+AMDG Mass for the Family Members of Presentation Brothers Mount - PDF document

+AMDG Mass for the Family Members of Presentation Brothers Mount St. Joseph 7 May 2016 Br. Martin Kenneally FPM Dear Friends, Those of you who are dedicated followers of fashion will be aware that Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, recently appeared on the cover of Vogue magazine. For those of you who like to know these things, she was in fact wearing a brown suede trench coat and vintage trilby. Now I can confirm that I was in London on 29 th April 2011, when Kate married Prince William. Probably due to the Republican activities of my grandparents here in Cork, I can also confirm that I did not make the guest list for Westminster Abbey! However, along with 1.2 billion people around the globe, I did spend the day watching the ceremony on television. The day was memorable for a host of reasons – the pageantry, the outfits, the crowds - but what stood out for me was the sermon preached by Richard Chartres, Bishop of London in Westminster Abbey. He pointed to a great truth. In marriage and in the family, love finds a centre beyond ourselves – and this offers a door into another great truth – the more we give of self – the more human we become and the richer we become in soul. The more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become who God intended us to be. And this training in love begins in the family. Today, at this Eucharist, we gather to give thanks and praise to God. And today, especially, we Brothers, wish to give thanks to God for you, our own family 1

members. Your love, your encouragement, your prayers and your support have nurtured and sustained us in our vocation as Presentation Brothers. That love and encouragement has been so important to us. In our first reading today, from the Acts of the Apostles, we heard of the early Christian community. Under pressure from all sides, they distinguished themselves by their love for each other and by the generosity of their shared life. Among them was ‘a Levite, a native of Cyprus, Joseph, to whom the apostles gave the name Barnabas’ a na me which means ‘Son of Encouragement’. Joseph of Cyprus was such a positive presence in the early Christian community that the apostles gave him this wonderful nickname, ‘son of encouragement’. Dear friends, there is a call for all of us in our families and communities to be ‘Barnabas’ – to be sons and daughters of encouragement. Ronald Rolheiser, the Canadian theologian and spiritual writer says our world has lost the capacity for genuine admiration and praise. Quoting St. Thomas Aquinas, he says that to withhold a compliment from someone who deserves it is a sin because we are withholding from him or her necessary food for the soul. You, our family members, have been our great encouragers over the years. Your brother, your uncle, your grand uncle probably left home to join the Presentation Brothers as a boy or at a very young age. He entered into a new and strange way of life, which in those days meant long separation from home, journeying to another part of Ireland or maybe even as a missionary to another part of the world. What must it have been like for the mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers left behind? What sorrow and what loneliness families suffered and what sacrifices they made. And they did all of this out of love and because they were people of deep faith. A few weeks ago, I visited Sr. Elizabeth Dromey, a Carmelite Sister, now 92 years old in a nursing home near Newry, Co. Down. Sr. Elizabeth from Kilmichael, Co. Cork had two Brothers who were Presentation Brothers. Br. John Alexis Dromey who died of T.B. in 1946 at the young age of 29 and Br. Matthias Liam Dromey who died in 1990 and who, in later life, became a diocesan priest in England. Sr. Elizabeth described how when she left school, she got a job in the civil service in 2

Dublin. T.B. was rampant in Ireland at the time. Her brother John – Br. Alexis – was diagnosed with T.B. in 1942 at the age of 25. He spent four years in Mount Desert Nursing Home, just a few miles out the road from here until his death in 1946. Elizabeth, with tears in her eyes, described how she made the journey from Dublin every second Saturday for four years to visit Johnny in Mount Desert. This was during the war years. Food and fuel were rationed, travel was slow and difficult. There were some terrible winters and the train journey from Dublin could sometimes take 7 – 9 hours. Yet the young Elizabeth faithfully made that journey every two weeks for four years because of her love for her brother. She spoke of that time as if it were yesterday! I share this story as just one example of the love that we Brothers have experienced from our families and for which we are eternally grateful. In today’s reading from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus poses the rather strange question: ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ Pointing to his disciples, he goes on to say: ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother’. Jesus, of course, as a believing Jew deeply valued his own blood family. However, here, he widens the notion of his family to include all those who follow him and do the will of the Father. We are that family today! As Presentation Brothers, we often speak of our Presentation Family. This includes the many thousands of women and men throughout the world who associate with us in living the charism and mission of Blessed Edmund Rice. Thursday (May 5 th ) was the feast of Blessed Edmund. So we pray through his intercession, for our mission, for all the people we serve and for new vocations to our Presentation way of life. The Presentation Brothers continue our ministry to young people today. We do this in a new and creative way in the Anglo-Irish Province and in North America/West Indies. Africa, especially Ghana/Nigeria is an area of great growth for us and thank God, we have many young Brothers there. God has also gifted us with new vocations from Sri Lanka. We have a number of Sri Lankan Brothers 3

now studying in Ireland and in the coming years we hope to establish and develop a mission. I commend all of these developments to your prayer. We need your prayers. Prayer is the energy that drives our life as Presentation Brothers and makes us passionate to spread the message of Jesus. This year, 2016, we also celebrate 125 years of a praying community of Presentation Brothers here at Mount St. Joseph. Moladh go deo le Dia! The poet Philip Larkin has a lovely poem called ‘Church Going’. There is an extract from it in your Mass booklet and I would like to apply his words to Mount St. Joseph: A serious house on serious earth…, In whose blent air all our compulsions meet, Are recognized, and robed as destinies, And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious, And gravitating with it to this ground. This is what Mount St. Joseph, indeed any religious house is about – the human search for ultimate meaning – for God – for love: And that much never can be obsolete, Since someone will forever be surprising A hunger in himself to be more serious. The world and Church may change. Particular forms of Religious Life may die but new forms will always develop because the human search for God and God’s search for us always continues! 4

Dear Family Members, God reward you for your love, your encouragement and your loyalty. Loyalty is something we should prize so highly. In a world where there is so much disloyalty, discouragement and untruth, your loyalty and your love are truly great gifts. On hundred years ago in 1916, when Mount St. Joseph was still a new building, a generation of young Irish men and women were prepared to sacrifice everything in the cause of the liberation and freedom of their people. Their principled stand, their idealism and their sacrifice released the native genius and the creativity of the Irish people, making possible the country we have today. The generation of young men who came to this building to become Presentation Brothers and to bring the gospel to many parts of the world were possessed of a similar idealism, of a similar desire to set people free. At the Eucharist today, we honour their memory best by re-committing ourselves to sharing our faith and these ideals of generosity and sacrifice with young Irish people today because ‘that much can never be obsolete’ . So, friends, today is indeed a day of celebration, of thanksgiving and of rejoicing with you, our family members. Thank you for coming to Mount St. Joseph today. Your presence is a gift and a blessing to us. Let us really enter into this time of prayer, sharing and celebration together. 5