there appear to be a few teething troubles but I am gratified to see two people posting and commenting respectively. I am now down as warbeck as well as doug small as i wanted a doppleganger so i could experience the invitee process. hopefully we'll get you all up and posting ASAP. then i'll tender my fee. (joke)
one the back burner i am working on a web repository for the word document versions of the homilies in printer friendly form.
Wednesday, 28 February 2007
Greetings
Hello everyone.
What a joy. For years I have been purchasing 'Reflections' for others and myself and more recently Joe has been sending me his homilies weekly, which are so enriching.
I look forward to meeting people some of whom I know but so many I do not.
Good wishes
Walker
What a joy. For years I have been purchasing 'Reflections' for others and myself and more recently Joe has been sending me his homilies weekly, which are so enriching.
I look forward to meeting people some of whom I know but so many I do not.
Good wishes
Walker
Tuesday, 27 February 2007
2007 1st Sunday of Lent. C. February
To many in the modern world, Lent, with its traditional emphasis on things like fasting and self-denial, seems like a relic from a bygone age. And it certainly isn’t in tune with a consumer-driven culture which encourages the instant gratification of every desire. But what I am inviting you to recognize this week is that, far from belonging to the past, Lent is more relevant today than it has ever been and that the prayer, fasting and alsmgiving which lie at its ancient core take us to the heart of the challenges facing our society at this moment in history.
That our society today needs the grace of conversion and renewal is surely beyond doubt. Having said that, I don’t want to go down the road, so seductive for religious, church-going people, of suggesting that the world is in a terrible state. This kind of thinking is simply not compatible with faith in the providence of God at work in history, something I have said many times here over the years. There are wonderful things going on in the world and the signs are everywhere for those who have eyes to see. But although that is true, there is also a deep need for repentance and conversion, the signs of which are there all around us too. Take, for example, the recent report from UNICEF telling us that, when it comes to happiness and self-esteem, our children and young people are bottom of a league table of the world’s twenty one most developed nations, the United States, with all its riches and power, being the other country fighting against relegation along with us. Why is this at a time in history when we have levels of prosperity and affluence never seen before? Add to that the fact that we top almost every other league table that comes out, having the worst record in Europe on drugs, heart disease, teenage pregnancies, alcoholism, suicides and virtually every modern evil you care to mention. Clearly something has gone wrong. There is something rotten in the State of Denmark and it’s the job of men and women of faith to confront this situation head-on and discern what is happening. That is what it means to read the signs of the times, the principal aim of the Second Vatican Council, and the first tool we have at our disposal during Lent is prayer.
And by prayer I don’t mean praying FOR things. I read recently a remark by William Johnston, an Irish Jesuit who has live and worked for years in Japan and who has written some wonderful books on prayer and spirituality which I know some of you have read. Speaking of the challenge facing the Church today, he says: ‘We must give the people mysticism or die.’ And by mysticism he doesn’t mean having extraordinary spiritual experiences. To be a mystic – and we are called to this – is to see beyond the surface into the depth of things. It is to read the signs of the times and understand them. It is to experience a change in ourselves so profound that, for the first time, we begin to see the full truth about ourselves, the world and everything that goes on in it. It is to see the world as God sees it. It is to understand the world as God understands it. That is the kind of vision we need today and it comes through the quiet, reflective, contemplative prayer Lent is calling us to in the midst of a world where there is so much that is superficial, noisy and empty.
Take, for the sake of argument, the role played in our lives by television. In the sixties and seventies, for example, it was used in a deliberate and calculated way by governments all over the Third World as a way of keeping people’s mind off the poverty and injustice they were living in. The theory was simple: fill their lives with endless soap-operas and it will keep them off the streets. And something similar, if not the same, is going on among us. Experts call it ‘dumbing down,’ and we see it everywhere. We see it in the lack of decent documentaries on TV which would encourage us to think. We see it in the way our politicians address us through sound-bites and slick advertising rather than the kind of reasoned argument and discussion I hope we can have with Des Browne next Sunday. We see it in the way our News bulletins are so often dominated by utterly trivial stories about Britney Speirs or some other poor, pathetic casualty of our so-called celebrity culture. We see it in the wall-to-wall rubbish awaiting anyone who flicks through our hundreds of satellite TV channels in the hope of finding something decent to watch. And all of this in a world where there are huge issues at stake, issues upon which we, as men and women of faith, are called. first to reflect and second to shine the light of the Gospel. And it simply cannot be done without the kind of prayer leading to mysticism William Johnston was speaking of.
And then there is fasting. Can there ever have been a moment in history when fasting was more in tune with the situation we find ourselves in? We eat too much. Obesity is now a cause of serious ill health costing the health service millions of pounds. We consume oil and other energy resources at a totally unsustainable rate which is destroying the planet. Binge drinking, doctors tell us, is destroying the liver of many of our young people. We are obsessed with possessing things, the vast majority of which are luxuries or gadgets we don’t need. The notion of waiting for something or saving up for it has almost disappeared as we see the level of private borrowing rising away beyond economically acceptable levels. Is it any wonder we think fasting and self-denial are old-fashioned?
And what can we say about alsmgiving? While we spend millions on the effects of obesity in our children, millions of other children, the same age as them, are dying of hunger and poverty. And it’s happening while we sit in front of our TVs eating crisps and watching Big Brother. The situation, in fact, has gone far beyond almsgiving. What is required now is a massive re-distribution of wealth, sharing on a previously unimagined scale and what politicians like to call ‘a new world order.’ And this can only happen when we, the people of the developed world, put down our knives and forks, switch off our Teles and take seriously what is happening in the world. And that, in essence, is what Lent is inviting us to do. Prayer, fasting and alsmgiving go to the very heart of the matter and there is nothing old-fashioned about them.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to confront the devil and engage him in spiritual combat during a period of forty days. And so we pray for the grace to do that in our own lives during these forty days of Lent. We pray that, through prayer, we will be enabled to go beyond what is superficial in our world, enter deeply into the challenges facing humanity at this time and be able to see more clearly what the response of men and women of faith needs to be……Lord hear us
In our consumer-driven society there are many forms of addiction. Some are addicted to drugs or alcohol, but many others are addicted to things like food, television, shopping, having our own way and many others. And so we pray for the wisdom we need this Lent to recognize our own personal addictions and grow in freedom from them by the mature practice of fasting and self-denial…………………...Lord hear us
Through almsgiving, we are called to reach out to those in need. This is fundamental to the christian life, but has always had special emphasis during Lent. And so we pray for the interior freedom we need to give generously this year to the annual SCIAF campaign. We pray that, like the poor woman in the Gospel who gave all that she had, our giving will go beyond what we have extra and come from what the advertisers have conned us into thinking we need to live on……………..Lord hear us
Constantly subjected to rubbish on TV and in the Press, our minds easily become lazy. And so our capacity to engage with serious issues is diminished, pushing us into watching and reading even more rubbish. And so we ask God for the commitment we need to engage more seriously this Lent with important issues like global warming, the decision about Trident, the forth-coming election here in Scotland, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many others….....Lord hear us
If the recent report from UNICEF is true and our children and young people are the most unhappy in the developed world. then we have a serious problem. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to understand what lies behind this report. One of the things which emerged was that many families rarely eat together or talk to each other and, if this is true of our own families, we pray for the grace to do something about it during Lent this year…………….Lord hear us
The meeting where we will have an opportunity to enter into debate and discussion with our MP, Des Browne, on the subject of Trident and the government’s imminent decision to replace it, has been postponed for a week. We pray, however, that when it does come, the meeting will be a mature and adult one where we will listen to everyone with respect and be open to truth wherever it comes from. We pray, too, for Des Browne himself who carries a very heavy burden at this time in his capacity as Secretary of State for Defence……………….Lord hear us
That our society today needs the grace of conversion and renewal is surely beyond doubt. Having said that, I don’t want to go down the road, so seductive for religious, church-going people, of suggesting that the world is in a terrible state. This kind of thinking is simply not compatible with faith in the providence of God at work in history, something I have said many times here over the years. There are wonderful things going on in the world and the signs are everywhere for those who have eyes to see. But although that is true, there is also a deep need for repentance and conversion, the signs of which are there all around us too. Take, for example, the recent report from UNICEF telling us that, when it comes to happiness and self-esteem, our children and young people are bottom of a league table of the world’s twenty one most developed nations, the United States, with all its riches and power, being the other country fighting against relegation along with us. Why is this at a time in history when we have levels of prosperity and affluence never seen before? Add to that the fact that we top almost every other league table that comes out, having the worst record in Europe on drugs, heart disease, teenage pregnancies, alcoholism, suicides and virtually every modern evil you care to mention. Clearly something has gone wrong. There is something rotten in the State of Denmark and it’s the job of men and women of faith to confront this situation head-on and discern what is happening. That is what it means to read the signs of the times, the principal aim of the Second Vatican Council, and the first tool we have at our disposal during Lent is prayer.
And by prayer I don’t mean praying FOR things. I read recently a remark by William Johnston, an Irish Jesuit who has live and worked for years in Japan and who has written some wonderful books on prayer and spirituality which I know some of you have read. Speaking of the challenge facing the Church today, he says: ‘We must give the people mysticism or die.’ And by mysticism he doesn’t mean having extraordinary spiritual experiences. To be a mystic – and we are called to this – is to see beyond the surface into the depth of things. It is to read the signs of the times and understand them. It is to experience a change in ourselves so profound that, for the first time, we begin to see the full truth about ourselves, the world and everything that goes on in it. It is to see the world as God sees it. It is to understand the world as God understands it. That is the kind of vision we need today and it comes through the quiet, reflective, contemplative prayer Lent is calling us to in the midst of a world where there is so much that is superficial, noisy and empty.
Take, for the sake of argument, the role played in our lives by television. In the sixties and seventies, for example, it was used in a deliberate and calculated way by governments all over the Third World as a way of keeping people’s mind off the poverty and injustice they were living in. The theory was simple: fill their lives with endless soap-operas and it will keep them off the streets. And something similar, if not the same, is going on among us. Experts call it ‘dumbing down,’ and we see it everywhere. We see it in the lack of decent documentaries on TV which would encourage us to think. We see it in the way our politicians address us through sound-bites and slick advertising rather than the kind of reasoned argument and discussion I hope we can have with Des Browne next Sunday. We see it in the way our News bulletins are so often dominated by utterly trivial stories about Britney Speirs or some other poor, pathetic casualty of our so-called celebrity culture. We see it in the wall-to-wall rubbish awaiting anyone who flicks through our hundreds of satellite TV channels in the hope of finding something decent to watch. And all of this in a world where there are huge issues at stake, issues upon which we, as men and women of faith, are called. first to reflect and second to shine the light of the Gospel. And it simply cannot be done without the kind of prayer leading to mysticism William Johnston was speaking of.
And then there is fasting. Can there ever have been a moment in history when fasting was more in tune with the situation we find ourselves in? We eat too much. Obesity is now a cause of serious ill health costing the health service millions of pounds. We consume oil and other energy resources at a totally unsustainable rate which is destroying the planet. Binge drinking, doctors tell us, is destroying the liver of many of our young people. We are obsessed with possessing things, the vast majority of which are luxuries or gadgets we don’t need. The notion of waiting for something or saving up for it has almost disappeared as we see the level of private borrowing rising away beyond economically acceptable levels. Is it any wonder we think fasting and self-denial are old-fashioned?
And what can we say about alsmgiving? While we spend millions on the effects of obesity in our children, millions of other children, the same age as them, are dying of hunger and poverty. And it’s happening while we sit in front of our TVs eating crisps and watching Big Brother. The situation, in fact, has gone far beyond almsgiving. What is required now is a massive re-distribution of wealth, sharing on a previously unimagined scale and what politicians like to call ‘a new world order.’ And this can only happen when we, the people of the developed world, put down our knives and forks, switch off our Teles and take seriously what is happening in the world. And that, in essence, is what Lent is inviting us to do. Prayer, fasting and alsmgiving go to the very heart of the matter and there is nothing old-fashioned about them.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to confront the devil and engage him in spiritual combat during a period of forty days. And so we pray for the grace to do that in our own lives during these forty days of Lent. We pray that, through prayer, we will be enabled to go beyond what is superficial in our world, enter deeply into the challenges facing humanity at this time and be able to see more clearly what the response of men and women of faith needs to be……Lord hear us
In our consumer-driven society there are many forms of addiction. Some are addicted to drugs or alcohol, but many others are addicted to things like food, television, shopping, having our own way and many others. And so we pray for the wisdom we need this Lent to recognize our own personal addictions and grow in freedom from them by the mature practice of fasting and self-denial…………………...Lord hear us
Through almsgiving, we are called to reach out to those in need. This is fundamental to the christian life, but has always had special emphasis during Lent. And so we pray for the interior freedom we need to give generously this year to the annual SCIAF campaign. We pray that, like the poor woman in the Gospel who gave all that she had, our giving will go beyond what we have extra and come from what the advertisers have conned us into thinking we need to live on……………..Lord hear us
Constantly subjected to rubbish on TV and in the Press, our minds easily become lazy. And so our capacity to engage with serious issues is diminished, pushing us into watching and reading even more rubbish. And so we ask God for the commitment we need to engage more seriously this Lent with important issues like global warming, the decision about Trident, the forth-coming election here in Scotland, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many others….....Lord hear us
If the recent report from UNICEF is true and our children and young people are the most unhappy in the developed world. then we have a serious problem. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to understand what lies behind this report. One of the things which emerged was that many families rarely eat together or talk to each other and, if this is true of our own families, we pray for the grace to do something about it during Lent this year…………….Lord hear us
The meeting where we will have an opportunity to enter into debate and discussion with our MP, Des Browne, on the subject of Trident and the government’s imminent decision to replace it, has been postponed for a week. We pray, however, that when it does come, the meeting will be a mature and adult one where we will listen to everyone with respect and be open to truth wherever it comes from. We pray, too, for Des Browne himself who carries a very heavy burden at this time in his capacity as Secretary of State for Defence……………….Lord hear us
Friday, 23 February 2007
7th sunday in 2007
Over the last two weekends, what I call my £10 note theory has been, if not blown out of the water, at least severely dented. The theory itself can be stated very simply: that if there were a pile of £10 notes in the porch and a notice in the bulletin inviting people to collect one on the way out, most folk would walk past it. But on this occasion that did not happen. Instead, over two weekends, a pile of sixty copies of a speech given by Des Browne at King’s College, London, on 25th January, followed by another pile of thirty copies the following week, disappeared from the porch like the proverbial ‘snow of a dyke.’ I have to say that I was both amazed and delighted. It even crossed my mind that someone might have lifted them all as some kind of protest, but I don’t think that happened. And so it’s worth remembering for a moment how it all came about.
It began with the petition nearly two hundred of you signed before Christmas, urging Des, as Defence Secretary, not to replace Trident but to use the £20bn involved for the alleviation of poverty. This, of course, is a slightly over-simplified position, but the basic point is clear. In response to this, Des sent us a letter outlining the governments position, and, again, a large numbers of you took away copies. As it happened, the same week-end Des’ letter was made available, the back of the bulletin invited us to respond to a consultation paper from Michael Mathieson MSP on his proposed Prevention of Crimes Committed by Weapons of Mass Destruction (Scotland) Act 2007, and commenting on these two items in the bulletin I pointed out that Des’ letter dealt with the matter at the level of politics and political judgement rather than morality. As it happened, Des was here at Mass that day, and a week later sent us copies of the King’s College speech. He said in a personal letter to me that he had thought about what I had said, had concluded that I was right, and so had addressed the moral question in the speech. And no doubt he will do the same next Sunday when he and I debate the matter here in the hall.
Now, I have no doubt personally that all of this is extremely important. There are those who would say that such things belong to the world of politics and so have no place in church. I disagree profoundly with this point of view. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not about pie in the sky when you die. It’s not about the kind of piousity which ignores the world and seeks refuge in churches and religion. As the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church in the Modern World famously put it; The joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the men and women of our time are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well… Nothing that is genuinely human fails to find an echo in their hearts…That is why Christians cherish a deep feeling of solidarity with the human race and its history. And it goes on to describe how it is the task of men and women of faith to enter deeply into all the challenges and events of history so as to discern there the movement of God and his Holy Spirit. And as we begin a new century and a new millennium, what could be more important to the world and to people of faith than the whole question of how we resolve conflict between nations in an age when our capacity to destroy both ourselves and the planet we live on have reached heights, or should it be depths, previouly unimagined. Do we do what we have always done, or has the time come to try something new?
The ‘do what we have always done’ approach was summed up for me on the front page of last week’s Catholic Herald. It contained a report of a speech given at Farm Street, the Jesuit Church in central London in which Britain’s most senior Catholic soldier, Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, former chief of the defence staff, argued that, while he doesn’t think the present situation justifies it, Britian should be free to strike the first blow in any future conflict with Iran. He goes on to justify this position in a very logical and reasonable way, using all the classic arguments that have underpinned military thinking down through the centuries. He also justifies the replacement of Trident in the same way that Des Browne does, arguing that we need it as an insurance policy. We don’t know what the world will be like in 20 or 25 years, he says, and describes the English and Welsh bishops’ opposition to the replacement of Trident, identical to the position taken by our own bishops here in Scotland, as, and I quote, ‘utterly irresponsible.’
Now I’m sure Lord Guthrie is a good man. I have no doubt he believes what he says and I have no doubt either that some of you here will agree with him. As a Catholic and a Christian, however, he has a problem, and it is a pretty fundamental one… Jesus disagrees with him. What Jesus says could not be more clear. ‘Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. To the man who slaps you on one cheek, present the other cheek too. Treat others as you would like them to treat you. If you love those who love you, what thanks can you expect? Even sinners love those who love them.’
I just invite you to hear those words today. Jesus is not kidding. He’s deadly serious. His words are the most radical ever recorded and few are able to accept them. They make no sense in the world inhabited by Lord Guthrie. They function at a different level and have a different logic. They represent a revolutionary approach to human relations and challenge us to the very depth of our being. To begin to live by them is to enter into the unknown. It is as if God were to ask us to jump out of a plane without a parachute and trust him to catch us.
And so I invite you to look deep inside yourself today and answer one simple question. Is what Jesus says in today’s Gospel madness, a foolish ideal with no chance of working in the real world, or is it the way forward, the promise of a new beginning, a new way of living which opens up the possibility of finally bringing to an end the endless vicious circle of violence and war which is our history?
It has to be one or the other.
When the Old Testament spoke of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, it was attempting to put limits on the vicious circle of violence and counter-violence which plagued the world of those days. It was not, however, the Bible’s last word on the subject. In the New Testament Jesus calls us beyond this way of thinking to something new and revolutionary. He calls on us to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us and we pray for the grace to hear that call today………………..Lord hear us
In the first reading Saul is out to kill David. As we heard, however, David finds himself in a position where he could easily have got his retaliation in first, made a pre-emptive strike, and killed Saul. But David refuses.‘Who can lift his hand against the Lord’s anointed and be without guilt,’ he says. And so we pray for the grace to see every person as God’s anointed, so that killing any human being, even in war, ceases to be acceptable or a mere statistic……………...Lord hear us
The Prime Minister has made it clear that the government wants to replace Trident. Only this week, however, a campaign which has the support of the leaders of two of the Parties in Parliament was launched to challenge this decision. And so we pray that, faced with such an important choice, the people of Britain will stop watching rubbish on television long enough to think about what all this means……………….....Lord hear us
In the second reading, Paul speaks of how, in Jesus, we become new men and women. Left to ourselves, we could never love our enemies. Instead, we would continue to repeat the mistakes and blunders of history until the end of time. And so we pray that the world will be open to the grace God is offering and embrace the new way of dealing with conflict which Jesus speaks of today…………………Lord hear us
This new way of living based on the teaching of Jesus must begin with ourselves. And so we ask God to stir in us a desire to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us. We pray that he will lead us beyond our prejudices, our narrow nationalism, our aggressive instincts, our deep-rooted desire for power, our primitive violent tendencies and all the other things which emerge from the dark part of ourselves and have been the cause of so much human suffering throughout history……....Lord hear us
On Wednesday we begin again the journey towards Easter we call Lent. It is a time of conversion; a time of prayer, fasting and alms-giving; a time when and we ask God for the grace we need to enter deeply into the process of death and resurrection without which neither we nor the world we live in can ever escape from the vicious circle of history we are caught up in. And so we pray that this coming Lent will be the most radical we have known in our lives…………...…..Lord hear us
Now let us be silent for a moment…………
It began with the petition nearly two hundred of you signed before Christmas, urging Des, as Defence Secretary, not to replace Trident but to use the £20bn involved for the alleviation of poverty. This, of course, is a slightly over-simplified position, but the basic point is clear. In response to this, Des sent us a letter outlining the governments position, and, again, a large numbers of you took away copies. As it happened, the same week-end Des’ letter was made available, the back of the bulletin invited us to respond to a consultation paper from Michael Mathieson MSP on his proposed Prevention of Crimes Committed by Weapons of Mass Destruction (Scotland) Act 2007, and commenting on these two items in the bulletin I pointed out that Des’ letter dealt with the matter at the level of politics and political judgement rather than morality. As it happened, Des was here at Mass that day, and a week later sent us copies of the King’s College speech. He said in a personal letter to me that he had thought about what I had said, had concluded that I was right, and so had addressed the moral question in the speech. And no doubt he will do the same next Sunday when he and I debate the matter here in the hall.
Now, I have no doubt personally that all of this is extremely important. There are those who would say that such things belong to the world of politics and so have no place in church. I disagree profoundly with this point of view. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is not about pie in the sky when you die. It’s not about the kind of piousity which ignores the world and seeks refuge in churches and religion. As the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church in the Modern World famously put it; The joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the men and women of our time are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well… Nothing that is genuinely human fails to find an echo in their hearts…That is why Christians cherish a deep feeling of solidarity with the human race and its history. And it goes on to describe how it is the task of men and women of faith to enter deeply into all the challenges and events of history so as to discern there the movement of God and his Holy Spirit. And as we begin a new century and a new millennium, what could be more important to the world and to people of faith than the whole question of how we resolve conflict between nations in an age when our capacity to destroy both ourselves and the planet we live on have reached heights, or should it be depths, previouly unimagined. Do we do what we have always done, or has the time come to try something new?
The ‘do what we have always done’ approach was summed up for me on the front page of last week’s Catholic Herald. It contained a report of a speech given at Farm Street, the Jesuit Church in central London in which Britain’s most senior Catholic soldier, Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, former chief of the defence staff, argued that, while he doesn’t think the present situation justifies it, Britian should be free to strike the first blow in any future conflict with Iran. He goes on to justify this position in a very logical and reasonable way, using all the classic arguments that have underpinned military thinking down through the centuries. He also justifies the replacement of Trident in the same way that Des Browne does, arguing that we need it as an insurance policy. We don’t know what the world will be like in 20 or 25 years, he says, and describes the English and Welsh bishops’ opposition to the replacement of Trident, identical to the position taken by our own bishops here in Scotland, as, and I quote, ‘utterly irresponsible.’
Now I’m sure Lord Guthrie is a good man. I have no doubt he believes what he says and I have no doubt either that some of you here will agree with him. As a Catholic and a Christian, however, he has a problem, and it is a pretty fundamental one… Jesus disagrees with him. What Jesus says could not be more clear. ‘Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. To the man who slaps you on one cheek, present the other cheek too. Treat others as you would like them to treat you. If you love those who love you, what thanks can you expect? Even sinners love those who love them.’
I just invite you to hear those words today. Jesus is not kidding. He’s deadly serious. His words are the most radical ever recorded and few are able to accept them. They make no sense in the world inhabited by Lord Guthrie. They function at a different level and have a different logic. They represent a revolutionary approach to human relations and challenge us to the very depth of our being. To begin to live by them is to enter into the unknown. It is as if God were to ask us to jump out of a plane without a parachute and trust him to catch us.
And so I invite you to look deep inside yourself today and answer one simple question. Is what Jesus says in today’s Gospel madness, a foolish ideal with no chance of working in the real world, or is it the way forward, the promise of a new beginning, a new way of living which opens up the possibility of finally bringing to an end the endless vicious circle of violence and war which is our history?
It has to be one or the other.
When the Old Testament spoke of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, it was attempting to put limits on the vicious circle of violence and counter-violence which plagued the world of those days. It was not, however, the Bible’s last word on the subject. In the New Testament Jesus calls us beyond this way of thinking to something new and revolutionary. He calls on us to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us and we pray for the grace to hear that call today………………..Lord hear us
In the first reading Saul is out to kill David. As we heard, however, David finds himself in a position where he could easily have got his retaliation in first, made a pre-emptive strike, and killed Saul. But David refuses.‘Who can lift his hand against the Lord’s anointed and be without guilt,’ he says. And so we pray for the grace to see every person as God’s anointed, so that killing any human being, even in war, ceases to be acceptable or a mere statistic……………...Lord hear us
The Prime Minister has made it clear that the government wants to replace Trident. Only this week, however, a campaign which has the support of the leaders of two of the Parties in Parliament was launched to challenge this decision. And so we pray that, faced with such an important choice, the people of Britain will stop watching rubbish on television long enough to think about what all this means……………….....Lord hear us
In the second reading, Paul speaks of how, in Jesus, we become new men and women. Left to ourselves, we could never love our enemies. Instead, we would continue to repeat the mistakes and blunders of history until the end of time. And so we pray that the world will be open to the grace God is offering and embrace the new way of dealing with conflict which Jesus speaks of today…………………Lord hear us
This new way of living based on the teaching of Jesus must begin with ourselves. And so we ask God to stir in us a desire to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us. We pray that he will lead us beyond our prejudices, our narrow nationalism, our aggressive instincts, our deep-rooted desire for power, our primitive violent tendencies and all the other things which emerge from the dark part of ourselves and have been the cause of so much human suffering throughout history……....Lord hear us
On Wednesday we begin again the journey towards Easter we call Lent. It is a time of conversion; a time of prayer, fasting and alms-giving; a time when and we ask God for the grace we need to enter deeply into the process of death and resurrection without which neither we nor the world we live in can ever escape from the vicious circle of history we are caught up in. And so we pray that this coming Lent will be the most radical we have known in our lives…………...…..Lord hear us
Now let us be silent for a moment…………
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