OF BIRDS AND BRICKS

OF BIRDS AND BRICKS

I take the marker lodged in my book for the last Sunday of year C and move it to the first Sunday of year A. In the gesture of a moment I have wiped out three years! I begin again the journey through the 156 Sundays of our triennial cycle. The good things I have done these past three years are all mixed up with the bad, the seeds with the weeds. What goes around comes around – but each time it is different.

We often give thanks for the gift of life. ‘Bliss was it that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven’ (Wordsworth). The gift means we have time and space to do things. Yet Pope Francis tells us that between these two – time and space - there is a tension (The Joy of the Gospel, #222). We want to get things done, to have something to show for our efforts, but we often find we have limited success. We say we need more time. Francis says we are called to ‘work slowly but surely, without being obsessed with immediate results’.

We are like the bricklayer whose task is to lay now one brick, now another. He does not see the finished building. His task is only the here and now; to use the time he has to do as good a job as he can.

In NE Turkey there is an area of wetland which is a haven for birds migrating from north to south and from east to west. It sings with insect life and of course they are the birds’ food.  A Turkish American ornithologist visits these lands every year to monitor them and to study the huge number of birds that pass through. But now, he says, there is a threat.  The Turkish government wants to build a huge dam in the area and, if they do, it will at a stroke wipe out this sanctuary for the birds.

So this Turkish man is working hard to inform the public and the government of the impending disaster.  He is trying to set in motion processes that will eventually save the wetlands.  We now know that you cannot harm one area of nature without harming the whole.  We can easily imagine people being impatient with the idea of birds holding up human progress.  But today we are educated enough about climate change to know that a huge dam may solve an immediate problem but it may well also set in motion an irremediable catastrophe.

Perhaps this is an example of what Pope Francis means: the preference we unreflectively have to ‘get things done’ without being prepared for the longer process of examining the implications and making the right choices, choices that will only be appreciated by people yet unborn.

Year A of Advent kicks off with the message ‘Stay awake’. In the next three years there are many ways in which we are called to be awake.

1 December 2019                    Advent Sunday 1 A

Isaiah 2:1-5                              Romans 13:11-14                    Matthew 24:37-44     

THIS IS THE DAY

THIS IS THE DAY

On 17 April 1980, we made our way to Rufaro Stadium to witness the birth of Zimbabwe as a free nation. It was a day many had yearned for, suffered for and died for. At midnight the flag was raised.  It was a still night with no breeze to shake out its many colours; so it hung there limp as though uncertain of what it was supposed to do.  When the prayer and the brief speeches were over there was a frightening crush as people crowded the exits to get home.

It was a day of joy and hope for the future.  Real excitement was everywhere and we rode a crest of good will among the nations. Foreign governments trod on one another in the rush to come to help and old enmities were buried in the flow of words about turning swords into plough shares.  But it was hard to hold on to the good will and joyful feelings.  We wondered just how all this promise could be fulfilled.

The poet, T.S. Eliot, once wrote, ‘humankind cannot bear very much reality’.  Well, that day in 1980 was ‘reality’! Perhaps it was in a sense ‘unbearable’ in that it carried so much responsibility to fulfil the dreams and hopes of all the people of the new country.  Let’s not dwell on how it all soon began to go wrong and how here we are forty years on as far away as ever – at least for most citizens - from seeing those dreams realised.

Instead, we could think of this day in which we now live and how capable are we of living the promise it carries. We were unable to ‘bear’ our responsibilities then. Can we begin to do so now? When Jesus came to ‘dwell among us’ he announced that ‘the time is fulfilled’ (Mark 1:15), ‘today, even as you are listening’ (Luke 4:21). But they could not bear that reality.  It was too much and their response was to try to get rid of him.

Yet Jesus kept repeating the promise, ‘Blessed are the eyes that see what you see and hear what you hear’ (Luke 10:23). They could not bear it. It involved too much of a commitment. They would have to follow him in his confrontation with evil that would lead to Calvary. They weren’t ready for that. There was no way the fruits of 1980 could just be plucked from a tree.  All that day did was to open the way. Some followed it. Many didn’t. And now here we are, forty years on, wondering will we ever fulfil our dreams?

Malachy is pessimistic. ‘The day is coming now, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and the evil doers will be like stubble’ (3:19). It doesn’t have to be like that.  We just have to face the reality and take up our task. ‘My yoke is easy’ (Matthew 11:30). It is quite bearable after all.   

17 November 2019                 Sunday 33 C

Malachy 3:19-20                     2 Thessalonians 3:7-12                        Luke 21:5-19      

A TASTE OF GLORY

A TASTE OF GLORY

There are many reasons to celebrate the victory of South Africa in the Rugby World Cup in Japan. Rugby was the game of the whites in South Africa before Freedom Day in 1994 and now it has been transformed into something the whole country can relate to. Also, the euphoria following the win on October 2 echoed those scenes in 1994 when the country celebrated the end of the old divided world and the beginning of a new united country.  Many words, most famously those of Captain Siya Kolisi, express the hope that this event will bring the country together anew. Many South Africans, aware of the tensions arising from the unfulfilled dreams of a quarter of a century ago, fervently hope so.

These thoughts express the release of joy the victory brought but we can also celebrate the sheer quality of the game itself. It was ‘awesome’ – this time the word is appropriate – to watch the South African defence in the last quarter of the first half. The English mounted fierce attacks time and time again and for ten unrelenting minutes were within a few feet of the score line.  But the Boks stood their ground in a dazzling display of defence.  My mind strayed to the Battle of Waterloo when the French repeatedly assailed the British lines but could not break them!

What thrills us is to see people stretch themselves to the limit.  You could see they gave everything and were struggling for breath when there was a pause in the game. We long to give all of ourselves in life and in love. And it is agony to keep falling short. It is the sorrow of being human, as the fourteenth century author of the Cloud of Unknowing tells us.

Perhaps what we are really celebrating in this victory is to glimpse what human beings are capable of. That is the message of Jesus. Each of us is capable of greatness.  ‘You will see greater things than this’. It will show itself in a multitude of different ways.  For some it will be on the sports field. For others it will be in a hospital bed where a person reaches beyond the pain and the frailty and suffers ‘in the right way’. Viktor Frankl, who endured the concentration camps in World War II wrote:

I understood how a man who has nothing left in the world may still know bliss … In utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way, man can achieve fulfilment.

So, thank you Siya Kolisi and your team, you have shared with us a precious taste of glory.  May we relish it!

10 November 2019                  Sunday 32 C

2 Maccabees 7:1…14              2 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5                     Luke 20;27-38

TRAGEDY ON A TRAIN

TRAGEDY ON A TRAIN

It was a long train journey from Karachi in the south of Pakistan to Rawalpindi in the north and the family had their supplies, even their own gas stove. But somehow, in the process of cooking, a fire started and quickly spread to the whole carriage and 73 people were burnt to death or suffocated in the flames or died jumping from the moving train.

It is so easy to imagine. If you are careful there should be no problem. When Shackleton and the men he was with in a small boat in the Antarctic waters one hundred year ago, made their epic journey to South Georgia, they cooked their food on a similar stove in the tossing sea. But the trouble is ‘human error’ – that old bogey that brings down super airliners and sinks mighty ships like the Titanic. 

More and more health and safety rules and laws crowd our statute books and job descriptions but at the end of the day it is down to the individual person; does he or she pay attention to what they are doing and take every possible step to avoid failure. Even if they do, and there is the best will in the world, there will still be room for mistakes.

Robert Browning puts it this way:

Our interest is on the dangerous side of things

            The honest thief, the tender murderer,

the superstitious atheist.         

The superstitious atheist, demirep

that loves and saves her soul in new French books.  

People love to take risks.  They sense it is a human thing to do. To live ‘safely’ is not to live at all. Explore the boundaries!  A child instinctively tests the limits of the rules and goes beyond them. The saints are often among the broken and the battered.

In the Catholic tradition we make official saints whose lives and love have been outstanding.  But they are the tiniest fraction of the saints. There are millions who have tried and failed, have risked and lost, have struggled only to end their days in a cell for the condemned.  And in that same tradition we have a day each year, November 1, when we honour them. Among them are our relatives and friends. We remember them and go, in our imagination, to where they are – waiting for us.

Meanwhile we continue our risky way, hoping we will not endanger the lives of those around us, ever conscious that is precisely what we may often, unknowingly, do.

November 1                             All Saints Day

Revelations 7:2 …11               1 John 3:1-3                            Matthew 5:1-12

CONSERVATION IS A LUXURY …

CONSERVATION IS A LUXURY …

On arrival in 1905, Fr Joseph Moreau, the first Jesuit to settle in Zambia, defended his insistence on farming before preaching by saying, ‘a hungry stomach has no ears’.  He brought a bible but he also brought a plough.  I heard a modern version of these words this past week, again in Zambia, relating to our efforts to promote the use of sources of energy that do not lead to global warming: ‘Conservation is a luxury when you can’t feed your children’.

This powerful pause for thought arose in connection with a formerly protected forest, close to Lusaka, which is now being pillaged by developers – and by charcoal burners. The forceful and scientifically supported arguments, warning of looming catastrophe, carry little weight if a poor man cannot put food on the family table.

Governments have a problem.  Many of them genuinely want to address the issue but first they have to educate people about the urgency of acting now.  And if they are able to convince them they have to provide alternative sources of energy which are ‘green’.  But they also have to work in solidarity with other governments otherwise those lagging behind will drag the others down.

All the science is available.  What is lacking is the will. In his letter on ‘Care for our Common Home’ (Laudato Si’), Pope Francis analyses the human roots of the ecological crisis. ‘A certain way of understanding human life and activity has gone awry, to the serious detriment of the world around us’ (#101).  He describes this in detail but ends on a positive note; ‘there is reason to hope that humanity at the dawn of the twenty first century will be remembered for bravely shouldering its responsibilities’ (#165). This will happen if we heed the call for ‘a selfless ecological commitment’ which can show itself even in ‘little daily actions’ such as where ‘a person who could afford to spend and consume more heating regularly uses less and wears warmer clothes’. This may seem a small thing but it shows ‘the kind of conviction and attitude which help to protect the environment.’ (#211)    

So the only problem we really have is a moral one: are we willing to act wisely now so that we save our common home for our descendants? When the Pharisee and the tax collector went to the temple, the former saw no need to ask himself questions about his way of life.  The tax collector, on the other hand, was conscious of his failure to live up to what his heart told him was the right way to live. Jesus praised him for his awareness and honesty.  The man knew he could not make it on his own.

The ecological crisis we face today calls us to realise that we are not so smart after all.  We need help to make the right decisions and carry them through. And the One who made our planet in the first place is ready and willing to provide that help.   

27 October 2019                     Sunday 30 C

Sira 35:12…18                        2 Timothy 4: 6…18                 Luke 18: 9-14

I’M ALRIGHT, JACK

I’M ALRIGHT, JACK

This saying used to be, perhaps still is, current to describe a person who is self-satisfied with their lot.  They have a job, a house, a car, an insurance policy and a pension waiting for them. It implies that they have taken care of themselves and feel no responsibility for anyone else. Others should do as they have done. End of story.

We know well that this is an untenable attitude of anyone who has an ounce of thirst for justice in our world.  We cannot be truly content if others are suffering. Nelson Mandela once said, ‘no one is free if all are not free’. Pope John XXIII decried, years ago, ‘prophets of doom’ – people who saw no way out of the mess as the future of the world seemed so bleak. At that time – the early sixties – the threat of nuclear war hung over us.

Sixty years on we are still there on our planet and the threat of nuclear war has receded.  But we have new worries while at the same time we have our share of those who say, ‘we’re alright, Jack’. Our biggest worries centre round global warming and the number of people in powerful positions who refuse to do anything about it. Their refusal is based on their sense of being ‘alright’ and they have no wish to make any decision that might threaten how they see themselves.

So when, for example, it is written, as it was in last week’s Zimbabwean,

‘as drought grips the region, the flow on the Zambezi river has dwindled to a third of what it was a year ago, limiting power generation’

they pay no attention or they shrug it off as ‘fake news’. Having crossed the Zambezi several times in the last year I have seen the water level drop and even as a layman in the world of meteorological science I can sense the creeping catastrophe.

This October does not feel like October as we have known it. There are cold winds and none of the oppressive heat that used to signal the approach of rain. So we already have a drought with all its multiple consequences for food and farmers. Yet there are many among us who persist in saying, ‘I’m alright.’

In today’s gospel Jesus tells a story of a widow who is persistent in demanding justice from a careless judge who has no respect for anyone. In the end he gives her what she wants, not because it is his duty but because he fears she will ‘box his ears’. (This is the meaning of the Greek word used).

It we are to make progress in halting and reversing global warming we need people like that widows who are not afraid to box a few ears.       

20 October 2o19                  Sunday 29 C

Exodus 17:8-13                     2 Timothy 3: 14-4:2                                    Luke 18:1-8

PLACES OF ENCOUNTER

PLACES OF ENCOUNTER

This Sunday, 13 October, John Henry Cardinal Newman will be declared a Saint by Pope Francis in Rome and among the thousands who will witness the event will be Charles, Prince of Wales.  The prince writes these words in the Times, ‘Newman could advocate without accusation, could disagree without disrespect and perhaps most of all could see differences as places of encounter rather than exclusion’.  He had an inquiring mind and was always ready to listen and to weigh what others said.

Charles has written a beautiful tribute to a great man. Newman grappled all his life – he was 89 when he died - with pressing issues of education and faith.  He had the intellectual ability to think through – and to pray through – questions that emerged in a century where reason and science posed serious challenges to long-held beliefs. Outstanding among his contributions was his assertion about the development of doctrine and the place of the laity in the Church. The essentials of doctrine do not change but the way they are expressed can undergo evolution and development.

He made a detailed study of the Arian controversy in the fourth century. The priest Arius held that Jesus, Son of the Father, could not be equal to the Father and so was subordinate to him. This view had serious implications for our understanding of ‘salvation’.  If Jesus is not God then we are left high and dry. No man could do what he did and does for us.  The Council of Nicea, in 325, condemned Arius and affirmed the absolute equality of Father and Son. But opinion remained divided and the Christian emperors of the period oscillated between Nicea and Arius and the bishops were inclined to follow their lead. It was “a time when the fidelity of the laity had ensured the Church’s continuance ‘when the body of the bishops failed in their confession of the faith’.”  Newman believed therefore that the Church was healthiest when able to encourage people to an intelligent grasp of the faith, and weakest when only requiring of them an ‘implicit faith in her word, which in the educated classes will terminate in indifference and in the poorer in superstition’.” [1]   

Perhaps this gives us a taste of the sort of man Newman was and the point of making him a saint is to make him more widely known and his contribution to faith and culture more easily accessible. It is not just the dictators of our age but even the duly elected leaders who govern our lives who could learn about ‘places of encounter’ in contrast to ‘places of exclusion’. We still live with too many walls – both physical and mental – that exclude others and so hold us back from welcoming those who are different and benefitting from the meeting.

13 October 2019                     Sunday 28 C

2 Kings 5:14-17                      2 Timothy 2:8-13                    Luke 17:11-19

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[1] Dermot Mansfield SJ, with quotes from Newman, Heart Speaks to Heart, Veritas  p 127