THE LORD FELT SORRY FOR HER

PRAYER PAUSE

Tuesday 18 September, 2018

THE LORD FELT SORRY FOR HER

Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading ”When the Lord saw her he felt sorry for her. “Do not cry,” he said, (Luke 7:11-17)

Reflection. This passage starts with, “Jesus went o a town called Nain.”  The sudden change of name to the title “Lord” alerts us to something. This is one of Jesus’ “signs” or “miracles” but it is given great solemnity by Luke.  In this brief ep[isode we  are given a glimpse of our compassionate God, reaching down to suffering humanity and raising us up . The power of the moment was not lost on the bystanders. They were “filled with awe.”  “God has visited his people.” We pause to allow the suffering of our world today to soak into our consciousness and hearts.  And we pray to be able to bring that consolation of God to those in great distress.”.  .

Prayer. Lord, help us to show your compassion to our suffering sisters and brothers and especially the children who are caught up in traumas over which they have no control.   Amen 

THE FOCUS OF MY LIFE

THE FOCUS OF MY LIFE

“People should not be ambivalent themselves just because everything else is. … Do people exist today who never tire of undividedly focusing all their thoughts and desires on a single objective?”  These are the words of a 21 year old girl to her boyfriend, a soldier in the German army during the early years of the Second World War.  Sophie Scholl was writing to Fritz Hartnagel who was beginning to question his own involvement in Hitler’s objectives.

Sophie was part of a group of students in Munich University who realised what was happening –as many in Germany did at the time - and decided to protest.  Secretly they composed leaflets denouncing the Nazis’ aims and deeds, and circulated them in many of the cities of Germany.  It was extremely dangerous and eventually they were caught, “tried” and executed by guillotine.  Sophie never flinched throughout her trial and up to the moment of her death she spoke to all of the evil and disastrous consequences of supporting Hitler’s aims.

We too live in an ambivalent world, though not as cruel as it as then.  I have just been to Europe; where I stayed, rapid trains run to the centre of London every three minutes and nearly everywhere  multiple and varied services are available. 

And yet, despite the abundance of choices, there is a deep felt desire for something that satisfies the heart: a thirst for relationship and yet an inability to achieve it.  There is a desire for community together with a desire to pursue individual goals and it seems often impossible to join these two together.  In Zimbabwe today we want the common good: we want to see justice for all the people.  But often we only want these things so long as they do not interfere with my own goals, my own programme.  Sophis’s words, “People should not be ambivalent themselves just because everything else is”, are a direct call to us today to focus our lives.  What do I really want? Sophie backs up her words with the witness of her life. She died for these words.  She could not tolerate ambivalence in herself and she wanted passionately to convey this message to Fritz and to others. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be too.”

16 September 2018                 Sunday 24 B

Isaiah 50:5-9                            James 2:14-18                         Mark 8:27-35   

THE SON OF MAN MUST BE LIFTED UP

PRAYER PAUSE

Friday 14, 2018, The Triumph of the Cross

THE SON OF MAN MUST BE LIFTED UP

Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading ”The Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the sdesert” (John 3:13-17)

Reflection. There are two major moments in the Christian year: Christmas which celebrates God becoming human in Jesus, and Easter which celebrates Jesus confronting evil and overcoming it. We too became human beings at our moment of conception and we too, in order to become full human, must confront evil in our ourselves and in the world. We had no choice in the former; we have every choice in the latter. The cross is the sign of our choices. We either identify with it, and the one who was lifted up on it, or we reject it and fail to become fully human. .Today’s feast is a moment to remember aggin Good Friday and its message to us.

Prayer. Lord, help us to make our choice in union with the desire of your heart: that the kingdom of the Father may come.  Amen 

Book Launch

May I post this on this site?  It is a selection of the sort of reflections which later appeared here.

Weaver Press and the Mashonaland Irish Association warmly invite you to the launch of Beyond Appearances by Father David Harold Barry, SJ at the Audio Visual Centre Arrupe College, 16 Link Road, Mount Pleasant, Harare, on Saturday, 29th September at 11.00 a.m. Light refreshments will be served Copies of the book will be available.

HE PICKED OUT TWELVE

PRAYER PAUSE

Tuesday 11, 2018

PRAYER PAUSE

Tuesday 11, 2018

HE PICKED OUT TWELVE

Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading.  “It happened in those days that Jesus went onto the mountain to pray: and he spent the whole night in prayer to God. When day came he summoned his disciples and picked out twelve of them.”  (Luke 6:12-16)

Reflection. I have not written these reflections for some time.  I found it impossible when contstantly on the move. But I am about to return to Africa after a long break and I hope to settle down in one plece again! Apologies, if I have disappoinbted anyone by my silence.

I find today’s reading a good place to restart.  This simple short description, in the gospel writers’ usual economic style, actually announces th start of the community that Jesus founded, which we call the Church. He committd his work to human beings, with their weaknesses; their desire for power, advancement and wealth, their jealousies and evasions of duty and so forth. The faults of the Church were fully listed in the Irish papers recently when the pope visited. Yet Jesus handed over to us, weak people, the work of bringing about his kingdom.  We may feel unequal to the task butthere is no one else to do it.

Prayer. Lord, help us to grasp the meaning of your words “When you pray, say ‘Thy kingdom come’.  Amen 

Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading.  “It happened in those days that Jesus went onto the mountain to pray: and he spent the whole night in prayer to God. When day came he summoned his disciples and picked out twelve of them.”  (Luke 6:12-16)

Reflection. I have not written these reflections for some time.  I found it impossible when contstantly on the move. But I am about to return to Africa after a long break and I hope to settle down in one plece again! Apologies, if I have disappoinbted anyone by my silence.

I find today’s reading a good place to restart.  This simple short description, in the gospel writers’ usual economic style, actually announces th start of the community that Jesus founded, which we call the Church. He committd his work to human beings, with their weaknesses; their desire for power, advancement and wealth, their jealousies and evasions of duty and so forth. The faults of the Church were fully listed in the Irish papers recently when the pope visited. Yet Jesus handed over to us, weak people, the work of bringing about his kingdom.  We may feel unequal to the task butthere is no one else to do it.

Prayer. Lord, help us to grasp the meaning of your words “When you pray, say ‘Thy kingdom come’.  Amen 

CHANGE YOUR WAY OF THINKING

CHANGE YOUR WAY OF THINKING

The Guardian displayed two stunning blue birds – Spix’s Macaws from Brazil – on its front page (5 September 2018) above the title, “Lost for ever.” The birds are among the species now extinct in the wild, one more indicator of the relentless advance of climate change due, in this case, to deforestation.

There are many more dramatic signs, such as the ice melting in the Arctic and the drying up of Lake Chad, but still people continue to exploit the earth, “our common home” (Pope Francis), seemingly regardless that they are destroying it.

‘Ephphata!’ Mark gives us the actual word of Jesus to the deaf and dumb man – ‘be opened’ - but he immediately orders the man to tell no one about it. We know that, for Jesus, his cures were not just to heal; they were signs with a meaning beyond the physical act of healing.  He knew people would stop at the cure and not look beyond.  So the solution was not to tell anyone until later when, as Mark sees it, after the passion they would understand.

Being open to the truth can require a kind of death; a death to my own prejudice.. I have to struggle to accept what I don’t want to hear but what I now know is true.  This is not easy.  We develop our ideas and can become set in them, comfortable in them.  We can be simply not open to other opinions.  This was the tragedy of Rhodesia and it became the tragedy of Zimbabwe.  Even today people are simply not open to ways of thinking that are contrary to their own. 

So Jesus is saying to the formerly deaf and dumb man: “Don’t go round crowing that you have had your ears opened and your tongue loosened. That is not going to help anyone.  This is simply a sign that I have come to help people open their ears and witness to the truth with their words and lives.”  This is no simple matter: to change my way of thinking, to ‘convert’, takes a lot of courage and a lot of dying to self.

But Isaiah tell us it will happen and we will rejoice: “Then the ears of the deaf will be unsealed and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy, for water will gush in the dsesrt and steams in the wastelend.” We always need this perspective. The challenge is there but so is the joy for we will succeed.  This is the promise of the Messiah.

9 September 2018                             Sunday 23 B

Isaiah 35:4-7                           James 2:1-6                             Mark 7:31-37 

NOTHING FROM OUTSIDE

NOTHING FROM OUTSIDE

“Nothing that goes into someone from outside can make that person unclean.” (Mark 7:15) These words of Jesus could be written in any self-help book about “how to” organise one’s own life.  Given personal human freedom, we do not have to be controlled by outside forces. In theory we are in charge.  We can make our own decisions.  In practice, it is not like that.  We are aware of how influences from outside, consciously and unconsciously, affect us so that often we do things that we immediately regret.   

The Incarnation, the coming of God into our flesh and walking our earth, was to help us be our true self.  If we look at Peter we see someone trying to be his true self, and showing flashes of courage and generosity, but in the end falling into a hopeless mess and “weeping bitterly.”  It was in that moment of profound bitterness and shame that he met Truth, a person who “turned and looked at him” (Luke 22:61) with infinite understanding and love.

This has been a hard week. Last Sunday I attended the Mass with Pope Francis in Dublin  over which hung the dark cloud of abuse and cover-up. Then today I read, in The Tablet, of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse in two Benedictine schools in England.  I was at one of those schools and, in my day, I never heard a whisper of what is reported.  That is not to say it did not happen, or it happened after I left. All I remember is the devoted endeavour of the monks to give of their best so that we might have a rounded education.

But now this abuse is out in the open here and in many other countries.  And where it is still not yet out in the open it is likely to be sooner or later.  It all makes for bitterly sad reading.

To say, in the next breath, it is a moment of meeting Truth and a moment of healing, is perhaps to speak too quickly.  We cannot rush healing.  This will take time, painful time. I felt for Pope Francis in Dublin.  I felt he is carrying this burden for the Church.  He always asks us to pray for him but he is only doing that so that we may share his heavy burden.  There is definitely a way forward.  There is definitely a huge moment of growth and new life round the corner.  But we are not yet ready to think about it now.  We have too much mourning to do still.

2 September 2018                               Sunday 22 B

Deuteronomy 4:1…8                         James 1:17…27                  Mark 7:1…23