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22 Sunday Ordinary Time, 28 August 2011, Matthew 16:21-27

The World Youth Day logo - 2011

Just under two weeks ago, 12 days to be exact, I began the pilgrimage to World Youth Day with 24 others. We were led by our Elphin Youth Ministry director, Mr Frank McGuinness, and our spiritual director was Fr Michael Duignan. Members of the inspirational Church music group: Elation Ministries, were among our number as well.

Emblazoned on the front of our group T-Shirts was the World Youth Day logo, as well as the theme of this year's World Youth Day: "Planted and built up in Jesus Christ, firm in the faith" coming from St Paul's letter to the Colossians. (Col 2:7)

The first big gathering was with the Cardinal Archbishop of Madrid to celebrate Mass outside at Cibeles Square. There, encouraged by the huge gathering of young people and the vibrancy of the celebration, we were let in on what may be a closely guarded secret here in Ireland: World Youth Day would be one big party from the beginning to the end.

After Mass, as the crowds moved towards the Underground, our group made its way to a local cafe/bar. The musicians in our group got out their instruments and treated us to a feast of traditional Irish music on the fiddle accompanied by African drums. Some other pilgrims from London heard the sound of our music and asked to join with us.

A request came from the owner/manager of the cafe, a young, heavily pregnant woman. She came in to share with us that the child in her womb was dancing along with us in our joy! I was reminded of John the Baptist jumping for joy in Elizabeth's womb at the sight and sound of Our Lady.

The whole experience of World Youth Day in Madrid was refreshing, uplifting, full of life, and simply great fun. Gathering with at least a million others, in the blistering heat & sunshine, as the Pope was given the keys of the City by the Mayor, we danced and sang and got to know one another. There, I met a young couple from Italy – Magdalena and Samuel. We exchanged badges – they giving me one from their home diocese of Alba, me giving them a badge for the International Eucharistic Congress to be held in Dublin next summer and encouraging them to come along.

That evening, the Pope told us, English-speaking pilgrims, to make "these days of prayer, friendship and celebration bring us closer to each other and to the Lord Jesus. ... so that we may be joyful witnesses to Christ, today and always." In these words the Pope encouraged us to be full of joy, to be full of prayer and to be jubilant in our celebrating. In this place we were to encounter the joy of meeting other young people of faith, to sing and to dance, to pray and be rooted in our relationship with Jesus. And, we were to bring that joy home! Not to leave it in Madrid! But to share it with everyone – that the Good News is not dreary, bad or sad, but vital, singing, dancing: full of life and joy.

The highlight of our pilgrimage was the gathering at Cuatro Vientos, a military airport on the southwest of Madrid. There, with what turned out to be some 2 million young people, we waited for, and kept vigil with, the Holy Father.

It was the toughest part of the pilgrimage, walking almost 41/2 hours to the site in the midday sun with temperatures hovering around 40C.

As the vigil began around 10pm, a storm blew up with heavy rain and high winds. Neither of these extremes could keep our spirits down. Shortly after, the vigil continued – the Pope smiling, even as he got soaked by the rain and lost the small, white, zucchetto that he normally wears on his head. His hair tousled, the Pope continued to smile, beginning again – "Queridos jóvenes amigos" – My dear young friends – delighting in the patient joy among the gathered pilgrims.

After a short night's sleep outside in our sleeping bags, we gathered ourselves once more at one of the large flat screens and tuned in our small FM radios to the translation in English. This was what we had kept vigil for, the Papal Mass with the biggest open-air Church on earth, for that moment at least.

During his homily, the Holy Father told us: "Christ cannot be separated from the Church any more than the head can be separated from the body (cf. 1 Cor 12:12)."

He then went on to say: "Make Christ, the Son of God, the centre of your life. But let me also remind you that following Jesus in faith means walking at his side in the communion of the Church. We cannot follow Jesus on our own. Anyone who would be tempted to do so “on his own”, or to approach the life of faith with that kind of individualism so prevalent today, will risk never truly encountering Jesus, or will end up following a counterfeit Jesus."

This was especially important for us young Irish pilgrims to hear – conscious as we are of the brokenness and sinfulness of our Church. That Christ is fundamentally connected to the broken and sinful Church is something that we may find hard to take in and accept.

The Pope encouraged us: "Having faith means drawing support from the faith of your brothers and sisters, even as your own faith serves as a support for the faith of others."

He advised us that: "Growing in friendship with Christ necessarily means recognizing the importance of joyful participation in the life of your parishes, communities and movements, as well as the celebration of Sunday Mass, frequent reception of the sacrament of Reconciliation, and the cultivation of personal prayer and meditation on God’s word."

My experience of World Youth Day was an upbuilding of my own personal faith, and the common faith I share with you, and with millions of other people throughout the world. It opened my eyes, once more, to the great truths of Christianity and the wonderful diversity of cultures that make up our universal Catholic Church. The joy-filled memory of those days will help me to persevere and endure the testing moments that we are living through in the present time.

20 Sunday Ordinary Time, 14 August 2011, Matthew 15:21-28

The Canaanite Woman and Jesus

Four years ago, I had the privilege of visiting the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. It is called the "Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels". Almost brand new, it was opened in 2002 after the previous Cathedral of St. Vibiana was badly damaged in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake.

The Archbishop of Los Angeles at the time was Cardinal Roger Mahoney. The fundraising for the Cathedral, which cost something in the region of $250m, was a huge project in itself. The archdiocese managed to secure a large amount of finance from the Walt Disney company, and from other such notaries as Arnold Schwarzenegger. I mention these two because neither one is rooted in Roman Catholicism. And yet, both contributed sizeable sums of money, in the millions, to the project.

The Cathedral is dedicated to Our Lady of the Angels, citing a piece of Scripture that we have just heard proclaimed today – the last line of the first reading from the prophet Isaiah: "My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples."

Nowadays, when we consider the mission of the Church to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth, we become afraid that we are, somehow, not being respectful to Christians of other denominations, churches or ecclesial communities; to people of other faiths; or to people of no faith.

We wonder if it is politically correct to tell other people about our faith. The place of faith in the workplace, in school and in third-level is hugely challenged. The implications of our shared faith, for political, cultural, social and moral life, rarely gets a mention these days. We have witnessed the privatisation of faith. Far from bringing the gospel to the public market place, we are tempted to carefully secure it's powerful message within the walls of the Church buildings our communities have inherited.

"My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples."

It is interesting to reflect briefly on the terms: 'My house', as understood by the prophetic writer called Isaiah. For him, the house is three things: it is God's house, the Temple; it is the Royal House of Israel and Judah; and it is the Chosen people.

For us Christians, "God's House" is the building that we call the Church, for us it is here, the Church of the Sacred Heart, Roscommon. But that is not all God's House is.

It is also the Royal House, the Family & Lineage that each of us participate in through baptism in Christ Jesus. The House of God is the People of God.

The Church is the people, not the building. Even more, the Church is the People of God, gathered to pray, to worship and to be nourished by the Word we share and the Bread we break.

Isaiah adds another definition – God's House will be a house of prayer. God's house, people first and building second, are the core ways to enter into relationship with God in the conversation we call prayer. And then one more addition – God's House will be for all peoples. This completely redefines the role of the Chosen People in God's plan of salvation. They will, eventually, reach out to welcome all peoples into the Royal House of God, by means of the salvation offered in Christ.

It is interesting that the Canaanite woman, an outsider in Jesus' Hebrew worldview, approaches seeking his healing help. As a Canaanite woman she is entirely opposite to Jesus – she is a woman, not a man; a Canaanite, not a Jew. In terms of gender, religion and politics, she is beyond the pale. So, Jesus does not answer her.

As Jesus walks northwest from the sea of galilee, out towards the edge of Israel as we know it, almost crossing over into modern-day Lebanon, this outsider comes seeking him. He does not go seeking to connect with other people; he does not go seeking to convert. But, she recognises him for who he is – and in her vulnerable moment of need, when her daughter needs God's touch, she appeals beyond her own gender, her own religion and her own politics to the One Master, the One Lord of all.

"My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples."

We may be worried about proclaiming the Good News of Jesus to people who may not share our world view. We need not worry. Our task is to simply share, gently, the joy, the hope, the love, the reconciliation, and the fullness of life that we have in Christ. We don't need to worry about the Church, or about the future. All we can offer, is real, genuine and honest witness, to the good things we share in because of our relationship in prayer with Christ. The rest we can leave to God.

19 Sunday Ordinary Time, 7 August 2011, Matthew 14:22-33

Fear

Gathering with you this morning for the first time is a privilege for me. We are, all of us, making a change. I have just moved here yesterday as Fr Kevin moved out to Rooskey. For the past year I have served as chaplain of IT Sligo, and it was with some surprise that I learned that I was to become curate here in Roscommon town. I am glad to be here with you and I pray that our getting to know each other over the time we have together will be mutually beneficial to us all.

I would like to offer you some brief biographical details – I am the youngest priest of the diocese. I was ordained in 2008 in my home parish of Riverstown, at the Church of the Assumption, Sooey, Co. Sligo. Before that, I was in Maynooth for seven years from 2001-2008, preparing for ordination to priesthood. And, before that again, I spent three years at IT Sligo studying Civil Engineering, which I still love.

I was educated at Summerhill College in Sligo, and completed my leaving cert there in 1998.
My hobbies include all things automotive, especially cars. For a number of years I volunteered as a marshall at the Sligo stages of the Circuit of Ireland Rally. And, in my teenage years I was a keen cyclist, winning an All-Ireland medal in the process, even if you wouldn't think it to look at me now!

Fear is an incredible thing. It has both positive and negative effects in our lives. It can save us from falling off a cliff, but it can also paralyse us and even stop us from taking the step that may sometimes be necessary to save ourselves.

Fear is what Mothers and Fathers drill into their children to stop them putting their hand into a fire. And yet, fear of water can paralyse a child trying to learn to swim.

Fear has both positive and negative effects on us.

Fear speaks to the Church that we find ourselves part of today. And, while we feel afraid of what is happening to our Church, we must also not allow our fear to paralyse us from taking the necessary steps to save ourselves.

It seems to me, from our gospel passage today, that the core activity of the Christian, when faced with fear, is to rely on God. And be reliance on God I don't mean that we ignore what is happening around us. What I mean is that we will find it most difficult to interpret the 'signs of the times' with 'eyes of faith' if we are not people of prayer.

Relying on God means placing our trust in God.

Relying on God means trusting that even in the midst of what can seem like a difficult and painful experience of truth, God is there. God is in the painful discoveries that we are making about our Church. And God is the reason that we continue to be people of faith.

Like the disciples out on the lake, we find ourselves afraid and overwrought, even sinking. And yet, all the while, Jesus is saying to us: "Courage! It is I! Do not be afraid."

I look forward to getting to know you all. Please pray for me as I get to know my new parish and community.

17 Sunday Ordinary Time, 24 July 2011, Matthew 13:44-46

Final Doxology - My first Mass

I think that it's fair to say that this week has been a painful week to be a priest. It doesn't compare to the pain of the many victims of abuse. Their pain is much greater and is lifelong.

But, nonetheless, this week has been a painful week to be a priest. The speech by An Taoiseach in the Dáil forced me to ask the question: what is my homily going to be about this Sunday? And, if I am honest, initially I was very angry with Mr Kenny for saying the things he said. Again, I felt ashamed to be a priest, ashamed to be part of the hierarchy of the Church. Ashamed, indeed, to be tarred with the same brush as those who have abused children in their care, and even more to be associated with those who attempted to shield abusers from the justice of the State.

So, back to my question: what is my homily going to be about this Sunday? In being angry with Enda Kenny, I wanted to lash out at him, and at his government. I was tempted to politicise my homily and to criticise him for being populist, and for being somewhat cavalier with the truth.

However, it was in conversations with my priest-colleagues, and with my colleagues in IT Sligo, that I began to hear another side to An Taoiseach's speech in Dáil Éireann. And that side is that Mr Kenny captured the anger and the injustice felt by many of us Irish people, at all that we have discovered about the Church over almost twenty years since the the Brendan Smyth case brought down the government in 1994.

And, while I might be somewhat critical of Mr Kenny on the core issue of truth; I can stand beside him in the anger that he expressed, the anger and rage that many people across our country feel inside.

So, if my homily is not to be a political attack on our Taoiseach, then what is it to be? A homily is supposed to break open the Word of God, for the People of God, in light of the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church, the faith of the community and the preacher and any current issues and affairs, both global and local, that affect the life of the believing community.

The pulpit is not the place for political rhetoric. The pulpit is supposed to be succour and help for the People of God in the living out of their faith.

Another way of saying this is that the preacher is called to form the hearts of the believing People of God in faith, hope and love.

So, where is the hope in these times? To whom can we en-trust our hearts?

A question that I ask myself on a regular basis is: Why do I continue to be a priest? With everything that has come out of the darkness and into the light – why remain? Why give my life to the Church, and be associated with some of the most evil actions that human beings can imagine? When there is no status left for priest or bishop: why stay?

The only answer that satisfies me when I ask this question of myself, is that I didn't become a priest because I wanted to do good things for the Church. I didn't become a priest because other priests asked me to consider being a priest. I didn't become a priest for either bishop or Pope.

I did become a priest, and I remain a priest, because deep in my own heart and soul I have encountered God's love. And, I have heard the call of God to share that encounter with other people. In short, I became a priest to share the Good News with others.

For me, that is the treasure hidden in the field, it is the one thing that is worth giving everything up for – status, power and wealth – even wife and family for the sake of the Kingdom of God, as the Gospel says.

I am a priest to share the Good News with others. In spite of all the brokenness and abuse, the sinfulness and the hopelessness of these moments, still the Good News is worth it. It is the Pearl of Great Price.

And the Church is, today and always, the broken vessel in which that Pearl is stored. The Church is the field in which the Treasure is hidden. Here, where never more in our lifetime has there been more dirt and mess and chaos covering it up. Here is where we find our resting place, here we encounter the One who searches for us until He finds us. Here we encounter Him who gave up all He had for us; for you and for me.

That is why I am a priest of Jesus Christ, and that is why I remain so.

16 Sunday Ordinary Time, 17 July 2011, Matthew 13:24-43

Darnel

During Easter week, as some of you know, I was in Lourdes with the IHCPT – the Irish Pilgrimage Trust, which brings children and young people with special needs to Lourdes each year for a "Pilgrimage – Holiday". Many of you here will know Mary Clancy who is very involved with the IHCPT, and is now a trustee in the organisation as well as being leader of group 164.

This year I travelled as the chaplain with group 306. Our group leader was a lady called Patricia Galvin, who comes from nearby Carraroe, and the deputy leader was a man called Ruairi McAteer who hails from Castlederg in Co. Tyrone. Ruairi is a young man of 24 years of age, and he entertained us for hours with his tomfoolery. While there, he told me all about his sister Maura, who recently joined the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in New York. He invited me to come to Castlederg to meet his sister during the summer when she was home for a family wedding.

About a month ago, we journeyed to Castlederg to meet Ruairi, his parents, and his sister, Sr Bernadette.
What happened around the dinner table that evening was nothing short of incredible. Sr Bernadette told me all about her life, and why she had become a Nun. She exuded joy into the room with her radiant smile, and we connected over a mutual acquaintance, an Austrian sister called Sr Christina whom I had met in the Holy Land in 1998, and who has been working in Letterkenny for many years. Then Sr Bernadette really astounded me when she talked about a core experience in her vocation journey at a Festival of Prayer for young people that happened in St Angela's College here in Sligo almost ten years ago. She shared about a particular priest who had helped her, through his preaching, to offer her life to God willingly. For her, this festival of prayer, and her encounter with God there, had helped her to answer the call of religious consecration.

The amazing thing for me was that I had been involved with the organisation and execution of that festival of prayer. I had spoken in Churches and encouraged young people to come along and try it out. The St Michael's Youth Prayer Group, of which I was an active member, had been instrumental in organising the event. Sr Bernadette went on to amaze me by producing an album of photographs from the festival itself!

I couldn't believe it! I think what I couldn't believe most of all was that something so good could have happened through that festival of prayer. That it could have been the catalyst moment in Sr Bernadette's vocation story really amazed me. In short, I was amazed that something so good could have happened.

Like most people, I am culturally conditioned by the negative. We cope with negativity, with bad news almost every day of the week. This week has been exceptionally negative for us who are attempting to answer God's call to ministry. It has been a shameful week, a week when the Church is forced to accept it's corporate wrongdoing in the face of immensely evil acts.

In short, we find it very difficult to see the good amidst what can seem like a sea of bad. The gospel today calls us to give time to the process of discovering the good and the bad, the saints and the sinners. We have to try to take time to give a correct perspective to all that has happened, not ignoring the bad and the sinful, but not allowing it to define all that the Church is.

Perhaps it is time that we could be amazed by a good news story – a story of the good in the midst of all the bad.

The Most Holy Trinity, Year A, John 3:16-18

Where to start?

"I don't know where to begin." When we are faced with something new; a relationship, a problem at work or at home, we find ourselves right back at square one. We must go back to the drawing board and think about how we are going to move on.

Our life as a Christian begins when we are baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The journey that we start when we are baptised is a journey alongside the Trinity and really the journey is about constantly deepening our relationship with this beginning, the Trinity.

For most of us, even 'professional religion people', the idea of the Trinity is difficult to understand. The Trinity is a frustrating mystery; nobody seems to be able to explain it. We are often tempted to overtake the problem and move on to things that are easier to solve, like fixing the roof, putting down tarmac on the car park, or fund-raising for the school. All of these are noble and necessary for the good of our community, but they can take away from the very necessary task of sitting still and thinking about something as fundamental to our faith as the Trinity. "I don't know where to begin."!

My Dad comes from Cork. There is something quite particular in the Cork psyche that must advertise itself, especially on All-Ireland Sunday. Cork people wear red and white football jerseys, wave red and white flags, paint their faces red and white, and I'm sure if Guinness brewed a red version of its famous stout, they would heartily drink it. I can see the various flags that the Cork fans use from the basic red and white, to the more elaborate Maple leaf of the Canadian flag, to the red sun on a white background of the Japanese flag. All in all, no one could walk down from Drumcondra train station to Croke Park on All-Ireland Sunday and mistake the Cork fans for any other county.

In a very similar way, like Cork people are from Cork, we as Christians are from the Trinity. We speak in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We are baptised, confirmed, married, sent to preach the Gospel in the name of the Trinity, and we end our lives in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. When we pray, we begin in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This is the identifying mark of what it is to be a Christian. We pray and act in the name of the Trinity.

Each person of the Trinity has a specific role in the life of the Church. The Father calls us to himself, the Son redeems us in the name of the Father, and the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to respond in love to the Father and to the Son. The Trinity then is not removed from our lives, we are called into the life of joy that is in the Trinity, living the covenant call of the Father, the salvation of the Son, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Pentecost Sunday, Year A, John 20:19-23

There are many things in our world that we cannot see. Many things that we fail to understand fully. Some of us have the privilege of learning about a particular part of our world and hopefully sharing it with other people.

Things like, electricity for example. You can google the image "Earth at Night" which is a composite image of the whole planet taken at night-time. All that you can see are the outlines of the countries and the clusters of civilisation where people have constructed large cities and small villages, all with one thing in common. Light. They are all lit up by electricity.

And yet, we cannot see electricity. In a way it is the purest form of energy. We cannot see it, and yet we can see it's effects. We flick a switch and the light comes on. Indeed, if we are really fancy we clap our hands and light comes on!

Even though we cannot see it, we have a good idea what electricity feels like when we touch it! And, if we stand near a high-voltage power line, or at the side of a sub-station, at times we can hear the buzz that large amounts of electricity make.

In the Bible, the Holy Spirit is spoken of as wind or breath, as a dove, as fire and as other natural phenomena. Wind is a good image for the Spirit of God because again we cannot see it clearly, but we can see it's effects. The dove as a bird that symbolises the peace that exists between God and man is another great symbol for the Holy Spirit. The Spirit as fire tells us something about the burning zeal in our hearts that can come about in us because of the Spirit of God dwelling within us.

The Holy Spirit is like the electricity that keeps the Church alive. The Holy Spirit has sustained the Church for 2,000 years through triumph and tribulation, through sin and grace. It is by the grace of the Holy Spirit that others shared with us the Good News of Jesus Christ, and it is by the same grace of the Holy Spirit that we share the Good News by passing it on.

What is the Holy Spirit? Theologians tell us that it is the love that is shared between God the Father and God the Son. They tell us that we share in that love – that love is the electricity that drives our participation in the life of God.

6 Sunday Easter, Year A, John 14:15-21

Russian Dolls

Have you ever seen a set of Russian dolls? They are sometimes known as 'Babushka dolls'. Anyhow, they sit one inside the other. The ones you can pick up on the tourist trail very often have five, but there can be as many as two dozen dolls, all one inside the next.

It's a helpful image for what Jesus tells us in the Gospel today: "I am in my Father and you in me and I in you." Given how close that means God is to us, it is no wonder that very often we wonder where God is. Is he up in the sky? Or in the land? If God is in each one of us and we are present in God, then God is a lot more like real life than the religious images we might have for God from our childhood.

If we are looking for God, then we have to begin by listening to the movements of our own heart because that is where God chooses to dwell by means of his Holy Spirit dwelling in us. It is that same Holy Spirit that prompts us to do right rather than to do wrong in moments of difficulty. It is God's Holy Spirit in us that reveals God's deepest dream for us. Because of God's Holy Spirit dwelling in us the Christian life is known as the 'Spiritual Life'. And this time of the Church that we are living in now since the time of Jesus is known as the time of the Spirit.

So, as Christians we live by the Spirit, rather than simply by the Law. This makes us joyful, because we experience the very presence of God in us.

Living by the Spirit, we are aware that the Spiritual life is not just about not sinning. The Spiritual life is not just about being sorry for what we have done. The person in the life of the Spirit seeks to allow their life to be moulded by the Spirit of God. The life of the Spirit is positive, life-giving and joyful, not simply dwelling on the negative.

Isn't it one of the strange aspects of our experience of Christian life here in Ireland that prayers are often seen as a penance? Whether it's as a penance from the Sacrament of Confession, or going on pilgrimage to Lough Derg; very often we understand our relationship with God in terms of a penance that we have to do. Our gospel today promotes a radically different vision to that; it is the vision of God gently dwelling inside us, encouraging us, calling us, dreaming for us, loving us. Listening to God who dwells in our hearts then we ache to live in relationship with him. Our whole being becomes shaped by the presence of God in our hearts.

Vocation makes sense in this life of the Holy Spirit. Whether we're talking about the vocation of marriage or priesthood, religious life or the monastery. With God these radical, Christian ways of life are possible, but without God they lose their flavour and their essence.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.
V. Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created.
R. And You shall renew the face of the earth.
Let us pray.
O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Graduation Mass, Coola Post Primary School, 26 May 2011

I’m a fan of the singer “Jessie J”. My favourite song of hers at the moment is “Price Tag”. As you know it’s currently at 25 in the charts. “Price Tag” features B.O.B., also known as Bobby Ray Simmons Jr., whose father is a Pastor in Georgia. Bobby’s father didn’t like what his son was singing about until he realised that it was good for him, and that it was a really good form of expression.
Recently Jessie J tweeted: “Just came off stage at trinity ball. Probably one of the hardest gigs to date. To see so many people so drunk they couldnt even stand. Girls unconcious and them literally trampling on eachother. wasn't easy”

What does freedom really mean? Is freedom simply about ‘having a good time’? Or is there something more to it?

Almost a year ago the journalist John Watters spoke to a gathering of priests all about freedom. John is a most interesting character because like many of us he grew up as a Catholic but then went significantly off the rails as he became an adult. In speaking about freedom he told us that at the age of 19 he made the decision that freedom was drinking as much alcohol as he wanted. He went on to become an alcoholic and today is sober.

For John Waters, alcohol became a prison. It became the ultimate un-freedom. Needless to say, his views on drugs are similar, even though he is not a drug-addict.

Jessie J went on to tweet: “I'm not upset they werent all listening it upset me to see so many young people so not with it. Not used to it. Its hard to sing when i just wanted to go in the crowd and help all the crying girls being squashed.... Can i just clear up that last night was a UNIVERSITY BALL and it was students. I was just shocked at how intoxicated they were and i was genuinely worried for them. im not used to it thats all. And its not just in Ireland its everywhere. As a non drinker. I just wanna spread the msg that binge drinking is dangerous”

So, what is freedom? I think that freedom is to be found inside yourself, in that quiet place where only you and God dwell. The passage from the Gospel that we heard earlier told us that “A good person brings good out of the treasure of good things in his heart.” As Christians we understand that in every human heart, God is there.

I was in Lourdes recently with the IHCPT, the Irish Pilgrimage Trust. The Trust brings people with special needs to Lourdes every Easter for a week of what they call a pilgrimage holiday. There are about 1100 people who travel from Ireland for the week. It’s not a very serious pilgrimage, and the children and young adults with special needs really help us to get in touch with our ‘silly gene’ especially at the big Masses. When we are silly, then we are vulnerable, and when we are vulnerable then we can be deeply touched.
At one of those Masses, Fr Michael McGrath asked us to hold up our hands. He got us to repeat the words: “God Loves Me Very Much”. Maybe, as you step forward on the next step of life, it’s good to remember that: “God Loves Me Very Much”. It's the greatest freedom we have.

5 Sunday Easter, Year A, John 14:1-12

Diakonia - Service

What would our world be like if cars were never invented? Or what about the railway? Or even the steam engine? If there was no such thing as oil, or gold? What would life be like if we didn't have Microwaves and Dishwashers, sewing machines and tumble dryers? Very often we say: How did we ever do without this?

Imagine, if you will for a moment, what our world would be like if Christ had never been revealed to us. Imagine if Jesus had never been born. What would our world be like?

I think that if Jesus had never been born and if we had not ever heard the Good News of the Gospel, then our world would not have as much service in it. Of course other religions and other ways of life have service. But there is a particular essence of service because of Jesus Christ.

This particular essence of service is born of the fact that God became a human being in Jesus Christ. And, because God became a human being, human beings are forever better. Because Jesus became one of us we know that every person, every human being, baptised or unbaptised, born or unborn, alive or dead, free or in prison; every human being is like Jesus. And, because we are like Jesus, we are also like God. Our dignity as human beings was always there, even before Christ. But, because Jesus walked among us as God become man; now we know. We can never go back. We are always challenged to move forward. We can never forget.

There are many examples in our world where the dignity of every human person has not been upheld. Famine, injustice, unemployment, poverty, slavery. In all of these situations people are not respected as the gift of God that they are. Even in our own time and place, the horrible plight of abuse in all it's forms challenges the Christian understanding of the dignity of each person.

It is because of the dignity of human life that Christians everywhere uphold pro-life values, challenging the status quo of abortion, challenging the status quo of war, challenging the status quo of an unequal and divided world.

It is also because of the dignity of every human person that we are touched deeply by the momentous symbolic acts of this past week when the Queen of England made a State visit to our country.

Because of the dignity of human beings, some of us are called into the service of God and of his holy people. Queen Elizabeth is a very obvious example to us all of a lifetime of service to others. And, in our tradition as Catholics we are aware of those who have offered their own lives to service as priests or religious sisters and brothers.

It is hard to imagine what life would be like if we didn't have planes, trains and automobiles. It is even harder to imagine what our world might be like if God had not become one of us. Because of Jesus Christ, our world is changed forever. The vision of life inspired by the Gospel is a vision of service to God and service to all people. It is a vision of love in concrete form. The challenge for each one of us today is to allow our hearts and our lives to be touched by Christ's love and so to offer ourselves in service.

4 Sunday Easter, Year A, John 10:1-10

When we were children, my father would bring us to Croke Park for All-Ireland Sunday, especially if his beloved County Cork were playing in the football or hurling final. Very often, he would have a ticket for himself and another ticket to cover two of us children and sometimes three of us! Hard as it is to believe today, at that time children were very often let in with a nod and a wink. But, after the Hillsborough disaster at Sheffield in 1989, the attitude to unticketed supporters changed all around the world, including in Croke Park.

However, the changes hadn't come yet, and we would arrive at the turnstiles to get in. The trick was to jump the turnstile before the ticket operator had a chance to stop you and we became very good at that. Then, we were in! That was how we got to see Cork beat Meath in the All-Ireland football final of 1990, 11 points to 9, sitting on the steps of the Cusack Stand.

Jesus tells us today that he is the gate of the sheepfold. The language seems a bit cryptic.
If we take a moment though to reflect on it, a gate is something that we encounter on a regular basis. The turnstiles at Croke Park, the gate into the driveway of your house, the front door of the Church. In the IT where I minister during the week, we have a thing called the 'Staff Portal' which only staff members can access on the college website. The Staff Portal keeps us up to date on all that is happening in the life of the college. All websites are a 'way in' to whatever we are browsing for. We can check out what the latest fashion is, or browse for historical trivia, or indeed to buy tickets for the All-Ireland!

Gates, doors and portals are things that we are very familiar with. While there are many gates and doorways in our world, Jesus tells us that he is the gate of the sheepfold. If he is the gate, then we are the sheep. And, if we are the sheep, then we need good grazing, good pasture to sustain us and nurture us. We need that good pasture.

In the book "Alice in Wonderland", when Alice follows the white rabbit down the rabbit hole, she finds herself in a room with many locked doors of different shapes and sizes. She must make a choice. Finding a key she matches it to it's door only to find that the door is too small for her to fit through. She finds a bottle with the label "Drink Me". It makes her shrink too small to reach the key. Then she finds a cake labelled "Eat Me" which causes her to grow into a giant! She must measure out just enough of the liquid in the bottle and the cake to make herself the right size to pick up the key and fit through the right door.

Today is also the Sunday when we offer prayers especially for vocations to priesthood and the religious life. Finding our vocation in life can be a little bit like zooming down the rabbit hole like Alice. We find ourselves looking at many different doors, wondering what adventures lie beyond them for us. Many of us will try different doors only to retreat back and pick another one. As Christians we find that we don't really choose our own vocation, but rather that we discover it.

If Jesus is the gate of the sheepfold, then he is also the doorway into our deepest calling in life. And that gate is to be found in our own hearts rather than outside ourselves in some distant place. We discover that the Lord of all Life resides deep within our very self, and there God plants a dream that is beyond all our own dreaming, an idea beyond all our own imagining, a call beyond all callings, a vocation beyond all vocations.

Like Alice in the wormhole, initially we may find that we have some work to do before our true vocation seems right. And, we discover that we do not have to force ourselves to be someone else, but to radically be true to our own self. We don't have to jump the turnstiles of life to be happy. All we have to do is discover the turnstile that fits, and we can sail right through. 

2 Sunday Easter, Year A, John 20:19-31

Peace – The Scarlet and the Black – Gregory Peck as Monsignor O'Flaherty, Christopher Plummer playing the Commander of Nazi forces in Rome, Colonel Kappler – Kappler worries for his family's safety from vengeful partisans, and, in a one-to-one meeting with O'Flaherty, asks him to save his family, appealing to the same values that motivated O'Flaherty to save so many others. The Monsignor, however, refuses, disbelieving that after all the Colonel has done and all the atrocities he is responsible for, he would expect mercy and forgiveness automatically, simply because he asked for it, and departs in disgust. The figure of Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, attending the Beatification of John Paul II is presented in a similar way in our own time.

War – In our own time: Lybia, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq – War as the opposite of Peace

Tyre meets the road – Are we people of peace or people of war? Our language, jokes, songs, prejudices all tell us who we are, the person of war that we harbour in our hearts? Or do we seek to harbour radical peace?

Peace is radical, it is much more difficult to achieve than war. It is complex. In "The Scarlet and the Black" as the Allies enter Rome, Monsignor O'Flaherty joins in the celebrations of the liberation, and somberly toasts those who did not live to see it.

Eventually Colonel Kappler is captured and questioned by the Allies. During his interrogation, he is informed that his wife and children were smuggled out of Italy and escaped unharmed into Switzerland. Upon being asked who helped them, Kappler realizes that it must be O'Flaherty, but responds simply that he does not know.

Radical peace is a difficult thing to achieve.

In the film "Karol: A Man Who Became Pope", Piotr Adamcyzk plays the character of Karol Wojtyla and Ken Duken plays the character of Adam Zielinski. Adam is a student of Fr Karol's at Lublin University and he gradually inserts himself into the group of young intellectuals that Fr Karol gathers around himself. Adam, it turns out, is a Communist Spy, working on behalf of the Communist government.

The story takes a twist when, at a certain point in the film, Adam climbs up over the confessional that Fr Karol uses and inserts a microphone to record the conversations that occur there.

Later on, Adam tell his commander that Fr Karol has never spoken against the Communist government, even in the confines and sacred seal of the confessional. He has never instigated or condoned any action that amounted to uprising. This is, by any standards, quite amazing.

This is portrayed in the film as the way by which Fr Karol became a bishop because of the Polish government's view of him as one who would not lead an uprising, as one who had never spoken against them, and finally as a member of the working class rather than the traditional noble background of the Archbishop of Krakow.

It should be obvious to us all that being people of peace, and being authentically true to that peace at all times has a radical quality to it that can really change our world and make it a better place. And, it should be just as obvious to us that we are unable to achieve that peace on our own. We are like the disciples locked in the room of fear. It requires the Lord Jesus himself to break through those locks of fear to inspire us with the words: Peace be with you.

These are the words that we share with one another just before we receive communion. We take these words of the Lord, and pray them to each other, declaring ourselves to be people of peace, just as the Lord is the Lord of peace. "Peace be with you" means that we are not jealous, we do not covet our neighbours goods; "Peace be with you" means that we honour ourselves and we honour the other person; "Peace be with you" means that we are people of love entering into the most profound relationship of love that is available to us.

Peace be with you.

5 Sunday Lent, Year A, John 11:1-45

There are a few aspects of our Christian faith that many of us find difficult to understand. Some of the moral requirements that are made of us can at times feel like a burden. And then there are aspects of our faith that we can find ourselves wondering about. Resurrection is one of those things. Sure, there may be moments when it is crystal clear, but by and large we don't fully understand it: either what exactly it means or why it would happen.

This Sunday we gain an insight into the resurrection. In our first reading from Ezekiel we are presented with the Jewish understanding of the resurrection on the last day. The image given is of God opening the graves of the chosen people and returning them to the soil of Israel. For many of us, this is an image of the resurrection that we can at least imagine. It makes sense, even if it is a supernatural image.

The second reading from St Paul's letter to the Romans offers us a dimension of the Christian understanding of the resurrection. Here, St Paul tells us that if God's holy Spirit dwells in us, then God will come looking for his holy Spirit and we will be resurrected because of that. Kind of like turning up with a VIP to an important event, because we are friends with this most important of people, we will be allowed in.

And then, in the Gospel we hear a story of love. This story is of Jesus' particular and personal love for Martha, for Mary, and for their brother Lazarus. One of the beautiful lines of our Gospel reads:
'Jesus said in great distress, with a sigh that came straight from the heart, "Where have you put him?"'

This tells us something further about the resurrection promised to us in Christ: it is because God loves us that he comes to bring us out of death.

And so, today, we have three images for the resurrection:
1.God opening the graves of his people and leading them back to Israel
2.God's holy Spirit, dwelling in us, the VIP that ensures our entry into the resurrection
3.The personal love that Jesus has for each one of us that causes him to sigh with distress and weep, but most of all it causes him to raise us up.

3 Sunday Lent, Year A, John 4:5-42

Water of Life

A good friend of mine, who was a priest of my home diocese, didn't like tea. Now, I'm not sure if any of you are Father Ted fans, but a priest who doesn't drink tea is something of a rarity, right?

My friends dislike of tea led to many uncomfortable moments for him in ministry, when people would offer him tea, or coffee (he didn't like coffee either) and he wouldn't accept it. It was like he wasn't accepting their hospitality – like he didn't really want to be there.

Water is mentioned quite a lot in our gospel for this Sunday. The Samaritan woman goes to Jacob's well to draw water. Jesus is thirsty. He asks for a drink. The ice is broken, and the conversation unfolds. It is a heart moment. Jesus is quiet and calm; the lady, bemused and wondering. Jesus speaks in what seem like riddles about the water of life.

And something clicks. She gets it. She runs to tell the others.

Like many of the stories of the gospels, if we pause for a moment; hear some of the words and follow some of the actions, we too can find ourselves 'getting it', even if its just for a moment.

'Water' is one of those words. Water is life. Unclean, dirty water, is death. This week we have heard about water contaminated by radiation in Tokyo and the measures taken by the authorities there to distribute bottled water to families with infant children. 'Water' is life. Not one of us would wish to give our child contaminated water.

Water is also the means by which we are all brought into the life of Christ and the life of the Church at our baptism. Some among us may be preparing to celebrate their baptism this Easter. Water of life, and words of life: "I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

Our baptism with water calls us into the new life of Christ. It reminds us of who we are as children of God. We realise that nothing can or should separate us from the new, eternal life offered us in Christ; not sectarian divisions or other things that divide us, including our sins.

We are all welcomed and invited. It is up to us to allow ourselves to listen carefully and be moved enough to follow.

2 Sunday Lent, Year A, Matthew 17:1-9

About a year after my ordination as a priest, I was sitting outside the adoration chapel next to the Cathedral in Sligo town, talking to a couple that I am friendly with. At the time they were preparing for their wedding.

The lady, who had been involved in a prayer group at IT Sligo when I was there as a student, commented to me that she knew that something was going on in me about the call of priesthood because of the way I led prayer there at that time. She mentioned that on one particular evening, I had called on everyone present to offer themselves with a full heart to the will of God in their lives.

A short time later, I was in Maynooth.

Our readings today are all about call. Our first reading which comes from the very first book of the Bible, Genesis, is about father Abram. Before he becomes Abraham, he is called Abram, and here we have one of the first moments that Abram does what God asks him to do by leaving 'your country, your family and your father's house, for the land I will show you. ... So Abram went as the Lord told him.'

The second reading, from the second letter of St Paul to Timothy, one of the earliest letters of the Apostle Paul, reminds Timothy, and the Church he oversees, that we are called to be holy.

Finally, our well known gospel of the transfiguration reminds the apostles and us: 'This is my Son, the beloved; he enjoys my favour, listen to him.'

In short, we hear the primary call of God like father Abram and we take a core action: leaving the familiar and the known to journey into the unfamiliar and the unknown – we realise like the apostle Paul that it is not enough to listen and to act, but that, having been saved in Christ, we are now called to holiness. And, what is holiness in today's gospel? It is listening carefully to Jesus Christ, who, according to the voice of God in today's gospel is in the first place, before anyone or anything else.

This journey is the most frightening journey of all, from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the comfortable to the uncomfortable, from the known to the unknown. Who knows what will happen if we listen to the call of Jesus deep in our hearts?

This is the journey of the heart. It is a journey from our heads into that place inside us all where God dwells, transfigured, and lighting us up. The journey of the heart is one that is undertaken by priests and prophets, poets and artists. It is a journey that we are all invited to be a part of.

Sometimes we have to do something to begin the journey inside – like Abraham and the apostles, we go to a place like a mountain to retreat, to reflect, to pray and to come close to God. Here in Sligo, we are spoiled for choice – we have religious sites by the dozen, and beautiful places in nature that allow us access to our hearts.

Stand at the top of Ben Bulben on a fine day and tell me that you are not touched deep inside. Tip your toes in the ocean that is on our doorsteps. Make a pilgrimage to the holy well at Tobernalt near Carraroe. Make a visitation to our beautiful Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. Pray in the chapel of Adoration at the Cathedral, or down at St Bernadette's on the riverside. Make a trip out to Skreen and to the community of prayer at Holy Hill hermitage. Book your place for this summer's season on Lough Derg. Plan a pilgrimage to Lourdes, Fatima, Medjugorje, or maybe World Youth Day this August – how's about a day at our beautiful national Shrine at Knock? Read a spiritual book. Learn a new way to pray, or renew an old one. Pick up your rosary beads. Ponder on the Stations of the Cross. Ask someone to show you if you don't know how.

The journey to the heart begins on the outside, but it finishes on the inside. God is waiting for you, don't hesitate to start today.

9 Sunday Ordinary Time, Year A, Matthew 7:21-27

My first appointment after ordination was as curate to the Parish of Ss Peter & Paul, Athlone. As part of that appointment, I served the small community of Clonown, south of Athlone on the west side of the River Shannon. The road from Athlone out to Clonown is called simply: The Clonown Road. It is a road that was built by the army in the 1940s to gather turf during the emergency. The local people would have travelled into Athlone by boat at that time. Because the road was built in a rush, it is built in the middle of a floodplain, and it seasonally floods for about 4 to 5 months each year.

Amazingly, houses have been built along this road, although outside of the seasonal flooding zones. One such house, that  people told me was built about 25 years ago, was built on a raft foundation. As the house was coming to completion, the back of the house began to sink into the bogland that it was built on. Amazingly, because of it's raft foundation, the walls of the house have very few cracks. But the back of the house sits some 6 foot lower than the front of the house! It was like the leaning tower of Pisa on the shores of the River Shannon!

Today, we all know the value of building our house on a firm foundation. We know it in a literal sense, like the house that I just talked about in Athlone; but we also know it in a metaphorical sense, where 'house' is a term that means life, family, career. We know it also in the other metaphorical sense of 'house' as people and nation. At the moment, we are paying a high price for building our 'house' on the sands of greed.

Our Gospel today, with it's warning to build on a firm foundation, speaks to Ireland in 2011. Washed up on the sands of the values of greed, we are forced to take stock. We are standing there, angry, shocked, bewildered. But if we look around us, we will be able to see that what was missing was a firm foundation.

Our Gospel presents to us a core dynamic – that of listening and acting. Like children who listen to their parents, and then go and do exactly the opposite of what was explained to them; so too, in life, we may listen, but rarely act according to what we have heard.

We are to listen to God's Word – which is Jesus Christ. Listening is not simply about hearing. We have to hear God's Word, and then spend time pondering it in our hearts. This is why the core prayer of the Church is God's Word itself. Then, having pondered God's Word, we are to allow ourselves to be shaped by it. Eventually, our lives become so shaped by the Word, shaped by Jesus himself, that we can act in the way that God asks us to.

To listen and to act – none of us would like to be the person who is caught out by the rising flood waters, or by the shifting sands of fortune. Many of us will visit famous places like the tower of Pisa in Italy where the lack of a firm foundation has created a huge tourist attraction.

To be wise in the ways of God is to listen to God's Word, and to build our lives on it as the firm foundation that will never fail.

8 Sunday Ordinary Time, Year A, Matthew 6:24-34

Have you ever been on a train, or on a bus, and quietly observed the people around you? I call it “people watching”. There is a real skill to it, to look at all that is going on around you, without letting them know that you’re interested in the slightest! Watching people, how they dress, what phone they have, clean-shaven or three day old stubble. Fashion conscious, or not fashion conscious. Confident or not confident. There is something of a tradition of people watching here in Ireland at Sunday Mass. We observe each other, where we sit, what we wear, pious and prayerful or talkative and letting on to be disinterested.

Yet, in our gospel this Sunday we are exhorted to focus first on the coming Kingdom of God. Our worries are very often bound up with what will happen next in our world. We are worried about what will happen for the children of this generation, will they be able to live in the Ireland of the future? Will there be a return to mass poverty? Worries like this can inhabit our mind. They can take over and leave us fretful and worried about the future.

Focusing first on the coming Kingdom of God is a life-long task that each one of us must try to do. Having discovered our faith for ourselves, we then have to make a choice to place God in the first place in our lives. This means entering into a relationship with the Other; the Other that God is and the other that my neighbour is. This is what the commandments are all about – relationship with God, relationship with our neighbour, relationship with my own self.

And we have to love all three. We have to strike a balance between loving God, loving my neighbour and loving myself. We come here to Church as individuals, gathered with our nearest neighbours, to worship God together. That three-fold relationship of love between myself, my God and my neighbour is fed in this gathering.

That is why we say that the Kingdom of God is here and yet still coming to be. When we gather as a community of faith, the principles of the Kingdom of God gain an entrance into our world. We get a small insight of the beauty that awaits us in the coming Kingdom of God.

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.”

7 Sunday Ordinary Time, Year A, Matthew 5:38-48 (Children's Homily)

What do you think of when you see a heart? (Hold up the Heart) Maybe you think of St Valentine’s Day, which we celebrated last Monday. Maybe you think of your Mum & Dad, and how much you love them, and how much they love you. Or maybe you think of your brother or sister; or your best friend; or maybe even your teacher in school. It’s easy to love the people who love you, isn’t it?

It’s not just as easy to love people who don’t show us love though. Maybe someone was mean to you in school; maybe they didn’t pick you to play football on their team; or maybe someone made fun of you or called you names. It’s not so easy to love them, is it?

Today, Jesus teaches us a lesson about love. Jesus taught this lesson to the disciples on the side of a hill. The lesson started a few Sundays ago, and it’s nearly finished this Sunday. It’s a long lesson isn’t it? So, what does Jesus teach us about love? (Hold up the Heart again) This Sunday, the lesson that Jesus really wants to teach us is that we have to do our best to love the people that don’t really love us.

You know when you fall out with your Mum or Dad, your Teacher, friend, brother or sister? You know the way that it’s fairly easy to make up with those who love you by saying you’re sorry for what you did wrong?
Well, today, Jesus asks us to love those who don’t love us. He asks us to love those who don’t really like us, and for the A+ grade, Jesus tells us to love those who hate us!

Jesus tells us that love is what God has already shown us, and so we have to try to love everyone as well. And while it isn’t easy to do that, we know that if we try really hard to love everyone, then even those who hate us can one day become our friends.

Maybe we can say a prayer to God to help us to love those who don’t love us:

Father,
it is easy to love those who love us.
Help us to love our enemies
so that they might know
that we are all your children.
We make our prayer through Christ our Lord. Amen.

6 Sunday Ordinary Time, Year A, Matthew 5:17-37

Two years ago, the film ‘2012’ was released. It is a fiction, set in the near future, about cataclysmic end-of-the-world events. Around the time of the film’s release it kicked off a worldwide fascination with the Mayan people, who are said to have predicted the end of the world in December 2012.

Our fascination with the end of the world is endless. Films and books, gurus and religious fanatics of many creeds and persuasions have attempted to convince us of the impending doom that is coming upon us. The ‘end of the world’ is a very profitable industry.

Anybody here who has lost somebody precious to them knows what the end of the world feels like. When a loved one dies, or when a marriage breaks down, or when we ourselves experience a form of nervous breakdown – everything changes. Our world ends. Everything that was important: our job, house, car, salary – it all loses its value in the face of what has just happened to us. In one way we are lost. But, in another way we are found, because in that moment of loss we encounter reality in its purest form. I don’t mean that we have to be sad to be real. What I do mean is that the priorities we have in life – success and status, honour and prestige, lose all their value in the face of loss.

It is the same when we encounter God. We know that we have encountered truth when all of the priorities of our life get turned upside down. When success and status lose their power over us, we know that we have encountered the holy in some way.

It is much like this when a priest hears the call of God in his heart for the first time, calling him to give up everything: success, land, money, wife, for the sake of God’s Kingdom – as the song goes: ‘nothing else matters’.

It is like this when a young couple fall in love for the first time: ‘nothing else matters’.

In a way, we need a ‘nothing else matters’ approach to hear today’s gospel in the way that it was intended. We need to be able to hear it from the point of view of having encountered God. And, when you think about it, if you or I had encountered God, would anything else matter?

This brings us to a subtlety of the spiritual life: and that is our ability to forget the most beautiful encounters we have had with God. It is the same thing that allows us to move on from a painful experience of loss. We gradually forget the pain of loss – and we gradually forget the beautiful spiritual consolations that we have been given.

For the pain of loss, the therapists and counsellors recommend to us to remember the painful experience in order to be genuinely healed. For the beauty of the encounters we have had with the divine, the spiritual directors and accompaniers exhort us to keep a journal, so that we will be able to remember, and give thanks.

Our gospel today appears to be hard-hitting and uncompromising. It appears to make no sense in our time and place. We forget that it did not make sense in Jesus’ time and place either!

This Sunday’s gospel calls us to a deeper reality than the everyday aims and goals of our daily living. It reminds us of the real priorities of life that we encounter in the fleeting moments of love or of loss, of the call of God and the way of truth.

5 Sunday Ordinary Time, 6 February 2011, Matthew 5:13-16

In the summer of 2003, a friend of mine and I travelled to Kenya. It was the second summer holidays that we had from the seminary. My friend was a Christian Brother, and so we organised to stay with the brothers in Nairobi, and from there to go out to explore the city, it's people and eventually to go on safari to other parts of the country.

While we were there, we met a Mercy sister from Dublin called Sr Mary Killeen. Sr Mary was something of a maverick sister, but she had great respect within her own community, among the poor people and the addicts that she worked with, and certainly my friend and I were quite awestruck by her.

Sr Mary was very kind to us, and she organised for us to visit various AIDS outreach services: AIDS Clinics in some of the slum areas, and AIDS orphanages, where orphans of those who had died from AIDS were housed. She gave us an introduction to the ministry she had working with drug addicts; helping them to become artists and craftworkers. Reading from Isaiah today:

"Share your bread with the hungry,

and shelter the homeless poor,

clothe the man you see to be naked

and turn not from your own kin.

Then will your light shine like the dawn ..."

Sr Mary also made a small Suzuki jeep available to us for the last days of our time in Kenya. We were warned not to travel after dark because of the many dangers in Kenya at that time. Of course, as you can imagine, we ended up travelling during the hours of darkness, trying to squeeze the most out of the brief time we had left.

One night travelling back to Nairobi, with a good hour's drive ahead of us, we got a puncture. Stopping the car to change the wheel, I was struck by how dark it was when the lights of the car were turned off.

Dark and quiet.

Almost silent.

It was eerie and quite frightening, especially when we remembered that during that day we had seen Lions, Cheetah, Hippos and Zebra. What if one of these frightening, wild animals were to have stumbled on us, and us standing there, trying to change a wheel in the dark?

Light and dark are curious things. The presence of light can make us feel calm, and the dark can make us distressed. Isn't it strange, that we need the dark to fall asleep?

 

"You are the light of the world."

Research has shown that lighting in urban areas during the hours of darkness corresponds with big drop in crime. On the other hand, light can be used as a form of torture to keep a person from falling asleep in the process known as 'sleep deprivation'.

For us Christians, Jesus is the light of the world. He lights up the dark corners of our lives, and of our society and culture. And, this Sunday, we hear the words on his lips:

"You are the light of the world."

As followers, as disciples of Jesus Christ, we are called to be light-bearers in our world.

"If you do away with the yoke,

the clenched fist, the wicked word,

if you give your bread to the hungry,

and relief to the oppressed,

your light will rise in the darkness,

and your shadows become like noon."

4 Sunday Ordinary Time, 30 January 2011, Matthew 5:1-12

Graduation is a great day. It's a great and proud day for parents, for the graduands and for the whole institution. It is also one of the only days when academic dress is worn. Lecturers and Professors, President and Registrar, and for the first time, many graduates wear the distinctive academic dress. It is an indicator to everyone who looks on that something has changed. The distinctive black academic gown accompanied by a coloured hood lets everyone know that the wearer has achieved a particular degree of education, that they have 'arrived'. So important was this process that, for many years, pictures would be published in local papers of the new graduate, wearing their academic gown.

This Sunday, Jesus all but puts on an academic gown. The simple action of sitting down tells that Jesus is about to teach. And this is no ordinary teacher; the gospel tells us that Jesus 'went up the hill.' This compares Jesus to Moses coming down off the mountain with the ten commandments.

Jesus the teacher is an image that we can identify with fairly easily, because many of the images we have of Jesus show him wearing a robe of some kind or another. They indicate to us that Jesus is no ordinary individual. He is presented to us as the wisest of teachers.

Of course, the clothes do not make the teacher, it is rather his wisdom.

Last Sunday, we heard that Jesus began his preaching with the words: 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.' This Sunday we hear the nine-fold teaching of the beatitudes. Preaching and teaching go hand in hand. The beatitudes begin a process of teaching in Matthew's gospel that is at the root of our Christian understanding of the world.

It is in this teaching that Jesus makes clear to us that what is needed is not so much a minimalist following of the rules, but rather a conversion of the heart.

It is good to live our lives by the law, but it is better to live our lives by the heart, when our hearts have been formed by God's Word.

Today we begin Catholic Schools Week. This is an opportunity for us to give thanks for the dedication of teachers, boards of management, trustees and parent organisations.

We celebrate the passing on of wisdom that Jesus calls us to listen to.

And we open our minds and hearts to the truth about our world and about life that is to be found all around us.