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FAther frank's log...

24/6/2017

FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 18th – 25th JUNE

Last Sunday I couldn’t find my driving licence. I only realised I had misplaced it when I started preparing the car for its M.O.T. which was scheduled for Monday. I looked inside my wallet and realised that my driving licence wasn’t in the place it is usually to be found. For years I have kept my licence in this one place, but somewhere in my mind there was a vague recollection of removing it recently for reasons that I do not now remember. I began searching every drawer in my office at St. Mungo’s, through folders, in-trays and out-trays. Later I searched every drawer of my room at the house in Bishopbriggs. I searched in the pockets of every jacket and coat, every shirt and trousers. I searched the pockets of the little rucksack I often carry around with me. I tried my wallet once again, and repeated the search through drawers and pockets. I searched through the mound of unprocessed papers on my desk and chair, and on top of my bed (I have a lot of unprocessed papers).

By now I was in a mild state of panic and increasing frustration. I searched other bags I sometimes carry when I travel, but still to no avail. I promised St. Anthony twice the usual finding rate. I sought the intercession of St. Charles of Mount Argus in the hope he might look favourably on me as the one-time Vice-Postulator of his cause for Canonization. As it was the month of June I informed the Sacred Heart repeatedly that I placed all my trust in Him. As a last resort, I began leafing through books I had been using in the recent past. In the fifth book I came to, the Glenstal Book of Prayer, marking page 34 for Tuesday Evening Vespers, there it was. A surge of relief swept through me and I was able to get on with the task in hand of clearing out the car, with a lighter heart and an easier mind.

I’ve noticed recently that I am misplacing things more and more, my keys, my wallet, my phone, and so on. It usually happens when I am in a rush or when I am trying to do too many things at one time. I suppose the biggest thing I’ve ever lost is my car. It was while I was still rector and parish priest in Mount Argus and I had to go to a meeting in Holland as secretary to the North European Conference of Passionists. The meeting began on a Thursday evening and was due to end on the Saturday evening. I had booked a flight back from Amsterdam to Dublin on the Sunday morning and had scheduled myself to celebrate public Mass in Mount Argus at 4pm on Sunday afternoon. The only thing was that I had been running late the day I left Dublin and had forgotten to take any heed of where I had left the car in the long-term car park at Dublin Airport, and on arrival I really did not have a clue where it was. After walking up and down, row after row, as ever invoking Saint Anthony, but to no avail, I had to call the monastery and ask if there was someone who was able to stand in and celebrate the 4pm Mass for me, which thankfully there was. At least that took the pressure off, and it was at least an hour and a half later that I found my car and eventually made it home. Needless to say that, ever since, if I use a long-term car park, I write the location down on my ticket.

Ironically, the page where I had placed my driving licence as a bookmark last week, in the Glenstal Book of Prayer, was marking Psalm 26 which contains the verse: “It is your face, O Lord, that I seek, hide not your face”. Whatever else I may lose in my life; may I never lose the face of the Lord, and may the Lord’s face never lose sight of me. You might like St. Anselm’s prayer for those searching for God:

O Lord my God, teach my heart this day where and how to see you, where and how to find you. You have made me and remade me, and you have bestowed on me all the good things I possess, and still I do not know you. I have not yet done that for which I was made. Teach me to seek you for I cannot seek you unless you teach me, or find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in my desire, let me desire you in my seeking. Let me find you by loving you. Let me love you when I find you. Amen.

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FATHER FRANK'S LOG...

17/6/2017

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 11th – 18th JUNE

I was ordained on June 18th 1983. I had spent my diaconate year in Rome and on my way back to be ordained in St. Mungo’s I took a sleeper train to Paris and made my first visit to our Passionist house there at 50 Avenue Hoche, where the Passionist Community looks after St. Joseph’s Church, which serves English speaking people in Paris. It’s a famous location in that in 1900, Oscar Wilde was received into the Church on his death bed by the Passionist, Father Cuthbert Dunne. Many years later, while filming in Paris, as recounted in Who Do You Think You Are, the actor Martin Sheen would find his way back to faith and to the Church by making his Confession to a Passionist priest at St. Joseph’s.

I spent a few days in Paris relaxing and sightseeing before flying home to Glasgow for final preparations. The late, and much lamented, Father Michael Doogan was the parish priest and rector of St. Mungo’s at that time, and he was in his element taking charge of both the liturgical and the social celebrations. The day of my ordination was also my mother’s 64th birthday and Father Michael probably made more of a fuss of her than he did of me, which suited me down to the ground. The ordaining bishop was the late, and also much lamented, Cardinal Tom Winning, who carried the occasion in his usual down to earth style.

In the middle of it all I had a lovely surprise. When Holy Orders had been conferred and I moved around my brother priests and religious to receive a sign of peace, I suddenly found myself looking into the eyes of an Australian Passionist, Father Chris Monaghan, whom I had become very friendly with in Rome. When I said my goodbyes to him he was waiting on his parents coming from Australia to visit him on holiday, and he somehow persuaded them to come to Glasgow. They arrived just as the ordination Mass was beginning and Chris had slipped quietly on to the sanctuary without me seeing him until, there he was, waiting to welcome me as a brother priest by offering me the sign of peace.

Chris was quite an amazing guy. He was studying scripture at the Biblicum in Rome and couldn’t stop scoring top marks in everything he did. He was also a wonderful guitarist, singer and songwriter, which is what had drawn us together in the first place. Added to that he was super fit and when I arrived in Rome he was just starting to train for the Rome marathon at which he was setting himself a target of under 3 hours. He adopted me as his training partner, advising me on a good pair of runners, and encouraging me out at 5 o’clock in the morning to run along the banks of the Tiber to be back in time for a shower before Morning Prayer. This went on from October to February, at which point, with the marathon looming large in April, I could see I was just keeping him back and I left him to it. Chris had many other talents as well, he even designed my ordination cards, but he was also one of the most modest people you could wish to meet and a privilege to have known. He wasn’t perfect though, he ran the Rome marathon in three hours and one second – truly!

The day after my ordination I celebrated my first mass, also in St. Mungo’s, and so, 34 years on, I have good memories to recall and a lot to be thankful for, although I find it hard to believe that I am older now than my mother was then. A prayer from Pope Francis to finish:

Dear priests, may God the Father renew in us the Spirit of holiness with whom we have been anointed. May he renew his Spirit in our hearts, that this anointing may spread to everyone, even to those “outskirts” where our faithful people most look for it and most appreciate it. May our people sense that we are the Lord’s disciples; may they feel that their names are written upon our priestly vestments and that we seek no other identity; and may they receive through our words and deeds the oil of gladness which Jesus, the Anointed One, came to bring us. Amen.

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FATHER FRANK'S LOG...

17/6/2017

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FATHER FRANK'S LOG...

9/6/2017

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 3rd – 11th JUNE

On the Feast of the Holy Trinity, 10 years ago, the Passionist, Father Charles of Mount Argus was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. It was June 3rd 2007. As Rector of Mount Argus at the time I was also Vice-Postulator of the cause. The announcement of the canonization had taken us by surprise but had also delighted us. When it was first announced we were given no date and we speculated that the earliest it would be was October 2007, which was still going to be tight in terms of organizing everything that would need to be done. In February I travelled to Rome with Father Paul Francis where we attended a ceremony in the Vatican when the date was announced. It was quite hard to hear but when the announcement was made I turned to Father Paul Francis and said, “please tell me he didn’t say June 3rd”, and Father Paul Francis said, “he did”. I had arranged with the pilgrimage organizers in Ireland that I would phone them as soon as the date was known so that they could swing into action and make plans for all the pilgrims who would want to go to Rome. I could hear their gasps of incredulity when I told them how soon it was.

The pilgrimage, however, was only one of the things that had to be organised, there were so many other things to do as well, both for the celebrations in Rome and also the celebrations in Dublin for those who couldn’t go to Rome. A wonderful team of volunteers, each with their own devotion to Father Charles, assembled in a labour of love to make sure everything was done just right. I myself would stay behind for three days of joyous and thronged celebrations in Mount Argus to coincide with events in Rome. In both places, on the day of the canonization, it poured from the heavens, but our spirits were never dampened.

There were many memorable moments leading up to the big day and one of them concerns a family who came to see me bearing two cups and a saucer and a story to tell. In the late 19th Century this family’s forebears ran a butcher’s shop in inner city Dublin. One of the sons of the family developed a severe illness in his late teens, following an operation for appendicitis and, as a result, the young man was in an unconscious condition for over a week. In deep distress, his mother asked for Father Charles of Mount Argus to be sent for. Father Charles, renowned for his availability to the sick, duly responded and arrived at the house accompanied by a companion. This was probably Brother Michael, who often accompanied Father Charles to various places. As was recorded at the time by the boy’s younger sister, Father Charles prayed over her brother and, very soon after, the boy woke up from his coma.

Before they left the house, Father Charles and his companion were given some tea. The two cups they drank from were kept and treasured by the family ever since. The only problem was, they forgot to mark which one had been used by Father Charles. After this, the only time the cups were used was when a family member got sick, in which case they were encouraged to drink from both cups, just to make sure that they drank from the “Father Charles Cup”. So now these two, very old, a little bit cracked, bone china cups, were given to Mount Argus, together with one saucer, the other having been broken or lost along the way. They now sit in a display case in the exhibition area in Mount Argus commemorating Saint Charles.

Heavenly Father, you filled Saint Charles with your Holy Spirit. In love with Christ Crucified he spent his life in prayer at the foot of the Cross. From the Cross he went forth to bring Good News to the poor, to heal the sick, to comfort the dying, and to bring forgiveness to the sinner. Look now on your people who cry to you. Through the intercession of Saint Charles give us the graces we need. Heal our aches and pains, our hurts and wounds, our anxieties and bad memories. Free us from depressions, habits of sin, and all evil. Strengthen our faith, deepen our hope, and increase our love. We make our prayer through Christ our Lord. Amen.

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FATHER FRANK'S LOG

2/6/2017

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 28th MAY – 3rd JUNE

My thoughts recently have been with all those who have been doing exams of one kind or another, and I hope that for most of them they are over now and have gone well. I thank God that my own exam days are in the past as I feel I sat enough of them in my time and never did so without at least some element of stress, and a little sense of trepidation.

Probably my most harrowing experience was on day one of the first year of my Accountancy studies in the summer of 1970. Accountancy exams were usually held in various Glasgow hotels and in this particular year my exams were due to take place in a big hotel on the south side of the city. Now, being from the north side, the south side of Glasgow is a foreign country to me, and I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going. Being a bit of a crammer, I was up late the night before staring bleary-eyed at the books for one last time, and then rose early to make sure I had plenty of time to reach my destination. Two buses were required, one into the city centre, then another across the River Clyde to the south side. Half way into town the first bus broke down, steam pouring out of the engine. Everybody had to get off and wait for a bus to come from the Anniesland depot to take us the rest of the way. A butterfly of panic began to flutter in my stomach. The relief bus came about 20 minutes later and we made it the rest of the way. Having missed the connecting bus in the city I now had to wait a while for the next one, the butterfly wings by now beating more furiously. Eventually it came and I alighted at the other end at running pace all the way to the hotel, only to discover it was the wrong hotel, I should have been at another hotel with a similar name a mile up the road. I ran and ran again and arrived breathless and sweaty 25 minutes into the exam. Thankfully they let me slip in quietly and get on with it. The next few days I arrived in plenty of time. When the results came out two months later I’d passed them all – but the first one, only just.

Another memorable exam experience was when I went to Rome for my final year before ordination. While there I applied to the Vatican to be ordained a deacon in the Passionist Monastery of Saints John and Paul where I was living at the time, while studying in the Gregorian University. This was 1982-83. The detail of all my Theology studies to show I had the necessary qualifications, with the proper exams taken and passed, had been meant to come from the Milltown Institute in Dublin, but they never arrived, even though I was assured they had been sent. This meant I had to take an oral exam covering the key areas of scripture, morals and doctrine, at the Basilica of St. John Lateran. I went with trepidation only to be examined by a very kind and friendly Swiss Dominican who was happy to put me forward for the Diaconate. A couple of days later an Italian member of the Passionist Community returned from conducting some parish missions and found my letter from Dublin which had been put into his mail box by mistake. So that was one set of exams I shouldn’t have needed to take – but it was an interesting experience. As we celebrate Pentecost we ask the help of the Holy Spirit in the prayer below for all those doing exams:

Lord, pour out your Spirit of wisdom on all students doing exams at this time.
Help them to remain calm, to attend carefully to the questions asked,
to think clearly, to remember accurately, and to express themselves well.
Grant that they may reflect the best of the work they have done,
and the best of the teaching they have received.
When the results come out may they be satisfied that they did their best,
and may whatever path they choose in life bring them happiness.
May your love be upon them O Lord as they place all their trust in you. Amen.

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