Father Donald
80 yrs
Introduction to Mass 13
August 2014-08-16.
Welcome:
You are welcome to the Octogenarian this
morning and to the other octogenarians present and to all the younger who
celebrating this Holy Mass.
1. Come adore the Lord
who is wondrous
in his saints,
and wondrous in all us saints ‘in the making’.
In our Morning Office we sang of one of the Saints.
2. At one time in in the monastery of Sancta Maria Abbey
my Ordination had a souvenir motto
phrase of the Psalm,
Psalm 26:4 in the Grail Psalms,
“There is one thing I ask of the Lord,
for this I long,
to live in the house of the Lord,
all the days of my life,
to savour the sweetness of the Lord,
to behold his temple”.
3. In the daily chant of the Office sings the praise of the
Lord. On every Thursday Morning Office
of Psalm 89.9...
“Our life is over like a sigh
Our span is sventy years
or eighty for those who are strong”.
It is not NEWS, it is EVERY DAY NEWS.
4.
From decade to
decade we have a new life, exciting with grace of God.
More recently, the six years have seen me to the regular Outpatient to the Haematology
Department of the Infirmary. A new experience in exciting life is the one in a thousand
in the rare condition of blood and marrow of bone.I refer to the Sweeney Todd leaching
of blood by the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
The Haematology experience merges into the prayer to the haematology experience
of Christ’s “body and blood”.
It is best expressed in the Hymn:
“O Jesus we adore you
our victim and our priest,
whose precious blood and body,
Become our sacred feast.”
5. It is the Mystery of Faith, (Mysterium Fidei), the
Sacrfice of the Mass – the death of Christ and the Resurrection talking to each
of us, the souls of the faithful.
6. Praying for souls, the Divine Mercy Prayer of St.
Faustina of Poland is beautiful, “O God, I believe, I adore I hope, I love. I
ask for your mercy”.
“O God, I believe, I adore I hope, I love. I ask for ALL SOULS your mercy”.
7. Sisters and Brothers, Let us acknowledge our sins,
and so prepare us to celebrate the sacred mysteries....
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Donald Nunraw shared these files from Dropbox:
Donald Nunraw shared these files from Dropbox:
Homily by Fr. Raymond.
CONSECRATED LIFE Today as we celebrate Fr Donald’s 80th
birthday and we have so many of his family gathered here to join us in that
celebration, and especially as so many of that family are themselves consecrated
to the religious life, I think it is a good occasion for us to consider
something of what consecration to the religious life means.
First, we tend to
think of consecration to the religious life as something quite opposite to the
married life. We think of the religious
life and married life as two opposites, especially as we so often use the word
Virginity to describe the religious life.
However, if we consider it carefully we will find that the consecrated
life of virginity and the married life are really two sides of the same
coin; one cannot understand the one unless one
understands the other. They have so much
in common. They are both expressions of
one and the same aspiration in the human spirit. They both spring from the same fountain in
the depths of the human soul. These depths are well plumbed for us by St Paul
when he writes that no one can plumb the depth of a man’s own soul but his very
own spirit who dwells in him; and even more so, he says, no one can plumb the
depth of God but God’s own Spirit who dwells in Him, and then he adds those
wonderful words: that we have received from God this very own Spirit of his;
that Spirit by which we are led into the very depths of God himself. This is that marriage to which every
Christian soul is consecrated by his baptism.
This is that marriage that is witnessed to in a special way by the
Church’s religious consecration of her monks and nuns.
I said a moment
ago that the consecrated life of virginity and the married life are really two
sides of the same coin; they are both expressions of one and the same
aspiration in the human spirit. They
both spring from the same depths of the human soul. This becomes evident when we consider that,
no matter how long a couple may live together in marriage, no matter how many
children they have, they are always VIRGIN TO EACH OTHER. Their fidelity to each other is the essence
of their virginity. It is a thing of
mind and heart and spirit as much as a thing of the flesh. This is a virginity that can never be spoiled
or violated by another. In this
inviolability both the married life and consecrated virginity share equally.
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