Alice O'Keeffe

Died on November 12, 2016

Smithstown, Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny. Died Saturday 12th November at St. Luke’s Hospital. Reposing at her residence. Vigil prayers on Monday evening at 6.30pm followed by removal to The Church of The Assumption, Thomastown. Funeral Mass on Tuesday at 11am followed by burial in St. Mary’s New Cemetery. May she rest in peace.

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Reflection

“The sun will be darkened.” How does Pope Francis say we can help bring light back to the darkened sun? And what can we learn from the fig tree?
Dear brothers and sisters, that is the word that makes hope blossom in the world and relieves the suffering of the poor: tenderness. Compassion that leads you to tenderness. We need to overcome our self-absorption, interior rigidity, which is the temptation nowadays, that of the “restorationists”, who want a Church completely orderly, completely rigid: this is not of the Holy Spirit.
We have to overcome this, in order to make hope blossom amid this rigidity. It is up to us to overcome the temptation to be concerned only about our own problems; we need to grow tender before the tragedies of our world, to share its pain. Like the tender leaves of a tree, we are called to absorb the pollution all around us and turn it into goodness.
It is useless to keep talking about problems, to argue and to be scandalized – all of us can do that. What we need to do is imitate the leaves that daily, imperceptibly, turn dirty air into clean air. Jesus wants us to be “converters” of goodness: people who breathe the same heavy air as everyone else, but respond to evil with good (cf. Rom 12:21). People who act: by breaking bread with the hungry, working for justice, lifting up the poor and restoring their dignity. As the Samaritan did.
Pope Francis