Masses Today

6.30: John Anderson, (Anniv)
11.00: Patrick Swords, (Anniv)

AS I WAS SAYING...

Saturday next is the Feast of St. Augustine. A mere glance at his biography will reveal parallels between our world today and his. He was born North Africa in 354. North Africa was then part of the Roman Empire. He loved everything about Rome and its culture. In some ways Augustine was destined to be 'an outsider' for life: an African in Rome and a Roman in Africa! However, it was almost inevitable that, one day, he would seek his fortune at the centre of the great but now groaning Empire.

He was baptised in Milan by St. Ambrose in 387 at the age of 33; he was made bishop in 396, just before the Barbarian invasions. He began his great work, The City of God, as a consequence of the destruction of Rome by the barbarian tribes in 410. This was as catastrophic to the people of the day as 9/11 has been to our own times. Many pagans attributed the fall of Rome to the anger of the old gods against Christianity.

Augustine is seen by many as a bridge leading from the Old World to the new. He witnessed the collapse of the old classical culture which had shaped the way people viewed life for more than a thousand years. The Barbarian invasion brought an end to that world. In Augustine we find the first great intellect of the West, whose work guided leaders of Church and State for centuries to come. Pope Gregory the Great read and re-read Augustine's Confessions, Charlemagne used The City of God as his guidebook in building up his empire.

But, as Augustine reached his declining years, all this was in the future. As bishop, he worked hard to heal disagreements and divisions in the Church of his day. But after 410, these divisions were not the only problem. Refugees from Europe flocked to Africa from the European continent via the port of Hippo. They showed up in sufficient numbers for Augustine to warn his flock to receive them 'with charity and with open arms'. They brought news of the devastation cause by the Vandals: the destruction of towns and villages, the looting of churches and monasteries, the martyrdom of their inhabitants, it seemed that the social setting for Augustine's Church would no longer survive. In fact, in this context, the divisions within the Church that had so troubled Augustine were now almost irrelevant. Civilisation would have disappeared for good, many believed. But Augustine viewed thing from a very different perspective: the ruin of one civilisation and the destruction of an old Empire were not the most important things.

The people of his time were filled with fear. They longed for the "the good old days" when Rome was great. "You talk about the good old days," Augustine asked his congregation in the basilica in Hippo, "were the old days so good after all? Good times, bad times: what makes them good? If you are good, the times are good, if you are bad, the times are bad!" It all sounds rather familiar!

His last recorded words were, "It matters little if stones fall and mortals die." Beyond the chaos was the world of eternal realities. "The Word of the Lord endures forever." Augustine died, aged 76, on August 28th, 430 AD, as the Vandals were actually besieging his own city, Hippo.

-Dick Lyng.

EVENTS THIS WEEK AND LAST

THE GODS AND THE GAMES

The Olympics have always inspired religious fervour. They were first conceived as a pagan festival, thought to honour the ruler of the gods, Zeus. When they were first held in 776 BC they lasted just five days, but religion played a vital role. The highlight was the middle day, "when 100 oxen were sacrificed to Zeus". The abolition of the Olympics 1,000 years later was also caused by religion. Theodosius, the Holy Roman Emperor, judged them to be pagan and banned then in AD 393.

When the games were revived in 1896, many of the old symbols and traditions were revived. With Pierre de Coubertin, the Jesuit-educated Frenchman who inspired the restored Olympics, calling them "a new civil religion", there was a curious fudging of the gods and God.

The lighting of the Olympic flame, for example, mirrors the ritual performed by vestal virgins at the altar to Hera, wife of Zeus. Likewise, at the ancient Olympics not only athletes but their brothers and fathers took the oath. They did so over slices of boar flesh in front of a statue of Zeus.

Meanwhile, the source for the official Olympic motto, Faster, Higher, Stronger, was the Dominican priest Henri Didon, while the present Olympic creed "the most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part" originated with an American Episcopalian, Ethelbert Talbot.

Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 1952 to 1972, would call the Olympics "a twentieth-century religion. A religion of universal appeal which incorporates all the basic values of other religions, a modern, exciting, virile, dynamic religion."

From the early twentieth century the Christian Church recognised that the Olympic bandwagon was one worth jumping on. Local ecclesiastical dignitaries began to celebrate Mass or preach sermons at the opening ceremonies.

At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Adolf Hitler demonstrated the power of his own new "religion" of Nazism, with himself as the people's messiah. Berlin was wreathed in swastika banners for the spectacular opening ceremony and more than a million people "lined the Berlin streets for a glimpse of their leader as a cavalcade of black limousines conveyed Hitler to the newly designed high temple of sport".

36 years later, politics and religion again overshadowed the Olympics as Germans and Jews were once more locked in war in Munich in 1972. Ironically, now the Germans were in the position of protecting the Jews from Palestinian terrorists. Eight masked gunmen infiltrated the Olympic village and took the entire Israeli team hostage. Within 24 hours all 11 hostages and five of the terrorists were dead.

This year Greek authorities in Athens have experienced their own religious controversy because, despite being home to 100,000 Muslims, the city is the only EU capital without an officially recognised mosque. Plans for a new mosque to be ready in time for the Olympics fell by the wayside.

-Adapted from The Tablet, 13-08-04.

YES FATHER!

The source of attraction and love, as of distraction and fear, between people is difference. Distraction and fear are part of the human sexual interaction. Seminary isolation and training in the past often reinforced for priests the fear and sense of distraction. One of the oddities of the young priest's life was his sudden thrust into the role of father of all, without passing through the demands of parenting for any. Of course it provided a certain prestige and protection but it did not necessarily make for authentic relations with women old enough to be his mother and particularly with those young enough to be his wife. From cherished family-son to vulnerable parish-father did not always make for creative adult integration.

-ENDA McDONAGH, The Small Hours of Belief (Columba Press), p.26.

Some More Light Verse

You have to try. You see a shrink.
You learn a lot. You read. You think.
You struggle to improve your looks.
You meet some men. You write some books.
You eat good food. You give up junk.
You do not smoke. You don' t get drunk.
You take up yoga, walk and swim.
And nothing works. The outlook' s grim.
You don' t know what to do. You cry.
You' re running out of things to try.

You blow your nose. You see the shrink.
You walk. You give up food and drink.
You fall in love. You make a plan.
You struggle to improve your man.
And nothing works. The outlook' s grim.
You go to yoga, cry, and swim.
You eat and drink. You give up looks.
You struggle to improve your books.

-

Home