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  PassionistsGlasgow

FATHER FRANK'S LOG...

26/10/2017

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 22nd – 29th OCTOBER

This week I have been preparing some materials for the month of November, our special time of remembering our loved ones who have died, and it prompted a particular memory. For 10 years I was the secretary to the North European Conference of the Passionists. We have since done some restructuring, but the Passionist Provinces in the Conference at that time were Ireland/Scotland; England/Wales; Netherlands; Belgium; Germany; France and Poland. There was an annual meeting of the leaders of the provinces that usually lasted 3 or 4 days. The meetings moved around the various locations and, especially with the language differences, the meetings were quite intense. Because of that, by way of a break, half a day was always set aside for some cultural experience arranged by the host province.

Some of the experiences that I especially remember were, for example, when we held the meeting in Munich and had an afternoon at the Oktoberfest (Munich Beer Festival) This was around the time they introduced the “Quiet Oktoberfest” which, up until 6pm at least, maintained the beer tents family and elderly friendly, and now Passionist friendly, with the orchestras in the tents playing only quiet brass music and traditional folk tunes, so we weren’t going too wild. From another meeting held in Bordeaux we visited a local vineyard. After the tour we were seated around a garden and given two small glasses of wine, one of them a very expensive wine, and the other a very modestly priced wine. We weren’t told which was which and we were asked to discuss which of them we preferred. To a man we preferred the cheap wine, so perhaps our taste buds were more suited to German beer.

Lest you think all our cultural experiences were alcohol related, in Belgium we went to Leuven to visit the shrine of the leper priest, Father Damien, who was voted the greatest ever Belgian in a poll conducted by the Flemish Public Broadcasting Service for his work as the resident priest in a leper colony on Molokai Island, eventually submitting to the same, then incurable disease. At a meeting in the Netherlands we visited the Shrine of Father Charles of Mount Argus at Munstergeleen, the place of his birth, and then on to Maastricht, where the Treaty on European Union was signed in 1992. At a meeting in Minsteracres, a Passionist Retreat Centre in Northumberland, we visited Hadrian’s Wall, built by Roman Britain to keep the Scots out. I was happy to be living proof that it didn’t work.

But the foremost memory that was prompted this week was when we had a meeting in Warsaw which took place at the end of October, beginning of November. On All Saints' Day the cemeteries and graveyards in Poland are decorated with candles, flowers and wreaths throughout the day, and the candles are left to burn through the night. And so, for our cultural experience, the Polish Passionists provided us with votive lamps and brought us to Powazki cemetery, the primary cemetery in Warsaw, where we placed the lamps on the graves of deceased Passionists. It was dark by this time and the effect of all these lamps burning throughout this huge cemetery was incredibly solemn and beautiful. Afterwards, in the church of St. Charles Borromeo, within the cemetery, we attended a concert of sombre music to fit the occasion. It was a cultural experience with a difference, but one I will never forget.

In the old Catholic ritual this commendation was said over a dying person by the priest:

"Go forth, Christian soul, from this world in the name of God the almighty Father, who created you, in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God who suffered for you, in the name of the Holy Spirit, who was poured out upon you. Go forth, faithful Christian. May you live in peace this day, may your home be with God, with Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, with Saint Joseph, and all the angels and saints. Amen"
May our deceased loved ones rest in peace.

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October 20th, 2017

20/10/2017

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 15th – 22nd OCTOBER

In the middle of November my sports reporter brother will help us to raise funds by hosting a Super Scoreboard night here in St. Mungo’s. At the moment we are getting tickets printed in the hope that we can fill the hall and have a very enjoyable night. I am hopeless at that side of things and find it quite stressful, so I am always very grateful for those volunteers who step forward and offer their help.

My most stressful experience of trying to sell tickets was 10 years ago in Dublin when we were preparing for the canonization of Father Charles of Mount Argus. I had the notion of commissioning a new hymn for the occasion and I decided to approach Liam Lawton, a priest based in Carlow who was the most prominent writer of liturgical music in Ireland at the time, and probably still is. I liked his music very much and we sang a fair amount of it in our Mount Argus Folk Group, so who better to ask!

I contacted Liam and we arranged to meet for a coffee in the Red Cow Hotel in Dublin which was easy for him to get to from Carlow, and for me from Mount Argus. As an aside, the Red Cow was also known as the Mad Cow because, at the time, it was approached via a roundabout where the traffic was invariably chaotic and an absolute nightmare to try and get on and get off in one piece. However, we both negotiated it safely and sat down at table.

He wanted to know all about Father Charles, about his ministry of healing, hope and reconciliation, and also, about what our plans were leading up to the celebrations. At the end of the conversation Liam had agreed to write the song and also to put on a concert of Sacred Music in the church before the canonization, during which he would introduce the song for the first time. And so it was, in the midst of all the other hectic preparations for the celebrations, both in Rome and in Dublin, I had to try and promote this concert and sell 900 tickets to fill the church. Thankfully, a great team of volunteers helped me to do just that.

The hymn, “Come to Me”, was beautiful. He finished it just in time for the concert and sang it at the end, accompanying himself on piano. I remember feeling very moved by it. We had a limited number of CD’s made where the hymn was coupled with another of his compositions, “Sing of a Lady”, with the refrain – Ave Maria, hope of all our days – which we chose because of Father Charles’s great devotion to Mary as the Mother of Hope. A few years later Liam put the hymn to Saint Charles on his beautiful album, “Healing Song”.

I recently had another reminder of that fateful year when I was at a celebration with a couple whom I have been friendly with for almost 50 years, ever since I met them at our Passionist Retreat House at Coodham in the late 1960’s. Their first grandchild was born in 2007 and, without knowing anything about the canonization, they had decided to come over for a family trip to Dublin and have me baptize their new grandchild in Mount Argus. Until they arrived I hadn’t known that the child was to be called Charlie, and of course Father Charles’s nickname in the community was “Poor Old Charlie”, so when they saw all these banners in the church proclaiming a new saint for Ireland whose name was Charlie they were delighted and we had a great laugh about it. I hadn’t seen much of Charlie since but when I met him last week, now a fine strapping lad at 10 years of age, it brought it all back to me.

Here is the refrain of that beautiful hymn to Saint Charles:
Come to me with all your burdens, come and place your heart in mine,
Come and tell me all your worries, hope in you will never die
For I am full of Compassion, do not be afraid
Come to me with all your burdens, I will never walk away.

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FATHER FRANK'S LOG...

12/10/2017

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 8th – 15th OCTOBER

I had an unusual call last week from a man who wanted to come and take some photos outside of the church. Once I had satisfied myself of his good intentions I discovered that this man’s passion was journeying to film locations and trying to match stills from the film with how the location looked now.

He wanted to come to St. Mungo’s because the church had been used many years back in a film called Heavenly Pursuits. When I relayed this to Father Gareth he got very excited, because he loves his films, and he immediately went on to the internet to find this film. It was a light-hearted comedy released in 1986, starring Helen Mirren; Tom Conti and David Hayman, and it tells the story of a teacher at a Catholic school whose students are searching for two miracles that would help promote the late (and fictional) Edith Semple to sainthood.

What surprised me was that, if the film was released in 1986, then I must have been stationed in St. Mungo’s at the time, as I was part of the community here from 1983-1986, but I have no recollection of it at all. Of course, I was away a lot then, doing vocations work, and giving missions and retreats, so I can only assume that the filming was done during one of those pastoral journeys. But it pains me to think that, having become a big fan of Helen Mirren later on in life, especially when she was in Prime Suspect, that she was here at St. Mungo’s and I never got the chance to meet her. I’m sure if the late Fr. Anthony Behan had been here he would have remembered it well. He was also a member of the community at the time, and a great film buff, and no doubt he made a deep impression on Helen Mirren with his charms.
I have, however, been in other Passionist Retreats when some kind of filming was taking place, and I got the chance to meet a few famous film stars. When I was doing my diaconate year in Rome from 1982-83, I met Gregory Peck and Christopher Plummer when they filmed some scenes from The Scarlet and the Black in the monastery garden of Saints John and Paul where I was living at the time. This was a TV movie which told the story of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, a real life Irish-born Catholic priest who, while in Rome, saved thousands of Jews, and helped escaped Allied Prisoners of War, during World War II.

Mount Argus in Dublin has been used a number of times for films and TV dramas. I was there for meetings one time in the late 1990’s when they were filming a TV drama called The Ambassador, and I met the lead star, Pauline Collins, whom I had loved when she was in the film Shirley Valentine a few years before. She was playing the new British ambassador to the Republic of Ireland and some of the big meeting rooms in Mount Argus were being used for scenes supposedly taking place at the British Embassy in Ballsbridge.

More recently there was an Irish TV soap opera called Red Rock, set in the fictional seaside town of Red Rock in County Dublin. The locations manager came along and asked if he could use the entrance in and out of the new monastery at Mount Argus as the funeral parlour in the series. I might have been offended by that, but I had just been on holiday to Westport, and it turned out the locations manager’s father was the head of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Westport, so I felt I could trust him, and I gave the necessary permission. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out, as we weren’t able to shut down the monastery for the length of time they needed for filming, but they did do some other filming in and around the grounds for various scenes – there were no big stars for me to meet though.
​
Here is a quote from the above-mentioned Pauline Collins about goodness and evil in films: “I think goodness is very powerful, but evil is often made more attractive in films. It’s a challenge to make goodness appealing. I was brought up a Catholic, so I have to believe in the goodness of human beings. I think we’re not so bad after all”
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October 06th, 2017

6/10/2017

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FATHER FRANK’S LOG: 1st – 8th OCTOBER
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Father Gareth and myself have just passed the year mark since we both came to St. Mungo’s last October. Back then Father Gareth arrived on the 4th and held the fort until I arrived on the 6th; and he had to do the same again this year as I had to travel to Belfast for a series of meetings around finances and formation. When these meetings were first arranged I wasn’t under any particular pressure coming back, but I had agreed to do a wedding in St. Andrew’s cathedral in November for a Ugandan couple which, because of visa problems, was brought forward to October 6th. When I went to organise travel the only way I could be at the meetings and be back for the wedding, which was at the unusual time of 11 a.m., was to bring the car and return on the 23.30 Stena Line sailing from Belfast to Cairnryan. That meant I would be getting back to the house at around 4 a.m. and arriving to the wedding with very little sleep. Added to that, it was a stormy week, and the bride and groom, a truly lovely couple, were concerned that the sailing would be cancelled and that they’d be left stranded at the altar without a priest, although I knew it would take a lot for one of those big boats not to be able to sail, and that they had stabilisers to manage on the rough seas.

As it turned out, the meetings finished a little earlier than planned and I was able to transfer to an earlier sailing at 19.30, which would mean getting home around midnight, a much better option. It was better still, that once the boat set sail, I discovered they were showing both the Northern Ireland v Germany, and the Scotland v Slovakia World Cup qualifying matches in different parts of the ship. I got myself a good seat in the Scottish section and passed the journey watching a really exciting match. When Scotland’s winning goal went in with just minutes to go we were all out of our seats with hugs and high-fives, perfect strangers becoming each other’s best friends – even if just for a while. There was a bit of a panic when, with 3 minutes of injury time still to play, the ship reached port and the television was switched off. Cries of dismay persuaded the crew to put the television on again so that we could be sure we had held out to the end, which of course we did, and the drive back to Bishopbriggs was pleasantly spent listening to post-match analysis on the radio.

The wedding itself was a delight. There were only about 15 people there, mostly from Uganda, but also from Ghana and Tanzania. In 35 years of celebrating weddings it was the first time that I had kept the bride waiting instead of the other way around, as she had arrived 15 minutes early while we were still setting up the altar in the cathedral. They were people of real faith and their small group of friends entered fully into the joy of the occasion. There was no big reception, but I had agreed a while back to have lunch with them after the Nuptial Mass, and I had to smile to myself when I discovered that we were going to the World Buffet in Renfield Street, because this is Father Gareth’s favourite restaurant, although I hadn’t realised he had his very own waitress as well, because no sooner had I entered the restaurant than I was very warmly greeted by one of the Passionist Young Team (PYT), the group that Father Gareth gathers on a Wednesday night. Later on, another young man who had been to the PYT came over to greet me as well.

I don’t think the World Buffet had ever held a wedding reception before and they were obviously thrilled to see the bride and groom arrive and, even though the bride had made a quick change out of her wedding dress, she still looked quite stunning, while the groom and guests were all still in their wedding outfits, which for some meant traditional costumes. The World Buffet offers food from all corners of the world but, when I got up to get my main course, the first PYT member pointed to the Macaroni and Cheese and told me that Father Gareth usually just fills his plate with that and sits quite happily before heading off again.

The kingdom of heaven is like a wedding feast… (Matthew 22: 1-14)
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    FATHER FRANK KEEVINS C.P.

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