WE’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE

 WE’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE

Among Ignatius of Loyola’s first companions were Francis Xavier whom

everyone knows and Peter Favre whom nobody does. While Xavier travelled

the world, Favre travelled Europe – on foot. A gentle sensitive person, what he

was remembered for was not his preaching, or writing or teaching, but, in the

words of one of the other first companions, his ‘gracious conversation which

powerfully drew to the love of God all those with whom he dealt.’

Could we say there are three levels of conversation? First there is the

spontaneous politeness of chatting to the person next you in a queue at a store. It

matters little what you talk about – the weather, the prices, the football score -

the point is to relate to someone and lighten the burden of waiting.

Then there is the more pointed conversation in the family or with friends where

often it is just socialising or maybe there are issues to be resolved. We might

enter into these with our own agenda intent on making a point to another and

winning them to a certain course of action. Or we may be just socialising.

Thirdly, there is a level of conversation where we explore some difficult issue

together with no preconceived outcome, no ‘hidden agenda’ beyond a desire to

engage with respect and kindness. This requires attention to the other in a way

that may stretch me to my limits. I listen in silence, without interrupting. I try to

grasp what the other is saying even if it goes beyond anything I can relate to.

In the sixth chapter of the gospel of John, Jesus reveals a mystery. No one

understands. And they are not prepared to even try. ‘The Jews were complaining

because Jesus said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ ‘We know

him’, they said, ‘he is Jesus, the son of Joseph. How can he say these things?’

They are stuck. They jump to conclusions and so the message escapes them.

But the message is, in the words of Romano Guardini, ‘The Holy Eucharist is

the final link in the sacred chain of life-giving nourishment reaching from the

remoteness of God into the here and now of human existence.’ Together with all

the ways God comes close to us in Bethlehem, Galilee, Calvary and the garden,

this is the way he reaches us individually to nourish us and lead us to freedom.

The chapter ends with the people going away and leaving Jesus. ‘We can’t take

this anymore.’ Jesus turns to his close companions, ‘Will you go too?’ Then

Peter rises above the impasse and says, ‘We don’t understand either but we

know you have the words of life. We’re not going anywhere. We’re staying.’

That is the height of conversation. We don’t understand but we’re not walking

away. 11 August 2024 Sunday 19B 1Kg 19:4-8 Ep 4:30-5:2 Jn 6:41-51

REACHIING BEYOND MY GRASP

 

REACHIING BEYOND MY GRASP

I am by the sea. Each day I look out over the ocean seemingly stretching forever into the distance. I know that India and Australia are out there somewhere but all I can see is endless sea. Right in front of me the waves break against the shore and the water is thrown back. ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped' (Job 38:11).

In the ancient world, the sea was seen as hostile, unpredictable, the home of monsters and part of the ‘good news’ in the book of Revelations (21:1) is ‘there was no more sea’. Many who love the sea, John Bradburne for instance, don’t find that ‘good news’, but the writer is referring to the ancient symbolism. Evil is conquered.

For me, as I stand by the sea, I see this vast expanse of ocean which, we now know, covers 64% of the planet. It stretches my vision and leads me to think of the almost immeasurable past which predates human evolution which itself took 200 000 years. What a speck each one of us is; no more than a grain of sand on the sea shore!

And yet each of us is known and loved. We are planted on this earth, itself a speck in the universe, and given the power to grow. Plants and animals grow but they lack the one quality we have; the power to choose. History tells us the woeful story of our bad choices. But it also tells us how many men and women have stretched out to reach beyond their grasp. There is an ache, a restlessness, in each of us. We know at the end of the day, ‘we are merely servants; we do what we can.’  But we feel it is far from enough.

God knows this and he reaches out to nourish us. Jesus tells the Jews, ‘I am the bread of life’. They have no idea what he means. But we do. The Lord comes, not to make choices for us, but to nourish us to make the right choices – all the time and in everything. This demands great attention, like the attention of an athlete in the Paris Olympics focused on a perfect performance. That is the wonderful thing about our life: we can be creators, all the time, co-creators with God who calls us to share in his unfinished work. Henri Nouwen spent his last years in a l’Arche community for people with mental disabilities. He was invited to give a lecture to a distinguished audience in New York and told the community he would be away for some days. Bill, one of the inmates said, ‘I will come with you.’ Taken aback, Henri book another ticket for him. Bill sat beside him on the podium and when the lecture was about to begin, he stood up and said, ‘we are doing this together.’ He then sat down. Everyone cheered. They understood.

As I look out at the vast sea and sense my littleness, I can sing Alleluia because my little loaves and fishes can go a long way.

4 August 2024  Sunday 18B                 Ex 16:2…15                 Ep 4:17…24                 Mk 9: 2-10

SHEEP, BUT NO SHEPHERD

 

SHEEP, BUT NO SHEPHERD

On 5 August 1962, Nelson Mandela was arrested on a bend of the Durban/Pietermaritzberg road near Howick in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. He was held in prison for 27 years. The actual spot of his arrest is now a national monument and an imaginative interpretative centre has been constructed there, tracing the story of his life and his ‘Long Road to Freedom’ which was synonymous with that of South Africa itself. A highly original sculpture has been erected next the road consisting of fifty iron poles, each designed so that together they portray Mandela’s head. But you have to view them directly in front so as to see his face. Moving one side or the other distorts the image. 

I was part of a group last week that visited the centre and several things struck me. Perhaps most of all was the description of his first years on Robben Island in the 1960s. The texts on view highlighted the loneliness of those years. They were the first in what was a life sentence. Cape Town can be cold and the food was spare. He and his companions had to work in a stone quarry. They were cut off from the world. He had to struggle not only with the physical conditions but the awful psychological trauma of emptiness. How did he get to this point? Was it all worthwhile? Would he just be forgotten by the world and die and be buried on the island.

These reflections led me to marvel at the cost of leadership. Mandela and his companions supported one another at a time when one might think it was all hopeless and their cause was crushed. There must have been low moments when only a rock-like belief in the justice of their goal kept them from despair. What is deeply impressive is their faithfulness to something they knew was not just their own but was shared by the whole nation. But it was in the distance.

I find such ‘facts on the ground’, such political realities, indicative of something underlying them mirrored in the scriptures. Jesus, echoing Ezekiel, found the people ‘lost, like sheep without a shepherd’. They needed a leader; someone who could put their desires into words, someone who was prepared to suffer so that their hopes would be realised. We know good leaders and not so good ones. And we know the difference. A good leader is someone who has a vision and is prepared to suffer – for 27 years if need be – so that that vision blossoms.

21 July 2024         Sunday 16B          Jer 23:1-6    Eph 2;13-18      Mk 6:30-34

SYCAMORE TREES

 

SYCAMORE TREES

Amos was a cultivator of sycamore trees which produced a fruit like figs, but not the figs we know, and being leafy, provided much shade. He was happy in his work as a gardener and a shepherd.

Then, one day, he was called away by God to be a prophet. ‘I was a shepherd and looked after sycamores. It was the Lord who took me from herding the flock and said “go, prophesy to my people Israel.”’ Being a prophet was a tough calling. Jeremiah groaned under the burden. Prophets often get a poor reception and are sometimes harassed and persecuted.

But something in Amos made him obey. He knew he had to do this thing. He would never find peace if he refused. I know someone in Zimbabwe who struggled with such a call. They resisted and resisted. But in the end gave way and now their work has really blossomed for the benefit of many.

This person and Amos were called to do great things. But we know our days are full of little opportunities to ‘do the right thing’. A multitude of little victories can one day grow into something big. Yet we often take the easy way and avoid the call. And we know this avoidance makes us a lesser person. In some way it diminishes us. We are less alive.

The Lord ‘cultivates us’ as Amos did his fig trees. He wants us to grow. He gives us this wonderful gift we call ‘life’. As the poet says,

          Bliss was it that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven.  (Wordsworth)

 

Life is beautiful, we often say, but yet we do not grasp it with both hands. We spend our time saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’. What made the saints into saints was their saying, ‘yes’, all the time - even when the going got tough. And what makes the going tough is things like Jesus saying in today’s gospel, ‘take no spare tunic.’ Don’t surround yourself with comforts that make you self-reliant. We are encouraged to be self-reliant in one sense. But, in another, we can make our self sufficiency so secure we forget that life is all about ‘launching out into the deep’ and being ready for surprises.

 

14 July 2024         Sunday 15 B         Am 7:12-15   Ep 1:3-14  Mk 6:7-13

 

EFFECTIVE MIRRORS

 

EFFECTIVE MIRRORS

St Clare of Assisi, who lived in the 1200s, used to say, ‘the Lord has called us to this greatness (radical poverty) that those who are to be effective mirrors and examples for others should see themselves mirrored in us.’ Yesterday we buried two great mirrors.

Bernadette Nachowe (spelling?) was a Sister of Jesus of Nazareth (SJN) who spent her 80+ years searching for God in very ordinary things; the garden, the workshop, the training of younger sisters and her prayer in a contemplative community (mainly at Mariachiedza) near Chegutu. Lorenz von Walter was a Jesuit priest from Germany whose father had to leave Russia, where he was a teacher, after World War One when hostilities developed between the two countries. Lorenz came to Zimbabwe and was a wonderful teacher who drew students by his quiet and gentle approach at three schools but mainly at St Albert’s in Mount Darwin, where he was during the Liberation War. Both these ‘mirrors’ gave quiet and solid support to the two responsible for their respective works. Bernadette to Mother Lydia of the SJN sisters and Lorenz, later in life, to Bishop Dieter Scholz of Chinhoyi.

At a funeral, we look at the life of the one who has died and we mourn them. We also celebrate their lives – especially if they have been mirrors. Last week, the one preaching at our church, spoke of Peter rising to the moment and acknowledging Jesus as ‘the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ It was a pinnacle of human response to the divine presence ‘in the region of Ceasarea Philippi’, that is, in a certain definite place on this earth at a certain time. But it is Jesus’ response that strikes us: ‘You are a rock and, on this rock, I will build my community.’

How did that strike Peter? He had reached out to Jesus and the Lord reflected back to him his true greatness. This did not prevent him messing up and denying the Lord when the crisis came in the Passion. But his true worth was revealed to him by his steadily gazing into the mirror that was Jesus. It was this that gave him huge confidence in the awesome mission he undertook.

In the Psalms, we read, ‘Look towards him and be radiant’ (33:5). Look in that mirror and you will come away changed. And let me end with St Paul:

And all of us, with our unveiled faces like mirrors reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the image that we reflect in brighter and brighter glory; this is the working of the Lord who is the Spirit.         (2 Cor 3:18) 

7 July 2024     Sunday 14 B               Ez 2:2-5          2 Cor 12:7-10              Mk 6:1-6

 

Zamaswazi

 

ZAMASWAZI

 

ZAMASWAZI

‘It is as easy to deceive ourselves without noticing it as it is hard to deceive others without their noticing it.’ A Jesuit who worked in KwaZulu Natal at the time of heightened tension when Mandela was being released and the Inkatha party felt threatened by the seemingly unstoppable progress of the ANC, quoted these words of De La Fouchefoucauld in his reflections about what happened. People who lived peacefully together and who prayed in the same church, suddenly found themselves the prey of those who demanded they support their side.

Horrific events unfolded. I was particularly touched by the story of Zamaswazi Kunene. She was a little girl aged seven, asleep with her sister Lindiwe and cousin Delisile on a night in February 1988, when a petrol bomb was thrown into the store room next to where they were sleeping. The parents rushed to take them to safety and then tried to dowse the flames which involved going out of the house to fetch water. As they did so they were met by a hail of bullets. Two of the children and their mother died and Zamaswazi was shot in the neck immediately paralysing her. She was taken to Edendale Hospital where the medical staff did what they could and she was even allowed home for a wonderful Christmas that year. But it was a brief respite. When she returned to the hospital, she developed pneumonia and shortly afterwards died. A month later her father hanged himself.

This account of Zamaswazi was accompanied by a photo of the little girl in a hospital bed with the most infectious smile on her face. One is left pondering the mystery. The people who destroyed her family thought they were serving some cause and they deceived themselves into thinking they were doing something good. But no one could look at such killing and destruction without being aware how much the opposite was true. ‘War is always a defeat’, says Pope Francis repeatedly. But people still pursue war with passion and continue to deceive themselves.

On Sunday we shall read the account of the death of Jairos’s daughter, only a little older than Zamaswazi. Jesus raised her from the dead as a sign that all the Zamaswazis of the world are loved by God and destined to enjoy life with him. Time is running out for the perpetrators of evil.                                                   30 June 2024        Sunday 13 B     Wis 1:13…24   2 Cor 8:7…15 Mk 5:21-43