Masses Today

6.30: Tom & Josephine McNamara (Market St.) (Anniv.)
11.00: Colm Ferguson, (Anniv)
6.30: Michael Murray, (Anniv)

AS I WAS SAYING...

In November 1999, a friend and former classmate of mine was involved in a horrible road accident. Married with a wife and three sons in their late teens and early twenties, he had been driving in the west of Ireland here on business. He was taken to the Regional Hospital and, understandably, the doctors held out little hope for him. His injuries were massive, and the medical consensus tended towards the opinion that the brain was irreparably damaged. Jim was in a deep, deep coma.

After some months, I guess, he was moved to Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, nearer his home. There his wife visited him daily, and often crept into the bed beside him at night, talking to him all the while. After six months, Jim begins to react if not yet respond. For example, his hand will now move to snatch a hurling ball thrown in his direction! Next, he begins to respond the his siblings, but not his wife. Memories of childhood and early adulthood are next to return. But he fails to understand the presence of these strange new people in his life: the new woman and the three young men! Where did they come from?

As damaged nerves in his brain began to reconnect, the picture of Jim's past was being filled out. 'He was coming back to himself', literally. As his healing continued, his wife and three children were durly restored fully to the picture; the various other people, games and exploits that fleshed out his adult life were to follow gradually. Today, Jim's memory (and life) has been restored to about 95% of its full capacity. (He still has no memory of the 1999 All Ireland which he attended!) The medical expectation now is that the healing will continue and that his memory will eventually recover its full contents. His life will have been restored to its fullness. Memory is an amazing faculty. Without it, we are not fully ourselves. Without it, we do not know ourselves.

The same observation can be made about any individual strand of the human web: family, parish, community, religion or country. Deprive any one of their memory (their history) and you have severed the strand at source. In doing so, you have weakened the human web. November is the 'Month of Memory', and this is 'Remembrance Sunday'. At 10 minutes to 11 o'clock today, the name, rank and number of those British soldiers who died in the two Great Wars will be read aloud in village churches throughout the UK. That of course is a 'national' rather than a pious exercise. However, all Christians believe that prayer for the dead is a bridge across the gulf of separation which is death. Through remembering the dead, they and we remain bound together in that great vessel of memory, the communion that is our Church. We felt diminished by their death; in time, we will feel replenished by their memory. We pray for them, not to 'bail them out', but to complete ourselves, and them! We are only ourselves in relation to those who have shaped us and loved us.

St Augustine wrote magnificently on the subject of memory: He compared it to a vast ocean, filled with living images and emotions, all ready for retrieval. "For heaven, earth, sea are all present within me, apart from what I have forgotten. There also I meet myself, there I face my history as it comes alive again within me!" I presume my friend Jim would agree. Without memory, I am a pale shadow of the self. Augustine was born 1650 years ago today. Let us remember that we may become more!

-Dick Lyng.

EVENTS THIS WEEK

AUGUSTINE'S BIRTHDAY

Augustine was born on November 13th, 353. We mark his Jubilee today. The following may replace the ordinary Sunday readings:

Act of the Apostles: (2:42-47)

The believers devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. And everyone was filled with awe. The apostles worked many signs and miracles. And all who shared the faith owned everything in common; they sold their goods and possessions and distributed the proceeds among themselves according to what each one needed. Each day, with one heart, they regularly went to the temple but met in their houses for the breaking of bread; they shared their food gladly and generously; they praised God and were looked up to by everyone. Day by day the Lord added to their community those destined to be saved.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Response: Happy is the one who dwells in the house of the Lord.

Second letter of Paul to Timothy: ( 4:1-8)

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you: proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favourable or unfavourable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths. As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully. As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time for my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that Day, and not only to me but to all who have longed for his appearing.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Sequence Poem (read)

Alleluia, alleluia! No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends, Alleluia.

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John: (15:9-11)

Jesus said: "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; now remain in my love. If you obey my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I obeyed my Father's commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no-one than this, to lay down one' s life for one' s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. No longer do I call you servants, because servants do not know their master' s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for every thing that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This I command: Love each other."

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

Home