Author: Will Brown

I find myself singing the Connemara Cradle Song. “Hear the wind blow love, hear the wind blow!” Out loud! Against the wind, head down in the dark, the wind with rain on it. So it doesn’t matter! No one can hear me.

The seafront on this night feels like a scene from Ray Bradbury’s ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes!‘ It is the scene of mostly solitary men, mostly jogging. One woman! Jogging! The bravest is the man who sits on a bench staring out to sea. Stillness mid the elements! Waves like a thousand white horses galloping to the shore.

All the amusements stand deserted. Kiosks closed and shuttered! Palm trees wave frantically and the automated pirate’s voice in the crazy golf place shouts insults at nobody.

I was tempted to sit in front of the TV for the evening. I had just witnessed a teenage boy’s grief over the death of his dad; heard the poem of the man’s godson spoken through tears. Observed the dignified sorrow in the faces of all those who loved him. I soak it all in until I’m filled with a helpless pain.

St. Mary Star of the Sea offers a space of solace, comfort and a bit of warmth when one’s very core turns cold with grief.

John was only 50 and I met him once, the day before he died in a tragic fall. He was at Mass and came up to me at the door afterwards to welcome me to Hastings. A bright smile, vibrant and warm! His beautiful three year old daughter was with him.

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me! When I was a stranger you made me welcome” – the words of Jesus keep turning in my mind. This is what John did for me and therefore to Christ Himself. It’s as if an unnameable interior pull drew him to Mass that day to be near to Jesus in preparation for what he did not know was going to happen. God does that when someone is about to die. He visits them in a hidden mysterious way to prepare their soul for the pilgrimage beyond death.

And maybe John’s welcoming of me was part of that preparation. I’m already well welcomed here but there was something about the way it happened with John. It’s one of the things specified by Jesus in the last Judgement that awaits us all in the end. I was a stranger and you made me welcome. Whatever you did to one of the least of these you did it to me.

That’s the kind of thing that determines whether we get to heaven or not – what we do to the least of people or neglect to do.

The wind has a way of reaching into the loss that I have absorbed, stirs up all kinds of stuff and now the fury inside me. It’s a kind of helpless fury over the unspeakable violence that is visited by men and women on the least of all God’s people. The anonymous women, men and children who are violated day in and day out!

I have a fury over the selective outrage that is trotted out in public, on the airwaves, spoken by the sophisticated, glamorous, and powerful of this world.  Every violation is an outrage but it frustrates me to hear one outrage spoken by people who promote other outrages. But they are not seen as outrageous because they are so slick and posh and rich.

It appalls me that people claim to have rights over the lives of others, rights that belong to God alone but maybe He has been turned into an irrelevance by minds that do not wish to know the truth.

And I wonder too is there another storm on the way? A storm of a different order. Is the turmoil taking place in nature prophetic of something spiritual to come?

So that’s the kind of prayer going on in me as I push resolutely against the wind and rain. I think of Jesus in the storm on the sea of Galilee, His own fury in the cleansing of the Temple. Mine is an unholy fury. If unleashed it would just be destructive. And I take no pleasure in it at all. His fury is pure and redeeming. So I give mine to Him for what it’s worth and maybe He will turn it into something redemptive.

“Oh winds of the night may your fury be crossed. May no one that’s dear to our island be lost!”

With the wind to my back now my mind turns to something beautiful, the consolation of another grief, one of the most awful griefs that I have witnessed. A mother who has seen three of her children die, two of daughters in the space of two months. She has a very special place in my heart and it was such a joy to get the news that she has given birth again to a beautiful daughter. The thought of them softens my entire being.

So I pray for them with gladness and gratitude. And I sing the lullaby for them in a sporadic kind of way – not as it is meant to be sung, but I am singing:

“Angels are coming to watch o’er thy sheep
Angels are coming to watch over thee

Hear the wind blow love, hear the wind blow
Lean your head over and hear the wind blow

Blow the winds gently, calm be the foam
Shine the light brightly and guide them back home”

I turn in home to my quiet house. Earlier in the day a visiting priest asked if I mind living alone and the answer that emerged in me was, “I am not alone!”

– Father Eamonn Monson SAC (https://eamonnmonson.blogspot.co.uk/)

“Let me sing to my friend
Let me sing to my friend the song of his love
Let me sing to my friend the song of his love for his vineyard” (Isaiah 5:1)

Michael scared the life out of me the first time we met! He was so angry and aggressive with bitterness carved into the shape of his mouth. Eyes on fire! I was repelled inside but I stood my ground because he was hungry and he had come to our house for food. So I got something together and gave it to him. He scowled. I left him alone.

Oddly enough we became friends over time; we grew to love each other. And we often laughed together.

He started to tell me the story of his life and I listened. It completely changes your perspective when you hear what the other has been through, even though it also leaves you helpless because there is nothing you can do to change what another person has experienced, can’t change what life has done to them. But we can be present to a certain extent and we can listen. Listen without judgement!

Michael had had a very brutal childhood during which he was severely beaten on a regular basis and it left him seriously damaged. Relationships didn’t work out, jobs didn’t last and he ended up homeless. The only comfort he got was when he drank but that’s a comfort that only lasts a while and when it fades it leaves a man desolate and desperate. He died young and it was probably a happy release for him but I missed him when he was gone.

It’s Michael I think about when I read the lovely and lonely song of the vineyard at Mass today, the 27^th Sunday.

The vineyard of the Lord, in Old Testament times, is the House of Israel! Today it is us, God’s own people whom He dearly loves. It is the individual person, especially the one who ends up desolate and rejected for whatever reason.

Vineyards bearing fruit are beautiful to behold. We saw many of them on the Camino – rich grapes full of juice, full of promise, powerful symbol of life. They can only be beautiful when tended carefully, diligently, by hard work.

To let a vineyard go is to surrender it to the wild, untamed ways of nature. I see it in my own back garden. Not a vineyard but a garden, a very nice garden in my mother’s time. It’s still not bad but the end of it has gone wild because I can’t look after it. Amazing the speed and persistence of briars! They take over everything.

There are briars that take over the mind and heart and soul of a person, to such an extent that they give up on themselves and most others give up on them too. They become the rejected.

When Jesus talks about the vineyard in the gospel He reminds us that He too is the rejected one – the stone that the builders rejected – and He takes the part of all those whom society rejects, all those whom we reject, the Michaels of this world.

In the ways of God it is those who are rejects who become the key to salvation; it is through them that we are introduced to the most authentic experience of God, the most profound of spiritual experiences.

It requires a change of mind, a conversion of our way of thinking, learning to think in the way that Christ thinks on all levels of life, as St. Paul said last week, “In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2) Most of the time we don’t want to go there because it actually challenges our deep-seated attitudes that we are unwilling to let go of.

But if we take the way of positive, God-like thinking, the way that leads to peace then we will come to see everything and especially every person in a different light.

“Fill your minds with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honour, and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise…Then the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4:6-9)

When our minds are so filled in this way, then we have the enlightenment to see the rejects of society as God sees them and, hopefully respond to them as God does, in love rather than in fear.

This quote from John Chrysostom, which I saw on Facebook yesterday, is very apt, “If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find him in the chalice.”

Please take a look at Snowflake Nightshelter website:
http://www.snowflake-nightshelter.org.uk/

– Father Eamonn Monson SAC (https://eamonnmonson.blogspot.co.uk/)

I’m wearing vestments that were made for my predecessor Fr. Seamus who was a much, much bigger man than me by a long shot, so there’s no way I can fill them as he did. There is no way that I can fill the space occupied by him when he was Parish Priest. But all the same the vestments fit me in a different kind of way. Something of Seamus remains here but things are not the same. His death brought an unexpected change and I have become part of that change. When I was his novice master I never dreamed that he would die before me, never thought that I would succeed him.

On the front and back of my chausible is the Pallottine seal with the motto “Caritas Christi Urget Nos” (The Love of Christ Urges us on). This seal is testament to our communal calling, the mission given to each of us personally and together as community.

The emotion of his passing is still strong! He is very much missed and was greatly loved here in Hastings. He touched people’s lives for the better. People tell me all the time, though I don’t think they expect me to do things as he did and I’m not putting myself under pressure to be like him. At 62 you realize that you can’t be what you’re not. I know my limitations, my unworthiness. I know that at some levels of my life I am not fit for this. But I also know the gifts that God has given me. Shankill has shown them to me, taught me how to use them.

Deacon Duncan knows I don’t care for the glory of the big occasion and in the lead-up to my induction as Parish Priest I was fairly apprehensive. I would have preferred if it could have been done in the privacy of the Bishop’s office. But Bishop Richard likes to do it in public with the parish present and Duncan is delighted because he too knows that it’s needed.

They are right of course. Becoming Parish Priest is not a private matter between the Bishop and myself. I belong to the People; we belong to each other in this ministry.

The priests of the Deanery are present as well as Fr. Luke from the Anglican Communion. Canon Tom in neighbouring St. Leonards has been a true friend to me since I came here and I felt we would be companions but it is not to be! He is being moved to a part of the diocese that is about 3 hours away from here. So, on that front God seems to be saying, “do not cling!” Only in God!

Before Mass I was asked if other Pallottines would be present or any of my family. They are not – not because they would not come, it just didn’t happen. And I conclude that in this moment the People of Hastings are both my community and my family. That is not to deny either my family or community. It’s somehow necessary that I do not cling to them, depend on them. I must stand up straight in Jesus in this community. He is the centre around whom we gather.

When I was on the Pallottine retreat for a couple of days while meditating on the woman taken in adultery from John 8, I felt myself being drawn into the person of Jesus and twice it is said of him that “He stood up straight” and I see in this the call for me to stand up straight in Jesus.

And as we come near to the time of beginning, I find myself at peace. A fine crowd has turned out and the procession enters the church to the beautiful sound of the hymn “Servant King” which I heard for the first time here in Hastings a few weeks ago:

“From heaven you came helpless babe
Entered our world, your glory veiled
Not to be served but to serve
And give Your life that we might live
This is our God, The Servant King
He calls us now to follow Him
To bring our lives as a daily offering
Of worship to The Servant King”

It’s not only the choir who sing it beautifully but the whole congregation. I also asked to have the hymn, “For You Are My God” (based on Psalm 16) as the Responsorial Psalm which the choir had to learn it caught on, like an anointing. We also had some very uplifting classical Latin Hymns.

We kept the readings of the day – the first being about the rebuilding of the Temple and the gospel was the short piece where Herod is wondering who Jesus really is. There is reference to the beheading of John the Baptist which felt a little bit challenging! But the last sentence is what mattered, “He was anxious to see Jesus!”

Bishop Richard Moth confessed to his love for Canon Law and you can see the Canon Lawyer in him. He likes things done properly. But he was also very kind and fatherly towards me in the midst of the solemnity of the induction itself. And it is very solemn, awe inspiring, daunting! I’m left in no doubt as to the sacred responsibility entrusted to me, a responsibility to which I make a public commitment.

It’s almost like being ordained all over again. Anointed is what I feel. Not power, not position but an anointing like the anointing of Jesus Himself. And in the midst of this I thought of my parents and Maura looking down from heaven as witnesses.

What I feel from the People is the warmest of welcomes, a sense of true delight in them. The experience is for me like a bookend. The leaving of Shankill was like a bookend on the shelf of my life and this induction into Hastings is a bookend on that same shelf and my life is somehow held between the two. Two extraordinary blessings.

After Mass we went to the hall for food. Those who prepared it did a fabulous job and worked so hard and the atmosphere was full of joy!

When I got back to my room so filled with grace I sat for a long time and even when I went to bed I couldn’t sleep. And at one point in the midst of my wakefulness I realised that we took no photos at all! Me of all people not to have photos of such a moment in my life! The only image remaining, the only image that matters is the one imprinted in our minds, hearts and souls.

P.S One of the singers in the gallery took this one photo! Thank you!

– Father Eamonn Monson SAC (https://eamonnmonson.blogspot.co.uk/)