THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

 

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY

The doctor’s waiting area had four entrances. The wooden floor was old but polished. Nurses and patients came and went, all intent, in a steady unpredictable flow. They shared a common purpose of healing or being healed and a common humanity. They formed a temporary community of transitory connections. Without saying so, they wished each other well. They got on with the silent thoughts or their texting. The atmosphere was charged with unspoken anxiety. Like waiting for exam results or the verdict of interviews.

It was a provisional community. In another place, at another time, they would have chatted and learnt each other’s business.  They would have broken the silence and allow connections to develop. They would have revealed who they are and what were their hopes.

          The orchard where the tree grows is judged on the quality of its fruit,

          Similarly a person’s words betray what he feels.

 

So speaks Ben Sirach and he goes on: we cannot praise a person until we hear them speak. Words are like those daubs of paint that build up the whole picture. And they reveal whether the picture is full of promise or threat. When Jesus came, he spoke extraordinary words, words that penetrated the meaning of this planet. Yet they were simple words, easy to understand, like the instructions on a medicine bottle. ‘Lose your life and you will find it.’ They were words full of hope.

 

Easy to understand but so hard to learn. The Russians have invaded Ukraine. All the words they used in the build up pronounced they are acting in self-defence. A powerful country attacking a weaker one in self-defence? It is overwhelmingly sad. There is now so much anger at this situation, so much pain and sadness. It forces us back to the words of Jesus and calls us to pray. In quiet personal prayer or in public or on the internet or whatever way. People are losing their lives and those who remain live in fear. All because we ‘cannot lose our life – in the sense Jesus means - and so find it.’

 

Can we imagine what the world would like if we could live these words? All our doctors’ waiting rooms, sports grounds, musical venues and theatres of war – are the raw material of our relating to one another. There are so many opportunities to choose to reach out to others or, on the contrary, think only of ourselves. This attack is a huge step back for humanity. After all we have been through, we cannot see it, even ‘through a glass darkly’.

 

27 February 2022

A WORLD WITHOUT FRONTIERS

 

A WORLD WITHOUT FRONTIERS

There are many ‘shocking’ passages in the gospels: Jesus healing lepers, forgiving sinners, calling tax collectors and washing his disciples’ feet. But the one thing that must have stuck in their throat was the call to ‘love your enemies’. After all the oppression they had been through – from the Egyptians, the Philistines, the Persians, the Greeks and now the Romans – how are they expected to have even a kind thought towards their enemies, leave alone love them?

Jesus came to announce the kingdom, a new world of fraternity (the word covers sisters as well as brothers, as Pope Francis points out in Fratelli Tutti). Paul interpreted it as a world without boundaries: ‘Christ is our peace. He made both Jews and Gentiles into one group. With his body, he broke down the barriers of hatred that divide us’ (Eph 2:14).

In the Old Testament reading today, we see David sparing Saul’s life when he could have killed him. But David did not act out of love but out of fear of God’s anger if he killed ‘the Lord’s anointed’. David was a calculating politician!

Jesus, on the other hand, is urging us to remove the ‘great gulf’ referred to in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus at his door (Luke 16:26). Jesus calls us to go to the frontier where we cannot bring ourselves to say a kind word to some people who irritate us beyond endurance! They could be in our own family, in our work place or in our society. ‘If you love those who love you what thanks can you expect?’ our gospel asks us today.

Jesus wants a breakthrough in our world; between Russians and Ukrainians, Tigrayans and Ethiopians, migrants and those who close their doors to them -and all the other divided people in the world. And with us, is there a message too? Who is my ‘enemy’? Who am I called to reach out to? To love? 

I know it is easy to ask these questions and they can remain theoretical or abstract. We can also give thanks for the barriers we have overcome. I often think of how I came to view people who are mentally handicapped in a completely different way. It was a gift for me. And I am sure you have had similar experiences. We are called to go on breaking down these barriers wherever they are. The kingdom is ‘among’ but it is not yet fully there!

20 February 2022         Sunday 7C       1 Sam 2:62…23           1 Cor 15:45-49             Lk 6: 27-38

WHAT A TRAGEDY!

 

WHAT A TRAGEDY!

A reader, so disappointed by the ending of The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot, decided to read the book again in the hope that the ending would be different! So the story goes, and whatever the truth of it, it illustrates our disappointment over tragic endings. I was one of the many who turned to the news last Sunday morning in the hope five-year-old Rayan, who had fallen down a 100-foot deep dry well in Morocco, would at last be rescued safe and sound. Hundreds had kept vigil during the five-day rescue attempt and now the moment arrived when he could be safely extracted from his little prison. Jubilation! But, alas, only for a moment: the child was dead.

People on the spot, and watching around the world, went numb. They knew it might turn out that way but they hoped ‘against hope’ that there would be a happy ending. There was consolation in the show of human solidarity across boundaries and Pope Francis pointed to the ‘beauty’ of this. But there was no escaping that awful feeling of pain and disappointment. How wonderful if he been found alive! But he wasn’t. The world moved on and the story dropped from the headlines.

Yet knawing questions remain. Is that really the end of the story? Is tragedy just what the word means; an awful human disaster and it ends there. Herbert Chitepo and Thomas Sankara are assassinated. Josiah Tongogara and Princess Diana die in road accidents. Cyclones and tsunamis kill thousands and destroy homes and livelihoods.

We are caught between wanting our planet, our only home, to be a place of happiness and happy endings and realising that it has never been that way and tragedy is our constant companion. I often go back to St Thomas Aquinas: ‘God does not want evil but he permits it. And that is good.’ When I first heard these words, I was shocked. It is good that God permits evil? I do not know if Thomas elaborates. I suspect he doesn’t because who can? You cannot get your mind around the reality of evil being ‘good’.

Yet we often get hints that tragic events lead to some good result. I won’t try to give examples: There is a starkness in the concept that does not bear too much analysis. We just have to stay with the paradox. We see ‘good’ people suffering tragedies and we see ‘bad’ people seemingly enjoying life without suffering. But tragedy, pain and disaster are like the shards in the potter’s workshop. They are the price we seem to have to pay in order to create a wholesome humanity. 

13 February 2022  Sunday 6C  Jer 17:5-8    1 Cor 1512…20    Lk 6: 17…26    

THE POWER OF WORDS

 

THE POWER OF WORDS

‘Doesn’t it show that a simple little conversation can change things? Its huge. The power of words is a lot better than the power of the gun. I’m chuffed.’ The speaker was Patrick Murphy, head of the Irish South and West Fish Producers’ Organisation, on learning that the Russian government had heeded his request that they moved their naval exercises further out to sea as they were threatening their fish with all their explosions and rocket drill. ‘I’m shocked really, I didn’t think that little old us would have an impact on international diplomacy’, he said.

The prophet Isaiah had a vision of a seraph touching his lips with a live coal and purifying him so that he could announce the words of God to the people and we have been living off those words ever since. And in Luke’s gospel we have an example of Jesus telling, not the Russian navy, but Peter to ‘put out into deep water for a catch of fish.’ Peter is astonished for he knows about fishing and fishing is done at night. But there was something in the power of Jesus’ words that moved him to obey, and we know what happened.

It is so easy to say nothing, to keep quiet. It is safer and keeps us out of trouble. But our readings today prompt us to reflect on those words of Qoheleth about ‘a time to keep silent and a time to speak’ (3:7). Many times we fail to speak when there is a real need to do so. The whole case of abuse in the Church is a case in point. But the need is far wider. In families and communities we see someone getting into trouble but we say nothing. We are afraid to speak because we might be blamed later on. Or we feel we might be breaking the family unity.

An America researcher, George Vaillant, is part of a team that has studied behaviour in a large sample of people over decades. One of his conclusions is that people who are happy in their eighties enjoyed good relationships in their fifties. This may not sound like a major discovery; maybe it is obvious. But his point is that happiness is based on sound relationships. And we can take this further and say, sound relationships grow when people speak honestly to each other and know when to ‘keep silent and when to speak.’   

The key is that we are responsible for each other. If we take courage and speak when it is necessary, we not only contribute to another’s long term happiness but we achieve our own. When we lose our life we find it. We too can be ‘chuffed.’

6 February 2022    Sunday 5C  Is 6:1-8       1 Cor 15:1-11       Lk 5:1-11