'Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.' Sunday Reflections, 5th Sunday of Easter, Year C

The Last Supper, El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]

Today's Gospel is from the Last Supper Discourse of Jesus.

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel John 13: 3i-33a, 34-35 (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition, Canada)  

When Judas had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer.” 

‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

John 13: 3i-33a, 34-35 in Filipino Sign Language

A familiar sight until a couple of months ago here in St Columban's, Dalgan Park, Ireland, where we have a community of more than 70 Columban priests, mostly retired and many in our nursing home, was that of Fr Jim Gavigan, now 92, pushing the wheelchair of Fr Paddy Hurley, then 94. Only two years ago Father Jim was using a wheelchair himself for a while after a hip operation.

Father Paddy went to his reward on 15 April. He had spent more than 60 years in the Philippines on the island of Negros. His two Columban brothers, the late Fathers Dermot and Gerry, had spent many years in Fiji. That's where Fr Jim Gavigan had worked all his active years, being a member of the pioneering Columban group that went there in 1952, as was Fr Gerry Hurley.

In the last few days I've seen Father Jim 'driving' another priest's wheelchair. (We have professional staff here who do this work very efficiently and with great care but sometimes others chip in.)

In all of this I see today's gospel being lived out. It is a gospel that is central to the Missionary Society of St Columban.

Frs Owen McPolin, John Blowick, Edward Galvin 
China 1920

On the evening of 29 January 1918 an extraordinary event took place in Dalgan Park, Shrule, a remote village on the borders of County Mayo and County Galway in the west of Ireland. At the time Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, which was engaged in the Great War. Thousands of Irishmen were fighting in the trenches in France and Belgium. Many, including my great-uncle Corporal Lawrence Dowd, never came home. There was a movement for independence in Ireland that led to the outbreak of guerrilla warfare in Ireland later in 1918. There was widespread poverty in the country, particularly acute in the cities.

Despite all of that, on 10 October 1916 the Irish bishops gave permission to two young diocesan priests, Fr Edward J. Galvin and Fr John Blowick to have a national collection so that they could open a seminary that would prepare young Irish priests to go to China. The effort was called the Maynooth Mission to China, because Maynooth, west of Dublin, is where St Patrick's National Seminary is, where Fr Galvin had been ordained in 1909 and Fr Blowick in 1913.

The seminary opened that late winter's evening with 19 students and seven priests. Many of the students were at different stages of their formation in Maynooth but transferred. The seven priests belonged to different dioceses but threw in their lot with this new venture which, on 29 June 1918, would become the Society of St Columban.

This Sunday's gospel was part of what the new group reflected on as they gathered in the makeshift chapel in Dalgan Park, the name of the 'Big House' and the land on which it was built. Among the seven priests was Fr John Heneghan, a priest from the Archdiocese of Tuam, as was Fr Blowick, and a classmate of Fr Galvin. Fr Heneghan never imagined that despite his desire to be a missionary in China he would spend many years in Ireland itself teaching the seminarians and editing the Columban magazine The Far East. But his dream was to take him to the Philippines in 1931 and to torture and death at the hands of Japanese soldiers during the Battle of Manila in February 1945, when 100,000 people, mostly civilians, were killed and most of the old city destroyed.

Fr John Blowick emphasised the centrality of the words of Jesus in this Sunday's gospel, I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. The second sentence there was written into the Constitutions of the Society, drawn up the following year.

To this particular Columban these words of Jesus from the Gospel of St John are the greatest legacy of Fr John Blowick to the many men from different countries who have shared his dream and that of Bishop Galvin to this day. 

And not only men, but women too, as Columban Sisters and as Columban Lay Missionaries. 

The Society of St Columban was born in the middle of the First World War because of the vision of two young men who saw beyond that awful reality and who took Jesus at his word. Down the years Columbans have lived through wars, in remote areas where their lives and the lives of the people they served were often in danger. Some have been kidnapped and not all of those survived. Among those who did was Fr Michael Sinnott, kidnapped in the southern Philippines in October 2009 when he was 79 and released safely a month later on 12 November. He is now one of our community here in Dalgan Park.

Fr Michael Sinnott in Manila on the day of his release

Father John Blowick's insistence on the words of Jesus in this Sunday's gospel becoming part of the very fibre of the being of Columbans sustained Fr John Heneghan, Fr Patrick Kelly, Fr John Lalor and Fr Peter Fallon, as Japanese soldiers took them away from Malate Church, Manila, on 10 February 1945, and their companion Fr John Lalor who was working in a makeshift hospital nearby who with others was killed there by a bomb three days later. 

Frs Lalor, Kelly, Francis Vernon Douglas, Fallon, Monaghan and Heneghan

Fr Douglas died, most probably on 27 July 1943,  after being tortured  by the Japanese in Paete, Laguna.

The words By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another are not only the hallmark of Columbans but of countless other groups, of countless families. They are meant to be the hallmark of every Christian.

JeanVanier with John Smeltzer, a member of L'Arche Daybreak, Toronto, 2009 [Wikipedia]

Two of those 'countless groups' are L'Arche and Faith and Light, which I have often mentioned on this blog. Jean Vanier, the founder of L'Arche and, with Marie-Hélène Mathieu, co-founder of Faith and Light, died in Paris on 7 May. 

I watched part of his funeral Mass yesterday, Thursday, on Facebook and was very struck by something that was said after the Mass by a group from L'Arche in which they thanked Jean for washing their feet - and for allowing them to wash his feet.

Today's gospel comes just after Jesus washed the feet of the Apostles. In both L'Arche and Faith and Light the washing of the feet has a great significance, a ritual that Jean Vanier developed over the years and which I experienced in a retreat he gave in Metro Manila in 1995. A whole afternoon was given to a reflection on what Jesus did. This ended in small groups forming circles where each washed the feet of the person on their left and had their feet washed by the person on their right. I remember that my friend Lala, about whom I have blogged many times, washed mine. 

Lala with Jordan, L'Arche, Cainta, Rizal, Philippines

I am blessed to be a member of the Missionary Society of St Columban for whose members today's Gospel is foundational and to have been involved, mainly on the fringes, with Faith and Light and with L'Arche, in the Philippines and in Ireland.

Jean Vanier embodied today's gospel. May he rest in peace. 

Antiphon ad communionem  Communion Antiphon Cf John 15, 1, 5

Ego sum vitis vera et vos palmites, dicit Dominus;
I am the true vine and you are the branches, says the Lord.
qui manet in me et ego in te, hic fert fructum multum, alleluia.
Whoever remains in me, and I in him, bears fruit in plenty, alleluia.