According to a notice at the entrance, Mass is celebrated there three days a week and Holy Communion is brought to the wards on two days a week including Sunday. Due to a gradual reduction in chaplaincy services and shortage of priests in the locality and diocese there is no full-time chaplain and it is no longer possible
During his captivity
he silently celebrated Mass with tiny amounts of bread and wine:
Every day, with three drops of wine and one drop of water in the palm of my hand, I celebrated my Mass.
Source: Mary at the Cross: A Mother’s Unwavering Love – Life Lessons by Jenine Marie
In yesterday’s blog I reflected
on the close association between the Holy Cross – celebrated each year on 14
September – and the Eucharist which makes the fruits and the power of the sacrifice
of Calvary present in the here and now.
Today’s memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows follows immediately after the
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross yesterday. The liturgy invites us to stand with Mary at the
foot of the Cross contemplating her Son who is given for us. The evangelist, John, witnessed to what
happened as follows:
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home (John 19:26-27).
At this crucial moment in salvation history three important strands come together:
At the heart of every Eucharist stands the mystery of the Cross. The Eucharist makes present the one sacrifice of Christ, the true Paschal Lamb, who offered himself for us on Calvary. His sacrifice was offered once for all, yet its saving power reaches us whenever we gather to celebrate the Eucharist. Through this sacred mystery we are drawn into Christ's death and resurrection and share in the grace that flows from his redeeming love.
In the example given, the epiclesis, the prayer invoking the Holy Spirit upon the gifts, reads as follows:
Sunday 13 September 2026
Lectio
Divina:*
(See also Luke 17:4)
Meditatio:
‘So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you,
if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart’ (Matthew 18:35)
Commentary:
This Sunday’s Gospel begins with Peter’s question: how often
must he forgive a brother who sins against him? Jesus responds that forgiveness
cannot be measured or limited. He then tells the parable of the unforgiving
servant and concludes with a solemn warning that forgiveness must come ‘from
your heart’.
Forgiveness cuts both ways: our forgiveness of others and God’s forgiveness of us. Jesus has already taught that reconciliation with our neighbour is inseparable from authentic worship (Matthew 5:23-24). Forgiveness is not cheap, nor is it limited to minor grievances. It reaches into the deepest wounds of human experience.
Precisely because Christ has become for us the food of truth, the Church turns to every man and woman, inviting them freely to accept God's gift.
It is by meeting Christ in the Blessed
Sacrament and being nourished by his Word that are souls are strengthened for the
journey ahead. Each one of us, whether we know it or not,
deeply desires truth, beauty and goodness. One
of the great legacies of Pope Benedict XVI was the emphasis he placed on
faithful adherence to the liturgical rites of the Church. Beauty, reverence,
sacred music, appropriate architecture and careful celebration help reveal the
mystery being celebrated. The truth of Christ’s presence in the Sacrament can
never be separated from the truth of Christian witness. We go out into the
world from each Mass to be broken bread for all of humanity. In a sense – not to be confused with the
reception of the Sacrament – we become food for the world.
The truth of Christ's
presence in the Eucharist can never be separated from the truth of Christian
witness. Having encountered Christ and received him in Holy Communion, we are
sent forth to bring his love to the world. People may never read the Bible or
attend Mass, but they encounter us every day. If our lives reflect Christ's
self-giving charity, we become living witnesses to the Gospel and signs of the
love we have received in the Eucharist.
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| Credit: godongphoto | Shutterstock |
At its heart, the Forty
Hours Devotion is an extended period of prayer before the Blessed
Sacrament, inviting the faithful to contemplate the mystery of Christ's abiding
presence among his people. Far from being separate from the celebration of the
Mass, Eucharistic adoration flows directly from it and leads back to it.
Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Sacramentum Caritatis (2007):
Christians are called to witness to the love of Christ, who offers salvation to all and excludes no person from the reach of his mercy. We are called to view all of our neighbours as brothers and sisters of the human family. It is appalling to witness cases such as that which was widely reported earlier this week when gangs of hooded, masked and uniformly dressed men shouted ‘Christ is King’ while they terrorised people who were trying to help other human beings. Resorting to violence and threats – online as well as offline – against the brave men and women who rescued human beings from the sea shows the depths to which hateful ideologies have entered our societies more and more. Not only that, but many of these ideologies have sought to hijack Christian religion for purposes completely inimical to the message of Jesus Christ.
The spirituality that we need is a Eucharistic spirituality, that is, a spirituality of ecclesial unity in love. The Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery reveal God entering into our human condition and transforming it through the gift of himself. This gift remains present and active in the Eucharist, in which the Lord gives himself and gathers the Church together, so that his offering becomes the principle of unity and source of new life. It is from this communion that Christian solidarity also arises, since “union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself.”
At the end of this reflection, I would like to propose a sober yet demanding program of Christian life with which we can navigate this epochal change in the light of the Gospel. This avenue emerges through contemplating God’s plan, living ecclesial unity by partaking of the Eucharist, building a world centred on the common good and praying in union with the Blessed Virgin Mary.
On this the birthday of Mary we celebrate the moment when Mary is born into a world awaiting its saviour. Together with her son, Jesus, and cousin, John the Baptist, today is only one of three days in the liturgical calendar when we celebrate a birthday. The seasons are marked in this way:
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| Eucharist — Saint Patrick Catholic Church |
The intrinsic, infinite and equal dignity of all humans;
We do not walk this road alone, nor do we walk it under our own power. The same Christ who emptied himself on the Cross rose again on the third day, and it is his risen life we receive at every Eucharist. Whatever weighs on us this week — the world’s brokenness or our own — we can bring it to the altar and leave transformed, 'more than conquerors through him who loved us' (Romans 8:37). That is the hope of the Lord’s Day: not that our struggles vanish, but that we face them carried by a strength not our own.
In July 1981, I
attended a Mass in Dublin at which Mother Teresa, as she was known at the time,
spoke to a packed church of some 1,500 people. She spoke about holiness, love of the poor, family life as well as abortion. On the subject of family life, she called for prayer and love. When family
life breaks down, bitterness and wrongdoing can take root, she said. Holiness
was not just for a few but for everyone. 'We must all imitate Jesus, meek
and humble of heart', she urged.
Three years later,
during a visit to Liverpool, I was brought to a house in a very deprived area
of the inner city where the Missionaries of Charity lived and served the local
community. I cannot forget the bare floor on which the sisters prayed as Mass was
celebrated. I had the honour of being given a chair, notwithstanding my youth!
Nor can I forget the constant ringing of the doorbell as people continued to
come seeking help.
Jesus was adored in
the Blessed Sacrament in the living room and served in the poor in the hallway.
Teilhard gives a beautiful coherence to the universe and unites the disparate strands of knowledge into one unified whole, which is exactly what our deepest soul invariably insists must be true. Whether you agree with his precise interpretation or not, you cannot help but breathe fresh air when you absorb even a bit of his optimism, faith, and intelligence—in what, for him, was a certain and positive future, which he called the Omega Point, the Cosmic Christ.
Rohr closes his short article with the following:
Sometimes, writers
like to believe that Celtic Christianity was something very separate and
unique, to such an extent that something called 'Roman Christianity' arrived,
more or less, with the Normans in the 12th Century. This is a distortion of
Irish history. Yes, there were features unique to Ireland and what is now
Britain, including an emphasis on nature, monasticism, asceticism and fashions
and habits that might hint at ties to Eastern Christian traditions.
Pragmatically, Christianity, as it did elsewhere, had to negotiate its way into
local cultures, 'baptising' some pagan symbols and rites by removing what was
idolatrous and centring attention on the Son of God and not the Sun. Pagan
ritual sites became holy wells, and some scholars argue that the cult of St.
Brigid absorbed elements of an earlier pagan goddess of the same name — though
the extent of any direct continuity is debated among historians of early
Ireland and should be taken as a contested thesis rather than settled fact.
One area of interest is the Eucharist, because we can be assured that what was believed and practiced in the universal Church - East and West - was also held in Ireland, notwithstanding any particular local adaptations in the liturgy.
Sunday 6 September 2026
Lectio
Divina:*
(See also Luke 17:3)
For where two or three are gathered in my name, I
am there among them.’ (Matthew
18:20)
Commentary:
Today's Gospel comes from a section of Matthew concerned with life within the Christian community. Written at a time when the early Church was emerging amid persecution, division and uncertainty, it addresses a persistent question: how do Christians deal with sin, conflict and reconciliation?
His essay-poem The Mass on the World (MOW) is a remarkable meditation on creation and its
relationship to the Eucharist. It is important to state at the outset that The
Mass on the World is not a sacramental Mass. TDC wrote it while on an
expedition in the Ordos region of Inner Mongolia, where he had no access to
bread, wine or altar for the celebration of Mass. What he offers is a
meditation and prayer, not an attempt to celebrate the Eucharist without the
matter required for the sacrament.
Underlying Catholic
theology of the Eucharist are three fundamental realities:
In the celebration of the Eucharist we return
thanks for all that we are and have. Not
just that, but we are united in a mysterious way with Heaven and Earth in one
single chant of praise, adoration and thanksgiving. Immersed in the universe we are joining a
chorus that lifts up the world.
Over a century ago, a French priest, Fr PierreTeilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) wrote a short and remarkable piece of work entitled The Mass on the World. Finding himself in the Ordos desert in Mongolia, in 1923 without bread, wine or altar, Fr Teilhard de Chardin was moved to write this piece that captures his mystical and scientific insights into a beautiful piece of prose. As a Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, philosopher, mystic and teacher he was able to bring a unique synthesis of insight in a unity that stretches our understanding and concepts.
Tomorrow we celebrate the ‘Mass for the Care of Creation’.
