FLOWERS IN THE DESERT

FLOWERS IN THE DESERT

Each year I am astonished anew by the colours at the end of the dry season. Just when you expect the earth to be parched and exhausted there is a blaze of colour. First it is the Msasa, then the Jacaranda, the Flamboyant and a whole variety of shrubs with various colours of leaf and flower. It is as though nature taunts us: you thought I was finished, but just look!

Pope Francis is regularly in the media in words and gestures; he reaches out to the most neglected and “useless” members of society. He stops his car to speak to a parent who lost his son in a ferry disaster or a little disabled girl. He meets victims of abuse and listens to their story. He addresses the United Nations and reminds them of the poor and vulnerable. He seeks to remind us all that there is life in unexpected places.

He is a Jesuit and has drawn from the Society of Jesus the great motif of love and service, amar e servir. To serve is to plan, to act, to follow up and to plan again. All these things, while good, can also be a step removed from the people “on the ground.” There can be a service which never senses “the smell of the sheep.” Francis calls us not only to work for people but to sit with them, listen to them and learn from them. Oh, that this would happen among Jews and Arabs, Sunnis and Shiites, Russians and Americans!

But our world is more comfortable with force rather than listening, with numbers rather than individual faces. We do not allow ourselves to see the beauty in the parched earth. “You know how the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them…. But it shall not be so among you. Whoever wants to be great must be your servant.” We will never achieve the breakthrough we want until we learn to listen. The Israelis may say, “Why should we listen to them when they do not listen to us?” This is the barren spiral leading nowhere. It is like the stairway in Addis Ababa built by the Italians when they occupied the country in 1936. It was meant to be part of some grand building but all that remains is the spiral stairway leading nowhere.

The message of the Church to the world today is for us all to listen to one another, especially the weakest and most vulnerable. Just think how many small and great problems could be solved is we could sit for a moment and listen to one another. Abandon preconceived solutions and simply listen. Then a solution will suddenly emerge. A flower will blossom in a barren desert.

18 October 2015                                  Sunday 28 B

Isaiah 53:10-11                                    Hebrews 4: 14-16                                Mark 10:35-45