Masses Today

11.00 Anne Duggan (Anniv) & Fr. Pearse O'Mahoney (Month's Mind)
6.30 O'Grady, Fannon & McCurtin families. (RIP)



EVENTS THIS WEEK






AS I WAS SAYING...

Our Christmas story tells us that our God comes wrapped in dirty nappies. The image is both familiar and shocking. That shock and that familiarity are the two poles of the doctrine of the Incarnation. The story of recent decades shows that humanity is sorely in need of this doctrine. It acts as a corrective to two opposite tendencies: an exclusively scientific secular view of the human condition on the one hand, and totalitarianism, in both its fascist and socialist manifestation, on the other.

Ironically, Bethlehem exposes the naïveté of both. It rules out the cynical, knowing approach to human achievement which is characteristic of the secular assessment: the denial of the truth, beauty and goodness to which human beings are capable of aspiring. In his 1998 encyclical "Faith and Reason", the Pope chided 20th century philosophers on this very score: for selling humanity short, for underestimating our capacity for beauty and truth. But Bethlehem also prevents us from falling prey to the religious temptation of making light of human values on the grounds that eternity is so much better!

The other tendency goes in the opposite direction. Whole societies have been organised on the assumption that belief in a God is damaging to humanity. (John Waters touched upon this during the week, but more of that later!) According to this school, the human family must have the courage to stand alone, to recognise the fact that this life is the only life there is. Only then will it find moral authenticity and be able to work wholeheartedly for a better world. Belief in a God is a denial of responsibility.

This argument has been promoted by idealists with no religious belief, but of high moral virtue. It draws plausibility from the serious misuses of religious faith which do occur. But, in practice, it has been disastrous. Left to themselves, men and women find that things run against them: where they decide to find the foundation of human dignity only in themselves, that dignity quickly becomes obscured and vulnerable; where they aim to establish firmly human rights, they end by finding themselves on shifting sands, denying human freedom. Where they look to inspire greater generosity, they discover that the source of the spirit of service has dried up, and that they have no argument against crabbed personal selfishness. 'Spiritual poverty' follows.

Now back to John Waters: while writing on decentralisation and urban sprawls in our capital this week, he had this to say:
The only poverty that need concern us is poverty of spirit. The people suffering maximum pain are those who have been crammed into factory-farm estates, had their banks of hope and imagination burgled by bad planning and ignorant ideologies. And unlike the rural poor, they also had their God confiscated by supposedly smarter minds intent upon denying them their opium in order to prove a point. Human beings need to be near to nature, as close as we get to knowledge of God.

Bethlehem is viewed through a romantic haze. The tinsel paper obscures the harsh material poverty. However, that Bethlehem family was not crippled by the 'spiritual poverty' that is so familiar today. On the contrary: they had hope and imagination in abundance! In fact, Bethlehem brings home to us the full measure of human dignity and human destiny. The Unknown God, who is Lord of the Universe, discloses to human beings that, if they want to know what he is like, they should look right here -at human life wrapped, not in tinsel paper, but in dirty nappies.

-Dick Lyng.




CHRISTMAS PROGRAMME: 2003

CONFESSIONS
Monday 22nd: 11.30-12.30; 3.00-4.00;
Tuesday 23rd: 11.30-12.30; 3.00-4.00;
Wednesday 24th: 11.30-1.00; 3.00-4.00.
PENITENTIAL SERVICES:
Monday, 22nd 7.30pm
Wednesday, 24th 4.30pm.
CHRISTMAS MASSES: 12.00 Midnight and 11.00am.
St. Stephen's Day to January 1st: One Mass daily: 11.00am
except
SUNDAY, 28th: Usual Sunday Programme
Normal Programme resumes on Friday, January 2nd.
PRIORY OFFICE
The Priory Office will close at 3.00pm on Christmas Eve.
Saturday, 27th: Office will open briefly after 11.00 Mass.
29th, 30th, & 31st: normal office hours
Normal life will resume again on Friday, January 2nd.





AUGUSTINIAN HUNGER AWARENESS CAMPAIGN

FIGHT HUNGER BY CHANGING YOUR LIFESTYLE

"God does not demand much of you. He asks back what he gave you. From him you take what is enough for you. When you possess surplus, you possess what belongs to others."

-St. Augustine.




ALTERNATIVE VENUE

As you see from the notice on the church door (shades of Martin Luther!), our Planning Application has gone in. The renovations cannot begin until this planning permission is secured. And the processing of that application (ands its speed) depends upon factors beyond our control. Obviously then we are not in a position to give you any firm information on when the work will begin.

We plan to close the church and the priory for the duration of the work, estimated to take seven months. We have not yet settled on an alternative venue for our Sunday Masses. But the St. Vincent de Paul Society have kindly offered us their Conference Room in Ozanam House for our weekday Masses. It is a fine spacious room that can comfortably accommodate up to one hundred people. It is really ideal for our weekday purposes. The Priory Office will also function from there.






AN OPEN HOUSE

I am an Irish emigrant living in Australia for the last seven years. I come from a family of ten (second last!) and Christmas was simply such an exciting time for us. We would see Santy on Christmas Eve down in the local shop, have a look at all the toys there and choose one! Amazingly we instinctively knew to choose within Daddy's budget! I often tried to sleep with one eye open, but never managed to see Santy.

My parents showed me the importance of Christmas; we would visit the crib often over the Christmas and it always saddened and amazed me that Mary had to have baby Jesus in a stable. I used to wish we lived near by at the time and we would have given them our bed and anything they needed.

Our house, while small, was always an open house and not just at Christmas. I often remember cooking for maybe twenty to twenty-five on Christmas day (only three girls out of ten, so you were taught to cook at an early age!). There were many occasions during the year when I would come home from school and find a stranger at the kitchen table being fed. My father would be asking our guest questions about their life. To my parents it didn't matter who you were, if you were hungry you were fed. Everyone had a story to tell.

Today, things are different. Then you could trust people more readily. There was not so much talk about the drug culture. You have to be more careful about who you let into your home. While I agree with this I feel we have gone in the opposite direction and we are not helping our neighbours, many of whom we have lived beside for years and have not even tried to communicate with. This I feel is extremely sad and is so easy to rectify. All it takes is courage and to trust in God that he will lead you in the right direction. This I believe with all my heart and always tried to do and he has never failed me.

I have lived in different countries and as a result of my upbringing I have always adopted this belief and the results and rewards are overwhelming. The positive experiences certainly outweigh the negative ones.

This Christmas is a very special Christmas for us. The Lord has given us the most precious gift of all, a child within my womb. You can guess what attitude our child will be encouraged to adopt with their neighbours and others.

Happy Christmas to all and a new year full of new friends.

-Anne-Marie Lyons




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