December 2006 – For the fainthearted . . .

New Year’s Eve Sermon

Sermon at Saint Matthias’ Church, Killiney on 31st December 2006

You turn us back to dust and say:
‘Turn back, O children of earth.
For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday,
which passes like a watch in the night.
You sweep them away like a dream;
they fade away suddenly like the grass.
In the morning it is green and flourishes;
in the evening it is dried up and withered. Psalm 90:3-6

There is a planting of trees on the Milltown Road between the townland of …

Going out with a whisper

“Who was the Secretary General after Waldheim?”

“I don’t know”.

“You do. You must do. Don’t you remember? Thatcher and the Falklands, who was at the UN then?”

“I don’t know.”

Finally, I had to resort to Google for the answer as to who was Secretary General of the United Nations in 1982. Not that it had anything to do with the conversation anyway, which had been about Kofi Annan who retires next Sunday.

31st December is a bad time to leave a job. No-one notices you have gone. Half …

Eton rifles at Blackrock DART station

Back in the 1970s I fancied myself as a political radical. Certain pop groups had a particular cachet about them for any self-respecting member of the Left; amongst them was The Jam, a group whose songs were often explicit in their politics.Songs by The Jam remain in my memory, one of them being Eton Rifles. I never fully understood the lyrics until Saturday.

The first two stanzas read,

Sup up your beer and collect your fags,
There’s a row going on down near Slough,
Get out your mat and pray …

The greatest gift ever

Saint Matthias Church, 11.30 pm, 24th December 2006

mild, he lays his glory by,
born that we no more may die,
born to raise each child of earth,
born to give us second birth.

Hark! the herald-angels sing
glory to the new-born King.â?

I got married in September 1983 which means, if I have counted correctly, that this is the 24th Christmas since then. Twenty-three of those Christmases were spent in the company of Kate’s mother, Peggy. Peggy was a great Christmas person; she loved cooking the huge Christmas lunch; …

Solstices and seasons

The solstice marked the beginning of winter in the scheme of things taught at High Ham Primary School. The world was a very orderly place and the seasons broke down into four neat quarters – winter ran from the solstice until the spring equinox; spring from the equinox until the summer solstice; summer from the solstice until the vernal equinox; and autumn from the equinox until the winter solstice.

I liked the way the year was knocked into such an orderly shape. The bit about solstices moving from one day …

The truth of the Christmas story

Sermon for the morning of 24th December 2006

“Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child who you will bear” Luke 1:42

Christmas is a season of faith, but also a season for scoffers. While it would be completely inadmissible to question the existence of a gentleman in red on public media, it is quite acceptable to rubbish the Christian faith. I thought this morning, knowing we would be down to the faithful few, we …