Pastoral

“IS THAT ALL THERE IS?”

This contrasts with the bleak chorus of Peggy Lee’s song from the 1960s, which echoes an unease deep in our culture. It asks whether there is anything worth committing ourselves to, anything worth living for:

“Is that all there is, is that all there is

If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing

Let's break out the booze and have a ball

If that's all there is.”

In spite of the frenetic activity of our lives, a pall of boredom hangs over us. Perhaps a world that provides so many stimuli makes us less able to pursue our own goals. “I’m bored!” “There’s nothing on the telly!” “There is nothing worth getting out of bed for.” “What is there to do?”

Tolstoy describes boredom as “the desire for desires”. And we do need to have desires and goals. Human beings “fully discover their true selves only in sincere self-giving.” If there were no cause worth our commitment, nothing worth our wholehearted effort then nothing would be left but to “eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” ( Is 22:13 ).

The two downcast disciples had come to the end of their journey. They invited the Stranger to remain with them because “the day is now far spent” ( Acts 24:29 ). But when they recognised the Risen Jesus in the breaking of the bread, “they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem” ( Acts 24:33 ). Suddenly they were people with a mission, people so much on fire with Good News that they could not wait to share and spread.

Sent out

The Eucharist is not only the summit but also the source of our lives. In other words, the Eucharist sends us out to live with new purpose and strength: “Entering into communion with Christ in the moment of his Pasch also means sensing the duty to be a missionary of the event made present in that rite” (34). In Limerick, Pope John Paul told us that there is no such thing as an ordinary layperson because, “As God’s holy people you are called to fulfil your role in the evangelisation of the world” (35).

We are people with a mission in life; we are people whose lives are a mission. The very word ‘Mass’ derives from the Latin missio, which means sending out. When we look at our lives and our quest for meaning, when we look at a world so in need of the Good News, the question, ‘What is there to do?’ is hardly appropriate!

In the Eucharist we are face to face with the meaning of our lives and of human history, with the longing for a universal belonging, with our need to commit our lives to a mission worthy of our whole heart and mind and strength. That mission is to help people to recognise the God for whom all human beings thirst with a thirst is often suppressed, but never satisfied. Our role is to awaken the thirst and to make the Good News known by our attitudes, actions and words, ‘in families, schools, the workplace, in all of life’s settings’:

In Jesus, in his sacrifice, in his unconditional ‘yes’ to the will of the Father, is contained the ‘yes, the ‘thank you’ and the ‘amen’ of all humanity. The Church is called to remind all men and women of this great truth. This is especially urgent in the context of our secularised culture, characterised as it is by a forgetfulness of God and a vain pursuit of human self-sufficiency (36).

‘There is no such thing as an ordinary layperson’. The time is past, rather it never existed, when one could leave that task to others:

We must revive in ourselves the burning conviction of Paul, who cried out: ‘Woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel’ ( I Cor 9:16 ). This passion will not fail to stir in the Church a new sense of mission, which cannot be left to a group of ‘specialists’ but must involve the responsibility of all members of the People of God. Those who have come into genuine contact with Christ cannot keep him for themselves, they must proclaim him. A new apostolic outreach is needed, which will be lived as the everyday commitment of Christian communities and groups (37).

The renewal that we have been undertaking in the diocese, the clusters and the parishes needs to have this as a priority. How, in practice, do we proclaim the Gospel in our communities and beyond?

A new mode of being

The Eucharist is not just a source of strength for our mission; it is, in a sense, the mission itself. We reflect, as individuals and together on what we celebrate, on the truths and values which the Eucharist expresses, on ‘the attitudes it inspires and the resolutions to which it gives rise’. As we do so, our union with Christ grows and ‘ new mode of being’ passes from Jesus into us and to the whole of our society and culture (38).

The Church is a sign and instrument of the unity of the whole human family. Any community, but particularly a Eucharistic community, is fatally unhealthy if it fails to look beyond itself. The Good News is not just for those who are present at Mass. It is also for those who are not – those who no longer practice regularly and those who have never received the Gospel.

In celebrating, as Jesus asked us to do in memory of him, we ought to be particularly conscious of the pain of Christian divisions. We should pray, work and have “a burning desire” for the day when the visible unity of Christ’s Church will be restored and we will be able to “join in celebrating the one Eucharist of the Lord” (39).

We celebrate conscious that every human being is invited by God as we are; every human being in his or her heart thirsts for God; every human being has been created in order to belong in God’s new creation. We are conscious that Christ died for each person, as he did for us. We know that we are meant to love and serve all of them as he did: “In the Eucharist our God has shown love in the extreme, overturning all those criteria of power which too often govern human relations and radically reaffirming the criterion of service” (40).

The Trócaire collection for the people of South East Asia was taken up in the context of our gathering for Mass. The response to the disaster from the diocese of Limerick, which amounted to well over six hundred thousand euro to the Trócaire collection alone, was unprecedented. [One also has to remember the generosity here and throughout the country through many other agencies and groups.] It was a truly Eucharistic occasion. The Gospel of Saint John records how at the Last Supper, Jesus set an example for the disciples to follow ( Jn 13:15 ):

by bending down to wash the feet of his disciples, Jesus explains the meaning of the Eucharist unequivocally. Saint Paul vigorously reaffirms the impropriety of a Eucharistic celebration lacking charity expressed by practical sharing with the poor ( cf. I Cor 11:17-22, 27-34 ) (41).

The Pope suggests that we could very suitably mark the Year of the Eucharist by finding ways of responding to the needs of others:

Can we not make this Year of the Eucharist an occasion for diocesan and parish communities to commit themselves in a particular way to responding with fraternal solicitude to one of the many forms of poverty present in our world? I think for example of the tragedy of hunger which plagues hundreds of millions of human beings, the diseases which afflict developing countries, the loneliness of the elderly, the hardships faced by the unemployed, the struggles of immigrants… We cannot delude ourselves: by our mutual love and, in particular, by our concern for those in need will we be recognised as true followers of Christ ( cf. Jn 13:35; Mt 25:31-46 ). This will be the criterion by which the authenticity of our Eucharistic celebrations is judged (42).

In the light of the needs in ourselves and in the world, how can anybody experience boredom and feel that there is nothing worthwhile to be done? Perhaps the reason is the enormous, apparently impossible, scale of the needs. We feel like the apostles coming to Jesus with the five loaves and the two fish, “but what are they among so many?” ( Jn 6:9 )

There are many people, and especially many young people, who show great commitment in responding to emergencies and underdevelopment, even by working for a time in the developing world. The needs are overwhelming; the progress in meeting them is painfully slow. In the Eucharist, however, we are celebrating the truth which assures us that God’s love for each person is stronger than any agony, any injustice, any feeling of hopelessness, stronger than evil or death. Reaching out in love to our brothers and sisters is a work that is in harmony with the unconquerable plan of God. Christ “assures those who trust in the charity of God that the way of love is open to all and that the effort to establish a universal communion will not be in vain” (43).

Learning to be missionary

The great Bishop Shanahan of Southern Nigeria would begin his sermons to the people of his home village of Templederry with the words, “My dear fellow missionaries”. The Second Vatican Council declared that, “The church on earth is by its very nature missionary” (44). Pope John Paul welcomed “a new awareness that missionary activity is a matter for all Christians, for all dioceses and parishes, Church institutions and associations” (45).

The hungers and longings that the Eucharist addresses in us as individuals and as a community are not ours alone. The world is hungry for a sense of meaning, a sense of belonging, a sense of mission and purpose. Even the most secular enterprises feel the need for a ‘mission statement’. If the truth and hope and love of the Gospel do not influence the way we, as individuals and as a community, approach our daily lives, we are contributing to a desert of meaningless that could starve our society of depth and hope. Bringing the Gospel to the world “is the primary service which the Church can render to every individual and to all humanity in the modern world which has experienced marvellous achievements but which seems to have lost its sense of ultimate realities and of existence itself” (46).

The needs around us are so great that no individual or parish or diocese can meet them all. The Holy Spirit has given a variety of gifts to God’s People so that together, using all those talents, we can respond in many different ways, from many different perspectives, with many different gifts. Each parish should reflect about the way or ways in which the members of their community might bring their ‘loaves and fishes’, and so “live the breaking of bread according to all its demands”.

In ‘How can we know the Way?’, in the section Reaching Out…, I pointed to some of the many ways in which individuals, parishes and clusters might try to respond to the call to give ourselves to others as Christ did at the Last Supper and on Calvary. Since ‘reaching out’ is a response to our ‘sensing the duty to be a missionary of the event made present’ (47) in the Mass, the Year of the Eucharist would be an appropriate time to look again at those suggestions.

“WE HAD HOPED…”
THE YEAR OF THE EUCHARIST