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Pastor’s Desk – 5th Sunday of Lent

Approaches to suffering

    I knew a man who fought cancer to the end. And he took to every type of possible healing.  We all had been told it wouldn’t work.  I know another who just opened himself to it all and wouldn’t even take chemo. These are different approaches to suffering. One fought it and the other accepted. I admired both of them.

    Many people go into hospital wondering about their illness, and that death might be close. That’s part of life. As for Jesus, it’s a fearful time, confusing and sometimes draws us into more faith.  We can transform our pain into suffering, and find some great graces in it. There is the challenge to find new life in it.  Pain becomes suffering.  Jesus doesn’t want the chalice of the garden, but he allows it become fully part of him so that his inner strength is big!   It doesn’t mean a simplistic approach.  But it means an acceptance of darkness in life.

    Jesus found in his passion that God the Father is near.  This can be our way, and we can find that through helping each other.  We can help people at times of suffering – listening, being present. We find this in our hearts, not in books – that we can grow through suffering and we realise on a bad day that peace invades the soul, or that there is a bright light in the darkness.

    In any suffering in our lives, when we think of God, or say his name, or question him, maybe we can just imagine a light around us….  Saying nothing, just being open to the light.

Lord, by your cross and resurrection, you have set us free,

you are the Saviour of the world.

Donal Neary SJ

Pastor’s Desk – 4th Sunday of Lent

A New Colour

Why rose vestments today? It is the hope of Easter just around the corner. We are on the way, but not there yet. So, we wear the colours of joy. Our joy is from the love which has brought us here and made us the work of art we are. Jesus is lifted up on the cross so we may have life. In all our thoughts on lent and the death of Jesus, we are people of the resurrection.   We have many identities in our lives, but our prime belonging is to God, brothers and sisters of Jesus. This is the life of faith, the life of faith in the heart.

We can often think of God and faith as deadening. Our faith is that he sent his son from love. Jesus is the one who went through all we go through and rose from death. As our faith in this becomes strong, then we find love active from God in our lives. At times when there is little else there, we unite ourselves with the sufferings of Jesus and rise with him. God, being love, promises not an easy life nor magical solutions, but love always.

We live on amazing grace, and the graced light is Christ. Easter is around the corner, if we take a corner too quickly we crash. In life there is often a call to patience. We live in the light of Easter.

Look on the world – its business, goodness and evil,

and let God’s love for the world become your love.

Lord, by your cross and resurrection, you have set us free;

you are the Saviour of the world and ….

Donal Neary SJ

Pastor’s Desk – 3rd Sunday of Lent

God’s building

Why is Jesus angry? – they have missed the point and the religious leaders are allowing this to happen! Religion has come down to ritual, and the centre is missing. Jesus was not much at home in the temple.  He went there sometimes, and always caused trouble. The finding in the temple, the words – my body is the temple.  Jesus is more at home at the table – the loaves at the lake, the fish on the beach, the last supper in a home. This is where he is most himself.

The falsity of the occasion was the using of the temple to be entrapped by riches. The poor were being overcharged to pay for the materials for sacrifices. This caused the anger of Jesus.

The temple has disappeared. We are God’s building. If we do not make God’s presence real in our area, then maybe we should knock down the church!  Only if God is alive in us all the time, will he be alive in the building.  If God is not alive all week in us, God will not be alive on Sunday.  If he is not alive in our hearts – well, maybe that’s sometimes why religion can be so boring – it’s religion only from the neck up.

The forty six years are over, and the three days of the rebuilding have been going on for years, in the hearts of all who are faithful to God’s love. The building continues still and we are the living stones.

Think of what is most central to your life.

Is that a concern of God too?

Lord, keep me close to all you love and value in life.

Donal Neary SJ

Novena of Grace 2024

This year’s Novena of Grace in honour of St. Francis Xavier takes place from Monday 4th March to Tuesday 12th March in Holy Trinity Church. There will be a guest speaker at each Novena Mass.

Monday to Friday: 7.30pm
Saturday: 6.30pm
Sunday: 11.30am

Novena Prayer

O most kind and loving saint, in union with you I adore the Divine Majesty. The remembrance of the favours with which God blessed you during life, and of your glory after death, fills me with joy; and I unite with you in offering to God my humble tribute of thanksgiving and of praise. I implore of you to secure for me, through your powerful intercession, the all important blessing of living and dying in the state of grace. I also beseech you to obtain the favour I ask in this Novena (here mention the favour to be asked for): but if what I ask is not for the glory of God or for the good of my soul, obtain for me what is most conducive to both. Amen.

Concluding Prayer

O God, who was pleased to gather unto your Church the peoples of the East by the preaching and miracles of blessed Francis, mercifully grant that we who honour his glorious merits, may also imitate the example of his virtues, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Pastor’s Desk – 2nd Sunday of Lent

Radiant Light

Jesus heard at the Transfiguration that he was beloved!   We all want to know that someone would say they love us.

We are all the time God’s favoured ones – it’s ourselves that miss out on it.  We live in the big wide world of God’s love, and Jesus on Tabor was allowing himself be loved in the radiant light of God, shining even in the cloud.

Together we are loved as Peter, James and John were loved in community. Light is caught from one to the other.  We are the light of Tabor Mountain for each other. All are loved.  The one I like and don’t like!  The radiant body of Christ was hammered and killed later by ourselves.  Love killed at Calvary rose again. Love cannot die.

We can transfigure or disfigure each other. We can bring out the light and the hope and the joy in our belonging to God!

We can transfigure a school, a parish, a community any group by first of all our being loved by God and letting love go out.  If we really believe we are loved by God then the world we live in is transfigured, changed.

In the light of the cross, the sign of our faith, the way we are saved.

Imagine yourself breathing in the light of God.

Let it fill your body bit by bit. Praise God for this light.

Light of God, love me, save me, call me.

Donal Neary SJ