The parish of Lismore and Ballysaggart news
Pope Francis, at the beginning of his pontificate, reminded us that we find the foundation of our lives in the Resurrection of Christ. The power of the Resurrection is not something that we recall only as an event that happened once in Jesus' life. We are all connected to this life-giving event. In his letter to the whole Church called Evangelii Gaudium 276, he wrote 'Christ's resurrection is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world. Where all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. It is an irresistible force.'
Often it seems that God does not exist; all around us we see persistent injustice, evil, indifference and cruelty. But it is also true that in the midst of darkness something new always springs to life and sooner or later produces fruit. On razed land life breaks through, stubbornly, yet invincibly. However dark things are, goodness always re-emerges and spreads. Each day in our world beauty is born anew, it rises transformed through the storms of history.
These words are really encouraging for us, even for those outside of church communities. Believing about Jesus is far from believing in Jesus Christ. Every Eucharist celebrated is the Easter Sacrament. It is the Risen Christ who communicates with us when hearing the Word we rededicate ourselves to living in the Spirit of Eucharist. We live in a surfeit of words that so often lack truth, though sold as ' the truth'. We are enriched when we have personally prepared the Word of God in our own family.
It is not easy to receive much meaning if the only time we hear the Word is when at Mass. I know from many years of experience that preparation is everything. The same goes for every other human undertaking also. With the weather of the uptake efforts will be made to sow crops. One thing is certain, that farming cannot be run from well heated offices where comfort means telling others what to do. In some ways we have reached the Soviet ideology of food production. Not all of it is bad. We might even revisit the story of the deluge in the Bible with less cynicism and learn some of the hard learned lessons those good people had to experience.
It seems that the ‘public service’ broadcaster has learned nothing from the adverse publicity it received in recent times. The Monday Special Prime Time programme on abortion was truly unbalanced. Public service surely must mean that the two sides of a story is told. It may be beyond the capacity of a service that in the last two referenda sided with the ‘yes’ folk. Since then there seems to be little public analysis as to why things turned out the way they did. There are many politically homeless people in our land. That is not healthy for democracy. We have suffered enough from totalitarian regimes where only one point of view could be aired. Under the cloak of ‘hate speech’ very balanced articles were deemed hate speech.