of God in Chile (31 May 2018).

3 Letter to Cardinal Marc Ouellet, President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America (19 March 2016).

MORNING PRAYER

Most Holy Trinity
Father, Son and Holy Spirit

We adore and thank you for the blessings received throughout our lives, especially for the gift of this day.

Blessed be the One True God
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Most Holy Trinity we offer you through the hands of Mary Queen of Apostles our thoughts, words, works and sufferings of this day.

We renew our resolve to grow to be more perfect in your love so that our community, united by the Love of the Father, the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, may be totally committed to the work of the catholic apostolate.

We ask you to assist our Pope Francis and we join with him in prayer for the universal apostolate, for our Christian brothers and sisters, for those who profess a different faith, for those who do not believe in you and for all the peoples of the world.

We entrust our community to your Infinite Love: the individual members and their superiors, the communities, regions and provinces.

Watch over bishops, priests, sisters, brothers and all religious families in your Church.

Bless our relatives, friends and benefactors and all who have asked our prayers.

Through your Infinite Mercy recall to your love all who have strayed; and grant eternal life in  your kingdom to our deceased members and relatives and to all the faithful departed.

MOTHER & DAUGHTER: Hands Enfolded

The Grotto in Castlegar - a lovely place to be on a dry, cool August morning. Feast of St. Clare and Autumn seems to have arrived.

We prayed here for a miracle on May 25th - an incredibly beautiful evening - but there was none given. We came here in our youth across the fields when faith was strong and swift.

Now I'm here preparing for the funeral of our neighbour who was 103 years old, whose daughter has been part of our family for over 60 years and I have the honour of being the brother she never had.

No matter what's going on, this place delivers a peace that is to be found in no other grotto, except perhaps Lourdes.

I'm thinking of the days in the hospital. There was a short period of quiet one evening when conversation ceased and I was alone with Mother and Daughter. In the silence I observed both their hands so effortlessly and tenderly enfolded in each other. They didn’t grasp or hold on tightly; they didn't cling but there was reverence and love.

In the hands of these two great women there is the history of what I think of as a legendary life with all its wonder, discovery, its shared struggle and suffering; its laughter and a love that has progressively deepened, a love that has ascended great heights.

And when the Word of God asks us to see what love the Father has lavished on us, we see an expression of such love, we have witnessed it and felt it in them together and in their own individual ways.

Her Mother's faith is core, not just an external function but an interior, unfathomable depth, a deep spiritual well that she was able to draw from when she could no longer read or pray in the way she used to.

It was inspiring to encounter the spirit of prayer that she maintained to the end. She prayed for all of us and she suffered for us, suffered with Christ for us and it is in Him that all her years of suffering has meaning.

The regular visits of the Parish Priest meant an awful  lot to her, were essential part of the care she received and in them she received spiritual sustenance. 

Her bed was a place where the spiritual and the material came together. She held the two worlds together in balance. On one side she had Hello magazine with all its glamour and celebrity and on the other she had her prayers and rosary beads.

To be a person of faith in this life means just that - to hold two different worlds together in balance without losing either one; to be a person of faith is to be a blessing to the world and she did this because she held the blessing within herself, she had the resources. Jesus in Holy Communion was her chief resource, together with His Mother Mary and the saints. By these she blessed us, made us feel better, made us laugh and feel happier.

She gave birth to her Daughter who in time came to mother her, became her safe place, her wellbeing. The evidence of this came a couple of years ago when she was not well in the nursing home so her Daughter  brought her back home and she became well again. She may not have said it in words but her body spoke, her very being became better in the care her child gave her. 

And when the time for parting finally came her Daughter delivered her into Eternal Life by her presence, her love and her prayer. The Word Jesus spoke to her soul, “come you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you since the foundation of the world.” And in dying she delivered her Daughter again into a new life of her own, a reality emphasised by the fact that the funeral took place on her Daughter's birthday. 

Together they  have run the race, fought the good fight and kept the faith. “Well done good and faithful servant", good and faithful Daughter who gave an exceptional level of care that has inspired all of us beyond what words can express. It cost nothing less than everything. Everything generously and selflessly given.

It was time, the right time and there is a lovely sense of grace but it also leaves her Daughter with a great big empty space that is her's alone to fill. And, while we will accompany her, we should not rush to fill that space for her.