HELEN LUCY BURKE,
Madam, - Last Sunday, Father Peter McVerry said 10 a.m. Mass in the Glasnevin Cemetery chapel, and read from Chapter 23 of St Matthew's Gospel as follows:
"The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you observe and do: but according to their works do ye not ,for they say and do not. For they bind heavy and insupportable burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but with a finger of their own they will not move them.
"And all their works they do for to be seen of men, for they make their pylacteries broad and enlarge their fringes. And they love the first places at feasts, and the first chairs in the synagogues, and salutations in the market place and to be called by men, Rabbi." (Douai version.) No consciousness of irony disturbed his face, or even a sense of the ridiculous.
We, the congregation heard out our pastor with the appropriate faces of sheep. Internally my imagination dwelt on the coveted red hat, the highly prized mitre, the glittering robes worn while saying the Mass, the titles of Your Eminence, Your Grace, Your Lordship, the refusal of weddings of divorced people while rogue priests are sheltered and protected.
I would dearly like to be present at the Second Coming of Christ just to see His face as he contemplates His church. - Yours, etc.,
HELEN LUCY BURKE,
Glasnevin,
Dublin 11.