MASS FOR THE DEAF
SUNDAY 18 JUNE 2000
IN
MOUNT OLIVER PASTORAL CENTRE, DUNDALK
INTRODUCTION BY CARDINAL SEÁN BRADY

I welcome you all to Mount Oliver today. I am very happy to celebrate this Mass with you. Today we celebrate a big feast. Today we celebrate the kind of God we believe in. We believe in One God. In God there are three persons – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is a family of three persons. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit know each other very well. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit love each other always. We are here to praise God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit and so we begin. In the name of the Father……………

MASS FOR THE DEAF
HOMILY BY Cardinal SeÁN BRADY
IN
MOUNT OLIVER, DUNDALK
SUNDAY 18 JUNE 2000

I thank Sister Carmel McAvoy for inviting me here today. It is nice to be here beside the sea. It is good to see you all. It is good that we can come together and have this Mass and have a meal together. We come together to praise God. We believe in the same God. We all believe there is only One True God – a God who can do all things.

Do you watch football on the television? Perhaps tonight you will watch Derry and Antrim. Maybe last night you watched England and Germany. Well when the All-Ireland final comes, there will be one, and only one, All Ireland champions. I hope it will be Armagh. Father Paul Strain may be hoping for Antrim to win. And, at the end of the European Championships there will be only one European Champion. A lot of people say it will be France. I do not know. But there will be only one European Champion.

In the same way there is only one God, one true God. But in God there are three persons. That is hard to understand. In fact we cannot understand it. We would never have known it only God has told us. The three persons are – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. As I say, we cannot understand how this can be but we know that that is the way God is. God is one family of persons, so God is not lonely. God is a family of three persons who know each other very well. God is a family of three persons who love each other always.

God knows you and me well. God knows us all. God loves us all. We sometimes get gifts for those who love us. God has given all of us many gifts. The first and biggest gift is the Gift of Life. But that is not all. God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world. Jesus Christ became a man, a human person. He was born of the Virgin Mary. He came to show us how much God loves us. He travelled around telling people God loved them. Jesus loved us so much that he died for us. He showed us how much God loves each one of us. He told us that we must love each other. We must treat each other well. When Jesus went back to the Father, he sent the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is still with us. The Holy Spirit came to us at Baptism. The Holy Spirit came to us at Confirmation. The Holy Spirit comes to us, to help us to do what God wants us to do, to give us strength. The Holy Spirit is in this Church.

The one God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, comes to each one of us in Holy Communion. God comes to us in Holy Communion to be our food and drink. God comes to us in Holy Communion to give us strength to live the kind of life God wants us to live.

So today, we thank God for sending his Son, Jesus Christ, to tell us about God. We thank God for sending the Holy Spirit to make us holy. We ask God to help us follow what the Holy Spirit wants us to do. We ask God to forgive us for the times we did not do what God wanted us to do. We ask for help for this coming week. We ask God to help our families and friends. We say Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

AMEN