Having begun Lent by reflecting on how prayer, fasting and almsgiving address the roots of the economic and financial mess we currently find ourselves in, we went on in week two, having heard the story of the Transfiguration, to think about how, unless we can first imagine something different, conversion and change can never happen. Then, on the third Sunday, I suggested that, if we are to imagine the kingdom of God, then we have to be, at least by the standards of the world, a little bit mad. God’s foolishness, Paul told us that day, is greater than human wisdom. And so last week, we reflected on the madness of a God who loves us with a love so foolish that it makes no sense in human terms and which invites from us, not the obedience that comes from fear but the free loving response of which human nature, at its best, is capable. And now, in this final homily of Lent – next Sunday we read the Passion - I invite you to reflect on the ultimate proof of this Divine madness, the Crucifixion and death of Jesus. Why did it happen and what does it mean?
Well, my response to that question has been heavily influenced this week by a programme called ‘The Great Sperm Race’ which I saw on Television last Sunday and which some of you will have seen too. It was certainly well trailored in the days before it went out on Channel 4. And what it dealt with, and used computer generated images to illustrate, was the incredible story of how each one of us came to be conceived, following the amazing journey made by a quarter of a billion male sperm once they have entered the female reproductive system. And we’re talking biology here, not sex. And by far the most striking feature of this journey was how hazardous and dangerous it is for each one of those quarter of a billion sperm. And in case you are wondering, that’s twenty five followed by seven zeros, millions of whom survive no more than seconds with millions and millions more dying by the minute along the way, until, in the end, if it has more luck than you would need to win the lottery jackpot three weeks in a row, one solitary sperm reaches the ovum or egg, the Holy Grail for every sperm, enters it, links its own genetic code to the DNA of the mother and, if it can survive the many dangers and hazards of the next nine months, becomes us. And as I pondered the sheer enormity of the odds against any single sperm ever becoming a person, it suddenly struck me. No wonder those of us who make it think we are gods!
And yet, no matter how strong and fit we had to be to win the greatest race in nature, the race against 250,000,000, other competitors to become a living person, and no matter the odds against us doing that – and it would actually be more like winning the lottery every week for the whole of our lives – the simple truth we spend those hard-won lives learning and coming to terms with is that, despite the triumph involved in simply surviving such a journey, we are not gods but creatures of the God who created everything that exists. And we learn that lesson the hard way, through painful experience.
Part of it, life itself teaches us, as happens when, as children, we discover that we are not the centre of the universe or, when, as adults, when sickness strikes or deaths comes to those near us, we see with sometimes frightening clarity how tenuous our own grasp on life is. But we also learn this hard lesson through our failures and shortcomings, the whole ageing process being central to it. As the years pass and we cannot do the things we used to do and our conversations turn more and more to doctors and the medication we are on, an experience I am not unfamiliar with myself, it dawns on us that our lives are passing very quickly and that we are not immortal.
And the importance of this is reflected for us in today’s second reading which speaks of how Jesus, during his life on earth, ‘submitted humbly’ and ‘learnt to obey through suffering.’ But what Jesus submitted to was the human condition, what it means to be us, and the obedience the reading speaks of is obedience to and willing acceptance of all that that involves. Jesus, in other words, although he is God, empties himself and experiences in his own person what it’s like not to be God. In other words, what it is to be human. And being human, this was not easy. ‘Now my soul is troubled’ we hear him say in today’s Gospel. ‘What shall I say: Father save me from this hour? But’ he goes on, ‘it was for this very reason that I have come to this hour.’ What Jesus is doing is living to the full what it means to be a human being and in doing so he is showing every person who has survived the ‘great sperm race’ how to do the same, how to become everything we are created to be. Being born, monumental achievement that it was, was not the end of the journey. It was just the beginning. Now we have to learn what being human really means. And that’s what Jesus teaches us in the Gospel.
And at the heart of this whole mystery is death and resurrection. ‘Unless a grain of what falls on the ground and dies’ Jesus tells us, ‘it remains a single grain. But if it dies it yields a rich harvest.’ ‘Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for the eternal life.’ Such paradoxical statements litter the pages of the New Testament, reflecting over and over again the basic reality we have been meditating on since Lent began; that to enter the kingdom of God, the final destination of the ‘great sperm race,’ we have to turn all human thinking on its head and embrace a whole set of new values which make no sense to the world. We have to die, in other words to one way of thinking and be born to another. And that’s what we celebrate at Easter. That’s what the Christian life is about.
So let me end by telling you what happens to that one surviving sperm. When it reaches the egg, the final great challenge facing it is to find a way through the outer layer or shell. So what does it do? It makes an opening by blowing its head apart. It dies so that it may live.
Now there’s a thing!
BIDDING PRAYERS
In the first reading today, the prophet Jeremiah imagines a new covenant which will not be like the old one. It will not, like the old covenant, be written on tablets of stone. Instead, it will be written on people’s hearts. There will no longer be any need for one person to tell another about God because they will all know him. And so we pray for the wisdom and insight we need to imagine this new covenant, as Jeremiah did, so that it can become a reality among us here.........Lord hear us
If we are to come to know God and not just have heard about God or read books about God, then we are going to have to make what many call ‘a leap of faith.’ This means leaving our heads, the place where we think, and going to deeper parts of ourselves where human reasoning is out of its depth. The Spirit of God who lives and moves in us does so in this deep place sometimes known as ‘the heart’ and we pray for the courage to meet God there..........Lord hear us
The obedience of Jesus the letter to the Hebrews speaks of was obedience to everything involved in the mystery of the Incarnation. It was obedience to what it means to be human, which was why, when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, the first thing the devil tried to get him to do was turn stones into bread. But Jesus refused, not only accepting the limitations of the human condition but embracing them. And so we ask for the wisdom to do the same every day.........Lord hear us
To accept and embrace the human condition involves many things. It means living with our own weaknesses and the weaknesses of others. It means living each stage of our lives to the full and accepting the limitations that go with being who we are: our illnesses; the gifts we have and the gifts we don’t have; the bad things that happen to us; the mistakes we make, our triumphs and our disasters and, ultimately, the inevitability of our own death. And so ask for this grace........Lord hear us
To accept and embrace the reality of our own death and the death of those we love is not easy. It is something which takes time and the pain of loss and bereavement when those close to us die can last for many years, sometimes for a whole lifetime. And so we pray today for a deep faith in the reality of the Resurrection in these days leading up to Easter so that we can face our own death, whenever it comes, as well as the death of others with trust and confidence in God............Lord hear us
This week’s bulletin contains an item about a proposed initiative in the parish directed at teenagers and young people. How to communicate to young people today the sheer depth of God’s love for them and the part God longs to play in their lives is one of the great challenges of our time. As a result, this project is one of the most important things to happen in the parish in recent years. And so we ask God to raise up among us the committed adult leaders it needs to even begin...............Lord hear us
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Saturday, 21 March 2009
4th Sunday of Lent B
As Lent began three weeks ago, I invited you to recognize how the three elements which lie at the heart of this season address directly the roots of the current economic crisis facing the world. In a society obsessed with what is empty and superficial, prayer invites us to go deeper. Penance and fasting confront head-on the ‘I must have it and I must have it now’ philosophy of consumerism. And almsgiving, which emerges out of prayer and fasting, addresses the inevitable consequence of a world dominated by market-forces, which is that the rich grow richer and poor grow poorer.
Then, on the second Sunday, when we read the story of the Transfiguration, I suggested that, apart from moments of insight which come directly from God, another way in which we can contemplate a world transfigured is through the use of the imagination. I pointed out that every advance in human history has begun life in someone’s imagination. Before anything can become a reality we first have to imagine it. And I invited you to see that that is as true of the kingdom of God as it is of anything else. If we cannot first imagine a world free of violence and injustice, then how can it ever happen? If we cannot imagine new ways of living, new ways of organizing the world, new ways of doing things, then, like cattle in a field, we are doomed to repeat for ever what we have always done.
And then, last week, we explored the fact that, to be a Christian and begin to imagine a world different from the one we currently inhabit, it is necessary to be, in the world’s eyes at least, a little bit mad. And the reason is simple. God does not think as we think. His foolishness, as Paul told us last Sunday, is wiser than human wisdom. The gospel with its command to love our enemies, turn the other cheek and so on does not make sense in human terms. To people who live by the values of the world, such things are madness. And yet, unless we are willing to embrace the madness of the kingdom, we cannot enter it.
And now, on the fourth Sunday, we confront one particular aspect of God’s foolishness which, in the end, is beyond our comprehension. And yet, paradoxically, until we begin to understand it, we haven’t understood anything. And it’s in today’s second reading, where Paul tells us in words which which those of you who attended last month’s Church History Course on the Reformation will remember well; that it is by grace that we are saved: not by anything of our own, but by a gift from God. These deceptively simple words, properly understood, turn on its head most of what many of us learned as children and take us once again to the heart of the difference between religion and faith. So what do I mean by this?
Well, the image of salvation presented to me as a child -and I suspect to many of you too - was classic religion without faith. It told me that, to get to heaven, I had to do certain things and not do others. First and foremost, I had to go to Mass every Sunday. This was the key to everything and if I didn’t do that and died without going to confession, I would go to hell. There were many other things I had to do or not do to keep God from getting angry and sending me to hell, but, if I stuck to these rules, I would make it into heaven. It might be via purgatory, but that wasn’t so bad, because it didn’t last for ever. And what I came to understand many years later and say to you again today is that none of this is true. As Pauls tells us, it is by grace that we have been saved...not by anything of our own, but by a gift from God.
And yet it is so difficult for us to understand this in a world which does not think in this way; a world where people love those who love them; where people fall in love and fall out of love again; where we have to be careful we don’t upset our friends so much that they might stop being our friends; where people take the huff and stop talking to each other. But with God it is not like that. Nothing we do can make God love us any more or any less. With God there is no earning, only receiving what is freely given. God does not have to be pleased or kept happy. He is already infinitely pleased with us and nothing can change that. We are, as Paul says today, God’s work of art.
Except that for those of us who inhabit the world of religion, this way of thinking presents a serious problem. Religion, from the days of our primitive ancestors, has been about fear of what will happen if we don’t please God. It is essentially about keeping an angry God happy so that he doesn’t do bad things to us. Fear of not going kept generations of people going Mass each week and the removal of that fear in recent years has been one of the main reasons why fewer people attend Mass now than once did. What’s the point, really, if God loves us all the same and nothing we do can change that one way or the other? If going to Church, keeping the rules and behaving ourselves is not what gets us into heaven, then what’s the point in doing them?
And so we come to something which lies at the heart of faith and makes no sense in the world of religion, the concept of a free and loving response. Love, of its very nature must be free. Nothing we do here is worth a light if it is not freely chosen. To the extent that it grows out of fear it is worthless. There is only one valid reason for being here and its name is gratitude. People of faith come to Mass, not to keep God happy, but to give God thanks for who God is. And everything that flows from that – the whole Christian life – is a freely chosen response to God whose love moves and inspires us to love others the way we have been loved ourselves.
And so I invite you to look into your inner self and see what lies there. What has brought you here today? What moved you to come? Is it fear, and therefore religion, or is it love, and therefore faith. Or are you, like so many of us today, somewhere in the middle, struggling to make the life-changing journey from one to the other?
BIDDING PRAYERS
A month ago, at the Church History Course, we saw how what St Paul says in today’s second reading was central to the Reformation. What St Paul teaches today, Luther taught then, and in 1999 a joint statement by the Vatican and the Lutheran Church finally acknowledged that Luther was right and that that, in reality, had always been the authentic teaching of the Church. And so we pray for greater and greater understanding among the followers of Jesus in our time....................Lord hear us
Today, in one of the best known passages from the Gospels, - John 3:16 - one we often see on placards at international sporting events, we hear how God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but so that, through him, the world might be saved. And so we pray that we will have that same attitude to the world of our time, not condemning it, but loving it, believing in its fundamental goodness and doing everything we can to show it what the love of God is like...............Lord hear us
Today’s Gospel also speaks of how the light has come into the world and the world has shown that it prefers the darkness to the light. The person who lives by the truth, we heard St John say, comes out into the light, while the person who loves what is wrong hates the light and avoids it. And so we pray for the courage we need to live in the light of truth, always open wherever it takes us, and willing to move beyond our personal prejudices, no matter how deeply felt ................Lord hear us
The first reading this week speaks of how God tirelessly sent his people messenger after messenger. The people, however, despised his words and laughed at his prophets, despite the fact that God’s whole purpose was to save the people from the effects of their own foolishness. And so we pray that the world of our own time will learn to listen to the prophets God sends: men and women who challenge us, point out the error of our ways and call us to new ways of living.....................Lord hear us
The first reading also speaks of Cyrus, King of Persia, the man who, having defeated Babylon in battle and succeeded them as the great power of the ancient world, brought the exile to an end and allowed the people to return to Jerusalem. The book of Chronicles sees Cyrus as God’s instrument in history even although Cyrus himself did not know God. And so we pray that the great leaders of today’s world will continue that tradition in our own time............ Lord hear us
Today’s psalm, “By the rivers of Babylon,” is one of the great songs of a people far from their homeland. And so, on this Sunday when the SCIAF collection is being taken up at Masses throughout Scotland, we pray in a special way for the millions of exiles and refugees in the world today. Some move through fear of violence, others for economic reasons, in search of a better life. And so we pray for the openness and generosity we need to welcome them here in Scotland............Lord hear us
Then, on the second Sunday, when we read the story of the Transfiguration, I suggested that, apart from moments of insight which come directly from God, another way in which we can contemplate a world transfigured is through the use of the imagination. I pointed out that every advance in human history has begun life in someone’s imagination. Before anything can become a reality we first have to imagine it. And I invited you to see that that is as true of the kingdom of God as it is of anything else. If we cannot first imagine a world free of violence and injustice, then how can it ever happen? If we cannot imagine new ways of living, new ways of organizing the world, new ways of doing things, then, like cattle in a field, we are doomed to repeat for ever what we have always done.
And then, last week, we explored the fact that, to be a Christian and begin to imagine a world different from the one we currently inhabit, it is necessary to be, in the world’s eyes at least, a little bit mad. And the reason is simple. God does not think as we think. His foolishness, as Paul told us last Sunday, is wiser than human wisdom. The gospel with its command to love our enemies, turn the other cheek and so on does not make sense in human terms. To people who live by the values of the world, such things are madness. And yet, unless we are willing to embrace the madness of the kingdom, we cannot enter it.
And now, on the fourth Sunday, we confront one particular aspect of God’s foolishness which, in the end, is beyond our comprehension. And yet, paradoxically, until we begin to understand it, we haven’t understood anything. And it’s in today’s second reading, where Paul tells us in words which which those of you who attended last month’s Church History Course on the Reformation will remember well; that it is by grace that we are saved: not by anything of our own, but by a gift from God. These deceptively simple words, properly understood, turn on its head most of what many of us learned as children and take us once again to the heart of the difference between religion and faith. So what do I mean by this?
Well, the image of salvation presented to me as a child -and I suspect to many of you too - was classic religion without faith. It told me that, to get to heaven, I had to do certain things and not do others. First and foremost, I had to go to Mass every Sunday. This was the key to everything and if I didn’t do that and died without going to confession, I would go to hell. There were many other things I had to do or not do to keep God from getting angry and sending me to hell, but, if I stuck to these rules, I would make it into heaven. It might be via purgatory, but that wasn’t so bad, because it didn’t last for ever. And what I came to understand many years later and say to you again today is that none of this is true. As Pauls tells us, it is by grace that we have been saved...not by anything of our own, but by a gift from God.
And yet it is so difficult for us to understand this in a world which does not think in this way; a world where people love those who love them; where people fall in love and fall out of love again; where we have to be careful we don’t upset our friends so much that they might stop being our friends; where people take the huff and stop talking to each other. But with God it is not like that. Nothing we do can make God love us any more or any less. With God there is no earning, only receiving what is freely given. God does not have to be pleased or kept happy. He is already infinitely pleased with us and nothing can change that. We are, as Paul says today, God’s work of art.
Except that for those of us who inhabit the world of religion, this way of thinking presents a serious problem. Religion, from the days of our primitive ancestors, has been about fear of what will happen if we don’t please God. It is essentially about keeping an angry God happy so that he doesn’t do bad things to us. Fear of not going kept generations of people going Mass each week and the removal of that fear in recent years has been one of the main reasons why fewer people attend Mass now than once did. What’s the point, really, if God loves us all the same and nothing we do can change that one way or the other? If going to Church, keeping the rules and behaving ourselves is not what gets us into heaven, then what’s the point in doing them?
And so we come to something which lies at the heart of faith and makes no sense in the world of religion, the concept of a free and loving response. Love, of its very nature must be free. Nothing we do here is worth a light if it is not freely chosen. To the extent that it grows out of fear it is worthless. There is only one valid reason for being here and its name is gratitude. People of faith come to Mass, not to keep God happy, but to give God thanks for who God is. And everything that flows from that – the whole Christian life – is a freely chosen response to God whose love moves and inspires us to love others the way we have been loved ourselves.
And so I invite you to look into your inner self and see what lies there. What has brought you here today? What moved you to come? Is it fear, and therefore religion, or is it love, and therefore faith. Or are you, like so many of us today, somewhere in the middle, struggling to make the life-changing journey from one to the other?
BIDDING PRAYERS
A month ago, at the Church History Course, we saw how what St Paul says in today’s second reading was central to the Reformation. What St Paul teaches today, Luther taught then, and in 1999 a joint statement by the Vatican and the Lutheran Church finally acknowledged that Luther was right and that that, in reality, had always been the authentic teaching of the Church. And so we pray for greater and greater understanding among the followers of Jesus in our time....................Lord hear us
Today, in one of the best known passages from the Gospels, - John 3:16 - one we often see on placards at international sporting events, we hear how God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but so that, through him, the world might be saved. And so we pray that we will have that same attitude to the world of our time, not condemning it, but loving it, believing in its fundamental goodness and doing everything we can to show it what the love of God is like...............Lord hear us
Today’s Gospel also speaks of how the light has come into the world and the world has shown that it prefers the darkness to the light. The person who lives by the truth, we heard St John say, comes out into the light, while the person who loves what is wrong hates the light and avoids it. And so we pray for the courage we need to live in the light of truth, always open wherever it takes us, and willing to move beyond our personal prejudices, no matter how deeply felt ................Lord hear us
The first reading this week speaks of how God tirelessly sent his people messenger after messenger. The people, however, despised his words and laughed at his prophets, despite the fact that God’s whole purpose was to save the people from the effects of their own foolishness. And so we pray that the world of our own time will learn to listen to the prophets God sends: men and women who challenge us, point out the error of our ways and call us to new ways of living.....................Lord hear us
The first reading also speaks of Cyrus, King of Persia, the man who, having defeated Babylon in battle and succeeded them as the great power of the ancient world, brought the exile to an end and allowed the people to return to Jerusalem. The book of Chronicles sees Cyrus as God’s instrument in history even although Cyrus himself did not know God. And so we pray that the great leaders of today’s world will continue that tradition in our own time............ Lord hear us
Today’s psalm, “By the rivers of Babylon,” is one of the great songs of a people far from their homeland. And so, on this Sunday when the SCIAF collection is being taken up at Masses throughout Scotland, we pray in a special way for the millions of exiles and refugees in the world today. Some move through fear of violence, others for economic reasons, in search of a better life. And so we pray for the openness and generosity we need to welcome them here in Scotland............Lord hear us
Saturday, 14 March 2009
3rd Sunday of Lent B
The thing which links this Sunday’s liturgy to last Sunday’s is the word madness. In today’s second reading St Paul speaks of how the Gospel message of the crucified Christ is madness to the pagans of his day. It simply makes no sense to them. And last week, as we reflected on the Transfiguration, I invited you to recognize that we all have Transfiguration experiences, moments when the veil which limits our vision is removed and, for a short time, we glimpse realities normally hidden from us. Such moments move us very deeply, enabling us to experience in a more profound way than usual what it means to be human. And so they should be taken very seriously. And I went on to explain why these things normally remain hidden. Quite simply, at this point in our journey towards God - some would say our evolutionary journey - our minds can only cope with so much reality and so are not yet ready for a face-to-face experience of the God who fills the world around us. Which was where the madness came in. I explained how, for some psychiatrists, what we call madness is simply a failure of certain defence mechanisms in the brain to function properly in some individuals, causing massive overdoses of reality to pour into them. Which is why it’s very difficult sometimes to tell the difference between madness and genius. But one thing is certain – and I hope by the time I am finished you will understand what I mean by this: that only those who, in a certain sense, are mad, can be genuine and authentic Christians. So let me explain by turning first to the first reading from book of Exodus and the Ten Commandments.
People today often speak, sometimes with a sense of nostalgia, as if they have always been from the very beginning the basis of Christian morality. But, as I have explained before, these same Ten Commandments were virtually forgotten during the early centuries of the Christian Church. And the reason, expressed in the language of today’s liturgy, was simple. They were not mad enough. In fact, all you have to do is look at them to see that there’s nothing specifically Christian about them at all. They are no more than the basic requirements for any society which wants to keep order and avoid chaos. It was as important in the Old Testament as it is now not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to covet your neighbours ox or his donkey. To allow such things to go unchecked was to invite endless conflict within the group and, even today, these basic rules would be accepted by people who do not even believe in God. But Christianity goes much further than that. It invites people to embrace ways of thinking which have always been madness to many. It proclaims a God who dies on a cross. It invites us to love our enemies. It teaches us to give rather than receive. It rejects the way of money and power and tells the world that the future belongs to the poor and the meek. It even tells us that, if we want to save our lives, we must lose them, and if that isn’t madness, what is? The Christian faith goes completely against human logic. It turns human thinking upside down, and, until we have understood this, we have not understood anything about God. Put simply, it means that we cannot claim to be authentic Christians until, by the standards of the world around us, we are thought to be at least a little bit mad.
And we see this in today’s Gospel. The people in the Temple that day must have thought Jesus had really lost it. What he was doing made no sense to them. Without the men selling cattle and sheep and pigeons and without the money changers sitting at their counters, the business of the Temple would have quickly ground to a halt. So what was wrong with what they were doing? Those who asked this question, however, were looking at the Temple through human eyes and judging it by human standards. Jesus, on the other hand, was looking through prophetic eyes and so what he saw was very different from what the people saw..And it will always be like this for those who inhabit the world of faith rather than the world of religion. They really are two very different worlds and for anyone living in the world of religion – which was what went on in the Temple every day – those who live in the parallel world of faith will always seem to be suffering from some form of madness. And having spent forty years as a priest observing this I offer you two examples of it.
The first is widespread among people who think of themselves as good Catholics. In fact, it’s probably the single greatest obstacle to growth I have come across in the Church. And it’s the notion that the last thing you want to do is take all this stuff about God too seriously. Going to Mass on a Sunday is fine, but anything more than that... like personal prayer, learning more about your faith, getting involved in things...well, you don’t want to become a religious fanatic, do you? And yet, for those who with God’s help can make the transition from religion to faith and begin to know God rather than have just heard of him, a whole new world opens up, a world which once seemed like madness, but which is now seen for what it is, the only world worth living in.
And the second example is the use many people make of the phrase ‘living in the real world.’ It’s often used, especially by politicians, as a way of avoiding the teaching of Jesus and the challenge of the Gospel. They tend to smile at you in a knowing, patronising kind of way, the clear implication of the smile being that, while loving your enemies and living by the values of the kingdom rather than the market place is a wonderful ideal - and wouldn’t it be great if it were possible - well... you have to live in the real world. But what they and all like them have failed to understand is that what appears to be the real world is, in fact, an illusion which, sooner or later will slip through our fingers like sand. Because, as Paul tells us in today’s second reading, God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.
And so I leave you with this question. Which world do you live in, the world where those who think they are sane are really as mad as hatters, or the world where the apparently mad are, in reality, the only sane people around?
Persecution of Christians has taken many shapes and forms over the centuries. In the early years, many of our ancestors in the faith died violent deaths in the circuses of Rome. But persecution in our time has taken on a new form. It happens when society marginalizes us, dismisses us, laughs at us and treats us as if we were fools. And so we pray for the grace to confront this modern persecution with the same courage and determination as those before us did in their own time.....................Lord hear us
If we are to confront modern versions of age-old persecution, then we will often have to stand up against the crowd. Following the crowd has never been a good idea at any moment in history and it is not a good idea now. Crowds are rarely right. Following the current fashion has never been a reliable way of determining what is true. Truth, throughout history, has nearly always been in the minority, and we pray for the wisdom to remember this as we negotiate our way through life.................Lord hear us
If we are to be faithful to the truth, it will be necessary sometimes to take a stand or to protest against what is wrong. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to recognize when the time has come to do this and the courage to act when that time comes. And we pray for those who are already doing this, whether in society as a whole or within the Church itself. It can be a lonely and painful journey and we ask God to be with them..........................Lord hear us
It is easy sometimes to believe the voices which tell us that faith no longer has any meaning in the modern world, that no one believes all that stuff anymore and that those who do are little more than relics of a bye-gone age. But it is not true. The truths of faith are eternal truths, valid in every age, and as the world struggles with the great issues of our time, we pray that the Churches will learn to express these truths of faith in ways that the modern world can understand....................Lord hear us
There are other voices, too, which undermine faith, and many of these come from within the Churches themselves. They are the voices of pessimism, fear and despair which constantly tell us that nothing can be done, that the world is in a terrible state, that there is no point in trying new things because they will never work. And so we pray for the courage to resist this negative message and be always willing to explore new paths, even if others think we are mad.....................Lord hear u
It is perfectly possible to come to Mass each week and go away untouched and unaffected by what has happened. The bulletin is regularly filled with invitations to think about and respond to all manner of things. And yet the temptation is to tell ourselves that these things are for other people, not for us. This Wednesday, for example, there is a meeting of the Parish Pastoral Council which every person in the parish is entitled to attend and we pray that many of us will......................Lord hear us
People today often speak, sometimes with a sense of nostalgia, as if they have always been from the very beginning the basis of Christian morality. But, as I have explained before, these same Ten Commandments were virtually forgotten during the early centuries of the Christian Church. And the reason, expressed in the language of today’s liturgy, was simple. They were not mad enough. In fact, all you have to do is look at them to see that there’s nothing specifically Christian about them at all. They are no more than the basic requirements for any society which wants to keep order and avoid chaos. It was as important in the Old Testament as it is now not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to covet your neighbours ox or his donkey. To allow such things to go unchecked was to invite endless conflict within the group and, even today, these basic rules would be accepted by people who do not even believe in God. But Christianity goes much further than that. It invites people to embrace ways of thinking which have always been madness to many. It proclaims a God who dies on a cross. It invites us to love our enemies. It teaches us to give rather than receive. It rejects the way of money and power and tells the world that the future belongs to the poor and the meek. It even tells us that, if we want to save our lives, we must lose them, and if that isn’t madness, what is? The Christian faith goes completely against human logic. It turns human thinking upside down, and, until we have understood this, we have not understood anything about God. Put simply, it means that we cannot claim to be authentic Christians until, by the standards of the world around us, we are thought to be at least a little bit mad.
And we see this in today’s Gospel. The people in the Temple that day must have thought Jesus had really lost it. What he was doing made no sense to them. Without the men selling cattle and sheep and pigeons and without the money changers sitting at their counters, the business of the Temple would have quickly ground to a halt. So what was wrong with what they were doing? Those who asked this question, however, were looking at the Temple through human eyes and judging it by human standards. Jesus, on the other hand, was looking through prophetic eyes and so what he saw was very different from what the people saw..And it will always be like this for those who inhabit the world of faith rather than the world of religion. They really are two very different worlds and for anyone living in the world of religion – which was what went on in the Temple every day – those who live in the parallel world of faith will always seem to be suffering from some form of madness. And having spent forty years as a priest observing this I offer you two examples of it.
The first is widespread among people who think of themselves as good Catholics. In fact, it’s probably the single greatest obstacle to growth I have come across in the Church. And it’s the notion that the last thing you want to do is take all this stuff about God too seriously. Going to Mass on a Sunday is fine, but anything more than that... like personal prayer, learning more about your faith, getting involved in things...well, you don’t want to become a religious fanatic, do you? And yet, for those who with God’s help can make the transition from religion to faith and begin to know God rather than have just heard of him, a whole new world opens up, a world which once seemed like madness, but which is now seen for what it is, the only world worth living in.
And the second example is the use many people make of the phrase ‘living in the real world.’ It’s often used, especially by politicians, as a way of avoiding the teaching of Jesus and the challenge of the Gospel. They tend to smile at you in a knowing, patronising kind of way, the clear implication of the smile being that, while loving your enemies and living by the values of the kingdom rather than the market place is a wonderful ideal - and wouldn’t it be great if it were possible - well... you have to live in the real world. But what they and all like them have failed to understand is that what appears to be the real world is, in fact, an illusion which, sooner or later will slip through our fingers like sand. Because, as Paul tells us in today’s second reading, God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.
And so I leave you with this question. Which world do you live in, the world where those who think they are sane are really as mad as hatters, or the world where the apparently mad are, in reality, the only sane people around?
Persecution of Christians has taken many shapes and forms over the centuries. In the early years, many of our ancestors in the faith died violent deaths in the circuses of Rome. But persecution in our time has taken on a new form. It happens when society marginalizes us, dismisses us, laughs at us and treats us as if we were fools. And so we pray for the grace to confront this modern persecution with the same courage and determination as those before us did in their own time.....................Lord hear us
If we are to confront modern versions of age-old persecution, then we will often have to stand up against the crowd. Following the crowd has never been a good idea at any moment in history and it is not a good idea now. Crowds are rarely right. Following the current fashion has never been a reliable way of determining what is true. Truth, throughout history, has nearly always been in the minority, and we pray for the wisdom to remember this as we negotiate our way through life.................Lord hear us
If we are to be faithful to the truth, it will be necessary sometimes to take a stand or to protest against what is wrong. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to recognize when the time has come to do this and the courage to act when that time comes. And we pray for those who are already doing this, whether in society as a whole or within the Church itself. It can be a lonely and painful journey and we ask God to be with them..........................Lord hear us
It is easy sometimes to believe the voices which tell us that faith no longer has any meaning in the modern world, that no one believes all that stuff anymore and that those who do are little more than relics of a bye-gone age. But it is not true. The truths of faith are eternal truths, valid in every age, and as the world struggles with the great issues of our time, we pray that the Churches will learn to express these truths of faith in ways that the modern world can understand....................Lord hear us
There are other voices, too, which undermine faith, and many of these come from within the Churches themselves. They are the voices of pessimism, fear and despair which constantly tell us that nothing can be done, that the world is in a terrible state, that there is no point in trying new things because they will never work. And so we pray for the courage to resist this negative message and be always willing to explore new paths, even if others think we are mad.....................Lord hear u
It is perfectly possible to come to Mass each week and go away untouched and unaffected by what has happened. The bulletin is regularly filled with invitations to think about and respond to all manner of things. And yet the temptation is to tell ourselves that these things are for other people, not for us. This Wednesday, for example, there is a meeting of the Parish Pastoral Council which every person in the parish is entitled to attend and we pray that many of us will......................Lord hear us
Saturday, 7 March 2009
2nd Sunday of Lent B
Last week, as Lent began, I invited you to do what, in one form or another, I invite you to do every year at this time: to go into the desert with Jesus and confront the demons which live there. This year, however, the demons I had in mind were not our personal ones. Rather, they were our communal ones, the ones which have been running riot among us for so long and which have finally been shown for what they are in the financial crisis currently dominating our world. And I suggested to you that Lent, with its traditional emphasis on prayer, fasting and almsgiving, has within it the basic ingredients of an antidote to all that has gone wrong. Prayer challenges the shallow materialism that has led to so much superficiality in our society today. Fasting and self-denial, ways of acting not in tune with the mood of our time, call us beyond the ‘I must have it now’ culture which demands the instant satisfaction of every whim or desire and accounts to a large extent for the mountain of debt in our economy. And almsgiving, the fruit of both prayer and self-denial, which open us up to others and begins to address the totally unacceptable gap between those who have and those who have not in our world. And now, on this second Sunday, we have Abraham and Isaac along with the story of the Transfiguration. So, as we try to develop a consistent theme in our reflections throughout this season, what do these passages have to say to us and how, if at all, do they take us forward. Well, let’s look first at the Transfiguration.
What this story reminds of is that it is possible to glimpse, even if only momentarily, realities which, this side of eternity, normally remain hidden and unseen. In it, Peter, James and John are given an insight into the reality of who Jesus is. And while it is an awe-inspiring experience - ‘It is wonderful for us to be here’ – it is also unbearable, too much for them to take in – ‘When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces, overcome with fear.’ And, of course, this is true of all of us. The main reason why we cannot see God face-to-face at this moment in our journey into him is that we are not ready for it and could not bear it. It would literally blow our minds. We just do not have the capacity yet to contain such an experience. Many psychiatrists would tell us, in fact, that one explanation for what we call ‘madness’ is that, in people whom we think of as ‘mad’, some kind of protective filter in their minds fails to work and more of reality than we are designed to cope with pours into them. And yet, having said that, we all have Transfiguration experiences; moments when we are taken out of ourselves, - which is what exstacy means - and, whether it is in the face of the beauty of nature or a moment of profound happiness or whatever, we, too, glimpse something normally hidden from us. And I invite you today to remember such Transfigurations moments in your life and trust them. They are very very important.
But there is another way of entering into realities as yet unseen. And that is by the use of the imagination, some would say, God’s greatest gift to us. Every advance made by humanity, every step forward in the on-going story of the human race, begins in someone’s imagination. Only by first imagining something can we begin to make it a reality. The cars, buses and planes we travel in today only exist because someone, years ago, long before they came into existence, was able to imagine them. And even now, as we speak, there is someone somewhere imagining forms of travel, as yet unknown, which will, one day, take us out into the cosmos. And it is the same with the kingdom of God. If it is to become a reality among us, first we must imagine it. And that is what I invite you to do now. Imagine a world transfigured....So what would it be like?
Well, the first thing that would astonish and amaze us would be the presence of God everywhere. No matter where we turned, God would be there, lovingly working and labouring in every situation and in the life of every person. So imagine it. See it in your mind’s eye! A world where God is visible everywhere.....And as the truth of God’s presence everywhere filled us, the whole way we see the world would change. Suddenly, instead of judging others harshly, our hearts would be filled with the compassion of God for them. Instead of seeing people’s faults, we would see the goodness of God in them, no matter what they had done. And I invite you to imagine that too. ...And as we began to see the world for what it is, a God-filled place, the things in the world which are not of God would become more and more ugly and abhorrent to us until we could simple not bear them: the poverty, the hunger, the greed, the injustice, the war, the hatred and the violence, the shallowness of so much that we do. So imagine that too.... And as a result, our one overwhelming desire would be to to rid the world of such things which we would see as blots or blemishes on an otherwise God filled place. And imagine what the world could become then.
But, of course, imagining is one thing. Turning what we imagine into reality is something else entirely. And it is for this reason that we turn now to the first reading. Leaving aside any idea that the story of Abraham and Isaac is a real historical event, which it isn’t, what it teaches us is that, if what we imagine is ever to become a reality, like Abraham in the story, we, too, are going to have to sacrifice things which are dear to us. To put it bluntly: if the world is to become a more just place; if the hungry are to be fed; if the looming catastrophe of global warming, with all that it entails, especially for the poor, is to be avoided; we cannot go on living the way we do. And yet it is so hard for us to hear this. It seems too much. We don’t want to think about it. And yet, unless we can embrace it, all the imagining in the world will remain no more than that; imagining.
Which, of course, is where Lent comes in. It is only a beginning, but it points us in the right direction. So keep praying. Keeping fasting. Keep giving. And, above all, keep imagining.
BIDDING PRAYERS
One of the things which makes us different from the animals who share our planet with us is the ability we have, as humans, to imagine things. It is what has enabled us to make such rapid progress through history, moving from primitive ways of living to where we are today on a time-scale which, in evolutionary terms, is no more than a few years. And so we pray for the grace to use that same gift now to imagine new ways of living which address the great issues of our time................Lord hear us
In the Gospel reading today, Jesus led the disciples up a high mountain to pray. Throughout the Scriptures the mountains were places of prayer, not least because they enabled those who climbed them to see long distances. And so we pray for the grace to climb the mountain of prayer this Lent so that we, too, can become people with a broad vision, able to see beyond our noses and view the events of history through the eyes of the God who is at work deep within them...............Lord hear us
The liturgy calls Lent a great season of grace during which God teaches us to control our desires and so grow in freedom. We learn to live in this passing world with our hearts set on the things that really matter. And so we pray for this grace. We pray that, through our Lenten penance, we will grow in the freedom we need to reject the emptiness and superficiality of our consumer-driven society and set our hearts on what is really important..........Lord hear us
The second reading this week speaks of the generosity of God. Having given us his Son, Paul says, there is no way now that he would refuse to give anything he can give. And so we pray that our giving to SCIAF this Lent will be open and generous and that, like God, we will not refuse anything we can give, not only in terms of money, but in the way we reach out to all who are in need, whether here in Kilmarnock or in other parts of the world........Lord hear us
Whether we remember them or not, or even recognize them at the time for what they are, we all have transfiguration moments in our lives. This happens when the veil which covers our eyes and prevents us seeing the full truth about the world around us is removed and, for a brief moment, we glimpse the presence of God in all things. These are vital moments in our lives and we pray for the grace we need today to remember them and trust them...................Lord hear us
This week’s Kilmarnock Standard carries on its front page a story about the possible building of a new children’s unit here in New Farm Loch. Such a unit would house a small number of damaged and difficult young people, and many in the community are extremely unhappy, not just about the building of the unit, but about the lack of consultation over it. And so, as feelings run high, we ask God to guide us and enable us to respond, not out of fear or anger, but out of love...............Lord hear us
What this story reminds of is that it is possible to glimpse, even if only momentarily, realities which, this side of eternity, normally remain hidden and unseen. In it, Peter, James and John are given an insight into the reality of who Jesus is. And while it is an awe-inspiring experience - ‘It is wonderful for us to be here’ – it is also unbearable, too much for them to take in – ‘When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces, overcome with fear.’ And, of course, this is true of all of us. The main reason why we cannot see God face-to-face at this moment in our journey into him is that we are not ready for it and could not bear it. It would literally blow our minds. We just do not have the capacity yet to contain such an experience. Many psychiatrists would tell us, in fact, that one explanation for what we call ‘madness’ is that, in people whom we think of as ‘mad’, some kind of protective filter in their minds fails to work and more of reality than we are designed to cope with pours into them. And yet, having said that, we all have Transfiguration experiences; moments when we are taken out of ourselves, - which is what exstacy means - and, whether it is in the face of the beauty of nature or a moment of profound happiness or whatever, we, too, glimpse something normally hidden from us. And I invite you today to remember such Transfigurations moments in your life and trust them. They are very very important.
But there is another way of entering into realities as yet unseen. And that is by the use of the imagination, some would say, God’s greatest gift to us. Every advance made by humanity, every step forward in the on-going story of the human race, begins in someone’s imagination. Only by first imagining something can we begin to make it a reality. The cars, buses and planes we travel in today only exist because someone, years ago, long before they came into existence, was able to imagine them. And even now, as we speak, there is someone somewhere imagining forms of travel, as yet unknown, which will, one day, take us out into the cosmos. And it is the same with the kingdom of God. If it is to become a reality among us, first we must imagine it. And that is what I invite you to do now. Imagine a world transfigured....So what would it be like?
Well, the first thing that would astonish and amaze us would be the presence of God everywhere. No matter where we turned, God would be there, lovingly working and labouring in every situation and in the life of every person. So imagine it. See it in your mind’s eye! A world where God is visible everywhere.....And as the truth of God’s presence everywhere filled us, the whole way we see the world would change. Suddenly, instead of judging others harshly, our hearts would be filled with the compassion of God for them. Instead of seeing people’s faults, we would see the goodness of God in them, no matter what they had done. And I invite you to imagine that too. ...And as we began to see the world for what it is, a God-filled place, the things in the world which are not of God would become more and more ugly and abhorrent to us until we could simple not bear them: the poverty, the hunger, the greed, the injustice, the war, the hatred and the violence, the shallowness of so much that we do. So imagine that too.... And as a result, our one overwhelming desire would be to to rid the world of such things which we would see as blots or blemishes on an otherwise God filled place. And imagine what the world could become then.
But, of course, imagining is one thing. Turning what we imagine into reality is something else entirely. And it is for this reason that we turn now to the first reading. Leaving aside any idea that the story of Abraham and Isaac is a real historical event, which it isn’t, what it teaches us is that, if what we imagine is ever to become a reality, like Abraham in the story, we, too, are going to have to sacrifice things which are dear to us. To put it bluntly: if the world is to become a more just place; if the hungry are to be fed; if the looming catastrophe of global warming, with all that it entails, especially for the poor, is to be avoided; we cannot go on living the way we do. And yet it is so hard for us to hear this. It seems too much. We don’t want to think about it. And yet, unless we can embrace it, all the imagining in the world will remain no more than that; imagining.
Which, of course, is where Lent comes in. It is only a beginning, but it points us in the right direction. So keep praying. Keeping fasting. Keep giving. And, above all, keep imagining.
BIDDING PRAYERS
One of the things which makes us different from the animals who share our planet with us is the ability we have, as humans, to imagine things. It is what has enabled us to make such rapid progress through history, moving from primitive ways of living to where we are today on a time-scale which, in evolutionary terms, is no more than a few years. And so we pray for the grace to use that same gift now to imagine new ways of living which address the great issues of our time................Lord hear us
In the Gospel reading today, Jesus led the disciples up a high mountain to pray. Throughout the Scriptures the mountains were places of prayer, not least because they enabled those who climbed them to see long distances. And so we pray for the grace to climb the mountain of prayer this Lent so that we, too, can become people with a broad vision, able to see beyond our noses and view the events of history through the eyes of the God who is at work deep within them...............Lord hear us
The liturgy calls Lent a great season of grace during which God teaches us to control our desires and so grow in freedom. We learn to live in this passing world with our hearts set on the things that really matter. And so we pray for this grace. We pray that, through our Lenten penance, we will grow in the freedom we need to reject the emptiness and superficiality of our consumer-driven society and set our hearts on what is really important..........Lord hear us
The second reading this week speaks of the generosity of God. Having given us his Son, Paul says, there is no way now that he would refuse to give anything he can give. And so we pray that our giving to SCIAF this Lent will be open and generous and that, like God, we will not refuse anything we can give, not only in terms of money, but in the way we reach out to all who are in need, whether here in Kilmarnock or in other parts of the world........Lord hear us
Whether we remember them or not, or even recognize them at the time for what they are, we all have transfiguration moments in our lives. This happens when the veil which covers our eyes and prevents us seeing the full truth about the world around us is removed and, for a brief moment, we glimpse the presence of God in all things. These are vital moments in our lives and we pray for the grace we need today to remember them and trust them...................Lord hear us
This week’s Kilmarnock Standard carries on its front page a story about the possible building of a new children’s unit here in New Farm Loch. Such a unit would house a small number of damaged and difficult young people, and many in the community are extremely unhappy, not just about the building of the unit, but about the lack of consultation over it. And so, as feelings run high, we ask God to guide us and enable us to respond, not out of fear or anger, but out of love...............Lord hear us
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)