It has been a good few weeks since we’ve had our ‘usual’ style week-end mass sheet – so we’ve a lot to catch up on.
Firstly, welcome to post Confirmation Season 2012, it seems almost to have snuck up on us during the relative calm of Lent. Last Tuesday week the boys and last Wednesday week the girls were confirmed here in St Brigid’s.
Like any other event that comes around but once a year, and especially as it only affects such a relatively small number of families, the blip on the screen of ordinary parish life isn’t hugely high. Inevitably you’re going to get predictable comments like ‘kids that age are too young anyway and ‘twould be better waiting till an older age’!! Yea! Yea!
In reply to that I always like to remind myself (and others) that we often seem to forget that from our very earliest days we can make a difference to the lives of those with whom we live. From the infant days of bawling all through the night keeping the keeping the sleep of the night off our parents for nights on end, to being the source of such comfort and consolation beyond words to them at other times, who dares say that any age is too young to make a difference, or for a difference to be made!
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Early teenage years, turbulent in the extreme at times for teenagers and parents alike, may not reflect the ‘sensible’ reflection that we adults often like to say we have. Nonetheless if as adults we can drop an anchor for kids of that age, or indeed can help to have an anchor dropped for them (no matter how long the chain) if it secures a grounding in the God who is the source of their love, what a service we do for them as teachers and as clergy too. What a real and lasting treasure could be bequeathed to them for life by their parents.
In their young lives we wish for them nothing but the best, in the gradual unfolding of their character in many and varied circumstances over the next years. May they never forget the love that has brought them this far, and also rest secure (come what may) in the knowledge that the source and the Spirit of that love was confirmed and pledged to them in the Springtime of 2012 in St Brigid’s Church, Cabinteely.
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Peace too is the promise of Faith properly understood – the way it’s referred to in today’s first reading in writing it, as it has been, ‘on our hearts’. If the heart (not literally or physically speaking) is the seat of our contentment, then what’s inscribed, (engraved) there has to address us where we really are. It’s both amusing and sad to hear people say so often ‘Religion does nothing for me’ as if that statement showed a flaw in Faith rather than more likely in themselves.
The seriousness of the discourse that’s reported in to-day’s Gospel from St John is clear reminder that real Faith has to be lived in the real world – and that can be the pits at times – tell Christ about it!! A O’N