THUS HAVE WE MADE THE WORLD

 

THUS HAVE WE MADE THE WORLD

We are six months from Christmas! Someone in the early Church, following the scriptures and doing their arithmetic (Luke 1:36), decided it’s time to celebrate the birth of John the Baptiser. He’s the one who told the religious leaders they were ‘a brood of vipers.’ We brush that aside saying that was then. It’s got nothing to do with us. But how do we feel when we hear our own leaders today described as a ‘criminal syndicate’? It was a passing remark but I was startled.

A criminal is someone who acts for personal gain irrespective of law, either natural or civil. The natural law is written in our hearts. Civil law is written in our statute books. A syndicate is a group of people working together to keep a system in place that benefits them alone. So the phrase describes a group of people acting outside the law in their own interest only. Applied to a government, it is frightening.

But then further thoughts arise when we hear the same government described as ‘unaware of opportunities.’ It calls to mind the saying of Jesus to the woman, ‘if you but knew’ (John 4:10)! The implication is that the country has great resources and is on the cusp of development and prosperity if only they (in leadership) knew it.

The world’s created things have health in them,

            in them no fatal poison can be found. (Wisdom 1)

 

The world is such that there is enough for every person’s need. There is no reason why people should be poor, hungry, homeless, jobless and so forth. We have all the resources. But, as the final exchange in the film, The Mission, between Cardinal Altamirano and Don Hontar, puts it; ‘what happened (the destruction of the Jesuit settlements in Paraguay in the eighteenth century) was unfortunate but inevitable because "we must work in the world; the world is thus." Altamirano objects, "No, Don Hontar, thus have we made the world. Thus have I made it".’

           

It was never the Creator’s intention that the world should be a cruel place. We made it so. But we can change it. Just as we can destroy and exploit, so we can rebuild and renew. ‘Change your way of thinking for the kingdom is close at hand’, were John’s opening words. It wasn’t a threat. It was an opportunity.

-o0o-

 

The late Fr Emmanuel Ribeiro, who was buried this week, was a man who tried to change the world. I first met him in 1967 when he took me on the pillion of his motorcycle to do a wedding at an outstation in Mhondoro. Later he became a renowned composer, raising the hearts of participants in Eucharists and prayer services. He was a particular inspiration to me in his prison work; the hardest period was during the war. His work involved attending executions at Chikurubi and he would come out to us at Silveira traumatised by the experience. He did not want to speak to anyone but just walk in the woods, the Chikurubi woods, to regain peace in his sore and boiling heart. 

 

27 June 2021   Sunday 13B    Wis 1:13-15, 2:23-24       2 Cor 8:7…15        Mark 5:21-43

BREAKING THE SPIRAL

 

BREAKING THE SPIRAL

 

On 14 June we celebrated a 100^th birthday with a difference. The centenarian wasn’t there. He was already in a ‘far better place’ these past 42 years. John Bradburne was shot dead near Mutemwa on 5 September 1979. He was such an extraordinary person that his name soon became known far and wide. In thanksgiving for his life, we celebrated the Eucharist with a Covid crowd of about 80 near the hut from which he was abducted. I recalled the times, fifty years ago, when we used to sit near this same hut while John regaled us with his observations on life. We shared a lasagne cooked by Dr Luisa Guidotti in a vain attempt to put some flesh on John who tended to live on lactogen and coffee – and chocolate when he could get it!

If you are unfamiliar with John’s story, he was an Englishman who lived through terrifying action during the second world war in the far east. On returning home, he sought to live out the inspirations he had received during his first 25 years of life. These led him to a monastery in the south west of England not far from where the G7 gathered recently. But the life of a monk was not what he was called to and he began to search again and came to discover his happiness in silence and solitude – a life he pursued for almost another 25 years – until he came to Mutemwa.

There he found he could combine his intense search for God with a profound service of the most abandoned and vulnerable of people – those living with leprosy. The last decade of his life were dedicated to these two goals which were really one. The world being ‘the way we have made it’, he soon became embroiled in jealousies, misunderstandings and open hostility – just like Jesus. And, like Jesus, he was killed.

The way he pushed out the frontiers of what it is to be human has attracted people ever since and so it was fitting that we celebrate his birthday into this world. This ‘world’ was not far away even at our celebration. Our particularly Zimbabwean world manifested itself: The technical people, who were to broadcast the event, were more than three hours late and when they did arrive made no apology to the people living with leprosy or anyone else. They just seemed to presume everyone would wait for them. Forty years ago I would have got irritated and impatient. Today I find I just accept it. ‘This is Zimbabwe, get used to it!’ Well, I have got used to it, me and all the people of the country.  But am I proud of, at last, learning to ‘go with the flow’? I should not be. None of us should. The lack of accountability, the taking people for granted, is now a spiral of disrespect that has got out of hand. We have created a jungle of selfishness where the weakest are of no account. John gave his life ‘pushing back’ against this lava flow which is engulfing us. We have to break this spiral. Otherwise, it will break us.    

20 June 2021   Sunday 12B    Job 38:1,8-11              2 Cor 5:14-17              Mark 4:35-41       

LISTEN TO THE MUSIC

 

LISTEN TO THE MUSIC

Maria Callas was a supremely gifted Greek singer who died in 1977. People at the time were astonished by her talent. ‘If the public could understand how deeply and utterly musical Callas is, they would be stunned. It was extraordinary, almost frightening,’ Tullio Serafin, an Italian opera conductor, said at the time. Other singers and musicians used to say, ‘Callas opened a new door for us, for all the singers in the world, a door that had been closed. Behind it was sleeping not only great music but great ideas of interpretation.’

 

Yet she suffered immensely. Her mother wanted a boy and let Maria know it. When she discovered Maria’s talent, she forced her repeatedly to sing. ‘I'll never forgive her for taking my childhood away,’ Maria said of her mother, ‘During all the years I should have been playing and growing up, I was singing or making money.’ But her mother did arrange tuition for her and Maria advanced quickly. Her teacher, Maria Trivella, recognised, ‘the tone of the voice was warm, lyrical, intense; it swirled and flared like a flame and filled the air with melodious reverberations.’ 

Maria Callas was called ‘La Divina’, meaning she was touched by God and it was in a way she did not understand. One who knew her, Victor de Sabata, quoted Callas, ‘when you want to find how to act on stage, all you have to do is listen to the music. The composer has already seen to that. If you take the trouble to really listen with your soul and with your ears—and I say 'soul' and 'ears' because the mind must work, but not too much also—you will find every gesture there.’ De Sabata went on, ‘She paid a tremendously difficult and expensive price for this career. I don't think she always understood what she did or why she did it. She knew she had a tremendous effect on audiences and on people. But it was not something that she could always live with gracefully or happily. I once said to her, "It must be very enviable to be Maria Callas." And she said, "No, it's a very terrible thing to be Maria Callas, because it's a question of trying to understand something you can never really understand." Because she couldn't explain what she did – it was all done by instinct; it was something, incredibly, embedded deep within her.’

I give a lot of space to Maria Callas as, it seems to me, she is a prophet for today. She shows how the divine literally intrudes into our world and yet it is all so hidden. ‘A man throws seed on the land’, Jesus says, ‘Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is wake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know.’ This is a vivid image, we are given by Mark this week, of how God is at work, every moment. But can we hear God’s music ‘with our soul and with our ears’ (our heart and our mind)? If we can, we will find everything there.  

13 June 2021   Sunday 11B    Ezek 17:22-24             2 Cor. 5:6-10               Mark 4:26-34

LOVE CONSISTS IN SHARING

 

LOVE CONSISTS IN SHARING

We are not good at respecting zebra crossings for people on foot. In our part of the world they are often blurred and hard to see. But in some countries, they are strictly observed. Someone caught on camera a swan using a zebra crossing! The astonishing clip shows one swan, then another, sedately waddling its way across the road while all the traffic stops. Finally a third swan appears with 10 baby cygnets in tow. The clip went viral, as they say, as everyone feels the urge to share something uplifting.

Ignatius of Loyola writes in his Spiritual Exercises that, ‘love consists in a mutual sharing of goods, for example, the lover … shares with the beloved …  something of what he has or is able to give.’ We can ponder those words, ‘is able to give.’ God has longed, from the beginning of creation, to share his life with us but he was not able to do it in years long passed. People simply did not have the capacity to receive the life he wanted to share with them.

So he began by working through signs. In the book of Exodus, Moses scatters the blood of bullocks over the people as a sign of their belonging to the Covenant, the first step in building a relationship between God and his people – a step they could understand. Then, in the letter to the Hebrews, the writer tells us all those signs are now fulfilled. Jesus has ‘poured out’ his own blood in a sacrifice that touches the very heart of what it is to be human. Life is the greatest gift we enjoy; it enables all else. To freely give this life, to ‘lose’ it, is the greatest thing we can do. The Israelites could not have been expected to understand this though they must have pondered what Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac meant.  But we can understand, or begin to understand.

Giving one’s life is life giving. I have just been reading of one of our Jesuits, Gregor Richert, who for eleven years sought every way – educational (the out schools), economic (cotton growing), leadership training and pastoral – to fulfil his mission in Makonde. Finally, armed men (it was war time) entered the mission and shot him and his companion, Bernhard Lisson, dead. The mission was abandoned and partly vandalised. Today it is a flourishing centre on the bank of the Mupfure River.

All of this is brought together in that act of Jesus when he took bread into his hands and said, ‘this is my body for you’, and wine, ‘this is my blood poured out for you.’ The Israelites in the desert would never have grasped this and many today also ‘pass by on the other side.’ But Jesus insists. ‘Do this in memory of me.’ This is life to the full and, ‘it is to the glory of my Father that you bear much fruit.’

6 June 2021      Corpus Christi       Exod 24:3-8             Heb 9:11-15                 Mark 14:12…26

 

A FLOOD OF RECOGNITION

 

A FLOOD OF RECOGNITION

Suddenly it was clear to them. Up to then they were full of questions, sometimes in a daze, sometimes thinking of quitting. But now they understood. The coming of the Holy Spirit opened their minds and they could begin to understand why he had come and walked among them, why he had to die and rise again. It lifted them to a new sense of being. They progress through the Acts of the Apostles with a confidence that was extraordinary seeing that they were ‘uneducated people’ (Acts 4:13).

On 20 May, this past week, Jesuits worldwide remembered that it was precisely five hundred years to the day since Ignatius of Loyola was hit by a bullet – a cannon ball - in the leg and began a long journey towards a similar recognition. His ambitions of military success, which would lead to high office in the service of the king, were dashed and he was carried home to Loyola where he submitted to a surgery that was torture and months of convalescence.

His reading and reflection opened his eyes a little to a new reality. Now it was a kind of spiritual torture as he spent months in prayer and fasting waiting for some kind of clarity about where all this was leading. Eventually the clarity came. As he sat by the river Cardoner, ‘the eyes of his understanding began to be opened; though he did not see any vision he understood and knew many things, both spiritual things and matters of faith and of learning and this was with so great an enlightenment that everything seemed new to him.’ 

This happened in 1521. It would be another nineteen years of searching, preparation and gathering companions before he founded the Society of Jesus but he never doubted from that moment that God was leading him on.

 One way or another we are all invited to walk this journey. The details may be hugely different but the basics are the same. We grow up influenced by our family, our culture and the expectations the world lays on us. But we have questions. We can listen to those questions and vigorously seek answers – or we can avoid them. When we do listen, answers do not normally come all at once. They come in unexpected ways. We may have a ‘cannon ball’ moment when our world is thrown upside down by unemployment, sickness or war. Immensely painful moments can also be gateways to new horizons.

The feast of Pentecost is a reminder that God has given us his Spirit to make all things clear to us. This clarity is sure though it may not break on us immediately. We too, like the disciples of Jesus and – much later – Ignatius, may have to spend time in searching. But the one who searches will always find. 

23 May 2021   Pentecost         Acts 2:1-11      1 Cor 12:3-7,12-13      John 20: 19-23           

RISING TO THE OCCASION

 

RISING TO THE OCCASION

There is an English saying of unknown origin: ‘cometh the hour, cometh the man.’ It refers to a situation where there seems to be no solution and then someone steps forward with a plan and the will to carry it out. The English, in 1795, were in control of the French city of Toulon and the French were desperate to drive them out. A young corporal, aged about 25, in the French army approached his commanding officer with a plan and a request to implement it. At first, he was laughed at but gradually he was given the go-ahead. The English were driven out. The young man’s name was Napoleon Bonaparte.

A variation on the saying would be ‘rising to the occasion’ and it has a similar meaning: someone steps forward to solve a difficult situation. We know, because we have all had the experience; there are moments when we are called to put our hand up, or stand up and say or do something that may make us look foolish. We may have flinched often but there have been times when we have done it, we have risen to the occasion. And we have felt good about it. It is like we have got in touch for a moment with the best in ourselves. And maybe we have sensed, this is what it is to be human.

There is a moment in Luke’s gospel when Jesus is described as ‘setting his face towards Jerusalem.’

Now it happened that as the time drew near for him to be taken up, he resolutely turned his face towards Jerusalem (Luke 9:51).

‘To be taken up’ refers, of course, to his Resurrection and Ascension. Coming down and being born in Bethlehem, where he ‘dwelt among us’, he lived his life showing us the way to rising with him to the fullness of human life. His rising and ascending symbolise the crowning human act. To get there he had to go to Jerusalem. That is where the great battle with evil and death would take place and he would ‘rise to the occasion’ for us.

We miss countless occasions ‘to rise’ because we are not yet fully like Jesus. But the celebration of the Ascension is a moment when we can earnestly ask for the courage to move beyond ourselves and rise to the occasion. Only today I was reading of our late Jesuit brother, Denis Adamson. He was one of those who stayed at St Paul’s Mission, Musami, during the Zimbabwe war of Liberation. He was stopped on the road on one occasion by a group of guerrillas who pointed guns at him and said, ‘you are now a prisoner of the ZANLA forces.’ It would be a frightening experience for anyone but Denis dropped some names of guerrilla commanders he knew and entered into lively conversation with the comrades. They all went to a nearby beerhall and the incident ended with comrades laying down their AK 47s and pushing the car so that it started. Not all of us would have had Denis’ courage but we might be surprised what we are capable of.

16 May 2021      Ascension         Acts 1:1-11             Eph 4:1-13                  Mk16:15-20

‘HE WAS LIFTED UP’

 

‘HE WAS LIFTED UP’

We take it for granted but it is beautiful to look up into the sky and see the expanse of blue. I once saw a picture of the earth from far out in space. 99.9% of the picture was black with just a tiny sapphire of blue, our planet, in the centre. We are a little bubble of blue in a vast expanse. We use the word ‘up’ to describe that world beyond, even heaven, and ‘down’ to describe the dark interior: caves, mines and the cold depths of the oceans, even hell. But in reality, neither heaven nor hell is up or down. We are spiritual beings and we inhabit a real world of which our beautiful planet is just the entrance gate, not the full picture.

We have to go through that gate but things will be very different when we do. We have no idea what they will be like. ‘No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.’ (1Cor 2:9). Both the first reading for the celebration of the Ascension and the last use this language of ‘up’. It is a convenient and accessible way for us to understand that after his resurrection from the dead Jesus returned to the Father. But we know that ‘my Father’s house’ is not somewhere ‘up there’ but the opening into the fullness of the reality we only faintly grasp in this life of preparation of ours.

The second reading, from Ephesians, probes this theme;

‘May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and perception of what is revealed, to bring you to full knowledge of him.’   

The writer fails to put into words what this ‘full knowledge’ might be and so he asks God to give us the ‘wisdom and perception’ to grasp it ourselves, however dimly. Teilhard de Chardin says somewhere, ‘we are not bodily beings with a spiritual nature, but spiritual beings with a bodily nature’. He puts the emphasis on the spiritual. This celebration of the Ascension, perhaps more than any other, reminds us of this. The spirit is not ‘up’ or ‘down’ or limited to any place or time like the body is. Death opens the way to infinity. But it is not a dry ‘world without end’ kind of infinity. It is the infinity of love and happiness.  

Surely, that is consoling. But we can’t stand there ‘gazing up to heaven’ (Acts 1:11). We have things to do. So, ‘from the Mount of Olives they went back to Jerusalem’ and began the great work of which we are part today.

9 May 2021       The Ascension          Acts 1: 1-1      Eph 1:17-23       Mk 16:15-20