The parables of Jesus, as I have said to you many times over the years, are mirrors in which we are invited to see a reflection of ourselves. The parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, however, is a veritable hall of mirrors in which it is difficult sometimes to know what exactly we are looking at. As soon as we see ourselves as the Pharisee we are on the way to becoming the tax collector, and no sooner have we begun to think of ourselves as the Tax Collector than we are back to being the Pharisee again. It’s really quite subtle, difficult to pin down, and the reason is not hard to find. This parable is not about good or bad actions. It has nothing to do with what is visible and external. It’s about what motivates us, why we do things rather than what we do, and at that level we are very complex creatures indeed. It’s virtually impossible, for example, for a human being to act out of one pure motive. There are always hidden levels of motivation and these can lie undetected or unacknowledged, sometimes for years, and sometimes for a lifetime. The most generous looking actions on the outside can come from a deeply selfish and manipulative place inside us and many an apparently pious and holy exterior hides a bitter, frustrated and hard-hearted interior. And so Jesus warns us never to judge. This is because we can never see into any person’s heart and so can never be sure why they do what they do. God, on the other hand, is described sometimes as the one who, because he understands all, forgives all. God sees into the heart and so is not misled, as we are, into harsh judgements based on mere actions or on what is happening on the outside.
Which brings us to the the most basic and fundamental theme of all our reflections together, the difference between religion and faith, a difference which itself has its roots, not in actions, but in what motivates them. It’s not about what we do. It is about why we do it, and the Pharisee and the Tax Collector represent the extremes of this. On the one hand we have the Pharisee, the religious man. He’s not a bad person by human standards; far from it. Everything he says about himself is true. But he has a fatal flaw. As people have done since primitive times, and as religious people, including ourselves perhaps, if we were to examine closely what motivates us even to be here today, still do, he performs religious actions to please God and so gain salvation by his own efforts. The Tax Collector simply cries out for mercy, and so, without necessarily understanding why – there is a sense, even, in which, if he did understand it and so were doing it in a manipulative way, he would be back to being the Pharisee - finds himself at rights with God, a phrase which simply means that the relationship between the two reflects reality; God is in his proper place and the creature is in his. And if you are struggling to follow the logic of this, maybe its because of that hall of mirrors we enter when we read this parable.
In the end, of course, the Pharisee and the Tax Collector are each one of us. The journey from the front of the temple, where we are doing something for God, to the back, where God is doing something for us, is one we are all engaged in. It is that journey from religion to faith, and, like people on one of those great medieval pilgrimages to Rome or Compostela, we are stretched out at various stages all along the way. But whether we are near the beginning or near the end, central to the whole journey is the experience of weakness and failure which brought to tax collector to the Temple that day. They come to us in all shapes and forms and are rarely welcome at the time. But, in reality, they are our best friends as they slowly but surely strip us of illusions about ourselves and force us to confront the ultimate truth about who we are, the truth of our creatureliness and our utter dependence on God. In a word, they teach us humility, the key thing lacking in the Pharisee and the thing which rendered his prayer meaningless. ‘The humble man’s prayer,’ however, as the first reading put it, ‘pierces the clouds.’
Many of you, of course, will have been exploring aspects of this journey in recent days during the Week of Prayer, and, even if you were not involved in the week, you will have your own struggle with it. And so I want to end by drawing to your attention a thought that was triggered in me by a poster someone left in the porch during the week. It reminded me of a journey I made to the now non-existant Smith’s book shop in St Vincent Street in June 1963. I had just learned I was going to Spain in three months time, in September of that year, and so was delighted to find a book entitled ‘Spanish in Three Months.’ Perfect, I thought in my naivete, I can learn Spanish over the summer. Needless to say, it didn’t happen. I got stuck at page one with the polite form of you, Usted in Spanish, written as Vd. I could not make head nor tale of it and and arrived in Spain that autumn without a word of the language. And I recalled that experience because of what it said on the poster. It was announcing an eight week course of meditation for everyone. For a mere £45, it promised to bring a window of calm into your life, improve your health, build inner confidence, set you free to be yourself, sleep better and improve your relationships – to mention just a few. It was like all those books you see piled up nowadays in the Mind, Spirit, Body section of Waterstones or Borders which promise to maximise your potential, unlock your creative mind or do a thousand other wonderful things to your inner self. And all you have to do is buy the book and maybe send away for the tapes.
But it’s all an illusion. The really important changes in us do not happen in six weeks. It’s not possible to buy them. The journey from religion to faith is a life-long journey. It means struggling with our basic weaknesses on a daily basis over years. There is no quick solution, no magic formula, no silver bullet. There is only death and resurrection.
But if, like St Paul in the second reading, we fight the good fight to the end, it will be well worth it.
BIDDING PRAYERS
By far the harshest words spoken by Jesus were addressed to the Pharisees. He called them whited sepulchres, all clean and tidy on the outside and filled with dead men’s bones in the inside. He clearly saw that, unless he could open their minds to deeper ways of relating to God, they would remain forever stuck in their traditional, shallow and totally inadequate ways of thinking. And so we pray for the insight we need to recognize any signs of the Pharisee in ourselves………………………....Lord hear us
Today’s parable, St Luke tells us, was addressed to some people who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else. In telling this story, Jesus is drawing attention to a temptation faced by religious people in every age; people like ourselves who go to church and yet, without even recognizing it sometimes, look down our noses at others. And so we pray that, as a community, we will be open to all who come here regardless of their position in society………………...Lord hear us
Throughout his life, Jesus was criticised by the polite, religious people of his day for mixing with prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners. And yet he was completely at home in their company, explaining that it was not the healthy who needed the doctor but the sick. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to see that, in every Eucharist we celebrate here, Jesus continues to be present among sinners………….Lord hear us
One of the reasons many people no longer go to Mass is that the sense of obligation which went with doing so no longer has the power it once had. And so, never having had any other reason for doing so except the keeping of a rule, they have drifted away. And so we pray that we will all discover new and deeper reasons for being here. We pray that our weekly celebration of the Word and the Eucharist will, in time, take the central place in our lives it deserves…………………….....Lord hear us
The modern explosion of books and courses promising to do all kinds of wonderful things for our inner selves shows that there is a deep need in us for genuine spirituality. And yet, lost and with little idea of where genuine truth lies, millions today are wide open to exploitation by those who sell all kinds of promises which can never possibly be fulfilled. And so we pray that the world will rediscover the great christian spiritual tradition we have temporarily lost touch with…………Lord hear us
And we pray for all those who have just completed the Nineteenth Annual Week of Prayer in the parish. God will have worked in a unique way in every individual. For some it will have been a happy experience and for others it will have been a struggle. But we pray that each one of them will be faithful to the experience and never doubt the presence and movement of God in whatever happened………………Lord hear us
Monday, 29 October 2007
Sunday, 21 October 2007
29th Sunday of the Year C
One of the good things that has happened recently, after years of talking about it, is that the priests in the area have started meeting young people in St Joseph’s Academy on a regular basis. I met two classes myself last week and hope to meet another two this coming Friday. Like the other priests involved, I have enjoyed the experience very much, although some of the questions the youngsters ask illustrate just how far they have drifted away from the Church and how ignorant they are about the most basics things to do with it. So when one of them last week asked me, ‘What happens when you die?’, I perked up, thinking that here, at least, was a serious theological question. And so, partly to give myself time to think, I said, ‘Well, what do you think happens when we die?’ ‘No, I don’t mean that’ he said, ‘What happens when you die. Will someone else come to St Matthew’s?’
I have told that story to a few people recently and they have all laughed. And I laughed myself, although, at the time, I tried to keep my face straight. But as I thought about it, I realised that the boy was actually expressing something quite profound in the consciousness of the Catholic community today; the feeling that things in the Church are in decline, on a downward spiral, falling apart even. The numbers going to Mass are dropping. Priests are getting older and fewer in number. Since this summer, Mount Carmel, here in Kilmarnock, is without a resident priest, something more and more parishes are having to get used to. And it will get worse. To answer the boy’s question: when I die or move away, whichever comes first, it is quite possible, likely even, that noone will take my place, as the number of priests in Kilmarnock is reduced to the two envisaged just a few years ago by the process we called Embracing the Future. And faced with this kind of thing, many in the modern world think that the churches are in terminal decline, that their time is over and that they will soon disappear altogether. So, is this true? Are those who say these things right or wrong? Well, I’m sure it won’t surprise you to know that I believe they are completely and utterly wrong, the reason for this being hidden deep in today’s first reading.
‘All scripture,’ as we heard St Paul tell Timothy this morning, ‘is inspired by God and can profitably be used for teaching… and guiding people’s lives.’ This does not mean that we can just pick any old sentence from the Bible and use it out of context to prove some obscure point or other. On this basis, the Bible could be, and often has been used to justify almost anything. What it refers to are the deep movements of God in Scripture, the dynamics that underpin the way God deals with us, the patterns that repeat themselves over and over again throughout history. And in that story of Moses and the Amalakites where, so long as Moses lifts his arms in prayer the people prosper and when he doesn’t the Amalakites do, we have one of the most fundamental of all of these. Whether this is a historical event or not is irrelevant. What matters about it is the fact that the truth it expresses, the truth that without God we can do nothing, that God’s strength is at work in human weakness, runs through the whole of scripture. We see it all through the Old Testament; we see it in the stable at Bethlehem; we see it on calvary; we see it in the history of the early Church and, if we have eyes to see, we see it in all that is going on in the Church today. St Paul sums it up when, reflecting on his own personal experience, he turns human logic on its head and tells the Corinthians that God’s grace it at its best in weakness and that it is when he, Paul, is weak that he is strong, something we need to reflect on deeply in the midst of a Church which, at so many levels, seems on the face of it, to be disintegrating and falling apart.
I have quoted you more than once recently the words of the Jesuit, William Johnston, a Irishman from Derry who has spent many years working in Japan. ‘Unless we give the people mysticsm’ he writes in his autobiography, ‘the Church is finished,’ words which reflect exactly my own deepest conviction about the what is happening today. Mysticism, you see, is not just for monks and those like them; people like St Teresa, whose home town Avila the men’s group visited recently, or St John of the Cross, whose tomb we saw in Segovia. They belong to another time. As we enter the third millennium, the whole Church is called to mysticism. We are all called to see the world as God sees it; to see beyond the externals into the depths of things; to pull back, at least for a moment, the veil that separates us from the miracle that God is working in history and in the life of every human being. And for this to happen God has to do what he did in the past to people like Teresa and John. He has to wean us off the human consolations we cling to. He has to lead us through darkness into a new kind of light. He has to strip us bear of all that prevents us entering this new world of faith. He has to teach us over and over again the message contained in today’s story of Moses and the Amalakites.
And everywhere we look God is doing this. He’s doing it as the weakness of the Church is constantly exposed to public ridicule. He’s doing it as the triumphalism and self-confidence which went with full churches give way to diminishing numbers and self-questioning. He’s doing it as the certainty of the past gives way to doubt and many inevitably feel confused and lost. The Church many of us were born into had an answer for every question. People nowadays laugh at those answers. To many it seems like a disaster, but, in reality, it’s the most powerful sign imaginable that God is doing something wonderful and new in the Church right before our eyes.
Millions today write it off. But they just don’t understand. Their thinking is based on human logic. Only mystics can understand what’s going on the Church today and it’s in such mystics, their arms, like Moses’ in the first reading, raised in prayer, that Jesus, in the words of today’s Gospel, will find faith on earth. Just pray that we will be counted among them.
BIDDING PRAYERS
In the minds of many people mysticsim is associated with strange visions and extraordinary experiences. But this is a complete misunderstanding. The great mystics always warned against taking such things too seriously and attached no importance to them. Genuine mysticism is about seeing the world and everything in it in a new way. It is about seeing into the depths of reality beyond the obvious and superficial and we pray for that grace for ourselves….…………………..Lord hear us
Faced with the confusion and uncertainty which are part and parcel of the modern world, many in the Church today flee from the reality of this situation and seek refuge in old certainties, a form of fundamentalism found in all the major religions at this time. It is a failure to engage with the world as it is and renders those who choose this path incapable of speaking in a meaningful way to the men and women of our time. And so we ask God to show us all the futility of this………….……Lord hear us
Faced with the same uncertainty and doubt, others in the Church react by walking away. Just like those who choose the path of fundamentalism, they are unwilling or unable to engage with uncomfortable realities. But to walk away just because there are things happening we don’t like or find scandalous is not the answer. The challenge for men and women of faith today is to stay and engage with what is going on, and we ask God for the courage we need to do that…………………..Lord hear us
To make sense of what God is doing in the Church and world at this moment in history we need to learn to understand a logic which, in human terms, makes no sense. It is about a light which feels like darkness. It is about a birth that looks, for all the world, like death. It is about weakness that is, in reality, strength. It is about a falling apart which is more of a coming together. And so we ask God to help us understand this seemingly irrational logic………………………………...Lord hear us
Many, if not most of our young people would appear to have lost touch with the Church. But this need not be a permanent state of affairs. We may not see how they are going to find their way to faith in the midst of a world so opposed to the values of the Gospel, but that does not mean it will not happen. And so we pray that, in ways we cannot at the moment foresee, God will draw today’s young people to himself and lead them to deep personal faith…………………….Lord hear us
This Sunday see the beginning of the Nineteenth Annual Week of Directed Prayer in the parish. There are fifty six people involved this year, forty six participants and ten guides, and we pray that every single one of them will be open to what God is doing in the coming days…………...Lord hear us
I have told that story to a few people recently and they have all laughed. And I laughed myself, although, at the time, I tried to keep my face straight. But as I thought about it, I realised that the boy was actually expressing something quite profound in the consciousness of the Catholic community today; the feeling that things in the Church are in decline, on a downward spiral, falling apart even. The numbers going to Mass are dropping. Priests are getting older and fewer in number. Since this summer, Mount Carmel, here in Kilmarnock, is without a resident priest, something more and more parishes are having to get used to. And it will get worse. To answer the boy’s question: when I die or move away, whichever comes first, it is quite possible, likely even, that noone will take my place, as the number of priests in Kilmarnock is reduced to the two envisaged just a few years ago by the process we called Embracing the Future. And faced with this kind of thing, many in the modern world think that the churches are in terminal decline, that their time is over and that they will soon disappear altogether. So, is this true? Are those who say these things right or wrong? Well, I’m sure it won’t surprise you to know that I believe they are completely and utterly wrong, the reason for this being hidden deep in today’s first reading.
‘All scripture,’ as we heard St Paul tell Timothy this morning, ‘is inspired by God and can profitably be used for teaching… and guiding people’s lives.’ This does not mean that we can just pick any old sentence from the Bible and use it out of context to prove some obscure point or other. On this basis, the Bible could be, and often has been used to justify almost anything. What it refers to are the deep movements of God in Scripture, the dynamics that underpin the way God deals with us, the patterns that repeat themselves over and over again throughout history. And in that story of Moses and the Amalakites where, so long as Moses lifts his arms in prayer the people prosper and when he doesn’t the Amalakites do, we have one of the most fundamental of all of these. Whether this is a historical event or not is irrelevant. What matters about it is the fact that the truth it expresses, the truth that without God we can do nothing, that God’s strength is at work in human weakness, runs through the whole of scripture. We see it all through the Old Testament; we see it in the stable at Bethlehem; we see it on calvary; we see it in the history of the early Church and, if we have eyes to see, we see it in all that is going on in the Church today. St Paul sums it up when, reflecting on his own personal experience, he turns human logic on its head and tells the Corinthians that God’s grace it at its best in weakness and that it is when he, Paul, is weak that he is strong, something we need to reflect on deeply in the midst of a Church which, at so many levels, seems on the face of it, to be disintegrating and falling apart.
I have quoted you more than once recently the words of the Jesuit, William Johnston, a Irishman from Derry who has spent many years working in Japan. ‘Unless we give the people mysticsm’ he writes in his autobiography, ‘the Church is finished,’ words which reflect exactly my own deepest conviction about the what is happening today. Mysticism, you see, is not just for monks and those like them; people like St Teresa, whose home town Avila the men’s group visited recently, or St John of the Cross, whose tomb we saw in Segovia. They belong to another time. As we enter the third millennium, the whole Church is called to mysticism. We are all called to see the world as God sees it; to see beyond the externals into the depths of things; to pull back, at least for a moment, the veil that separates us from the miracle that God is working in history and in the life of every human being. And for this to happen God has to do what he did in the past to people like Teresa and John. He has to wean us off the human consolations we cling to. He has to lead us through darkness into a new kind of light. He has to strip us bear of all that prevents us entering this new world of faith. He has to teach us over and over again the message contained in today’s story of Moses and the Amalakites.
And everywhere we look God is doing this. He’s doing it as the weakness of the Church is constantly exposed to public ridicule. He’s doing it as the triumphalism and self-confidence which went with full churches give way to diminishing numbers and self-questioning. He’s doing it as the certainty of the past gives way to doubt and many inevitably feel confused and lost. The Church many of us were born into had an answer for every question. People nowadays laugh at those answers. To many it seems like a disaster, but, in reality, it’s the most powerful sign imaginable that God is doing something wonderful and new in the Church right before our eyes.
Millions today write it off. But they just don’t understand. Their thinking is based on human logic. Only mystics can understand what’s going on the Church today and it’s in such mystics, their arms, like Moses’ in the first reading, raised in prayer, that Jesus, in the words of today’s Gospel, will find faith on earth. Just pray that we will be counted among them.
BIDDING PRAYERS
In the minds of many people mysticsim is associated with strange visions and extraordinary experiences. But this is a complete misunderstanding. The great mystics always warned against taking such things too seriously and attached no importance to them. Genuine mysticism is about seeing the world and everything in it in a new way. It is about seeing into the depths of reality beyond the obvious and superficial and we pray for that grace for ourselves….…………………..Lord hear us
Faced with the confusion and uncertainty which are part and parcel of the modern world, many in the Church today flee from the reality of this situation and seek refuge in old certainties, a form of fundamentalism found in all the major religions at this time. It is a failure to engage with the world as it is and renders those who choose this path incapable of speaking in a meaningful way to the men and women of our time. And so we ask God to show us all the futility of this………….……Lord hear us
Faced with the same uncertainty and doubt, others in the Church react by walking away. Just like those who choose the path of fundamentalism, they are unwilling or unable to engage with uncomfortable realities. But to walk away just because there are things happening we don’t like or find scandalous is not the answer. The challenge for men and women of faith today is to stay and engage with what is going on, and we ask God for the courage we need to do that…………………..Lord hear us
To make sense of what God is doing in the Church and world at this moment in history we need to learn to understand a logic which, in human terms, makes no sense. It is about a light which feels like darkness. It is about a birth that looks, for all the world, like death. It is about weakness that is, in reality, strength. It is about a falling apart which is more of a coming together. And so we ask God to help us understand this seemingly irrational logic………………………………...Lord hear us
Many, if not most of our young people would appear to have lost touch with the Church. But this need not be a permanent state of affairs. We may not see how they are going to find their way to faith in the midst of a world so opposed to the values of the Gospel, but that does not mean it will not happen. And so we pray that, in ways we cannot at the moment foresee, God will draw today’s young people to himself and lead them to deep personal faith…………………….Lord hear us
This Sunday see the beginning of the Nineteenth Annual Week of Directed Prayer in the parish. There are fifty six people involved this year, forty six participants and ten guides, and we pray that every single one of them will be open to what God is doing in the coming days…………...Lord hear us
Saturday, 13 October 2007
28th Sunday C
It’s a pity that the first reading today did not give us a fuller version of the story of Naaman. A well-to-do Syrian, suffering from leprosy – the link with the Gospel passage – he hears from an Israelite slave girl about a prophet who lives in Samaria. This is Elisha, and willing to go to any length to find a cure, Naaman gets the king of Syria to write a letter to the king of Israel asking him to arrange for him to see Elisha. All the prophet does, however, is send a message telling Naaman to go and bathe seven times in the Jordan, something which angers Naaman. He had expected to be treated like the important person he was in Syria and complains that there are plenty of rivers at home he could have bathed in. But, persuaded by his servants, he goes to the Jordan, bathes there seven times, and, of course is cured. As a result, as we heard in our much shortened version of the story, he gathers as much soil from Israel as two mules can carry and vows that he will no longer offer sacrifice to any god except the Lord. This, of course, is the whole point of the story: to demonstrate the absolute superiority of the God of Israel over the gods of the surrounding nations, an important message in its own day, but one which is, nevertheless, a classic example of religion over faith, an attitude that still, sadly, goes on in the world today as religions continue to compete with each other in ways which often overflow into violence.
And we see signs of it in the Gospel passage too, especialy if we read between the lines. Generally, Jews did not associate with Samaritans. We know that. Ever since they had been invaded from the north in the eighth century BC and had inter-married with the gentiles they had been despised by the Jews of the south around Jerusalem. They lacked religious and racial purity and so were treated as outcasts. It would appear, however - since nine of them were Jews and one was a Samaritan - that being lepers together had enabled this group to overcome these ancient prejudices. Suffering has always brought people together and it would appear to have done so here too. Once they were cured, however, all that togetherness seems to have disappeared and the Samaritan, no longer joined to the others by their common suffering, finds himself an outcast again, the reason, I would suggest, why he alone comes back to give thanks. Religious prejudice is deep in all of us and is one of the great tragedies of history. Which brings me to something very important that has happened here in the parish recently.
It began earlier this year when I answered to the door to find a young Pakistani man standing there. My initial thought was that he was looking for help. Most young people who come to my door are. And indeed he was, except that it wasn’t the kind of help I am used to. He told me that the Moslem community in Kilmarnock was having great difficulty finding a place in the town to meet for prayer and wondered if there was any possibility of them using our hall. Well, for me, it was one of those moments when ‘the child in my womb leapt for joy.’ I knew at once what my answer was and assured him that they would be most welcome. Within two weeks they were meeting at lunchtime on a Friday for prayer, and for the last month, during Ramadan, they have been coming in every night around 9.30, something that came to a climax yesterday morning when the hall was packed with men, women and children celebrating the Islamic festival of Eid, a great day in the Moslem world which brings Ramadan to an end and commemorates the sacrifice of Abraham. And as the prayer finished, they invited me into the hall where they gave me an Eid gift, their equivalent of a christmas present, and both the Iman and myself said a few words. He thanked me for allowing them in. I assured them that they were most welcome. And we both talked about our hope that this would lead to closer links and closer cooperation in the future.
But, of course, this involves you too. Religious and racial prejudice of the kind which lies behind today’s readings from both the Old and the New Testaments is widespread in this country, especially against the Moslem community. The gutter Press encourage it and some politicians, sadly, pander to it. But it has no justification and can have no place in the heart of any of us here. Far too often today, people in Britain see a Moslem or Asian face and they think ‘terrorist.’ We must resist this at all costs. The people who come here to pray every Friday are good decent people, no more terrorists than we are. Or, to be more accurate, no more terrorists than we were in the days, not so long ago, when, to be a Catholic or an Irishman was, in some people’s minds, to be an IRA terrorist. We must resist this like the plague, remove every trace of it from our minds and stand up against it whenever it rears its ugly head around us. And I hope and pray that this whole community will do that and join me in welcoming the Moslem community of Kilmarnock here to St Matthew’s.
That’s not to say, of course, that there are not differences between us. We worship the same God but not all our beliefs are the same. For christians Jesus as God living among us. Moslems see him as no more than a great prophet. And there are cultural differences too. The world from which Islam comes, to give one obvious example, has a very different attitude to women than we do and it is difficult at the moment to see how these two views can be reconciled. But the important thing is to try to understand and respect individual people even when they think differently from ourselves. And, of course, there are those on the fanatical fringes who use religion as an excuse for violence and terrorism. There always have been, christianity being no exception, but we must never fall into the trap of tarring everyone with the same brush.
A few days ago 138 top Islamic scholars wrote a letter to christian leaders saying that the future of the world depended on the world’s religions working together. If they are right, then I invite you to thank God today that this parish is part of that process. But even more importantly: look into your own heart and your own attitudes. Are you yourself part of it?
BIDDING PRAYERS
Prejudice and bigotry are deep within human nature. Since the beginning we have defined ourselves by who we are not rather than by who we are. We are not the people from the next village, so we fight them. We are not the people from the tribe over the hill, so we make up stories which justify our hating them. We speak a different language from others and so we decide we don’t like them. And so we pray that, in the third millennium, the world will finally move beyond these fundamentally primitive ways of thinking………………………..Lord hear us
Prejudice and bigotry has always been particularly bad whn it has taken on a religious character. Down through the ages religious prejudice and the persecutions which have gone with it have caused immense suffering to millions of people. The history of our own country, Scotland, has been riddled with them. And so we ask God for the grace we need to recognize signs of this still at work in ourselves so that, as individuals and as a nation, we can begin to break free from of it……….Lord hear us
The most serious religious conflicts in history have involved at least two of the great world religions we know as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Sometimes all three have been involved and sometimes only two, but the suffering and pain caused down through the ages has been immense. Much of it has centred on the Middle East, especially Jerusalem, and we pray that all those involved will finally find a solution to the problems which have bedevilled that city for so long……………...Lord hear us
One of the consequences of our imperial past is that we have a large Asian population, many of whom are followers of Islam. Many of them, especially here in Scotland, are second, third or even fourth generation immigrants and so are as Scottish we are. A number of us here are also the result of immigration in the past, especially those of Irish or Italian origin. And so we pray for the grace to be open to new immigrants and rejoice in the richnes they bring…………………....Lord hear us
In Jesus’ time, those who suffered from leprosy were the social outcasts of the day. They were not allowed to live in the towns and had to survive in groups away from where people lived. Everyone was afraid of them and tried to avoid coming into contact with them in the same way we do with the outcasts of our own day. And yet Jesus reached out to them, even doing the unthinkable and touching them. And so we pray for the grace we need to be more like Jesus in this respect………….Lord hear us
Only one of the lepers who was cured came back to thank Jesus. And so we ask God to stir in us, through the power of the Spirit, a deep sense of gratitude for all the good things we have received. We pray especially for the insight we need to recognize and appreciate the people in our lives who love, help and support us so that, from time to time at least, we can show our gratitude to them………………………....Lord hear us
And we see signs of it in the Gospel passage too, especialy if we read between the lines. Generally, Jews did not associate with Samaritans. We know that. Ever since they had been invaded from the north in the eighth century BC and had inter-married with the gentiles they had been despised by the Jews of the south around Jerusalem. They lacked religious and racial purity and so were treated as outcasts. It would appear, however - since nine of them were Jews and one was a Samaritan - that being lepers together had enabled this group to overcome these ancient prejudices. Suffering has always brought people together and it would appear to have done so here too. Once they were cured, however, all that togetherness seems to have disappeared and the Samaritan, no longer joined to the others by their common suffering, finds himself an outcast again, the reason, I would suggest, why he alone comes back to give thanks. Religious prejudice is deep in all of us and is one of the great tragedies of history. Which brings me to something very important that has happened here in the parish recently.
It began earlier this year when I answered to the door to find a young Pakistani man standing there. My initial thought was that he was looking for help. Most young people who come to my door are. And indeed he was, except that it wasn’t the kind of help I am used to. He told me that the Moslem community in Kilmarnock was having great difficulty finding a place in the town to meet for prayer and wondered if there was any possibility of them using our hall. Well, for me, it was one of those moments when ‘the child in my womb leapt for joy.’ I knew at once what my answer was and assured him that they would be most welcome. Within two weeks they were meeting at lunchtime on a Friday for prayer, and for the last month, during Ramadan, they have been coming in every night around 9.30, something that came to a climax yesterday morning when the hall was packed with men, women and children celebrating the Islamic festival of Eid, a great day in the Moslem world which brings Ramadan to an end and commemorates the sacrifice of Abraham. And as the prayer finished, they invited me into the hall where they gave me an Eid gift, their equivalent of a christmas present, and both the Iman and myself said a few words. He thanked me for allowing them in. I assured them that they were most welcome. And we both talked about our hope that this would lead to closer links and closer cooperation in the future.
But, of course, this involves you too. Religious and racial prejudice of the kind which lies behind today’s readings from both the Old and the New Testaments is widespread in this country, especially against the Moslem community. The gutter Press encourage it and some politicians, sadly, pander to it. But it has no justification and can have no place in the heart of any of us here. Far too often today, people in Britain see a Moslem or Asian face and they think ‘terrorist.’ We must resist this at all costs. The people who come here to pray every Friday are good decent people, no more terrorists than we are. Or, to be more accurate, no more terrorists than we were in the days, not so long ago, when, to be a Catholic or an Irishman was, in some people’s minds, to be an IRA terrorist. We must resist this like the plague, remove every trace of it from our minds and stand up against it whenever it rears its ugly head around us. And I hope and pray that this whole community will do that and join me in welcoming the Moslem community of Kilmarnock here to St Matthew’s.
That’s not to say, of course, that there are not differences between us. We worship the same God but not all our beliefs are the same. For christians Jesus as God living among us. Moslems see him as no more than a great prophet. And there are cultural differences too. The world from which Islam comes, to give one obvious example, has a very different attitude to women than we do and it is difficult at the moment to see how these two views can be reconciled. But the important thing is to try to understand and respect individual people even when they think differently from ourselves. And, of course, there are those on the fanatical fringes who use religion as an excuse for violence and terrorism. There always have been, christianity being no exception, but we must never fall into the trap of tarring everyone with the same brush.
A few days ago 138 top Islamic scholars wrote a letter to christian leaders saying that the future of the world depended on the world’s religions working together. If they are right, then I invite you to thank God today that this parish is part of that process. But even more importantly: look into your own heart and your own attitudes. Are you yourself part of it?
BIDDING PRAYERS
Prejudice and bigotry are deep within human nature. Since the beginning we have defined ourselves by who we are not rather than by who we are. We are not the people from the next village, so we fight them. We are not the people from the tribe over the hill, so we make up stories which justify our hating them. We speak a different language from others and so we decide we don’t like them. And so we pray that, in the third millennium, the world will finally move beyond these fundamentally primitive ways of thinking………………………..Lord hear us
Prejudice and bigotry has always been particularly bad whn it has taken on a religious character. Down through the ages religious prejudice and the persecutions which have gone with it have caused immense suffering to millions of people. The history of our own country, Scotland, has been riddled with them. And so we ask God for the grace we need to recognize signs of this still at work in ourselves so that, as individuals and as a nation, we can begin to break free from of it……….Lord hear us
The most serious religious conflicts in history have involved at least two of the great world religions we know as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Sometimes all three have been involved and sometimes only two, but the suffering and pain caused down through the ages has been immense. Much of it has centred on the Middle East, especially Jerusalem, and we pray that all those involved will finally find a solution to the problems which have bedevilled that city for so long……………...Lord hear us
One of the consequences of our imperial past is that we have a large Asian population, many of whom are followers of Islam. Many of them, especially here in Scotland, are second, third or even fourth generation immigrants and so are as Scottish we are. A number of us here are also the result of immigration in the past, especially those of Irish or Italian origin. And so we pray for the grace to be open to new immigrants and rejoice in the richnes they bring…………………....Lord hear us
In Jesus’ time, those who suffered from leprosy were the social outcasts of the day. They were not allowed to live in the towns and had to survive in groups away from where people lived. Everyone was afraid of them and tried to avoid coming into contact with them in the same way we do with the outcasts of our own day. And yet Jesus reached out to them, even doing the unthinkable and touching them. And so we pray for the grace we need to be more like Jesus in this respect………….Lord hear us
Only one of the lepers who was cured came back to thank Jesus. And so we ask God to stir in us, through the power of the Spirit, a deep sense of gratitude for all the good things we have received. We pray especially for the insight we need to recognize and appreciate the people in our lives who love, help and support us so that, from time to time at least, we can show our gratitude to them………………………....Lord hear us
Sunday, 7 October 2007
27th Sunday of the Year C
Some would say he’s never far from my mind, but the first person I thought of after seeing today’s first reading was St Ignatius of Loyola. A psychologist long before psychology was invented, his genius was to understand and make sense of the huge number of thoughts, feelings, desires and inclinations which go on in us twenty four hours a day. We know we cannot act out all of them. For one thing, they pull us in different, often contradictory directions. We also learn, very early on in our lives, that some of them are not acceptable to other people, causing us to repress or supress them. A lot of this is normal and healthy enough. The very young children here, for example, who have no inhibitions about talking or shouting out during Mass, will learn before long that it’s not acceptable to do this. At other times, however, it’s not so healthy, as our repressed or denied feelings go underground to re-emerge at a later date in sometimes quite unhealthy ways. Saint Ignatius saw this very clearly and had lots of very helpful things to say about it. But his real insight went deeper. What he understood so clearly was that, in the midst of all the different thoughts, feelings and desires swirling around inside us, there is a gentle, sometimes almost imperceptible feeling which is God moving in us and which Ignatius calls consolation. And there’s another contrary movement which comes, not from God, but from what Ignatius variously calls Satan, the enemy of our human nature or the bad spirit. This is desolation, the key point being that the discerning person will identify the movement of God and follow it, while the foolish person will do the opposite and allow him/herself to be led by the bad spirit, a course of action which can only lead to trouble. In other words, identify the consolation, the movement of God, and follow it. Do this and you will have the life. Follow the desolation, however, and you’re on a downward spiral, today’s first reading being, for me, an invitation to reflect deeply on this.
At the heart of faith is an invitation to do what Elizabeth, in Luke’s Gospel, praises Mary for doing: believing that the promises made her by the Lord would be fulfilled. Abraham believed this and, by doing so became the father in faith of many nations. Mary believed it and gave birth to the Saviour of the world. And as the Church makes its way through history we are all called to believe in God’s promises, that, no matter how long it takes and how many ups and downs there are along the way, the Kingdom of God is coming. But it is not always easy to do this. It wasn’t easy for the people of the Old Testament who, in the course of a thousand years, lost faith in God’s promise over and over again. And it hasn’t been easy for people in the Church over two thousand years either. Time and time again, when things have been hard, people have lost faith, although there have always been those who, in the words of today’s Gospel, have had faith to move mountains. And this same pattern is reflected in the life of every person. There are times of consolation when, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, we believe in God’s promises and know them to be true. But there are other times when we lose sight of them and, under the influence of desolation, allow ourselves to sink into unbelief. And none of this should surprise us. Consolation and desolation go together. They follow each other as closely as day follows night. Each of them is part of what it is to be human. The secret is to know the difference between them and learn how to live with each of them. And that is what Habakuk is talking about today.
First of all, he reminds us of a truth we must always hang on to. Speaking of the vision God has for his people, he says; “Eager for its own fulfilment it does not deceive; if it comes slowly, wait, for come it will, without fail.” In other words, no matter what happens, we must never lose faith in what God is doing. In New Testament terms it means that the Kingdom of God is coming and that we must never lose sight of this. And then, in two lines, he sums up everything we have been saying about consolation and desolation. “See how he flags, he whose soul is not at rights:” in other words, who is allowing himself to be led by desolation into loss of faith. And then. “But the upright man (or woman) will live by his righteousness.” In other words by trusting God’s promises and living out of them. Sometimes we will feel the truth of these promises, sometimes we won’t. That is ultimately irrelevant. The key is to live out of them regardless of how how we feel and regardless of what is going on in our lives at any given moment.
Which brings me to a recent experience of my own which I want to tell you about today. September is always a month full of memories for me. On the 5th of September 1957 I set off from home at the age of twelve to begin a journey which brought me to the priesthood and to this parish. This year, however, was more significant than usual. It was the fiftieth anniversary of that day in 1957 and a cause for much remembering on my part. But the culmination came a week past on Tuesday as, with eight other members of the Men’s Spirituality Group, I flew into Valladolid Airport in Spain. Forty four years earlier, almost to the day, I had arrived in Valladolid as an eighteen year-old. Then the journey had been by train and had taken four days. Last Tuesday it took just one and a half hours from Stansted Airport. But as I soaked in the experience I was filled with the most profound sense of gratitude to God. All kinds of things had happened during those years. There had been times of consolation and times of desolation. But as the bus took us from the airport, past the city and out towards Salamanca, I was filled with gratitude to God for all that had happened. Just to be there with those men from the parish and share an important part of my past with them was a moment of profound consolation, confirming the rightness of everything that has happened over the years.
The promises made me by the Lord had been fulfilled and it’s in a spirit of thanksgiving for all that God has done for me that I tell you about it today.
BIDDING PRAYERS
It is not only possible to have important experiences of God and then forget we ever had them. It happens all the time. And so we ask God to stir in us this weekend memories of times when we have known him intimately and experienced his presence in our lives. And regardless of how we feel right now or of what is going on in our lives at this particular moment, we pray for the grace we need to trust those moments of consolation and live out of them always……………………Lord hear us
There are an infinite number of ways in which we experience the movement of God in our lives. For some of us, however, the annual Weeks of Guided Prayer have been one such way. And so, as we prepare for the nineteenth such week, we ask God to stir in us memories of past experiences, especially those we have forgotten or failed to remain faithful to as the years have passed. And we ask him to bless the coming week as he has blessed others in the past……………Lord hear us
Many religious people feel a sense of despair in the face of the modern world. It seems to them to be a godless place and, like the prophet Habakuk at the beginning of today’s first reading, they wonder why God looks on and does nothing about it. But this way of thinking is, in fact, a form of desolation which undermines genuine faith. It fails to recognize that God is always at work in the world and that his vision for humanity, even if it is delayed for a time, will come without fail. And so we pray for the grace to believe this…………………..Lord hear us
Often the growth of God’s kingdom is slow. Sometimes it is so slow as to be almost imperceptible. But it is always going on and we pray for the insight we need to recognize the many signs of the Kingdom of God which surround us every day if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear……………Lord hear us
In the Gospel today Jesus speaks to us of the power of faith. The mulberry tree was noted for the depth of its roots, extremely difficult to dig out, and yet Jesus says that faith the size of a mustard seed would be enough to pull it out and plant it in the sea. He is, of course, exaggerating – as he often does to make a point – but we pray nevertheless for some of the faith he speaks of so that we can be the people he calls us to be in the midst of the modern world……………….…………….Lord hear us
In the second reading, St Paul tells Timothy to fan into a flame the gift God has given him. These are powerful words in the context of our time. The world desperately needs men and women of mature, adult faith who can do this, and on Wednesday, here in the hall, there is an information evening regarding a new course in Adult Education which will take place over the next year. And so we pray that God will bless this initiative and that many in Kilmarnock will respond to it……...Lord hear us
Now let us be silent for a few moments……………
At the heart of faith is an invitation to do what Elizabeth, in Luke’s Gospel, praises Mary for doing: believing that the promises made her by the Lord would be fulfilled. Abraham believed this and, by doing so became the father in faith of many nations. Mary believed it and gave birth to the Saviour of the world. And as the Church makes its way through history we are all called to believe in God’s promises, that, no matter how long it takes and how many ups and downs there are along the way, the Kingdom of God is coming. But it is not always easy to do this. It wasn’t easy for the people of the Old Testament who, in the course of a thousand years, lost faith in God’s promise over and over again. And it hasn’t been easy for people in the Church over two thousand years either. Time and time again, when things have been hard, people have lost faith, although there have always been those who, in the words of today’s Gospel, have had faith to move mountains. And this same pattern is reflected in the life of every person. There are times of consolation when, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, we believe in God’s promises and know them to be true. But there are other times when we lose sight of them and, under the influence of desolation, allow ourselves to sink into unbelief. And none of this should surprise us. Consolation and desolation go together. They follow each other as closely as day follows night. Each of them is part of what it is to be human. The secret is to know the difference between them and learn how to live with each of them. And that is what Habakuk is talking about today.
First of all, he reminds us of a truth we must always hang on to. Speaking of the vision God has for his people, he says; “Eager for its own fulfilment it does not deceive; if it comes slowly, wait, for come it will, without fail.” In other words, no matter what happens, we must never lose faith in what God is doing. In New Testament terms it means that the Kingdom of God is coming and that we must never lose sight of this. And then, in two lines, he sums up everything we have been saying about consolation and desolation. “See how he flags, he whose soul is not at rights:” in other words, who is allowing himself to be led by desolation into loss of faith. And then. “But the upright man (or woman) will live by his righteousness.” In other words by trusting God’s promises and living out of them. Sometimes we will feel the truth of these promises, sometimes we won’t. That is ultimately irrelevant. The key is to live out of them regardless of how how we feel and regardless of what is going on in our lives at any given moment.
Which brings me to a recent experience of my own which I want to tell you about today. September is always a month full of memories for me. On the 5th of September 1957 I set off from home at the age of twelve to begin a journey which brought me to the priesthood and to this parish. This year, however, was more significant than usual. It was the fiftieth anniversary of that day in 1957 and a cause for much remembering on my part. But the culmination came a week past on Tuesday as, with eight other members of the Men’s Spirituality Group, I flew into Valladolid Airport in Spain. Forty four years earlier, almost to the day, I had arrived in Valladolid as an eighteen year-old. Then the journey had been by train and had taken four days. Last Tuesday it took just one and a half hours from Stansted Airport. But as I soaked in the experience I was filled with the most profound sense of gratitude to God. All kinds of things had happened during those years. There had been times of consolation and times of desolation. But as the bus took us from the airport, past the city and out towards Salamanca, I was filled with gratitude to God for all that had happened. Just to be there with those men from the parish and share an important part of my past with them was a moment of profound consolation, confirming the rightness of everything that has happened over the years.
The promises made me by the Lord had been fulfilled and it’s in a spirit of thanksgiving for all that God has done for me that I tell you about it today.
BIDDING PRAYERS
It is not only possible to have important experiences of God and then forget we ever had them. It happens all the time. And so we ask God to stir in us this weekend memories of times when we have known him intimately and experienced his presence in our lives. And regardless of how we feel right now or of what is going on in our lives at this particular moment, we pray for the grace we need to trust those moments of consolation and live out of them always……………………Lord hear us
There are an infinite number of ways in which we experience the movement of God in our lives. For some of us, however, the annual Weeks of Guided Prayer have been one such way. And so, as we prepare for the nineteenth such week, we ask God to stir in us memories of past experiences, especially those we have forgotten or failed to remain faithful to as the years have passed. And we ask him to bless the coming week as he has blessed others in the past……………Lord hear us
Many religious people feel a sense of despair in the face of the modern world. It seems to them to be a godless place and, like the prophet Habakuk at the beginning of today’s first reading, they wonder why God looks on and does nothing about it. But this way of thinking is, in fact, a form of desolation which undermines genuine faith. It fails to recognize that God is always at work in the world and that his vision for humanity, even if it is delayed for a time, will come without fail. And so we pray for the grace to believe this…………………..Lord hear us
Often the growth of God’s kingdom is slow. Sometimes it is so slow as to be almost imperceptible. But it is always going on and we pray for the insight we need to recognize the many signs of the Kingdom of God which surround us every day if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear……………Lord hear us
In the Gospel today Jesus speaks to us of the power of faith. The mulberry tree was noted for the depth of its roots, extremely difficult to dig out, and yet Jesus says that faith the size of a mustard seed would be enough to pull it out and plant it in the sea. He is, of course, exaggerating – as he often does to make a point – but we pray nevertheless for some of the faith he speaks of so that we can be the people he calls us to be in the midst of the modern world……………….…………….Lord hear us
In the second reading, St Paul tells Timothy to fan into a flame the gift God has given him. These are powerful words in the context of our time. The world desperately needs men and women of mature, adult faith who can do this, and on Wednesday, here in the hall, there is an information evening regarding a new course in Adult Education which will take place over the next year. And so we pray that God will bless this initiative and that many in Kilmarnock will respond to it……...Lord hear us
Now let us be silent for a few moments……………
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