An Irish Sunday
The Church honors St. Patrick this weekend and the larger community of Chicago has celebrated with the color green, Irish Dancers, Irish music, food and drink this past week, leading up to the actual Feast Day. I was very inspired by the Siamsa na nGael (pronounced Sheemsa N Gail) Celtic celebration at Symphony Center this past Monday. Siamsa na nGael is Gaelic for Song, Story and Dance. These three elements are beautifully celebrated in an annual event hosted by the collaborative efforts of Symphony Center, the Metropolis Symphony Orchestra and Old St. Patrick’s Church.
Each year a guest narrator tells a certain story from Irish culture and history. This year marked the 25th anniversary and the first since Covid. WXRT disc jockey, the legendary Terri Hemmert told the story of St. Brigid, and Irish dancers of all ages and the powerful collection of singers and musicians gave motion and melody to the story.
Brigid is one of the three national saints of Ireland along with Patrick and Columba. She was born in 451 and founded the first and greatest Abbey in Kildare. The many hagiographies, or stories of lore and inspiration, tell us that Brigid was brave and innovative, inspiring women to develop spiritually and creatively. The Abbey thus became a center for education, art and a blending of pagan culture with Christianity. This is much like the melding of Native American spirituality with Catholic practices, rituals and thought similar to the way our new friends in Montana are leading and expressing. This year’s Lenten Social Justice Project gives us here at Holy Family gives us the opportunity to support a strong missionary movement in the Big Sky Country of the United States.
Brigid has such a missionary spirit, inspired by the first Christian missionary to Ireland, St. Patrick. Patrick died in 461 when Brigid was a ten year old girl, and at the same time her father sold her and her mother as slave workers to a Druid. Working in trapped and oppressed conditions undoubtedly motivated Brigid to overcome the injustice of slave labor and to learn, study and grow. A greater sense of purpose and good old fashioned luck earned her freedom and fueled a fire of empowerment for her and all the women she mentored and lived in community with.
Terri Hemmert took extra pride in narrating this story, a strong, creative, empowered woman telling the story of another.
Sr. Mary Dostal and Amy Aguire at Angela’s Piazza, Becky Pugh in the Diocese of Great Falls Billings as well as Megan Callahan, Myra Martinez, Sr. Edith Shnell and Chelsea Arlee in the Diocese of Helena all share the missionary spirit of both Patrick and Brigid. These dedicated and faith filled Montana women have been empowered in ministry, and like Brigid in Ireland 1500 years ago, they are empowering others.
Please prayerfully consider a generous donation for our 2024 Lenten Social Justice Project in support of them.
A New Covenant of the Heart
During this reflective season of Lent, let’s all seek to find more analogies and metaphors for reconciliation. We have a beautiful one in the first reading at Mass this weekend from the prophet Jeremiah. It begins, “The days are coming says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel…it will not be like the covenant I made with their Fathers…I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts.”
The covenant that God made with the chosen people in the desert – the covenant that we renew every time we gather to celebrate the Eucharist – can be concretized in the Ten Commandments. This covenant was written on tablets and gives us a guide for how to lie.
Because we are human we fall short of living the covenant. Once the chosen people got to the promised land they overlooked the law and broke the covenant with sinful behavior. Jeremiah speaks for God who makes a new covenant with us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It is a covenant of forgiveness placed in our hearts. It is a new covenant with new beginnings and new hope.
May this Lenten season be one during which you form a new covenant of the heart with God and others.