|
|
|
Third Sunday of Easter Lk 24/35-48 |
||
| Background: Like last Sunday’s Gospel this is an account which reveals the faith of the early church that Jesus who had been dead was now alive again. While it is not to be taken as literally true in every detail, it is a very ancient story, certainly dating in its origins if not in its present form to the decade of the thirties, shortly after Jesus went home to the father. It might be considered a form of historical fiction, based on facts but with a story enriched by faith and told to reinforce faith. |
read the padre |
|
 |
Story: Once upon a time there was a young man named Brendan. He was very poor because he was not much of a business man. He had sold the land he had inherited from his father and invested the money in a peddler’s pack. But he was such an eedjid that he lost all of his back because he had given too many things a way. A nice person, your man Brendan, too bad he was such an eejid. Well there were hard times in Ireland in those days, not enough food for them as worked and hardly anything at all for a poor eejid like Brendan. He kind of fancied a young woman with gray eyes named Sheila who used to stand at the edge of his circle when he was trying to sell things and he sort of thought she had a fancy for him. But he knew he was an eejid and that he should not risk marrying and having children. He wouldn’t even kill the birds who ate the fruit on his trees or the critters who the food on the few pratie fields he still owned, because, as he said, they had to live too. Once night, when he had only one pratie left, didn’t he eat a third of it and fall asleep in his cold house and the wind swept through the nooks and the crannies. And then didn’t St. Brigid herself appear in his dreams and tell him to go into town and stand in front of the church and he’s see what he wanted to sea and hear what he wanted to hear? Your poor man dismissed the dream as foolish and as the rain and the wind beat down on the house the next dark day, didn’t he eat another third of the pratie and fall asleep. And didn’t Brigie appear again and give him the same order and didn’t he not believe in his dreams. Sure, hadn’t everyone said that he was too much of a dreamer. Well the third night, after he had consumed the last third of the pratie, didn’t she appear again and didn’t she lose her temper with him and order him to go into town. So your man wet and hungry and cold went into town and stood in front of the day and didn’t everyone say that he didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain. Finally the man from the public house across the street from the church took him into the pub and fed him a decent meal and give him a wee drop to warm him up. When Brendan told him why he was standing in the rain, didn’t your man tell him that it was time that he stop acting like and eejid and grow up. There was no point in believing in dreams. Hadn’t he, the publican, had a similar dream in which herself had told him that outside of town under a barren apple tree there was a treasure chest. Well, you’re man Brendan was an eejit all right, but he was nobody’s fool. So he excused himself, walked back into the country, shivering from the wind and the rain, find a spade in his barn and begin digging in front of his old barren apple tree. Wasn’t he an eejid to do that? Anyway just as the sky began to turn gray, didn’t he find the chest. It was filled with pieces of eight and pieces of six and eurodollars and stock options and all kinds of clever commodity futures. Wasn’t he now, because of his belief in his dream, one of the richest men in the west of Ireland. Well the first stop was to collect the coleen with the gray eyes. If I told you all the good things they did with that money, I’d be here all night long. (This story is part of most of the folk cultures of Europe. It is often told as the story of the rabbi who went from Pinsk to Minsk, or from Cracow to Prague. However, there is an Irish version too, which one is permitted to believe is older than all the rest.) |
|
