Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: John Joe Conneely (Market St.) (Anniv).
11.00: Bina & Coleman Cooke, (Anniv).
6.30: Sarah & Josie O'Toole, Quay Lane (Anniv).

AS I WAS SAYING.....

Go in to any classroom in the country this week and ask them on what date the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius falls. You will draw a 'blank' for sure. But ask them the date of St. Valentine's Day! Every hand in the classroom will shoot for the sky! Yet the official liturgical calendar of the Church designates February 14th as the feast of the Slavic brothers Cyril (d. 14.02.869) and Methodius (d. 6.04.885). Their fellow Slav, John Paul II declared them 'Patrons of Europe' in 1980, almost immediately on his own election as Pope. (a 'hometown' decision?) Both men left an indelible mark on civilisation. Cyril invented the Slavic (Cyrillic) alphabet. Methodius translated the Gospels into Slavonic. We know the precise day on which both men died.

Yet popular culture insists on celebrating February 14th as the Feast of St. Valentine. But who is this mysterious Valentine and why do we celebrate his feast? He never existed! He was invented. The 'Feast' itself has its origins in pagan Rome, partly at least. There February 14th was observed as a holiday to honour Juno, the Goddess of women and marriage. The following day, February 15th, began the Feast of Lupercalia, a Spring celebration of fertility and cosmic regeneration. In medieval England and France we find an additional ingredient, where conventional wisdom had it that birds began to mate on February 14th. Thus in Geoffrey Chaucer's Parliament of Foules we read:

For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.

These then are the elements that fed into the popular Feast of 'St. Valentine'.

Of course in relatively recent years, the commercial world has breathed new life into the mythical saint. But, together, all of these elements have combined to 'produce' the 'Feast of St. Valentine' as we have it today.

This is just one more example of the Church and 'popular culture' travelling on separate, if parallel, tracks. The distance separating those tracks is more pronounced in the area of love and sex than in any other area of human experience. For example, the Church's teaching on sex and marriage is now honoured among the young more in breach than in observance. To illustrate this, I have often told this story I first heard from an old Galway priest. "It was at a wedding reception that I first began to suspect the world was changing," said my old friend "The fact that a bride stood up to make the speech alerted me. But it was her first sentence that confirmed my dark suspicions. The unblushing bride said: 'I nearly fell out of the bed the morning he proposed to me' I then knew for certain that the world had changed" said Fr Joe as he shook his grey head.

Yes! Two mind-sets travelling on separate tracks. But yet I'm optimistic enough to believe that they are travelling in the same direction. Love is the desired destination.

-Dick Lyng

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid-air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

-Robert Frost.

Items of Interest

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