Category: abbeynews

Fr Christopher Dillon OSB

A shepherd in Palestine or anywhere in the Middle East manages his sheep very differently from what you might expect of a shepherd in this country. We think of shepherds as driving their sheep, but the Palestinian leads his. He walks ahead of them to guide them to safety and good grazing, keeping an eye out for dogs and wolves and ready to take them on, should they attack. That is the point of the image which Jesus uses of the Good Shepherd. He sees his task as being out there ahead of us, to keep us safe. And not only that; he says, “I lay down my life for my sheep”.

All three readings today talk about God saving us. St Peter in the first reading says of Jesus’ name, “Of all the names in the world given to people, this is the only one by which we can be saved.” St John puts it more mysteriously in the Second Reading, when he says, “all we know is that when the future is revealed, we shall be like him”, that is to say, we shall be like God.

“And what”, you might ask, “do we need to be saved from?” Well, look around you: climate change, wars in Ukraine and Israel, migrants fleeing catastrophes of one kind or another, threats to democracy and sane government, social problems ranging from housing to health services, to say nothing of famine and drought around the world, the mental stress of addiction and loneliness.

There is so much from which people, including us here, need to be saved, to be rescued. And these readings represent the voice of God saying to us, “I love you. You are my children. I will not fail you. I will lay down my life for you.” The Easter story tells us that God, in Jesus Christ, has done just that; he has laid down his life for us, has laid down his life for us and taken it up again. He has taken it up again in such a way that we too can rise to new life after our own death. That is the saving, the rescue that he is speaking about. He is inviting us to put our trust and our hope in his love for us.

That is what our Christian faith is about, believing in God’s love for us. When all else fails, as it will, his love for us is absolute and unconditional. The question for every one of us is, “Do you trust his love?” At the very least, like the father of the sick child whom he brought to Jesus for healing, we can say, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”

Fr William Fennelly OSB

‘The disciples told their story’, Saint Luke tells us, about what had just happened on the road to Emmaus and about how, at the breaking of bread, they finally recognised that their new companion was Jesus, their Lord. you can almost feel the buzz. You can hear the urgency in their voices telling what they’d seen. And they were so consumed with the business of telling the others, that Jesus comes again and interrupts them mid-flow.

Telling stories about Jesus, sharing news of God’s wonderful works, and witnessing to the Risen Lord remains a vital task for 21st-century disciples as it was two thousand years ago. It’s how the faith was spread, often at great sacrifice and risk, and how it has been handed down through countless generations the world over. In this sharing of the Good News of Jesus Christ, no detail is more important than the Resurrection, not least because, as Jesus says, it fulfils the scriptures.

So, how good are we at engaging in and performing this key resoinsibilty? Have you, for example, radiated some of that same joy of the early disciples as they basked in the light of the Risen Lord? Have you greeted people with the traditional Easter greetings like ‘Christ is risen! Alleluia!’? When was the last time you spoke with friends about an encounter with Jesus like the Emmaus disciples? How many of us see his Holy Spirit as an animating force in our lives? Did you, this Easter, choose the Easter bunny and Easter eggs over the cross? These are searching questions to ask of ourselves.

The Korean German writer, Byung Chul Han, says that  Homo sapiens have degenerated into “phono sapiens”. Storytelling used to bind us together around the campfire; it connected us to our past and helped us imagine hopeful futures. The digital screen has replaced that fire, making us individuals that perform fictitious versions of ourselves to unseen peers, tailoring our looks, lives and opinions to get our story liked. “This smart form of domination constantly asks us to communicate our opinions, needs and preferences, to tell our lives, to post, share and like messages”. Han argues that in a fog of instant information, commodified data, and selfie updates, our ability to tell our stories has degenerated. He surely has a point and the effects of this decline really affect the christian community’s efforts to share its story and encourage each other in the faith. My story seems to be hard to connect to our story as christians.

One issue is ignorance of the story itself. You can’t speak about what you do not know about. ‘Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ’, it is said. Reading scripture and spending time in prayer are humble and faithful slow works of a lifetime, part and parcel of being a disciple.

Another obstacle is of course our sin. Our credibility as storytellers, as sharers of the Gospel, depends on the way we live our lives. People are rightly reluctant to accept the word of a hypocrite, one who says they know Jesus but doesn’t keep his commandments, as the Second Reading put it. Actually, I think few have the brass-neck for such double standards and so the result of sin is not that the Gospel is shared by sinners and is disbelieved, but that it isn’t shared at all for fear of being labelled a hypocrite or judged ourselves. Of course, not one of us is perfect and so failing to proclaim the Lord because of our own shortcomings is a complex but real state of affairs. Happily, there’s a remedy and one that is found in the very thing we seek to proclaim.

When we sin and we all do, we can confess and repent, as St Peter said in the first Reading. We repent knowing of the Lord’s victory over sin and death, confident of his forgiveness for all. As forgiven and redeemed people we can testify to others that we need not be trapped by our faults and vices in an endless cycle of guilt. Moreover, when we seek to avoid sinning, we hold to the ideal of being a genuinely good person on our horizon so that, ‘God’s love can come to perfection’ in us. Only by living God’s love will the Good News be seen for what it is: authentic; compelling; and transformative.

Jesus tells the disciples, as he tells us, in no uncertain terms ‘you are witnesses to this’. So let’s tell his story! Tell his story in your story! And tell the stories well, because salvation depends upon this vital task.

Fr Jarek Kurek OSB

Quite recently the death occurred of a Polish man whose name was Ernest Bryll. He was a well-known writer and poet; a man of wide cultural horizons. He had a particular affection for Irish Culture and because of his love for this country he gave his Polish readers many Irish gems. For instance, he made a translation into Polish of Irish poems from the 6th to the 19th centuries. But also, and I have this book here with me, he left us with a most fascinating account of the
journey he made with his wife across Ireland, a journey that started in Dublin, where the two of them followed the trail of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and continued until they eventually reached Dingle and the Blasket Islands, mapping out for the reader all the cultural phenomena they encountered.

Mr Bryll lived in Ireland, back in the early 90s’, while he was serving as the first Polish ambassador to Ireland. And it was during those years that he had a very memorable encounter with a Polish nun called Sr Faustina Kowalska. Well, like it or not, you are stuck with the Poles today…

To be perfectly honest with you, Mr Bryll, didn’t think too much of Sr
Faustina’s revelations initially. To him they seemed quite odd. But he was lucky enough to be challenged by some Irish people who helped him to appreciate her. He happened to meet a local Irish woman, the owner of the hotel he was staying in, and in that hotel there were some pictures of Sr Faustina and the Divine Mercy. That landlady said to him: ‘You are from Poland, are you not? Tell me everything about this Sr Faustina, because, you know, her revelations are very important to us here in Ireland’. The Ambassador looked at her quite perplexed and thought: ‘What am I supposed to tell her? I don’t really know anything
about them’.

On that occasion he managed to save face by remaining rather vague. However, that conversation made him read up on Sr Faustina and her legacy, to avoid similar future embarrassment. At this stage it was still too soon for him to read the actual Diary containing her revelations and he still maintained a low opinion of these writings. He believed
they were rather chaotic, a folksy text produced by an uneducated nun and not worth his scholarly attention.

It was only some years later that he finally started to seriously explore the spiritual experience of the Diary. Only then did he discover that there was far more to this than he had originally though. This highly educated man humbly admitted to himself that this Diary, so often
unappreciated and ridiculed, could actually have a transformative power on its reader.

And a spiritual transformation is what Ambassador Bryll experienced as he carefully read these pages. This extraordinary man subsequently became a herald and promotor of Divine Mercy. We read in the Diary those powerful words that Jesus spoke to Sr Faustina: ‘I want to give Myself to souls, I yearn for souls, My daughter. On the day of My feast, the Feast of Mercy, you will go through the whole world and bring fainting souls to the spring of My mercy, and I shall heal and strengthen them, amen’.

Fr Senan Furlong OSB

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been … think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first
link on one memorable day.

Great expectations were shattered on the Friday we call good. Jesus’ death on the cross seemed so final, so irrevocable, the erasure of meaning and hope. Things fell apart and those left behind were broken and devastated. The violence of Friday however gave way to the stillness of Saturday and now, it’s early dawn on the first day of the week, the first Easter Sunday. And the first link of the long chain of new life on this one memorable day is an empty tomb.

Sometimes things come along that you didn’t know you needed until you’re offered them. And who would ever have imagined that something as unpromising as an empty tomb would be one of these? On one memorable day three people, one woman and two men came to the tomb where Jesus had been laid. Each came looking for something, not really knowing what that something was.

First came Mary of Magdala, grief stricken and inconsolable. To her horror, she found that Jesus’ body was gone. Then came Peter and the beloved disciple running to the tomb at Mary’s news. Peter did not hesitate to go straight in, but all he could understand then was emptiness: an empty tomb and empty grave clothes. The beloved disciple who outran Peter also entered in. “He saw and he believed.” What he believed is hard to say. Even if he outran Peter in faith, clearly neither of them yet understood what this was all about, for both of them just went home. But Mary, who stood by Jesus as he was dying on the cross, now waited at the tomb in tears; and it is to her that the first link, the empty tomb, yielded up its meaning. Mary is the first to see the Risen Lord. She is first to proclaim, ‘I have seen the Lord.’

We may think we know what we are looking for, hoping to fulfil our great expectations. And then suddenly everything changes: the tomb is empty! Our expectations are shown to be far from great, what we were looking for embarrassingly paltry.

Waiting at the empty tomb like Mary changes us. We seek the Lord only to find that it is the Risen Lord who is seeking us. No matter what we throw at him, however deeply we reject him, however much we seek to bury him, he will find a way back to us. Nothing can separate us from the love of the Lord, not even death itself. This is the story of Easter, this is the story of eternity. Today is the one memorable day that changes the course of our lives and binds us with the long chain of God’s infinite love.

Abbot Brendan OSB

As we listened to the account of God’s dream for the world in the Liturgy of the Word; could you feel the presence of the Risen Lord with us? Has this dream become a reality? The promises made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Elizabeth and Zacheriah, Mary and Joseph, have they come true?

Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James and Salome, came to the tomb. St Cyril of Jerusalem calls Mary of Magdala the philochristos – the ‘lover of Christ’. But strong as she was, Mary of Magdala was almost broken as she approached the tomb. It was all too much. She was reduced to misery. Like all the others she misread the situation.

John’s gospel tells us she had been weeping in the garden. This seems to be a human pastime, starting with Adam and Eve. The three women didn’t realise that God’s plan had already become a reality.

These women expected to see a corpse wrapped in a sheet, instead they see a young man dressed in white. They expected to see a body lying in the tomb, instead they see a man sitting on the right: on whose right? Someone placed this young man on his right hand, saying to him: ‘Sit on my right’.  Do we not remember the words of Jesus to the sons of Zebedee, “sitting at my right hand and my left, this is not mine to grant; this is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

“You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth”, said this man dressed in white, “he has risen, he is not here.” The place of deposition bears witness to this. The hour has come when the bridegroom has been taken away, just as he said.

There is one more line in this gospel passage which we never hear, it is always omitted. It says, “And the women came out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and amazement had gripped them. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

What an anticlimax! No wonder it’s omitted. They have just been told the most important news in all of history and what do they do? Nothing. They were afraid. I think this verse is actually more for us than for the women disciples.

Are we afraid of Jesus’ resurrection? Are we afraid of proclaiming it? Are we afraid to stand up for what is right and true in the world? Many of us in the church today are so afraid that we don’t even tell ourselves who we are anymore – the disciples of the Risen Jesus.

Yes, the problems of the world have not disappeared and life remains a struggle for many people, but Christ is Risen, the stone is rolled away from the entrance to our tomb, and we are the messengers of this truth.

Have you not heard, this is the night when a tsunami of grace is poured out, as it will be on Carole when she comes before the altar to receive the sacrament of confirmation.

So do not be afraid, listen to the voices of Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James and Salome. Listen to the voices of the peoples of Ukraine. Listen to the suffering people of Gaza and the Middle East. These are the voices crying out to the Risen Christ who stands among us and before whom one day every one of us must stand and ask for mercy. Christ is Risen and it is intolerable in our day that God’s children should be treated like this. Do not be afraid – proclaim the resurrection, proclaim the gospel!

Can you feel the presence of the Risen Christ among us? Can you hear what he is saying to us? We believe in the God of life and “He is going before you to Gallilee, there you will see him.” What shocked the disciples about the resurrection was not just that Jesus rose from the dead; they witnessed this before, Jairus’ daughter, the son of the widow of Nain, and of course, Lazarus. What was so shocking was that the resurrected Jesus did not come back from death as an avenger, but as the bringer of forgiveness. His pierced hand is forever raised against the flames of war, violence and vengeance and he says: Stop! ‘Peace be with you’. Such words break down the gates of hell. These are now our words, if we have the courage to use them.

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! (Khristós Anésti! Alithós Anésti!) Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

Abbot Brendan OSB

We have listened to the Book of Exodus. How each household must share the Passover lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, taking into account what each can eat. The Last Supper, the memory of which we keep this evening, was a meal Jesus celebrated with his disciples during Passover.

Over time the Passover traditions of the Jewish people strayed a little from the regulations in the Book of Exodus and by the time of Jesus, well over one thousand years later, Passover could also refer to the weeklong celebration of Unleavened Bread with which it had merged.

The famous Roman historian Josephus tells us that over 250,000 lambs were slaughtered every year on the eve of Passover between 3pm and 5pm, some in the Temple and some in people’s homes. This is the same time we will celebrate our Liturgy of the Passion tomorrow afternoon. The time that Jesus died on the cross. The lambs used in the Temple were, like Jesus, born in Bethlehem. They were without blemish, specially reared in the hills surrounding Bethlehem and brought to the Jerusalem Temple for sacrifice. The blood of these slaughtered lambs was collected in bowls and some of it thrown against the altar. Two rods in the form of a cross skewered the lambs before they were prepared and eaten. St John in his Gospel wants us to understand that Jesus is our Paschal lamb. The Lamb of God.

On this night Jesus chose to digress from the normal ritual of the Passover week. He rose from the table and washed the feet of his disciples. He made the disciples ritually clean and brought them into communion with him. Then he fed them with himself. The bread was his body, the wine his blood.

Next he goes to the Garden of Gethsemane, which means ‘oil press’. Do we not remember here another garden, the Garden of Eden with its two trees, the tree of good and evil and the tree of life. Despite what almost everyone thinks, nowhere does it say in the Book of Genesis that Adam and Eve ate an apple. Genesis only mentions that they ate fruit and the ancient Jewish tradition was that this fruit was probably fig, because Adam and Eve afterwards sewed fig leaves together to make themselves clothes. This also helps us make sense of what Jesus said to the fig tree as he was on his way up to Jerusalem for the Passover, “may no one ever eat fruit from you again”.

If tradition says the fig was the tree of good and evil, it also says that the olive was the tree of life. Gethsemane is the oil press where the olive from the tree of life must be crushed. The healing power of the tree of life, holy Chrism, has to flow down upon us from the Paschal Lamb on the tree of the cross.

This blessed night, the gift of the Eucharist, the gift of healing oil, the washing of our feet, reveals in a beautiful way what St John teaches us in the Gospel: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end”.

Tomorrow, Christ our Paschal Lamb will be sacrificed. Tonight, he invites us to come home. He invites us to sit at his table with him to be washed and healed by his oil of love and feed on his body and blood.