The Messenger - February 2008 - Editorial To Walk with God Today
By John Looby, SJ - 01 February 2008
What does God require of us? To do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God today.
This ringing call to action is the answer given by the prophet Micah to that question. In different times and places, and in quite disparate circumstances, men and women have done just that. Readers of the September Messenger will remember Fr. John Murray’s article on Franz Jägerstätter. Franz was a conscientious objector who refused to perform military service. There were things, he believed, over which one should obey God more than man. He would do justice even when everyone else told him it would not be wrong to serve in the Nazi army. On 9 August 1943. aged thirty-six, he was executed, and on Friday 26 October 2007 Pope Benedict beatified him as a martyr.
Many Messenger readers will remember Fr. Seán O Duibhir, S.J. who died at the end of October. He was a man who loved mercy - and he loved company. Unlike the tyrants of the 20th century who claimed to love The People, but could not tolerate individuals, Seán O Duibhir genuinely loved people. They recognized it and he became a great apostle of the Irish
Messenger. Great and possibly apocryphal stories attached themselves to him. Once, it is recounted, he was on his way to the west with a case full of Messengers. He was to get a lift and he was waiting for the lift by the roadside right in front of Costume Barracks in Athlone. The lift arrived, Seán got in and they drove off, but he had forgotten the suitcase. The army, it is said, grew suspicious of the unattended suitcase and destroyed it with a controlled explosion. So the Messenger was scattered all over Athlone. But maybe it worked out differently. Certainly the Messenger spoke of God’s love and mercy for the little people of God, and he carried it far and wide during his lifetime.
Lily Redmond belonged to the old Finglas, the village that existed to the north of Dublin, before being swallowed by the ever-encroaching city. Lily was buried in St. Canice’s Church, the old parish church of Finglas, on 5 November 2007. She was a lovely, quiet woman with a great heart. For well over twenty years she devotedly spread devotion to the Sacred Heart by distributing over eighty Messengers every month to her friends in the neighbourhood. Of course, she would modestly say she only delivered the magazine to friends. She walked humbly before her God. Even in her final illness she was concerned that the delivery of the Messenger would continue even after she was gone. God loves a generous giver.
John Looby, S.J.