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Sunday’s Gospel – 19th Sept

Posted augAdminPosted in Sunday Gospel
Mark 9:30 They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; 31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” 32 But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
 
Mark 9:33 Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” 34 But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. 35 He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” 36 Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 37 “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
 
Explore more on this Sunday’s Gospel with Kieran J. O’Mahony OSA.
 
Click HERE for YouTube discussion.
 
Click HERE for Gospel Notes:
Hearers of the Word book cover.

Hearers of The Word – Advent & Christmas

Posted augAdminPosted in Augustinians, Books, Prayers

Our experience of the Gospel readings can be enhanced by a reflective examination of the history, meaning and context of the scriptures.
Hearers of The Word – Praying and Exploring the Readings for Advent and Christmas: Year C by Kieran J O’Mahony OSA is the seventh volume in the popular series and the first for Year C. It explores the context and background, along with commentaries, on the Sunday readings for the liturgical period from Advent to the 2nd Sunday of Year C. The prayers and prayer guidance that the author provides allow for a multi-dimensional understanding of the Gospel in terms of their historical and theological significance.
Hearers of the Word may be helpful to those involved in Lectio Divina, either individually or in a group. Combining spirituality and contemporary biblical scholarship, it is unique among Gospel commentaries on the market today.
Kieran J O’Mahony OSA is an Augustinian friar and biblical scholar. He is on the team of the Tarsus Scripture School initiative and is well-known for his very popular Weekly Notes – an email resource for each week’s readings throughout the year.
Hearers of The Word – Praying and Exploring the Readings for Advent and Christmas: Year C by Kieran J O’Mahony OSA is published in Ireland and the UK by Messenger Publications. Priced at €19.95/£18.95
Click HERE for further details.

Fr. Tony Egan OSA

Fr. Tony Egan OSA – Provincial Elect

Posted augAdminPosted in Augustinians
We are delighted to announce that we have elected our next Provincial! He is Tony Egan OSA an only child, he hails from Tullamore in Co. Offaly where he was born on February 24th, 1953. He will take up his office at our Province Chapter in March and continue in office until the next Chapter, 4 years later. He joined the Order in Orlagh in September 1972 and was Solemnly Professed in Rome in May 1977. He was Ordained Priest in July, 1978.
Tony has served the Irish Province extensively and very well indeed. At first, after Ordination he joined the team in Ballyboden parish where he served as a curate in the Parish. He returned to Rome in 1981 for further studies and, from there went to Nigeria. He served in Benin City, and Lagos from whence he returned to Limerick in 1997. As Prior there he repainted the Church to its present beauty and undertook further studies in the University of Limerick. In 2003, he was voted Person of the Month in March 2003. The citation in the Limerick Leader, ““Fr. Tony Egan has been to the fore in events at Limerick city’s Augustinian Church that have captured the public imagination. The churchman has always had a knack for ensuring large attendances at Augustinian Church services with his imaginative thinking. Fr. Tony was praised for setting up an Easter vigil that saw Limerick’s McGlynn brothers bring film, drama and dry ice to the O’Connell Street Church in a re-enactment of St. Patrick’s fire on the Hill of Slane. In recent times, Fr Egan has held a number of memorial services commemorating tragic events, such as the September 11 and Omagh bomb atrocities, that have been hailed for their innovation” (Limerick Leader)
In 2006 he served as Prior in John’s Lane, the Motherhouse, where he remained until 2013. In 2013 he went as Prior and Bursar to our Church in Dungarvan, where he remains today.
We wish Tony every blessing as he takes up this new service to the Province and assure him of our prayers and support.
John Hennebry OSA
Prior Provincial
Saints Liberatus Boniface and Companions

Saints Liberatus, Boniface and Companions

Posted augAdminPosted in Augustinian Lay Forum
We celebrate today the memory of a group of seven monks of North Africa who were martyred during the Christian persecutions of the late 5th Century. They had each chosen to live monastic life under the inspiration of Saint Augustine’s early communities and chose, as well, to meet death together rather than deny their faith. They are the Liberatus, Boniface and Companions
In 484, some 34 years after the death of Saint Augustine, the Vandal king, Hunneric, issued a decree ordering the closure of all Christian monasteries and the consignment of all monks and nuns to the Moors. The seven members of the monastery of Gafsa, Tunisia, founded under Augustinian inspiration, were taken prisoners. They were the Abbot Liberatus, Deacon Boniface, Subdeacons Servus and Rusticus and the lay monks Rogatus, Septimus and Maximus. They were taken to Carthage where efforts were made, in vain, to have them renounce the faith. The youngest, Maximus who was only 15 years old was particularly pressured to abandon his confreres and his Christian way of life, but refused, preferring to accept the same fate as the rest. They were then ordered to be burned alive. When it proved impossible to set the wood of their funeral pyre afire, they were clubbed to death.
Constant in their Christian resolve and fidelity to one another, these seven monks offered wonderful witness to the faith as well as to their fraternal communion. Our Order was granted the right to celebrate their liturgical memorial on June 6, 1671.
This history was taken from the Augustinian Province of Saint Thomas of Villanova
Sunday's Gospel

Sunday’s Gospel – 29th August

Posted augAdminPosted in Sunday Gospel

Mark 7:1 Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, 2 they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. 3 (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; 4 and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) 5 So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 6 He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
‘This people honours me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
7 in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
8 You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

Mark 7:9 Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ 11 But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God)— 12 then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”

Mark 7:14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”

Mark 7:17 When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, 19 since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. 21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Read, explore & listen to more on this Sunday’s Gospel with Kieran J. O’Mahony via these links:

Link to YouTube discussion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sbwW8hh-34

Link to Gospel Notes:
https://www.tarsus.ie/SundayReadings/page-84/

St. Clare Of The Cross Of Montefalco

Saint Clare of the Cross of Montefalco

Posted augAdminPosted in Augustinians

There are saints to be imitated and saints to be admired,” says an old and wise proverb. For many reasons the saint whose memory we celebrate today would probably fall into the second category, for she was endowed with extraordinary gifts of grace and practised radical forms of penance that are the cause of amazement to many. She was also a person, however, filled with great love who could not be content to live by half measures or compromise.
There are saints to be imitated and saints to be admired,” says an old and wise proverb. For many reasons the saint whose memory we celebrate today would probably fall into the second category, for she was endowed with extraordinary gifts of grace and practised radical forms of penance that are the cause of amazement to many. She was also a person, however, filled with great love who could not be content to live by half measures or compromise the Rule of Saint Augustine. Upon the death of Giovanna, Clare at 23 years of age was elected abbess and became mother, teacher and spiritual director of the convent. A young woman of deep spiritual perception, though with almost no formal education, she was much sought after for advice and counsel from people of all walks of life, and from within the walls of the cloister became a director of many souls. She was deeply devoted to the Passion of Christ and was known to experience periods of ecstasy as she contemplated the mystery of the Cross. For many years she received no consolation in her interior life except that of her own fidelity to prayer and acts of penance. During her final illness, she repeated to her sisters that she bore the cross of Christ in her heart. After her death, this was verified when the nuns examined her heart and found in it symbols of the passion of the Lord, formed from cardiac muscle. Clare died on August 17, 1308, at the age of 40 and was canonized by Leo XIII in 1881.
The life of Clare of the Cross is a striking reminder that holiness is the work of grace and not of human effort. Nonetheless, cooperation with the work of God is indispensable for spiritual growth, “for He who made us without our willing it, will not save us without our willing it.”

Sunday’s Gospel – 8th August

Posted augAdminPosted in Augustinians, Sunday Gospel
John 6:31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 32 Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
 
John 6:35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 37 Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; 38 for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”
 
John 6:41 Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. 44 No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. 45 It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. 46 Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
 
John 6:52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53 So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” 59 He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
 
Explore more on this Sunday’s Gospel with Kieran J. O’Mahony OSA.
 
Link to audio discussion:
 
Link to Gospel Notes: