Our readings for this Sunday, the First Sunday of Lent are here. (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031724.cfm).
These are my notes and interpretations of Fr Dennis Dillon SJ’s homily from the 8:30AM Mass on March 22, 2015 at St Mary Student Parish, Ann Arbor, MI.
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The poem Fr Dennis references in 2015 is:
Quarantine by Eavan Boland (22 Mar 2015 8:30AM)
In 2015, D2 reflected —
- At this point, the Fifth Sunday of Lent, the season is becoming a bit more somber as we’re moving to Jesus’ passion and death, which prompts the questions:
- What is most important to us / for us?
- What are our decisions about?
- This time of Lent and these questions call us to think about how central God’s Love for us and for each other is.
The poem, Quarantine by Eavan Boland (now deceased), from the 2015 homily generated several reflections in Dennis, SJ —
- a somber tone to the poem
- describes the action of love rather than the words of love
- the husband / man offered an action of love (holding the woman’s feet to the last source of his body heat, his heart) in a time of what could only have been a dark abyss (see more below).
- This is the sort of love we take into Holy Week, a love that recalls another’s humanity out of our own act of humanity when circumstances want to force despair and inhumanity, and then commingling our shared sense of humanity into the sacredness of Jesus Christ. Giving ourselves totally in Love and to Love to say “Yes.”
For those unfamiliar with An Gorta Mor / The Great Famine of Eavan Boland’s poem, it and the echo famine of 1879, following two centuries of penal (anti-Gaelic, anti-Catholic) laws enacted by the British in Ireland, caused the massive decline of the Irish population from 8 million to 4 million in roughly 50 years — 2 million lost to starvation, and another 2 million lost to emigration, with families shattered.
If you listen to “Thousands Are Crossing” on the Winter’s Crossing by James Galway and Phil Coulter, narrated by Liam Neeson, you’ll get a flavor of the sorrow. An 1847 painting of An Gorta Mor, “The Irish Peasant Family Discovering the Blight of Their Store” by Daniel MacDonald, an Irishman, is one of the only known contemporaneous paintings to capture a family’s moment of despair during the Great Famine.
The Irish were relegated to growing potatoes to feed themselves, while the remaining crops were exported for British profit. When the blight hit their potatoes, which could be harvested looking fine and then rot some time later, no policy or tax was changed to save the Irish from starvation during An Gorta Mor.
Our featured image today is of the sculpture Kindred Spirits by Alex Pentek, composed of nine 20′ high stainless steel eagle feathers forming a bowl; this article further describes the art and surrounding culture of Kindred Spirits installed in Co. Cork.
Why?
This rte.ie article describes the kind of love we hear in Eavan Boland’s poem, except between groups of people. The Choctaw and Cherokee nations, having recently endured the Trail of Tears and having lost nearly 1/4 of their remaining people, decided to raise money and donate (likely through the Quakers) towards the relief of the 1847 Irish Famine as one of their earliest acts of self-governance following their forced relocation by the United States government and dissolution of their native / original self-governance.
This sacred giving was remembered by the Irish when the Covid-19 pandemic of this century struck. While the Choctaw and Cherokee nations faced hardship during the pandemic, the Diné / Navajo people faced a public health disaster and the potential catastrophic loss of their families, elders, faith keepers, and language guides during a quarantine ranging across 140,000 people and 72,000 square miles. A group of younger Navajo created a GoFundMe account when they realized the federal government would not be acting with the alacrity nor the volume of aid needed. A simple look at the “remembrances” section of the GoFundMe page reveals the sacred link of Irish gratitude across centuries and thousands of miles.
The Surest Sign 