Churches of the Day

Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life:  Jesus urges peace upon us at all times
Saint of the Day: St Joseph the worker, special readings may be used. 

Saint of the Day: 1 May; St Joseph the worker, the provider
C/f A short life of this saint can be found below todays' Readings and Reflection.

 FIRST READING     

 A reading from the Acts of the Apostles            13:26-33  
God has fulfilled his promise by raising Jesus from the dead.

Paul stood up in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia, held up a hand for silence and began to speak:
'My brothers, sons of Abraham's race, and all you who fear God, this message of salvation is meant for you. What the people of Jerusalem and their rulers did, though they did not realise it, was in fact to fulfil the prophecies read on every sabbath. Though they found nothing to justify his death, they condemned him and asked Pilate to have him executed.

When they had carried out everything that scripture foretells about him they took him down from the tree and buried him in a tomb.
But God raised him from the dead, and for many days he appeared to those who had accompanied him from Galilee to Jerusalem: and it is these same companions of his who are now his witnesses before our people.

'We have come here to tell you the Good News. It was to our ancestors that God made the promise but it is to us, their children, that he has fulfilled it, by raising Jesus from the dead. As scripture says in the first psalm:
'You are my son: today I have become your father.'

The Word of the Lord.         Thanks be to God

Responsorial Psalm       Ps 2: 6-11. R/v 7
Response                           You are my Son. It is I who have begotten you this day.
Or                                         Alleluia!

1. 'It is I who have set up my king on Zion, my holy mountain.'
I will announce the decree of the Lord: The Lord said to me: 'You are my Son.
It is I who have begotten you this day.'                                                                        Response

2. 'Ask and I shall bequeath you the nations, Put the ends of the earth in your possession.
With a rod of iron you will break them, shatter them like a potter's jar.'             Response

3. Now, O kings, understand, take warning rulers of the earth;
serve the Lord with awe and trembling, pay him your homage.                             Response

Gospel Acclamation                 John 14:6
Alleluia, alleluia!
'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, says the Lord;
No one can come to the Father except through me.'
Alleluia!

GOSPEL                 

The Lord be with you.                     And with your spirit
A reading from the holy Gospel according to John     14 1-6            Glory to you, O Lord
I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Jesus said to his disciples:
'Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me. There are many rooms in my Father's house; if there were not, I should have told you.

I am going now to prepare a place for you, and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you with me; so that where I am you may be too. You know the way to the place where I am going.'
Thomas said, 'Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?'
Jesus said: 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me.'

The Gospel of the Lord.           Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.


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Gospel Reflection         Friday        Fourth Week of Easter           John 14:1-6

Many of us find departures difficult, especially when the person departing from us is significant for us in some way. The words Jesus speaks in today’s gospel reading are set by the evangelist within the context of the last supper on the evening before Jesus was crucified. Jesus is about to leave his disciples. Yet, in leaving them he also assures them that he is not abandoning them. He will in fact come back to them. That is the promise of Jesus to the disciples in today’s gospel reading, ‘I shall return to take you with me’. That promise is generally heard as a promise that at the end of our earthly lives Jesus will come and take us to the many roomed house of his Father, which is why this reading is so often chosen for the funeral liturgy.

However, Jesus goes on to assure his disciples that we don’t have to wait to the end of our lives to experience his coming. He will come to us in and through the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, ‘whom the Father will send in my name’ and who ‘will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you’. Through the Spirit, the Lord comes to us here and now, today, and his coming through the Spirit is a foretaste, an anticipation, of his coming to us at the end of our lives. That is why Saint Paul refers to the Spirit as the first fruit of the final harvest, eternal life. Our present calling is to allow the first fruit of the Spirit to bear the rich fruit of love in our lives.

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The Scripture Readings are taken from The Jerusalem Bible, published 1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd. and used with the permission of the publishers.  http://dltbooks.com/
The Scripture Reflection is made available with our thanks from his book Reflections on the Weekday Readings : The Word is near to you, on your lips and in your heart by Martin Hogan and published by Messenger Publications  c/f www.messenger.ie/bookshop/

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Saint of the Day: 1 May; St Joseph the worker, the provider

Summary of St Joseph the Worker: This commemoration, instituted by Pius XII in 1955, proposes the example and intercession of Joseph as worker and provider. On this date many countries celebrate the dignity and cause of human labour.

Patrick Duffy outlines elements of the papal social encyclicals that led up to and followed on from the introduction of this feast.

It was in 1955, at a time when Communism was becoming strong in Italian political life, Pope Pius XII introduced the feast of St Joseph the Worker into the liturgical calendar.

An ideological Feast?
Liturgical purists may be inclined to question this day in honour of St Joseph the Worker: they see it as "an ideological feast" brought into the liturgical calendar in 1955 by Pope Pius XII apparently as a counterweight to the socialist and communist celebration of Labour Day on 1 May.
Another perspective, however, is that the institution of the feast fits in well with the developing awareness in the social teaching of the Church from Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII to Laborem Exercens of Pope John XXIII on the dignity of human work and its creative role in the development of the human person.

Rerum Novarum (1891)
In the encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), Pope Leo XIII raised a cry of protest against the harsh conditions which industrial workers had to endure and against their exploitation. This was a rejection of the prevailing 'realism' which held that labour was a commodity to be bought at market prices determined by the law of supply and demand rather than by the human needs of the worker. Pope Leo's position was that the State was not the instrument of the richer class, but a neutral arbiter, that it had a duty to protect the poor from abuse and exploitation. Leo also advocated that as many workers as possible should become owners of property and that workers had the right to form protective associations. With Leo XIII the Church was first seen to take a stand on behalf of the poor.

Quadragesimo Anno (1931)
Forty years later in Quadragesimo Anno (1931) Pope Pius XI looked not only at the unjust conditions of workers, but also made an analysis of the socio-economic order to focus on the causes of injustice and poverty. He pointed out the need not only for 'an improvement of conduct' ( = moral change) but also for 'a reform of social institutions' ( = structural change) (QA 77). Further, in an encyclical called Firmissimum (1937) dealing with the situation of Catholics in Mexico, he even indicated in some circumstances that the possibility of an active resistance to civil authorities (= legitimate rebellion) could be considered (par 35).

Mater et Magistra (1961)
Pope John XXIII in his encyclical Mater et magistra (1961) showed optimism in the way he spoke about the dignity and creative value of human work: 'Work, which is the immediate expression of a human personality, must always be rated higher than the possession of external goods, which of their very nature are merely instrumental.' This view of work is certainly an indication of an advance that has been made in our civilization (MM 107).

And about farm work:
'In the work on the farm the human personality finds every incentive for self-expression, self-development and spiritual growth. It is a work, therefore, which should be thought of as a vocation, a God-given mission, an answer to God's call to actuate his providential, saving plan in history. It should be thought of, finally, as a noble task, undertaken with a view to raising oneself and others to a higher degree of civilization' (MM 149).

Gaudium et Spes (1965)
This positive estimation of human activity was reinforced by Vatican II's Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes      (1965): 'When men and women provide for themselves and their families in such a way as to be of service to the community as well, they can rightly look upon their work as a prolongation of the work of the creator, a service to their fellow men, and their personal contribution to the fulfilment of the divine plan.' (GS 34)

Laborem Exercens (1981) and 'The Indirect Employer'
This positive evaluation of human work is more fully developed by Pope John Paul II in the opening chapters of his encyclical 'Laborem Exercens'  (1981) .  But quite early on he insists that 'the basis for determining the value of human work is not primarily the kind of work being done but the fact that the one who is doing it is a person' (LE 6).

Besides, to assist in a structural analysis of the injustice to workers in the global economy, the pope introduces the concept of the 'indirect' employer. This he defines as the 'many different factors, other than the direct employer, that exercise a determining influence on shaping both of the work contract and, consequently, of just or unjust relationships in the field of human labour'.

These would include the State and public departments that make decisions, employers' associations, trade unions, farmers' organisations, and not just within one particular State, but also in links between States, like the EU, and in transnational companies. So, for example, farming agencies in Western countries can put pressure on their governments to protect their interests by restricting the entry of beef from Botswana or Argentina.

Preferential Option for the Poor
This teaching about 'the indirect employer' helps us understand that whole peoples can suffer an impoverishment as a result of unjust political and economic structures and why Church leaders, especially from Latin America, have used the phrase "preferential option for the poor" as indicating the way to structural justice, both for workers and for the unemployed.

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Memorable Sayings for Today

 “Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well
that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.”

~Martin Luther King, Jr. ~

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Saint of the Day: St Brendan, abbot and missionary, navigator

Summary: St Brendan, abbot, and a Kerryman who was born in 484 AD. He studied at Clonard under St Finnian. His name is connected with many places in Kerry such as Ardfert and Mount Brandon. He visited Scotland and reached the Hebrides and possibly areas beyond. He founded a monastery in Clonfert in 568 and died there in 578.)

St Brendan of Kerry

There is very little secure information concerning Brendan's life, although at least the approximate dates of his birth and death, and accounts of some events in his life, are found in the Irish annals and genealogies. Paddy Duffy draws the different strands together for us here.

The first mention of Brendan occurs in Adamnan's Vita Sancti Columbae, written between 679 and 704. Often referred to as The Navigator, he first he first came to notice as a seafarer  in the ninth century Martyrology of Tallaght.

The principal works devoted to the saint and his legend are a 'Life of Brendan' in several Latin and Irish versions (Vita Brendani / Betha Brenainn) and the better known 'Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot' (Navigatio sancti Brendani abbatis). Unfortunately, the Lives and the Voyage provide little reliable information about his life and travels; they do, however, attest to the development of his following in the centuries after his death. An additional problem is that the precise relationship between the Vita and the Navigatio traditions is uncertain.

Any attempt to reconstruct the details of the life of the real Brendan or to understand the nature of the Brendan legend has to be based principally on the Irish annals and genealogies and on the various versions of the Vita Brendani.

In 484 AD Brendan was born in Tralee, in County Kerry, in the province of Munster, in the south-west of Ireland. He was born among the Altraige, a tribe originally centred around Tralee Bay, to parents called Finnlug and Cara. Tradition has it that he was born in the Kilfenora/Fenit area on the North side of the bay.

He was baptised at Tubrid, near Ardfert by Saint Erc, and was originally to be called "Mobhí" but signs and portents attending his birth and baptism led to him being christened 'Broen-finn' or 'fair-drop'. For five years he was educated under Saint Ita, "the Brigid of Munster". When he was six he was sent to Saint Jarlath's monastery school at Tuam to further his education. Brendan is one of the "Twelve Apostles of Ireland", one of those said to have been tutored by the great teacher, Finnian of Clonard. He is often referred to as Brendan the Voyager, the Anchorite, and the Bold.

At the age of twenty-six, Brendan was ordained a priest by Saint Erc. Afterwards, he founded a number of monasteries. Brendan’s first voyage took him to the Arran Islands, where he founded a monastery. He also visited Hinba (Argyll), an island off Scotland where he is said to have met Columcille (Columba). On the same voyage he traveled to Wales, and finally to Brittany, on the northern coast of France. Between the years 512 and 530 Brendan built monastic cells at Ardfert, and, at the foot of Mount Brandon, Shanakeel— Seana Cill, usually translated as "the old church". From here he is supposed to have set out on his famous seven-year voyage for Paradise. The old Irish Calendars assigned a special feast for the "Egressio familiae S. Brendani".

Legendary journeys
St. Brendan is chiefly renowned for his legendary journey to the Isle of the Blessed as described in the ninth century Voyage of St Brendan the Navigator. Many versions exist that tell of how he set out onto the Atlantic Ocean with sixteen pilgrims (other versions have fourteen, plus three unbelievers who join at the last minute) searching for the Garden of Eden. One of these companions is said to have been Saint Malo, the namesake of Saint-Malo. If it happened, this would have occurred sometime between AD 512–530, before his travel to the island of Great Britain. On his trip, Brendan is supposed to have seen Saint Brendan's Island, a blessed island covered with vegetation. He also encountered a sea monster, an adventure he shared with his contemporary Saint Columba. The most commonly illustrated adventure is his landing on an island which turns out to be a giant sea monster called Jasconius or Jascon. This too, has its parallels in other stories, not only in Irish mythology but in other traditions, from Sinbad the Sailor to Pinocchio.

The Voyages of Saint Brendan
The earliest extant version of The Voyage of Saint Brendan was recorded around AD 900. There are over 100 manuscripts of the story across Europe, as well as many additional translations. The Voyage of Saint Brendan is an overtly Christian narrative, but also contains narratives of natural phenomena and fantastical events and places, which appealed to a broad populace. The Voyage of Saint Brendan contains many parallels and inter-textual references to the Voyage of Bran and the Voyage of Máel Dúin.

On the Kerry coast, he built a currach-like boat of wattle, covered it with hides tanned in oak bark softened with butter, set up a mast and a sail. He and a small group of monks fasted for forty days, and after a prayer upon the shore, embarked in the name of the Trinity. The account is characterized by a great deal of literary license and contains references to hell where “great demons threw down lumps of fiery slag from an island with rivers of gold fire” and “great crystal pillars.” Many now believe these to be references to the volcanic activity around Iceland, and to icebergs.

Later life
Brendan travelled to Wales and the holy island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland; returning to Ireland, he founded a monastery at Annaghdown, where he spent the rest of his days. He also founded a convent at Annaghdown for his sister Briga. Having established the bishopric of Ardfert, St Brendan proceeded to Thomond, and founded a monastery at Inis-da-druim (now Coney Island), in the present parish of Killadysert, County Clare, about the year 550. He then journeyed to Wales and studied under Saint Gildas at Llancarfan, and thence to Iona, for he is said to have left traces of his apostolic zeal at Kil-brandon (near Oban) and Kil-brennan Sound. After a three years' mission in Britain he returned to Ireland, and did more proselytising in various parts of Leinster, especially at Dysart (County Kilkenny), Killiney (Tubberboe), and Brandon Hill. He established churches at Inchiquin, County Galway and at Inishglora, County Mayo, and founded Clonfert in Galway around 557 AD. He died c. 577 at Annaghdown, while visiting his sister Briga. Fearing that after his death his devotees might take his remains as relics, Brendan had arranged before dying to have his body secretly carried back to the monastery he founded at Clonfert concealed in a luggage cart. Brendan was buried in Clonfert Cathedral.

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Memorable Sayings for Today

The Christian's journey through life is not a sprint,
it's a marathon.

We aren’t only called to become Christians;
we are called to be Christians.
Becoming a Christian is the work of a moment; being a Christian is the work of a lifetime.

~ Rev Billy Graham ~

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Fifth Sunday of Easter

No one can come to the Father except through Christ. Working together in love,
all God’s people can build up the kingdom in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, our high priest.

FIRST READING

A reading from the Book of  Acts of the Apostles           6:1-7
They elected seven men full of the Holy Spirit

About this time, when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenists made a complaint against the Hebrews: in the daily distribution their own widows were being overlooked. So the Twelve called a full meeting of the disciples and addressed them,
'It would not be right for us to neglect the word of God so as to give out food. You, brothers, must select from among yourselves seven men of good reputation, filled with the Spirit and with wisdom; we will hand over this duty to them, and continue to devote ourselves to prayer and to the service of the word'.

The whole assembly approved of this proposal and elected Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, together with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus of Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these to the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them.

The word of the Lord continued to spread: the number of disciples in Jerusalem was greatly increased, and a large group of priests made their submission to the faith.

The Word of the Lord.               Thanks be to God.

Responsorial Psalm            Ps 32: 1-2. 4-5, 18-19. R/v 22
Response                               May your love be upon us, O Lord,
as we place all our hope in you.
Or                                             Alleluia!

1. Ring out your joy to the Lord, O you just; for praise is fitting for loyal hearts.
    Give thanks to the Lord upon the harp, with a ten-stringed lute sing him songs.   Response

2. For the word of the Lord is faithful and all his works to be trusted.
    The Lord loves justice and right and fills the earth with his love.                               Response

3. The Lord looks on those who revere him, on those who hope in his love,
    to rescue their souls from death, to keep them alive in famine.                                   Response

SECOND READING  

A reading from the first letter of St Peter          2:4-9
You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood

He is the living stone, rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him; set yourselves close to him so that you too, the holy priesthood  that offers the spiritual sacrifices which Jesus Christ has made acceptable to God, may be living stones making a spiritual house. As scripture says: See how I lay in Zion a precious cornerstone that I have chosen and the man who rests his trust on it will not be disappointed. That means that for you who are believers, it is precious; but for unbelievers, the stone rejected by the builders has proved to be the keystone, a stone to stumble over, a rock to bring men down. They stumble over it because they do not believe in the word; it was the fate in store for them.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God who called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.

The Word of the Lord.          Thanks be to God.

Gospel Acclamation                 Jn 14: 6
Alleluia, alleluia!
Jesus said: 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.
No one can come to the Father except through me.'
Alleluia!

GOSPEL

The Lord be with you              And with your spirit.
A reading from the Gospel according to John           14:1-12
I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Jesus said to his disciples 'Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me. There are many rooms in my Father's house; if there were not, I should have told you. I am going now to prepare a place for you, and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you with me; so that where I am you may be too. You know the way to the place where I am going.'

Thomas said, 'Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?'
 Jesus said:'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me. If you know me, you know my Father too. From this moment you know him and have seen him.'

Philip said, 'Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied'. 'Have I been with you all this time, Philip,' said Jesus to him 'and you still do not know me? ' 'To have seen me is to have seen the, Father, so how can you say, "Let us see the Father"? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?
The words I say to you I do not speak as from myself: it is the Father, living in me, who is doing this work. You must believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; believe it on the evidence of this work, if for no other reason.

'I tell you most solemnly, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself,
he will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father.'

The Gospel of the Lord    Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.



Taken from THE JERUSALEM BIBLE, published and copyright 1966, 1967 and 1968 by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd and Doubleday, a division of Random House Inc, and used by permission of the publishers.