Readings(Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)
GospelMatthew 21:33-43 (English Standard Version Anglicised)
Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of the people:
“Hear another parable. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence round it and dug a wine press in it and built a tower and leased it to tenants, and went into another country.When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to get his fruit.And the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.Again he sent other servants, more than at first. And they did the same to them.Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.’And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”
Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:
“‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes’?
Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits.
Just over a century ago the young Fr Edward Galvin of the Diocese of Cork, Ireland, was sent by his bishop to work for some years in the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, because he had no place to put him. This was common at the time and many young Irish diocesan priests spent their early years on loan to English-speaking dioceses in other countries. While in Brooklyn Father Galvin found himself answering God's call to go to China. This was to lead eventually to the formal founding of the Missionary Society of St Columban, to which I belong, in 1918 with Fr Galvin and Fr John Blowick, another young Irish diocesan priest, as the co-founders. Later Fr Galvin became Bishop of Hanyang, China, and was expelled by the Communist authorities.
When I was growing up in Ireland people who were critical of the Church, sometimes with good reason, often used the term 'priest-ridden' to describe the country. Today there are parishes without priests and the average age of priests is, according to reports, is now around 70. In twenty years or so it could well happen that priests will be a relative rarity in the country.
When I was young almost every Catholic in Ireland went to Sunday Mass and the seminaries were full. Today only a minority take part in Sunday Mass, the seminaries have nearly all closed and only a handful of young men are preparing for ordination in the only that still remain open. More and more young people are choosing not to get married and not to have their children baptised.
In 1961, the year I entered the seminary, Ireland celebrated the 1,500th anniversary of the death of St Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland. Very few could have foreseen the falling away, not only from the Church, but from the Christian faith, within two generations.
St Paul tells us in the Second Reading today: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
I sometimes get disheartened at the situation of the Church in my native land and in other Western countries. The First Reading and the Gospel remind us that many have rejected God's love, God's gift, especially the gift of faith. Through the Prophet Isaiah God poignantly asks,What more was there to do for my vineyard,that I have not done in it? When I looked for it to yield grapes,why did it yield wild grapes?
But in the readings the Lord is really asking us to see what he has given us, to treasure it and to pass it on. In his homily at the beatification of 124 martyrs in Korea on 16 August 2014 Pope Francis said: The victory of the martyrs, their witness to the power of God’s love, continues to bear fruit today in Korea, in the Church which received growth from their sacrifice. Our celebration of Blessed Paul and Companions provides us with the opportunity to return to the first moments, the infancy as it were, of the Church in Korea. It invites you, the Catholics of Korea, to remember the great things which God has wrought in this land and to treasure the legacy of faith and charity entrusted to you by your forebears.
The following day in the opening sentence in his homily at the concluding Mass of Asian Youth Day Pope Francis said, The glory of the martyrs shines upon you! These words – a part of the theme of the Sixth Asian Youth Day – console and strengthen us all. Young people of Asia: you are the heirs of a great testimony, a precious witness to Christ.
The Pope was reminding the young people, and all of us, of the legacy of the Christian faith that we have received.
Pope Francis touched on this again on 21 September 2014 when he celebrated Mass in Mother Teresa Square, Tirana, very conscious of the persecution that had ended almost 30 years ago. He concluded his homily with these stirring words: To the Church which is alive in this land of Albania, I say 'thank you' for the example of fidelity to the Gospel. Do not forget the nest, your long history, or your trials. Do not forget the wounds, but also do not be vengeful. Go forward to work with hope for a great future. So many of the sons and daughters of Albania have suffered, even to the point of sacrificing their lives. May their witness sustain your steps today and tomorrow as you journey along the way of love, of freedom, of justice and, above all, of peace. So may it be.
(The words do not forget the nest refer to the Pope's mentioning earlier in the homily the eagle on Albania's flag and his saying, The eagle does not forget its nest, but flies into the heights.)
The Lord is calling each of us today to look back with gratitude for the gift of faith we have received individually and as community so that we can live that faith fully in the present as we move in hope and love into the future.
But the readings also remind us of the reality that the precious gift of the Christian faith has been lost, not only by individuals but in large areas of the world such as North Africa not that long after the time of such giants as St Augustine.
However, there are signs of a living Church, of a missionary Church, here in Ireland. After I came back to Ireland from the Philippines in 2017 I came to know a group of actively Catholic families with young children in one of the local parishes. From time to time on Sunday afternoons they held a family Holy Hour in one of the parish churches. The families included parents from India, France, China, Australia and other places. The children were mostly Irish-born. Sometimes the priest who led the Holy Hour was a Nigerian. And on one occasion when I was there, before the Holy Hour there was a period for the children to learn about our faith. The one leading the class was a husband/father from Kerala, India, where St Thomas the Apostle is believed to have brought the faith to the people. These are families focused on Jesus Christ. The spouses/parents in these families know that our Catholic Christian faith is the 'vineyard' that God has given us, and which He wants each generation to cultivate and to pass on to the next.
St Paul expresse this in the closing words of the Second Reading: What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practise these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
Pope Benedict in his Angelus talk on this Sunday in 2011 said, Firmly anchored in faith to the cornerstone which is Christ, let us abide in him, like the branch that can bear no fruit unless it remains attached to the vine. The Church, the People of the New Covenant, is built only in him, for him and with him.
Last May I updated a series of posts on The Rosary with the Great Artists. Here are The Joyful Mysteries.
Authentic Beauty
Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond. Pope Benedict XVI meeting with artists in the Sistine Chapel, 21 November 2009.
Autumn 2020, Margaree, Nova Scotia, Canada
Photo by Shaun Bennett
In March last year I gave missions in a number of parishes in the Diocese of Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Margaree was one of them and that is where I met Shaun.
In those parts of the Northern Hemisphere that have four seasons we are now well into autumn
Elizabeth appears in the Gospel of Luke, where she is described as “righteous in the eyes of God, observing all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blamelessly,”. I imagine that she was warm, loving and obviously a safe harbour for young Mary, who was not married when she conceived. When Mary came to visit her, Elizabeth was pregnant with St. John the Baptist and in her sixth month: “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And how have I deserved that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, the moment that the sound of thy greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leapt for joy. And blessed is she who has believed, because the things promised her by the Lord shall be accomplished.”
This popular prayer, a favorite of many Catholics, dates back to the 15th century and takes its name from the first Latin word of the prayer, "memorare," which means "remember." The Memorare is of unknown authorship, although it has been attributed to St. Augustine (354-430), St. John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) and, with more reason, to St. Bernard of Clairvaux (c. 1090-1153). St. Bernard's sermons on Mary were famous, and it was his Cistercian monks in the monastery of Citeaux in the 12th century who popularized the name "Our Lady" for Mary. The Memorare has also been attributed to the French cleric Claude Bernard (1588-1641), known as the "poor priest" of Paris, whose homilies contain passages that echo its words. No matter who wrote this prayer, it was Father Bernard who did much to popularize it, teaching it in hospitals and prisons, where Mary's intercession was effective in working miracles of grace. The first manuscript of the Mem...
I haven't been able to post for more than a week as I was giving an eight-day directed retreat to eight sisters of the Missionaries of Charity near Manila. While I had some access to the internet it was rather slow. I had intended to make a post here on the murder of Fr Fausto Tentorio PIME , a 59-year-old Italian priest, in the Diocese of Kidapawan, Mindanao, on Monday 17 October. I will save that post for a later date. As I was looking for a video about Father Fausto I came across one about Brother Richard Michael 'Richie' Fernando SJ, a Filipino Jesuit scholastic who died while trying to prevent a troubled and disabled young man in Cambodia from throwing a grenade. That was in 1996 - on 17 October. Father Fausto gave his life exactly 15 years later. I remember the mixture of sorrow and pride I felt when I read of the death of Brother Richie, pride as a missionary in the Philippines that a young Filipino seminarian had given his life so spontaneously in order to sav...
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