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.