Gardening in God's valley

It has been a strange summer, preceded by a strange winter. Some of my vegetables did not turn out well due to heat stress and the challenges of keeping the garden watered from our well. As weather patterns become more unpredictable and we experience extended periods of drought interspersed with heavy downpours, the topic of care for creation comes increasingly to the fore.

In 1989, Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I of Constantinople established 1 September as a Day of Prayer for Creation, marking an important milestone in Christian awareness of the environment and our responsibilities towards it. Following the publication of his encyclical Laudato Si', Pope Francis instituted the annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, also celebrated on 1 September. More than ever, we are aware of our call to care for the earth, receiving it as God's gift and stewarding it wisely rather than treating it merely as a source of extraction.

Weary trying to hold it in

Sunday 30 August 2026

Lectio Divina:*

Jeremiah 20:7-9 Psalm 63(62) Romans 12:1-2 Matthew 16:21-27

(See also Mark 8:34-9:1 and Luke 9:23-27 and John 12:25-26)

Meditatio:

 “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name’, then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot." (Jeremiah 20:9)

Commentary:

There is a small irony in this Sunday’s reading. Last Sunday, we heard about the conferring of the keys on Peter, the rock on whom Christ builds his Church. This Sunday, immediately following that discourse, we hear Peter being called a stumbling block—a skandalon in Greek—ironically from the same Jesus who had just named him Petros, the rock.

Jesus does not mince his words: ‘Get behind me, Satan.’ Later in the Gospels we learn that Peter will deny the Lord three times, and yet be forgiven, restored and strengthened. His story is not one of perfection at once but of conversion.

Like Peter, we too can become stumbling blocks for others on life’s journey. By our attitudes, assumptions and ways of thinking, we can become instruments not of peace and unity but of discord, harm and alienation. Being a stumbling block is one thing; failing to recognise it and change is quite another. We can cling to self‑interest or to the approval of others while ignoring the demands of love. Many are deterred or scandalised because the light of Christ seems absent from our words, actions and manner of living.

An ordinary life

Earlier today, I attended the funeral Mass of an elderly gentleman in a local town. As is customary, the men's choir sang at the funeral, as they do for parish funerals when requested. I did not know the man who had died.  I am always struck by the words of the priest on such occasions.

Almost invariably, the faith of the deceased is mentioned. At today's funeral, the priest recalled how the man had been baptised in the same church where his funeral Mass was being celebrated, 89 years ago. He received his First Holy Communion there and, some years later, was confirmed in the same church. Sixty years ago, he was married there. The priest also told the congregation that he occupied the same seat at the same Mass every Sunday.

Behold what you are; become what you receive

St Augustine (354-430 A.D.) was a theological heavy weight – giving us a huge range of writings that encapsulated the themes of conversion, communion and grace.  Augustine along with others helped set the scene for much of Christian thinking and spiritual life for the next 1,600 years.  The current Pope, from the Order of  Saint Augustinian, draws from a rich Augustinian tradition that is timely in a world threatened by forces that seek to tear it apart.

As a young man, Augustine sought truth, goodness and beauty in many places, but ultimately found their fulfilment in Christ alone. Famously, he wrote at the very beginning of his Confessions:

 You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.

Mothers at the altar

Nothing quite compares to the  love of a mother.  That is my view. I see it all the time. I know that some children suffer want and neglect but the overwhelming evidence points to a high point of self-sacrificing love between mothers and their children that is remarkable.  Saint Monica (c. 332-387 A.D.), whose feast day is today, prayed ceaselessly for her wayward son, Augustine. Eventually, he saw the light. He would become a great saint, bishop and doctor of the Church (St Augustine of Hippo) and author of major classics in Christian literature and theology.  He wrote, in his Confessions:

…she had learned to bring to the Churches of the martyrs a breast filled with more purified petitions, and to give what she could to the poor; that so the communication of the Lord's Body might be there rightly celebrated, where, after the example of His Passion, the martyrs had been sacrificed and crowned   Confessions 6.2.2

Hunger for God

Church of the Holy Spirit, Ballyroan,
Rathfarnham, Dublin 

There is a raging hunger in the world for food that lasts. Most people are not even aware of their hunger and thirst.  This is where Jesus brings us something that no earthly food, pleasure or status can bring: joy in the heart.

When we receive with faith God rewards us with his presence and dwelling and nothing can compare to this. Here is something worth living for and dying for because it is pure giving for the life of the world.

Jesus alone offers the food that lasts because it is his flesh and blood that he gives.

'We are all in there together'

An Orthodox Catholic priest explained in simple terms the mystery of the Eucharist in response to a question from a parent of child about to receive Holy Communion. He wrote:

So we don’t just say that we want Christ to live metaphorically in our hearts — we receive Him physically in our bodies. God comes to us, God transforms that bread and wine, so that He can truly become a part of us. Literally.

He also went on to write something very beautiful that I had not quite thought of before:

We don’t just say that we are meant to be in communion with God and with one another, but our priests place bits of bread for the Theotokos and the Saints, for the loved ones who have gone before us, into the communion chalice so that we are all in there together when we approach the one holy chalice as a parish community.

Far from imagining that the real change in the bread and wine was some notion invented in the West in the middle ages, St Cyril of Alexandria mirroring many other early Fathers of the Church wrote in 430 A.D.: