December 2024: Points to Ponder
Points to Ponder
December 2024/ January 2025
First Sunday of Advent
1 December 2024
‘Watch the road.’ There is a beautiful anecdote given by Mgr Arthur Tonne clarifying the message of today’s Gospel. Several years ago a bus driver reached an unusual record. In 23 years he had driven a bus over 900,000 miles without a single accident. When asked how he had done it, he gave this simple answer: ‘Watch the road.’ In today’s Gospel Jesus gives the same advice in several ways: ‘Be vigilant at all times,’ ‘Stand erect,’ ‘Raise your heads,’ ‘Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy.’ This is not only a good spiritual advice for the Advent season but also a safe rule for daily life. A good football player or basketball player should always concentrate his attention on the ball and the players. A good student must be alert, awake and attentive, watching the teacher and listening to his or her words. A good Catholic in the Church must be physically and mentally alert, watching the altar and actively participating in the prayers and songs. Like the Roman god Janus, who had two faces, one looking at the past year and the other looking into future, Christians during the Advent season are to look at the past event of the first coming of Jesus into the world and expectantly look forward to his second coming in glory.
sundaypulpit.com
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Second Sunday of Advent
8 December 2024
Most churches have a Service of Reconciliation during Advent. In a way, we can think of this as ‘Confession without the shopping list.’ To the older generation, it may appear all too simple, all too easy. This is to misunderstand the thinking behind the Reconcilation Service. Sin has a community dimension. When I do wrong, I offend the community in general, through an individual, or through a group. Because there is a community dimension to my sin, there must be a community dimension to my repentance. That is why the public acknowledgement of our sinfulness, that is part of the Service of Reconciliation, is much preferable to going into a Confessional and whispering in the dark. In the season of peace on earth to people of good-will, it is important that I harness my good-will, and act on it. Filling valleys, levelling mountains, straightening the crooked road, preparing a pathway for the Lord this is our preparation for Christmas. Of course it involves decisions, and these decisions come out of the context of the realities of my life. God is always calling on me to respond to him. Responding to him is to become responsible. I have responsibility for my actions and become willing to face up to the truth. There is a tendency to look for a softer, easier way. Part of the human condition is an inability to understand the human condition. Lucy said to Charlie Browne ‘Charlie Browne, do you know what’s wrong with you?’ ‘No,’ replied Charlie, ‘tell me.’ ‘What’s wrong with you, Charlie Browne, is that you don’t want to know what’s wrong with you.’
holyredeemerbray.ie
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Third Sunday of Advent
15 December 2024 • Gaudate Sunday
As Luke tells the story of Jesus’ earthly ministry in the Gospel of Luke and the story of Jesus’ heavenly ministry through the Holy Spirit in the Book of Acts, he comes back to this question again and again, ’What should we [I] do?’ [1] This is THE question Luke wants all of us to ask. Luke is looking for more than just, ‘What must I believe?’ God uses Luke to speak to our times when goodness and godliness are sometimes associated with only what we feel or what we think. Change has to change more than just what goes on in the gray matter between our ears. Yes, God wants our hearts, minds, and souls to be thoroughly convicted and passionate. [2] Yes, without faith and love, all action is hollow and vain. [3] But, the Bible makes clear that faith is not genuine if all it does is change what we think. Real faith leads us to action. [4] Faith is always displayed in action based upon trust – it is never just mere wistful thinking or good intentions. When Jesus enters our world, he changes it. When Jesus enters our lives, he changes them. So the question of each day, the ultimate question of faith, is this: ‘What, Lord, should I do?’ Why not begin each day by asking Jesus that question?
O God, guide my steps, lead my heart, and form my character. I want my faith to be more than mental. I want my love for you to be displayed in what I do and how I do it. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.
www.heartlight.org
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Fourth Sunday of Advent
22 December 2024
Fear stalks us daily. The world in which we live can undermine our trust in God. It is easy to become attached to things of this world, even though they give us only a fleeting pleasure or temporary security before they pass away, disappear, or vanish. Since our heart is made for God, for the infinite, when we become attached to something, not of God, the result is fear. This is a fear of the future and a fear of the unknown. But with God, we know the ending, and we know what awaits us. Listen to those words: ‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.’ All that we see and enjoy around us will pass away, but not Christ’s promises, namely the promises of eternal life – of paradise.
The grace of God ripens us. The moment we are baptised, we are made ready to see God. But there is a lesson, and it might be a bit scary. When Jesus spoke about the fig tree in today’s Gospel, he may have thought of another fig tree – the one that bore no fruit, withered, dried up and died. Christ shocked them that time. We don’t know when Christ will pass by the fig tree of our life, looking to pick the fruit of our virtues. However, we can be assured of this: The time will come. Our baptism has made our lifetime a time of harvest. You have all eternity to rest in the house of the Father. The lesson: Bear fruit now; live virtue now. Christ came to give life and give it abundantly.
www.epriest.com
Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe
24 November 2024
The two pregnant women in our Gospel today are very different in age, yet both full of joy and concern for each other. These two great women understand the miracle of conception and birth. But in each case there was a direct intervention of God in a truly exceptional way – by an angel messenger.
At particular moments we might recognise the hand of God in our lives. Maybe it was when we felt we had a priestly or religious vocation or when we finally decided on our partner in marriage. Maybe it was in the birth of a child, a change in job circumstances, or the death of a parent. Maybe it was a moment in prayer, the grace of a sacrament, advice in the confessional, wise words from a friend or relative at a critical moment.
God continues to work with us and for us. He takes the long view and there are periods of seeming barrenness, seeming aloneness. But these are all part of that gestation period which is life on earth. We were born into this world and we will be reborn into eternal life.
Every now and then like John the Baptist we leap in this womb of ours, which is our life on earth. Every now and then we recognise God’s presence, just as John recognised Jesus’ presence, and we leap with joy. But life is constantly moving on and God is always with us. He caused us to come into being, he sustains and feeds us, and he will welcome us into life eternal. We celebrate a birth at Christmas; a birth, a life, a death and a resurrection.
queenofpeace.ie
Second Sunday of Christmas
5 January 2025
A new year has begun. It is a time of new beginning. The gospel reading is itself a beginning, the opening verses of the gospel of John. ‘In the beginning was the Word’. This Word was God’s self-communication, a self-communication that was so complete and perfect that it was itself God, ‘the Word was God’.
This self-communication of God became human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We celebrate the birth of Jesus because we recognize in this child the fullest possible self-communication of God. Jesus is the fullest Word that God could have spoken to us. We speak, we communicate, not just by our words but by the way we relate, by the way we live and, even, by the way we die. God spoke to us through the life of Jesus, and through his death and resurrection. God has said everything he wants to say to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, his Word. God and his Son, together, have sent us the Holy Spirit to help us plumb the depths of all God has said to us through Jesus. As Jesus will later declare in this fourth gospel, the Holy Spirit ‘will guide you into all the truth… he will take from what is mine and declare it to you’. The Holy Spirit enables us to keep hearing the Word that is Jesus in all its richness, to hear it as a word for us here and now. At the beginning of this new year, we invite the Spirit to open us up more fully to the truth of this Word that became flesh in the person of Jesus.
Fr Martin Hogan
Curate in the parishes of Finglas, Finglas West and Rivermount
The Baptism of the Lord
12 January 2025
Most of us who were baptised as infants cannot remember the moment of our baptism. Fortunately, we have an abundance of symbols and rituals to anchor us in our ‘baptismal memory’. When we pass by the baptismal font in our Church we can ‘remember’ our baptism. Anytime we have the pleasure of being in the congregation at a baptism ceremony we can ‘remember’ our baptism. We can look at photographs or take out the family christening gown or baptismal candle to have a visual reminder of our initiation into the Christian faith. But most significantly whenever we turn to one of the Gospel passages that tell the story of Jesus’ baptism we can ‘remember’ our baptism in an especially powerful way.
The simple act of entering a Catholic Church and blessing ourselves with water from the font at the entrance is a way of remembering our baptismal commitment And it makes even more sense to put water on our foreheads as we leave the Church and go out into the world – for there the battles are fought. This is a month in which many of us are feeling overwhelmed. In January, the holidays are over and the bills are looming. Some people are dealing with a variety of post-holiday emotions; others already feel that they have failed in their new year’s resolutions. The message of Jesus’ baptism and a reminder of our own is needed at a time such as this: ‘Lord we are yours, help us to know it, To know it in the depth of our hearts and to act accordingly.’
blessingtonparish.ie
Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
19 January 2024 • Catholic Schools Week begins today
Almost two thousand years ago Jesus of Nazareth spoke of the Reign of God as healing for the sick, hearing for the deaf, sight for the blind, freedom for prisoners, good news for the poor. The world is full of real problems; the pain of human experience is obvious. In facing this reality we could turn our backs in despair and throw our hands in the air at the futility of human life. But the call of Christian discipleship demands otherwise. It demands that we always seek to lift the burden. The burdens of life are real and so we need to help each other in:
• opening our eyes to the reality of life
• feeding those who are too weak to feed themselves
• liberating those who are oppressed
• expanding our minds through education
• dispelling our fear of the unknown
• challenging ourselves to let go of hurts and prejudice
• unsealing our ears to hear the divine echo in our hearts
• inspiring hope for the future
In all of these ways the ministry of Jesus is continued as ‘the blind see again, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, the good news is proclaimed to the poor’ (Luke 7:22). To teach as Christ taught means inviting people to live without the crutch or the grudge or the closed mind.
Catholic schools make an indispensable contribution to Catholic education. While such schools can never replace the home or the parish they have a crucial role to play in the education of the next generation of young people.
ceist.ie
Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
26 January 2025 • Sunday of the Word of God
Many organisations have a mission statement. A mission statement could be said to have a two-fold purpose. One purpose is to state clearly to those outside the organisation what is the primary aim of the organisation, its significant values, its vision for the future. Another purpose is more internal, to help those within the organisation to stay focused and to live by the values that the statement proclaims. As we know, it is one thing having a mission statement and another matter to live by it. In the opening paragraph of our gospel reading this morning, we find Luke the evangelist’s own brief mission statement. He declares to Theophilus, probably Luke’s patron, why he is writing his gospel. Luke’s mission in writing his gospel is to give people greater assurance about the faith in which they have been instructed. He is going to tell the story of Jesus in such a way that he will be able to confirm believers in their faith. That is what the gospel of Luke has been doing since it was written about fifty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is many people’s favourite gospel. If we did not have the gospel of Luke, we would not have such memorable parables of Jesus as the good Samaritan, the prodigal son, the rich man and Lazarus. We would not have the story of Jesus in the home of Mary and Martha or the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Our faith would certainly be the poorer without Luke’s gospel. Luke did what he said he would do in his mission statement.
Fr Martin Hogan
Curate in the parishes of Finglas, Finglas West and Rivermount