Yep, still here.
I looked in here this morning for the first time in ages and to my surprise new thoughts came, on reading some of the old posts. I may start writing again. I don't know. Just as I don't know whether I'll find that I've got my mojo back, but we'll see. Something is stirring, after a very long drought, anyway.
Sunday, 1 July 2018
Thursday, 17 November 2016
Treasuring silence
' Christ’s victory over death and sin is consummated in the grand silence of the cross. God manifests all His power in this silence that no barbarity will ever be able to sully...
' Silent prayer is the last treasure of those who have nothing left. Silence is the last trench where no one can enter, the one room in which to remain at peace, the place where suffering for a moment lays down its weapons. In suffering, let us hide ourselves in the fortress of prayer.
' Then the power of the jailers is no longer important; criminals can destroy everything furiously, but it is impossible for them to break in and enter into the silence, the heart, the conscience of a human being who prays and nestles in God. The beating of a silent heart, hope, faith and trust in God remain unsinkable. Outside, the world may become a field of ruins, but inside our soul, in the deepest silence, God keeps watch. War and the processions of horrors will never get the better of God present in us. When faced with evil and God’s silence, we must always persevere in prayer and cry out silently, saying with faith and love:
“I looked for you, Jesus!
I heard you weeping for joy
at the birth of a child.
I saw you seeking freedom
through the bars of a prison.
I walked close by you
while you were begging for a piece of bread.
I heard you howling with sorrow
when your children were laid low by the bombs.
I discovered you in the rooms of a hospital,
subjected to treatments without love.
Now that I have found you,
I do not want to lose you again.
I ask you, please, teach me to love you.”
With Jesus we bear our sufferings and trials better. '
- Robert Cardinal Sarah
Thursday, 6 October 2016
Silence (On the feast of St Bruno)
"As we grow older, and draw closer to the moment when we shall stand before God and answer not only for our own lives but, in some degree, for the lives of others, I think our understanding of silence becomes deeper, richer. Words fall away because they are unnecessary. We are left only with a profound silence, the sometimes stricken silence of snow or solitude or the glorious, blazing silence of sunshine. Our prayer reaches out to the God above and beyond yet also, amazingly, intimately close to us, ‘closer than we are to ourselves.’ The hermit understands and lives this silent prayer in a uniquely powerful way. Let us pray for the hermits we know and give thanks for their vocation in the Church." - Source
Monday, 3 October 2016
Interval
Busy, busy and with nothing to say, so I've been reluctant to waste time (mine or yours) in trying to say... something.
On the other hand, I just read this (with thanks to the Magis Centre):
On the other hand, I just read this (with thanks to the Magis Centre):
"Take some time each day this week to sit and gaze at something that inspires you or comforts you. Slow your breathing and be present in the moment. Imagine God watching you and taking delight in your enjoyment of his creation."Amen.
Sunday, 18 September 2016
Master, teach US to pray
Other people praying. Somehow, the sight always draws the eye, commands one's attention. We are fascinated.
Monks, books in hands, calmly singing the Divine Office in choir.
A nun, eyes cast down, contemplative, totally engaged.
Buddhist monks, eyes closed, motionless in saffron.
Jews in yarmulkes and prayer shawls, bowing by the Western Wall of Jerusalem's Temple.
Muslims in straight rows, bowing heads to the ground in unison.
A lone Hindu sannyasi, focused on a point a thousand miles away.
Ineluctably, one wonders: what are they experiencing?
Some of us recoil, discomfited. Why is that? Fear of the unknown in what we are seeing? The pray-ers' having and our not-having whatever-it-is puts a great gulf between them and us, between their worldview and ours. It makes some of us fearful and we flee, sometimes taking refuge in denigrating both prayer and pray-ers. It's comforting to tell ourselves that we do not need what they think they have, which anyway is a delusion.
But we do need what they have, though, and it is no delusion. People do not live long lives of discipline and deprivation and remain content in a mere delusion. The scales would fall from their eyes sooner or later and they would go, and try to make 'ordinary' lives with all the world has to offer.
Even in our ordinary lives we can share what these pray-ers have, in our bad times, our good times, our everyday, nothing-special times.
There are no atheists in foxholes, they say. Fear makes us pray, by instinct - an in-built faculty.
When our hearts suddenly burst with gratitude for one of life's loveliest, most awesome blessings suddenly apprehended... a love, recognised... sunlight in a quiet wood... sudden relief from great suffering... to whom are we grateful? We pray our gratitude, not knowing to whom.
Some of us yearn with inchoate hunger for what we recognise that these others, these praying others, seem to have, but we ourselves have not. One sometimes hears: 'I wish I had your faith.'
It is often taken for granted that prayer follows the dawning of faith but, counterintuitive though it sounds, sometimes it is the other way around: faith follows from prayer.
To have what the pray-ers have, with or without intellectual belief, one needs only to imitate the practice: to pray. Just to begin, knowing nothing about what we are doing. Just - pray. Not understanding to whom does not matter, in the beginning. Merely acknowledge the possibility of the existence of a personal entity infinitely greater than ourselves but who recognises us and our longing, One to whom we can present ourselves and our longing, just as we are, however blindly, as though into a darkness. But it is darkness only to our poor sight, because in that darkness, warm, bright Perfect Love lives.
That is enough, to begin to pray: 'Are you there? I think you may be, and if you are, well, here am I, just me, just as I am.'
There. You are praying.
And out of the darkness, Love will respond. Love can do no other but respond to a humble, openhearted, nakedly honest call. Heart speaks to heart. Mind-to-mind can come later. The heart knows.
The Apostles had been brought up praying in the Temple and the synagogues, like everybody they knew. They had thought that they knew what prayer was. But now, watching Jesus as He withdrew some distance from them and prayed alone for a long time, they realised that His prayer was entirely different from their familiar ritual which seemed, in comparison, to be little more than adherence to a formula, although a holy, beautiful and time-honoured formula, to be sure. But something was missing. They now saw that something, and they wanted it.
Watching the Master pray opened their eyes to their hunger, their need, their helplessness, their not knowing how to pray as He was praying.
When he returned, they pleaded with Him: 'Master, teach us to pray. We want to pray as you pray. Master, teach us to pray as you do.'
And He did. "When you pray, say: 'Our Father...' "
Monks, books in hands, calmly singing the Divine Office in choir.
A nun, eyes cast down, contemplative, totally engaged.
Buddhist monks, eyes closed, motionless in saffron.
Jews in yarmulkes and prayer shawls, bowing by the Western Wall of Jerusalem's Temple.
Muslims in straight rows, bowing heads to the ground in unison.
A lone Hindu sannyasi, focused on a point a thousand miles away.
Ineluctably, one wonders: what are they experiencing?
Some of us recoil, discomfited. Why is that? Fear of the unknown in what we are seeing? The pray-ers' having and our not-having whatever-it-is puts a great gulf between them and us, between their worldview and ours. It makes some of us fearful and we flee, sometimes taking refuge in denigrating both prayer and pray-ers. It's comforting to tell ourselves that we do not need what they think they have, which anyway is a delusion.
But we do need what they have, though, and it is no delusion. People do not live long lives of discipline and deprivation and remain content in a mere delusion. The scales would fall from their eyes sooner or later and they would go, and try to make 'ordinary' lives with all the world has to offer.
Even in our ordinary lives we can share what these pray-ers have, in our bad times, our good times, our everyday, nothing-special times.
There are no atheists in foxholes, they say. Fear makes us pray, by instinct - an in-built faculty.
When our hearts suddenly burst with gratitude for one of life's loveliest, most awesome blessings suddenly apprehended... a love, recognised... sunlight in a quiet wood... sudden relief from great suffering... to whom are we grateful? We pray our gratitude, not knowing to whom.
Some of us yearn with inchoate hunger for what we recognise that these others, these praying others, seem to have, but we ourselves have not. One sometimes hears: 'I wish I had your faith.'
It is often taken for granted that prayer follows the dawning of faith but, counterintuitive though it sounds, sometimes it is the other way around: faith follows from prayer.
To have what the pray-ers have, with or without intellectual belief, one needs only to imitate the practice: to pray. Just to begin, knowing nothing about what we are doing. Just - pray. Not understanding to whom does not matter, in the beginning. Merely acknowledge the possibility of the existence of a personal entity infinitely greater than ourselves but who recognises us and our longing, One to whom we can present ourselves and our longing, just as we are, however blindly, as though into a darkness. But it is darkness only to our poor sight, because in that darkness, warm, bright Perfect Love lives.
That is enough, to begin to pray: 'Are you there? I think you may be, and if you are, well, here am I, just me, just as I am.'
There. You are praying.
And out of the darkness, Love will respond. Love can do no other but respond to a humble, openhearted, nakedly honest call. Heart speaks to heart. Mind-to-mind can come later. The heart knows.
The Apostles had been brought up praying in the Temple and the synagogues, like everybody they knew. They had thought that they knew what prayer was. But now, watching Jesus as He withdrew some distance from them and prayed alone for a long time, they realised that His prayer was entirely different from their familiar ritual which seemed, in comparison, to be little more than adherence to a formula, although a holy, beautiful and time-honoured formula, to be sure. But something was missing. They now saw that something, and they wanted it.
Watching the Master pray opened their eyes to their hunger, their need, their helplessness, their not knowing how to pray as He was praying.
When he returned, they pleaded with Him: 'Master, teach us to pray. We want to pray as you pray. Master, teach us to pray as you do.'
And He did. "When you pray, say: 'Our Father...' "
Sunday, 4 September 2016
Go. The Mass is ended.
Thanks be to God.
Huh? 'It's over at last - what a relief - thank God - I can leave now'? Well, that's one way of looking at it, for a bored and ill-catechised teenager, possibly (to the shame of us adults).
But, no. Hearing these words of dismissal, we should be reminded of Our Lord's final words on the Cross in St John's account: 'It is completed'.
St John's whole Gospel can be summarised, some say, by Jesus's question to His friends, 'And who do you say that I am?' Johann Sebastian Bach's great St John Passion presents this question in some of the most poignant music ever created, and also proposes our answer to it, as the Passion story unfolds.
The pivotal section of this magnificent work by 'theologian Bach' is the aria Es ist vollbracht ('it is completed'). It is spoken (i.e., sung) by a witness to the Crucifixion, and comes immediately after the death of Jesus, or rather after a minute or two of absolute silence from the performers in which the hearer is invited to contemplate what s/he has just 'witnessed'.
In the Bach St John Passion, the witness is now pondering so quietly, so wonderingly,
In the Mass, time itself falls away and all is now. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we are no longer in time, but in eternity. The Crucifixion of the Lord is present to me now and I am present to the Son of God on His Cross now, as he offers, in pain and suffering and out of love alone, His one eternal sacrifice of His Body and Blood, which is the Mass. At Mass, the Redeemer of the world, the long-promised conquering hero of Judah, is present to me and I am present at the foot of the Cross on which He completes the work of redemption.
At then end of Mass, then, like the witness in Bach's dramatisation of the Passion according to St John, we too recognise and acclaim, 'It is completed'. The Redemption of the world is completed at the completion of the Mass which is the same, one perfect sacrifice.
The only adequate response from our hearts is as we are sent from the church to make Jesus Christ known to the world He has redeemed is, 'Thanks be to God'.
Thy Will be done. Lord, I go from Mass to do Your Will. Thanks be to God.
Huh? 'It's over at last - what a relief - thank God - I can leave now'? Well, that's one way of looking at it, for a bored and ill-catechised teenager, possibly (to the shame of us adults).
But, no. Hearing these words of dismissal, we should be reminded of Our Lord's final words on the Cross in St John's account: 'It is completed'.
St John's whole Gospel can be summarised, some say, by Jesus's question to His friends, 'And who do you say that I am?' Johann Sebastian Bach's great St John Passion presents this question in some of the most poignant music ever created, and also proposes our answer to it, as the Passion story unfolds.
The pivotal section of this magnificent work by 'theologian Bach' is the aria Es ist vollbracht ('it is completed'). It is spoken (i.e., sung) by a witness to the Crucifixion, and comes immediately after the death of Jesus, or rather after a minute or two of absolute silence from the performers in which the hearer is invited to contemplate what s/he has just 'witnessed'.
In the Bach St John Passion, the witness is now pondering so quietly, so wonderingly,
'What is completed? Is it... as He said? Is it possible... that this death - which I have just witnessed - is for me? That this Man's death is unlike any other, and in fact gives the whole world, gives me, eternal life and eternal liberation from sin and its appalling consequences?'Suddenly, the singer's voice, the voice of the witness by the Cross, recalls to us all the prophesies of all the ages as the voice breaks out confidently in a loud cry of recognition that the hero of Judah would one day come to us, would struggle with the forces of darkness and corruption and would triumph. And then once again, quietness, as realisation confirms in the witness, in us, a new faith that what has happened is indeed the truth as the ancients, and Jesus Himself, had foretold, and that His death, which so seems like failure at first sight, is in fact the promised triumph, the supreme Divine act of redemption which has been longed-for over centuries, believed by the prophets and the ancestors, and is now actually happening. What He promised has come to pass. His work of Redemption is completed. Es ist vollbracht.
In the Mass, time itself falls away and all is now. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we are no longer in time, but in eternity. The Crucifixion of the Lord is present to me now and I am present to the Son of God on His Cross now, as he offers, in pain and suffering and out of love alone, His one eternal sacrifice of His Body and Blood, which is the Mass. At Mass, the Redeemer of the world, the long-promised conquering hero of Judah, is present to me and I am present at the foot of the Cross on which He completes the work of redemption.
At then end of Mass, then, like the witness in Bach's dramatisation of the Passion according to St John, we too recognise and acclaim, 'It is completed'. The Redemption of the world is completed at the completion of the Mass which is the same, one perfect sacrifice.
The only adequate response from our hearts is as we are sent from the church to make Jesus Christ known to the world He has redeemed is, 'Thanks be to God'.
Thy Will be done. Lord, I go from Mass to do Your Will. Thanks be to God.
Friday, 2 September 2016
Not that - this. Not then - now.
St Francis de Sales said we should not be so busy trying to be angels that we forget about being good human beings.
We also should not concentrate on yearning for heaven so much that we forget to live now.
Oh, we yearn for heaven all right. Eternal rest, eternal peace, free from strain and pain, infinite love and beatific joy without end. Sounds lovely. But that is then, and this is now. God gives me this life, this corporeal life, the here and now, with these joys and these sorrows. It behoves me to be warmly grateful for His having given me life at all, whatever that life brings, and to seek every opportunity it gives me to serve Him and His beloved creatures, my brothers and sisters, as well as the beautiful world in which He has placed us all - in the here and now.
Oh, it is most certainly not easy to love the people around me as I should. Too much of the time they are irritating, tedious and burdensome. (Just as I am to them.)
God, though, loves them and asks me to do the same, although 'Love my neighbour' is no guarantee that my neighbour will stop being irritating, tedious and burdensome. Doubtless, he will carry on being all those things. Thank heaven I am commanded only to love him, and not to like him. I simply can't do that, and it's no good pretending that I can, or even might, some day. Not going to happen.
But liking and loving are two different things, and God does not ask the impossible.
Liking is a matter of personal preference. God does not have personal preferences. Or rather, He does, but His ways are not our ways and God's preferences extend to... all whom He has brought into being because He loved them from all eternity.
Loving means wishing for and often working for the good of the other as other, as himself, not as I would wish him to be. As the tedious and irritating and burdensome so-and-so he has always been. As God does, who loves the unlovely and the loveless and the thoroughly unlikeable. (Like him over there. Hmf.)
I expect that Samaritan was in a hurry to get to his appointment further down the Jericho road. The last thing he would have wanted was delay because of some chap lying in the gutter, beaten up and robbed... and needing him to stop and help. He may have muttered strong words about 'the ****** ******* who did this' as he got off his donkey and went to the aid of the wretch at the roadside. I daresay he'd have looked at his watch, if he'd had one. But love, caritas, for this man he did not know and might even have disliked had he known him, overcame his concern for himself and his affairs, and he abandoned his plans until he had seen to the needs of the wounded stranger. That's love, love for a man he could neither like nor dislike - a stranger. Liking did not come into it.
Sometimes, it is not even easy to love our own life, here and now, either. It is too often full of care and pain. There are days when we could wish it would all just... stop. A very sick woman, close to the end of a long and sorrowful life, said to her priest, 'Oh, Father, I am sick to death of this dreadful life. I believe in God and in his love and in heaven and I pray to go there if He will have me. I so want to go now. Why can't I?'
This question is asked by millions of suffering souls, and we have no comforting answer. Only that God gave us our life and only He has the right to dispose of it, no matter how desperately, on occasions, we may wish it were not so.
On the Cross, the Son of God Himself must have wanted to die, to end the agony. His poor mother must have prayed minute to minute for Him to be released from the pain. But as with our own lives, even Christ had to leave the final moment in the Father's hands and cling only to His faith in the Father's eternal love.
For some of us, our very lives - and the suffering of those we love - can be our crosses.
God our loving Father, give us the grace to see that as the Incarnation gave your own Son a human life, a life which lead to death on the Cross, and let us see that He now takes up our lives, our crosses, into His own, and will transform us as He was transformed, and that we shall be raised to new life as He has been.
Stay with us, Lord Jesus Christ, for darkness is falling and night will soon come, and we cannot live or love without You. Give us the grace to live now as you would have us live and, in your own good time, bring us to you and wipe away our tears for ever.
We also should not concentrate on yearning for heaven so much that we forget to live now.
Oh, we yearn for heaven all right. Eternal rest, eternal peace, free from strain and pain, infinite love and beatific joy without end. Sounds lovely. But that is then, and this is now. God gives me this life, this corporeal life, the here and now, with these joys and these sorrows. It behoves me to be warmly grateful for His having given me life at all, whatever that life brings, and to seek every opportunity it gives me to serve Him and His beloved creatures, my brothers and sisters, as well as the beautiful world in which He has placed us all - in the here and now.
Oh, it is most certainly not easy to love the people around me as I should. Too much of the time they are irritating, tedious and burdensome. (Just as I am to them.)
God, though, loves them and asks me to do the same, although 'Love my neighbour' is no guarantee that my neighbour will stop being irritating, tedious and burdensome. Doubtless, he will carry on being all those things. Thank heaven I am commanded only to love him, and not to like him. I simply can't do that, and it's no good pretending that I can, or even might, some day. Not going to happen.
But liking and loving are two different things, and God does not ask the impossible.
Liking is a matter of personal preference. God does not have personal preferences. Or rather, He does, but His ways are not our ways and God's preferences extend to... all whom He has brought into being because He loved them from all eternity.
Loving means wishing for and often working for the good of the other as other, as himself, not as I would wish him to be. As the tedious and irritating and burdensome so-and-so he has always been. As God does, who loves the unlovely and the loveless and the thoroughly unlikeable. (Like him over there. Hmf.)
I expect that Samaritan was in a hurry to get to his appointment further down the Jericho road. The last thing he would have wanted was delay because of some chap lying in the gutter, beaten up and robbed... and needing him to stop and help. He may have muttered strong words about 'the ****** ******* who did this' as he got off his donkey and went to the aid of the wretch at the roadside. I daresay he'd have looked at his watch, if he'd had one. But love, caritas, for this man he did not know and might even have disliked had he known him, overcame his concern for himself and his affairs, and he abandoned his plans until he had seen to the needs of the wounded stranger. That's love, love for a man he could neither like nor dislike - a stranger. Liking did not come into it.
Sometimes, it is not even easy to love our own life, here and now, either. It is too often full of care and pain. There are days when we could wish it would all just... stop. A very sick woman, close to the end of a long and sorrowful life, said to her priest, 'Oh, Father, I am sick to death of this dreadful life. I believe in God and in his love and in heaven and I pray to go there if He will have me. I so want to go now. Why can't I?'
This question is asked by millions of suffering souls, and we have no comforting answer. Only that God gave us our life and only He has the right to dispose of it, no matter how desperately, on occasions, we may wish it were not so.
On the Cross, the Son of God Himself must have wanted to die, to end the agony. His poor mother must have prayed minute to minute for Him to be released from the pain. But as with our own lives, even Christ had to leave the final moment in the Father's hands and cling only to His faith in the Father's eternal love.
For some of us, our very lives - and the suffering of those we love - can be our crosses.
God our loving Father, give us the grace to see that as the Incarnation gave your own Son a human life, a life which lead to death on the Cross, and let us see that He now takes up our lives, our crosses, into His own, and will transform us as He was transformed, and that we shall be raised to new life as He has been.
Stay with us, Lord Jesus Christ, for darkness is falling and night will soon come, and we cannot live or love without You. Give us the grace to live now as you would have us live and, in your own good time, bring us to you and wipe away our tears for ever.
Wednesday, 31 August 2016
Truth? We can't handle the truth.
Our emblem - the Cross, is a horror.
Just look at it.
A gentle, loving, absolutely good and innocent man painfully breathing his last after being tortured. He is naked, bloody flesh torn to shreds by sharp metal scourges and thorns, bruised from kicks and punches, sickly pale with the pallor of death, breath rattling in his collapsing chest, face contorted in immeasurable pain from the nails hammered into his hands and feet upon which the whole weight of his body is hanging. He is shivering from pain and shock. He is utterly lonely, abandoned and bereft in his pain.
Horrible.
What we see here is the reality of sin. Our sin. This is what sin looks like.
Terrible.
We sin, oh, so often, oh, so blithely, not grasping that this horrible sight, this agonising death of the only truly innocent human being who ever lived among us, is the terrible degree of damage our selfishness and greed do to us, to ourselves, to our loved ones, the world.
This is the shocking insult we offer to the creator of the world by our dreadful abuse of the holy freedom given to us from the first moment of our existence, which only begins at all because, from all eternity he sees us and loves us and so bring us into being simply so that we can love and be loved.
And now look at the work of our hands, so lovingly made by our loving Father. Look at what we are doing to his beloved Son.
Why the Cross?
To show us what sin is like. To show us its effects. Its true nature. Sin is suffering and death.
Only Divine love and Power can overcome sin, and did, when Jesus was raised from death on the third day. The only human person ever to return from death, because He was then and remains and always will be the divine Son who lived, died, was buried and returned glorified in absolute victory over sin and death.
Oh, we are so proud, so vain, so stupid, so unwilling to face the truth and ourselves, that it takes the Cross to bring us to our senses.
Truth? That's Truth - the Cross. The Death and Resurrection of the Son of God.
In the midst of our self-occupied lives, in the midst of the busy-ness of the world we are remaking in our own image, we are deaf to the truth of God's almighty love, and deaf to the truth of what the Divine Love has been prepared to do in His incredible condescension and kindness to his beloved creatures. The Absolute, the ground of all that exists, became one of them - became human, became one of us, so that we might learn from Him directly, in language we can understand, what Divine Love is. It is the Cross. It is bearing all imaginable suffering on our behalf, out of a Love we cannot ever grasp and which it takes eternity even to begin to comprehend.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that God will not give us to show us His Love.
And even when this profound mystery begins to dawn on us, when our sorrow for sin begins, even then, what do we give Him in return for His giving us everything, from our own immortal soul to His own Life? Ah, so little. So little.
When St Thomas Aquinas received the grace to comprehend the infinite love of God, he laid down his pen, regarding all his life's great work, on which as Christians we still depend, as straw. Christ asked him what he wanted of Him and his answer was simple and brief. 'Only yourself, Lord.'
What does God want of me? 'Only yourself, my love.'
Then here I am, Lord, just as I am. Not as You made me, though, but wounded and soiled by my own wilful hand. Have mercy on me.
Lead us away from temptation, Father, and deliver us from evil.
Take out of me this heart of stone, and give me a heart of flesh instead, so that I may begin to understand what I see when I look at your Cross.
Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Just look at it.
 |
| Drawing by St John of the Cross |
A gentle, loving, absolutely good and innocent man painfully breathing his last after being tortured. He is naked, bloody flesh torn to shreds by sharp metal scourges and thorns, bruised from kicks and punches, sickly pale with the pallor of death, breath rattling in his collapsing chest, face contorted in immeasurable pain from the nails hammered into his hands and feet upon which the whole weight of his body is hanging. He is shivering from pain and shock. He is utterly lonely, abandoned and bereft in his pain.
Horrible.
What we see here is the reality of sin. Our sin. This is what sin looks like.
Terrible.
We sin, oh, so often, oh, so blithely, not grasping that this horrible sight, this agonising death of the only truly innocent human being who ever lived among us, is the terrible degree of damage our selfishness and greed do to us, to ourselves, to our loved ones, the world.
This is the shocking insult we offer to the creator of the world by our dreadful abuse of the holy freedom given to us from the first moment of our existence, which only begins at all because, from all eternity he sees us and loves us and so bring us into being simply so that we can love and be loved.
And now look at the work of our hands, so lovingly made by our loving Father. Look at what we are doing to his beloved Son.
Why the Cross?
To show us what sin is like. To show us its effects. Its true nature. Sin is suffering and death.
Only Divine love and Power can overcome sin, and did, when Jesus was raised from death on the third day. The only human person ever to return from death, because He was then and remains and always will be the divine Son who lived, died, was buried and returned glorified in absolute victory over sin and death.
Oh, we are so proud, so vain, so stupid, so unwilling to face the truth and ourselves, that it takes the Cross to bring us to our senses.
Truth? That's Truth - the Cross. The Death and Resurrection of the Son of God.
In the midst of our self-occupied lives, in the midst of the busy-ness of the world we are remaking in our own image, we are deaf to the truth of God's almighty love, and deaf to the truth of what the Divine Love has been prepared to do in His incredible condescension and kindness to his beloved creatures. The Absolute, the ground of all that exists, became one of them - became human, became one of us, so that we might learn from Him directly, in language we can understand, what Divine Love is. It is the Cross. It is bearing all imaginable suffering on our behalf, out of a Love we cannot ever grasp and which it takes eternity even to begin to comprehend.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that God will not give us to show us His Love.
And even when this profound mystery begins to dawn on us, when our sorrow for sin begins, even then, what do we give Him in return for His giving us everything, from our own immortal soul to His own Life? Ah, so little. So little.
When St Thomas Aquinas received the grace to comprehend the infinite love of God, he laid down his pen, regarding all his life's great work, on which as Christians we still depend, as straw. Christ asked him what he wanted of Him and his answer was simple and brief. 'Only yourself, Lord.'
What does God want of me? 'Only yourself, my love.'
Then here I am, Lord, just as I am. Not as You made me, though, but wounded and soiled by my own wilful hand. Have mercy on me.
Lead us away from temptation, Father, and deliver us from evil.
Take out of me this heart of stone, and give me a heart of flesh instead, so that I may begin to understand what I see when I look at your Cross.
Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Empty hands
'... the Eucharistic banquet where all are beggars, even those who minister. We all come with our hands outstretched. We are invited precisely because we have nothing to offer.'
- Allan White, OP
The master then ordered the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedgerows and make people come in that my home may be filled.’
- Luke 14:23
What does God want from me, from one found in a hedgerow, whom He has commanded to come into His home?
There is nothing He needs: there is no lack in Him Who is perfect. There is nothing I can supply of myself for I have nothing.
What can I give Him from my nothingness? Only myself, my presence, my heart broken open, my hunger, my thirst.
What can I do for Him? Nothing. Without God, I can do nothing. Even with God, I can do nothing although if I am united with God, which is His Will for me as it is for all His beloved creation, God can do anything through me.
It is not my business to know what it is that the Lord effects through me. Of any seeds which I may scatter through the world as I go, unaware of what it is that I scatter, some will be good by the grace of God and others anything but because of my sin, so I must be careful. And some will fall on stony ground and some on fertile ground, but in any case I will have moved on and shall not see them sprout into life. I shall not see their fruits which will come, if they come at all, long after I have gone on my way. The fruits, if there be any, are not for me. They are for God.
Here I am, Lord, beggar that I am. Send me. Let me sow a few good seeds from whatever Your Providence places in my hands. From Your boundless goodness to me let there be a little fruit for the table at Your banquet.
Wednesday, 24 August 2016
A letter from a weak soul
It is one of those days when the distance between my Lord and me suddenly seems so great that I cannot see Him, nor hear Him, nor sense Him. I begin to read Morning Prayer but the words blur before my eyes and lose all sense because I feel as though I am speaking into a void and cannot grasp their meaning. Without His sensed assistance to my small understanding, it is hard to think.
I start again, after telling Him that today I am writing a letter to Him instead of talking, because He seems too far away for my small voice to reach Him or for my weak ears to hear His voice. So I will, as it were, write to him, slowly and carefully, line by line, not thinking about the line before or the next line, just this line. He will receive my message in His own good time, which of course is always now. He knows. He knows all. It is I that do not know anything.
And thus I begin over again, concentrating very hard on each line, and slowly, slowly, the sense comes into focus. I carry on with my letter knowing that He will read it, that He is reading it even as I write it, because although I cannot sense His presence I know that I am present to Him. And thus He is present to me. And when my letter is done, I will know what I wrote.
Warmth begins to fill the lines of the psalms and then, ah, His own perfect prayer, the Our Father, says all that I ever need to say to Him.
It is not I that is praying but it is the Spirit praying within me.
Deo gratias.
I start again, after telling Him that today I am writing a letter to Him instead of talking, because He seems too far away for my small voice to reach Him or for my weak ears to hear His voice. So I will, as it were, write to him, slowly and carefully, line by line, not thinking about the line before or the next line, just this line. He will receive my message in His own good time, which of course is always now. He knows. He knows all. It is I that do not know anything.
And thus I begin over again, concentrating very hard on each line, and slowly, slowly, the sense comes into focus. I carry on with my letter knowing that He will read it, that He is reading it even as I write it, because although I cannot sense His presence I know that I am present to Him. And thus He is present to me. And when my letter is done, I will know what I wrote.
Warmth begins to fill the lines of the psalms and then, ah, His own perfect prayer, the Our Father, says all that I ever need to say to Him.
It is not I that is praying but it is the Spirit praying within me.
Deo gratias.
Tuesday, 23 August 2016
Comfort ye my people
St Teresa of Avila:
We will grow tired of sinning long before God grows tired of forgiving us.
We will grow tired of sinning long before God grows tired of forgiving us.
Monday, 22 August 2016
Eye to eye
He is walking towards me. 'It is the Lord!' Walking towards me. Towards me. Always walking towards me.
His eyes are fixed on mine. There is love in His face. He draws nearer. And nearer. Walking towards me.
Nearer.
I can see into His eyes now.
He stops.
He sees right into the heart of me, and I in turn into His heart. I see infinite love, great suffering, freedom of soul, almighty power, absolute beauty, absolute joy. I cannot bear it. I cannot bear it but I cannot look away.
I fall to my knees, face to the ground. His gaze draws my eyes upwards again, and although almost blind now I am gazing into His eyes. We are face to face. I cannot bear it but I cannot look away.
Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.
I cannot bear it but I cannot look away.
Lord, I am not worthy.
I cannot bear it but I cannot look away.
Lord, if you want, you can heal me.
I want to, He says, looking right into my heart.
There is no more to say.
His eyes are fixed on mine. There is love in His face. He draws nearer. And nearer. Walking towards me.
Nearer.
I can see into His eyes now.
He stops.
He sees right into the heart of me, and I in turn into His heart. I see infinite love, great suffering, freedom of soul, almighty power, absolute beauty, absolute joy. I cannot bear it. I cannot bear it but I cannot look away.
I fall to my knees, face to the ground. His gaze draws my eyes upwards again, and although almost blind now I am gazing into His eyes. We are face to face. I cannot bear it but I cannot look away.
Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.
I cannot bear it but I cannot look away.
Lord, I am not worthy.
I cannot bear it but I cannot look away.
Lord, if you want, you can heal me.
I want to, He says, looking right into my heart.
There is no more to say.
Sunday, 21 August 2016
Horizons
Beyond the horizon, we are blind. The horizon ends our field of vision. Yet we long to know what it is that is over there, out there, beyond the horizon – at, and even more, beyond the limit of what we can see. This powerful, primaeval urge sets scientists studying the cosmos, travellers travelling, mountaineers climbing and explorers risking their lives. It is the explanation for all human striving.
Where is the horizon? It is far away or very near, depending on where my eyes focus. It may be that line I seem to see that divides sea from sky, mountains from cloud. It may be whichever thing, or person, that is right in front of me now, up close enough to block my view of what lies beyond. With my eyes closed, the inside of my eyelids are my horizon.
When I look at you, you are the limit of my view. You are placed here by Providence precisely for me to look at you, to see you. I cannot see through you to what lies beyond you. When I look at it, that tree is the limit of my view. It is placed here by Providence precisely for me to look at it, to see it. I cannot see through the tree to whatever lies beyond it. These are my horizons. The people, the living and inanimate things which constitute the whole of creation.
And... beyond the horizon of all creation? Ah, that is where what I cannot see begins. My horizons are the beginning of infinity, not merely the end of visible reality. They are the point at which the invisible starts.
The invisible Creator is utterly beyond the visible creation. Beyond my horizons. Immediately beyond them. Precisely where my vision ends, there the Creator is. At one moment, that seems impossibly distant but if I close my eyes my horizon is as close to me as I can possibly imagine. This is why I close my eyes when I pray. Not to blot the visible world out but to sharpen my awareness that the invisible Creator is so near, so utterly and intimately present in my very existence.
The Creator is hiding behind his visible creation. If my vision ends with this tree, the Creator lies immediately behind it. I touch this side of the tree, which is my horizon, and at that very same instant its Creator touches it, too, on the other side of this horizon which is the tree. If my vision ends with you, if I touch you with my eyes or my hands, at that very instant your Creator and mine is touching you, too, touching the part of you that must remain invisible to me.
Everything that I can see or sense in creation is a horizon. My horizons are everywhere that I look. They are my natural limits, proper to my creatureliness, my finitude. The Creator is immediately beyond everywhere I look and everything I look at, surrounding and looking at me and at all else that he has created.
Thus in him we live and move and have our being.
Christ, in His life on earth, wholly human and wholly God, was transparent to those who believed in Him so that the power of the invisible Trinity could reach and act on them directly and immediately through the Son's visible humanity, inspiring, converting, healing and saving. There was a stupefying, terrifying glimpse of the reality of His transparency to the Godhead at His Transfiguration. The disciples could not grasp what they saw and when He came back down the hill He had to reassure them with comforting words, 'It is only me, don't be scared'. When His suffering ended and He was risen, never to suffer or die again, He became so fully, so utterly and eternally transparent to the Father and the Holy Spirit that His friends at last grasped His words, 'Anyone who has seen me, has seen the Father'. In Him and through Him, they knew that they saw God.
I look to my horizon, yearning to see the face of God as they did, and I fail because I am a limited creature and must wait for that longed-for vision. But even now, beyond every one of my horizons, far and near, the invisible Godhead is. I look at you and I see a beautiful creature placed in my field of vision by the One who created us both for love's sake and who is constantly and eternally looking at you, and me, with ineffable, infinite love. He commands me to try to see you through His eyes. You, and every other person alive. I can have no enemies among humankind. I must love, too, and care for all creation because God loved it all into being: every sparrow, every blade of grass, every star, every person, for love's sake.
So I look at the horizon, at you, at the tree swaying in the breeze beyond my window, at my sweet cat, and Love is right there, just on the other side of each, where my vision cannot go. Because each is my horizon and the beginning of the invisible, each is to be cherished because loved by God and placed before me by the Creator as an indicator of his eternal love.
I close my eyes to bring my horizon as close to me as possible and there is Love, the Holy Spirit of God, breathing Love.
Where is the horizon? It is far away or very near, depending on where my eyes focus. It may be that line I seem to see that divides sea from sky, mountains from cloud. It may be whichever thing, or person, that is right in front of me now, up close enough to block my view of what lies beyond. With my eyes closed, the inside of my eyelids are my horizon.
When I look at you, you are the limit of my view. You are placed here by Providence precisely for me to look at you, to see you. I cannot see through you to what lies beyond you. When I look at it, that tree is the limit of my view. It is placed here by Providence precisely for me to look at it, to see it. I cannot see through the tree to whatever lies beyond it. These are my horizons. The people, the living and inanimate things which constitute the whole of creation.
And... beyond the horizon of all creation? Ah, that is where what I cannot see begins. My horizons are the beginning of infinity, not merely the end of visible reality. They are the point at which the invisible starts.
The invisible Creator is utterly beyond the visible creation. Beyond my horizons. Immediately beyond them. Precisely where my vision ends, there the Creator is. At one moment, that seems impossibly distant but if I close my eyes my horizon is as close to me as I can possibly imagine. This is why I close my eyes when I pray. Not to blot the visible world out but to sharpen my awareness that the invisible Creator is so near, so utterly and intimately present in my very existence.
The Creator is hiding behind his visible creation. If my vision ends with this tree, the Creator lies immediately behind it. I touch this side of the tree, which is my horizon, and at that very same instant its Creator touches it, too, on the other side of this horizon which is the tree. If my vision ends with you, if I touch you with my eyes or my hands, at that very instant your Creator and mine is touching you, too, touching the part of you that must remain invisible to me.
Everything that I can see or sense in creation is a horizon. My horizons are everywhere that I look. They are my natural limits, proper to my creatureliness, my finitude. The Creator is immediately beyond everywhere I look and everything I look at, surrounding and looking at me and at all else that he has created.
Thus in him we live and move and have our being.
Christ, in His life on earth, wholly human and wholly God, was transparent to those who believed in Him so that the power of the invisible Trinity could reach and act on them directly and immediately through the Son's visible humanity, inspiring, converting, healing and saving. There was a stupefying, terrifying glimpse of the reality of His transparency to the Godhead at His Transfiguration. The disciples could not grasp what they saw and when He came back down the hill He had to reassure them with comforting words, 'It is only me, don't be scared'. When His suffering ended and He was risen, never to suffer or die again, He became so fully, so utterly and eternally transparent to the Father and the Holy Spirit that His friends at last grasped His words, 'Anyone who has seen me, has seen the Father'. In Him and through Him, they knew that they saw God.
I look to my horizon, yearning to see the face of God as they did, and I fail because I am a limited creature and must wait for that longed-for vision. But even now, beyond every one of my horizons, far and near, the invisible Godhead is. I look at you and I see a beautiful creature placed in my field of vision by the One who created us both for love's sake and who is constantly and eternally looking at you, and me, with ineffable, infinite love. He commands me to try to see you through His eyes. You, and every other person alive. I can have no enemies among humankind. I must love, too, and care for all creation because God loved it all into being: every sparrow, every blade of grass, every star, every person, for love's sake.
So I look at the horizon, at you, at the tree swaying in the breeze beyond my window, at my sweet cat, and Love is right there, just on the other side of each, where my vision cannot go. Because each is my horizon and the beginning of the invisible, each is to be cherished because loved by God and placed before me by the Creator as an indicator of his eternal love.
I close my eyes to bring my horizon as close to me as possible and there is Love, the Holy Spirit of God, breathing Love.
Wednesday, 17 August 2016
It's hard, being a shepherd
Shepherds, the Lord says this: Trouble for the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Shepherds ought to feed their flock, yet you have fed on milk, you have dressed yourselves in wool, you have sacrificed the fattest sheep, but failed to feed the flock. You have failed to make weak sheep strong, or to care for the sick ones, or bandage the wounded ones. You have failed to bring back strays or look for the lost. On the contrary, you have ruled them cruelly and violently. For lack of a shepherd they have scattered, to become the prey of any wild animal; they have scattered far. Well then, shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. As I live, I swear it – it is the Lord who speaks – Since my flock has been looted and for lack of a shepherd is now the prey of any wild animal, since my shepherds have stopped bothering about my flock, since my shepherds feed themselves rather than my flock, in view of all this, shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. The Lord says this: I am going to call the shepherds to account. I am going to take my flock back from them and I shall not allow them to feed my flock. In this way the shepherds will stop feeding themselves. I shall rescue my sheep from their mouths; they will not prey on them any more. For the Lord says this: “I am going to look after my flock myself and keep all of it in view."
- Ezekiel Ch 24.
The Lord is coruscating in his contempt for shepherds who do not care for their flock... His flock... as they are charged to do.
My first reaction is to think immediately of negligent clergy who ensure that they themselves live high on the hog but hold the flock in less than the love with which God loves them, for notice has surely been served upon them. But wait - what about me? Am I also a shepherd, even a part-time one? Am I asked to care for God's people?
Yes. When I pray the I confess, I ask my brothers and sisters... the other members of the Church... to pray for me to the Lord our God, because I am a sinner, and I undertake also to pray for them, because they need my prayers just as I need theirs. We are shepherds of each other. This is what members of the Church are to each other, and must also be to His other sheep, those not of this fold.
We are not always able physically to come to the material aid of the Lord's sheep, spread all over the world and mostly unknown to us personally, but just as at Mass I ask for their prayers in my need, I am duty bound to pray to the Lord for them, in their need. Pray constantly.
But how can I see the Lord's lambs wounded, scattered, His baptised members lost, wandering, cast out to be the prey of any wild animal, and do nothing? How can I see His other sheep, not of this fold but whom He also loves, unshepherded, frightened, unfed and with no fold that is safe, in which they might find rest?
St Teresa of Avila writes:
We are not always able physically to come to the material aid of the Lord's sheep, spread all over the world and mostly unknown to us personally, but just as at Mass I ask for their prayers in my need, I am duty bound to pray to the Lord for them, in their need. Pray constantly.
But how can I see the Lord's lambs wounded, scattered, His baptised members lost, wandering, cast out to be the prey of any wild animal, and do nothing? How can I see His other sheep, not of this fold but whom He also loves, unshepherded, frightened, unfed and with no fold that is safe, in which they might find rest?
St Teresa of Avila writes:
Christ has no body now on earth but yours;
no hands but yours; no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which
Christ must look out on the world with compassion.
Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good.
Yours are the hands with which He is to bless people now.
So, on hearing the Lord say, “I am going to look after my flock myself and keep all of it in view," we recognise His mandate to us, to us who are His eyes, His feet, His hands, now, to be shepherds.
'Love one another, as I have loved you.'
I begin by praying for those sheep who are of this fold but have been lost by inadequate shepherds whose hearts have grown cold and hard, or who lack mercy, or are blind, and pray to be allowed to help bring them home. I try to do nothing to alienate them from the loving Good Shepherd by my own lack of faith and fidelity to Him.
I look next for those not of this fold and try, by living as faithfully and closely as I can to the Lord, to give them some sense that the love of the Good Shepherd is caring for them even now.
I pray that I may be made merciful, as the Father is merciful, and that I may love both sheep and shepherds who have gone astray and cannot find their way home, but especially the shepherds who need rescuing. God love them. God help them.
I bless those many good shepherds who, at the sacrifice of their private lives and loves and so much more, care as tenderly for His sheep as He would... because He asks it of them, because He has no hands on earth now but theirs.
Saturday, 13 August 2016
All time is the present moment to God
Luke 12, 35…
Jesus said to his disciples:
‘See that you are dressed for action and have your lamps lit.
Be like men waiting for their master to return from the wedding feast,
ready to open the door as soon as he comes and knocks.
‘Being watchful and staying awake means being aware. Being conscious of something, being aware, is the root of being alive… Spiritual awareness means living in what the 18th-century Jesuit Pierre de Caussade called ‘the sacrament of the present moment.’ It encourages us to do that most difficult of things: live in the present moment – that is, live in a state of awareness. The present moment is all there ever is. Still, most of us ignore it, imagining the future or the past, stuck in our thinking minds.’
- Fr DC
Our thinking minds. Our memories of past things. Our yearning for future things. Obliterating the present moment, which is all we have.
Christ comes to us in our present moment, when He comes. Am I ready, or am I given over, in my mind, to my past or my future, where I think (too much) that my treasure was, or will be?
Am I too attached to my treasured memories when I should just hang them on the walls of my inner dwelling and let them be, so that I can turn to Him in my present moment? Am I dreaming (too much) of a day in the distant future when all shall be well, which it clearly isn’t, now, Lord? Are my dreams blotting out this present, so graced moment in Your presence?
NOW, in this present moment, He is knocking on the door of my heart. Am I ready? Can I wake from this reverie of my treasures and fly to admit Him?
‘Happy those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.
I tell you solemnly, he will put on an apron,
sit them down at table and wait on them.’
And what on earth will I say when He puts on an apron to serve me?
LOVE BADE ME WELCOME
yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.
'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here.'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful?
Ah, my dear, I cannot look on Thee.'
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'
'Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.
- George Herbert
Friday, 12 August 2016
Outcast woman - 3
Just then a Canaanite (Syro-Phoenician) woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.
**************************************
'Dogs'?! A bit harsh, no? Well, maybe not. It's worth another look.
We are like the disciples at Emmaus who got it all wrong and despaired until 'He opened their minds to understand the scriptures' (Luke 24:45). We can only understand what we are reading with His help. So, if I don't understand something at first reading, I pause briefly to ask Him to help me see what He wants me to see, and not what I think I see.
If I read something in the New Testament accounts of Jesus's words which seems harsh, I remind myself what Jesus is like, and if my reading clashes with that understanding, then I know it's my reading that's wrong. I go over it again, looking for another way to see it, with His help, until I get a glimmer of something more obviously in keeping with what we know about Our Lord.
In this reading, for example, I remember, 'I have other sheep who are not of this fold...' And that Jesus has a tender heart. And that Faith in Him makes us whole.
I also remember that what we have in the Scriptures of Jesus's saying are merely some remembered (though critically important) snippets from His three years of constant teaching, written down decades later. Just the words, with nothing about facial expressions, smiles, laughs, winks or unspoken communication between His eyes and those of whomever he is speaking to.
It's always worth taking time to read between the lines.
Making some space for a few unwritten but hardly unlikely details, then...
The Canaanites were definitely 'not of this fold'. For a start, there was ancient enmity between them and the Hebrew people who had taken over their land a thousand years ago. (Not much seems to change in Israel/Palestine.) The Canaanites had their own gods. They had no truck with the Hebrews' Yahweh. Hardly surprising, then, that the two peoples referred to each other as infidels... dogs. And worse. Common parlance.
Placing myself among the bystanders, I watch this encounter again, and now I see a wry expression on Jesus's face - is that a raised eyebrow? - as He turns round to look into the face of this persistent infidel woman who is annoying His friends. Ah, but soft eyes as He teasingly tests her with mention of the distance between His people and hers. His head on one side, I think He is smiling as He quizzes her: 'Mm-hm? You come to me? To one of those ghastly Jews, those old enemies who call your people dogs - those whom in turn, you'll agree, your people call dogs?'
Tricky. She thought this might happen. But the medical people have tried everything and given her daughter up for dead. She has nowhere left to turn. She is not of His faith, no, but... here she is. What has she heard about Him that was evidence enough to utterly convince her that He has a power to heal, such as no-one else has? And this Jesus looks and sounds... different. It seems that, unlike most others, He does not hate anyone. She is more than ever determined to plead with Him for her daughter.
But look - she sees that He reads her heart! He already knows everything about her, and about what she needs. The relief is overwhelming and she is warmed enough now to answer His tease with one of her own. With a small shrug she gives Him a small, lopsided smile as she answers, 'Crumbs from the table, sir...'
He appreciates her wit and acknowledges her courageous determination. They acknowledge each other. She now believes absolutely that He has this power she has heard about. It must all be true, then. Her heart tells her that her daughter was cured the instant He wished it and, touching His feet in gratitude, she hurries home to her girl, rejoicing and with a wholly new faith.
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel.
Thursday, 11 August 2016
At the foot of the Cross
There stood by the foot of the Cross, Mary, the disciple whom Jesus loved, Mother, Father, my brother John, and me. In life, Mother feared it was true. Father hoped it might be true. John always believed.
Jesus was shivering with shock and cold, dying, in appalling pain, his breathing rattling in his chest. Mother knew what he was going through. She had nursed many people through the painful last hours of life. Father, who loved her, had heard her breathing like this as she herself died. John breathed like this as he was dying, too. I watched them all die. Now I was watching my Lord die, out of love for each of us.
Jesus looked at Mother with love in his agonised face. 'Because she loved much, much is forgiven her. Needy, uncertain Sheila, it is time to be loved just as you are. Come to me.'
He looked at Father. 'Another doubting Thomas. He too loved much, gave everything. Come to me, doubting Tom. You can stop thinking now, and rest content in me.'
'And John. Stumbling, defiant, wild, passionate John. Beneath it all, a true heart. Come to me, John.'
And me? I am the friend from His childhood.
'Ah, you came,' He whispered.
His Mother looked into the troubled face of my mother and then opened her arms wide and embraced her, nodding to signify that she understood her sister, understood all.
Then she smiled up into the face of my father, raising her hand tenderly to his cheek.
She then put a kiss in the the palm of her hand and, reaching up, rested her hand on my brother’s head.
Finally she smiled at me, the same smile as when He and I crept into her kitchen when she was making raisin bread.
Mary, holy virgin, mother of us all, pray for us and guide us to your Beloved and Risen Son. Pray for healing for me. Never let me be parted from Him, or from you.
Mother, Father, John, pray for me.
Wednesday, 10 August 2016
A memorable boat trip
Dark, a chilly breeze. It will take the best part of an hour to cross over. Jesus is tired. He goes to the back of the boat and curls up on the cushions, pulling His brown cloak tightly around Him. Sandals, a striped robe under the cloak. He hunches His shoulders against the breeze, closes His eyes.
The proper sailors, Peter and James and John, are pulling the sail up, hauling ropes. I am on a thwart bench at the back with Matt and Nat. Desk wallahs like me, no use in a boat. Peter gives us a meaningful look. 'Sit there, you three - and don't touch anything.'
We pull away from the pier. There are three other boats setting off with us. The wind is getting stronger. Nathaniel looks over at Jesus. 'Look at Him. He can sleep anywhere.'
Matthew answers, 'I don't think He ever really sleeps. He rests, though. He's dead beat.'
Gusts, now. Strong. Peter shouts to trim the sail and they haul on the ropes, the wind whipping the sail as the boat leans over heavily. Noisy wind, but Jesus is still lying there, eyes closed, looking peaceful.
The boat leans hard over and then rights itself violently as Peter yells at the crew, the wind whipping his voice away.
'Don't think he was expecting this,' shouts Matthew, pulling his cloak tighter and gripping the side of the boat for dear life.
A sudden squall and some of the men are knocked over, crying out as they fall. I'm scared now, as wave after wave wallops into the boat and Peter and Andrew roar at everyone to bale, bale.
Even Matt and Nat grab fish buckets and start baling. I am just clinging to anything I can reach.
Suddenly, the boat jerks in the wind and I tumble off the seat towards the rear, almost falling right on to the Lord. He opens His eyes and looks directly at me, right into my eyes. He is quite still and utterly calm amid the howl of the gale and the creaking and cracking of the wood of the ship and the frantic activity of the men. I'm panicking a bit as Peter yells towards the back, 'We're in real trouble here, Lord!', reproach in his voice as if to say, 'Still sleeping? We could really do with one of your miracles right now!'
Amid the turmoil, Jesus is looking deep into my eyes, into my soul, and in a quiet clear voice that I can hear through the storm, asks me, with a sad smile, 'You still don't trust me, then? Don't you know I guard you as the apple of my eye?' He reaches out and puts His arm tightly round my shoulders, holding me safe.
Eternal Love has a Name, and He calls me by my name, His strong arm around me, no matter what. Infinite Power has a Face, a Face full of love.
One arm tight around my shoulders like a big brother, He raises His other hand just slightly and, looking up, past the snapping sail, says quietly, 'Enough now, be still.' Not shouting, just a soft command. But it is a command and it is awesome to hear.
Immediately the wind drops, the air is quiet, the waves calm and the boat comes right on its keel. As the clouds begin to clear, all the men gawp at each other, stunned. Mystified. Relieved!
And then to Peter and the others He calls out, 'Where is your faith, little children?' and He is smiling at them. 'Did you really think I would let my beloved friends go down in the storm?'
The proper sailors, Peter and James and John, are pulling the sail up, hauling ropes. I am on a thwart bench at the back with Matt and Nat. Desk wallahs like me, no use in a boat. Peter gives us a meaningful look. 'Sit there, you three - and don't touch anything.'
We pull away from the pier. There are three other boats setting off with us. The wind is getting stronger. Nathaniel looks over at Jesus. 'Look at Him. He can sleep anywhere.'
Matthew answers, 'I don't think He ever really sleeps. He rests, though. He's dead beat.'
Gusts, now. Strong. Peter shouts to trim the sail and they haul on the ropes, the wind whipping the sail as the boat leans over heavily. Noisy wind, but Jesus is still lying there, eyes closed, looking peaceful.
The boat leans hard over and then rights itself violently as Peter yells at the crew, the wind whipping his voice away.
 |
| Mark 4, 35-41 |
'Don't think he was expecting this,' shouts Matthew, pulling his cloak tighter and gripping the side of the boat for dear life.
A sudden squall and some of the men are knocked over, crying out as they fall. I'm scared now, as wave after wave wallops into the boat and Peter and Andrew roar at everyone to bale, bale.
Even Matt and Nat grab fish buckets and start baling. I am just clinging to anything I can reach.
Suddenly, the boat jerks in the wind and I tumble off the seat towards the rear, almost falling right on to the Lord. He opens His eyes and looks directly at me, right into my eyes. He is quite still and utterly calm amid the howl of the gale and the creaking and cracking of the wood of the ship and the frantic activity of the men. I'm panicking a bit as Peter yells towards the back, 'We're in real trouble here, Lord!', reproach in his voice as if to say, 'Still sleeping? We could really do with one of your miracles right now!'
Amid the turmoil, Jesus is looking deep into my eyes, into my soul, and in a quiet clear voice that I can hear through the storm, asks me, with a sad smile, 'You still don't trust me, then? Don't you know I guard you as the apple of my eye?' He reaches out and puts His arm tightly round my shoulders, holding me safe.
Eternal Love has a Name, and He calls me by my name, His strong arm around me, no matter what. Infinite Power has a Face, a Face full of love.
Even in His sleep He guards me as the apple of His eye.
One arm tight around my shoulders like a big brother, He raises His other hand just slightly and, looking up, past the snapping sail, says quietly, 'Enough now, be still.' Not shouting, just a soft command. But it is a command and it is awesome to hear.
Immediately the wind drops, the air is quiet, the waves calm and the boat comes right on its keel. As the clouds begin to clear, all the men gawp at each other, stunned. Mystified. Relieved!
And then to Peter and the others He calls out, 'Where is your faith, little children?' and He is smiling at them. 'Did you really think I would let my beloved friends go down in the storm?'
Tuesday, 9 August 2016
Not even fools
Isaiah 35
A highway will be there, called the Holy Way;
No one unclean may pass over it,
but it will be for His people;
No traveller, not even fools, shall go astray on it.
John 14, 1-14
Thomas: Master, we do not know where you are going.
Jesus: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Monday, 8 August 2016
On the Feast of our holy founder, Saint Dominic
Greetings in the Lord on this happy day, to Dominicans everywhere!
We are united in fraternity through our prayers for each other and for the mission of the Order, today and every day.
May God bless us and may He smile on all blessed Dominic's sons and daughters, on their efforts in His many vineyards around the world, and on all who support the mission of the Order of Preachers by any means, but chiefly by their prayers.
Saint Dominic, Saint Catherine, all holy saints and beati of the Order of Preachers, pray for us.
Alleluia!
We are united in fraternity through our prayers for each other and for the mission of the Order, today and every day.
May God bless us and may He smile on all blessed Dominic's sons and daughters, on their efforts in His many vineyards around the world, and on all who support the mission of the Order of Preachers by any means, but chiefly by their prayers.
Saint Dominic, Saint Catherine, all holy saints and beati of the Order of Preachers, pray for us.
Alleluia!
Sunday, 7 August 2016
Teal
Not smug green, in its knowing growingness.
Not bold blue, sure of its heavenness.
Somewhere between.
Uncertain, then, but calm.
A something of green but
Seagreen, deep green, green of vast depths
Into which God alone gazes.
But not so profound.
A something of blue.
Not skyblue, not
The blue of peacocks, kingfishers,
Too bluely bold.
Wistfulness for flashing flight and royal splendour
Poured profligate into silent deeps
Where only God sees all.
Only God sees all
In the quiet, humble colour of a duck.
Not bold blue, sure of its heavenness.
Somewhere between.
Uncertain, then, but calm.
A something of green but
Seagreen, deep green, green of vast depths
Into which God alone gazes.
But not so profound.
A something of blue.
Not skyblue, not
The blue of peacocks, kingfishers,
Too bluely bold.
Wistfulness for flashing flight and royal splendour
Poured profligate into silent deeps
Where only God sees all.
Only God sees all
In the quiet, humble colour of a duck.
Saturday, 6 August 2016
Ecce homo
Agony in the garden. Jesus falls to the ground, hunches into a foetal ball out of fear, shivering and sweating. When He finally gets up He is faint.
Arrest. Trial.
Peter disowns Him. Now that shocking feeling, reeling with nausea, realising that one really has actually done the unthinkable. Overwhelming shame. Nothing could be worse than this.
The quiet resignation of Jesus before the high priests. He knew He was doomed. He just stood there and took it, His divine, cosmic power veiled.
Pilate, exasperated at yet another revolutionary trying it on. More threats from those damned officials. He looked at Jesus and saw a completely innocent man. His demeanour was not that of a rebel or a trouble maker. Pilate was disturbed. He tried everything to get Him off.
'Ecce homo.'
Look at Him. I mean - just look at Him. Quiet, humble, rational although half dead from scourging and shock. Hardly a rabid maniac, obviously a threat to no-one. Surely you have punished Him enough, whatever you think His crime is? Look at him, for God's sake.
Arrest. Trial.
Peter disowns Him. Now that shocking feeling, reeling with nausea, realising that one really has actually done the unthinkable. Overwhelming shame. Nothing could be worse than this.
The quiet resignation of Jesus before the high priests. He knew He was doomed. He just stood there and took it, His divine, cosmic power veiled.
Pilate, exasperated at yet another revolutionary trying it on. More threats from those damned officials. He looked at Jesus and saw a completely innocent man. His demeanour was not that of a rebel or a trouble maker. Pilate was disturbed. He tried everything to get Him off.
Look at Him. I mean - just look at Him. Quiet, humble, rational although half dead from scourging and shock. Hardly a rabid maniac, obviously a threat to no-one. Surely you have punished Him enough, whatever you think His crime is? Look at him, for God's sake.
Friday, 5 August 2016
Holy Saturday
 |
| Mary waiting for the Resurrection Lourdes, France, Way of the Cross, white marble, Maria de Faykod |
A mother always knows. He was in her heart as He went down to Sheol. She knew. She knew His Godforsakenness. She was not in the same dreadful plight but she felt it, felt his fear and sorrow and loss in the place where God's love is not. A piercing sword in her heart. Indeed.
Did the Mother plead, now, with the Father for their Son? 'Let this bitter chalice pass from Him, but not my will but Thy Majesty's will be done'?
He had to go where the God-forsaken and the forsaken-God are. To experience what they do, in order to be human, like us, in all things except sin. All things. To be very far from His Father, to be where those who run from the Father are, so that the farther they run from the Father, the more they run into the arms of the Son.
Shema, Ysrael. The Lord is One.
The Cross is truly Trinitarian. The all-loving Father shares everything with His Beloved Son in Whom the Spirit of Love dwells eternally, a Spirit of sympathy and love and of longing for all to know Love, again or for the first time.
‘Father, forgive them.’
Them?
Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
You risked all, in your humanity, for me. And lost?
I betrayed you. You abandoned all that you had: your Godhead, your human life, gave all until there was no more you could give. For me. And I betrayed you. My selfish desires were more important to me than Your love.
Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
‘Where I am, you will be, too. You know the Way. I am the Way.’
O amazing love, O sweet condescension for our sake. O blessed gift.
Blessed be the God of Israel. He has visited His people and redeemed them.
Yes, I will go with you. Whither thou goest, I will go.
Thursday, 4 August 2016
Jesus Mercy
All the deadly sins, Lord. Deadly. All. Knowingly.
Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
'Yes. I have seen your sins. Every one. And I have redeemed you, paying the price of them. I have restored Justice both because I know of what you are made and because I am merciful.'
'Your name has been written in the palm of my hand since before you were made, because even then I loved you.
'I have cast your sins behind my back, and even when you forget me or shun me, I bear the wound of it in patience, because I guard you as the apple of my eye.
'Do not fear. My peace I give you.
'Give glory to My Father and your Father Who is in heaven, Who sees all.'
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel. He has visited His people and redeemed them.
Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
'Yes. I have seen your sins. Every one. And I have redeemed you, paying the price of them. I have restored Justice both because I know of what you are made and because I am merciful.'
'Your name has been written in the palm of my hand since before you were made, because even then I loved you.
'I have cast your sins behind my back, and even when you forget me or shun me, I bear the wound of it in patience, because I guard you as the apple of my eye.
'Do not fear. My peace I give you.
'Give glory to My Father and your Father Who is in heaven, Who sees all.'
Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel. He has visited His people and redeemed them.
Wednesday, 3 August 2016
Outcast woman - 2
Jesus was passing her way with Jairus whose much loved daughter was dying.
Now came this woman, pious but an outcast because a haemorrhagic woman was unclean. She had been shunned for 12 years. Her husband would not touch her. He may even have taken another wife. She could not go to the ritual bath with her friends who should not touch her. No hugs. Loneliness as well as illness and pain. A tragic, desperate figure but with persisting faith and hope despite it all. She must have prayed constantly for healing, to get her life back, for readmission to God's community outside which there was no life, merely existence of a sort.
She must have thought herself sinful and punished. Then she recognised the source of her healing in Jesus. The crowd around Jesus and Jairus did not know about her or they would have driven her off. Anonymity gave her this opportunity and she grabbed it.
It worked.
When Jesus said He had felt power go out of Him, she was scared of being discovered and punished but she confessed immediately, in Jairus's hearing - and he an official of the Synagogue, maybe even one of those who declared the woman shunned, probably without even meeting her. How brave she was to touch anyone, let alone the famous rabbi walking with Jairus while he was hurrying, distraught, to his daughter's deathbed.
And Jairus? He experienced two huge miracles in the space of a few hours. His life would never be the same.
Be bold! Importune Him! Especially if you are unclean, an outcast, a sinner. Or a high official.
Tuesday, 2 August 2016
Outcast woman - 1
She is a shunned outcast, a woman alone, a foreigner, one of the heathen, 'the enemy'. And a disreputable woman at that, the sort respectable people cross the road to avoid.
He is tired and hot. He really needs the water he asks her for. Does he look into her eyes? Many men have, and do. She is doubly, trebly unclean, yet he will take water from her hand, share her cup. Appalling, to the law-abiding. How could he?
When He speaks of living water, she mocks him. He just repeats and underlines what he said before - ignoring her mockery. He again holds out a strange promise, with echoes of their common prophet Moses. She recognises something of great moment happening, but what?
When finally she stops playing games and asks for the living water, he stops her in her tracks with his knowledge of her private life. But he is not from 'around here' - how does he know all this? WHO IS HE?
He tells her that the awaited time is now here. That neither the Samaritans' holy mountain nor that of the Jews will do, but that from her people's enemies, the Jews, salvation will come, and very soon.
The conversation is serious now. He is talking to her as he would to a Jerusalem Temple doctor. Seriously, respectfully, as no-one else has ever spoken to her, a mere woman, let alone a lower-than-low outcast with a despicable personal history.
She looks into his eyes, in awe. She acknowledges that Messiah will come. He says, I AM HERE, talking to... YOU.
When they are interrupted by his companions, she is embarrassed even though they do not interrogate her, do not even address her. She breaks away, runs home, probably wondering if she had imagined what He seemed to be saying.
Shunned she may be but she cries to anyone and everyone that maybe, just maybe, she has met the Messiah, but surely not? Would MESSIAH speak privately to her of all people? This is NOT how one expects the Messiah to behave, to announce his millennial arrival! (But... but... Elijah's still small voice...)
He tells the disciples to look around them at the harvest ripe for reaping. Look around at this small Samaritan village. Harvest. In unexpected places like this, He says.
And then some of the villagers came to Him because of her frantic earnest report about Him. They had to see for themselves. They saw for themselves and believed, and told her so.
WHAT exactly did they see for themselves? The Gospel does not tell us. But he stayed with them for two days before moving on to Galilee.
How did the disciples feel about staying in a Samaritan village instead of going home?
'We realised that this was a completely new and huge thing, If we wanted to stay with Jesus, we had to change our thinking and abandon all our preconceptions. Our prejudices.'
Monday, 1 August 2016
Our young God
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, 'Do it again.' And the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again,' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again,' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
G K Chesterton
G K Chesterton
Sunday, 31 July 2016
Highly recommended!
Just back from a blessed 8-day IGR at St Beuno's.
Thanks be to God. And to Saint Ignatius on his feast day today, to all his Jesuit brethren especially those who first formed me in my Catholic faith at school and university, and to all at that beautiful Ignatian spirituality house in North Wales, for so many graces received.
Thanks be to God. And to Saint Ignatius on his feast day today, to all his Jesuit brethren especially those who first formed me in my Catholic faith at school and university, and to all at that beautiful Ignatian spirituality house in North Wales, for so many graces received.
 |
| St Ignatius Loyola |
No, no - let the children come
It has been a long day, a very long walk. Hot and very tired now, resting on the bench, leaning his head back against the house wall. Someone gives him water and he smiles his thanks.
The villagers come out to see the celebrity. His friends say, Leave him be now, please, he is too tired.
Then the grandmothers come out, pushing the little ones towards him. Go and get a blessing from the holy rabbi!
No, no...
'Let the little ones come,' he says, leaning forward and looking into their small faces. One shyly hands him a bunch of daisies and willowherb. He takes it solemnly, asking, 'Which is your favourite?' The child touches one with his forefinger and Jesus removes it from the bunch and raising it to his lips, kisses it and gives it back to the child saying, 'Please give this to your mother from me.'
Shyness is gone from them now. They like his crinkly smiling eyes and gentle voice. A brave tiny one tries to get up on his lap. He reaches both hands out and swings him up in the air and down on to his knee. This is their cue. The tiniest clamber all over him, giggling and squealing and pulling his hair, he laughing, tiredness forgotten, his companions watching from the corner.
The grandmothers eventually come to take their babes home, bowing and blessing him and blowing him kisses for loving their darlings.
One child remains behind, looking into his eyes, serious and silent. He looks at her. She moves slowly towards him until she stands at his knees, head bowed.
'My mother has a demon,' she whispers.
'Yes,' he says, as he folds her in his arms.
She burrows her face into his chest, smelling the warm sandy scent of the linen, feeling his hands gentle on her back, his arms enveloping her firmly in love, and she begins to weep. He whispers, and she sobs against him, heartbroken sobs, until it is all gone, the bewilderment, the hurt and the grief.
Her breathing eases. He kisses the top of her head. Then, putting his finger under her chin, he raises her face and smiles into her eyes. She smiles in reply and nods, and then turns away and walks over to her mother's house. She looks back at him just once, completely calm now as she pushes the door and goes inside.
The villagers come out to see the celebrity. His friends say, Leave him be now, please, he is too tired.
Then the grandmothers come out, pushing the little ones towards him. Go and get a blessing from the holy rabbi!
No, no...
'Let the little ones come,' he says, leaning forward and looking into their small faces. One shyly hands him a bunch of daisies and willowherb. He takes it solemnly, asking, 'Which is your favourite?' The child touches one with his forefinger and Jesus removes it from the bunch and raising it to his lips, kisses it and gives it back to the child saying, 'Please give this to your mother from me.'
Shyness is gone from them now. They like his crinkly smiling eyes and gentle voice. A brave tiny one tries to get up on his lap. He reaches both hands out and swings him up in the air and down on to his knee. This is their cue. The tiniest clamber all over him, giggling and squealing and pulling his hair, he laughing, tiredness forgotten, his companions watching from the corner.
The grandmothers eventually come to take their babes home, bowing and blessing him and blowing him kisses for loving their darlings.
One child remains behind, looking into his eyes, serious and silent. He looks at her. She moves slowly towards him until she stands at his knees, head bowed.
'My mother has a demon,' she whispers.
'Yes,' he says, as he folds her in his arms.
She burrows her face into his chest, smelling the warm sandy scent of the linen, feeling his hands gentle on her back, his arms enveloping her firmly in love, and she begins to weep. He whispers, and she sobs against him, heartbroken sobs, until it is all gone, the bewilderment, the hurt and the grief.
Her breathing eases. He kisses the top of her head. Then, putting his finger under her chin, he raises her face and smiles into her eyes. She smiles in reply and nods, and then turns away and walks over to her mother's house. She looks back at him just once, completely calm now as she pushes the door and goes inside.
Saturday, 30 July 2016
Children's conversations
I saw the small Child sitting on the wall by his mother's house in the sun-bleached hill village, in the shade of a fig tree.
'Will you be my friend?' he said.
I nodded. He smiled, and beckoned to me to come and sit beside him on his wall. We sat there for a while, not talking, just looking around together at the village going about its day.
'My mother is making raisin bread,' he said. 'If we go inside she will give us raisins.' We slid off the wall and crept into the kitchen, where his mother was at the table, kneading dough. We stood on our toes and peered over the edge of the table. She had a basin of raisins.
'This is my friend,' he told her.
She looked up and nodded. 'I know. And I know what you and your little friend want.' She smiled as she scooped up two handfuls of raisins and dropped them into our outstretched hands. We ran out, triumphant and laughing, and got back up on the wall. We munched his mother's raisins amicably and carried on watching the village going about its business.
We were firm friends after that.
_________
Later, not looking at me, he asks: 'Will you go away?'
Shock. He's my friend! How could he ask this? And how could I do this to Him?
But I do.
And when I return, broken and worried, there he will be, sitting on the wall, waiting. For me. And he will offer me more of his mother's raisins, still in His hand.
____________________
'If you go away, I shall come looking for you, and bring you home. But only if you want to come. I shall carry you on my shoulders like a shepherd with his little lamb when it's lost and he finds it crying alone in a ravine.'
'You are too small to carry me.'
'Now I am, but I shall be big, then.'
____________________
'It will not always be happy like now. When I am grown up, I think it may be horrible. But not at first. I will go everywhere, and I shall have new friends. Will you come with me and be one of my friends, when we're grown up and I have to leave home?'
'What about your mother?'
'She knows I will have to go. She always knows. Mothers do. It will be hard for her when I go. But she will come to meet me often, and I shall come home to her when I can. And bring my friends. She will make raisin bread for us!'
'She will cry when life is horrible to you.'
'Yes, but inside she will know that everything will be all right. She has me and my Father in her heart always. We will never let her go, and she will never let us go. Even when I leave never to come back, not as I am now anyway, she will have my Spirit in her heart and she will be peaceful. I will never leave her. Never. I will never leave you alone without me, either. Never. So will you come with me when I am a man and have to go away? Will you?'
'Will you be my friend?' he said.
I nodded. He smiled, and beckoned to me to come and sit beside him on his wall. We sat there for a while, not talking, just looking around together at the village going about its day.
'My mother is making raisin bread,' he said. 'If we go inside she will give us raisins.' We slid off the wall and crept into the kitchen, where his mother was at the table, kneading dough. We stood on our toes and peered over the edge of the table. She had a basin of raisins.
'This is my friend,' he told her.
She looked up and nodded. 'I know. And I know what you and your little friend want.' She smiled as she scooped up two handfuls of raisins and dropped them into our outstretched hands. We ran out, triumphant and laughing, and got back up on the wall. We munched his mother's raisins amicably and carried on watching the village going about its business.
We were firm friends after that.
_________
Later, not looking at me, he asks: 'Will you go away?'
Shock. He's my friend! How could he ask this? And how could I do this to Him?
But I do.
And when I return, broken and worried, there he will be, sitting on the wall, waiting. For me. And he will offer me more of his mother's raisins, still in His hand.
____________________
'If you go away, I shall come looking for you, and bring you home. But only if you want to come. I shall carry you on my shoulders like a shepherd with his little lamb when it's lost and he finds it crying alone in a ravine.'
'You are too small to carry me.'
'Now I am, but I shall be big, then.'
____________________
'It will not always be happy like now. When I am grown up, I think it may be horrible. But not at first. I will go everywhere, and I shall have new friends. Will you come with me and be one of my friends, when we're grown up and I have to leave home?'
'What about your mother?'
'She knows I will have to go. She always knows. Mothers do. It will be hard for her when I go. But she will come to meet me often, and I shall come home to her when I can. And bring my friends. She will make raisin bread for us!'
'She will cry when life is horrible to you.'
'Yes, but inside she will know that everything will be all right. She has me and my Father in her heart always. We will never let her go, and she will never let us go. Even when I leave never to come back, not as I am now anyway, she will have my Spirit in her heart and she will be peaceful. I will never leave her. Never. I will never leave you alone without me, either. Never. So will you come with me when I am a man and have to go away? Will you?'
Saturday, 8 August 2015
Alleluia! Greetings!
Greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to all Dominicans everywhere, on the feast of our holy father Saint Dominic.
May the good Lord give you His peace, most especially if your heart is troubled today, and may He preserve you in the Catholic faith and give you grace to speak Truth to His people.
Saint Dominic, pray for us.
May the good Lord give you His peace, most especially if your heart is troubled today, and may He preserve you in the Catholic faith and give you grace to speak Truth to His people.
Saint Dominic, pray for us.
Monday, 29 June 2015
Kalahari Bushmen, Han Chinese, Carthaginians and Aztecs
Gay marriage: an extract from the Dissenting Opinion of USA Supreme Court Justice Roberts, C J, in the case of Obergefell v Hodges:
Quite. Hooray for Justice Roberts. And hooray, too, for dissenting Justice Thomas, J.
St Thomas More, patron saint of lawyers and politicians, pray for us.
p41 & ff
"The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent. The majority expressly disclaims judicial “caution” and omits even a pretense of humility, openly relying on its desire to remake society according to its own “new insight” into the “nature of injustice.”
"As a result, the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs.
"Just who do we think we are?"
p 78 & ff (My emphasis.)
"The Court’s decision today is at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built. Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits. The Framers created our Constitution to preserve that understanding of liberty. Yet the majority invokes our Constitution in the name of a “liberty” that the Framers would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect. Along the way, it rejects the idea—captured in our Declaration of Independence—that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government. This distortion of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic. I cannot agree with it. "
Tuesday, 9 September 2014
One for the scrapbook?
Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, with Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, and Pope Saint John Paul II.
Or so I'm told. Not a very good one of Francis, if it is Francis. Is it?
Tuesday, 29 July 2014
My name
I will know my name
When He speaks it.
I can see Him in the distance
But I am not yet close enough
To hear His voice.
I look towards Him
And go closer,
Listening.
Sent from my iPad
When He speaks it.
I can see Him in the distance
But I am not yet close enough
To hear His voice.
I look towards Him
And go closer,
Listening.
Sent from my iPad
What has Christianity ever done for us?
'Apart from being involved at the beginning of science, systems of government, philosophy, art, schools, universities, hospitals, the emancipation of women, the abolition of slavery, social welfare, helping form the basis of the moral code that most people live by, and introducing popular notions of justice, mercy, decency and compassion, what has Christianity ever done for the world?'- Milton Jones
(With no apologies whatsoever to Monty Python - P.)
Sent from my iPad
Wednesday, 16 July 2014
Thursday, 27 March 2014
An invitation
... come back to me with all your heart, for I am all tenderness and compassion.
From the Mass for today, from the prophet Joel.
Friday, 7 March 2014
Babble: some remedies
The student brethren of our province are running a great series on popular piety over at their blog, Godzdogz.
I particularly like this from the post of 22 January 2014:
But prayer is a two-way thing. It's not just me - Christ is the other half of the conversation. Sometimes I need to simply be in His presence. Just be. And listen. So I stop babbling and fumbling for coherence and just cling to the foot of the Cross.
But if I must have words in which to address the Lord, as we all do, and cannot find my own, I reach for the the old prayers and particularly the hymns I remember from childhood. And the Divine Office. In the Prayer of the Church, so many souls around the world are praying the same words alongside me, words provided to me by patriarchs and prophets and preachers of the Word, the great communion that is the Church through the ages. And we join the wonderful Communion of Saints, souls gone before us now enjoying eternal bliss in the vast love of the Almighty. All these people come to my rescue. When I cannot, they can!
And of course I run to Mother, 'The Lady of the house' as my old teacher used to call her. I grab my Rosary. 'If you really want a chap to do something for you,' she'd tell us, 'get his mother to ask him for you.' Well, it worked in Cana.
Above all, it comforts me to remember that 'the Spirit prays within me'. All that is needed is for me to plead my great need for His Grace, and He comes. I don't always feel it, but I do believe it, with all my heart. Deo gratias.
I particularly like this from the post of 22 January 2014:
“When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words” (Matthew 6:7).
[...] In moments when we can’t find words for ourselves (yes, even garrulous Dominicans find this happens sometimes!), we make our own these well-worn words [prayers like novenas and litanies] —with their repeated invocations and responses, tested in the crucible of centuries of Christian witness and endorsed by the Church. We insert ourselves into the community of saints whose names we invoke to pray with us and for us; we recognise that there are others who will say ‘amen’ to our prayers as we say ‘amen’ to theirs. So whilst I have to admit that there are times when I’ve neglected these traditional devotions—and it is certainly important to develop our friendship with Christ through mental prayer—it might be worth me pondering whether I’m more likely to babble like a pagan in my own extemporaneous prayers, or when I turn to these prayers recognised by the Church as a gift of Our Lord.Oh, yes, some days, I can babble like a pagan. Other days, I am reduced to a kind of mental silence. Well, no, not silence. Mental silence means you're dead. Dumbness, maybe? With inchoate mental rumblings signifying such a lot that I cannot pin down let alone find words for: needs, yearnings, certainty, doubt. No, definitely not silence! Cacophony.
But prayer is a two-way thing. It's not just me - Christ is the other half of the conversation. Sometimes I need to simply be in His presence. Just be. And listen. So I stop babbling and fumbling for coherence and just cling to the foot of the Cross.
But if I must have words in which to address the Lord, as we all do, and cannot find my own, I reach for the the old prayers and particularly the hymns I remember from childhood. And the Divine Office. In the Prayer of the Church, so many souls around the world are praying the same words alongside me, words provided to me by patriarchs and prophets and preachers of the Word, the great communion that is the Church through the ages. And we join the wonderful Communion of Saints, souls gone before us now enjoying eternal bliss in the vast love of the Almighty. All these people come to my rescue. When I cannot, they can!
And of course I run to Mother, 'The Lady of the house' as my old teacher used to call her. I grab my Rosary. 'If you really want a chap to do something for you,' she'd tell us, 'get his mother to ask him for you.' Well, it worked in Cana.
Above all, it comforts me to remember that 'the Spirit prays within me'. All that is needed is for me to plead my great need for His Grace, and He comes. I don't always feel it, but I do believe it, with all my heart. Deo gratias.
Monday, 3 February 2014
Inconstancy
Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one:
Inconstancy unnaturally hath begot
A constant habit; that when I would not
I change in vows, and in devotion.
As humorous is my contrition
As my profane love, and as soon forgot:
As riddlingly distemper'd, cold and hot,
As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none.
I durst not view heaven yesterday; and today
In prayers, and flattering speeches I court God:
Tomorrow I quake with true fear of his rod.
So my devout fits come and go away
Like a fantastic ague: save that here
Those are my best days, when I shake with fear.
Holy Sonnet XIX
John Donne, 1572-1631
Inconstancy unnaturally hath begot
A constant habit; that when I would not
I change in vows, and in devotion.
As humorous is my contrition
As my profane love, and as soon forgot:
As riddlingly distemper'd, cold and hot,
As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none.
I durst not view heaven yesterday; and today
In prayers, and flattering speeches I court God:
Tomorrow I quake with true fear of his rod.
So my devout fits come and go away
Like a fantastic ague: save that here
Those are my best days, when I shake with fear.
Holy Sonnet XIX
John Donne, 1572-1631
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