Breda was a colleague of mine when we both worked at The Kerryman.
The piece below appears in the current issue of Kerry's Eye.
A Dominican priest, who said the ‘whole thing’ was a waste of time if Christians were not marked by joy, captivated an audience of about 500 people in the Malton Hotel, Killarney, last week.
Amost twice as many people as were expected turned out to hear the international speaker, Fr Timothy Radcliffe, address the question, ‘Why Be a Christian’ on Wednesday night. The partition in the hotel’s conference centre had to be rolled back and extra seating provided.
The English Dominican was in Killarney from Tuesday to Friday to address about 80 priests from the Diocese of Kerry during their annual retreat in the Malton.
Fr Padraig Walsh, PP, Saint Brendan’s, Tralee, said they had enjoyed his humour, insights and theological understanding. Fr Walsh quoted the Archibishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who praised the Dominican as ‘one of the most lively and creative preachers of Gospel in the Catholic Church today’.
Posing the question why be a Christian, Fr Radcliffe said, “First of all we should be marked by joy. If you don’t see joy, the whole thing is a waste of time.”
“The most joyful people know what sorrow is,” he said. “Joy should not be incompatible with sorrow.
Asked by a member of the audience what was the source of that joy, he replied, “The knowledge that you are accepted totally as you are. This is the deepest part of joy - we are loved as we are.”
Fr Radcliffe based his talk on the theme of living the Gospel as the face, ears, mouth and hands of Christ.
“When you love someone, the most important thing is that they smile at you,” he said. “When we smile at someone, we show their value to everyone else.”
“So that is our first mission, to offer God’s loving look,” he said. “We must learn to be the face of God rejoicing in people.”
Stressing the value of listening as ‘one of the greatest arts in the world’, Fr Radcliffe said Christians were not sales people marketing God as the answer to everything.
“We start where people are and with what they want,” he said. “Sometimes we are afraid to listen because we are disturbed by what they
say.”
He quoted Pope John Paul 11 who said, ‘If the heart is open, the mind understands’.
“And the biggest moral issue is this: do we offer people life-giving words that build them, that value them and cherish them. Or do we offer nasty words that accuse and undermine, that denigrate people?” he said.
“So if we are to be the mouth of Jesus today, then we first have to speak words that cherish and reverence people, expecially the people whom others rubbish and who feel on the edge and despised for it is these are God’s friends.”
An interview with Fr Radcliffe on the Radio Kerry programme, ‘Horizons’, can be listened to on the website, www.dioceseofkerry.ie
GLENCAR CONNECTION WITH ACCLAIMED PREACHER
Memories of summer holidays spent as a young Dominican student in the Climber’s Inn, Glencar, were recalled by Fr Radcliffe at the opening of his talk. The students spent a week every summer in the bar and hostel in the heart of the Ring of Kerry.
“We enjoyed huge pints of Guinness, walks in the mountains and hours talking theology,” he said. “We could stay on these bunk beds for 50p a night. It wasn’t like the Malton Hotel.”
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