Last Sunday I was down in the West of Ireland.  I met there, Brian and Mary, a couple whose wedding I celebrated almost twenty years ago.  Mary was holding in her arms their beautiful daughter, Ciara.  Mary’s mother was also there and she said to me, “You know that child is greatly treasured.  They waited fourteen years.”  Indeed, I could easily see the joy on the faces of those parents at the presence of their beautiful and long awaited daughter.

Today, we celebrate the birth of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus.  I am quite sure that Mary’s parents Joachim and Anne, were truly delighted when their child, Mary, was born.  I am sure her arrival brought immense joy to their hearts.  They would have thanked God sincerely and often.  For, along with the rest of the people of Israel they too had been waiting.  They were waiting for God to keep his promise – the promise he made to Abraham and to his descendents.

Mary was the bearer of that promise for each of us and for all of mankind. Speaking of this feast of her birth, one of the Fathers of the early Church said: “Let the whole creation sing praise and dance and unite to celebrate the glories of this day. Let everything that is, in the world and above the world, join together in rejoicing, for today a Shrine is built for the Creator of the universe.  The creature is made ready as a divine dwelling place for the Creator.”

This evening, here in St. Malachy’s Church, Armagh we are very well placed to sing praise in honour of the Virgin Mary’s birth. We are joined by the Charles Wood Singers and by those attending the annual Charles Wood Summer School for music.  We are also joined by members of the Ulster Orchestra under the direction of Conductor, David Hill. The Church Organist this evening is Daniel Hyde co-director of the Cambridge University Chamber choir.

Charles Wood, a native of Armagh, was also closely associated with Cambridge University. It was as professor of Music at Cambridge that he pursued his life’s work. It culminated in a legacy which included over 250 pieces of sacred music plus a large number of hymn tunes. One of those tunes remains popular today in the famous carol which runs;

Aye- maiden child of
Joachim and Anna.
Archangels chant Hosanna!
Come weal, come woe, our
hymn shall never vary.
Hail! Blessed Virgin Mary!
Hail! Blessed Virgin Mary!

Charles Wood was happy to acknowledge the debt we owe to Mary for her part in the great symphony of salvation. His life overlapped by some quarter of a century with that of Cardinal John Henry Newman. While still an Anglican, Cardinal Newman wrote this of Mary:

She is doubtless to be accounted blessed and favoured in herself, as well as in the benefits she has done us. Who can estimate the holiness and perfection of her, who was chosen to be the Mother of Christ? What must have been her gifts, who was chosen to be the only near earthly relative of the Son of God, the only one whom he was bound by nature to revere and to look up to; the one appointed to train and educate him, to instruct him day by day, as he grew in wisdom and in stature?

Cardinal Newman paints a very human picture of the daily intimacy between Mary and Jesus. This must have been such an important influence on our Lord’s early life. It made me wonder about something that I had never asked myself before. Would Jesus have celebrated the birthday of his Mother Mary? I am fairly certain that he did, even though it is not mentioned in the Scriptures. I am sure that, on the birthday of His mother, he would have thanked his Father in heaven for having given him such a wonderful example of what it is to be human, to be gentle and to be generous in the service of others.  I am sure He would have prayed for her that her faith in Him would never fail despite the temptations and the trials and tribulations which lay ahead.  I also wonder did Jesus always remember Mary’s birthday or did He sometimes forget? I wonder did He always make sure to be present in Nazareth with her on that day? 

I also wonder what part Jesus’ grandparents Joachim and Anne played in his early life? Grandparents have always been an important part of that intimate circle of family love which provides the most nurturing and stable environment  in which children grow.

Recently I received a letter telling me that a Sunday has now been set aside at our National Shrine to Mary at Knock here in Ireland specifically to honour grandparents. In an age when the traditional family unit is facing such pressure and change, it is grandparents who are increasingly called upon to provide the only realistic and affordable source of support for parents and children alike. It is often grandparents who are the sole voice offering children and couples wisdom and values beyond the prevailing mores of a materialistic society.

There are so many stars in our world – pop stars, film stars, sports stars. In his recent encyclical on hope, Pope Benedict reminds us that the real stars are those who have shown us how to live our lives well.

As we were reminded in our Office Hymn, since the early centuries of the Church, Mary has been known as a ‘star’ – the morning star – the ‘Stella Maris’ – the star of the sea.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, close friend of St. Malachy, once wrote of this Star:

“If the winds of temptation arise; If you are driven upon the rocks of tribulation look to the star, call on Mary; If you are tossed upon the waves of pride, of ambition, of envy, of rivalry, look to the star, call on Mary. Should anger, or avarice, or fleshly desire violently assail the frail vessel of your soul, look to the star, call upon Mary.”

Today, in spite of their new technologies, sailors will often look to the stars for guidance. As we look for guidance amidst whatever darkness, storms or challenges we face in our own lives, let us call upon Mary. The feast of the Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary invites us to hold a steady course as this Stella Maris beckons us to the light of her Son, the eternal light of our heavenly home. Her birth is the prelude to the great symphony of salvation. Its crescendo is the union in her womb of the Divine Word and human nature.

We ask the help of Mary that this union will bear fruit in us.

Ave Maria, gratia plena – Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb – Jesus.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us now – and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for your warm welcome here today to Ballinasloe.  Some time, late last year, Bishop Kirby told me that in August 1858 the new St Michael’s Church in Ballinasloe had been opened.  He went on to say that the Preacher on that day was none other than Cardinal Nicholas Patrick Wiseman, Archbishop of Westminster, England.  Having heard that, it wasn’t difficult to guess what the next question would be – would I like to come here today and join all of you on this happy occasion as you celebrate 150 years of your venerable and beautiful Church. 

I have to say that I was very happy to accept that invitation for many reasons.  First of all, out of respect for Bishop Kirby himself, whom I have known for 51 years, ever since we were students together in Maynooth.  In more recent times, of course, as Chairman of the Executive Committee of Trócaire, Bishop Kirby has shown tremendous commitment and dedication to alleviating the needs of the developing nations of the world.  I am also glad to come here also out of affection for my many classmates, in Maynooth, from the diocese of Clonfert. 

When we went to Maynooth 51 years ago, in September 1958, my classmates on that day included:
•    Fr Christy O’Byrne, PP, Laurencetown,
•    Fr Benny Flanagan, PP, Carrabane,
•    Fr John Naughton, PP, Eyrecourt
•    and the late Fr Paschal Donohoe. 

I moved to the Irish College, Rome, in 1960, so also did Paschal, and for the next four years we walked the streets of Rome and tramped up and down the Seven Hills together.  The late Paschal used to take great delight in regaling us with stories of life in the West, in Galway, in the diocese of Clonfert in Garbally Park.  His descriptions of rugby and hurling contests had us believe they were equal to anything that took place in the Circus Maximus or the Roman Coliseum and, of course, there were some tall stories from the marts and fairs of Ballinashoe.

During my 13 years on the staff of the Irish College, Rome, from 1980 to 1993, it was my privilege to celebrate the weddings of a great number of Irish couples in Rome.  Many of those couples are from the diocese of Clonfert and they were always gloriously happy occasions.  Many is the time that the walls of Roman restaurants shuddered to the strains of the Fields of Athenry.

I feel greatly honoured by the decision of the Urban Council to grant me a Civic Reception.  Your agreement to this proposal, ladies and gentlemen, to mark my visit here today, to your lovely town, is a most gracious and delightful one.  I am well aware that you are honouring me in my capacity as Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland and successor of St Patrick.  I am very proud to accept this honour.  I thank you most sincerely for it.  I am pleased to bring you greetings and good wishes from the City of Armagh and indeed from the diocese of Armagh.
I wasn’t lucky enough to be born in Co. Galway, a county so famed in song and story, in history and poetry, but I come from a county where there is huge respect for the citizens of this noble county.  Of course the displays of Galway teams in Croke Park, both in hurling and football, on so many occasions have added to that respect immensely.  Your footballers gave another such display last Saturday and were rather unfortunate not to have won.

I have a lot of admiration for people, like yourselves.  People who put themselves forward for local government elections.  Members of my family, on both sides of my family, were elected to such positions.  I think such willingness is essential for the survival of democracy.  I wish you well in your deliberations, great wisdom in your decisions and, of course, I wish continued success and prosperity to the citizens of Ballinasloe.

Every time I read or hear that Gospel – I am a little bit shocked.  Shocked at the way Our Lord behaved towards the Canaanite woman.  At first he refused to talk to her.  When he did talk to her it was to remind her that she was an outsider – a Gentile – a pagan – not a Jewess and therefore not his first concern.  Mind you, that was after the disciples had advised him to send her away or give her what she wants.  She was following them, making all this noise and generally getting on their nerves.  They wanted her to clear off.

•    But she was a mother with a sick child. 
•    A mother who loved her sick child
•    A mother who was determined to leave no stone unturned in her efforts to get help for the daughter whom she loved.

She is totally focussed. ‘Son of David’ she cried out. ‘Have mercy on me’.  Jesus answered:  ‘I have been sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel’.   Before his death the mission of Jesus was to gather all Israel – God’s chosen people.

Jesus did not want to go beyond the mission given to him by the Father.  He would preach to his own people first.  After all – it was they who were expecting a Messiah – and they might reasonably be expected to welcome the Messiah when he came. 
The thing that shocks is that not only the disciples, but Jesus himself, seems at first, to exclude.  “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to dogs” he says.  When Jesus referred to her people as dogs he wasn’t the first to make use of this taunt.  It was in common use among the Jews as a derogatory, disrespectful description of those who were not Jews.  Jesus knew that well.  The woman also probably knew it too.  Jesus was not implying that he looked on Gentiles, pagans, as dogs. 

Well what was he saying?

Perhaps he was saying, to this woman pleading for her daughter, that she was asking a lot.  She was asking for the miraculous healing of her daughter.  But more even than that – she was asking Jesus to give to her gifts that were, by right, not hers to ask.  She had addressed him as Son of David – the King of Israel.  There he was, the long-awaited Saviour of Israel – then Jesus, and the benefits of his kingdom belonged surely, firstly, to those who suffered in Israel, not to Gentile outsiders.

The woman is very quick to pick up the image in the answer given by Jesus and turn it to her own advantage – but without arrogance.  Her courageous humility bests her.  Perhaps it is right then, with this outsider who refuses to go away, that the real embarrassment of this story lies. 

Remember St. Matthew was writing from the inside, from Israel, from Jesus our people.  His audience is a Jewish people – the people who had been given the law and the prophets and the covenant.  And yet, it was this same people who took smug delight in their way of life – their fidelity to the Sabbath etc., who failed to see, in Jesus, their long-awaited Saviour. 

Then this outsider – this pagan – this probably poor woman with her sick daughter, simply refuses to go away from Jesus.  She simply refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer.  She flings herself down crying ‘Lord – help me’.  She has a sense of honour and she wins the debate. 

Even dogs are allowed a few crumbs from the children’s bread.  ‘O woman – great is your faith’ what else could he say.  What an immense compliment.  Maybe that is the real scandal of today’s Gospel.

Great is the outsider’s faith – so great a faith in fact that it puts the rest of us to shame.  What about our faith?  What about those of us on the inside who are heirs to a century’s old faith. 

I was in Nigeria two years ago and I saw people travel for days to attend a three hour ordination ceremony.  And for some of us for whom the Mass and our faith is our birthright, how little it takes to keep us away from Mass.  How little it takes to leave us skipping our prayers.  But this pushy, stubborn determined pagan woman saw in Jesus the help her daughter desperately needed.  Her persistence is an embarrassment to those of us who are more faith-healed.  She was hurting – she saw and she simply refused to be packed off empty handed.  ‘O woman, great is your faith’. 

This woman reminds me a lot of St. Monica.  She was married to a man called Patrick.  He was described variously as a pagan, a nominal Christian – a bad tempered man.  Her mother-in-law lived in the house and added to the difficulties.  Monica overcame her own tendency to heavy drinking.  By her patient perseverance Monica won over her mother-in-law and her husband.  He was frequently unfaithful but never struck her or physically ill-treated her.
It is as the Mother of St. Augustine that Monica is especially famous.  He was a wild man in his youth for many years.  Once again her patient treatment of him over many anxious years, ended up in his conversion.  She is regarded as the model of Christian mothers.  When Augustine was young she had him enrolled for baptism.  His irregular life-style caused her so much grief that, for a while, she refused to let him live in her house.  But she soon relented when advised that maybe the time of his conversion had not yet come. 

So she gave up arguing with him or asking others to do so.  She turned instead to prayer, fasts and vigils – pilgrimages – I suppose.  She was hoping that those would work where arguments had failed.

Augustine cleared off to Rome – from his native Africa – even deceiving his mother about the time of his departure so that he could travel.  He went to Milan but the bold Monica followed and caught up and enlisted more help.  To cut a long story short, he was baptised in 386 – at the age of 32 and he was totally and morally reformed.

Shortly before her death she told her son: ‘Nothing in this world now gives me pleasure.  I do not know what there is left for me to do or why I am still here.  All my hopes in the world are now fulfilled.  All I wished to live for was to see you a Catholic and a child of Heaven – God has granted me more than this in making you despise earthy happiness and devote yourself to His service’.  Another great woman of great faith.

A priest-friend sent me a postcard recently. It showed a farmer scattering the oats by hand in a valley in Cumbria in1952.  He carried a large sort of basket full of oats as he strode up and down the ploughed field. It reminded me of my father sowing oats or grass seeds about the same time – about fifty years ago.

A gardener friend said to me recently “A dry May and a little rain in June keeps the farmer in good tune”.

Of the course the farmer is in good tune when the crops are growing.  In today’s Gospel, Jesus obviously is describing a scene that was well known to him.  He talks about the sower gong out to sow his seed.  He knew well that for the growth to happen, four elements are needed,
seed,
soil,
sunshine and
some rain –

and then this marvellous miracle called growth takes place.

I have another friend who, every time we say grace before meals and bless the food and thank the Lord for food, this friend reminds us not to forget to thank Mother Earth who, year in and year out, produces the food and drink, the light and heat, the clothes and shoes and shelter that makes life bearable.
Too easily we forget the fact that Mother Earth works her great miracle each and every year by producing the crops even if we, who benefit from them, are so often quite indifferent and quite unthankful.

Today’s liturgy is mindful of these great miracles of nature which so enrich our lives.  They bring us food and flowers and fruit and fish of every kind.  Just listen again to the Responsorial Psalm and let us fill our lungs with praise of a great a generous God. 
You care for the earth, give it water
You fill it with riches
Your river in Heaven brims over to provide its grain
You crown the year with your goodness
Abundance flows in your step
The hills are girded with joy;
The meadows covered with flocks
The valleys are decked with wheat
They shout for joy, yes they shout.

But the Reading then moves on think of  another great sowing which takes place all the time.  It involves all of us, without exception.  There, the sower is none other than God himself.  The soil is the human heart, the heart of each one of us and the seed is the Word of God.

The First Reading tells us that the Word of God is effective.  It does the job.  It achieves its results.  Just as surely as the rain and the snow come down, and most certainly water the earth, and make it fruitful, producing seed for the sower and bread for the eating, in the same way the Word that goes forth from the mouth of God does not return to God empty handed.  Yes, some people may harden their hearts.  Some may refuse to listen.  Ultimately that is the road to disaster.   For anyone who does that cannot have life.  The fact is that where the Word of God fall and is welcomed there, and only there, in that human heart does  the seed of life grow and bear fruit.
The prophet Isaiah was talking to people who lived in the desert.  They knew how barren it was.  They experienced, in their own lives, the struggle to eke out a living.  He was talking to people for whom rain was synonymous with life.

The Word of God is alive and active, sharper than any two edged sword we are told.  The question is:  How is the Word of God alive and active in my life; in your life? 

Today’s Gospel takes the argument a bit further. Yes, the Word of God is always effective in itself but we can put obstacles in its way. We can offer resistance instead of co-operation.  Even the rain can be fruitless, useless if it falls on rocks.   Yes, God is all-powerful but we are free to accept God’s help or to reject that help. 

There is one sun in the skies which gives light to the world.  It is the same light for all.  But it gives different colours to different things:   green grass, red apples, orange jerseys, black hair, brown eyes, blue berries.  It all depends on the type of body on which the light falls.  In the same way the Word of God is always alive and active.  It can judge the desires and thoughts of your heart and mine.  But the Word of God produces different fruits in different hearts.

Jesus presents us with different examples.  There is the superficial heart – those who hear the message of God  but don’t make any effort or pay much attention to it.  The result is that they don’t understand the Word.  They really are not very interested because they are not paying much attention to anything that doesn’t touch themselves in some way. 

Then there are hearts that are hard and rocky.  Yes they hear the message, and to be fair to them, they receive it gladly, but it doesn’t sink in deeply.  They don’t last long especially when trouble comes along, they give up at once.

And then there are the seeds that fall among bushes, thorns.  These are the people that let the worries about life and the desire for riches choke the message.  They don’t bear fruit. 

Then, of course, there is the good soil – those who hear the message and make it their own business to understand it and persist in their sincere efforts to follow that Word in life.  And so, the 64,000 dollar question is:  What division am I in?  This much is sure – whether we are young or old, fit or feeble, we are in one of those divisions –
The  Premiership – the First, Second or Third.  Are we the kind of people who hear the message but quickly forget about it – get distracted?