The Presbytery, Abbeydorney. (066 7135146)
4th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 28th January 2018.
Dear Parishioner,
When I took up my appointment in Spa Parish in the summer of 2000, after returning from my previous three years in Kenya, I got to know the road leading out of Tralee towards Ardfert and Ballyheigue, before I left that road to go the route towards Fenit and Spa. I still like to travel that route, occasionally, out of Tralee to Abbeydorney and, when I come that way, I recall how different it is now from what it was back in 2000. Many of the young people, who are students of Mercy Mounthawk Secondary School at this time, were not born then and I wonder how many of them realise that their school did not exist then either. Yes, it is hard to believe that the area occupied by the secondary school, O’Donnells Restaurant and the nearby supermarket and pharmacy, the roundabout and the filling station and the nearby businesses was a greenfield area in the area 2000 – less than 20 years ago.
If the secondary school had not been built, the wonderful production of ‘My Fair Lady’ by the students, that began in Siamsa Tire last Wednesday night, would not have been happening. When I booked a seat for the opening performance, I hoped that the stomach bug that affected me would have moved away from me. Even though I did not feel on top of the world that night, being part of a wonderful occasion helped to lift my spirits and I am sure the majority of those present would have said the same. In the introduction to the beautiful programme prepared for the performance of ‘My Fair Lady’, school principal, John O’Roarke, wrote, “My Fair Lady is a tale that recurs because it presents infuriatingly persistent social and gender stereotypes that still bedevil our society. In our time, when we know all too well, nationally and internationally, the political outcome of social and class division, this musical invites us to consider the dynamics of social gender and division.”
As the music and songs from ‘My Fair Lady’ echoed within me on the way from Tralee after the performance, I felt what a wonderful chance all the young people involved got, by being part of a beautiful occasion at such an early time in their lives. (Fr. Denis O’Mahony)
The Dark Corners of the Family
The great Russian novelist, Leon Tolstoy, begins one of his most famous novels, Anna Karenina, with the sentence, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” While there is hardly a bland sameness to the life of what people generally recognize as happy families, novelists probably need tales of unhappiness to provide surprise and tension for their stories. I am not a regular viewer of television ‘soaps’. I grew up with Coronation Street, and I occasionally watched it later to keep my mother company when I was visiting. I suspect I sometimes embarrassed her by asking how some new character I did not recognize had got into the storyline, and why someone I last saw married to one character was now the partner of another. Keeping up with changing patterns of family life in Weatherfield was probably a nudge towards recognizing the way in which family life was changing in the world ‘outside of the box’. Divorce, temporary partnerships, gender realignment, same-sex parenting were becoming so familiar in ‘the street’ that regular viewers like my mother seemed to take them in their stride, while perhaps inwardly hoping that they might stay among the English working class, and not cross the Irish Sea. But cross it they did.
It is worth recalling that the narrative of our faith, the Bible, begins with what is literally a series of family stories. From legendary tales of the descendants of the first human couple, it develops into what is probably the oldest family saga in Western literature. The story of Abraham’s family occupies more than half of the Book of Genesis. It tells the story of an ever-expanding family over four generations, struggling with infertility and family squabbles. Although patriarchy is usually assumed to be a closed and traditionally ordered form of extended family, the biblical families are far from ideal. They are closer to what social workers might term ‘dysfunctional families’, or families that seem by their very nature to be deeply flawed, and whose children are likely to carry the same flaws into the next generation. In the saga of the patriarchs, we have a man who passes off his wife as his sister, and allows another man to take her (Gen 12:34); a young slave girl is used as surrogate mother only to be discarded along with her child when her employer’s natural child eventually arrives (Gen 6); in polygamous marriages two sisters are married to the same man (Gen 29); a mother, Rebekah, who sides with her favourite son to cheat her older son out of his inheritance (Gen 27), and brothers who just stop
short of murdering their younger brother and sell him into slavery instead (Gen 37). Things are little better a couple of generations on when the royal family of David proves to be every bit as dysfunctional, with incest and murder among the flaws of the royal children.
As we prepare to celebrate the Year of the Family and the World Meeting of Families, we need little reminding how radically family life has changed within a generation. Two challenges face us. The first is the compassion to recognize how every family, no matter how far it may depart from what we believe to be the ideal, aspires to be a place where children are nurtured in love, and where their parents, no matter what the legal or ecclesial status of their relationship, are meant through the quality of their relationship to provide them with a bedrock of security. This compassion is at the root of Pope Francis’ encyclical, The Joy of Love, that guides our reflection during this year. The pope has attempted to address one particular question that has troubled many people whose Catholic roots have become tangled by divorce, separation and new relationships. How can they be enabled to take part in the Church’s banquet of life, the Eucharist? The question of their access to Holy Communion requires a shift in how we interpret Church law. Not all the pope’s advisors seem open to even a modest move on this front, but it demands a solution.
The second challenge is what do we do with an ideal? It is a common view today that we should not embarrass other people, and one way of embarrassing them is by setting the bar too high. The Catholic theology of family is built on an extraordinary vision of Christ’s love for his Church: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). At ground level that is about lifelong fidelity “till death do us part”. Toning down the ideal is not possible. No matter how open we are to recognizing the multiplicity of family types in our culture today, the traditional one, based on the love of a man and a woman, sealed in a sacramental covenant that brings forth and nurtures new life, has been tested by centuries of the battering by human frailty. It will survive because it is held together by grace even more than by human effort.
Brendan McConvery CSsR in Reality Magazine January/February 2018)
St Teresa of Avila described our life in this world as like a night at a second class hotel. (Malcolm Muggeridge in Reality Magazine, Jan/Feb. 2018)
Seeing Your Life Through The Lens Of The Gospels Mark 1:21-28
1. In this first chapter Mark familiarises his readers with the type of things Jesus did to proclaim the kingdom of God. Our passage today touches on two of these, the first being that ‘he taught as one having authority’. It makes a difference when you listen to someone who speaks from experience and personal knowledge. Remember people who impressed you in this way.
2. Jesus combined teaching with healing, and he drove the evil spirit out of the man. The power of God that worked this wonder through Jesus is at work in and through us today. When have you been freed from some bad habit?
3. The evil spirit convulsed the man before it left him. The path to liberation can be a painful struggle. If you have found it so, who was the Jesus person that helped you through the struggle to freedom?
4. It is not only individuals but groups that can be struggling with an evil spirit – jealousy, rivalry, malicious gossiping, abuse of power, etc. Sometimes a Jesus person comes into the group and drives out that evil spirit. Have you experienced this? Perhaps you yourself have been this person on some occasion? (John Byrne osa in Intercom Dec. ‘17/Jan. ’18)
THE DEEP END: Genuine authority
‘But man, proud man,
Dress’d in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d…’
(Measure for Measure - William Shakespeare)
We probably wouldn’t have to look too hard for examples of public figures who seem to fit the above description. Puffed up with a sense of their own importance, they are anxious to be seen as the expert on a given subject, in spite of their limited knowledge or experience. We criticise politicians if we feel they are blind to the struggles of ordinary people. They don’t know what it’s like, for example, to live on a minimum wage, or to be at risk of homelessness. On the other hand, it is refreshing when those in power have faced some of these issues themselves, or have made the effort to do their research and to listen to people. We can tell when someone is speaking with genuine authority and care.
Those who listen to Jesus, teaching in the synagogue, know there is something different and exciting about him. His teaching is in sharp contrast to the scribes they are used to hearing. The difference, stated twice in this passage, is his authority, and it leaves his audience ‘astonished’. He does not use it the way we might tend to use our ‘little brief authority’, to make ourselves look good. Instead he uses his authority to serve, to love, and to bring mercy and freedom. (Tríona Doherty in Intercom Dec. ‘17/Jan. ’18)