Posts made in February, 2009

First Sunday of Lent – 1 March 2009

Posted by on Feb 28, 2009 in Sunday Reflections | 0 comments

Jesus had just been baptised … In receiving the baptism of John, You line Yourself up with sinners. You descend to our level….but it is to enable us to ascend to the Father after You. The new Moses, You lead humanity to guide it towards the true Promised Land. You accompany us in this journey towards God. Immediately the Spirit drives Him into the desert…. The Spirit came visibly on You at Your Baptism; He drives You now to share the experience with everyone, in living the trial of the desert. Let us also allow ourselves to be pushed by the Spirit. He is light and strength in the difficulties and trials of our...

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Homily delivered at the Requiem Mass of Br. Paul Byrne, SSS

Posted by on Feb 19, 2009 in Provincial Corner | 0 comments

Like the disciples in the Gospel we have just heard, our hearts are troubled. Paul, our brother is gone from us. We mourn for him as Christ mourned for Lazarus outside the tomb. But there is hope, because like Christ, we know that Paul will rise again. Jesus tells us in the Gospel that he is going to prepare a place for us, so that where he is, we may be too. Paul is now in the place set aside for him by God for all eternity. In the Gospel, the disciples were bewildered and did not know where Jesus was going. But he told them that he was the Way, the Truth and the Life. He left his disciples to show the way to others. The first reading tells us that the life and death of each of us influences others. Paul showed us the way, and influenced us all. Paul was born in Cork city, and was baptised and confirmed in the Cathedral. He loved Cork, and loved going back there whenever he could. He used to say that that passagefrom the Old Testament “ a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart” was really about the Cork people! As one of his friends said, Paul had a wide, varied and checkered career. He started his working life as a messenger boy for the Cork Yeast Company. He was a religious for most of his adult life. He joined the Franciscans in Killarney in 1946 at the age of 23, and stayed for six years with them, until he became ill with tuberculosis. After that he worked for a few years here and there, and then joined the Blessed Sacrament Congregation in 1956. He was always insistent that he was called by God to make perpetual adoration, and for him, that was unchangeable, regardless of changes and updatings in the Constitution of the Congregation. He had a personal devotion to Little Nellie of God, a little seven-year old Cork girl who had an extraordinary devotion to Holy Communion at the beginning of the century – all who knew her considered her to be a saint – Pope Pius X knew about her. Paul was always ready and available to go wherever he was asked – he lived in eight different houses of the Congregation in his time with us. He generously agreed to go our province in the United States, to help in our houses there. When he came back he worked in Wareside, Leicester, Liverpool and Dublin. Paul loved people. He had numerous friends, many of whom knew him as Bobby – three of his best friends are here today – James and Noel Lynch and Christy Doyle. He befriended the less fortunate in particular – his heart would go out to them when he discovered their difficult circumstances. All the shops around here knew him – the paper shop, the chemist, and probably half of O’Connell Street, where he loved to walk. Paul was highly intelligent – he loved to engage in theological discussion, and he could hold his own with the best of them – as he would say himself “ he was so bright, he had to wear a lampshade”. He had an extraordinary capacity to play with words. He loved doing his crossword in the paper that Kathleen brought him every day without fail. All who knew would unanimously agree that his outstanding trait was his sense of humour.. It was the same sense of humour that the Lynch’s had – he grew up with them –...

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