Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts

21 April 2020

Some music for the pandemic

Va, pensiero from Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi

This recording of Va, pensiero, also known as The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, from Verdi's opera Nabucco was made as a tribute to Italy's medical workers and others fighting Covid-19 in that country. The Wikipedia article on the aria, which includes the Italian lyrics with an English translation, notes Verdi composed Nabucco at a difficult moment in his life. His wife and small children had all just died of various illnesses. Despite a purported vow to abstain from opera-writing, he had contracted with La Scala to write another opera and the director, Bartolomeo Merelli, forced the libretto into his hands.

There is a touching image at 4:40 of a medic cradling Italy as a new-born child.

I first became familiar with this beautiful chorus back in the 1950s when it was regularly played on Hospitals Requests on Wednesdays at lunch time on Radio Éireann, Ireland's state-owned national radio station.

The libretto of the opera, which is set in the Babylonian captivity  of the Jewish people around 600 BC, is by Temistocle Solera who was inspired by Psalm 137 [136]. Here is the Grail translation, used in the English language versions of The Divine Office (The Breviary).

By the rivers of Babylon
there we sat and wept, remembering Sion;
on the poplars that grew there
we hung up our harps.

For it was there that they asked us,
our captors, for songs,
our oppressors, for joy,
'Sing to us,' they said,
one of Sion's songs.

O how could we sing
the song of the Lord
on alien soil?
If I forget you, Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!

O let my tongue
cleave to my mouth
if I remember you not,
if I prize not Jerusalem
above all my joys!



St Teresa of Ávila, who lived from 1515 to 1582 in Spain, could never have imagined the internet, though if she were around today I'm certain that she'd be involved in this digital continent, as Pope Benedict calls it, and as a woman who travelled considerably, despite being a contemplative nun, she would certain journey along the digital highways - las calles digitales - of Pope Francis.

in 2014 83 followers of St Teresa, Discalced Carmelite nuns from 24 countries, created a virtual choir to sing and record the saint's poem Nada te turbe - Let nothing disturb you to mark the 500th anniversary of her birth. She was born on 28 March 1515. An interesting piece of trivia is that she died on the night of 4-15 October 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII switched from the Julian calendar to the one named after him in what was a correction of the older one.

Sr Claire Sokol of the Carmelites in Reno, Nevada, wrote the music.

Though this is not a 'Covid-19' initiative, the words of St Teresa are very appropriate for what the whole world is living through right now.

Nada te turbe   Let nothing disturb you

by St Teresa of Ávila


Nada te turbe,
nada te espante,
todo se pasa,
Dios no se muda;
la paciencia
todo lo alcanza;
quien a Dios tiene
nada le falta:
Sólo Dios basta.

Let nothing disturb you,
let nothing frighten you,
everything passes,
but God stays.
Patience reaches it all;
he who has God
nothing lacks:
God alone suffices.

Eleva tu pensamiento,
al cielo sube,
por nada te acongojes,
nada te turbe.

Lift your thinking,
raise up to heaven,
let nothing anguish you,
let nothing disturb you.

A Jesucristo sigue
con pecho grande,
y, venga lo que venga,
nada te espante.

Follow Jesus Christ
with an open heart,
and, no matter what may come,
let nothing frighten you.

¿Ves la gloria del mundo?
Es gloria vana;
nada tiene de estable,
todo se pasa.

See the glory of the world?
It's vainglory;
it is not everlasting,
everything passes.

Aspira a lo celeste,
que siempre dura;
fiel y rico en promesas,
Dios no se muda.

Yearn for the celestial
that lasts forever:
faithful and rich in promises,
God doesn't change.

Ámala cual merece
bondad inmensa;
pero no hay amor fino
sin la paciencia.

Love it the way it deserves
immense kindness;
but there is not fine love
without the patience.

Confianza y fe viva
mantenga el alma,
que quien cree y espera
todo lo alcanza.

Confidence and a live faith
let the soul maintain,
that he who believes and hopes
reaches it all.

Del infierno acosado
aunque se viere,
burlará sus furores
quien a Dios tiene.

Although harassed by hell
one may see himself,
he who has God
will defeat its rage.

Vénganle desamparos,
cruces, desgracias;
siendo Dios tu tesoro
nada te falta.

Come abandonment,
crosses, misfortune;
God being your treasure,
you lack nothing.

Id, pues, bienes del mundo;
id dichas vanas;
aunque todo lo pierda,
sólo Dios basta.

Go, then, wordly goods
go, vain happiness;
even if everything is lost
God alone suffices.

Berliner Luft by Paul Lincke

Every summer the Berlin Philharmoniker give a concert in the Waldbühne, an amphitheatre in Berlin. They play a programme of classical music, most of it of a serious nature, but always end with Berliner Luft - Berlin Air, from an operetta written by Paul Lincke in 1899. The song has become the unofficial anthem of the city. It has no deep significance whatever. But as you can see in the video, made in those 'far off' days of the pre-social distancing era, it's a piece of music than can bring a smile to anyone's face and create a moment of happy community between the musicians and the audience, and between the generations. The conductor, Gustavo Dudamel, is from Venezuela. He's enjoying it more than anyone else. You enjoy it too!


05 September 2012

Do Obama's 'closest allies' use 'Mitts' to 'punch above their weight'?


It would seem that many of the 'strongest allies' of the USA 'punch above their weight', as a Danish TV station noticed. Is this because the head of government of each wears a good pair of 'Mitts'? Or is it President Obama and his scriptwriters who need such? 

Meanwhile, and on a much more serious level, four years ago when Mr Obama was campaigning for the presidency of the USA, his opponent had no difficulty giving a simple, straight answer to a simple question. But Mr Obama found the same question 'above my pay grade'.



24 October 2011

'Greater Love: Richie Fernando SJ', a joy-filled Filipino missionary



I haven't been able to post for more than a week as I was giving an eight-day directed retreat to eight sisters of the Missionaries of Charity near Manila. While I had some access to the internet it was rather slow.

I had intended to make a post here on the murder of Fr Fausto Tentorio PIME, a 59-year-old Italian priest, in the Diocese of Kidapawan, Mindanao, on Monday 17 October. I will save that post for a later date. As I was looking for a video about Father Fausto I came across one about Brother Richard Michael 'Richie' Fernando SJ, a Filipino Jesuit scholastic who died while trying to prevent a troubled and disabled young man in Cambodia from throwing a grenade. That was in 1996 - on 17 October. Father Fausto gave his life exactly 15 years later.

I remember the mixture of sorrow and pride I felt when I read of the death of Brother Richie, pride as a missionary in the Philippines that a young Filipino seminarian had given his life so spontaneously in order to save the lives of others while on overseas mission, and sorrow that a young life had been cut short. Some months later in the Columban house in Manila I met an Irish Jesuit priest who had been in Richie's community in Cambodia. I shared my feeling of pride and sorrow with him but he could only share his grief at the tragic loss of a brother.

The video above is the first of a four-part production by Jesuits in Manila. At the end of each part you will find the link to the next.

I read somewhere very recently that joy should be even more characteristic of Christians than love. The two, of course, go together but we have the English expression 'as cold as charity' which comes out of the experience of a joyless Christianity, the kind you read about in the novels of Charles Dickens, for example. In everything I have read or heard about Brother Richie Fernando he has come across as a young man of loving faith filled with joy, a joy that is characteristic of the faith of so many Filipinos.

Fr Christopher F. Amoroso MSP, a young members of the Mission Society of the Philippines serving in Japan, wrote an article in the May-June 2011 issue of Misyon, the Columban online magazine I edit, Misyon and My Vocation, on how reading about Richie Fernando in our magazine led him to the priesthood.

Yesterday was Mission Sunday. Fr Fausto Tentorio PIME and Brother Richard Michael Fernando SJ are true faces of the missionary church.





14 October 2011

'You shall love your neighbor.. .' Sunday Reflections, 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Donaghadee, County Down, Northern Ireland

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Matthew 22:34-40 (NAB)

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,

they gathered together, and one of them,
a scholar of the law tested him by asking,
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
He said to him,
"You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."

+++

Sister Perpetua was Mercy Sister from County Down, Northern Ireland, who died earlier this years. A nurse by profession, she spent some years in Iceland, working in a Catholic hospital there. She had a great love for those who were sick and especially for those who were bereaved.

A few years ago when I visited her in her convent in Downpatrick, where St Patrick is buried, she took me to St Comgall's Church in Donaghadee, probably the most Protestant town in the whole of Ireland. St Comgall's Catholic Church is on a side-sreet. It is part of the parish of Bangor, about the kilometres further north, also on the coast. The parish church there is also St Comgall's.

This saint founded the famous monastery in Bangor in 555. Some years later, during the lifetime of St Comgall, St Columbanus (Columban) entered there. Later he and twelve companions left for Continental Europe as Peregrini pro Christo, 'Pilgrims for Christ'.St Columban, the patron of the Missionary Society of St Columban to which I belong, founded a number of monasterieson the European mainland,preaching the gospel wherever they went. The saint's last monastery was in Bobbio, in northern Italy, where he died in 615.

St Columban set out from Bangor as a missionary. More than thirteen centuries later an Italian ice-cream seller, whose name I do not know but will call 'Luigi, found his way to the area from which St Columban had set out on his long journey. This Italian, to earn a living, opened an ice-cream parlour in Donaghadee, where he spent the rest of his life.

On another occasion when I went to visit Sister Perpetua she had just come back from the funeral of Luigi. She told me she had been afraid that very few would attend. But the church was packed and Sister Perpetua found herself sitting beside a Protestant man who had probably never entered a Catholic church before in his life. He told Sister why he was there.

He was one of a large family that never had money to spare. Occasionally during the summer his father would bring the children to Luigi's for ice-cream, even though he never had enough to buy for them all. 'Luigi never let us go', he told Sister,'without making sure that each of us had ice-cream, no matter how little money my father had. That is why I am here'.

St Columban left Ireland to be a missionary and died in Italy. Luigi left Italy to make a living in the area from which St Columban had set out and died in Ireland. He probably never thought of himself as a missionary but he crossed the religious barrier in Ireland by his simple love for poor children.

'You shall love your neighbour . . .'


I am posting this early because I probably won't have access to the internet for the next eight days as I give a retreat to some Missionaries of Charity in Tagaytay City, an elevated and pleasantly cooler area south of Manila. Please keep the Sisters and me in your prayers. Perhaps you can invoke St Columban and Blessed Mother Teresa.

20 December 2009

A saint-in-the-making who failed in mathematics

For two or three years I've been intending to write an article for Misyon, which I edit on behalf of the Columbans in the Philippines, about a young Italian woman who died just short of her 19th birthday in 1990. Her name was Chiara 'Luce' Badano. Recently I asked someone else to use the material I had gathered to write the article. One of the things that had attracted me was that Chiara failed mathematics in high school. Though I had no difficulty with mathematics until my last two years in school I never liked the subject and sympathise with those who finds it difficult. The terms 'trigonometry' and 'applied mathematics' are simply words to me now. I have a vague recollection of trigonometry being a cross between algebra and geometry. One of the happiest moments in my life was when I finished my exams in mathematics and science in my Leaving Certificate in Ireland in 1961. I have never opened a book in either subject since.

I have a young friend in first year high school here in Bacolod who is struggling with mathematics (in Ireland we shorten that to 'maths' but here in the Philippines it's 'math') and when we meet I usually ask her 'How is "Mattie"?' (At the moment 'Mattie' is not too well!)

I really will have to make sure the article is written very soon for Misyon because yesterday Pope Benedict gave the 'green light' for Chiara to be beatified. The Pope also declared both Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II as 'Venerable', meaning that they may be venerated. The next step, if a miracle through their intercession is officially declared by the Church, then they may be beatified.

Chiara was a member of Focolare, whose foundress, Chiara Lubich, who died earlier this year, gave her the name 'Luce', the Italian for 'light'. 'Chiara' is the Italian form of 'Claire'.

Chiara was her parents' only child and she arrived more than 11 years after they were married. Coincidentally, the Vatican announcement was made yesterday when the readings at Mass dealt with that very same theme - childless parents who longed for a son or daughter. God heard the prayers of Manoah and his wife and gifted them with a son named Samson. God equally heard the prayers of St Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah. The son of their old age was St John the Baptist.

Chiara's mother is quoted as saying after her birth, 'Even though we were so immensely happy, we understood straightaway that this child wasn’t ours alone. She belonged to God first of all.'


Though the commentary in the video above is in Italian you can see many photos of Chiara.

You can read more about Chiara here.

Chiara as an infant with her parents, Ruggero, a truck-driver, and Maria Teresa Caviglia

This video features a song in Chiara's honour, also in Italian, with the words on the screen.