THE GREAT RESPONSE

THE GREAT RESPONSE

I was thinking of the response of the shepherds, ‘let us go to Bethlehem and see’ (Luke 2:15) and it struck me that no sooner was Jesus born than people started to react to him. The Jews had reacted long ago, drawn by the promise they dimly sensed, ‘let us come into his presence’ (Ps. 95). And the pagans too felt the Jews had something to offer: ‘The citizens of many cities will say, we must certainly go to entreat Yahweh’s favour … and they will take a Jew by the sleeve and say we want to go with you’ (Zech. 8:20-3).

So there was a movement towards the divine in ancient times even if it was obscurely understood. Later the response was to have a sharper edge. Jesus said, ‘let us go to our friend Lazarus’ and Thomas added, maybe with a touch of desperation, ‘Let us also go and die with him’ (John 11:11-16).  And then we arrive at Jesus’ blunt invitation to accompany him to Gethsemane, ‘Come now, let us go!’(John 14:31).  

So the human heart is aching.  Yet its aching is often unfocused.  I want but I am not quite sure what I want.  ‘Everyone was trying to touch him’ (Luke 6:19) but why? And this continues today. There are rich pickings on You Tube where you can listen, for example, to Richard Rohr or Rupert Spira – each in his own way clearing the ground so that we can focus our desire. 

Many who embark on this search do not sense that they are helped by the Church. This is a pity because it is hard to search alone and the churches, for all their shortcomings, provide community, interpretation of the word and visible signs with life-giving effects.

But we have a problem of connecting.  The different Christian traditions want to help people make their response to God yet it often seems they fail to meet people where they really are. It seems this is always the problem.  Culture is always one step ahead of religion.

‘Let us go to Bethlehem!’  How on earth are we going to understand what happened there and how are we going to respond to it?  As we enter 2020 we may feel overwhelmed with our failure to respond.  The mess we are in just seems too big.  Pope Francis, in his Christmas message, tells us not to lose heart. Each person is called to respond as best they can.  We cannot look to our government to respond, or the United Nations. They may – eventually – or they may not.  What we can do is personal and individual. We take a tough look at our spontaneous responses.  Where are they taking us?   

29 December 2019      The Holy Family

Sir 3:2-6, 12-14                       Col. 3:12-21                Matt 2:13-15, 19-23

THE CENTURY OF THE GREAT TEST

THE CENTURY OF THE GREAT TEST

113 people from a variety of professions gathered recently in Barcelona to ‘maintain a dialogue between faith and the struggle for a fairer world’. Meeting under the title, ‘Facing the Century of the Great Test’ they ‘dreamed of a different course for civilisation, which would seek other goals and foster other values; welcoming the stranger, taking care of the weak, making peace with nature, accepting ourselves as the vulnerable mortal beings that we are’.

The key phrase here is ‘faith and the struggle’. In the struggle for a better world, one which faces these four issues of the stranger, the weak, nature and ourselves, we either leave it to others because we don’t want to be involved, or we decide to become engaged at the level we can manage. That level is defined by where we find ourselves and the opportunities open to us. It is also defined by the energy we can draw on.

For the one who believes that Jesus was born in Bethlehem to share in this struggle and open the way for them to be fully engaged – ‘I am sending you out  … I am with you always’ – there is reason to rejoice at Christmas and draw new energy from this ‘with you’, this ‘Emmanuel’. The companionship Jesus invites us to stretches beyond a neat ‘strategic plan’ or ‘manageable objective.’  We cannot be guided by a desire to see results but only by a desire to set in motion a process that is sound. The foundations of my house may be hidden but if the house stands though storms and cyclones it becomes obvious that they are solid.

And the way Jesus lays out is one that stretches us beyond our reach.  We cannot see the future.  We have no ‘proof’ we will succeed. ‘Blessed is she who believed the promise made to her’. Mary asked for no guarantee.  She had no idea how things would work out.  All she knew was that she had been called to a task that seemed impossible. She trusted that the one who called her knew what he was doing.  It was not necessary for her to know more for now.      

We are being called to respond to the choices before us in this ‘Century of the Great Test’ as our age has been called.  We face options never before imagined. Fires, floods and drought are affecting the lives of millions each year and the millions will soon be billions.  Those international agencies that offer food to the hungry and shelter to the homeless are stretched to previously unimagined limits. Extraordinary imagination and courage will now be needed if we are to save our planet from becoming uninhabitable.

Many deny there is a problem or they say it is exaggerated.  But the scientists, who go to great trouble to gather their evidence, hammer us day by day with new and alarming facts. In our own part of the world the water pouring over the Victoria Falls is now reduced to a trickle. Surely that should alarm us as we think of what it means.

The message of Christmas comes to us year by year with gathering force. Can we open ourselves to new perspectives?  Can we change? Can we imagine ‘a different course’ for our civilisation? One where tenderness and compassion replace the pursuit of wealth and power? That is ‘the Great Test’. We cannot contract this test out to others - our leaders of states and managers of industry.  It is theirs, but we know it is also for each of us.

Nature itself beckons us. In the northern hemisphere Christmas comes at a barren time of the year. John Milton wrote 400 years ago.

Nature in awe of Him

Had doff’d her gaudy trim,

With her great Master so to sympathise

In our southern hemisphere it is the opposite; crops are planted and the earth is green with hope. Nature offers us a time of barrenness and a time of plenty. Which will we choose?

Christmas 2019   

  

HOPE, IN THE RIGHT WAY

HOPE, IN THE RIGHT WAY

Does it make sense to speak of hope? People struggle every day just to survive. How can they possibly lend their ears to a message of hope? It seems insulting to tell them time after time that things will get better, when manifestly there is no sign of improvement.

In the Christian perspective Advent is the season of hope. Nearly every day we hear the words of Isaiah on this. This Sunday we read,

            Let the wilderness and the dry lands exult,

let the wasteland rejoice and bloom,

let it bring forth flowers like the jonquil,

let it rejoice and sing for joy.

What possible consolation is a mother to draw from this when her every waking hour is spent struggling to provide for her children?

Yet the Church insists on her message of hope. She has come to know that there is something fundamentally human in reaching out in hope even when there is no evidence that hope is justified. This was the situation of Israel in Egypt in the days of Moses and in modern times it was the situation in South Africa in the darkest days of apartheid.

Viktor Frankl, imprisoned in the ‘death camp’ of Auschwitz in World War II was stumbling to work under guard one icy winter morning when his wife (imprisoned in another camp) came into his mind. ‘Real or not her look was then more luminous than the sun … and I saw the truth … that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire … and I understood how a man who has nothing left in the world may still know bliss, … his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way, (and so) man can achieve fulfilment’.

By quoting Frankl I am not suggesting we should simply smile and bear our suffering s with resignation. No! It is more a matter of changing our attitude and letting our spirit reach beyond the present trials to the fulfilment that will come. Karl Marx accused Christians of teaching resignation in present sufferings in the hope of future happiness. That is decidedly not what we mean by Christian hope.

Twelve years ago Pope Benedict wrote a letter (Spe Salvi) on that little word ‘hope’. He spoke about hope as ‘knowing how to wait’.  We can wait passively, just sitting there ‘hoping for the best’. That is not true hope. The pope speaks of an active hope where we strain forward with ‘all our heart, all our mind and all our strength’ for the thing we long for. 

Also, Benedict warns against an individualistic hope where a person thinks ‘he is a chosen one! In his blessedness he passes through the battlefields with a rose in his hand’! (Henri de Lubac). That also is not true hope.  We are not ‘saved’ alone.  We belong to the family of humanity and my hope embraces all people. As Nelson Mandela used to say, ‘I cannot be free unless all are free’.  St Bernard of Clairvaux told us, Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis, God cannot suffer, but he can suffer with. So, in a sense, God is incomplete until we are all complete.

Finally, we cannot place our hope in investment, technology, ‘correct’ politics or economics. Without a conversion of heart no amount of fixing the system will lead to our hopes being realised. ‘It is not science that redeems man: man is redeemed by love’. (Benedict XVI) 

15 December 2019      Advent Sunday 3 A

Isaiah 35:1-6, 10          James 5:7-10                           Matthew 11:2-11