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  PassionistsGlasgow

father frank's log...

16/2/2019

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 10th – 17th FEBRUARY 2019
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I’m a day late getting to my Log this week (I still can’t convince people it’s a log and not a blog, or as one of our elderly members in the Passionist community referred to it – a blob). Still, I will persevere in my technophobia and insist that it’s a log, as in Captain Kirk’s Log from Star Trek. It’s been a really busy week, hence the day late, and the Gospel for today is about Jesus healing a man who is deaf.
 
I remember well sitting around the dinner table at Mount Argus in Dublin a few years back, where a very animated conversation was going on. One of the senior men seated beside me was obviously struggling to keep up with it and he turned to me and said, “it’s a curse to be deaf”, and, despite all the wonderful people who were deaf, and more than compensated for it by doing extraordinary things, for example Beethoven, arguably the greatest composer of all time, and Thomas Edison, inventor of, among many other things, the phonograph and the light bulb, it can be a real curse to be deaf, which I have experienced in a small way through a regular struggle with an excess of ear wax.
 
I was also reminded of an incident back in 1988. After a 3-year stint in St. Mungo’s after ordination, I was asked to go into Formation Ministry, working with aspiring Passionists in the early stages after they joined us. I spent 1986-87 doing a year’s training for this, and then I took up the position of Director of Postulants. In the autumn of 1987, I was involved in the setting up of a programme for postulants from many different religious orders, male and female. It was agreed that this course would take place in Mount Argus. In the inaugural year we were filled to capacity with 40 postulants plus their directors. They were a great bunch and the year went very well. Come the summer, when we were winding up, we decided to have a fun day out, followed by a buffet meal, to celebrate the end of the programme. 
 
The fun part of the day brought us to a place called Clara Lara in County Wicklow, very near to the ancient monastic site at Glendalough. At one stage a number of us hired rowing boats to go out on the lake. I was in a boat with a couple of other religious priests and two religious sisters. One other boat was being rowed by religious as well, all directors on the course.  All the other boats were full of postulants. Now, just because they were postulants with religious orders, doesn’t mean they were different from any other young students eyeing up an ideal opportunity to get one over on their teachers. All was going peacefully until the postulants in one of the boats decided that they were going to ram into our boat. As their boat came speeding towards us, one of the religious sisters, a very holy nun indeed, fully clad in her habit, panicked, screamed, and opted to jump for shore, which was only a few feet away. As she stood up and put her foot on the side of the boat, the boat toppled over, and we all ended up in the lake. Very quickly we were out of the lake, safe, but soaked to the skin.
 
The rest of the day was fine. We soon dried out and changed, laughed about it, and had a very enjoyable closing celebration. The next day, however, I couldn’t hear a thing. I let it go for a couple of days hoping it would clear up, but the experience was very isolating. On the third day (very biblical) I went to the doctor who reckoned I had picked up an ear infection from the lake water getting into my ears. He prescribed medication, but also sent me for some tests to the ENT department in the local hospital, just to be sure there was nothing more serious, which thankfully there wasn’t. It took a good couple of weeks to clear up completely, and I found being deaf a most unpleasant experience. So, ever since then, anyone with hearing difficulties has had my most sincere and profound sympathies.
 
They brought to him a deaf man… Jesus took him aside and put his fingers into his ears… Then, looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And immediately his ears were opened. (Adapted from Mark 7:31-37)

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father frank's log...

8/2/2019

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 3rd – 10th FEBRUARY 2019

As I write my log this week, which I usually do on a Thursday, the Gospel for the day is about Jesus sending the 12 disciples out on mission, and he sends them out in pairs. It brought to mind the first time I went out to preach a parish mission, shortly after my ordination as a Passionist priest, and being paired with a much older, more experienced missioner, to provide encouragement and support, and to show me the ropes.
 
This good priest was a missioner in more ways than one. He had spent most of his priestly life as a much-loved missionary in Botswana, before coming home in the late 1970’s, after which he was appointed as assistant to the Novice Master in Crossgar, just as I was entering the Novitiate with my 4 classmates. He was a man of great kindness, humour, experience and wisdom, and we enjoyed his input very much. I do remember, though, when he accompanied us on the Novitiate Holiday to Hook Head in County Wexford, that he got quite annoyed when we were acting the goat during a game of cards. He later apologised and explained that in Botswana, when the missionaries would come in once a week from their various mission stations, to have a meal together, catch up on each other, and enjoy a game of cards, that they took the cards very seriously, and that he still hadn’t got that out of his system.
 
I was delighted, then, when I was paired with him as a young priest, to conduct my first parish mission in Derry City. It was an extraordinary experience as all of the parishes in Derry City held their annual mission at the same time. Of the seven parishes in the city, four of the missions were being conducted by Passionists, and we were in the parish of Our Lady of Lourdes in Steelstown. The parish priest and my mentor, as it turned out, were from the same small village in County Tyrone. At meal times they talked so much to each other that the curate and myself never really got a word in throughout the whole fortnight.
 
Derry City still had the old tradition of a week for the women, followed by a week for the men. On the middle Monday, as the transition took place, it was customary for the parish priests of all the parishes to bring the missioners out for lunch. All the Passionists from the four parish missions were brought to the same place, so it was great to catch up with how everyone was doing. The first Mass each day was at 6 a.m. followed by Confessions. The   local bakers would set up stalls with hot morning baps to sell after Masses. The last priest out after Confessions was always given a free bag of hot baps to bring back for breakfast.
 
An extraordinary tradition was that, on the final night of the men’s mission, all the men, young and old, would wear a white flower in their lapel, given to them by a woman in their life – wife; mother; girlfriend; sister, or whoever it might be – to signify the state of grace they were now in at the end of the mission, and no doubt hoping that they might stay that way, at least for a while. What a sight to see a packed church of men wearing flowers!
 
I gave many parish missions after that, both in Ireland and in Scotland, and I enjoyed all of them, but that first mission was quite unique, and an experience I will never forget. I don’t know if Derry City has continued those wonderful traditions, and I suppose parish missions are few and far between now, but I will always feel blessed and grateful for the good people of God I met in many places, for their faith and their kindness, and for the encouragement they gave to me and to whatever companions I was with. My companion and mentor on that particular mission has gone to God now, as has the parish priest. I imagine they are still   sharing memories of that little County Tyrone village that they both came from, and I doubt whether even God will manage to get a word in.
 
Then Jesus called the Twelve to Him and began to send them out in pairs… so they set out to preach the Good News… (Mark 6:7;13)

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father frank's log...

1/2/2019

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 27th JANUARY – 3rd FEBRUARY 2019
We had two very big funerals at the beginning of this week, celebrating the lives of two
really good people who were much loved, and who were deeply rooted in family and faith. Despite the sadness of such occasions, there was also a great sense of hope and joy as well, given the good memories and the legacy of love left behind by each of them. Neither funeral had a reception of remains the night before, and that seems to be a growing trend, the families preferring to arrive at the church just before the beginning of the Requiem Mass, and to have the prayers of reception then. So, just as cremation would now be much more prevalent than   burial, even for Catholic funerals, this way of doing things is becoming more prevalent too, and that’s absolutely fine, although the choice for either absolutely remains in the family’s hands. Each family will know what helps them most.
 
Then, in the middle of the week, I was sent the funeral arrangements for the retired Bishop of Gabarone in Botswana, who had died the previous Friday at the age of 91. These funeral arrangements were being communicated to all the Passionists in Scotland and Ireland as Passionists from our Province had laboured in Botswana from the early 1950’s, and all had worked very closely with Bishop Boniface and come to know him as a true friend, and a very good, gentle, kindly and holy pastor, ever since he took over as bishop after the death of the Passionist, Bishop Urban Murphy CP, in 1981. Indeed, Bishop Boniface was a Passionist at heart, and would dearly have loved to have been a Passionist, but at the time when he pursued his vocation to the priesthood, the Passionists were focussed on building up the church in Botswana and didn’t have the structures to receive Passionist vocations, and instead channelled any enquiries towards the diocese, very much their gain and our loss.
 
Some people here in St. Mungo’s, and those around our other houses in Scotland and Ireland, might possibly have met him, as he used to come over from time to time in order to thank people for supporting our missions, and to visit the families of Passionists from Scotland and Ireland who had worked, or who were still working in Africa. When he visited, he was never interested in sightseeing or going to places of interest, he was only interested in meeting people, people to whom he felt a deep sense of gratitude for their generosity in the giving of their resources, or in the giving of their family members, to help his country grow in faith. I had met him a few times before I went out to work in Botswana for a short time myself in 1993-94, and he could not have been more helpful or supportive, so, I have a tiny sense of how much he was loved, and how much he will be missed, by all the people of Botswana.
 
Of course, Fr. Lawrence in St. Mungo’s would have known him much better, having spent many years there in various locations, and he regrets not being able to travel and be present for the ceremonies to mark his passing. When I received the arrangements, I realised that   anyone of us would need to be in the fulness of our health to endure them. Bishop Boniface’s remains would lie in state in Gabarone Cathedral from 10 0’clock on Thursday morning until 6 o’clock on Friday morning, to allow people to view his body and pay their last respects, which they would do in their droves. During that time there would be a Requiem Mass at 7 p.m. led by bishops. At midnight there would be another Mass led by diocesan priests. At        4 o’clock in the morning there would be yet another Mass led by the Religious. At 6 o’clock in the morning Bishop Boniface’s body would be transferred to the National Stadium, as the Cathedral would be far too small, for a final Requiem Mass at 10 a.m., before being brought back to the Cathedral for burial beside Bishop Boniface. And then the feasting would begin.  I feel exhausted just thinking about that, but the good people of Botswana, who loved their bishop dearly, would not, I’m sure, bat an eyelid at being there from beginning to end. My thoughts and prayers are with them in their great loss, and in their treasured memories.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him…
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    FATHER FRANK KEEVINS C.P.

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