Category: politics

“I can’t breathe” – homily for Day 1 of Perpetual Help novena

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

Famous lines from WB Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming.” Published a century ago, “The Second Coming” is one of the most plundered poems in the English language, its lines popping up regularly in books, songs, films, TV, speeches and newspapers. It’s a poem we turn to in uncertain times: Things fall apart…

Lines from another Yeats’ poem, “Easter 1916,” are repeatedly plundered, too: “All changed, changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born.”

Yeats was referring to the 1916 rising. He could just as easily have been describing our world today. When we’re lost for words, we turn to poets to better express how we feel. Yeats’ words summarise the catastrophe of Covid-19: Things fall apart… All changed utterly.

Unlike the recession of 2008, the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted every country. It has cut across differences of age, gender, ethnicity, wreaking devastation and despair. It has brought sickness, death, loss, loneliness, isolation, domestic violence, collapsed credit, closed churches, shuttered shops, deserted workplaces. It has tested and tormented us—the deepest depression in a century.

These past few months, all changed utterly – but not all for the bad. Some change has been positive.

Our sense of connectedness has deepened. Physical distancing has reminded us to treasure our relationships, to nurture them, to never take them for granted. It has reminded us of those priceless traditional values we were in danger of letting go – community, neighbourliness, solidarity, empathy, concern for one another.

We have a new appreciation for health care and front line workers, those often overlooked, overworked and underpaid. We are reminded that those who hold many of the most critical jobs don’t have fancy degrees or smart suits or posh addresses; that without these essential workers, society would crumble. We’ve been invited to value people and jobs that often we disregard.

Planet earth has had a chance to catch its breath. Smog lifted, air pollution plummeted, waterways cleared, fauna and flora flourished, nature nurtured—a real springtime for our common home.

All welcome developments, but at a terrible cost. Covid-19 has been that rare plague that has affected everyone in some way.

Last month, as George Floyd choked under a policeman’s heavy knee in Minneapolis, his last gasping words were, “I can’t breathe.”

“I can’t breathe” also describes the experience of victims of Covid-19, struggling frantically for air. It describes so much of our human experience.

“I can’t breathe” is an expression of the wearied cry of the world’s poor, who have been hit hardest by this pandemic.

“I can’t breathe” is the jaded cry of those continuously crushed by racism, in Ireland as well as overseas.

“I can’t breathe” is the exhausted cry of women and LGBT people and all who suffer discrimination.

“I can’t breathe” is the plaintive cry of our plundered planet.

“I can’t breathe…” Three little words that express so much of what’s wrong with our world today, problems compounded by the pandemic. Three little words that remind us of the work we need to do if we are to love and care for each other as we should.

Covid-19 proposes three points for reflection, three lessons for us Christians.

Covid-19 has been a wake-up call, a chance for us to think about what matters most. Many of us lead busy lives. There is so much to do, so many commitments that seem important. The lockdown has forced us to slow down, to put plans on hold. It’s been an invitation to examine our activities, our priorities, to practice present moment awareness. A chance to breathe.

I’ve heard more birdsong this spring than at any time in my life. The birds have always been singing, of course. It’s just I was too distracted to hear them before. A retreat from the world, even if imposed on us, is an opportunity to take stock. Grasp this chance while you can. See, smell, listen, hear, touch. Breathe.

Covid-19 has highlighted the major fault lines in our society and church. Like how we treat our elderly. Why have nursing homes and residential institutions been so severely affected? How can we take better care of our most vulnerable?

Racism isn’t just an American phenomenon. It’s present here, too. We must hold the incoming government to its pledge to end the scandal of Direct Provision. We must confront racism wherever we encounter it.

How can we better reward and recognise our frontline workers, those drivers and carers and cleaners and shop assistants and delivery people, who have risked their lives at the coalface these past six months?

Shuttered churches have given us a painful foretaste of what it’ll be like in 20 years when there will be few priests left to celebrate the sacraments. How can we become a less clerical, more inclusive church?

The shutdown has shown how quickly the earth can breathe anew if given a chance. What can each of us do to help it breathe?

Finally, this pandemic reminds us of a wonderful truth about our God. On the cross, Jesus said, “I can’t breathe.” His breath was taken from him. But God raised Jesus from the dead. And remember what Jesus did when he appeared to his followers in the upper room after his resurrection: he breathed on them. His first act was to breathe on them. The breath of new life. The breath of the Holy Spirit – the Spirit of peace, of forgiveness, of courage and strength. We have been given that same Holy Spirit. That same Spirit breathes in us. The Holy Spirit lives in us, so that even in our suffering, even in our grief and hardship, even when things fall apart, even when all is changed utterly, even when we struggle for air, God is by our side. And with God by our side, we need not be afraid.

Being peaceful in a hate-filled world – Homily for the 7th Sunday of the Year

Perfection is difficult.

Every Friday, the New York Times has a quiz of the week. It’s usually comprised of ten multiple-choice questions about stories that appeared in the paper over the previous seven days. After you finish the test, it tells you what percentage of people got each question right, so that you can compare yourself to others and see how well you performed. I do it every week. Last week I got one answer wrong, which seems good except that 13 per cent of participants got every answer right. They were perfect. I was not.

Perfection is difficult. Not even LFC is perfect this season. Our stats might be better than any other team in the history of Europe’s top five divisions, but we dropped two points in our opening 26 games. Staggering stats, yes, but not perfect.

Today’s Gospel is from the Sermon on the Mount – the passage in Matthew where Jesus spells out the moral code that must guide his followers. There’s a big difference between Jesus’s teaching and the old Jewish law. Jesus takes the old law to the next level. He orientates the focus from head to heart, from convention to conviction, from the letter of the law to the intention behind it.

Jewish law was big into external observance. Keep the law, and you were all right. Stick to everything it prescribed, and you couldn’t go wrong. It didn’t matter very much what kind of person you were on the inside – in the heart – so long as you followed the law line by line.

Jesus sees it differently. It’s not just about keeping the letter of the law. It’s about the kind of person you are, how you relate to others, what motivates you. 

We see that contrast played out in today’s Gospel. Jesus says: “You have learnt how it was said: Eye for eye and tooth for tooth. But I say this to you: offer the wicked person no resistance…”

“You have learnt how it was said: You must love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I say this to you: love your enemy…”

You see the pattern: “You have learnt how it was said…. But I say this to you…” The contrast is stark. The old way of living is no longer good enough. We must now live according to the far more challenging new law of Jesus. It’s a call to be our best selves, to be no less than perfect.

This new law of Jesus has vast implications for how we treat each other. Perfection is difficult. We are far from perfect. Think of the tragic story of Caroline Flack, who died last Sunday. The tabloid press harassed her, internet trolls tormented her, reporters hounded her, media circulated all kinds of nasty rumours impugning her. They were having a field day, as they have whenever there’s a juicy story to exploit. Cast into a pit of despair, Caroline Flack saw no way out. They destroyed her.

Think of how polarised and bitter politics and public debate have become at home and abroad – the anger, venom, hatred, sneering contempt that’s directed at individuals and groups. Social media – Twitter, Facebook, messaging apps – are particularly vile and vicious, and even good people get sucked into that world of cruelty and intolerance. It’s a particularly discomfiting environment if you are a woman in the public eye, or if you are gay or trans, or an immigrant. An African footballer walked off a pitch in Portugal last week after suffering disgusting racial abuse throughout a match. He was reduced to tears.

On Wednesday, in Germany, a right-wing nationalist, fuelled by online racist ideology, shot dead nine members of the Kurdish community. An increasing number of children are using racist and sexist language to taunt others in school – in America, much of it because they feel they’ve got permission right from the top.

Now listen to the law of Jesus again: love your enemies; show mercy; extend the hand of friendship; be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. A message of inclusion, equality and respect our hierarchical, patriarchal church would do well to take on board also.

Be perfect, Jesus instructs us, but perfection is difficult, and we are far from it.

There’s a line in today’s second reading that gets to the heart of why we must love and respect and forgive and seek perfection. St Paul reminds the people of Corinth that they are God’s temple. The Jewish people believed that God dwelt in the great temple in Jerusalem. The temple was where you found God; the temple was God’s earthly dwelling place.

But St Paul reminds us that God lives in each of us, that God’s Holy Spirit dwells in each of us, that the Spirit has made her home in us. Each of us is God’s temple – no matter our background, or sexuality, or gender, or ethnicity, or physical appearance, or academic qualifications, or career accomplishments, or sporting prowess, or personal history, or class or rank  – and so each of us is unique, precious, priceless, lovable, invaluable, irreplaceable.

Each of us is a temple of God’s Holy Spirit, and this knowledge must shape how we treat every other person, online and offline, in person and in absentia.

Living the Sermon on the Mount is living the law of love. It is seeing everyone – everyone – as God’s holy temple. It is to seek perfection, not only in the NYT quiz every week but in every sphere, in everything I do. What a different world we would have, and what different debates we would conduct, and how gentle and just society would be, if we were able to live like that.

Perfection is difficult; be perfect.

Trump, evangelicals and the death of democracy

Looking at what is happening in Washington these days, it appears as if the very fabric of US democracy is breaking down. The system of checks and balances the Founding Fathers carefully put in place is creaking badly and urgently needs an overhaul.
It is damaging to democracy that scantily populated states like Vermont and Wyoming should have the same power in the US senate as California and Texas. It is damaging to democracy to have an electoral system in place that gives the highest office in the land to someone who fails to win a majority of the votes. Democracy is about honouring the will of the people – something the electoral college does not. It is damaging to democracy when the three branches of government fail to hold one other in check. When the Senate fails to hold the Executive to account, as is now happening, then the constitution is being flouted, and government is breaking down.
America is in a mess, a country deeply divided. Unscrupulous players are manipulating social media to exacerbate these divisions. The occupant of the White House has no respect for truth or integrity. The party of which he is a member has wilfully colluded in his egregious machinations so that it can stuff the federal courts with right-wing judges who will remain in office for a generation. There is every possibility that should he lose the election in November, neither he nor his supporters will accept the result, leading to an even bigger constitutional crisis. Putin, and every enemy of democracy, is thrilled by what is happening.
The fact that so many Christians have publicly aligned themselves with this president is a scandal. The occupant of the Oval Office has ably demonstrated that he is a naked opportunist with no real commitment to the pro-life cause, as his rhetoric and policies show. He may claim to be anti-abortion, but he is not pro-life. Its identification with this man has irrevocably tarnished Christianity in the US. The Christian should be identified by her concern for the poor, by her support for human and civil rights, by her determination to build bridges and promote reconciliation as well as by her opposition to the death penalty and easy access to guns. If right-wing evangelical Christianity and its ‘prosperity gospel’ is forever tarnished through its association with this president, at least that is one good thing he will have done.

A decade of highs and very lows

I’m not sorry to see the back of the teens. The last decade has been the most difficult of my life, and while it hasn’t been all bleak, I have little reason to look back on these years with any fondness.
It was a decade of losses. I lost my parents and many other close loved ones. This was the first Christmas without my mother, whom I miss beyond words.
I lost my health and have had to live with daily chronic pain since the summer of 2014. During the first couple of years, the pain was so intense and my self-pity was so all-consuming that I did not want to go on living.
I lost my innocent belief in the power of medicine and medics to alleviate pain and not merely to treat a patient as just another client to cross off their list as soon as convenient.
I lost my job in Redemptorist Communications that gave me joy, routine and a sense of purpose.
I lost my reputation as a responsible, ‘reliable’ priest, having been officially sanctioned by the Vatican.
I lost my home in Dublin and my parish chaplaincy in Rathgar where I felt stimulated as priest and pastor.
I lost any lingering delusion of being a young man. I had to accept the reality of rapidly advancing middle age and that my best years, and any possibilities of new beginnings, were now behind me.
I lost hope for the future of the Redemptorists (and of religious life as we knew it) in Ireland and the Western world. I am one of the last generation of Irish religious.
As fascism, narrow nationalism and right-wing populism gained momentum across the world, I lost hope that people, brought together through the potentially unifying power of social media, would focus on what unites rather than divides.
I lost the naive assumption that social media would bring people together and be a force for good rather than become an easily manipulated tool that undermines democracy, spreads fake news, and feeds people’s worst instincts.
From being a life-long lover of US politics and the US presidency, I lost respect for the office of president and for the party of Lincoln, Grant, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower which allowed itself to become the willing poodle of an insane, dangerous demagogue.
The tragedy of Brexit damaged the affection I had built up for Britain following the Good Friday Agreement and the queen’s successful visit to Ireland in 2011. Now we see the worst of England, a country pining for a glorious past it will never recover. It’s hard to forgive the injury the Brexiteers are doing to the cause of harmony in Europe and especially to the welfare of the people of the island of Ireland.
The last decade brought many positives too.
I have gained four family members, grandnephews and grandnieces, that are a source of wonder and joy.
I found a warm welcome and extraordinary support from the Redemptorist community in Limerick, which helped me through my early days of physical pain and wallowing self-pity. It reminded me of the value of religious life.
I have discovered that my preaching has improved with age and enjoy the task of putting a challenging and engaging homily together.
I have – I think – become more tolerant and pleasant to live with. Suffering has made me more human and improved my sense of humour.
Without deadlines to meet, I have read far more and more widely than in the past and would like to think I am more educated now.
As I have aged, I have become more liberal/progressive/lefty in my views. The downside is that I am also more intolerant of those with whom I disagree.
My reading has helped me to see the world from a feminist perspective and to be even more ashamed of my church’s failure to include women as equals.
The election of Pope Francis filled me with hope, to which I continue to cling. He is trying to effect real change in the face of stiff opposition from powerful forces in the curia and in the church who seek to stifle him at every turn.
I am delighted that the 2010s has been a good decade for the LGBTI community in Ireland and many other countries with the introduction of marriage equality and other rights. However, much remains to be done, especially concerning protecting those who are transgender.
The last decade has been good too from a sporting point of view. Limerick won the All Ireland hurling title in 2018. Having attended five finals which they lost, I thought I would never see the day when the McCarthy Cup would come back to Limerick. Their unexpected triumph filled me with happiness.
The same goes for Liverpool FC. Under the wonderful Jurgen Klopp, the team is playing with a style and panache I never dreamed possible ten years ago. When they win the Premiership in May, most of my dreams will have been completed.

The cost of discipleship (Homily for 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time)

It’s always smart to plan ahead. If you’re doing an exam, and have five questions to answer in two hours, it’s essential to calculate how long to spend on each question. Otherwise, you may run out of time. If you’re going somewhere by car, make sure you have enough petrol, especially if you’re travelling in the countryside late at night.

History overflows with examples of epic miscalculation. Napoleon and Hitler both invaded Russia without taking the hostile winter weather into account. David Cameron promised a referendum on the European Union thinking he’d never have to hold one. Theresa May called a general election certain she’d win handily. The Americans invaded Afghanistan and Iraq with no plan what to do once the regimes were overthrown. Now, millions of suffering people are paying a terrible price. Last week, Boris Johnson threatened his MPs with deselection if they failed to back his Brexit plan. Now he – and we – are facing a deep dystopian crisis. Think of the ghost housing estates of a decade ago, a symbol of reckless spending and absent prudence that ended up crushing so many ordinary people.

Good planning is essential if we don’t want to miscalculate and mess up. In setting out to do something, it’s critical to weigh up the options and potential outcomes, in order to achieve success.

Good planning is what Jesus advocates in today’s Gospel. He says if we want to follow him, we need to be absolutely clear what we are getting ourselves into. We need to know exactly what it means. We need to calculate the cost because it won’t be easy. If you become a follower of mine, he says, it will involve making tough decisions, hard choices. It will mean taking up your cross every day. It may mean laying down your life.

Jesus uses an extreme example to illustrate his point. Choosing to follow him, he says, means being willing to put him before everyone else, even our own family. It means putting him first in everything, whatever the consequences. Like someone building a tower or a king going into battle, we need to know what we are getting ourselves into; we must make sure we are ready and prepared; we must approach it with eyes wide open.

Last Sunday marked the 80th anniversary of the start of the Second World War. It’s tempting to think of the German people as fully supporting Hitler. But many Germans and Austrians did not. Many opposed him because they knew that Nazism was the opposite of Christianity. People like the great Lutheran martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, knew that Nazim was sinful, grotesque, abhorrent.

One such person was a young Austrian farmer called Franz Jagerstatter. A committed Catholic, Franz was married to Franziska, and had three young daughters. Shortly after the outbreak of war, Franz was enlisted to serve in Hitler’s army. He refused to serve. He knew the war was unjust, that Hitler’s campaign was evil. As a Christian, he could have no part in it.

It was a brave stand to take because the price to pay was stark: the punishment for refusing to wear the Nazi uniform was death. His neighbours and local community thought Franz was crazy, and they tried to get him to change his mind. Even the local bishop pleaded with him, telling him it was his duty to his family and to the nation to be a good soldier.

Franz was taken to the local prison and from there to Berlin to be tried before the Supreme Military Court. Even at that late stage efforts were made to find a solution, but to no avail. On August 9, 1943, Franz Jagerstatter was beheaded in Brandenburg Prison. He had been given just 20 minutes to say goodbye to Franziska. He was 36 years old.

Fast forward to October 2007, and Franz’s beatification in a cathedral in Austria. There at the Mass was his 94-year-old widow Franziska. She had lived to see her husband, who had been excoriated and ignored for so long, finally recognised by the church for his heroic virtue, just one step away from sainthood.

Franz Jagerstatter knew what was going to happen to him and his family for defying Hitler, but he did it anyway. He calculated the cost and was ready to pay the price. He was willing to sacrifice his life for the sake of the Gospel. His family were willing to stand with him. If I had been in his place, could I have done that? Could you?

Next Thursday it will be exactly 40 years since I joined the Redemptorists. I was 17 years old, just finished the Leaving Cert, pimple-faced and full of zeal. The religious life was what I wanted. I thought I had it all worked out, certain I knew what I was getting into. Nine years of study, profession, ordination, then parish missions. A cloudless horizon ahead. But clouds drifted in, often obscuring the horizon. Scandals, clericalism, loneliness, celibacy, friends leaving, vocations falling, church attendance plummeting, the Vatican censoring what I said – so many crises, obstacles. Like a Sat Nav after going off-route, I had to recalculate, reimagine, recommit. Entering religious life seemed much easier in 1979 than today. Now there is a deeper awareness of the cost, of the price.

As there is for all of us gathered here. In Ireland today, to be a Christian doesn’t mean literally risking your life, but putting Jesus first is still a risk, because it means going against the grain. It means believing and acting in ways that the cool people think are foolish.

Today’s Gospel asks us to think about our response to our baptismal calling; whether we are totally committed. Do you stick your neck out for the Gospel? Are you all-in? Do you know the potential consequences? Have you calculated the cost?

The world’s 26 richest billionaires own as much as the poorest 50% – an unjust situation at odds with the gospel

A shocking statistic published a couple of days ago shows the extent to which our world is messed up. The top 26 billionaires are as wealthy as 3.6 billion people, according to a report by Oxfam International. The net worth of these mostly American top 26 reached $1.4 trillion last year. Or, to put it another way, the world’s 26 richest people own as much as the poorest 50%. Billionaires, who now number a record 2,208, are growing $2.5 billion richer every single day, while the net worth of the world’s poorest half continues to dwindle.
Since the great recession of a decade ago, the number of billionaires has nearly doubled, a gap that will only increase as China’s economic slowdown sharpens and with Brexit and Trump’s trade war creating more uncertainty.
No wonder there has been an increase in the popularity of extremist parties and individuals, especially on the right.
For all the progress humankind has made, for all our advances in technology and science, for all our progress in human rights, there is a growing gap between rich and poor. The rich will always find ways to protect and increase their wealth, even in times of turmoil and certainty. (Just look at how leading Brexiteers are transferring assets overseas in case their deluded project goes wrong.)
More people than ever are excluded access from a decent, sustainable, even a basic, quality of living. Women suffer the most from equality. Of course, the rich practice philanthropy, and many are genuine about it, but charity is never a substitute for social justice. It simply keeps the current system in place.
As the wealthy gather for their annual powwow at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a plan is needed to more fairly distribute the goods of the earth. Oxfam recommends that nations tax wealth at fairer levels, raise rates on personal income and corporate taxes and eliminate tax avoidance by companies and the super-rich.
Here in Ireland, as we celebrate the centenary of the first Dail, we also have a long way to go to build a more just society.
Action for justice is a Christian imperative. The church has a whole body of teaching built up over decades that speaks about the rights of workers and of the poor, a body of teaching that places the church and its members firmly on the side of the oppressed. In fact, the church teaches that action for justice is a constitutive part of living the Gospel. It is not enough for us to tell the poor, the abused, the unjustly treated, that we will pray for them or that we will give money to charity to support them. We must also do whatever we can to address the injustice. Our faith compels us to be concerned for justice and to work for it.
We must support all efforts to build a fairer, more just world.

Priesthood must change if the Mass is to continue being celebrated

As part of our service here in Limerick, Redemptorists celebrate Mass in some local convents every week day and on weekends. It’s a service we are happy to give, something that has been offered for many years now, and a service for which the sisters are most appreciative.

The graying of the priesthood and of religious life is an undeniable reality. The lack of vocations to both is keenly felt. Though many pray for a miracle, few believe it’s going to happen. Those who are able to minister are delighted to do so, and will keep going as long as they are able. But what of the future? What even of the next five years?

We will not be able to continue as we are. The church in Limerick and in the West will not be able to continue as it is. At least, Limerick diocese has held a synod to help it to plan ahead. But no local church has the authority to make the kind of radical decisions that might go some way to addressing the priest shortage. All it, or we, can do is try to involve more non-ordained in the church and enable them to use the many gifts with which the Spirit has blessed them. But priests are needed to lead the celebration of Mass, and Mass, as we know, is the heartbeat of the church. Without priests, while many good liturgies can be held, there can be no Mass.

Meanwhile, groups of religious sisters depend on elderly men to lead them in the Eucharist every day, sisters many of whom are steeped in the scriptures and in the knowledge of God. It seems a shame to me that they are prohibited from leading the Eucharist in their own religious community and that suitably qualified leaders cannot be ordained or anointed to do the same in their own parish communities.

Reform and renewal are needed if the church is to remain alive and significant in the West. A new council of the church is needed in order to meet the extraordinary challenges of the 21st century. If the Eucharist is going to continue to be celebrated regularly, and if the church is to remain vital and alive, then we need a new way of being church, a new model of church. We need radical restructuring.

New wine, as today’s Gospel puts it.

Gillette’s new ad is a statement about Christian values of love and respect. How could anyone be outraged by that?

Gillette, the razor company, released a new television ad this week that has generated lots of controversy. The ad isn’t another version of the shirtless man, gazing into a mirror, face covered in lather, as he shaves himself fresh and handsome for the day ahead, to the old jingle “The best a man can get.”

This ad adopts a radically different approach. There is no shirtless man in front of a mirror. Instead, through a series of different scenes, it provokes viewers to take on issues including sexual harassment, inappropriate behaviour and toxic masculinity, praising those who’ve abandoned “the same old excuses” for such behaviour in the past.

It is Gillette’s response to the #MeToo movement, which has encouraged women to speak out against sexual exploitation in a way they never had before.

Instead of “The best a man can get” line, the new ad challenges, “Is this the best a man can get?” The ad encourages its audience to reflect on what masculinity means, and how a man should see himself.

Many viewers were thrilled with its message of tolerance and respect. But others were outraged by what they saw as another example of political correctness gone mad. They claimed, in the words of Piers Morgan, that the ad is stating that men are bad and masculinity is a bad thing, that it is a shameless exercise in man-shaming and emasculating men.

But what I saw is a beautiful ad with a powerful message. It’s not attacking men or masculinity. It’s attacking toxic behaviour, the kind that leads to intimidation and violence, and women being afraid to be out alone at night. It’s challenging the kind of behaviour nobody – male or female – should engage in.

It’s extraordinary how so many people managed to get offended by the ad. And how the outrage came from the same predictable sources – the right-wing, the traditionalists, the Jordan Peterson fans, the Trumpsters, those who see liberal conspiracies everywhere.

Look at the ad and see if you’re offended. And if you are, then ask yourself why.

It reminds us to think about how we see and relate to each other. How we touch others can be positive or negative. It can build up or knock down; be constructive or destructive, life-enhancing or life-diminishing.

It reminds us that we can touch someone with a warm hug or we can touch them with a slap or a beating. “The verbal, physical, and sexual violence that women endure in some marriages contradicts the very nature of the conjugal union,” Pope Francis writes in The Joy of Love. And, of course, this doesn’t just happen within marriage.

It reminds us that we can touch someone with a word of encouragement or acceptance or love. Or we can touch someone with a word of contempt or anger or abuse. Bullying in schools and the workplace is a major problem, made worse by social media such as Facebook and Twitter. And we know what bullying can do.

The Gillette ad is a statement about Christian values of love and respect.

Why should anyone be outraged about that?

People who make me ashamed to be a Christian

I am no saint and am full of faults and prejudices of my own but there are some kinds of Christians I find embarrassing and who give Christianity a bad name. Among them are:

Christians who support a man who gleefully puts kids in cages at the Mexico border.

Christians who (quietly) support the burning down of hotels designated as reception centres for refugees.

Christians who use the cloak of clericalism to nakedly climb the hierarchical ladder.

Christians who refuse to receive holy communion from a person of colour.

Christians who use their position of trust to use and abuse the weak and vulnerable and those who cover up for them.

Christians who greedily exploit and denude the environment, or treat it with reckless abandonment.

Christians who blame those who are gay for sexual abuse in the church.

Christians who want nothing to do with Christians of other denominations.

Christians who disown a family member simply because he/she is gay (even though God created everyone in God’s own image and likeness).

Christians who send gay teens to special camps to undergo so-called ‘conversion therapy.’

Christians who advocate erecting walls and barriers between nations and peoples rather than building bridges.

Christians who, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, continue to deny the reality of man-made climate change.

Christians who are repulsed by transgender people, even though they have no idea about the life-long pain and trauma transgender people go through.

Christians who agitate about some pro-life issues while studiously ignoring others.

Christians who confidentially tell you that they just hate having all those foreigners around. (Who knows what diseases they might have?)

Christians who vociferously attack the current pope while tolerating no criticism of his immediate predecessors.

Christians who anonymously report or delate other Christians to those in authority for not being, in their view, sufficiently orthodox.

When Christianity is not about love, then it is about nothing.

True love, which always speaks the truth, is the only antidote to the lies and fake news of today

Love is an overused word today. We find it everywhere from graffiti-laden locker room walls to the heart emojis in anonymous internet chat rooms. It sells everything from underwear to Ferraris. It is confused with every kind of feeling and state and emotion. I’ve been thinking of the casual way I misuse the word love:

I love chips

I love a nice lie-in on a Saturday morning

I love Liverpool FC

I love preaching

I love salt

I love a good game of hurling

I love a book that captures my imagination

I love relaxing on Cape Clear island in the summer

I love Munster rugby

I love history and politics

I’m sure all of us can come up with our own list of ways we misuse the word love.

But what is the true meaning of love? For those who are Christian, if we want to know what true love is, we need only look at God. God is love, St John tells us. God not only loves, God is love. And God showed us what true love is like by sharing it, by shaping us like himself, with an inbuilt capacity for loving. By sending his only Son among us to show us how to live.

The nature of true love is spelled out for us in St Paul’s famous ode to love that is read at so many weddings: “Love is patient, love is kind. Love is not envious, boastful, rude, and arrogant. Love does not insist on its own way, is not irritable or resentful, love takes joy not in wrong-doing but only in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

That is the definition of true love.

True love does not change with the times. It can be cheapened by misuse and overuse but its essence never changes. Love is not infatuation or lust or obsession. It is not servile submission or putting up with. It is not grasping or abusive or domineering. It is not a one-night stand or a casual fling with someone whose name you forget the next day. True love overcomes, forgives, endures, sacrifices, empathises. It never gives up on anyone. It sees the good in everyone. Love, true love, is our best nature because it is God at work in us.

True love is never selfish, never all about me. When you love it’s not all about you anymore, you empty yourself for the one you love. You die to yourself for the one you love. Think of the give and take in a marriage or a committed relationship. Think of the parents of a handicapped child who spend themselves for that child every single day. Or the one who cares for an elderly parent. Patience, sacrifice, devotion, willingness to be there for someone always – that’s love.

True love speaks the truth. Or, as St Paul puts it, love delights in the truth. It always speaks the truth, no matter how difficult or dangerous that might be. Love speaks uncomfortable truths, whatever the cost. We can think of politicians, presidents and others throughout history, and especially today in this era of fake news, for whom that concept is alien.

Andrei Sakharov was a brilliant scientist who helped develop the Soviet Union’s nuclear programme. The Communist authorities honoured him for his achievements. But then he began to speak out in favour of social justice and human rights and against the bomb. So he was stripped of his honours and sent into internal exile in the city of Gorky, where he could contact no one. He was punished severely for telling the truth, as so many of his country men and women were. But he did not back down and he was vindicated in the end. Love speaks the truth no matter what the cost.

Love risks everything. It pays any price; lays everything on the line. Think of Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish Franciscan who willingly gave his life in Auschwitz for a man he did not know. 

True love risks everything.

The Bee Gees were onto something when they asked: How deep is your love?