RETREAT IN LENT 2021 Day 3, Friday, 19 February

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 3, Friday, 19 February

Break every yoke

 

When the Jesuits first came to Monze, Zambia, Fr Joseph Moreau started to train local oxen to pull the plough. They had never before been ‘under the yoke’ and did not submit easily. Moreau wrote, ‘the oxen were fighting for the freedom of their species!’ In the end they surrendered and ploughing was quickly adopted with great results.

 

A yoke, or harness, is useful for ploughing, drawing carts and so forth but Isaiah (58:1-9) is speaking of the ‘unjust yoke’ where a person, or animal, is burdened beyond endurance. As we begin Lent, we are invited to examine the ‘yokes’ in our lives. Isaiah tells us the Lord is not interested in our prayers and fasting if we are all the time ignoring our yokes! In other words, what are the ways we burden ourselves or other people?

 

Jesus often tells the Pharisees they are more interested in how they appear than in how they are. ‘These people honour me with their lips while their hearts are far from me’ (Matt 15:8). Do we find ourselves saying prayers, reading the bible, going to Church and the rest, but not being awake to what we are doing? We burden ourselves by paying attention to the wrong things. The Pharisee in the temple spends his time congratulating himself for his way of life while the tax collector beats his breast and cries, ‘Lord, have mercy on me a sinner’ (Luke 18:9-14). 

Day 2, Thursday, 18 February

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 2, Thursday, 18 February

A Choice.

Lent wastes no time in getting to the point. It is a matter of choice. We go right back to Deuteronomy (30:15-20) written 3,000 years ago: ‘I set before you life and prosperity, death and disaster. … Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live in the love of the Lord your God …’

 

Maybe it is not so simple. I cannot choose because my circumstances do not allow me. Yet, I can always choose – no matter what the circumstances! I am thinking, for example, of people in prison I have met. They cannot choose to walk out the door. But they can choose how they will live the time that they are inside. They can choose to be hopeful, helpful to others, cheerful, patient – always ‘singing in their heart’. Or they can choose to be miserable, counting the days, nursing a grudge against someone and full of self-pity. The former can be happy, even in prison, while the latter choose to be unhappy!

 

The gospel draws us deeper into the mystery of human life. Happiness is not accumulating things, getting my own way, dominating others. Happiness is in getting out of myself and being there for others, ‘renouncing self and taking up my cross every day’ (Luke 9:22-25). Happiness is the opposite of thinking of myself and my property, my reputation, my pleasure, my, my, my! Happiness is in ‘emptying’ myself, ‘losing my life’.

 

I think we have all grasped it at times: the joy we have in giving a present, doing a job for someone without looking for payment, reaching out to someone in trouble. There are many times in which we glimpse what Jesus means by ‘losing one’s life’.

 

We have this power to choose. Everyone has it. It is the most beautiful thing about human beings. Choosing well is what makes us more human, makes us grow as people, helps us build a better family, make a better society, create a better world.

 

Enjoy the day!

RETREAT IN LENT 2021 Day 1, Ash Wednesday, 17 February

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 1, Ash Wednesday, 17 February

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 opens the season of Lent. It recalls the three traditional ways we can live this season:

·        helping others especially the poor, ‘your left hand must not know what your right is doing’

·        prayer, ‘go to your private room and pray to your Father who is in that secret place’

·        fast, ‘so that no one will know what you are doing’

The emphasis is on intimacy, secrecy and sincerity. This is a matter between you and God. You are cut off from the gaze of the world. What you do is the real ‘you’. There can be no pretense, no show. You are alone, as if you were on your own in a prison cell! Your relationship is now stripped down, laid bare. ‘Simon Peter, do you love me?’ Jesus wants the truth. The question is repeated a second time. And a third time. Peter is distraught; ‘Lord, you know everything, you know I love you’ (John 21:17).

Peter helps us. There are other instances in the gospel where he is shaken. When he sees the catch of fish, he is shocked and cries, ‘leave me, Lord, this is too much’ (Luke 5:8). Again, he reacts to Jesus’ words that he would ‘suffer grievously’ in Jerusalem in horror, ‘No, no! Let that not happen to you!’ And Jesus says to him sharply, ‘Get out of my way; you are an obstacle in my path’ (Matt 16:23). And when Peter’s courage collapses completely and he denies ever knowing him, Jesus turns and looks on him with love and understanding (Luke 22:61).

So, on this first day I can try to be honest with myself. I can try to get behind all the outward show I put on when I am with others. We wear masks on these Covid days but, in another way, we are always wearing a mask, always hiding our true self from others – and even from ourselves.

So I desire to know myself as I am known by God and come before him with truth and honesty. 

-o0o-

 

People like receiving ashes. I wonder why? The practice surely comes from the book of Genesis (3:19): ‘you are dust and to dust you will return.’ One day, I will be a handful of dust! 

SO GREAT A MYSTERY

 

SO GREAT A MYSTERY

Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, a Roman senator in late antiquity, was horrified by the Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity. The traditional religion of ancient Rome was now labelled ‘pagan’ and the basilicas and shrines of the gods were either pulled down or converted to Christian use. We were taught it was all a ‘good thing’, this conversion of the emperor, but Symmachus protested, ‘We gaze up at the same stars; the sky covers us all; the same universe encompasses us. Does it matter what practical system we adopt in our search for the Truth? The heart of so great a mystery cannot be reached by following one road only.’

St Ambrose was not amused. It was the central tenant of Christianity then and since: there was ‘one road only’ to the great Truth and Jesus had revealed it. Everything else, as Paul said in another context, was ‘garbage’. Today we would like to give Symmachus another hearing. There are millions of people on our planet who do not share the Christian ‘one road only’ view and we have learnt to respect and appreciate what they hold dear. It is not only people of other faiths, like the Muslims and Buddhists, but people of no explicit faith who lead lives of integrity and generosity.

And if Symmachus was around today he would feel further support for his view if he looked at the divisions among Christians. The spectrum is wide though not as intense as it was in the sixteenth century when we burned, hanged and quartered each other. And if we narrow our zoom even more and look at Catholics for a moment, we will see another spectrum. We are familiar with the label – that word again – ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ but we say there is one thing on which we all agree: the Eucharist is the heart of our faith.

But is it? I know two good, devoted and generous women who have quite different ‘takes’ on the Eucharist. One was a hermit, drawn out of her solitude by the BBC when they discovered her talent for explaining and commenting on art. She was taken to many places – Paris, Rome, New York – but there was always one condition. The BBC had to provide means for her to go to Mass each day. What they made of this isn’t recorded but each day a taxi driver in a foreign city had to scratch his head to find a Catholic Church in the early morning.

The other woman, equally generous and devoted, sat lightly on the Catholic custom of regular participation at the Eucharist. She did not feel the need and was irritated by the priest always being a man and often preaching bland sermons. She would have much sympathy for Symmachus.

If the reader is wondering where all this is leading, it is simply this. It is true that the mystery, which we sense in our inmost being, can be approached in different ways. Yet the gift of the Eucharist to the primitive community Jesus formed was prized from the beginning. All four gospel writers, as well as Paul, tell us about it. And they each write with special reverence as they sense that here we are actually touching the mystery. Jesus, the Son of God, is inviting us to be physically part of his offering of his life and death for the world.     

14 February 2021         Sunday 6B       Lev 13:1-2, 45-46         1 Cor 10:31-11:1          Mk 1: 41-45

 

THE VIRUS NEVER DIES

 

THE VIRUS NEVER DIES

La Peste, (The Plague) is a novel by Algerian writer Albert Camus, published in 1947, which describes the effect of a virus on a town, Oran, in his country. The town is real but the plague is not though its description draws on accounts of real plagues in other places in other times. The book was immediately hailed as a ground breaker for two reasons. It was seen as an allegory of the German occupation of France (1940-44) and how the people suffered and reacted. But it was also seen as a reflection on human beings in general and how they respond to the pestilence embedded in life that keeps breaking out all over the world. The most recent example is a report of the Chinese trying to eliminate the culture, language, dignity and even life of the Uighurs in their western province.

The first sign of something unusual in Oran was rats bleeding and dying in the streets. People notice it but aren’t worried and continue their normal life, leaving the authorities to clean the streets. Then there are some deaths among the population. Again it is shrugged off and causes no alarm. Finally, the death toll rises to around 500 or more a week. And then the dreaded word ‘plague’ is used for the first time. Camus describes the gradual change that come over the people. Health workers devise a response which is scientific, meticulous and generous. The doctor works twenty hours a day.

But many try to leave the town though the gates are locked and guarded to prevent the contagion spreading. The priest preaches a sermon saying the people have brought it on themselves and they must accept the suffering as a cleansing process. The bar owners are happy that people come to drink to drown their worries and frustrations.  Those who have money spend it in a luxurious life style without thought for the future. Ordinary people just wander aimlessly round the town overwhelmed by the sense of ‘illness, exile and separation’ that grips the town. Meanwhile the number of deaths rise and the authorities are more and more stretched.

Camus has no heroes and no villains. Everyone is just trying to survive. But Camus makes a quiet but earnest plea for people to face the truth.

'All I say is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims - and as far as possible one must refuse to be on the side of the pestilence. This may seem rather simple to you, and I don't know if it is simple, but I do know that it is true. I have heard so many arguments that nearly turn my head, and which turn enough other heads for them to consent to murder, that I understand that all the misfortunes of mankind came from not stating things in clear terms. So, I decided to speak and to act clearly ...' p 195 

 

There is one great benefit we have in our time with our own plague, Covid 19. We know the truth and can do something about it. Facts are available even though some politicians cannot resist bending the truth and presenting it in a way that suits them. This is a plague that our ancestors did not have the science to detect or treat. We do. And all the ‘stop/go’ about vaccines is only a temporary hitch.

The people of Oran lived a life of drudgery, reflected in the words of Job in this Sunday’s readings, as they waited for the pest to recede. Many today are locked up and frustrated and there are even cases of young people unable to bear the wait and taking their own lives. But Camus tells us that a pestilence is like an earthquake or a cyclone that hits us from time to time and reminds us of the underlying fragility of life. He ends his novel saying,

‘The plague bacillus never dies or vanishes completely … it waits in bedrooms, cellars, trunks and old papers, and perhaps the day will come when, for the instruction or the misfortune of mankind, the plague will rouse its rats and send them to die in some well-contented city.’

7 February 2021          Sunday 5B      Job 1:1-7         1 Cor 9:16-23              Mark 1:29-39

 

 

JESSE THISTLE – A HUMAN TRIUMPH

 

JESSE THISTLE – A HUMAN TRIUMPH

It is something to give joy to the heart of God and to us. He is about 42 now but indigenous Canadian Jesse Thistle has found his feet after an almost unbelievably broken life. His father, an indigenous Canadian from the Algonquin tribe, in trouble with the law, ran away from home and met up with another indigenous Canadian from the Métis-Cree tradition with whom he had three sons, Jesse being the youngest. Sonny, the father, was soon in trouble again and his wife ran away with the children when they were still small. He caught up with her and took the children back but neglected them. They ended up in ‘white’ homes, among people, who in the 1960s, despised and tried to scrub out the indigenous culture.

Jesse ended up on drugs and living wild. It is a dreadful story but slowly his grandmother and then his mother and finally a girl, Lucie, came into his life. He began to see another way was possible and, when he realised (it had been hidden from him) his mother was a Métis-Cree, he researched her history, and so his own. He found they were a noble tribe who fought for their land and their freedom against the Canadian settlers in the 1880s. He put himself to school and learnt to read and do maths. He shone and was offered a post at York University in Toronto where he is now working on his PhD. 

It is a story of rejection, destitution and redemption. Despite the pain of it all it is hard not to rejoice once again at the sheer resilience people have and their ability to survive unspeakable trauma. After all, what are we here for but to fight these battles and win? Shakespeare said famously, ‘all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’ True, but all the world’s also a workshop, where men and woman mould their destinies by their decisions. And we can rejoice in the writers who bring us these stories. They tell us of the plague we are living through. They tell us Trump and Biden and climate change and North Korea. But on the same page they tell us of Jesse Thistle and his triumph over the snares life laid for him.

Jesse’s new-found life did not end with himself. It drove him to compassion for his fellow Canadians who endured similar histories. He wrote and spoke on ‘homelessness’ as something that goes well beyond not having a roof over your head. A roof is one thing but kinship, land, culture, language and spirituality were also wrenched from the indigenous people and made them ‘homeless’. Jesse spreads his compassion to reach out to veterans returning from war and the elderly unable to live with their children. Kinship is a key value: it extends to visiting, hospitality and relationships. It makes you who you are. Without it you are lost as he was for ten years or more as he drifted from dead end to dead end. All of this could be written about Africa.

When an evil spirit shouted at Jesus, ‘I know who you are’, it was speaking the truth. But Jesus told it, ‘Be quiet!’ There was no way the people in that synagogue could understand then. It would take time. They thought he could solve all their problems at a stroke. But life is not like that. Jesus knew the struggle with evil would be a long haul – for individuals – and for the world. We are still at it all these centuries later. Each one and all of us together have to engage in that struggle. There are setbacks but there are also victories. Jesse Thistle’s story one of those victories; a human triumph forged in the workshop of life.  

31 January 2012          Sunday 4B      Deut 18:15-20       1 Cor 7 :32-35       Mk 1:21-28   

NEW AND SHOCKING

 

NEW AND SHOCKING

People keep holding a gun to my head. But it is only a thermometer. Normally it gives good news but last week it suddenly shot up into the red. Panic! I began to ponder how I felt. I persuaded myself I had all the symptoms of the beginnings of Covid and stayed away from others and so missed lunch. I lay there ‘grinding gears’ for a while thinking what next until my supposed bearer of bad news reappeared and told me his thermometer was faulty. He checked me out with another one and behold! I was normal. I suddenly began to feel well.

The moral of the story is that our feelings sometimes have nothing to do with reality. This may sound trite and obvious but we often stay with our feelings because the reality is just too hard to bear. Joe Biden tried hard in his inaugural speech to raise the aspirations of his fellow Americans but he pointed out the obvious; the ideals of the founders, about equality and opportunity, are still, 240 years later, far from the reality.

In Zimbabwe we are into our fifth decade of freedom yet the ideals spoken that night in April, 1980, are still simply ideals. They do not reflect the reality. Simukai Chigudu, who was at a renowned school in Zimbabwe before he moved to the UK to completed his secondary education and pursue studies in medicine and then politics, writes in The Guardian that ‘colonialism has never really ended’.  The way people think, in Zimbabwe and in the UK, is still colonial in essence. They may assent in their heads to the notion of equality and may rave in anguish at the events, for example, that led to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement but when they meet another person in the street who is different from them, they become tense and search for a politically correct attitude or, worse, ignore or condescend to them. Between their ideals and the reality there is a yawning gap.

There is, it seems to us,

At best, only a limited value

In the knowledge derived from experience.

That knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,

For the pattern is new at every moment

And every moment is a new and shocking

Valuation of all we have been.

 

These words of T.S.Eliot, in East Coker, are a commentary on the words of Jesus which we have this Sunday: ‘The time has come and the kingdom of God is close at hand. Change your way of thinking and believe the Good News.’ As a companion piece to this gospel we are given that passage in Jonah where the people of Nineveh – an ancient pagan city – ‘believed’ in the words of Jonah and did precisely that: they changed their way of thinking.

The pattern of our life ‘is new at every moment’ and we are always called to conversion: to make our best effort to welcome the ‘new and shocking valuation of all we have been’, and do the hard work of bringing our thinking into harmony with the reality we live each day.

24 January 2021          Sunday 3B      Jon 3:1-10       1 Cor 7:29-31              Mk 1:14-20