October 2023: Thought for the Day
Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
1 October 2023
I watched a farmer in Co. Leitrim; he was bringing his flock of sheep out of one field and transferring them somewhere else. But what I admired was how, instead of having a dog round up the sheep with barking and nipping, and wielding a big stick himself, he simply stood by the gate and whistled. The sheep came to him, slowly and contentedly. As they approached, he simply walked out the gate ahead of them; and they followed. I had watched animals being driven with an amount of cruelty, thumping and shouting. This was different. I remembered him when I thought that Christ, the ‘good shepherd’, is not driving us forward, but calling us, drawing us towards him.
Song of the Goldfinch: A Memoir
by John F. Deane, Veritas Publications
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Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
8 October 2023
To call oneself Roman Catholic is perfectly fine, but I prefer now to touch on the wider sense of catholicity, to see my faith as all-embracing, to include all people, all honestly held belief and unbelief, all work that moves to forward humanity in peace, justice, and harmony. To be a Christian, then, is to be aware that the whole cosmos is moving and evolving as one, that all through time something new is being continuously formed and re-formed through the force of evolution. To be part of this Christian thinking is to be aware that creation has been moving forward from the first moment, from the ‘Big Bang’ and that we are invited to be part of that wonderful process.
Song of the Goldfinch: A Memoir
by John F. Deane, Veritas Publications
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Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
16 July 2023
Joy and happiness are two different things, although they are obviously related. There are things in our lives we feel happy doing or experiencing. Watching a good movie makes us feel happy for the time we’re watching it. Happiness is very much in the moment, and it can be good. But joy is a different thing. Joy is a deeper sense than happiness. We feel happy watching a film, but feel joy when we see a good friend who we haven’t seen for awhile. Joy is different. To live lives of joy is not to depend on happiness or temporary experiences. It is to seek out the better path and walk it.
Brendan McManus SJ & Jim Deeds
Finding God in the Mess (Messenger 2023)
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Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
15 October 2023
The Christian faith is something of far more worth than I could have possibly imagined. I had lived something very remote from the faith I now try to hold to, and it is challenging, productive and filled with hope. The word ‘love’ applies to it in every way: from us to the God, from the God to us, and from all creation to the God, and from the God to all creation. None of that was present to me, nor to the many generations that came and went before ours. We have moved very far indeed from those dark beliefs into a bright and beautiful light. And with it we must bring along all the creatures that are part of our care for our common home.
Song of the Goldfinch: A Memoir
by John F. Deane, Veritas Publications
Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
22 October 2023 • Mission Sunday
Midnight; half-moon, a hosting of stars; I turned the clocks back an hour, signaling winter. I had watched the dying sun light up the yellow leaves of the dreaming maple and knew again a yearning for the small wonders. The mare’s-tail persists, and the rushes still thrust up across the lawn. Now the fire has fallen to white ash; as we age, we grow perhaps a little milder, in closer communion with the earth; a little humbler, the demanding lover drawing close. I sit in the fraught stillness, missing the buoyancy, attending on the spirit. I know there are huge granaries out there, amongst the starving. I wait upon the Lord, doleful, quietly expectant.
Song of the Goldfinch: A Memoir
by John F. Deane, Veritas Publications
Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
29 October 2023
I know I have always been more than half in love with the easeful wonder of creation and the warming glow that the loveliness of things offers to the heart …
When, late evening, I lean on the topmost bar of the red gate, looking out on the shadowed world, I search the innermost reaches of the spirit and feel scared lest I discover emptiness, a well that has run dry and hold only woodlice and weevils in its depths; but then I have swung round with joy to hear the scratchy song of the whitethroat as it rises from a fence and flies low and fast into a field; then I know a gratitude that tells of the sacred otherness of the earth.
Song of the Goldfinch: A Memoir
by John F. Deane, Veritas Publications