DAVID’S RESTRAINT

 

DAVID’S RESTRAINT

David’s restraint, when he has Saul in his power, is a model for peacemakers. Saul set out with three thousand men to find and do away with David. David, aware of Paul’s aim, creeps up on Saul while he is asleep and takes away his spear but does not harm him. When Saul wakes and realises what had happened, he cries out, ‘I have behaved like a fool. I have been profoundly in the wrong.’

This incident from the Hebrew scriptures prepares us for the gospel where Jesus says bluntly, ‘love your enemies, do good to those who hate you’. As many have pointed out, a shocking command to Jews then under the Roman yoke. To love is to go out to another with a desire they be free and full of joy. The story is told of Aston Chichester, before he became the first Catholic bishop in Harare, that he accused a boy at a school in England of helping himself to the altar wine. The boy feared the worst when he was called to the office but Chichester had investigated and found the boy was innocent. He told him, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve made a fool of myself.’ History doesn’t tell us what the boy thought of this but he surely went away amazed and elated.  

The desire to respond to other’s fears and build bridges does not seem prominent in the mindset of many world leaders. Rather than removing the spear they use it to impose their own solution. After all these centuries of war and oppression, we still seem far from practising restraint. To take just one example, why is it not obvious that the Palestinians want a place where they can live and prosper without fear? Why is this denied them these past eighty years?

Restraint brings peace to both sides. To compromise is not to show weakness. On the contrary, it takes courage to face the cost of another’s fears and allay them. I come from a country, still divided, but where efforts to remove the bitter hatred of three centuries has succeeded to the extent that young people hardly know what you are talking about when you recall the wounds of the past. To reach that point both sides had to restrain themselves and recognise their antagonisms were leading nowhere.

To see a problem from the point of view of the other person, to get into their mind, is what actors, psychotherapists, priests and many others try to do. Somehow, we have to empty ourselves of our own standpoints and take on that of another. Isn’t that what the Lord himself did when he became one of us? 

23 February 2025  Sunday 7 C  1 Sam 26    1 Cor 15: 45-49        Lk 627-38

PLANTED BY THE WATERSIDE

 

PLANTED BY THE WATERSIDE

What makes for a good doctor, or a good anyone? The doctor who knows the clinical answer to every disease will, no doubt, do a good job. But if they only rely on book knowledge, there will be something missing. That ‘something’ is the space between the doctor as a person and the patient. The book knowledge is necessary and may well provide a cure for many ailments. But it is not enough.

I have mentioned before in this column the etching I once saw in a house in Ireland where a child lay on a bed dying. The mother has her head buried in despair in the bedclothes, the father standing lost in the background and the doctor sitting by the bed deep in thought. He is straining every inch of his knowledge and his intuition to find a remedy.

Scientists today are humbler than their forbears. There was a time, in the hubris of the Enlightenment, when they boasted they would, in time, find the answer to all nature’s secrets. Few would claim that today. The more science advances, the more scientists know their limits – and the more some of the gospel sayings show their wisdom; “When you have done all you were told to do, say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty'” (Lk 17:10).

But still, scientists, like doctors, explore beyond known boundaries and follow their intuitions. They leave aside rule books, manuals and maps and search for solutions that may never have been tried before. They will not go wrong if they remember another scripture saying, this time from Jeremiah; ‘Blessed is the one who trusts in Yahweh ... They are like a tree by the waterside ... which never stops bearing fruit’ (17:7).    

I take this to mean, when a person is rooted in God, they can try all sorts of things. They will never go far wrong. Am I saying anything profound? No! We know that no soldier can be trained for every eventuality in war and no player can prepare for every twist of a football game. True, but we are not soldiers or footballers – most of us. The point surely is; we are all called to be explorers, all called to announce the kingdom of God wherever we are planted.

The tree has no choice, but we have. We can choose to be planted by the waterside and ‘thrust our roots to the stream’ (Jer 17 again). There we draw water that gives us energy and imagination to engage in the struggles of today. Alone, we can do nothing. But rooted by the water’s edge we can make a difference – beyond the rules. 16 Feb 2025. Sunday 6 C. Jer 17:5-8. 1 Cor 15:12... 20. Lk 6: 17... 26

  

     

AMONG YOU, UNKNOWN TO YOU

 

AMONG YOU, UNKNOWN TO YOU

The story is told by Indian wise man, Anthony de Melo. about a religious community that was disintegrating. They were aging and bickering and had lost direction. The leader of the group decided to consult a holy man and ask his advice. He simply said, ‘Do you not know the Messiah is among you?’ The leader was puzzled and went back to the community and reported the holy man’s words.

They did not understand but they began to look at one another and say, ‘Could this one be the Messiah? Or that one? Or even that one?’ They began to see each other differently and began to respect each other, a respect that gradually grew into a warmth. Soon the community turned a corner and became wholesome again and attracted others to join them.

We have no idea who this person is we meet today. When I was at our Social Development Centre in Chishawasha, we use to have members of the boards of organisations we dealt with coming to see what we were doing. I well remember the time Robert MacNamara was one such. I was in awe of the man who had been President John F. Kennedy’s Defence Secretary at the time of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. For about a week the world was on the edge of a nuclear war that might have destroyed us all. And here he was calmly bumping along a Mhondoro dirt road looking at our projects.  I was the only one on the bus who knew who he was. I was totally in awe of the man and could hardly put a few sentences together in talking to him. 

In this first week of February we definitively end the Christmas season which has lasted forty days, as Lent and Easter will shortly do. The occasion is the ‘presentation’ of the baby Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem. No one, in that milling crowd, knew who this child was – except two old representatives of the ‘remnant’ of Israel, Simeon and Anna. The promises to Abraham, the covenant on Sinai and the words of the prophets are being fulfilled but no one notices.

Our world may look predictable and – for many of us – our lives secure. But we live in a charged world where those we meet – from the greatest to the least – may be about to change everything. John the Baptist told the pharisees ‘standing among you, unknown to you, is the one ... and I am not fit to undo the strap of his sandals’. Whoever and whatever we meet on our way, we are invited to stop and pay attention. Otherwise we may miss something that may change our life and that of those among whom we live.

9 February 2025    Sunday 5 C           Is 6:1...8      1 Cor 15:1-11       Lk 5:1-11