Author: ANTONINO

– Brought to you by: Fr.Ricardo Teixeira

Having the opportunity to hold the celebrations in English in the Penha de França Church I was asked to write a few words. My name is Ricardo Teixeira; I am a member of the congregation of Priests of the Sacred Heart – Dehonians.

I’m a priest for 10 years, 4 of them in China. Now, coming back to Portugal, I get embarrassed every time people ask me to talk about that time in mission. Because of my missionary experience, I am asked to give testimonies and conferences.

The most embarrassment comes when people call me brave for this experience and I know that the brave and the courageous are the Christians who are in that country and others that are adverse, and maintain their faith.

I admired them when I saw them making long distances to go to church. Where, with effort, they built magnificent churches; for their audacity, they called themselves Christians even though they could lose their jobs, property, and social recognition because of this affirmation. The courage was not mine, the truly brave are those who today, here too, continue to declare themselves as Christians.

Thank you for the opportunity once again to be able to remember the courage of these, our brothers.

Recently I have had the privilege of being invited to spend 10 days in England. It was my first time in that beautiful country. It was a gift from a very special couple who attended the English Mass at the Chapel Penha de França, in Funchal. It is impossible to know Neil and Dena and not believe in the Sacrament of Marriage that is the symbol of the passion that God has for His people. Married for 53 years it is impossible to know Dena and Neil and not believe that Love is a growing journey. That love is growing together. That love is a commitment. That love is a decision. I strongly believe that they love each other more now than on the day of their Wedding. It is a marriage built on a rock as Jesus says in the Gospel (Mat. 7). It is impossible to know Dena and Neil and not believe that love is not love until it is shared with the world especially with the most vulnerable.
Neil belongs to the Church of England and Dena to the Catholic Church.

Besides their strong faith in God, their healthy communication, they also have something special. It is their sense of humour. That’s why laughter is the best music we can hear in that house. That’s what motivated Dena to buy a card for her grandson’s birthday with this saying: «My internet went down the other day so I had to go downstairs to speak to my family. They seemed like good people» Visiting England for the first time I felt like my internet had to break down for me to be able to «go downstairs» to know England and the marvelous English People.

One day in California I said to one of my colleagues: «I have a handicap. The more peoples and cultures I know, the less ready I feel like to put labels on them». He said: «No. That is not a handicap. That is a gift to see beauty in diversity». Africa was a mosaic of peoples, cultures and religions. The United States is a mosaic of peoples and cultures and religions. And they are really like a beautiful mosaic full of diversity and beauty.
However I don’t understand why I fell into the trap of believing that the English People were formal, distant and sometimes cold.

Each moment and each person and each corner of any street was for me a surprise. It was like a show with no intermission.

The place where I stayed was more in the country side of Shrewsbury. Those roads, escorted by beautiful trees extending their arms and embracing each other over the passing cars, the fields of wheat, cows and lambs grazing through those little hills… it is a scene that will stay forever in the eyes and hearts of those who visit them.
And… what about those «cold and distant» people? I confess that every moment and every person I met was a pleasant surprise. And one of the best parts of this discovery was that I was rewarded for expressing my feelings. In the airport I was close to a coffee shop, waiting for my flight. The waiters were so kind and always smiling and treating each customer like as if he/she was the only customer. I went to buy a cup of coffee and expressed my feelings about their service. I got my coffee. Then I asked a normal question: «how much is it?». The answer was: «That’s on the house». His name was Patrick. I wish I could meet Patrick again. But actually I met him again in every person I encountered in England.

Soon I will write another story about a social gathering made of “Cheese and Wine” that brought € 555,00 to the poor helped by “People Helping People” in Madeira.

Love and Peace
Fr. Bernardino Andrade

(bernardinodandrade@gmail.com)

It happened 35 years ago, during the month of August. Actually it was August 15. I remember not because I have a good memory, but because it was the day when the church celebrates the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. Another thing I remember very well was that it was during the peak of the Summer’s heat.

I was standing at the altar celebrating the Eucharist. In my home Parish it is the Feast of «Nossa Senhora do Monte» (Our Lady of the Mountain). I was facing the people. The Church was packed. Many people were standing. Among the standing people there was Gina holding her four-year-old daughter, Irene, in her arms. I assumed that no matter the child’s weight, she was not a light weight for Gina.

At a certain point of the Mass I saw Gina lifting her daughter to the level of her face, and she deposited a very gentle kiss on her sleeping daughter’s forehead. Very naturally. Very normally. Very gently. Then she kept looking at the altar.

I confess that this was a little epiphany for me.
In that moment I thought: «That sleeping child will never know that her mother kissed her today. She will never know how much her mother would always find ways to express her love for her, even when she is asleep».

Yes. It was an epiphany for me. Besides the Bible, mothers have always been for me the best teachers about God’s love and my relationship with God. I fell into contemplation and started thinking and I still think that Irene was asleep and she would never know that her mother kissed her in that moment. It was a gentle and secret kiss.

I believe that the majority of expressions of love that mothers have for their children go unnoticed. During that day I fell into deep contemplation thinking of how many times God kisses me during the day and during the night without being noticed by me. Then I discovered that God is a permanent surprise. He always holds me in His arms and always kisses me, performing so many miracles in my life even when I don’t notice it. God is a permanent surprise. The only thing I ask God in this moment is that He will help me to be open to his gentle and secret kisses. To his gentle and secret surprises.

Love and Peace
Fr. Bernardino Andrade

PS. The mother kissing her daughter, in this picture, is Irene, the one who was kissed by her mother 35 years ago. Now she is 39.  She is my cousin. Irene is doing to her one-and-a-half month old daughter what her mother did to her 35 years ago. In my story I said that Irene would never know that she was kissed by her mother on that very hot day when both of them were perspiring in Church. Now she knows because I told her many years ago. The baby is called Lara Virginia, after her grandmother who died recently.

1.
Jesus is a fascinating man. Jesus is a very kind and a very attractive man. He attracted multitudes. Healed the sick, played with children, left 99 good sheep and looked for the stupid, for the least, the last, the lost, the run-away. And when He found His lost sheep, bleeding, dirty, and smelling like urine and feces, approached her, very gently, with no questions asked, took her in His arms and brought her home.

Sometimes the Sunday Mass can be very beautiful, very alive, and very inspirational and very attractive. Sometimes it can be boring, uncomfortable, challenging and disturbing. The truth is that the Eucharist is never meant to be a Sunday spiritual entertainment.

In today’s Gospel (21st Sunday of the year, Cycle B, John 6: 60-69), Jesus gives to people a completely different image of what His followers thought He was. That sweet and attractive Jesus all of a sudden becomes very disturbing. He talked about eating His flesh. And the biggest challenge was that eating His flesh had disturbing and subversive consequences. What happened then? «Many of His disciples left Him and stopped going with Him. Then Jesus said to the twelve:

What about you? Do you want to go away too? » (John 6: 60-69)

2.
A Disturbing Jesus in a disturbing world

According to the Assistant Director General of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, about one-half billion of the over four billion people who live on earth are at the brink of starvation daily.

Some 200 million children become mentally handicapped or blind due to a lack of nutritious food, and another 10 million succumb to other hunger-related illness. The World Health Organization estimates that approximately one-third of the world’s population is underfed and one-third is hungry. Four million people die each year of starvation and 70% of children under six are undernourished. Equally alarming are the statistics which estimate that approximately three billion members of the human family suffer from chronic spiritual hunger and/or malnutrition.

These hunger pangs must also be recognized, as this hunger can be just as lethal as its physical counterpart. In recognition of this fact, the Church puts the gathered assembly in touch each week with the food that will satisfy its hungers. Each week the community is fed with the Bread of Life, in both word and sacrament; nourished by this essential food, every believer receives the strength needed for continuing to live a committed life. (Celebration)

This is highly disturbing: There is a lady who attends Mass in one of the churches where I help, when she hears me talking about the poor and the suffering she very openly leaves the church during my sermon to return when I finish. It is really an act of protest against bringing to church themes that are «not proper». Nothing new. His disciples did the same. I am afraid that many Christians don’t agree about the «proper themes for a proper church».

Love and Peace
Fr. Bernardino Andrade

(bernardinodandrade@gmail.com)

One of the most fascinating things about a human being is the capacity to feed and to be food. One of the most known chapters of the Gospel is John 6. Jesus talks about feeding, and he fed large crowds by multiplying bread. Then He talks, for a long time, about himself becoming and being bread. Bread of Life. He talks about Himself about becoming, and being, food.
Every time we attend our Sunday Mass we learn and are inspired to be like Jesus. That means to feed, and to be food.

IDOLIZING WITHOUT TRUSTING

American actor, Tony Randall, famous for his role as Felix in «The Odd Couple», once had an experience that surely was the inspiration for a current credit card commercial.

Randal was in a jewellery store in New York City. The store’s owner recognized him and was very excited. He declared that Randall was his all-time favourite actor. What a treat it would be for his wife, the man said, if she could talk to the Tony Randall. Randall graciously agreed. So, the man called his wife and Randall had a short, pleasant conversation with her as she gushed on and on about how wonderful he was. Finally, Randall came to the point of his visit to the jewellery store. There was a gold necklace in the window that had caught his eye. He would like to buy it. Would the store accept a personal cheque? The store owner hesitated, then asked, «Do you have any identification?»

Recognition only goes so far. The store owner only goes so far. The store owner was ready to idolize Tony Randall. He wasn’t ready to trust him.

It is possible for people to attend Mass today and worship Jesus, but still not trust Him with their lives?

Jesus is not in search of admirers. Jesus is in search of followers.

According to statistics from Oxfam, 2.500 people will die of hunger during the typical one-hour Church service. Two thirds of them will be children.

Love and Peace,
Fr. Bernardino Andrade

There are perhaps dozens of categories of freedom. Religious freedom is taken from those who have it, without giving it to dozens of countries that have never had it. Not a few, today, repeat the buzzword that one’s freedom ends where another’s freedom begins, as if it were all clear.

Many flee from thinking of their inner freedom, the freedom of their own neurons, the freedom of their passions, affections and hearts. And even more flee from linking it to responsibility. It is repeated that thinking is free; and can be; do not forget, however, the unique thought, politically correct, that so many want to impose on us.

Most people like to multiply theories of freedom from social constraints. They forget the constraints of fashion and the biological ones that nobody chooses; and the limiting conditions of freedom that each add up in the illusion of, but nevertheless do not reduce his freedom.

The “catechism” of the French Revolution leads many to think that everything is said with a few words on freedom. Many people are convinced that if they do what they like, they are already free. Despite Nelson Mandela’s centenary with 27 years in prison, many do not wonder how he, while incarcerated, remained liberated in his thinking and being.

There is a certain dread about speaking on debauchery as if there were only freedom with kindness, and people do not abuse it when they relate to others. Nor do many people like to speak of those who lose inner and outer freedom in each repetition of their substance-dependent behaviors and obsessive thoughts and behavioral compulsions. Few like to think that there are many people, perhaps more and more, who behave with reduced freedom in one, two, three and more behaviors.

Are the millions of Anonymous who face, with the Twelve-Step method of Minnesota, some of their behaviors without freedom and without truth, mistaken? At least these put side by side freedom and truth as the opposite to the lie of their life; they put side by side freedom, beauty and kindness of living.

It seems that it is not politically correct and well accepted to say that lie is glued to the lack of freedom, even when it is stated otherwise. Before Pilate, who seemed to want to know the truth about Jesus, he soon became disinterested in hearing Jesus saying that he came to bear witness to the truth (Jn 18: 38-39). Freedom and lying, together, can only be an illusion; the opposite of goodness and beauty of life. Freedom and lies end in corruption and slavery for the liar and others.

This apparent freedom, cooked with lies, cannot lead to the much-vaunted fraternity of the 1789 revolution, nor to the equal dignity of all people.

Equality, proclaimed without the dignity, respected, of all people, is a colossal sociopolitical lie. And why is the statement of the One who fully knows what it means to be free, so forgotten, “you shall know the truth, and it shall make you free”

Fr. Aires Gameiro, OH