ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION - SOLEMNITY OF THE MOTHER OF GOD 2017

We are sometimes told that Catholic devotion to the mother of Jesus is effusive and unbiblical. It is worthwhile, then, on today’s feast, to see what scripture has to say about Mary. For if ever the Mother of Jesus were spoken of in effusive terms, it is in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel.

The very first words addressed to Mary in scripture are uttered, not by a human, but by an angel, a powerful heavenly messenger who bears a message from the Throne of God itself. The message begins thus: “Rejoice, you who have been filled with grace! The Lord is with you!” Strong language indeed for an angel to address to a human.

The angel describes Mary as having been already filled with grace. And filled with grace implies sinlessness; for where someone is filled with grace, can there be any room for sin? The angel greets the mother-to-be of Jesus as a vessel of grace, already prepared to receive in her womb the Saviour of the world.

The angel says further: “The Lord is with you.” Israel, of which Mary is a daughter, had at that time been waiting for the coming of the Saviour for many centuries, for the Day of the Lord, when Israel would be vindicated and blessed with all manner of good things. With Mary, there is no question of a future coming; the Lord is already with Mary. The decisive coming of the Lord has already taken place in her life.

Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth is further evidence of the extreme terms which the Scriptures accord her. As she arrives, the first human to acknowledge her arrival is an unborn child. Just as John the Baptist was later to go before Jesus to the world in his ministry, so he is already in the womb the first to recognise and proclaim Jesus’ coming. In the light of this, the millions of "terminations" of pregnancy carried out every day in the world should be sobering.

Note the words of Elizabeth: “You are blessed amongst women.” This does not mean “one blessed woman amongst other blessed women,” so much as “Out of all women, you are the one who has been blessed.” And the action of the unborn John as he “leapt for joy” within his mother’s womb as both are filled with the Holy Spirit.

All the strong terms by which Mary is described or addressed in these scriptures point to Mary as a model of discipleship. “I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me as you have said,” are her words to the angel, words of utter submission to God’s will and purpose for her. At Cana in Galilee her advice is to “do whatever he tells you.” All the revelations she hears about Jesus she “ponders in her heart.” Even in his agony on the cross, she is present, never losing faith or hope in God.

At her last appearance in Scripture, she is amongst the apostles in the Upper Room, patiently awaiting the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church. Mary, the perfect disciple and model for all disciples, points the way not to herself, but to Jesus.

Let us give thanks today for the friend, intercessor and model Jesus has given us in his mother, who loves us, and whom Christians through all ages have loved even as they have listened to in her words: “Do whatever He tells you.”

Fr Phillip

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION - CHRISTMAS GALLERY

Here is a short, very mixed gallery of photographs from Christmas day events at the Cathedral in Bloemfontein. We sincerely hope that all who see this post had as blessed, holy and joyful a Christmas as we did.

Fr Cyriacus celebrates the Christmas Vigil Mass on Saturday night.

Dr Martina Viljoen plays the big University Allen Organ. Amongst the

works she presented were JS Bach's In dulce jubilo BWV 729 and, at the Vigil

Mass, Olivier Messiaen's Dieu parmi nous from his La Nativité du Seigneur.

Waiting for Christmas dinner, the Oratory "B" team: Fr Johnson's
Betty in the foreground, Fr Xolisa's Luigi in the window box...

...and Father Philip's Snoopy helping him to make up his bed.

CHRISTMAS MASS TIMES 2016

CHRISTMAS MASS TIMES AS ARE FOLLOWS:

Saturday 24th December:

10.30pm Cathedral and St Joseph's

Sunday 25th December:

7.15am and 9am Cathedral

10am St Joseph's

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION - FR STEPHEN CLOTHED AS NOVICE

Today, Saturday 24th December at 5pm, Rev. Fr Stephen Ilechukwu was clothed as a Novice of the Oratory, donning his habit officially for the first time. Here are two photos of the joyful occasion.

The members of the Bloemfontein Oratory: (left to right) Fr Stephen Ilechukwu,

Fr Phillip Vietri, Fr Xolisa Mafu, Fr Cyriacus Okoro, Fr John Johnson (Superior).

Ther newly clothed Fr Stephen with Fr Johnson.

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION – SOLEMNITY OF THE NATIVITY 2016

Giotto, Mystical Nativity

“The people that walked in darkness has seen a great light.” This phrase from the First Reading of the Christmas Vigil Mass is filled with meaning for a Christian. The phrase “great light” in particular, “or gadol” in Hebrew, echoes across the Scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. It expresses the radiant truth of God’s presence in our lives. At Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Jesus amongst us, Scripture is filled with light.

In Genesis, on the fourth day of creation, “God made the two great lights, the greater light (or gadol) to govern the day.” (Gen. 1,16) The Jews, in exile at the time amongst people who worshipped the stars, were poking fun at their captors by saying that God created light on the first day and heavenly bodies on the fourth as decorations for the sky. But at that stage, the sun, or “great light,” was merely for daytime, a physical fact that we recognise today.

But the “great light” became a much more powerful symbol as their understanding and knowledge of God developed through their experience of Him in their history. He became, in times of trouble, their Saviour God, and the “great light” became, not a heavenly body that shone during the daytime, but God himself who shone out as a beacon of hope in the darkness of their captivity. “The people that walked in darkness has seen a great light.”

 The link between light and darkness, on the one hand, and sin and God’s salvation on the other, persists throughout Scripture. Later in Isaiah, as we will hear on 8th January in the Solemnity of the Epiphany, God’s people are told to “Arise, shine out; for your Light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will appear over you!” (Is. 60,1-2) Here, the light does not only shine in the darkness; it dispels the darkness. By the time of the New Testament, this unquenchable Light has become the person of Jesus, as we read in the prologue to the Gospel of John: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness could not overcome it.” (John 1,5) Here it is Jesus who overpowers permanently the darkness of sin through his death and resurrection.

Finally, there is the definitive coming of the Light at the end of time in the Book of Revelation, where John describes the New Jerusalem: “And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light.” (Rev. 22,5) Here, God himself, the Lamb, shines upon them, so that not only is there no darkness, but no need of artificial light. The glory of God has triumphed for ever, so that the darkness of sin, evil, sickness, suffering and death no longer exists. In this symbol of the light overcoming the darkness and destroying it forever, we are given the vision of eternal life for those who love God and have remained faithful to him through the patient endurance of their tribulations.

We are drawn once more to the crib before our altar. We can never for a moment forget that, behind and beyond the homely and endearing scene of the Holy Family, the shepherds, the sheep, the Magi and their camels which we see every Christmas, lies the enormous reality of redemption from sin, of a New Creation. All this can be ours, if only we will love and obey the Universal King who lies so helplessly in the manger. “A light shines in the darkness...this is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad.”

Fr Phillip.

END OF YEAR FUNCTION - VOTE OF THANKS TO FR JOHNSON BY BLOEMFONTEIN ORATORIANS

At the end of this year 2016, as the Bloemfontein Oratory -in formation reaches the end of its second year of existence, the Fathers of the Oratory in Bloemfontein passed a vote of thanks to Fr Johnson for all that he has done for this Community since it was formed. Since he has so rarely appeared on our social media pages, we wish to give an account here of his achievements.

Fr Johnson is superior of the Bloemfontein Oratory-in-formation, the third he has founded in South Africa (including Oudtshoorn and Port Elizabeth). He has an impressive CV in the foundation of the Oratory in South Africa these past 25 years. Indeed, before him, there was no Oratory in South Africa. The first, in Oudtshoorn, was established to serve the Afrikaans Apostolate of the Catholic Church in Southern Africa. The monumental task of translating and publishing the Afrikaans Sacramentary and Lectionaries was completed under his direction.

He then established the Oratory in Port Elizabeth, constructing two major architectural additions, a double-storey residential block for the Fathers and another equally significant aedifice which houses the Collegium of St Philip Neri, an orientation year for students of the priesthood which he founded and of which he was rector for more than fifteen years. He promoted and financed the priestly formation and ordination of most the Port Elizabeth and Oudtshoorn Fathers, a contribution which can hardly be exaggerated. How on earth did he manage to pay for the formation of so many seminarians, including education at overseas institutions? Their education has also included international travel, also financed by him.

In Bloemfontein his work has continued. The Oratory-in-formation here has a busy and active apostolate. We are responsible for both urban parishes – St Joseph’s, a suburban church, was in a seriously neglected state, and has been substantially renovated, though this is still in process. We are responsible for the chaplaincy to Bloemfontein’s seven hospitals and many sodalities and societies, including the Sacred Heart, Knights of Da Gama, Divine Mercy and centring prayer group, as well as the Portuguese Apostolate, to name some of them. One of our Fathers is a Diocesan Consultor. In Fr Stephen Ilechukwu, Bloemfontein has already celebrated its first ordination.

The Oratory is responsible for the Religious Education and liturgy of St Joseph’s CBC, Bloemfontein. At the annual national CBC Conference for RE teachers Fr Johnson was the keynote speaker. He will shortly be addressing a similar conference in Welkom, and travels to Gauteng next year to address the Principals’ conference. He has been invited, by the Afrikaans Department of UFS, to address them on the Catholic Afrikaans Language Apostolate.

Musically, the Cathedral has a link to the UFS’s Odeion School of music. The UFS Allen organ, a massive, 3-manual version, has been installed alongside our existing pipe organ. Prof Beukes, the head of the Organ Department, teaches in the Cathedral, and recitals by lecturers, students and visiting international organists also take place here. The organ students practise here on a daily basis. Two of the music professors have taken up posts as cathedral organists, and have become Catholics.

All this and more has been achieved under his remarkable leadership. He is everywhere active and involved. He has presided over a renewal of liturgy and music at the Cathedral, and a Newman Association which has hosted some of the finest academics from UFS and other educational institutions. In October, at the height of the university protests, student leaders from the Central University of Technology (C.U.T.) invited him to address them, an address which received great acclaim.

Fr Johnson is loved and revered by parishioners and Oratorians alike. He has achieved so much in his brief two years here, and as a result of his apostolic work, the Oratory has become a household name in Bloemfontein. Below we offer a few photographs of him in his various activities here in Bloemfontein.

Rev. Fr Cyriacus Okoro C.O.

At the December Newman Association on the stage of the Odeion theatre, UFS:

Fr Davey, Prof Nicol Viljoen, Fr Johnson, Mbuso Zuma (Kloof Choirmaster, Durban),

Prof (Mrs) Viljoen. Prof Viljoen performed Schubert's last Piano Sonata D 960.

Listening intently to Schubert: Fr Johnson and

Prof. Ian Drennan, one of the Cathedral's three organists.

 

Ordination of Fr Stephen Ilechukwu at the Cathedral.

Archbishop Nxumalo presides, Fr Johnson to the left.

Fr Johnson concelebrates Sunday Mass

with newly ordained Fr Stephen Ilechukwu

A guided tour of the Cathedral for Protestant

ministers and enquirers conducted by Fr Johnson.

Another shot of the group of visitors. Fr Johnson

is in the background on the left.

Bloemfontein Afrikaans men's choir,

invited to sing at Sunday Mass.

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION - 4TH SUNDAY OF ADVENT 2016

Every year at Christmas we listen to Isaiah’s inspiring words about the coming of the Messiah. Today the text is “A virgin shall conceive and bear a child, and shall call his name Immanuel.” At the Christmas Vigil Mass, we will listen to these words: “The people that walked in darkness has seen a great light.” And “for unto us a Child is born, a Son is given, and his name shall be called: ‘Wonderful Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.’” Then, on the Solemnity of the Epiphany in January: “Arise! Shine out! For your Light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you!”

Isaiah has many passages which prophesy, first, Jesus’ birth, then, his death and resurrection. It sometimes speaks of the Messiah, the Suffering Servant of God, in a way which so accurately describes Jesus that Christian tradition calls it “the Fifth Gospel.

The event described in today’s First Reading is described as a sign. King Ahaz is under threat from surrounding kings, and fears what to him is a very real threat; that these kings will overrun Jerusalem and destroy his kingdom. God sends Isaiah the prophet to Ahaz to reassure the king that he will not allow Jerusalem to be overrun if only Ahaz puts his trust in Him. The maiden (meaning here, an unmarried virgin) will conceive a child, and the name of the child, Emmanuel, will be the confirmation of the fact that Israel is under God’s protection. Emmanuel is a Hebrew word, im-manu-El, which literally means “with-us-God.” In other words, the very name of the child means that God is present amongst his people and will guide and protect them.

But there is a fuller sense to this prophecy which no-one in the time of King Ahaz and the prophet Isaiah could possibly have understood. For it refers to Jesus, God’s own and only Son; Jesus, conceived through the Holy Spirit and born of his virgin mother Mary. The very name Jesus suggests how this event is to be interpreted, for Immanuel, God-with us, is given the name Saviour, which is what “Jesus” means. We are told that he will be called this, “for he will save his people from their sins.”

The ultimate threat to us all is not some political kingdom, but the kingdom of Satan, the kingdom of sin, evil, suffering and eternal death. It is a kingdom from which only Jesus can save us, and by God’s choice and command, only by becoming a “Son born to us”, “Emmanuel,” “God-with-us.” At Easter, these prophecies of Immanuel are fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus. But at Christmas, we must allow ourselves to take in the stupendous mystery of God born amongst us, as a baby that we could have held in our arms. Only when we grasp this, can we really understand who God is and what he has done for us.

Today, on the last Sunday of Advent, let this be our purpose and thought; to the very best of our ability, to grasp this powerful mystery, that for our sake God took flesh and came amongst us, and that if we place our trust in him there is nothing that can keep us from him.

Fr Phillip.

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION - 3RD SUNDAY OF ADVENT 2016

On Thursday we celebrated the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Let us reflect today upon her role in God’s plan for us.

The person who visits the modern city of Athens for the first time can expect a serious disappointment. Gone is the classical city of marble columns and temples, of white-robed philosophers and sculptors. Gone is the ancient cradle of civilisation, the home of all that we value most in our heritage. In its place is a great, noisy, dirty city, crammed with people, clogged with traffic.

 But there is one solitary sign of the glory which once was Athens. In its very centre, perched high on a flat-topped hill, the Acropolis, stands a magnificent Greek temple, a great structure of marble columns and friezes of perfect proportions and elegance. Alone amongst the unsightly modern sprawl, it is a reminder of the place of beauty, culture and learning which Athens once was. That building is the Parthenon. Its name comes from the Greek word for virgin, and amidst the ugliness in which it stands, it has lost none of its ancient beauty. It stands for all the world to see, a reminder of what Athens once was, and what it has long since lost.

In the gospel we encounter the word “parthenos” as we read: “In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to Nazareth, to a virgin...and the name of the virgin was Mary.” Like the Parthenon in Athens, Mary stood out in God's eyes above the broken wreckage of humanity, created once in the His image but marred and disfigured by sin. Because God reckoned her to be worthy, she was found to be in a relationship of grace with him. “Rejoice, you who have been filled with grace, the Lord is with you,” says the angel Gabriel to her, and “You have found grace before God.”

 Twice in quick succession Mary is referred to as being in a relationship of grace with God. God has found made her worthy for the most important task to which he has ever called a human being; to be the bearer of his only begotten Son. And she is to do this so that God can send a Saviour into the world, Jesus, whose very name means “Saviour.”

 It would be easy to see the grace of the mother of Jesus in terms of itself; that is, to see her simply as a spotless human being, without any reference to God. We could then speak on endlessly about her physical beauty – inasmuch as we could, for we know nothing of her looks – her moral purity, and so on. We could make her the focus of our attention. And in doing so, we would miss the point almost entirely. For the key to Mary's grace in God's eyes lies in her faithfulness and in obedience to his will.

 Her two best known statements, preserved for us in Scripture, make this clear. “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let whatever will, happen to me according to his word.” Mary chooses to see herself as a slave before her master, bound to God who has the power of life and death over her. Confronted with a demand that must have taken her breath away, her only concern is to be utterly obedient to God's will. She was also faithful to God in his call to bear witness to all that he does and is. This we see in her other recorded statement, made at the wedding at Cana, when she tells the servants to “Do whatever He tells you.” Here, she draws attention away from herself and towards Jesus, who then works the first of his miraculous signs.

 Total obedience to God, and pointing the way towards Jesus, his Son; these are the greatest things that can be asked of us. Mary is the perfect example of how we should attain this. As approach the end of Advent and look forward to the joyful season of Christmas, may she be an inspiration to us to do whatever God tells us.

Fr Phillip

Second Sunday of Advent – 2016

There is, on YouTube, a series of about forty episodes called People who Changed the World. What is interesting, is the people that have been chosen. All seem to be amongst the darkest and most evil in the world: Mass murderers like Pol Pot of Cambodia, Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia or Kim Jong Il of North Korea. They are people who have created darkness and misery and death for millions of people. They have certainly changed people’s lives through hardship and suffering. But the strangeness is that they have made no real contribution to the world. People have been wounded, physically, emotionally and spiritually by them, but as time passes, the world always seems to recover from them. They are here today, gone tomorrow, and eventually ordinary people just forget them as generations pass. Soon, like Ozymandias in Shelley’s poem, little remains of the might they have conferred about themselves but mouldering ruins.

Nowhere in this series does one find the great and good; scientists like Louis Pasteur, for example, whose work still benefits billions of people worldwide. Nowhere does one find the great reformers of labour laws, prisons, medicine and nursing. Nowhere do the great abolitionists of slavery feature. Great humanitarians like St Theresa of Calcutta are conspicuous by their absence. There is an unbridgeable gap between the monsters presented in the series, who changed times and places, albeit drastically, for a while, and those who brought the light of God to bear upon the world.

For this is the great difference. The murderous and violent figures in the series all started with a vision for a godless heaven on earth. When they began to fail, as such visions always do, their proponents attempted to shore them up and force their continuance with ever increasing control and violence, until the systems became more oppressive and brutal than the ones they were supposed to be replacing. They replaced love and justice with oppression and fear. They failed to deal with the one thing that could have made the difference; human sin, both within and around them. And they lacked the one thing that could have made the difference: God’s redeeming love, as He communicates it to us through the death of Jesus on the cross, and his resurrection from the dead.

Without God to heal, us, we carry around with us, sin and its consequences, and no matter what we attempt, sin stains and pollutes it. We need to be redeemed, to be made “whiter than snow.” (Psalm 51) It is those who were close to God, who loved him above all things, who have really changed the world. The horrors inflicted on Romania by the Ceauçescus lasted for 25 odd years, and the country is recovering from them. What they did has passed into history. But the efforts of William Wilberforce in the emancipation of slaves is with us still, and the world has been transformed forever by the work that God achieved through his faithfulness.

It would be wonderful were we to be able to make a counter-series about “People who REALLY Changed the World, and to tell the stories of people such as William Wilberforce, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Fry, St Peter Claver, St Theresa of Calcutta, Archbishop Romero and a host of others. But perhaps it is not necessary. God has seen their work, and the world has benefited by it. What will the contribution of each one of us be? Great or small, each one of us has a very definite task to do for God, and even the smallest can change the world without even knowing it. May each one of us respond to his call, and carry out that task to the very best of our will.

Fr Phillip

FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT – 2016

There is a very famous play by the British playwright Samuel Beckett called Waiting for godot. In it, two characters spend their time sitting at the side of a road, waiting for someone called godot to arrive. From the beginning of Act 1 to the end of Act 3, they sit there, idly and vainly, going round and round in circles in the same absurd conversation. At the end, they are still waiting as futilely as at the beginning. They sometimes wonder whether they are really waiting for anything or anyone at all. Yet there is nothing else for them to do but to sit around and wait in utter futility. Even the name of the person for whom they are waiting, godot, sounds like a diminutive form of God.

There is an emptiness, an aching void, at the centre of godless modern man. He is aware of this emptiness, and will go to any lengths to avoid it, or to fill it. Godless modern man is waiting for something, but he knows not what. And he sees no hope, no meaning, because he does not know for whom or for what he is waiting. It is an empty waiting, dark with ignorance, bereft of hope, bleak with despair. Godless modern man is still waiting for godot, and godot, like tomorrow, never comes.

How different is the waiting of the Christian for God! The Christian inhabits the same world as godless modern man; sees the same sorrows; experiences the same suffering; is assailed by the same evils. Often the Christian sees his work corrupted and come to nothing in the same way. The Christian knows, as surely as godless modern man, that there is something desperately wrong with this world of ours, something that urgently needs to be set right. And yet, in the face of it all, the Christian is not beset with despair, but filled with hope. Ahead lies not impenetrable darkness, but unquenchable light. And the reason for this completely different response is simple; for the Christian is not waiting for godot; he is waiting for God!

It is this that makes our waiting a waiting of such joy, a purposeful waiting in hope. Here, now, in the season of Advent, we relive that joyful hope as we prepare to celebrate the feast of Christmas, the feast of the birth of Jesus the Saviour amongst us. In the midst of sorrow, suffering, tragedy, even apparent meaninglessness in the world, the Christian has glimpsed the glory of the Lord. All the dark and ugly things we experience are things which the power of God overcomes, are even things which he can use for our good. And all of them ultimately make sense because we are waiting for a God who really is coming, a God whom we can and do know face to face. The God for whom we wait is a person, and he has come to save us.

The darkness of this world is for us merely a shadow which will be banished forever when God sheds his glorious light upon us. It is significant that the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, is a book which practically explodes with a message of hope in the midst of disaster. And the climax of that book, in its final verse, is the cry "Come, Lord Jesus!" Let this be our hope, our message for this Advent. Let us not be a hopeless people, waiting in despair for a godot who never comes. Rather, let us be a people brimming with hope and joy, our eyes fixed on the glorious future He has already prepared for us; let us be a people waiting - for God. Amen.

Fr. Phillip