AS I WAS SAYING...
This year we decided to prepare for Easter with three 'Lenten Preparation' sessions. These consisted of a reflection on the Eucharist, and on what contemporary theologians are writing on this matter. The numbers attending justified the energy expended. The impressive turn-out on the three nights gives the lie to the common belief that interest in the spiritual dimension has diminished, if not disappeared. Interest has changed rather than waned. These were very lively sessions where everyone had an opportunity to contribute. Most did. On the final night there was a request for 'more of the same'. We will give that request due consideration when Autumn comes.
Of course we begin our liturgical preparation for Easter today, Palm Sunday. Easter is the great celebration of the Church. The religious festival is, of course, in perfect harmony with the season, part of the 'perpetual cycle of regeneration', as the anthropologist Mircae Eliade called it. In fact the Easter Liturgy itself still carries strong vestiges of it pagan ancestry. I do not say this disparagingly. I do it to stress the all-embracing range of the Easter story. He died and rose in bodily form, not just to save the human race, but to save the world, which includes the relatively insignificant spot of dust called the earth, this earth which is coming alive again after a death-dealing winter. Spring is a season of great hope, if not optimism. The dead wood is raked away, exposing the young shoots and seeds to the life-giving light and heat. A whole new energy is perceptible in nature.
In popular piety, Christmas takes precedence over Easter. Commercial interests are often blamed. But the nature of the human being, and our evolutionary roots in the cave, has ensured that sentiment will triumph over reality. Christmas exploits this sentimental strand in our souls. Once a year we retire to the warm glow of the cave, or of infancy, to taste its reassuring comforts once more. For those few mid-winter days we lock reality out. And we enjoy the experience. We enjoy the experience because it is an escape from reality. As T.S. Eliot told us, mankind can tolerate very little reality.
Easter is a very, very different feast. Because Easter confronts raw reality head-on. During these Easter Days we are reflecting on the cruel mystery at the heart of life, the suffering and death that is our lot, and how to move through this and beyond it to the new life of Easter. It is a time when we are aware of our own weakness and vulnerabilities.
Easter confronts us with life as we experience it, its joys and sufferings, its betrayals and disappointments. The death and resurrection of Christ confronts all of this reality. Unlike Christmas, there is no locking out of reality in this Festival. Everything is there. Our God faced reality in the raw. He triumphed over it and is alive with the Father. And, because he is alive with the Father, we too will live with the Father, but only if we are prepared to face reality. Part of the reality is sin. But because of this week, sin is reduced to a mere footnote. Through his power, we too will triumph. Do your best to enter into the spirit of the week.
-Dick LyngMATTERS OF SOME INTEREST
- ST. PATRICK'S DAY: There seems to have been a general consensus that Charlie Lennon's 'Aifreann Caomháin' on St. Patrick's Day was 'a thing of beauty'. It was certainly a most appropriate day on which to celebrate it. It was a pity about Crosby's homily though. Sure you can't have everything!
- THE CHURCH RENOVATION GROUP: This group has now finalised plans for the Church renovations. We have reached the stage now where relevant bodies must be contacted and notified: town planners, Dúchas, Galway Corporation, Fire & Safety people, and so on. The beginning of the work will of course entirely depend upon clearance being secured from the various 'interest groups'. We don't know what obstacles, if any, they will place in our path. But we will keep you posted on progress.
- EASTER WEEK: This will be a very busy week in the Church. Perhaps the members of the Steering Committee could have a brief gathering after the 11.00 Mass today and review the preparations for Holy Week. What remains to be done? Are there people whom we still need to contact? When do we hold our rehearsals for the ceremonies? Important items such as this need to be looked into.
- Trócaire Boxes: Please bring along your family Trócaire Boxes to the Church during this week, or on Sunday next. We will count same and send the money off to the charity in question via the Diocesan Office.
- The Basement: Some weeks ago, a few people did a lovely job on the basement, cleaning it up, dumping the useless materials that seem destined to clutter all attics and basements alike. There is great storage space there, but it can so easily become a dumping ground. In the week after Easter, perhaps we could devise a system for securing out Liturgical banners there? It would entail the construction of a dust-proof 'rack'. Any takers?
HOLY WEEK AND EASTER PROGRAMME
CONFESSIONS:
| Thursday: | 11.00-12.30 |
| 4.00-6.00 | |
| Friday: | 11.00-12.00 |
| 6.30-8.00 | |
| Saturday: | 11.00-1.00 |
| 2.00-3.30 | |
| 5.00-6.00 |
PENITENTIAL SERVICES:
| Wednesday: | 8.00 |
| Saturday: | 4.00 |
EASTER CEREMONIES:
| Holy Thursday: | 8.00: Mass of the Lord's Supper |
| 9.00-11.00: Adoration | |
| Good Friday: | 12.00: Stations of the Cross. |
| 3.00: The Lord's Passion. | |
| 8.00: Meditation in Music & Poetry | |
| Holy Saturday: | 9.00: Easter Vigil. |
| Easter Sunday: | Usual Sunday programme. |
HEAVEN-HAVEN
(A Nun Takes the Veil)
I have desired to go
Where Spring's not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the haven's dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
-Gerard Manley Hopkins.
SPIKE MILLIGAN, RIP
 | On Monday night last we had the singular privilege of attending a 'Night of Tribute' to the late Spike Milligan in Pádraigh's Bar, New Docks. It was a privilege in that we were accompanied to the event by Spike's younger brother, Desmond Patrick. We listened to readings from his prose and poetry, and to the Jazz music Spike and Desmond loved. Desmond was asked to address the gathering but, due to a bout of timely depression, was advised by his medical team to refrain. This he did with some style. |  |
CLASHING SYMBOLS
I used Michael Paul Gallagher's book with the above title as a source for our 'Lenten Reflections'. The work explores the interplay between Christianity and culture. Gallagher understands 'culture' in the broad sense, 'the spectacles through which we view our world'.
He begins his book with this provocative statement: "The twentieth century began in 1917 and ended unexpectedly in 1989". For 70 seventy years, according to this view, a great deal of intellectual, economic and political energy were channelled into a confrontation between two ideological blocs - capitalism and the communism. That conflict is now over. But all energy was devoted to this struggle. The Berlin Wall was as much an intellectual reality as a geographic line. In the meantime culture waited in the Kitchen, neglected, like a Cinderella.
Gallagher recalls an actual TV image that encapsulates the ideological and cultural vacuum in which we now operate: The statue of Lenin being lowered gently by a crane from its plinth in Red Square, and carried off to obscurity. A giant pedestal remains. And this image gives rise to the central question of Gallagher book: "Who, or what will in the future occupy that pedestal?"
A RUNAWAY WORLD
Human beings have always had to cope with risk, the risk of plagues, bad harvests, storms, drought, and the occasional invasion of barbarians. But these were largely external risks, beyond our control. But now we are principally at risk from what we ourselves have done, what Anthony Giddens calls 'manufactured risk': global warming, overpopulation, pollution, unstable markets, unforeseen consequences of genetic engineering. We do not know the effects of what we are now doing. We live in a runaway world. This produces profound anxiety. We Christians have no special knowledge about the future. We too are haunted by the anxiety of our contemporaries.
But in this runaway world, what Christians offer is not knowledge but wisdom, the wisdom of humanity's ultimate destination, the Kingdom of God. The globalised world is rich in knowledge. We are drowning in information, but thirsting for wisdom. Indeed such is our anxiety about the future that is easier not to think about it at all. Our offering to the world will be the wisdom of the end towards which we are called, a wisdom which liberates us from anxiety.
-Timothy Radcliffe, O.P.