EVENTS OF THE WEEK
- REVIEW VIDEO: As you know, we held a 'Review Meeting' on the Gobán Saor on the Monday night, August 5th. The meeting was attended by about 30 people. However, since that was also August Bank Holiday, many key people who would have had significant contributions to make were unavoidably absent. Gearóid Lacey has put together a video of the performance. We will view it in the dining room on Tuesday night next, August 27th at 8.00pm. If you were remotely involved in any way with the production, you are welcome to come along. We look forward to seeing you there.
- MINISTERS OF THE EUCHARIST: Brenda Foy organises the 'duty rota' for the Eucharistic Ministers. She is relatively new to the job, so there are some addresses and phone numbers she does not have. (Summer is not the best time to enter upon a task such as this!) We will hold a meeting of the ministers in early September. If you think she hasn't got your details, please contact the priory office and leave the relevant information there for Brenda to collect.
- MIRACLE OR MAGIC?: Unfortunately, I was unavoidably absent from Croke Park last Sunday when the long-threatened miracle eventually materialised. But I will compensate for that omission with a visit to the shrine on September 8th, should I manage to secure a ticket (!).
Hint: n & v. -n.- v. tr. (often foll. by that + clause)
- a slight or indirect indication or suggestion (took a hint and left).
- a small piece of practical information (handy hints on cooking).
- a very small trace; a suggestion (a hint of perfume).
{app. f. obs. hent grasp, lay hold of, f. OE hentan, f. Gmc, rel. to HUNT.} Oxford E. Dictionary.
- suggest slightly (hinted the contrary; hinted that they were wrong).
- hint at, give a hint of; refer indirectly to
AS I WAS SAYING...
I was abroad for the abduction and murder of the two little girls in England. I had also been abroad for the death of Diana Spencer. I was forced to follow both events through the skewed lens of the British press. I was struck by the remarkable similarity of the public reaction to both events. People who had no connection whatsoever with the two tragic children vented their outrage in the pages of the tabloids. ("Rot in Hell" screamed one placard being wielded menacingly by a tear-stained female stranger.) In the same way, a couple of short years ago, they came in their hundreds of thousands to London to shed copious tears at the accidental death of a total stranger. (I presume there was a similar -if far more muted- reaction here in Ireland. At least the death of the Princess of Wales was greeted with inexplicable hysteria here).
Princess Diana was, I suppose, public property in that she was promoted as a sort of 'British national icon'. But the two little girls? Death robbed them of their lives; the tabloid press and their gullible readers robbed them of their privacy too. There was something distinctly artificial and intrusive in the pained outpourings of those who had no connection whatsoever with the little girls or their families. Theodore Dalrymple, a medical man who writes for a British broadsheet, focused on this artificiality and the underlying motivation. He refers to the phenomenon as the 'Dianafication of feeling': He then speculated on what a Martian from outer space would have made of it all: "He need not have been much of a psychologist to suspect that the vehemence of our anguish hides a profound inner emptiness. People try to reassure themselves that they are capable of real feeling by the extravagance of their expression. A diet of constant televisual sensation has rendered them susceptible to guests of intense but shallow emotion."
It is not very long ago that the expression of extreme emotion was regarded as anti-social in a British context. Indeed the 'stiff upper lip' was not so much the desired personal stance as the mandatory national pose in the face of public or personal tragedy. The 'stiff upper lip' saw the nation victorious through two world wars, and -in more recent times- called the bluff of medal-laden, puffed-up Latin Generals.
But that world has changed utterly, according to Dalrymple. A contrary 'philosophy' informs all life today: "The expression of emotion -any emotion- is better than its repression. Emotion is regarded like pus in an abscess: if it isn't let out, it results in the emotional equivalent of blood poisoning."
This philosophy is destructive of all finer feeling. It is destructive of nuance and subtlety. It is an invitation to crudity, vulgarity and shallowness. It means that people are regarded as feeling most who shout loudest. Not surprisingly, this results in a universal shouting match.
What else could explain the indignation and grief of complete strangers, turned on 'tap-like' for the cameras and the tabloids? Strangers strove to competitively 'out-grieve' each other, as if depth of feeling were always proportional to the vigour of hand-wringing! The families of the two little girls had suffered an incomprehensible blow. They should have been spared the painful intrusions of the 'emoting' vulgarians!
-Dick Lyng.
MEMORABLE QUOTES
- "A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.." -Oscar Wilde.
- "In the consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy." -Ivan Illich.
- "It is a terrible thing for an old woman to outlive her dogs." -Tennessee Williams.
- "In general the churches, visited by me too often on weekdays, bore for me the same relation to God that billboards did to Coca-Cola: they promoted thirst without quenching it." -John Updike.
- "I see the Church as an elderly lady, who mutters away to herself in a corner, ignored most of the time." -George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury.
THE MAN AUGUSTINE
THE FEAST OF ST AUGUSTINE
Wednesday next,
August 28th.
A special Mass for the feast
will be concelebrated
at 11.00.
IN OMNIBUS CARITAS"Augustine's clothing and shoes, and even his bedding, were simple and appropriate, being neither overly fastidious nor slovenly. It is in these externals that people usually go in for either arrogant display or for self-abasement; in either case they seek not the interests of Jesus Christ but their own. Augustine, however, followed the middle way and did not deviate right or left.
His meals were frugal and economical; at times, however, in addition to herbs and vegetables, they included meat for the sake of guests and sick brethren. Moreover, they always included wine, for he knew and taught with the Apostle, that everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; for then it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer (I Tim. 4:4-5).
Only the spoons were of silver; the vessels in which the food was brought to the table were of earthenware, wood, or marble, and this was not by unavoidable poverty but by deliberate policy.
He practised hospitality at all times. Even at table he found more delight in reading and conversation than in eating and drinking. To prevent one plague that afflicts social intercourse, he had these words inscribed on the table: "Let those who like to slander the lives of the absent know that their own are not worthy of this table. " In this way he reminded all his guests that they ought to abstain from unnecessary and harmful gossip. On one occasion, when some fellow bishops, close friends of his, had forgotten the inscription and disobeyed its warning, he rebuked them sternly, being so upset as to say that either the verses must be erased from the table or he would get up from the table in the middle of the meal and retire to his room. I and others at that meal witnessed this. "
(Extract from 'The Life of St Augustine' by Possidius, Augustine's close friend and first biographer.)
THE OLD LADY SAYS YES
She is an old woman now-Michael Hartnett.
but still a lady.
All the vulgar versions of her life
Have not changed her;
the crass biographies, the photos
with ephemeral people,
the murmurings of scandal
and the hints of evil
crumble into yellow dust
like the curtains in her window.
In her realm of bric-a-brac
she receives her children,
even the handicapped, the mad,
the drunkard in the corner -
none, with their awkward lives
are welcomed the less warmer -
and if she has many hearts
not one remains unbroken.
So I come to visit too
here in her room with my small token
made from the milk that suckled me,
not chosen just to suit her,
perhaps a bad investment in
a never-to-happen future.
She puts my verses with her things.
I have done my duty.
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