NO LONGER UNDER THAT GUARDIAN

PRAYER PAUSE

Saturday 8 October 2016

NO LONGER UNDER THAT GUARDIAN

Pause. Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading: “The Law was to be our guardian until Christ came and we could be justified by faith. Now that the time has come we are no longer under that guardian.” (Galatians 3:22-29)

Reflection. Paul is furious with the Galatians for being like young people hankering after their school days and not wanting to grow up. They want to go back to the Law because it meant they did not have to think for themselves. They did not have to do the inner work of exercising their freedom as people guided by the Spirit. Our situation is perhaps not as crude as that but we can still look at what others are doing before we make up our mind. Our vocation is to have courage and trust ourselves and discover our own gifts and use them for the service of the world.

Prayer. Lord, we help us to trust ourselves and use the gifts you have given to each of us for the service of others. Amen

TOGETHER WITH MARY

PRAYER PAUSE

Friday 7 October 2016, Holy Rosary

TOGETHER WITH MARY

Pause. Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading: “All these joined in continuous prayer, together with several women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with the brothers.” (Acts 2:12-14)

Reflection. The Rosary is a form of prayer that has sustained many in times when they had no other support. It is a way of meditating on the life of Jesus in the company of his mother. She was there at the beginning of the great mystery of “God among us” and she was there at the end when Jesus had left the disciples. It was an end but it was also a beginning, a beginning of the Church. And she accompanies us sill as Church and as a mother to each of us.

Prayer. Lord, we give thanks for the gift of Mary, your mother, May she accompany us with a mother’s love all our days. Amen

SEARCH AND YOU WILL FIND

PRAYER PAUSE (I am going away for a week and perhaps there will be no internet where I am going.)

Thursday 6 October 2016, Bruno

SEARCH AND YOU WILL FIND

Pause. Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading: “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” (Luke 11:5-13)

Reflection. We are aware that we can stop searching. We can say, “I know.” We can “tame” our quest for God, drawing on him, like a bank account (if we nave one), when we need him. And then something happens and we are caught off balance. “Why has God allowed this to happen to me?” We get angry and blame him. But perhaps we do not know him or have not sought him enough. Perhaps we have made him in our own image. It is part of our searching to be surprised, to discover new ways in which God “trips us up,” exposes our fragility to us and leads us into new ways of knowing him.

Prayer. Lord, teach us what it is to search for you. May we never settle for an image of you that is not you. Amen

I OPPOSED HIM

PRAYER PAUSE

Wednesday 5 October 2016

I OPPOSED HIM

Pause. Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading: “When Cephas came to Antioch, however, I opposed him to his face, since he was manifestly in the wrong.” (Galatians 2:1…14)

Reflection. Confrontation is uncomfortable but we know it is also life-giving. It is a gift some have – to boil when they see something wrong and speak up. To many “just keep quiet.” Confrontation leads to crisis and crisis is a Greek word implying growth. But we don’t confront because we are afraid, of our father or our employer or our president. We just keep quiet. The trouble is fear leaves no room for the trust that is essential if confrontation is to have any chance of bearing fruit. With Peter and Paul there was that trust and so the Church moved forward.

Prayer. Lord, give us the trust that will enable us to confront and so we will be able to grow as people and as your church. Amen

SHE SAT AND LISTENED

PRAYER PAUSE

Tuesday 4 October 2016, Francis of Assisi

SHE SAT AND LISTENED

Pause. Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading: “Mary sat down at the Lord’s feet and listened to him speaking.” (Luke 10:38-42)

Reflection. It is not difficult to imagine someone being so absorbed in an unusual visitor and forgetting everything else around them. Mary had that gift of concentration on Jesus there before her. I think it was the famous photographer, Cartier-Bresson, who wanted people not just to look at his pictures but to “see” them. It is that quality of pushing our senses beyond quick impressions soon forgotten. Mary doesn’t just hear, she listens. She brings her whole self before the Lord and allows herself to be absorbed by his words.  

Prayer. Lord, in our fast moving world, help us to take time to sit still and listen to you for a while and let our hearts be absorbed by yours . Amen

MOVED WITH COMPASSION

PRAYER PAUSE

Monday 3 October 2016

MOVED WITH COMPASSION

Pause. Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading: “But a Samaritan traveller who came upon him was moved with compassion when he saw him.” (Luke10:25-37)

Reflection. Pope Francis hopes that declaring a Year of Mercy will stir our hearts to compassion. It is much needed. Yesterday I visited a crowded jail where inmates cannot even lie down to sleep at night for lack of room. Yet the government spends vast sums on “priorities.” A scripture scholar once told me the Greek word for compassion means a turning upside down of our insides so that we reach out to a person in pain. “Strategic plans” inoculate us from seeing the institutional suffering at our door and kicks it down the road for another day.

Prayer. Lord, where is our compassion in the midst of so much suffering? Help us to let our hearts be moved so that we reach out to those in pain. Amen

ALEPPO BLEEDING

ALEPPO BLEEDING

We are sitting at the bedside of Aleppo. A part of the city is slowly dying with 250,000 people – mostly women and children – trapped. Russian and Syrian planes relentlessly bomb and the bombers’ leaders pay no attention to world opinion. Pope Francis has told them they will have to answer before God but they take no notice.

The prophet Habakkuk laments, “How long, Lord, am I to cry for help while you will not listen; to cry “oppression” in your ear and you will not save?” He voices the desperation of his age and every age when the poor and innocent suffer. ‘Why do they suffer?’ It is a question that has puzzled humanity from the beginning. God’s answer to Habakkuk is hard for the people of Aleppo to take; fulfilment will come, “if it comes slowly, wait, for come it will, without fail … the upright man will live by his faithfulness.”

That’s a tough answer – enough to strain the patience of Job. So, in the midst of Russian bombing and the death of my children, I am to wait in patience, trusting that God will bring deliverance? Yes and no. We really are called to ‘live by faith.’ Paul based his whole letter to the Romans, his most influential letter, on his firm grasp of this. At the same time he did everything to struggle against the evil of his time, denouncing, cajoling and encouraging in turn.   

If we simply say “wait in patience” we are doing what Marx said religion does: it anaesthetises the sufferer. No, we have to struggle mightily against the evil. But at the same time we are called to believe that God suffers too with his people and is working to bring relief but in his way and his time. This cannot be done speedily because we have to work through the consequences of the evil choices we make. There is no glossing over our actions, no quick fix.

The disciples in Luke’s gospel say; “Increase our faith!” They cannot, as yet, understand how God is at work but at least they know they do not understand. That is a beginning. Paul tells Timothy to “fan into a flame” the gift he was given. We are at the centre of a struggle – tempted to despair on the one hand and struggling to believe on the other.

I am reading a book about the unbelievable misery of the lives of the Irish peasants in the eighteenth century. This is not the place to expand on this but when we look at the subsequent history of the Irish we can see an extraordinary rebirth. I am not saying the Syrians have to wait two centuries. Things happen faster these days. But there is hope so long as we keep faith.

2 October 2016           Sunday 27 C

Habakkuk 1:2-3, 2:2-4           2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14          Luke 17:5-10