November 15th   33rd sunday in Ordinary time

A lovely image for today --- the book of life – your name in the book of life.

www.googleeternity.com has your name! What’s beside your name - facts about you, the good you did, the sins repented and crossed out, the efforts at good; maybe your biggest fear and greatest joy. All just for God’s reading or for those who love you and care. It’s not a book of evidence nor a book of condemnation nor a school book with all your misdemeanours.

Consistent Word

Part of Jesus’ book of life is his message about end times. His word does not pass away, his web site is not erased; it is consistently true. The disaster-times mean that God is near and in the midst of disaster. The imagery is frightening and reminds us of much of what we see on TV. Like the aftermath of suicide bombing, the Dublin bombings; like the destruction of the world with global warming. Maybe we bring on these disasters ourselves.

We can be ruining the world by how we treat it - the news from many places about famine and drought because of how we treat the planet, the ices melting from global warming.

Consistent Care

The care of God will not pass away. I am in the book of life - with a job to do. Something written for all of us to make this world a better place. Redemption is now in our minds, hearts and hands. We are called to be friends of the earth…friends of all people…friends of the poor. That’s redemption, Jesus and us.

The world cannot be saved now without us - work for the environment, recycling etc. Peace and justice worked for. And always, always compassion and love.

God’s book of compassion and love…your name and mine is in it. Be thankful our are names are in the book of life.

Donal Neary SJ.

Nov 1 All Saints’ Day

In remembering the saints, we remember and honour our heroes of faith. The martyrs, known and unknown. The leaders of churches who pioneered social reform. The sisters who pioneered medical and educational work when nobody else did. The parents and grandparents , aunts and uncles and other family members and friends who passed on faith. The priests and religious of parishes throughout the country. All in many localities, often in extreme poverty and social difficulties.

Today also we salute the tireless workers for peace in our country. People whose lives have been at risk in their work here and elsewhere in Ireland for peace. Can we be people of peace, tolerance and inclusiveness in our neighbourhoods? Our saints encourage us in our christian life.

Live the Vision of the gospel

These unknown saints remind us that it is possible to live by the vision of the gospel. Maybe every church should have an altar to ‘the unknown saints’, like cities have their monument to the unknown soldier which reminds us of all who fought in wars. Our altar would remind us of all who lived lives of faithfulness to God and who handed on faith to a new generation.

Different Colour Glass

A child was once asked for a definition of a saint. She said ‘a stained glass window’! ‘The different colours let in the light and every saint is a different colour of God. ‘ Every one of our unknown saints coloured God in a new way in his or her corner of the globe.

On All Saints Day we are grateful for the lives of so many people of every age, church and century who have lived their lives as best they could within the vision and spirit of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

For our saints, known and unknown we thank you, O God. May we join them one day with you. Amen.

Donal Neary SJ.

Sunday after Christmas b- Holy Family

Jesus grew up like all of us in a family. Coming from the family of heaven to the family of Mary and Joseph and their extended family. We know his grandparents’ names; he had cousins and he didn’t get on with them all; he had an aunt we now of Mary’s sister, the wife of Clopas.

Celebration of his family and of all family life. All of us are children, some are parents, some are grandparents, aunts and uncles. All play an important role in the lives of the family – the younger generation. Where church and state strengthen and support parents and children they are doing something essential.

No Perfect Family

None of us has the perfect family. Families include people with all sorts of difficulties – alcohol or drugs, crime and prison, people who don’t talk to each other; families who had to leave home and come to Ireland for work, or leave Ireland for work. Joseph and Mary had their family difficulties - their child could have been killed by a mad king Herod, and they couldn’t go home for fear of him; Joseph died leaving Mary a widow, and Jesus was murdered in front of his mother. The holy family know what family life is about, and our faith is a support to family life.

The School of the Family

In our family we learn most of the important things of life. We salute today families who survive and support each other in difficult times – parents bringing up their children in a one-parent family; grandparents making sacrifices for another generation; people widowed and living now without their loved ones. We thank our parents and families for sacrifices made to bring us up.

Jesus, guide us in life;

Mary, look after us;

Joseph, pray for us

Christmas 2b

John’s gospel begins in heaven and at the beginning of time. Today we hear the poetic story of the son of God, the Word of the Father, coming into the world.

Divine and Human

An essential christian belief is that Jesus, the son of Mary, is divine and born of heaven. John’s poetic prologue brings him to earth gently, stating that he becomes flesh, born of God.

The rest of the gospel will express and illustrate this great truth through meetings with people, through long discourses and through John’s presentation of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Suffice for today to let ourselves soak in the mystery of the God made one of us. This is the mystery of the Incarnation.

We touch God in Jesus, and touch God now in the bread and wine of the Mass. We hear his word in bible and in the words of his followers today. We see glory in his love for us, and in love shown by his followers to other followers, and indeed to people not his followers.

Keep Christmas for the Year

This is the true meaning of the Christmas story and celebration. If we keep Christmas for a day on December 25th, can we not live it for the rest of the year? Can we live it in the faith that keeps God alive for us and in love, which keeps god alive for others? Can we continue the spirit of Christmas through the year?

In the daily living of our faith, we are among those who accept Jesus. We will rise and fall, fail and succeed in this. The important thing is the conviction to live so that Jesus may be alive in each and through each.

A reminder of Christmas each day can be to say the angelus at noon and evening.

A house or an apartment – where we live – is really important. David is really proud of what he has built and now wonders what to do with God or for God. David wanted a big house for God but that was not the way it would be. The house would be the body of Mary and the house would be all of us.

Chrsitmas highlights the belief that God is in all of us. We can ignore that, or we can help God be found in all of us. God is often deeply hidden, and God is active through each of us for each other.

Married people are sacraments of God to each other, in their love, attention, self-giving love, in giving life and caring for their children. One big picture for me of the love of God is parents worrying over the cot of a sick child. Friends bring God to each other, caring for each other at bad times, as well as sharing the love of good times.Wherever we give of ourselves to another, then we are God to each other. The house of God is being built.

When we care for the really needy we bring God in a special way to people who really need the ordionary necessities of lfie, at home or far from home.

Every bit of Christmas celebration is a reminder of God coming among us. Christmas keeps the story of god alive in our neighbourhood and country. Because God is in each of us, then Christmas can happen.

No love that in a family dwells,

No carolling in frosty air,

Nor all the steeple-shaking bells

Can with this single Truth compare -

That God was Man in Palestine

And lives to-day in Bread and Wine.

Advent 3, Year B

We are still in the atmosphere this week of something about to happen.  Like when the whole football stadium hushes while a free is taken, maybe to decide a match or a penalty shoot out to decide a world cup qualifier.  John the Baptist is still on the scene, this time in the beginning of St John’s gospel, pointing where to look, where to wait, how to expect the one who is to come.

We get so used to Christmas and the coming of Christ that we hardly have any sense of expectation.  Christmas will come and go like every year, and afterward people say, ‘we had a quiet Christmas, thank God.’

But Christmas is not meant to be quiet. It’s meant to explode with the roar of the crowd when its team gets the score.  It’s meant to laugh with the joy of parents whose child has just been born.  It’s meant to be a voice of care, compassion  and love, the voice of God, in the wilderness of the world.

Christmas is the birth each year, new and old, of the god-child, born of Mary and in the family of Mary and Joseph.

This could be a week of active expectancy – to do something to prepare well for the Lord.  Do something for the poor each day, thank somebody genuinely each day for their place in your life, approach the communal sacrament of Penance (Reconciliation)or go to confession privately, go to mass once or twice more in the week, say sorry to someone you hurt or forgive someone who hurt you.  Make the path of the Lord a path of expectation in your life as Christmas approaches.

Then the Lord will not take us by surprise, then the One who is coming among us will not be unknown, then we will have a fuller Christmas and because of each one, someone else will have a happier Christmas.

Donal Neary SJ

Trinity Sunday

The readings indicate more the activity of the trinity than give an explanation of what it might mean that God is Father, Son and holy Spirit. We are introduced to the idea of the forgiveness, the tenderness of God, and the salvation of the human race by Jesus; our second reading asks us to live in the love of the Trinity.

God is Forgiving

The predominant quality of God in the Scripture is his forgiveness. Even the first reading in the context of the ten commandments on the stone tablets, ends up with the confident prayer for forgiveness.

We need that message of God. In the midst of all our desires to do good, to love the significant people in our lives and to care for the poor, is our personal cluster of faults and failings and sin. Each of us needs the forgiveness of God. This comes at the beginning of Mass, and in the sacrament of Reconciliation.

In our sin and our weakness, we can feel lost. The picture of God today is the One who comes into the world, the Son of the Father, and whose spirit is the Spirit of love and forgiveness. We can allow that grace touch us as we read this bulletin and as we hear the words of God for today. When we live in the presence of God, we live in an atmosphere and an ecology of forgiveness.

To forgive others can be difficult and is a long journey sometimes. A step in forgiving is to pray for someone who has hurt pr damaged us. This can give a distance between ourselves and the one who has hurt us: the grace of God in each of our lives can help us move on with less hurt and bitterness.

Forgive us our sins Lord in your great love for your people.

Easter 4b

This year in the Dublin diocese 16 people will be assigned for service in parishes of the diocese, having completed the approved course of training.Some are married, some single, all are lay people. They will bring their training and their personal qualities to parish work, and join teams of priests, religious and laity working in the parishes already. Some parishes already have full time or part time lay assistants, apart from the voluntary services provided by so many laity for years now. This new venture, as well as the preparations for the permanent diaconate, invite us to consider the meaning of vocation in the church.

Full Time Lay Service

The prime vocation within the church is to love. Baptism calls us all into the vocation of living service to the christian community. For some this will in a public, full time service within the parishes as lay pastoral assistants, or in schools , hospitals and prisons as chaplains. The vocation is to ministry within the church. This is a sharing in the ministry of Christ; some will find themselves called in this way as priests, involved in full time sacramental as well as other ministries. Others as laity in different ways, both sacramental, educational and others in the parish.

Lay Adminstrators

This is a future looking venture on the part of many dioceses. Looking ahead we know that the number of priests will be less in future years. There will be a shortage of full time people, and eventually we will find ourselves in parishes where the parish administrator or leader is a lay person, male or female. Priests will be part of this team, but not necessarily leaders, just as in many religious schools, priests, nuns and brothers work in the school and are not necessarily leaders.Vocation Sunday reminds us of the different callings within the church. We pray sincerely for new ways to engage ourselves in the ministry of Jesus Christ.

Donal Neary SJ.

3rd Sunday of Easter Year B We may be amazed at the memory of Jesus in the risen body taking a meal of grilled fish. He does if for many reasons, one being to ease their fear, so that when he does something comforting like eating a meal, they relax in his company. There is the human joy of a meal.The same JesusThe message is also that Jesus is the same Jesus as they knew. There is continuity from Good Friday into Easter Sunday, and the risen body of Jesus still shows his wounds. In the gospel there are two types of questions and atmosphere about food. We receive the food of God in prayer, in the word of God, and in the eucharist and sacraments. Jesus fed the apostles and then sent them to feed other. It is the same with his community of the church today; we are to be food for the world.Engagement of FaithEngagement with the gifts and call of the risen Lord is an engagement of faith. Faith, a great gift in our lives, is much challenged today; it is a humble response to God, not knowing all the answers. Faith is dark, humble and it is within ourselves that find the yes of faith. We want a more central place for religion but not a coerced religion. We live by faith that flows from love of God and others, grounded in our shared belief in the presence of the risen Jesus among us, This is the religion of the risen Christ - embracing the whole world, sending us all as witnesses of his love -and interested in fish for The human joy of eating together. Risen Lord you are our peace, risen Lord you are our joy, risen Lord you are forever with us.

Donal Neary SJ.

Easter 2b

Thomas was a modern man, finding faith hard. Like people today. He was let down by the others who ran away, the leader denied Jesus, his trust in the group of apostles had been abused. He didn’t want much more to do with them. He had got tired of it all. He went off on his own, and missed the Lord Jesus. Essential to our christian faith is our community. We can’t be Christians on our own.

Faith and Community

But faith, beginning in the home, grows within a community. That’s why we baptise children, because faith grows from the beginning of life. We find growth in our faith through the community. The Mass, shared rosary, sharing our faith in a group, a good spiritual book, sharing our doubts but never closing the door to Jesus, sharing our faith in thanks for what our faith gives us, just coming to a church with other people. It’s a personal, but not a private religion. Community is where we meet for the Mass, for the sacraments. It all started with a group of apostles and disciples. All the Easter stories involve the group. The true way to God is together. In the parish, the neighbourhood, the school, the family. Where we find God and through others often we find God is ruined.The call to the church today is to be the community of the faith that does justice. To link all the time our faith and our lives, especially our national life. A special concern for the poor of the world and of the parish.

Thomas missed out and when he returned he found the Lord. Never even touched him! His return within the community energised him again, with others who said, we have seen the Lord, we told him our story.... and led him to the ends of the earth to preach the gospel.

Risen Lord, gather us as one people in a community of faith, hope and love. Donal Neary SJ. Easter Sunday

Scared out of their wits. That’s what’s said about the people who came to the garden next morning. Protected from their fear by having plenty to do - anoint the body, rearrange the tomb, plant some flowers. To find what had been lost Fear - early morning, strange man in white, graveyards, and they could still see the crosses with maybe the body of the good thief hanging there…then, they saw an empty tomb and heard a strange message. Enough to go 40 shades of white and the heart beating till it almost stopped! They came to the garden to find what had been lost. To anoint a body and know that what they knew of this man was true. Running Lost Something this man gave them they didn’t want to lose.They were really alive with him. For without God we are only living and partly living. With Jesus gone, the sense of themselves which he had given had been lost. Belonging We can all have this fear that we’re not worth much. The feeling when your teenage daughter is in a row and says, ‘who’d want you for a mother!’ Or the look from even a loved one which says, ‘you’ve goofed again!’ Or when first love went astray. Or when you feel very ill or near death. We want to know we belong somewhere that can’t be eroded like the sea erodes a cliff. The way we know all this is in the love, smile, compassion, forgiveness of the risen Jesus - one like us. Not just a God vaguely alive somewhere, but one who shared our earth, our tears, our laughter, our death. . We know we are totally loved in all our pain, weakness, sin and all our hopes and desires and goodness. Lord, thanks for Easter, thanks for joy, thanks for being who you are. Alleluia!

Donal Neary SJ.