THE PEOPLE APPROACHING

THE PEOPLE APPROACHING

“Looking up, he saw the crowds approaching.”  I am in the UK and people are kindly giving me time to talk and listen.  One thing I am learning much about is the damage done to people’s equanimity of spirit by the safety procedures put in place in response to sexual abuse and by the perception of the whole institution as a result of the behaviour of a few of its members.  OXFAM is reeling from what happened to it and even the UN is touched.  In one religious community, which runs a large and flourishing educational establishment, the safety procedures are so comprehensive they appear to prevent expressions of affection or trust between youths and adults.

One person I met gave me a vivid description of the erosion of opportunity to build trust, which, as he pointed out, is the basis of all relationships.  We cannot have safeguards ruling our lives - however much they have their place.  We have to “reach out into the deep” and take risks if we are ever to have healthy relationships with others.  While we rejoice in the affirmation of human rights, particularly of the vulnerable, we seem, at times, to forget that these rights are arid if they cannot be developed in relation to others.

So, once again, we need to flash across the screen Donne’s words “no man is an island” and every person has to reach out to others no matter how risky that may be.  What were the people thinking when they approached Jesus? (John 6:3)  They were attracted by him but had no real idea why.  In the first chapter of John, Jesus actually turns on his heel when some people follow him and asks, “What do you want?”  They don’t know what they want and avoid a reply by asking their own question, “Where do you live?” What is clear is they are looking for something but are not sure what.

The gospels are accounts of how people are attracted to Jesus; but then many draw back when they realise the price of coming close to him. We both want and do not want relationship.  We flee from the very thing that draws us.  Can we trust?  Can we trust ourselves and others?  Safeguards have their place but when they leave no room for trust you wonder what they are achieving.   

In the final chapter of Matthew, when the women were running away from the tomb “in fear and great joy” – in other words they wanted and did not want to meet Jesus - they suddenly saw him approaching them.  If we can be patient in our confusion we may find the same.      

29 July 2018                            Sunday 17 B

2 Kings 4:42-44                      Ephesians 4:1-6                  John 6:1-15

BUILDING OUR HOUSE

BUILDING OUR HOUSE

I am out of my “comfort zone”! I am moving around among people my relatives live among.  They are different from those among with whom I normally stay.  For two days we have visited historical building in SW England. Yesterday it was the fortified home of the Earl of Devon, built around 1390 and full of vicissitudes ever since. At one time they favoured the Catholics, at another the Anglicans; at another time they favoured the king and, yet another, the Parliament ranged against him.

We also visited later buildings built on the enormous wealth of the new industrialists of the nineteenth century “to reflect their new status and position in society.”  These once magnificent places are no longer lived in.  Skilled craftsmen and women made them beautiful but they are now monuments to human hubris. In one house a special staircase was put in to show off the sumptuous gowns of the ladies as they ascended and descended.

We look back and smile at the follies of our ancestors and future generations will look back at ours.  When Jesus yearned to reach out to the multitudes because they were “like sheep without a shepherd” he was proclaiming his longing to fill the emptiness that people often feel when they try to express themselves in their surroundings and way of life.

We are always going to have to face who we are at the core of our being and what it is that is going to fill our starved hearts.  Maybe we are edging towards being open to this.  At a time when the exteriors of religion are finding fewer followers, the interior search of the mystics is arousing curiosity.

22 July 2018                            Sunday 16 B

Jeremiah 23:1-6                                   Ephesians 2:13-18                   Mark 6:30-34  

HE WILL NOT QUARREL OR CRY OUT;

PRAYER PAUSE

Saturday July 21, 2018

 HE WILL NOT QUARREL OR CRY OUT;
    

Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading.  “He will not quarrel or cry out;  no one will hear his voice in the streets.”  (Micah 2:1-5)

Reflection. I write  this on the move, far from books and desks, and I am among  people who have all the basic needs of life. They search to fill their leisure time in imaginative ways and enjoy the opportunities they have.  They are people one can have no quarrel with.  In some ways they are satisfied.  God longs to fill yearning hearts but perhaps at times we are not in touch with that yearning and ignore it or divert it.  The Lord does not raise his voice and can only be heard by those who enter inside themselves and find him there.

Prayer. Lord, help us to find our life in you.  Amen 

YOU WILL NOT STAND

PRAYER PAUSE

Tuesday July 17, 2018

 YOU WILL NOT STAND

Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading:  “But if you do not stand by me you will not stand at all .” (Isaiah 2:1-9)

Reflection. In this reading, and the accompanying one from Matthew (11:20-24),  we are given a sombre reflection on Israel’s failure to “stand by God.”  Infidelkity and failure to accept the good news led to disaster.  I once had the opportunity to visit Capernaum and it really is a ruin. Not that the permanence of buildings is any guarantee of anything.  But there is a sign there.  We are given this encouragement to build our life on the good news and, despite the constant trials we meet, all will be well.

Prayer. Lord, help us to found our life on you and the good new.  Amen 

A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER

PRAYER PAUSE

Monday July 16, 2018, Our Lady of Mount Carmel

 A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER

Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading:  “It is not peace I have come to bring but the sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother .” (Matthew 10:34-11:1)

Reflection. Jesus used shocking words to help us realise the urgency of the moment.  The “kingdom” was now close at hand but it would not come without a struggle. Its demands would often set a member of a family against his or her own relatives as they sought to live the values of the kingdom.  Jesus himself caused consternation in his own family at the age of twelve and many a person since has fallen out with close relatives over their choice of life. It is not only those who choose to live a “consecrated life” – as we call it - but anyone trying to live the gospel, even the ten commandments, will meet opposition within themselves and among those with whom they live.

Prayer. Lord, help us to have courage when we try to live the values of the kingdom and meet opposition from within or from outside. Amen 

NOTHING FOR THE JOURNEY

NOTHING FOR THE JOURNEY

The abbot of the Buddhist monastery in Thailand where the coach of the Wild Boars football team - whose teenage members have just been rescued from a flooded cave - spent some years as a monk, was astonished and delighted by the outcome.  “Was it science or a miracle,” he asked.  “I don’t know!”  Does it matter?  It was a drama that held our gaze and the world was united in wonder, joy and gratitude at the success of the mission.

But the answer to the question – about science or a miracle – could be “both”.  It was certainly science but it was also a miracle.  We know what science is but what is a miracle?  Perhaps we are conditioned to think of it as a sort of magic; an act that defies the ordinary laws of nature. Gerhard Lohfinck, in “Jesus of Nazareth: What did he want? Who was he?” - a book I do not have access to at the moment, explores the notion of ‘miracle’.

What I understand him to say is: there comes a point where all our efforts can do nomore and we have to hand over the issue to God.  But what God does – or is unable to do - at that point is inextricably related to what we do – or don’t do.  God doesn’t do magic.  He can only act if there is a sign from us that we want him to act.  The prayers of millions across the globe supported those seals. I once went to my eye doctor for a review after an operation and he asked me how I felt. “Great”, I said, “I feel much better.”   “It’s your faith,” he said. “No!” I protested, “it was your skill.”  We had a minor argument.  But, again, we could say it was both.

Jesus couldn’t do a thing where he found no faith.  When he found even a shred of it – as with curious Zacchaeus up a tree – he could do something.  Human beings and God make for a powerful combination.  If we come with our five loaves and two fish to Jesus we can do wonders.  So a miracle is the take- off point where a person brings all their science, equipment, skill and their trust in God together.  Our contemporaries are good at the first three.  We have still some way to go to add the last.  The enigmatic words of today’s gospel – about taking nothing for the journey – are like a code pointing us in that direction.

15 July 2018                  Sunday 15 B

Amos 7:12-15                Ephesians1:3-14                      Mark 6:7-13 

    

HOLY, HOLY,.HOLY

PRAYER PAUSE

Saturday July 14, 2018

HOLY, HOLY,.HOLY

Enter into the stillness of God within.

Reading:  “Holy, holy, holy is the Lordof hosts.  His glory fills the whole earthl.” (Isaiah 1:1-8)

Reflection. Was it a vision?  Or a dream?  Whatever Isaiah had he experienced a breaking through of the divine into this world; a piercing of the cloud that surrounds us and makes us think the only reality is the one we can see and touch; the rush and pressure and stress.  This experience of the prophet is also a call to him to speak to the people the message od God – a message of warning and one of consolation.  Isaiah would help us understand that the Christ would suffer greatly in order to achieve his purpose; that God longs to share his life with us and waits for us to open our hearts to recive him.   

Prayer. Lord, teach us to be quiet, to welcome you in all the encounters of the this day. Amen