UNLESS YOU BECOME LIKE CHILDREN

26 February 2019 (A day late. Internet problems)

UNLESS YOU BECOME LIKE CHILDREN… (Mark 9: )

‘Unless you become like little children you will not enter the kingdom of heaven’.  It is as though in our earliest days we were people of purity, simplicity and truth.  As time went on we learnt the hard way that the world was hostile and we had to either conquer it or defend ourselves from it.  We took up attitudes towards others and the world that we instinctively judged would help us survive. But in doing so we compromised with our own true worth and that of others.  Jesus does not want us to go back to being children but he does call us to recognise the gifts and values we were born with and that we even lived for a while.  He calls us to recognise the authentic gifts that make up the lives of each of us and to develop them and use them with purity for the good of others.  This may sound very theoretical but I have just been reading the life of Thérèse Vanier and she lived this out in practice in a life totally dedicated for others. 

OVERCOME WITH AWE

25 February 2019

OVERCOME WITH AWE.  (Mark 9: 14-29)

‘Immediately they saw him the whole crowd was overcome with awe’. Why this sudden comment in the midst of the ongoing narrative?  Jesus has just come down the mountain of the Transfiguration but only Peter, James and John had the glimpse of him in glory.  There was something about Jesus that attracted people.  We can reflect because we know who he was.  They could only say, in another place, ‘God has visited his people’ but even so they hardly knew what that meant. But we do. God walked among them and they could not help realising that there was something ‘awesome’ about him, something so attractive that crowds came from everywhere to see him.  What the Church, that is us, does today, in a no doubt faulty way, is to be that presence.

FREEDOM AND MERCY

FREEDOM AND MERCY

Thomas Merton was a New Zealander born in France, who was educated in England and lived his life as monk in America.  People who choose to be monks desire to withdraw from the world and search for God in silence and contemplation. There are a number of monasteries in Africa where men and women follow this way of life.   But Merton’s was not a hidden life; he became widely known because of his writings and his pursuit of racial justice and peace.  He opposed the arms race and all wars, especially in Viet Nam in the 1960s.

What struck people at the time was the personal way in which he described his search for God and his attraction to the Catholic Church which eventually led him into a monastery.  He lost his mother when he was six and moved house and country constantly as his father’s work took him from place to place. He was still a teenager when his father died and he set out to explore the meaning of life using whatever help he could get. He spent a wild year at an English university in which he fathered a child but at about the same time he began to discover the action of God’s grace in his life.

He has been compared to Augustine of Hippo (modern day Tunisia) who also lived a wild directionless youth but who also powerfully felt the inrush of grace in his life which he describes in his Confessions. Both men came to discover that freedom, touched by divine mercy, released their energies into highly creative ways. ‘Mercy’ is the word we use for the power to channel a person’s confused longings into something creative and positive.  We associate the word with God but a parent, a teacher, any kind of counsellor or friend can show mercy to another. It is the most beautiful quality of ‘e-ducat-ion’, leading a person out of dark confusion into the clarity of daylight.

In the Old Testament description of the rivalry between Saul and David there is a moment when David has the king in his mercy.  All he has to do was pierce him through with his lance.  But David restrains himself.  After all, Saul is ‘the Lord’s anointed’.  David showed mercy but it was a mercy based on fear and calculation. ‘If I kill him now what will be the consequences?  Better to wait!’

The mercy of Jesus is unconditional. There is no such calculating. ‘Love your enemies!’ Full stop!  ‘Lend without any hope of return’. ‘Give and there will be gifts for you; a full measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.’ The images pour out. This kind of mercy or compassion will change the world.  It will drive out fear.  It will create new people who will not be afraid to use their gifts and energies to create a better world. This is where mercy touches freedom.  This is what Thomas Merton and Augustine experienced.  It is available for everyone.  It can change our world.

24 February 2019              Sunday 7 C

1 Samuel 26:2…23            1 Corinthians 15 45-49                    Luke 6:27-38

      

IF ANYONE WANTS

22 February 2019, St Peter

‘IF ANYONE WANTS’ (Mark 8:34-9:1)

‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let them renounce their own will and take up their cross and follow me’.  There you have it: the heart of the Christian life.  What this means for me is evident at each moment of my life if I can become sensitive to what the Spirit is calling me to.  I spontaneously react to people and events and to my own moods. And maybe I do well.  But sometimes I have to ‘educate’ my spontaneous reactions so that they are in line with this call to ‘renounce’ myself.  This is the hard part! Today is one of the feasts of St Peter.  The gospels give us quite a lot of information about his journey from wild impulses to a deep following of Jesus.  We also want to pray for his successor Francis who, with the bishops in Rome, are addressing the Church’s failure to act transparently and justly in the matter of the abuse of people.  

A COVENANT WITH THE EARTH

21 February 2019

‘A COVENANT WITH THE EARTH’. (genesis 9:1-13)

After the first humans fell into evil, scripture tells us, Abel was murdered and there was wickedness over the earth. God decided to destroy his world and start again – like a potter.  But, we were told yesterday, he regretted his decision and today we hear of a ‘covenant’ with Noah and with the earth.  We can see this as an ancient bible story with little relevance to us or we can see it as sharply topical.  We are aware we need to make a ‘covenant’ with the earth today.  We are destroying it and in the process destroying ourselves. We have to change our thinking from seeing the earth as only there for us to exploit regardless.  Or we can see it as our home – a home that needs care, maintenance, with which we can have an ongoing ‘dialogue’.  

PEOPLE LOOK LIKE TREES

20 February 2019

‘PEOPLE LOOK LIKE TREES’. (Mark 8:22-26)

The religions of Asia call it ‘awakening’ or ‘enlightenment’. It is a state of awareness beyond the normal level on which we live.  It is a breakthrough into seeing things as they really are, seeing reality as God sees it.  Mark describes the only time Jesus ‘fails’ to work a miracle.  They bring a blind man to him and Jesus goes through a process of healing.  But at the end the man does not see clearly. People look like trees though they are walking about.  So Jesus lays his hand on him again and this time he sees everything clearly.  Mark’s purpose is to show that ‘seeing’ takes time.  The work of God in us does not happen immediately. We are to return again and again to the task of awakening.

BEWARE OF THE YEAST OF THE PHARISEES

19 February 2019

‘BEWARE OF THE YEAST OF THE PHARISEES.’ (Mark 8:14-21)

What is this yeast? Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven was like yeast.  But here is the opposite yeast; that approach to life that creeps into our way of thinking and acing unnoticed. What is it for me? Pope Francis calls us to discernment, to looking closely at what influences me.  Sometimes I hardly know.  We encourage each other to a moment each day of examining our consciousness, those spontaneous movements that influence us.  Some are good. Some not so.