Pope meets the parents of Madeleine McCann

The English speaking world continues to await news of little Madeleine McCann. Yesterday her parents met with Pope Benedict XVI. DANIELA PETROFF in The Guardian descibes the meeting and the press conference held by the McCanns.

- Pope Benedict XVI held the hands of the parents of 4-year-old Madeleine McCann, blessing them and a photo of the girl as they asked for prayers Wednesday for their daughter who disappeared while vacationing with her family in Portugal.
The pope spoke with the parents, each dressed in dark suits, as he greeted dignitaries seated in the front row during his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square.
``He was very kind, very sincere,'' Kate McCann told a news conference. She said Benedict assured them that he would ``continue to pray for Madeleine's safe return.''
``It was more personal than I ever could have imagined,'' said Gerry McCann, adding that Benedict immediately recognized Madeline's photograph.
``His touch and thoughts and words were more tender than we could have hoped and that will sustain us during this most difficult time,'' he said.
The Vatican had readily accepted the British couple's request to meet with the pope, as they press their campaign to publicize their daughter's disappearance. Devout Catholics, they recently prayed at the pilgrimage site in Fatima, Portugal, for her safe return.
The couple also outlined plans in the hunt for their daughter, saying they would travel to Spain, Germany and the Netherlands - countries that send many tourists to the holiday area in Portugal.
Gerry McCann brought a poster of his missing daughter, which has been widely distributed, to the news conference at the residence of the British ambassador to the Vatican. He said the family was asking people going on holiday to put up the posters to further publicize the disappearance.
He said he was grateful for the outpouring of solidarity. ``One evil act seems to be generating so much good,'' he said.
``Obviously we have very mixed emotions about being here, and of course why we are here,'' Gerry McCann said as he arrived in St. Peter's Square. ``In normal circumstances it would be one of the most exciting things we could do in our own lifetimes, but very much on our minds is the fact that we are here without Madeleine.''
A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor had requested the McCanns' meeting with the pope.
``We are talking about a family drama that has touched world public opinion. It could not but touch the Holy Father, especially since these people are Catholics,'' Benedettini said.
``The Holy Father is considered the father of all, therefore he was personally touched as a father,'' the spokesman said.
Madeleine McCann disappeared May 3 when her parents left her and her 2-year-old twin siblings alone in their hotel room while they went to a restaurant in their hotel complex in Praia da Luz, a resort town in Portugal's Algarve region. Gerry and Kate McCann have said they won't return to Britain without their daughter.
Kate McCann is traveling with a pink stuffed animal - Cuddle Cat - that her daughter took to bed with her every night.
``We have no plans to go back to the UK at the moment. I can't even think about that now, to be honest,'' she said.

Let's continue to remember Madeleine and her family in our prayers.

Summer Time & iPod shuffle

As ever the weather is in disarray! Continuous and driving rain over the weekend (I hope that parish scout group are having a wonderful time at the District camp)Yesterday we even had hail storms, which, as I was in the house, were magnificent to watch. The weather is maing me more eager for my holiday which begins this Sunday when I fly off for two weeks of glorious sunshine.

Played with the shuffle setting on my iPod last night - an eclectic top 10

1. This night has opened my eyes - The Smiths
2. I might have been Queen - Tina Turner
3. Blackbird - Sharon Shannon
4. Reel in the flickering light - Christy Moore
5. I am - I sais - Neil Diamond
6. No Wonder - Anne Sofie Von Otter
7. Whole of the Moon - The Waterboys
8. Pretty Things - Rufus Wainwright
9. Come pick me up - Ryan Adams
10. The Band Played Waltzing Matilda - Mike Harding

Solemnity of Pentecost

Happy Feast Day!
I came across this wee prayer in an airport chapel a few years ago as I nervously awaited a flight (I am not easily scared but flying always uneases me!) It seems to fit the day.

Come Holy Spirit

Come, Holy Spirit, give me happiness and contentment with my life.
And the Holy Spirit said no. your life is full of opportunities. Happiness is your choice.

Come, Holy Spirit, free me of pain and suffering.
And the Holy Spirit said no.
There are some things that only pain can teach you.

Come, Holy Spirit, make me grow.
The Holy Spirit said no.
I will prune you and cut you back to make you more fruitful.

Come, Holy Spirit, give me patience.
And the Holy Spirit said no.
You learn patience in the midst of the trials and troubles that come your way.
Patience is not free; it is earned.

Come, Holy Spirit, take away my pride.
The Holy Spirit said no.
Pride is part of you. It may even prod you to excellence.
Just you control and direct it.

Come Holy Spirit.

And the Spirit said:

We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I weren’t already here!

Vigil of Pentecost

"Vigil of Pentecost. What do I look for tomorrow? Light? No. it is safer to travel in darkness. What I need is the grace to cease making any kind of fuss over anything: travel in darkness and do God's will. He will get me through the obstacles. I will never reach him by my own efforts, my own wisdom. Forget what other people do; their virtues and their faults are none of my business. Be guided by obedience even if it seems to lead to the ruin of my aspirations. Easier to write that to do it. I wonder if I mean it, too, to go on in this hopeless muddle of writing and activities and contacts with the world, and trust that that can bring me to God? Yes, that is what I have to do."
Thomas Merton

A Homily for the Ascension

The women were standing there gazing into the empty tomb. While they were perplexed about this. Suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed there faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead?’
Luke 24:4

While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?’
Acts 1:10-11a

Where’s a person supposed to look? If not down, and not up, then where?
Forty days after the Resurrection He left them in the flesh. I wonder if they felt what we feel when a loved one moves away or dies. Alone? Abandoned? Desolate? Or did they recall His promise, one that would be fulfilled in ten days? On Pentecost He would return to them pouring out His spirit. What a moment in time, between Ascension and Pentecost, between loss and promise. He does promise that we will see Him again, as we will one day see our loved ones. But what should we do in the meantime?

The forty days between resurrection and ascension represents a serious number: fullness of time, plenty of time for the men and women who were his disciples to probe the mystery. Jewish students study with a Rabbi for forty days, a symbolic number meaning the amount of time it would take to learn the master’s teaching well enough to repeat it.
The ascension event is told in a way that is full of allusions to biblical precedents. Being lifted up before their eyes into the cloud refers to the cloud of God’s presence, which went before the people of Israel leading them through the wilderness to freedom. By being gathered into the cloud, Jesus is not so much going up as he is going ahead of his apostles into glory.
On Easter morning the women were told not to look down into the tomb; now the apostles are told not to look into the heavens. ‘beginning from Jerusalem you are witnesses,’ Jesus said. ‘I am sending upon you what my Father promised … you will be clothed with power from on high.’ The issue is not where Jesus was, or even where he is, but where he is sending them, clothed with power from on high. The direction is not down or up but out. They are no longer hearers of the word, but its heralds.
Do you remember another mountain, the mount of the transfiguration? ‘While he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they {Peter, James and John} saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to Jesus. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem.’
I have yet to find connections made about the transfiguration – resurrection ascension event made in any biblical commentaries, or between Moses and Elijah, the two men at the tomb, and the two men at Bethany, but I have a funny feeling that there may be such a connection.
Both Moses and Elijah know what passing the torch is all about. When Moses died and was buried (although no one could ever fid his grave), Joshua took over. The staff of God, which opened the way of promise was now in his hands. Before Elijah was taken to heaven in a chariot of fire, his successor, Elisha, asked for a double share of his spirit. Clothed with Elijah’s mantle, he continued his mission mightily.
The ascension also stands as a pathway between the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the apostles. As we move through the ascension experience, Luke’s point of view changes. The issues change. We move, as it were from the story of Jesus to the story of the Church, from then to now. In the ascension story, the staff of Jesus is passed. ‘Clothed with power from on high,; clothed with his mantle, the disciples are charged with the continuation of his mission.
The gospel of Luke tells of the disciples’ journey towards faith in Jesus. The ascension, a crucial moment, reflects something new, which the Acts of the Apostles will carry forward even to our own time and beyond.
The issue in the moment is not so much our faith in Jesus as his faith in us. The issue is not our giving his resurrection a certificate of authenticity, but his decision to pour out his spirit upon struggling believers. The issue is not for us to prove that Jesus is alive but for him to prove that we are not dead. The issue is no longer his identity with God, but our identity with him.
I stumbled upon a text from Hans Urs von Balthasar about the ascension, which helps bring this together, as he always does, really penetrates deeply into the mystery. He says, “In the ascension, God’s earthly image”—that is, Jesus—“is seized and drawn up definitively to the Father, and the disciples stand, blessed and full of longing, staring after the one who has disappeared into God. The Transfigured One took their hearts with Him up to God and they will never again feel altogether at home in this temporal world. For that part of the world they most loved is now with God. And this is why everything that they see on earth becomes transparent to heaven. The Holy Spirit, which the Son sends to them from heaven, kindles in them the fire of longing in which every image on earth becomes radiant for heaven, for the everlasting life which springs up from triune love.”
Now the disciples, as it says here, stood staring after the one who disappeared into God. So the angels had to come down and wake them up and say, what are you doing, staring up into heaven? He’s going to come back the same way that He left! And so they went back to the temple and worshipped Him and praised Him with joy.
That’s what we’re doing here, too. We are gathering at the temple, worshipping and praising Christ who has ascended to heaven, and at the same time we hear that voice of the angel that says, He’s going to come back. Every time we come to church to worship, part of what we’re doing is waiting, looking for Him to come back, and worshipping Him who has gone and has promised to come back. We stand both in body and in spirit, longing for the return of the Son of Man.
Do you feel a shaky at times as you face your own life with all its ambiguities? The mystery of the ascension invites us, even in our shakiness, not so much to believe in God, but to believe that God believes in us. In other words, don’t get stuck looking down in discouragement, or looking up in bewilderment. Staff in hand, mantle around your shoulders, look out and step out with grace, longing and courage

Saint Simon Stock

It has suddenly struck me that I have been negelcting my blogging duties! Over a month since my last post. Life has been vey busy with the usual spring round of Confirmations, First Holy Communions and the Wedding season begun last Saturday. All these sacramental milestones have a huge impact on the parish and on my time. I have a respite tomorrow with a day off on one of my favourite feastdays. St Simon Stock was an Englishman who led the Carmelite Order at a time of great change and upheaval. (Also the patron of my former high school!) Thankfully, he was a holy and prayerful man with a great devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus. There has always been a strong vein of marian devotion in the Carmelite order. One of the more recent documents of the Order speaks, most beautifully of Mary's place in Carmelite Spirituality and of the Scapular devotion that begun with Simon's prayer and Mary's response.

"Mary, overshadowed by the Spirit of God,
is the Virgin of a new heart,
who gave a human face to the Word made flesh.
She is the Virgin of wise and contemplative listening
who kept and pondered in her heart
the events and the words of the Lord.
She is the faithful disciple of wisdom,
who sought Jesus - God’s Wisdom -
and allowed herself to be formed and moulded by his Spirit,
so that in faith she might be conformed to his ways and choices.
Thus enlightened, Mary is presented to us
as one able to read “the great wonders”
which God accomplished in her
for the salvation of the humble and of the poor.

Mary was not only the Mother of Our Lord;
she also became his perfect disciple, the woman of faith.
She followed Jesus, walking with the disciples,
sharing their demanding and wearisome journey
- a journey which required, above all, fraternal love
and mutual service.

At the marriage feast in Cana, Mary taught us to believe in her Son;
at the foot of the Cross, she became Mother to all who believe;
with them she experiences the joy of the Resurrection.
United with the other disciples “in constant prayer,”
she received the first gifts of the Spirit,
who filled the earliest Christian community with apostolic zeal.

Mary brings the good news of salvation to all men and women.
She is the woman who built relationships,
not only within the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples,
but, beyond that, with the people:
with Elizabeth, with the bride and bridegroom in Cana,
with the other women, and with Jesus’ “brothers”.
Carmelites see in the Virgin Mary, Mother of God
and archetype of the Church,
the perfect image of all that they want and hope to be.
For this reason, Carmelites have always thought of Mary
as the Patron of the Order,
its Mother and Splendour;
she is constantly before their eyes and in their hearts
as “the Virgin Most Pure.”
Looking to her, and living in spiritual intimacy with her,
we learn to stand before God,
and with one another,
as the Lord’s brothers.
Mary lives among us, as mother and sister,
attentive to our needs;
along with us she waits and hopes,
suffers and rejoices.

The scapular is a sign of Mary’s permanent
and constant motherly love for Carmelite brothers and sisters.
By their devotion to the scapular,
faithful to a tradition in the Order, especially since the 16th century,
Carmelites express the loving closeness of Mary to the people of God;
it is a sign of consecration to Mary,
a means of uniting the faithful to the Order,
and an effective and popular means of evangelisation."

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, pray for us.
St Simon Stock, pray for us.