Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: Cepta, Patsy & Bridie Brogan; Peggy Regan, (Anniv).
11.00: Michael Leonard, (Anniv).
6.30: Una & Michael Beatty, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

Matters economic have never been so much to the fore in public debate and consciousness. Martin Luther once wrote: "There are three conversions necessary, the conversion of the heart, the mind and the purse." The way we spend money tells us more about ourselves than anything else we do. We don't need a counsellor to find out what makes you tick. A glance at the monthly statement of our credit card gives us the clearest picture of the values we live by. If this holds true for a person, it surely holds true for a government. A government's spending programme, or budget, will reveal its values. Put in biblical terms, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be."

This debate is not confined to Ireland, of course. It's everywhere. President Obama recently claimed to see glimmers of hope for economic recovery. He too used a scriptural allusion. The economy could not be built, the President said, on a pile of sand, but, 'we must build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity: moving from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest...if we persist and persevere I have no doubt that this house will stand'.

The President has absorbed the rhythms and cadences of the Bible, but in this case his oratory is at the expense of the original meaning. Jesus was not talking about the global economy, but about where true security is to be found. It is not to be found in saving and investment, but in attention to his teaching. The Sermon on the Mount is actually a devastating attack on the belief that material possessions can bring happiness. 'You cannot serve God and money'. 'Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own'. 'Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth'. Not much comfort here, you might think, for those who have lost their jobs or are worrying about how to feed a family. Yet Christ was not speaking to bankers and mortgage holders, but to people who were themselves poor, anxious and insecure. He invited them in ways that we might well find terrifying: to embrace poverty as freedom, to live like the birds of the air or the lilies of the field.

This of course is the last thing that any of us want to do. We have all bought into the materialist creed that it is good, even virtuous, to accumulate treasures on earth, bricks and mortar, money in the bank, a job. Incidentally, this attitude was a central core of 'our ancestors in the faith', Judaism. For them, material success was a sure sign of God's favour. We too find it difficult to imagine a good life that does not include material prosperity.

All politicians have tried their best to build the economy upon rock, but it is the bricks that are the problem. As we have discovered in the case of our banks, integrity and trust must be at the core of a healthy economy. If there is no trust in the bank, there will be no money there either.

Jesus recognised the inherent fragility of money. Not because he wanted people to live wretched lives but because he wanted them to have what cannot be taken away. A life based on guessing our way through booms and busts is as fragile as shifting sand. The solid rock can only come from putting values first: truth, mercy and integrity. It is paradoxical but true that economic health may depend more on a return to such values than any attempt by governments to fix the problem.

-Dick Lyng

HAPPENINGS

Wedding Bells

The happy couple, Sue Stanbury and Luke Murphy, married here in St. Augustine's Church on the Saturday after Easter. You will identify Sue as the young woman who was received into the Catholic Church and was Confirmed at the Easter Vigil here recently. We wish both a long life and great happiness together.

An Old Story

The 'Old Age' record held by Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 in France at the age of 122, may now pass to Sakhan Dosova from Kazakhstan. She celebrated her 130th birthday on March 27th, 2009. But officially the oldest living person in the world is Edna Parker, an American who is 114 years old.

Dosova's claims are difficult to substantiate. Her remarkable age came to light during a recent census. Officials then discovered that she was also on Stalin's first census of the region in 1926, when her age was recorded as 47. Her date of birth is recorded on her old Soviet passport as March 27th, 1879. Dosova has no birth certificate, but such records were not routinely kept in the late 19th century.

She had 10 children, only one of whom, a 76-year-old daughter, is still living. She is in general good health. She says she never visited a doctor and never ate sweets. Sakhan Dosova certainly looks very old in photographs. But claims of extremely long life are often made in this part of Asia. Similar claims made in nearby Georgia some years ago turned out to be unreliable. At that time Georgia was promoting its lifestyle and diet, particularly yogurt, as being especially healthy. Experts smelled a rat among all the cheese and yogurt.

Experts are not impressed by the special powers of any diet. They tend to attributes exceptional longevity to individual genetics. After all, Jeanne Calment smoked cigarettes and rode a bicycle for more than 100 years!

The best advice to someone who hopes to live for more than 100 years is that they should pick their parents carefully.

-William Reville.

Liturgy Group

A Parish Liturgy Group was formed at the recent meeting of the Steering Committee. Nine people volunteered for the task. But we would still welcome anyone who is interested to come and join us. What is the function of this group, you may well ask?

Well, a Liturgy Group is a common feature in the life of most parishes. We went through the 'Mission Statement' of a number of parishes similar to our own here. We agreed to adopt the following statement as a tentative, temporary expression of our composition and aims. The statement will probably need tweaking as we gain experience of working as a group.

"The Parish Liturgy Group will function as a sub-group of the Parish Steering Committee. At least two members of the Steering Committee, together with choir leaders, the coordinators of Minister of the Word and Eucharist, a representative of the Children's Liturgy Group, as well as other interested persons form this group.

Our primary focus is to foster the liturgical life of this Parish. We will do this by promoting and planning liturgies that will encourage full, conscious and active participation of the congregation. Forthcoming festivals and events will be examined and together we will strive to enhance these celebrations liturgically. We will pay particular attention to the manner in which God's Word is proclaimed, how music is chosen, how an atmosphere of sacredness and revererence is created, and how the congregation can be encouraged to actively participate by means of gesture, word, song and service as well as by silence, stillness and listening. We are conscious that for liturgy to be meaningful it must feed the heart and mind as well as the body and soul."

Our Liturgy Group will hold its first meeting on Thursday week next, May 7th at 7.30.

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