June 11th, 2000 |
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Pentecost, Jn 25/22-27 16/12-15 |
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| Background: Scriptural and Liturgical Reflection The soaring, mystical liturgy of Pentecost abounds in themes. Perhaps the most important is the idea that in Jesus and the Spirit the diversities in humankind become unimportant. The Spirit is the source of unity amid diversity. She does not eliminate diversity, but she makes it possible to rejoice in it instead of fighting over it. Neither Greek nor Roman, Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, but all one in Christ Jesus. Neither Irish nor Hispanic, neither white nor black, neither straight nor gay, neither male nor female but all one in Christ Jesus. This is a glorious vision, not yet achieved in Christian practice (to put it mildly). Rather is a goal towards which we strive with greater or lesser seucces and indeed with greater or lesser effort. If we are unable to rejoice in diversity and continue to fight over, the fault is ours, not God's spirit. |
read the padre |
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Story: Once upon a time there was a town in Ireland named Cong. Actually it still exists. It is a tiny town at a crossroads in County Mayo, pretty much like all the other little towns that cling together in that county as more and more of its young people go off to the big cities. Maybe, counting all the pople that are on the far outskirts it has a population of three hundred and fifty people. However, it has become world famous - though not by name - as the place where the film "The Quiet Man" was made. Moreover it huddles together in the shadow of two large institutions, the runs of a medieveal monastery (with a famous fishing room hanging out over the river as it rushes towards Loch Corrib) and Ashford Castle, one of the great hotels in all the world, indeed it is said the kind of hotel, the people in Cong say, that God could make if he had as much money as a Philadelphia millionaire. WELL, one day a young woman came from the government in Dublin came to Cong and said, you know we have a lot of foreigners coming to Ireland and ourselves such a prosperous country these days. If they're from the European Union we have to take them and without them Spanish young women there'd be no housekeepers in the hotels in Dublin. But there's also some political refugees from other places in the world and they can't no back or they'll be killed. Some of them, poor dear people, are from Africa. We have jobs for them too but we don't want to put them all in the same places and themselves becoming a ghetto, if you take me meaning. Some communities in Ireland have volunteered to accept these people and make them feel at home. Weren't we wondering if you good people in Cong would be willing to take, well now, maybe forty of them? There was dead silence among the villagers. There faces were solemn masks. Wasn't the young woman from Dublin, who never in her life had been beyond Galway town wondering that these West of Ireland farmers would say. Finally one woman said, Well, I suppose that we're no better than they are, are we now? And an old fella chimed in, aren't they people just like us, save for them being refugees? And a young man added, don't we know something about what it's like to be a refugee? There was more silenceThe Dublin lass didn't quite know what to say. You mean you'll take them? A girl her own age said in surprise, haven't we just told you we would? And didn't they now? |
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