As I Was Saying... Friday morning was spectacular in Newgrange. Four thousand years ago, our Celtic ancestors built this "house of eternity" for their royal dead. Every year a tiny drama is enacted there. It lasts for 17 minutes. At the heart of Newgrange is a small room and in that room is a large boulder, with three connected spirals carved on its surface. A narrow passage leads from the outside to this burial chamber. The corridor is 700 feet long.
On the deadest and shortest day of the year, 21 December , a shaft of sunlight travels the length of the passage, from a roofbox above the door. The rays pan across the spirals on the boulder. For 17 minutes the chamber has light. Then, darkness. Not for another 12 months will sunlight warm the spirits of the dead in the depths of Newgrange.
But such glimpses into eternity are not confined to the Celts. They are transcultural. In 1926, Howard Carter, the archaeologist, was working in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. He broke through to the sarcophagus of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Inside the coffin he found the body of the king. On the forehead was a tiny garland of flowers, still coloured after 3,000 years. Pharaoh's young widow had put them there, as a gesture of belief in the afterlife. The year was 1342 BC.
Events such as this freeze time and, in the process, reveal us in our true perspective. We are forced to reflect on our relationship with time: Newgrange, Christmas and the New Year, and ourselves, all part of the one jig-saw, components of the human-divine mystery. At this time we are forced to reflect on our own relationship with time, on our Church' s relationship with time. "Christ was king before all ages, yet now he is born in time" according to the scriptures.
As Christians, we believe that Christmas fits the jig-saw together. But this Christmas story is not easy to absorb. There are paradoxes in the swaddling clothes, mystery in the manger, How can the divine being be embodied in the child of two humble artisans? Infinitely powerful, yet finite and vulnerable? His mystery is our mystery. How can we suffer and sing?
In our relativistic age, how has this myth come to dominate the world? For the greatest revolution in the history of humanity has been the birth of Christianity. No other development in man's thinking has had such power -the power to touch Jew and Gentile alike, black and white, the power to move the greatest and the meanest, inspire the world's finest art and literature, animate the popular thirst for democracy. Yet this power sprang from the humblest origins, a wandering teacher born in an obscure village, shunned by his countrymen and persecuted by the imperial authority of his own time. According to Luke's gospel, Jesus came "to set the world on fire". Yet the whole mechanisms of the secular world was bent on extinguishing his flame. Yet here we are, two thousand years later, celebrating his birthday. Down through the two millennia, Christianity faltered, splintered and endured the corrosive attacks of cynics. And yet, at the same time, it inspired Michelangelo, Bach, Wilberforce, Wren, Pearse, Kavanagh, Tolstoy and Martin Luther King. Our world, like that of the Romans, knows licence dressed as lifestyle choice, philosophies which seek to explain life but which fail to understand by what means the heart lives. Into our world, across two millennia, the message of Jesus seems still as strange and challenging. But its power to rescue endures as an unquenchable fire.
The Church reclaimed the sun of New grange through the feast of Christmas. Not to squash the wisdom of the Celts but to fill out what they had vaguely believed. Not to mock Newgrange but to honour its suspicion that divinity impinged on us occasionally. At this time, we celebrate the coming among us of the Son of God, "the true light that enlightened all" as John's gospel tells us. In Newgrange, the divinity was revealed through stone. Again according to John, in the Christian dispensation "the Word was made flesh." "God has become one with man so that man might become one again with God, " as the Christmas preface puts it. The first Christmas showed us the capacity of humanity. The human being is Godbearing, Godlike. Christmas reminds us both of our great dignity, our tender vulnerability, and our great responsibility toward our follow human beings.
Have a very happy Christmas.
-D.L.
GRATITUDE AND SOBER REFLECTION
The disasters of September 11 have had a special impact on Americans, and particularly on those of us who live, as I do, in New York City. They have shaken us out of our complacency and demolished the illusion that the continental United States is all but invulnerable. The crisis is teaching the world, I believe, that contemporary civilisation is extremely fragile. If the human venture is to succeed, all peoples abide by transcendent norms of public morality. The spectacle of human wilfulness might cause us to despair if we could not place our hopes in God.
The message of Christmas is the same this year as always: 'To you is born day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord." (Luke xxi: I). Our hearts can be at peace because, our Saviour has come. If we put our faith in Him and abide by His word, we have nothing to fear. No enemy will be able to harm us in a definitive way. Coming into a sinful world that needed to be saved from itself, Christ exposed Himself to opposition. The Incarnation was an act of humility and obedience. The Lord renounced for a while the unclouded glory that He enjoyed with the Father; He emptied himself out and made Himself vulnerable. The whole pattern of His earthly sojourn is summarised in the prologue of John's Gospel: "He came into His own, and his own received Him not" - (John i: II).
The opposition was not slow in coming. The manner of Jesus's conception and birth foreshadowed His Passion and Crucifixion. The announcement of Mary's pregnancy almost destroyed her marriage with Joseph. A decree from the Emperor Augustus prevented Jesus from being born in His parental home in Nazareth, and at Bethlehem there was no place for Him in the inn. Immediately after His birth in a stable, the Holy Family was forced to take Him as a refugee to Egypt. Herod was blind to the light from the heavenly star and deaf to the voices of the angelic choirs. Like so many tyrants after him, Herod feared that the yoke of Christ would interfere with his earthly power.
The gospel of redemption cannot be neglected with impunity. Some days before His death, Jesus looked down from the Mount of Olives on the Holy City of Jerusalem with its brilliantly gleaming temple. With tears in His eyes He said: "Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. ..Your enemies ... will dash you to the ground and they will not leave one stone upon another; because you did not know the time of your visitation" (Luke xix: 42-44).
Now that the gospel has been preached in most parts of the world, these words take on a universal significance; they impel us to reflect on ourselves and on our time. Is the world still fearfully or thoughtlessly rejecting God's ambassador of love? If so, what price will it have to pay? Can it hope to achieve unity and peace apart from the Mediator in whom God wills to reconcile all things?
Christmas is a time of gratitude and joy, but not just a time for merriment. It is a time for sober questioning. Are we and our nation among those who receive the Lord with eagerness or among those who have no place for Him in their hearts? Are we responding any better than the people of Jerusalem? Will our house be left desolate to us? Or will our world turn to its Saviour and find its way to peace?
-Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ.
THE WEEK THAT WAS
- A special Christmas collection will be taken up at the three Masses of Christmas Day: Midnight, 9.00 & 11.00. Please note there are only 3 Masses on Christmas Day (and that includes the Midnight Mass)
- MASS of GIVING: The presents that came in through the Tree of Giving were truly mind-boggling, in both quality and quantity. Many poor families were provided with some little luxuries and practical household items also. Money came in too: over £400.00. This will be used to provide exercise and yoga classes for young people, in drugs rehabilitation. The Westside Women's Refuge and the Vincent de Paul home on Market Street were the two principal recipients of your generosity. Many thanks to the good ladies and gentlemen -Hedy, Tim, Nancy, Pat, Mary and others, who parcelled, allocated and distributed the gifts. It turned out to be a far bigger project than we had bargained for initially.
- CHURCH DECORATION Margaret, Hedy and Mary worked all day Saturday on arranging the flowers for the Church. As always, they did a tasteful, splendid job. Well done and thanks again, ladies.
- COMMUNITY ROOM: Norann and Chris decorated the Community Room upstairs. It now looks much less like the bachelors' pad than normal!
- CHURCH CHRISTMAS TREES: As well as the much admired Advent poems on the Church wall, Gerry Ferguson purchased and planted the Christmas trees in the Church. One of the trees is tied to the neighbouring angel indicating that he was closely supervised, but he did the donkey work nonetheless!
- PERSONAL FAVOUR: I will be forever grateful to Noel O'Rourke for carrying out a personal favour for me during the week. The task demanded travel, much diplomacy and discretion. He did it without a murmur. No better man! Thanks Noel.
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