WHAT A TRAGEDY!

 

WHAT A TRAGEDY!

A reader, so disappointed by the ending of The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot, decided to read the book again in the hope that the ending would be different! So the story goes, and whatever the truth of it, it illustrates our disappointment over tragic endings. I was one of the many who turned to the news last Sunday morning in the hope five-year-old Rayan, who had fallen down a 100-foot deep dry well in Morocco, would at last be rescued safe and sound. Hundreds had kept vigil during the five-day rescue attempt and now the moment arrived when he could be safely extracted from his little prison. Jubilation! But, alas, only for a moment: the child was dead.

People on the spot, and watching around the world, went numb. They knew it might turn out that way but they hoped ‘against hope’ that there would be a happy ending. There was consolation in the show of human solidarity across boundaries and Pope Francis pointed to the ‘beauty’ of this. But there was no escaping that awful feeling of pain and disappointment. How wonderful if he been found alive! But he wasn’t. The world moved on and the story dropped from the headlines.

Yet knawing questions remain. Is that really the end of the story? Is tragedy just what the word means; an awful human disaster and it ends there. Herbert Chitepo and Thomas Sankara are assassinated. Josiah Tongogara and Princess Diana die in road accidents. Cyclones and tsunamis kill thousands and destroy homes and livelihoods.

We are caught between wanting our planet, our only home, to be a place of happiness and happy endings and realising that it has never been that way and tragedy is our constant companion. I often go back to St Thomas Aquinas: ‘God does not want evil but he permits it. And that is good.’ When I first heard these words, I was shocked. It is good that God permits evil? I do not know if Thomas elaborates. I suspect he doesn’t because who can? You cannot get your mind around the reality of evil being ‘good’.

Yet we often get hints that tragic events lead to some good result. I won’t try to give examples: There is a starkness in the concept that does not bear too much analysis. We just have to stay with the paradox. We see ‘good’ people suffering tragedies and we see ‘bad’ people seemingly enjoying life without suffering. But tragedy, pain and disaster are like the shards in the potter’s workshop. They are the price we seem to have to pay in order to create a wholesome humanity. 

13 February 2022  Sunday 6C  Jer 17:5-8    1 Cor 1512…20    Lk 6: 17…26    

THE POWER OF WORDS

 

THE POWER OF WORDS

‘Doesn’t it show that a simple little conversation can change things? Its huge. The power of words is a lot better than the power of the gun. I’m chuffed.’ The speaker was Patrick Murphy, head of the Irish South and West Fish Producers’ Organisation, on learning that the Russian government had heeded his request that they moved their naval exercises further out to sea as they were threatening their fish with all their explosions and rocket drill. ‘I’m shocked really, I didn’t think that little old us would have an impact on international diplomacy’, he said.

The prophet Isaiah had a vision of a seraph touching his lips with a live coal and purifying him so that he could announce the words of God to the people and we have been living off those words ever since. And in Luke’s gospel we have an example of Jesus telling, not the Russian navy, but Peter to ‘put out into deep water for a catch of fish.’ Peter is astonished for he knows about fishing and fishing is done at night. But there was something in the power of Jesus’ words that moved him to obey, and we know what happened.

It is so easy to say nothing, to keep quiet. It is safer and keeps us out of trouble. But our readings today prompt us to reflect on those words of Qoheleth about ‘a time to keep silent and a time to speak’ (3:7). Many times we fail to speak when there is a real need to do so. The whole case of abuse in the Church is a case in point. But the need is far wider. In families and communities we see someone getting into trouble but we say nothing. We are afraid to speak because we might be blamed later on. Or we feel we might be breaking the family unity.

An America researcher, George Vaillant, is part of a team that has studied behaviour in a large sample of people over decades. One of his conclusions is that people who are happy in their eighties enjoyed good relationships in their fifties. This may not sound like a major discovery; maybe it is obvious. But his point is that happiness is based on sound relationships. And we can take this further and say, sound relationships grow when people speak honestly to each other and know when to ‘keep silent and when to speak.’   

The key is that we are responsible for each other. If we take courage and speak when it is necessary, we not only contribute to another’s long term happiness but we achieve our own. When we lose our life we find it. We too can be ‘chuffed.’

6 February 2022    Sunday 5C  Is 6:1-8       1 Cor 15:1-11       Lk 5:1-11

   

PEOPLE WHO FORGET …

 

PEOPLE WHO FORGET …

“People who forget history are destined to live through it again”. The speaker was Hans Werk, former member of the SS (Schutzstaffel, ‘political soldiers’) of the Nazi time in Germany in the 1930s and ’40. He was speaking to a group of young Germans after the Second World War of his deep shame at having been part of the operation which deliberately set out to kill all the Jews in Germany and the lands it occupied or planned to occupy - a total of eleven million people, equivalent to the entire population of Zimbabwe. This was Hitler’s ‘final solution’ to the Jewish ‘problem’ and it led to the death of six million Jews.

As if to underline Werk’s message, how many of us can remember ever hearing of the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, eighty years ago, which is being remembered this week and which drew up the plans to put this operation into effect? If we ever knew, we have probably forgotten. And yet Jewish people are deeply aware of the threat that still remains because people forget. Unbelievable as it may sound, there are people who deny, in spite of overwhelming evidence, the slaughter, the Holocaust, ever happened.

Our reading from St Paul this Sunday speaks of ‘delighting in the truth’ and in Luke’s gospel we read of Jesus ‘winning the approval of all.’ But when Jesus tried to build on his initial welcome in Nazareth, they suddenly turn on him in rage. They had forgotten their history. Israel had failed many times; in the desert and after the people were settled in the ‘promised land’. Their memory was short and they soon found themselves in exile in Babylon. They were unable or unwilling to remember and learn the lessons memory provides.

We can be selective about memory. Zimbabwe has a memory; a memory of opportunity based on race. Education, health, employment, access to land, advancement to leadership roles – all were based on the colour of a person’s skin. But we seem to have forgotten all that because all these things are – largely though not totally - still being denied to people. The difference is that now it is not colour that distinguishes people but power. The Liberation War was all about empowering people but we have forgotten.

It is deeply painful but true: people who forget their history – be it personal or group - are destined to repeat its mistakes. This saying is attributed to George Santayana, a Spanish philosopher, and was slightly adapted by Winston Churchill just after the war when he warned in the House of Commons, in London; ‘those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.’

30 January 2022    Sunday 4C   Jer 1:4…19 1 Cor 12:31-13:13      Lk 4:21-30

 

 

THE SEED GROWS

 

THE SEED GROWS

‘This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen’. This is the climax of our three readings this Sunday. The opening one, from Nehemiah, speaks of the rediscovery of the Book of the Law after the exile when the Jews returned to rebuild the temple. The people are moved to tears when they hear the words and realise how they had abandoned the way of the Lord. They want to start anew. The second reading, from Paul, describes how we all have different gifts and each of us is needed for the task. And gospel from Luke recounts Jesus coming to his hometown where he announces these words about ‘being fulfilled today.’

All the hopes and longings of people are about to be realised. There is a feeling of expectancy and Jesus says, ‘your desires are being fulfilled even as you listen.’ What were they to make of it? Certainly, they did not wake up next morning to a new world of justice and peace for all people. But they did wake up, if they knew it, to a new process that was now set in place. God had always been at work in his creation but now he was actually present, dwelling among his people in the flesh. He was one of them. And because of this, new things would start to happen. People would say, ‘we have never seen anything like this before’ (Mark 2:12).

A little example from daily life. I had a pork pie on the way to Zambia once, just beyond Karoi. It must have been well past its ‘best before’ date for I was very ill and could not attend the meeting in Siavonga. They took me to a clinic and fixed a drip and within minutes I felt better; a process was under way that changed everything. Jesus set in motion a process and people were drawn to him and they formed a community which grew in the cities around the Mediterranean and then spread over time to the whole world.  

This process is still going on and Pope Francis often refers to it. Our lives are the living out of the process; we benefit from what others have done before us and we make our own contribution to those who follow us. The ‘fulfilment’ is happening all the time even if we don’t see it. It is like our immune system, constantly working in our bodies but we hardly know it and seldom pay attention to it. It is protecting us and freeing us to do the things we want to do. Mark again; ‘Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know’ (4:27).

This is what we mean by hope. It gives us the knowledge that we are moving towards a goal and we will certainly get there. People in the Middle Ages  translated this hope into pilgrimages, often to Jerusalem. They would set out, often on foot, for the holy city as an act of devotion which symbolised their life-journey.

23 January 2022          Sunday 3C      Neh 8:2…10              1 Cor 12:12-30            Lk 4:14-21

A FAVOURITE AUNT

 

A FAVOURITE AUNT

Michael Bingham has just died, aged 80, of Covid 19 in Northern Ireland. Mike was a Jesuit priest who grew up in England, moved to Colombia to work with schools for poor people in the favelas, spent some years in a parish in Liverpool and lived his last twenty-three years on the ‘front-line’ between the Ulster Unionists and the Irish Nationalists in Portadown. We overlapped for some of our early years as Jesuits but I had not seen him for more than forty years when I bumped into him in Ireland in 2000.

An invitation to Portadown followed and he met me at the station which was ten minutes from the house on (or near) the Garvaghy Road, a frequent flash point in the divided town. The ‘ten minutes’ took an hour as every second person seemed to know Mike and he had some words with each one. Witnessing this was an insight into the gentle ‘presence’ that Mike was. I do not think programmes, seminars and strategic plans featured high among Mike’s priorities. He was simply there among the people willing to listen and talk to anyone on either side. And he did this day after day.  

Yes, there were some projects and for many years he worked in the prison but what struck the visitor was the simple not threatening engagement he practiced. I wonder what his job description was. I doubt if he had one. What is the job description of a favourite aunt? As soon as you try to construct one you rob it of its immediacy.

And he had a mischievous side to him. He calmly announced over lunch he was going to see the cardinal that afternoon. Would I like to come? I looked at my trainers and scruffy clothes and said I was in no way dressed to meet a cardinal. ‘Nonsense’, he said, ‘you’ll be fine’. So we drove to Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of All-Ireland, and were duly shown into His Eminence’s reception room. Mike briefly introduced me and then said to him, ‘Look at his old clothes and dirty shoes!’ The cardinal laughed, he clearly knew Mike well, but I had a moment of profound embarrassment – much to the delight of Mike!

It seems to me we can learn from people like Mike to be 100% attentive to others without having a hidden agenda. We are told that Jesus once went to a wedding. No one had any expectations beyond enjoying themselves. But there was a crisis and a great deal of embarrassment. Mary noticed it and drew Jesus’ attention to it. He protested a bit but then quietly did something that led the people themselves to discover he was taking their simple offering of all they had – some water – and transforming it into something beyond their dreams.

It was simply a sign, John tells us, but people have teased it out ever since. What does it mean? Jesus has come to take our simple efforts and make them life giving for us and for others. There is no great trumpeting of his actions. He wants to slip away and let us enjoy the results, though he is the one that brings them about. I am sure the many people who will gather at St John the Baptist Church on Garvaghy Rd next Monday to bid Mike farewell will be thinking, ‘that’s what Mike did.’  

16 January 2022          Sunday 2C      Is 62:1-5          1 Cor 12:4-11              Jn 2:1-12  

A NEW YEAR LOOK

 

A NEW YEAR LOOK

Like a teacher, who wipes the backboard clean, we are on to a new subject: 2022! A new year is like a moment while climbing a mountain when we stand still and look around to see where we are and where we have still to go. People make resolutions to improve or change their ways. Some don’t have the room to make choices. I am thinking of a young man who has no job and has just lost his wife, the mother of their two young children.

The Church somehow chose this time of year to present us with events which help us stop for a moment and look around: the birth in Bethlehem, the visit of the wise men and now the baptism in the Jordan. The baptism may seem the least exciting. It has no rousing carol to accompany it, no ‘Once in David’s royal city’, but it had its drama. It is mentioned by all four evangelists. So it must be important. If in Bethlehem he was born and later shown to the wise men, at the Jordan he was announced, ‘sworn in’, for the task. A ‘voice from heaven’ called him ‘my Beloved’.

From now onwards the great work would begin and each year we can renew our commitment to do our part. The word ‘baptism’, whatever its origins, has come to mean ‘belonging’. ‘We belong to God’ (1 John 5:19). I now belong to the community Jesus founded. That means I have a part in his task. It also means there will be obstacles, lots of them.  And divisions, ‘… daughter-in-law against mother-in-law …’

This week we buried Heather Benoy. She lived all her life in the same house in Zimbabwe. She was a great friend of John Bradburne who lived among the people with leprosy at Mutemwa. She was an uncomfortable person to be with at times because she seemed to like division! She had no problem in disagreeing with you at once if you said something not to her liking. But she cleared the air. She kept you on your toes. Those who knew her loved her directness, her authenticity, her love for the truth. She lived her baptism.

When Jesus was baptised, there was a lot of divisive language in the air. Years earlier Simeon foretold he would be ‘a sign of contradiction’ and John, at the Jordan, proclaimed this was the moment ‘when the axe was being laid to the root of the trees’ and ‘his winnowing fan is in his hand.’ It was a time of decision. Am I for, or against?    

So, the new year is a time for rubbing the board clean and looking again at the issues that form my daily life. Are my choices life-giving – for me and for others? Or are they covers for self-interest, security and comfort?

January 9, 2022           The Baptism of Jesus     Is 42:1…7    Acts 10:34-38      Luke 3:15…22

SEEING BEYOND THE ROCKS

 

SEEING BEYOND THE ROCKS

There is a beach somewhere – the picture doesn’t say where – and a little out from the shore there is a rock in the sea. On the rock there is a cavity for wind-blown earth to gather and in the earth a bird-flown seed has sprouted. It is now a tree: a tree on a rock in the sea! Nature is astonishing.

It is holiday time and the upwardly mobile gather at the nation’s resorts. Families mingle and separate. They swim, they boat, they ride horses. It was a clear day at ‘World’s View’ and you could see a lot of the world. The bateleurs swung by. Two of us climbed the nearby hill. It was steep and hands were called for as well as feet. This meant eyes constantly on the ground. Rocks everywhere. Tiny blue and purple flowers peeped from their edges. From the road below it would look like a barren pile. But here, up close, nature again astonishes.

And nature is a whole. If I am speaking of the wild outdoors I could equally be writing of the mixed-up indoors where a person’s life looks like a wasteland. They have been charged with abuse or they have murdered and will spend decades in prison. Their families will forget them and their neighbours will speak of them in hushed whispers. Or perhaps they are disabled in their minds or they cannot speak or hear or see. Or they are a combination of all these in one person. Eric was like that. Best to pass him by. Forget him. He was useless.

Or so it seems. Come Epiphany! The word means ‘showing’. ‘This is my Beloved.’ ‘Can you see in this child the fulfilment of my creation?’ He looks like any other child born in a migrant camp. But he is the source of life and its final goal, the Alpha and Omega. Look at him and see beyond the hard rock of unbelief the world proposes. See the signs all round of beauty. Take time to ‘be with’ Eric and soon you will see beyond his broken body to the little flowers peeping through his being.

‘The world is alive with the grandeur of God,’ wrote the poet. Can we stop to notice? New Years come and go. Are my eyes more open than last year? Can I be more awake in ’22? Can my light shine? Can my salt savour?

January 2, 2022   The Epiphany         Is 60:1-6                     Eph 3:2…6                  Mt 2:1-12