Events This Week
- RENOVATIONS COMMITTEE: This group will resume their meetings after the Easter break in the front parlour on tomorrow night, Monday 28th April at 5.30.
- THE SICK: Remember in your prayers Nora Drinkwater who is making a satisfactory recovery in Merlin Park. However, because of the nature of her injury, recovery will be a slow process. Murt Rabbitte, Foster Street, is also being cared for in the same hospital. Our own Pearse Mahony spend a couple of days in The Bon Secours (Galvia) for tests. He is back with us again, eating like a horse!
- TABLE QUIZ: What is now an annual Table Quiz in aid of the Salesian Missions in southern Africa will be held at the Sacre Coeur Hotel on Wednesday, May 7th at 8.30pm. Funds will be directed towards poverty relief projects run by Father Seán Murphy. Table of 4 for €30. Lots of table prizes and monster (i.e. very large) raffle on the night.
AS I WAS SAYING...
Since the year 2000, the Sunday after Easter (Low Sunday of old) has been designated Divine Mercy Sunday. This was a highly unusual development for a number of reasons. (See article later).
The 'Divine Mercy' movement is a devotional movement within the Catholic Church, obviously. A strong wing of that movement is to be found in the American church. The focal point of this movement is a picture which purports to represent Jesus. Sister Faustina, a Polish nun, was instructed in the course of a vision in 1938 to paint this picture. (Incidentally, from an aesthetic point of view, I would regard the picture as less than successful! But then taste is a very personal element.) Sister Faustina was from Cracow in Poland and she was elevated to the status of saint three years ago, in the millennium year. Members of the movement gather round this representation of Christ on a regular basis, imploring God's mercy. The particular form this prayer takes is highly traditional: the rosary (said on a special beads!) and an annual Novena (to God?) beginning on Good Friday. Nothing very wrong with that, you may well say. And of course, I have to agree with you. Men and women have implored God's mercy ever since the call of Abraham.
Incidentally, at the time of the Ballinspittle debacle of the 'Moving Statues' pious people said in defence of the phenomenon: "Well, anything that encourages people to pray can't be wrong!" A survey conducted among those who were robbed at gunpoint in the United States revealed that 98 per cent of the victims prayed intensely in the course of the unhappy experience If we are the follow the Ballinspittle logic, the conclusion is obvious: robbery at gunpoint should be encouraged since it encourages people to pray!
But the stated purpose of designating this particular Sunday 'Divine Mercy Sunday' was to call attention to the infinite mercy of God. But surely this is superfluous! Those who turn to God turn to him precisely as an infinitely merciful God! So where's the catch? So, in search of an answer to this 'divine puzzle', I turned to the Divine Mercy website. They too were asking themselves the same question. The 'answer' is instructive:
Why would Christ emphasize in our time a doctrine, the Divine Mercy, which has been part of the patrimony of the Faith from the beginning, as well as request new devotional and liturgical expressions of it? In His revelations to St. Faustina Jesus answers this question, connecting it to another doctrine, also sometimes little emphasised, that of His Second Coming.I am not at all questioning the sanctity of Sister Faustina. All I am attempting to do is to figure out how a particular devotional group succeeded in having what was essentially a private devotional practice more or less imposed on the general public?
Perhaps an answer may be found in the traditional nature of the devotions themselves. They are marked decidedly with the Catholic stamp of the 1930s and 1940s. The threat of apocalyptic judgement and hell fire is never far from the surface. The whole exercise strikes me as a pious attempt to turn back the clock. But this bell will not be unrung!
-Dick Lyng.
MOTHER OF GOOD COUNSEL NOVENA
Remember that the Annual Novena to the Mother of Good Counsel will begin tomorrow evening, Monday, April 28th, and it will be held at 7.30 each evening. We will celebrate the feast itself on Wednesday, May 7th. The Novena will be conducted once again this year by Fr. Jackie Power, OSA. The Petition and Offering envelopes are available now at the top of the church. Jackie was the preacher last year and he was such a 'roaring success' (no pun intended) that he was invited back by popular acclaim! So come along early if you have ambitions to secure a seat! Otherwise, bring a seat along with you.
COMING EVENTS IN SUAIMHNEAS
Celebration of Bealtaine
Wednesday, April 30th: 8.00pm - 10.00pm
Facilitator: Kathleen Glennon, R.S.M.
Week of Directed Prayer
Monday, May 5th - Friday, May 9
Facilitator: Judith Kirwan, R.S.M.
Music as a Gateway to Wellbeing
Wednesday, May 7: 7.00pm - 10.00pm
Facilitator: Evelyn Horan, R.S.M.
A Day of Story and Reflection
Saturday, May 17 2003, 10.00am-5.00pm
Facilitator: John Moriarty
Cost: €25
Prayer Ritual and Reflection to honour Mary
Wednesday, May 2: 8.00-9.30pm
Facilitators:Mary Glennon and Judith Kirwan.
For further information, phone: 753515
SAINT FAUSTINA
On October 5, 1938, a young religious by the name Sister Faustina (Helen Kowalska) died in a convent of the Congregation of Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Cracow, Poland. She came from a very poor family that had struggled hard on their little farm during the terrible years of WWI. Sister had had only three years of very simple education. Hers were the humblest of tasks in the convent, usually in the kitchen or the vegetable garden, or as a porter.
On February 22, 1931, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ appeared to this simple nun, bringing with Him a wonderful message of Mercy for all mankind. Saint Faustina tells us in her diary under this date:
"In the evening, when I was in my cell, I became aware of the Lord Jesus clothed in a white garment. One hand was raised in blessing, the other was touching the garment at the breast. From the opening of the garment at the breast there came forth two large rays, one red and the other pale. In silence I gazed intently at the Lord; my soul was overwhelmed with fear, but also with great joy. After a while Jesus said to me, 'paint an image according to the patternyou see, with the inscription: Jesus, I trust in You.'"Some time later, Our Lord again spoke to her:"The pale ray stands for the Water which makes souls righteous; the red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls. These two rays issued forth from the depths of My most tender Mercy at that time when My agonizing Heart was opened by a lance on the Cross....Fortunate is the one who will dwell in their shelter, forthe just hand of God shall not lay hold of him."-Diary, Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska.
HERACLITUS ON RIVERS
Nobody steps into the same river twice.
The same river is never the same
Because that is the nature of water.
Similarly your changing metabolism
Means that you are no longer you.
The cells die, and the precise
Configuration of the heavenly bodies
When she told you she loved you
Will not come again in this lifetime.
You will tell me that you have executed
A monument more lasting than bronze;
But even bronze is perishable.
Your best poem, you know the one I mean,
The very language in which the poem
Was written, and the idea of language,
All these things will pass away in time.
-DEREK MAHON
"Quote, unquote..."
- "What, when drunk, one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober." -Kenneth Tynan.
- "Governments need to have both shepherd sand butchers." -Voltaire.
- "If you go to heaven without being naturally qualified for it, you can hardly expect to enjoy yourself there." -George Bernard Shaw.
- "This Europeanism is nothing but imperialism with an inferiority complex." -Denis Healy.
- "You don't destroy the mystery of the rainbow by understanding the light processes that form it." -Anne McLaren.
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