The thought that has developed into this week’s homily started two weeks ago, the day I went on holiday. In the second reading that morning, and again last Sunday, we heard St Paul speak of how, in any Christian community, there are a variety of gifts, but always the same Spirit, and all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord. He went on to explain that the particular way in which the Spirit is given to each person is for a good purpose. Called to be signs of the kingdom and make the teaching of Jesus a reality in society through all the circumstances of history, it would be no use if we were all the same. To build a house you need brick-layers electricians, plasterers, joiners, plumbers and many others, and to be a living sign of the Kingdom of God in the world, the vocation of every parish community, large or small, an even greater variety of gifts and talents are required. And as one of the bidding prayers said that day, it is utterly inconceivable that, having called us, God would not give us in abundance the gifts we need to fulfil our vocation. It’s a complete impossibility and a contradiction in terms. Everything we need is here. All the gifts we require are present in this community, and only when the gifts of every single person in the parish, without exception, are first recognized and then harnessed and directed towards the task on hand, will we be the people and the parish we are called to be. More than forty years ago the Second Vatican Council challenged the whole Church to understand this and respond to it for the sake of the men and women who share this moment in history with us, and it’s a challenge I have thought a lot about over the last two weeks.
Going away as I did, three months to the day after arriving in West Kilbride, the holiday has been an opportunity for me to reflect on my experience so far. And I have to say that I have felt optimistic and excited about it. Even before I came here I had heard very positive reports. Fr Willie McFadden, who supplied here at Easter, spoke to me several times about how impressed he had been by you. The Bishop, when he asked me to come, spoke of the parish in glowing terms, a message I heard from others, too, when the appointment became public. And my own experience since late October has more than confirmed this. Many expected that, after twenty four years in one parish, moving would be a difficult and even traumatic experience for me. But it hasn’t been that way at all. I came with a real sense that the move was God’s doing and nothing has happened since to change my mind. Above all, I have a deep sense that this is a parish filled with the gifts of the Spirit Paul spoke of and filled, too, with men and women who are ready to move on to the next stage of the Church’s great journey through history and begin to embrace and become the kind of Church envisaged by the Second Vatican Council and so much needed by people today. There is, of course, resistance to this too. How could it be any other way? But that doesn’t worry or discourage me. It has always been thus.
So why am I telling you all this today? Well, the first reason, obviously, is that a few days away provided me with an opportunity to look back over these three months and reflect on them. And the second is in this morning’s Gospel, where Jesus reminds us that no prophet is ever accepted in his own country. It’s the old ‘Ah kent his faither’ syndrome. The ‘Who does she think she is? She was in my class at school’ way of thinking. Rubbing shoulders with each other as we do, and sometimes not seeing eye-to-eye with each other on certain issues - as happens even in West Kilbride – it’s so easy to lose sight of the goodness in the people around us and not recognize the gifts God has given them. And that is why I am telling you today how wonderful you are and inviting you, in your turn, to look around and see it for yourselves in each other. There are prophets in this Church and I invite you to recognize them.
But if what I am saying is true. If you are so wonderful and if the parish is so full of potential, what does it all mean, where is it leading, and what implications does it have for us now? Well, the simple but very profound answer to these questions is that God is inviting us on a great journey into the very heart of who he himself is. He longs to share his life with us and through us reach out to the men and women who share this moment in history with us. But if I could identify one thing above all others at this point it lies in what St Paul says in today’s second reading. ‘When I was a child’ he says, ‘I used to talk like a child, and think like a child and argue like a child, but now that I am a man, all childish ways are put behind me.’ And in this we have the single biggest challenge to men and women of faith today. Quite simply, if we are to be of any use to the world at this time and have anything authentic and meaningful to say to it about God, then, like Paul, we must grow up and put childish ways behind us which means learning to let go of the often infantile ideas we have in our heads. We have to be willing to open up our minds to new ideas, new insights and new ways of thinking about the Scriptures, the Church, God, prayer and all manner of things connected with what it means to be a Catholic in the world of the 21st century. Failure to do so, clinging to inadequate, half-baked ideas which have neither changed nor developed since we were children, which the Church herself has long ago moved beyond and which we just keep repeating to ourselves regardless of whether we even believe them, is a complete failure to rise to the challenge of the time through which we are living. And what I have found so encouraging in the short time I have been here is the sense I have, rightly or wrongly, that there are many of you who are not only ready, but willing and able to engage with these sometimes difficult questions.
So am I right or am I wrong?
BIDDING PRAYERS
In the first reading this week God tells the prophet Jeremiah how he knew him before he was formed in his mother’s womb, how, before he came to birth, he had consecrated him and that he has appointed him a prophet to the nations. But every single word of this is true of each one of us here. God has called us, consecrated us and appointed us, too, as prophets to the age we live in. And so we pray for the grace and courage we need be everything we are called to be at this moment in history..........Lord hear us
If we are to be prophets to the men and women of the 21st century then our faith must be modern, up-to-date and relevant to the times we are living through. Our Catholicism must be a modern Catholicism which reflects where the Church is now and not where it was fifty years ago. It must be a Catholicism rooted in the Scriptures, in the Second Vatican Council and in modern Church documents. What used to be is not enough today and we pray for the grace to embrace the implications of this truth.........Lord hear us
If we are to be a modern Church then we must embrace the concept of Adult Education in faith. One of the reasons why so many people have given up on religion over the years is because the general level of education in faith after 1945 did not keep pace with the educational advances taking place in society at large, leaving many feeling that faith had no intellectual credibility in the modern world. And so we pray for the wisdom to move beyond this unfortunate stage in our history.............Lord hear us
The philosopher, Bertrand Russell, remarked that the irony of the modern world is that the stupid are filled with certainty and the intelligent are filled with uncertainty and doubt. Certainty where there is none is the refuge of those who cannot believe in a God is beyond our comprehension and who can never be fully described in human language. And so we pray for the grace to let go of old, false certainties from our childhood and, having let go of them, enter a place where God is able to astonish and surprise us.......Lord hear us
The people of Nazareth were unable to accept Jesus for the simple reason that they had known him all his life. He was one of them. His family still lived in the village. He had sat with them as they had listened the words of the ancient prophets. But now the one whom those prophets had spoken of was in their midst and they could not recognize him. And so we ask God to open our eyes to recognize the prophets among us here in this parish and rejoice, without envy or jealousy, in each other’s gifts.......Lord hear us
To work together as a parish community is not easy. We are called by God to be a prophetic people but that does not mean that we cease to be human. Within any Christian community there will always be tensions, disagreements and personality clashes. But love, St Paul tells us today, is always patient and kind. It does not take offence and is never resentful. It is always ready to excuse the faults of others and delights in the truth. And so we ask God to pour this kind of love into our parish..........Lord hear us
Saturday, 30 January 2010
Saturday, 16 January 2010
Second Sunday of the Year C
It would be an exaggeration to say that this morning’s Gospel passage changed my life, but it certainly played a huge part in shaping the direction it has taken over the last twenty-one years. It happened in March 1989 while I was in St Beuno’s, a Retreat House in North Wales, near Rhyl. I had gone there to do a three month course on the Spirituality of Saint Ignatius Loyola, at the heart of which lay what are known as ‘The Spiritual Exercises,’ which I experienced in the form of a thirty day silent retreat. The very idea of being silent for thirty days might seem a bit daunting, but, despite difficult and painful moments, it was a wonderful experience. Some people in the parish in Kilmarnock, mind you, could not get their heads round the idea that someone would willingly take on such a thing and clearly thought I had been sent their as a punishment for some misdemeanour or other. But there was no truth in this whatsoever. I had, in fact, been attracted to the idea since the early eighties but had done nothing about it believing that I could not possibly be away from the parish for three months. In 1988, however, I spent a week in hospital in Ayr with an eye problem. That was an crucial experience, teaching me, as it did, that the world and the parish could manage fine without me, and less than nine months later I was driving down the M6 towards Wales.
The first three weeks there were spent preparing for the retreat which began at the beginning of March and the experience I am speaking about today happened about half way through the month. It was a Sunday morning and for a whole day I had been praying the story of the Marriage Feast at Cana. Each day of the retreat contained five periods of prayer, each lasting an hour and spread evenly over a whole day, one of which, therefore, was during the night. The days, however, did not necessarily go from midnight to midnight but from the time you met your director one day to the time you met him the next, which was why, although it was the middle of the morning, I had already prayed the passage four times. And as I approached it for the fifth time, I had a strong feeling that there was nothing left in it for me; as if, like an old piece of chewing gum, I had chewed to the point where there was no taste left in it. I was tempted to move to another passage, but something in me resisted this and I went to the wedding for the fifth time. And as I did so, my mind drifted back to Kilmarnock. As I said earlier, it was a Sunday morning and I began to imagine the people in the parish gathering for the 11.00.a.m. Mass. Although only half way through the retreat, God had already done amazing things for me and as I imagined the scene in St Matthew’s I began to look forward to the time I would go back there and tell them all about the things God had shown me during those days. And as I did this, a sentence from the story which had meant nothing to me during the previous four hours leapt out of the page and, in a way only the Word of God can and which you will only understand if it has happened to you, grabbed hold of me and, for a second or two, simply overwhelmed. And it was the phrase, ‘Only those who drew the water knew.’ In that fleeting moment of insight and revelation I saw with utter clarity that it was not about going back to Kilmarnock and telling people about what God had done for me during the retreat. Only those who drew the water knew. This kind of knowledge is not passed from one person to another. It’s not possible. Each person has to draw the water themselves and from that day to this the focus of everything I’ve done as a priest has been to help people do that.
And so when I came home from Wales one of the first things we did was to move towards having in the parish what is known as a ‘Week of Directed Prayer.’ These were developed first in Dublin and in October of that year, 1989, we had our first Week of Prayer in St Matthew’s, to be followed by twenty others in each of the years since. These weeks have helped so many people draw that water themselves and come to know God in completely new ways and my hope is that they will do the same here in West Kilbride when, during this coming Lent, we have a Week of Prayer here in this parish. Many other parishes in the diocese also have them every year and this has been possible because one of the other things we did when I came back from Wales was train lay men and women to act as Prayer Guides during those weeks, an enterprise God has blessed beyond our wildest dreams. And then there are the Spiritual Exercises themselves. Over those twenty one years more than a hundred individuals have done them in parishes near here in a form which does not involve thirty days of silent retreat but which can be experienced at home in the midst of daily life over a period of six or seven months. Currently I am helping four people do this, one a priest of the diocese, two laymen, one from Cumnock, the other from Prestwick, and a woman from Fife. Several others are about to start, including someone from this parish, and my greatest wish and prayer is that many of you will do the same over the coming years. I know what these Exercises can do for people and want you to share in that experience.
A well-known Jesuit writer from Derry called William Johnston says in one of his books that the Church today must either give people mysticism or die. Religion is no longer enough in the twenty first century. To have heard of God, listened to sermons about God or read books about God is not enough. Another famous Jesuit, Karl Rahner, one of the great theologians of the twentieth century, often spoke of how only those with personal faith would survive in the Church of the third millennium, and I have no doubt whatsoever that he is right. God showed me that day in 1989 that only those who draw the water themselves know. And so, for as long as I am here, helping anyone who wants to draw that water will always be my first priority.
So how thirsty are you for it?
BIDDING PRAYERS
When the writer, William Johnston, says that the Church today must give people mysticism or die, he is not talking about something strange or exotic of the kind we hear about in the lives of some of the saints. The mysticism he speaks of is simplicity itself. It is the ability to look at everything around us and see beyond the surface of it to recognize the presence in it of the God who is closer to us than the air we breathe. And so we pray for that this parish will be filled with mystics of this kind..........Lord hear us
If we are to be men and women of faith in the twenty first century, it is not enough that we have heard of God, listened to sermons about God or read books about God. Such knowledge is by its very nature second hand and cannot sustain us at this moment in history or survive the pressures of our age. Only those with personal faith, predicted Karl Rahner, those who know God from their own experience, will survive in the Church of the third millennium and we pray for the grace to be such people.............Lord hear us
But it is not just for the sake of our own faith that we need to have personal experience of God at this time. Called to bearers of the Good News of God’s love to the world, we will only have credibility with people and be able to say something meaningful to them if they recognize in us something that is real. In other words, that, like Jesus himself, we speak with authority based on what we ourselves have seen and heard. And so we pray for the integrity and inner consistency we need to do this...........Lord hear us
Over the last twenty one years, Weeks of Directed Prayer have helped many people in parishes throughout our diocese come to deep personal faith rooted in their experience of God. Wherever these weeks have taken place, God has poured blessings into those who have taken part. And so, as we begin to move towards having one ourselves this Lent, we pray that some among us will feel a desire to take part and, with God’s help, overcome the natural human fears which can so easily get in the way............Lord hear us
In the second reading this week, St Paul speaks of how there are a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit. There are all sorts of service to be done but always to the same Lord working in different kinds of people. Called to be witnesses to the Gospel here in West Kilbride it is impossible for God not to have given us the gifts we need to fulfil this mission. But it can only happen when the gifts of every single person in the parish are put at the service of the Community. And so pray that this will happen..........Lord hear us
The News this week has been filled with reports of the earthquake in Haiti, often referred to as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. But what is not so widely reported is that the reason Haiti is so poor is that the developed countries like America and ourselves have, for political reasons, deliberately chosen to keep it poor. The fact that, while even the presidential palace collapsed, the American Embassy remained standing, speaks for itself. And so we pray for justice as well as aid in that part of the world............Lord hear us
The first three weeks there were spent preparing for the retreat which began at the beginning of March and the experience I am speaking about today happened about half way through the month. It was a Sunday morning and for a whole day I had been praying the story of the Marriage Feast at Cana. Each day of the retreat contained five periods of prayer, each lasting an hour and spread evenly over a whole day, one of which, therefore, was during the night. The days, however, did not necessarily go from midnight to midnight but from the time you met your director one day to the time you met him the next, which was why, although it was the middle of the morning, I had already prayed the passage four times. And as I approached it for the fifth time, I had a strong feeling that there was nothing left in it for me; as if, like an old piece of chewing gum, I had chewed to the point where there was no taste left in it. I was tempted to move to another passage, but something in me resisted this and I went to the wedding for the fifth time. And as I did so, my mind drifted back to Kilmarnock. As I said earlier, it was a Sunday morning and I began to imagine the people in the parish gathering for the 11.00.a.m. Mass. Although only half way through the retreat, God had already done amazing things for me and as I imagined the scene in St Matthew’s I began to look forward to the time I would go back there and tell them all about the things God had shown me during those days. And as I did this, a sentence from the story which had meant nothing to me during the previous four hours leapt out of the page and, in a way only the Word of God can and which you will only understand if it has happened to you, grabbed hold of me and, for a second or two, simply overwhelmed. And it was the phrase, ‘Only those who drew the water knew.’ In that fleeting moment of insight and revelation I saw with utter clarity that it was not about going back to Kilmarnock and telling people about what God had done for me during the retreat. Only those who drew the water knew. This kind of knowledge is not passed from one person to another. It’s not possible. Each person has to draw the water themselves and from that day to this the focus of everything I’ve done as a priest has been to help people do that.
And so when I came home from Wales one of the first things we did was to move towards having in the parish what is known as a ‘Week of Directed Prayer.’ These were developed first in Dublin and in October of that year, 1989, we had our first Week of Prayer in St Matthew’s, to be followed by twenty others in each of the years since. These weeks have helped so many people draw that water themselves and come to know God in completely new ways and my hope is that they will do the same here in West Kilbride when, during this coming Lent, we have a Week of Prayer here in this parish. Many other parishes in the diocese also have them every year and this has been possible because one of the other things we did when I came back from Wales was train lay men and women to act as Prayer Guides during those weeks, an enterprise God has blessed beyond our wildest dreams. And then there are the Spiritual Exercises themselves. Over those twenty one years more than a hundred individuals have done them in parishes near here in a form which does not involve thirty days of silent retreat but which can be experienced at home in the midst of daily life over a period of six or seven months. Currently I am helping four people do this, one a priest of the diocese, two laymen, one from Cumnock, the other from Prestwick, and a woman from Fife. Several others are about to start, including someone from this parish, and my greatest wish and prayer is that many of you will do the same over the coming years. I know what these Exercises can do for people and want you to share in that experience.
A well-known Jesuit writer from Derry called William Johnston says in one of his books that the Church today must either give people mysticism or die. Religion is no longer enough in the twenty first century. To have heard of God, listened to sermons about God or read books about God is not enough. Another famous Jesuit, Karl Rahner, one of the great theologians of the twentieth century, often spoke of how only those with personal faith would survive in the Church of the third millennium, and I have no doubt whatsoever that he is right. God showed me that day in 1989 that only those who draw the water themselves know. And so, for as long as I am here, helping anyone who wants to draw that water will always be my first priority.
So how thirsty are you for it?
BIDDING PRAYERS
When the writer, William Johnston, says that the Church today must give people mysticism or die, he is not talking about something strange or exotic of the kind we hear about in the lives of some of the saints. The mysticism he speaks of is simplicity itself. It is the ability to look at everything around us and see beyond the surface of it to recognize the presence in it of the God who is closer to us than the air we breathe. And so we pray for that this parish will be filled with mystics of this kind..........Lord hear us
If we are to be men and women of faith in the twenty first century, it is not enough that we have heard of God, listened to sermons about God or read books about God. Such knowledge is by its very nature second hand and cannot sustain us at this moment in history or survive the pressures of our age. Only those with personal faith, predicted Karl Rahner, those who know God from their own experience, will survive in the Church of the third millennium and we pray for the grace to be such people.............Lord hear us
But it is not just for the sake of our own faith that we need to have personal experience of God at this time. Called to bearers of the Good News of God’s love to the world, we will only have credibility with people and be able to say something meaningful to them if they recognize in us something that is real. In other words, that, like Jesus himself, we speak with authority based on what we ourselves have seen and heard. And so we pray for the integrity and inner consistency we need to do this...........Lord hear us
Over the last twenty one years, Weeks of Directed Prayer have helped many people in parishes throughout our diocese come to deep personal faith rooted in their experience of God. Wherever these weeks have taken place, God has poured blessings into those who have taken part. And so, as we begin to move towards having one ourselves this Lent, we pray that some among us will feel a desire to take part and, with God’s help, overcome the natural human fears which can so easily get in the way............Lord hear us
In the second reading this week, St Paul speaks of how there are a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit. There are all sorts of service to be done but always to the same Lord working in different kinds of people. Called to be witnesses to the Gospel here in West Kilbride it is impossible for God not to have given us the gifts we need to fulfil this mission. But it can only happen when the gifts of every single person in the parish are put at the service of the Community. And so pray that this will happen..........Lord hear us
The News this week has been filled with reports of the earthquake in Haiti, often referred to as the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. But what is not so widely reported is that the reason Haiti is so poor is that the developed countries like America and ourselves have, for political reasons, deliberately chosen to keep it poor. The fact that, while even the presidential palace collapsed, the American Embassy remained standing, speaks for itself. And so we pray for justice as well as aid in that part of the world............Lord hear us
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Baptism of Jesus
The longest journey in the world, they say, is from the head to the heart. In other words, it’s one thing to know something and another thing to make it part of who we are and live it out in our lives. And in the second reading this week we have an example of this which takes us to the heart of everything Jesus stands for. ‘The truth I have now come to realise’ says Peter to Cornelius and his household, ‘is that God does not have favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him,’ an idea which you might think would have been obvious to Peter. He had, after all, heard parable after parable on the subject, been the recipient of Jesus’ command to teach all nations and had been there that day in Jerusalem when people of different nationalities had all heard the message of the Gospel proclaimed in their own language. But it wasn’t that simple. Peter speaks today about a truth he has come to realise, but it took him a long time to realise it. The story of how he eventually did is told in chapter ten of the Acts of the Apostles from which today’s reading is taken, and I invite you to look at it more closely now .
The chapter begins with an account of how the Roman centurion, Cornelius, the first gentile convert to Christianity, first hears the call of God. In a vision he is told by God to send to Jaffa for a man called Peter who, without knowing Cornelius, is himself having a vision. In it he sees a large sheet being lowered from heaven filled with every kind of animal, reptile and bird, and is told by God to kill and eat. But Peter refuses. ‘Certainly not, Lord’ he says, in what is one of the funniest sentences in the Bible, ‘I have never eaten anything profane or unclean.’ God himself is telling Peter to do this and on the grounds that it’s against his religion the rock on which the Church is built refuses. And so, turning on its head everything Peter has been brought up to believe, God says, ‘What God has made clean, you have no right to call unclean,’ something so important that it is repeated three times. Some men then arrive to tell Peter about Cornelius’ vision, and so, putting the two stories together and understanding, at last, what his own vision is about, Peter goes to Cornelius and utters those famous words. ‘What I have now come to realise’ he says, ‘is that God does not have favourites and that anybody of any nationality is acceptable to him.’ It had been a struggle, but the penny had finally dropped. A truth Peter had heard many times had finally made the long journey from his head to his heart and something of immense importance for the future of the Church had been clearly established.
Except that it hadn’t. God is the God of every human being. That’s a fact. All barriers between peoples have ceased to exist in Christ. That is true. Humanity is one. Yes, it is. God is Father of every human being. There’s no doubt about that. Every person is, to use the words of today’s Gospel, God’s beloved son or daughter and his favour rests on each of us. That’s a given. The problem is that, even for those of us who believe these things, the journey from the head to the heart simply has not happened yet. The Jesuit writer, Anthony de Mello, describes in one of his books how, at a certain point on flights from America to Canada, to pilot announces to the passengers that they are now crossing the American-Canadian border. But if you look out, he says, there’s nothing there. National borders and barriers between people, he is reminding us, do not exist in reality. They only exist in our imagination. We have created them. There’s something deep within the human psyche that has always wanted to draw lines on maps and put up fences which keep people apart. The result has been centuries of warfare and violence, and if we want to understand why this is we might do well to remember that one of the devil’s oldest titles is ‘The Divider.’
But, you might think, we are not like that. We are not racists. These are things for politicians and others to deal with and we cannot really do very much about them. Well, I suspect Peter would have said something like that about himself until the moment God finally revealed to him something he had not seen before. And that is what I hope God will do for us here today in some small way. Because, especially having lived abroad for some years, I firmly believe that as individuals and as a nation we are all up to our eyes in racist attitudes of a very specific kind and that these aspects of our culture are to a very large extent the product of our imperial and colonial past. So what do I mean?
Well, there are, of course, parts of the world where racism is more obvious than it is in Britain. But that does not mean that it does not exist here, and all I ask you to do today is reflect for a moment on very simple things about our national attitude to people in other countries. And where better to start with the word itself, ‘foreign.’ There’s something about the way we even use the word which reveals our deep-rooted sense of superiority over others. Foreign jails are always ‘hell-holes’. Foreign policemen can never solve crimes the way ours do. British drug smugglers in foreign courts are always innocent and never get a fair trial. Foreign footballers always dive and feign injuries more than ours do. Water from foreign taps is not as clean as ours is and if we drink it and need a foreign doctor, he or she will not be up to the standard of doctors here. And, of course, because they don’t speak English, foreigners are stupid; so stupid, in fact, that even when we speak more slowly and shout at them, they still don’t understand us. Even our politicians, who should know better, speak about Europe as if it were a foreign place instead of being the continent we belong to, have always belonged to and, barring some catastrophic earthquake or continental drift of some kind, always will belong to.
This, of course, is not Apartheid in South Africa or the Deep South in 1960s America. But it’s a subtle and very British form of it and my prayer this weekend is that, like Peter, we will come to realise that it’s not of God.
BIDDING PRAYERS
Through our baptism, we are called to make present and real in the world the values of the Gospel. The teaching of Jesus does not belong on the pages of the New Testament but on our streets, in our lives and in the world. And so we pray, today, that this teaching which we have heard so often in our lives and are exposed to every Sunday when we come together, will make that great journey from our heads to our hearts and truly become part of who we are as individuals and as a parish community...............Lord hear us
In Jesus, we find a universality previously unknown in history. The great prophets of the Old Testament had glimpses of it. Kings and emperors of the ancient world longed to establish it through conquest. But in Jesus we find something radically new. In him there is no more distinction between peoples. Every person is a beloved child of the Father. There is only one God. He is the God of every human being. Old national religions are redundant. And so we pray for the grace to be signs of this for others........Lord hear us
Sadly, and often tragically, the world of our time is far from recognizing the new vision for humanity introduced into the world by Jesus. Nations continue to erect barriers between themselves and others. Countries continue to wrangle and fight over disputed territories or natural resources and racism, prejudice and bigotry run riot among us. And so we pray for the world at this time that God will raise up in it men and women with the vision and generosity of heart to lead us into a different future.......Lord hear us
One of the forces shaping our world today is globalisation. As businesses reach out to bigger and bigger markets in far-flung parts of the world, globalisation is, in its own way, breaking down barriers between nations. But very often this is at the expense of the poor as those with power exploit the powerless and the world becomes even more unjust. And so we pray that as the world struggles to deal with what was near financial meltdown it will not once again be the poor who pay the highest price..........Lord hear us
One of the consequences of globalisation is that, as the world becomes smaller, people from poorer countries want to leave their homes in the hope of building a better life for themselves and their families in other parts of the world. And so they become migrant workers, immigrants, and, in some cases, asylum seekers. Many of us, of course, are descended from people who did the same in their own day and we pray that the memory of that will enable us to be generous and welcoming now.........Lord hear us
Traditionally, racism and bigotry in Scotland are associated with two areas in particular. The first is religious bigotry which often attaches itself to football and continues to be a blot on the Scottish landscape. The second is our attitude to England and English people. We make jokes about it and tell ourselves that it is not real racism, but neither of these aspects of Scottish life should have any place in the hearts of people who claim to be followers of Jesus. And so we pray for the grace we need to see this........Lord hear us
The chapter begins with an account of how the Roman centurion, Cornelius, the first gentile convert to Christianity, first hears the call of God. In a vision he is told by God to send to Jaffa for a man called Peter who, without knowing Cornelius, is himself having a vision. In it he sees a large sheet being lowered from heaven filled with every kind of animal, reptile and bird, and is told by God to kill and eat. But Peter refuses. ‘Certainly not, Lord’ he says, in what is one of the funniest sentences in the Bible, ‘I have never eaten anything profane or unclean.’ God himself is telling Peter to do this and on the grounds that it’s against his religion the rock on which the Church is built refuses. And so, turning on its head everything Peter has been brought up to believe, God says, ‘What God has made clean, you have no right to call unclean,’ something so important that it is repeated three times. Some men then arrive to tell Peter about Cornelius’ vision, and so, putting the two stories together and understanding, at last, what his own vision is about, Peter goes to Cornelius and utters those famous words. ‘What I have now come to realise’ he says, ‘is that God does not have favourites and that anybody of any nationality is acceptable to him.’ It had been a struggle, but the penny had finally dropped. A truth Peter had heard many times had finally made the long journey from his head to his heart and something of immense importance for the future of the Church had been clearly established.
Except that it hadn’t. God is the God of every human being. That’s a fact. All barriers between peoples have ceased to exist in Christ. That is true. Humanity is one. Yes, it is. God is Father of every human being. There’s no doubt about that. Every person is, to use the words of today’s Gospel, God’s beloved son or daughter and his favour rests on each of us. That’s a given. The problem is that, even for those of us who believe these things, the journey from the head to the heart simply has not happened yet. The Jesuit writer, Anthony de Mello, describes in one of his books how, at a certain point on flights from America to Canada, to pilot announces to the passengers that they are now crossing the American-Canadian border. But if you look out, he says, there’s nothing there. National borders and barriers between people, he is reminding us, do not exist in reality. They only exist in our imagination. We have created them. There’s something deep within the human psyche that has always wanted to draw lines on maps and put up fences which keep people apart. The result has been centuries of warfare and violence, and if we want to understand why this is we might do well to remember that one of the devil’s oldest titles is ‘The Divider.’
But, you might think, we are not like that. We are not racists. These are things for politicians and others to deal with and we cannot really do very much about them. Well, I suspect Peter would have said something like that about himself until the moment God finally revealed to him something he had not seen before. And that is what I hope God will do for us here today in some small way. Because, especially having lived abroad for some years, I firmly believe that as individuals and as a nation we are all up to our eyes in racist attitudes of a very specific kind and that these aspects of our culture are to a very large extent the product of our imperial and colonial past. So what do I mean?
Well, there are, of course, parts of the world where racism is more obvious than it is in Britain. But that does not mean that it does not exist here, and all I ask you to do today is reflect for a moment on very simple things about our national attitude to people in other countries. And where better to start with the word itself, ‘foreign.’ There’s something about the way we even use the word which reveals our deep-rooted sense of superiority over others. Foreign jails are always ‘hell-holes’. Foreign policemen can never solve crimes the way ours do. British drug smugglers in foreign courts are always innocent and never get a fair trial. Foreign footballers always dive and feign injuries more than ours do. Water from foreign taps is not as clean as ours is and if we drink it and need a foreign doctor, he or she will not be up to the standard of doctors here. And, of course, because they don’t speak English, foreigners are stupid; so stupid, in fact, that even when we speak more slowly and shout at them, they still don’t understand us. Even our politicians, who should know better, speak about Europe as if it were a foreign place instead of being the continent we belong to, have always belonged to and, barring some catastrophic earthquake or continental drift of some kind, always will belong to.
This, of course, is not Apartheid in South Africa or the Deep South in 1960s America. But it’s a subtle and very British form of it and my prayer this weekend is that, like Peter, we will come to realise that it’s not of God.
BIDDING PRAYERS
Through our baptism, we are called to make present and real in the world the values of the Gospel. The teaching of Jesus does not belong on the pages of the New Testament but on our streets, in our lives and in the world. And so we pray, today, that this teaching which we have heard so often in our lives and are exposed to every Sunday when we come together, will make that great journey from our heads to our hearts and truly become part of who we are as individuals and as a parish community...............Lord hear us
In Jesus, we find a universality previously unknown in history. The great prophets of the Old Testament had glimpses of it. Kings and emperors of the ancient world longed to establish it through conquest. But in Jesus we find something radically new. In him there is no more distinction between peoples. Every person is a beloved child of the Father. There is only one God. He is the God of every human being. Old national religions are redundant. And so we pray for the grace to be signs of this for others........Lord hear us
Sadly, and often tragically, the world of our time is far from recognizing the new vision for humanity introduced into the world by Jesus. Nations continue to erect barriers between themselves and others. Countries continue to wrangle and fight over disputed territories or natural resources and racism, prejudice and bigotry run riot among us. And so we pray for the world at this time that God will raise up in it men and women with the vision and generosity of heart to lead us into a different future.......Lord hear us
One of the forces shaping our world today is globalisation. As businesses reach out to bigger and bigger markets in far-flung parts of the world, globalisation is, in its own way, breaking down barriers between nations. But very often this is at the expense of the poor as those with power exploit the powerless and the world becomes even more unjust. And so we pray that as the world struggles to deal with what was near financial meltdown it will not once again be the poor who pay the highest price..........Lord hear us
One of the consequences of globalisation is that, as the world becomes smaller, people from poorer countries want to leave their homes in the hope of building a better life for themselves and their families in other parts of the world. And so they become migrant workers, immigrants, and, in some cases, asylum seekers. Many of us, of course, are descended from people who did the same in their own day and we pray that the memory of that will enable us to be generous and welcoming now.........Lord hear us
Traditionally, racism and bigotry in Scotland are associated with two areas in particular. The first is religious bigotry which often attaches itself to football and continues to be a blot on the Scottish landscape. The second is our attitude to England and English people. We make jokes about it and tell ourselves that it is not real racism, but neither of these aspects of Scottish life should have any place in the hearts of people who claim to be followers of Jesus. And so we pray for the grace we need to see this........Lord hear us
Saturday, 2 January 2010
The Epiphany
One of these days I must tell you more about St Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish Basque who lived from 1491 to 1556 and founded the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits. His Spiritual Exercises have had a huge influence on me and on thousands of others and it’s his life that’s depicted on the ten paintings hung like the Stations of the Cross in the hall. I mention him today because one of his great insights was the importance of desire in our lives, and in particular, the importance of getting in touch with our deepest desires. These, he came to understand, are the key to discerning the movement of God in ourselves. They are the equivalent in our lives of the star which led the Wise Men to Jesus and if we follow them and go where they lead, they will lead us to Jesus too. And so I would like to look more closely at them today.
The first difficulty, of course, is that there are as many desires surface in us in the course of our lives as there were stars in the sky the day the Wise Men set out on their long journey, and the challenge, then as now, is to know which of them to follow. Not all our desires lead to God, just as not all the stars in the sky two thousand years ago led to Bethlehem. Those of you even remotely familiar with the theories of Freud will know about the ‘id’ the ‘ego’ and the ‘super-ego.’ The ‘id,’ according to Freud, is where our raw, primitive desires lie, desires which we quickly learn as children have to be controlled by the ‘ego’ if we are to fit into society and be acceptable to others. And so we know from childhood that we cannot live out all our desires, many of which are dangerously selfish, destructive and cruel. And, of course, one of the dangers connected with the great emphasis we put today on things like counselling and psychotherapy is that, in the hands of those who do not fully understand them or choose not to understand them, they can degenerate into an excuse for just doing whatever we feel like; the ‘if it feels good, do it’ approach to life which is widespread in our culture today. But these dark inclinations and desires lie deep within us and when, in certain individuals, they are let loose and not controlled, the results, as we read in the papers every day, are horrific. So, clearly, these are not the deep desires St Ignatius was talking about.
What he was talking about, however, was the importance of taking seriously what goes on inside ourselves. A brilliant psychologist before psychology as we know it was invented, he noticed during months of lying in bed with nothing much to do while recovering from a wound received in battle in Pamplona in Northern Spain, that among the myriad of thoughts, feelings, inclinations, ideas and desires which passed through his consciousness every day, there were particular ones to which, in time, he gave the name ‘spiritual’. They were gentle movements which did not force themselves on him. If he had been living a busy life at the time he may never even have noticed them. But with nothing to do but read a handful of books and reflect on the experience, he came to see that they were God moving in him and that if he followed them, as the Wise Men did the star, they would lead him to Jesus. And that central insight, undeveloped as it was at the time, became the basis of everything he did and wrote afterwards and which have affected the lives on so many people since.
But if Ignatius is right, if God is moving in every single one of us in the way he describes, then how do we recognize this movement? Not everything that sounds like God or quotes the Scriptures or uses pious words and religious vocabulary is of God. The world, as I said a couple of weeks ago, is full of nutters who are convinced God is speaking to them. Ignatius, of course, knew this and so his answer to our question is this: Search inside yourself for any movement or desire which builds up faith, hope and love and you can be sure that it is of God. And the reason is simple. Only God can stir these things. They are what are known in theology as the theological virtues and, provided they are genuine, and not mutton dressed up as lamb, or, to use Ignatius’s phrase, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, they can only come from God. And so I would like to offer you two things the presence of which would indicate the genuineness we speak of.
And the first is very simple. The movement or desire we experience will be entirely consistent with the Gospel and the teaching of Jesus. Among such movements would be a desire for justice, a sense of sadness in the face of injustice, poverty or hunger, and a longing to respond in some way. It could also be a sense of shame or regret about our past actions which have not been consistent with the Gospel or the teaching of Jesus, manifesting itself in things like a heightened awareness of past selfishness and a desire to be more generous to others than we have been. Or it could be a felt-sense of hope and trust in God, especially in situations where there was no obvious reason at a human level to feel such hope and trust and where, on other occasions, we might have been more inclined to pessimism or despair. And many others.
And the second indication that a movement is genuinely of God is that there is resistance to it in us. Discerning the movement of God in ourselves is not at all about self-indulgence or an excuse for doing what we like. Where there are things in us which are not of God, the movement we speak of may well be experienced as disturbance. It will not always be easy but will invite us to embrace truths about ourselves which are challenging and involve quite deep and radical conversion. It will involve doing in some way what the Wise Men did and setting out on a journey which will take us across new frontiers into places we have never been to before and where things are so different that, for a while, we may feel lost and disorientated. Our star, unlike the one in the story, does not shine in the sky. It shines deep within us. In some way it will involve returning home changed and by another route and, in the end, there is only one question:
Are we willing to follow it?
BIDDING PRAYERS
We are all created in the image and likeness of God and called to make him present in the world. The particular form this universal vocation takes in each person, however, is unique, and the clue to what it is lies within us. It is there that the Spirit of God moves, inviting, pointing, indicating, inspiring, encouraging. He never forces himself on us but nor does he ever give up or go away. And so we pray for the wisdom to recognize this movement of God in us and follow his star wherever it leads........................Lord hear us
The key to recognizing what the Spirit is calling us to lies deep within the many thoughts, desires, hopes, fears, dreams and longings which go on inside us every day. Not all of these come from God. In the course of any given day there are many other spirits at work in us which have nothing to do with God and everything to do with our own selfish selves. But it is possible to sift through our inner experiences and discern the deep movement of God in us and we ask him to teach us how................Lord hear us
Millions in the world today are searching for God without knowing exactly who or what they are searching for. But to search for the truth is to search for the God who is the source of all truth. To hunger and thirst for justice is to hunger and thirst for the God from whom true peace and true justice come. To search for something deeper than the externals of religion is to search for the God who cannot be contained within the narrow limits of such things. And so we pray for all searchers in the world today................Lord hear us
The wise men in today’s story came from the East, the home of all the great cultures and civilisations of the ancient world. People in places like China, India, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on were highly civilised and educated at a time when our ancestors were little more than savages. Even today, much of what passes for culture in the West is little more than materialism, consumerism and greed. And so we pray for a deep sense of respect for people from the East and a willingness to understand them......Lord hear us
Today’s feast means that, in Jesus, all national barriers between peoples have come to an end. Jesus is the saviour of every human being, revealing to the world a God for whom every man, woman or child is a beloved son or daughter, making us all brothers and sisters in Christ. Two thousand years later the world has still not understood this. We are still divided according to race and nationality. But we pray that, in the course of this millennium, the world will finally move beyond this way of thinking....Lord hear us
There can be few things worse than to come to the end of our lives and be filled with deep regrets about the way we have lived, haunted by bad decisions made at crucial moments, opportunities squandered and lost through laziness or fear, potential unfulfilled, dreams and ambitions which came to nothing because we kept putting them off until it was too late. And so we pray for the courage we need to grasp life now and to follow our star while there is still time..............Lord hear us
The first difficulty, of course, is that there are as many desires surface in us in the course of our lives as there were stars in the sky the day the Wise Men set out on their long journey, and the challenge, then as now, is to know which of them to follow. Not all our desires lead to God, just as not all the stars in the sky two thousand years ago led to Bethlehem. Those of you even remotely familiar with the theories of Freud will know about the ‘id’ the ‘ego’ and the ‘super-ego.’ The ‘id,’ according to Freud, is where our raw, primitive desires lie, desires which we quickly learn as children have to be controlled by the ‘ego’ if we are to fit into society and be acceptable to others. And so we know from childhood that we cannot live out all our desires, many of which are dangerously selfish, destructive and cruel. And, of course, one of the dangers connected with the great emphasis we put today on things like counselling and psychotherapy is that, in the hands of those who do not fully understand them or choose not to understand them, they can degenerate into an excuse for just doing whatever we feel like; the ‘if it feels good, do it’ approach to life which is widespread in our culture today. But these dark inclinations and desires lie deep within us and when, in certain individuals, they are let loose and not controlled, the results, as we read in the papers every day, are horrific. So, clearly, these are not the deep desires St Ignatius was talking about.
What he was talking about, however, was the importance of taking seriously what goes on inside ourselves. A brilliant psychologist before psychology as we know it was invented, he noticed during months of lying in bed with nothing much to do while recovering from a wound received in battle in Pamplona in Northern Spain, that among the myriad of thoughts, feelings, inclinations, ideas and desires which passed through his consciousness every day, there were particular ones to which, in time, he gave the name ‘spiritual’. They were gentle movements which did not force themselves on him. If he had been living a busy life at the time he may never even have noticed them. But with nothing to do but read a handful of books and reflect on the experience, he came to see that they were God moving in him and that if he followed them, as the Wise Men did the star, they would lead him to Jesus. And that central insight, undeveloped as it was at the time, became the basis of everything he did and wrote afterwards and which have affected the lives on so many people since.
But if Ignatius is right, if God is moving in every single one of us in the way he describes, then how do we recognize this movement? Not everything that sounds like God or quotes the Scriptures or uses pious words and religious vocabulary is of God. The world, as I said a couple of weeks ago, is full of nutters who are convinced God is speaking to them. Ignatius, of course, knew this and so his answer to our question is this: Search inside yourself for any movement or desire which builds up faith, hope and love and you can be sure that it is of God. And the reason is simple. Only God can stir these things. They are what are known in theology as the theological virtues and, provided they are genuine, and not mutton dressed up as lamb, or, to use Ignatius’s phrase, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, they can only come from God. And so I would like to offer you two things the presence of which would indicate the genuineness we speak of.
And the first is very simple. The movement or desire we experience will be entirely consistent with the Gospel and the teaching of Jesus. Among such movements would be a desire for justice, a sense of sadness in the face of injustice, poverty or hunger, and a longing to respond in some way. It could also be a sense of shame or regret about our past actions which have not been consistent with the Gospel or the teaching of Jesus, manifesting itself in things like a heightened awareness of past selfishness and a desire to be more generous to others than we have been. Or it could be a felt-sense of hope and trust in God, especially in situations where there was no obvious reason at a human level to feel such hope and trust and where, on other occasions, we might have been more inclined to pessimism or despair. And many others.
And the second indication that a movement is genuinely of God is that there is resistance to it in us. Discerning the movement of God in ourselves is not at all about self-indulgence or an excuse for doing what we like. Where there are things in us which are not of God, the movement we speak of may well be experienced as disturbance. It will not always be easy but will invite us to embrace truths about ourselves which are challenging and involve quite deep and radical conversion. It will involve doing in some way what the Wise Men did and setting out on a journey which will take us across new frontiers into places we have never been to before and where things are so different that, for a while, we may feel lost and disorientated. Our star, unlike the one in the story, does not shine in the sky. It shines deep within us. In some way it will involve returning home changed and by another route and, in the end, there is only one question:
Are we willing to follow it?
BIDDING PRAYERS
We are all created in the image and likeness of God and called to make him present in the world. The particular form this universal vocation takes in each person, however, is unique, and the clue to what it is lies within us. It is there that the Spirit of God moves, inviting, pointing, indicating, inspiring, encouraging. He never forces himself on us but nor does he ever give up or go away. And so we pray for the wisdom to recognize this movement of God in us and follow his star wherever it leads........................Lord hear us
The key to recognizing what the Spirit is calling us to lies deep within the many thoughts, desires, hopes, fears, dreams and longings which go on inside us every day. Not all of these come from God. In the course of any given day there are many other spirits at work in us which have nothing to do with God and everything to do with our own selfish selves. But it is possible to sift through our inner experiences and discern the deep movement of God in us and we ask him to teach us how................Lord hear us
Millions in the world today are searching for God without knowing exactly who or what they are searching for. But to search for the truth is to search for the God who is the source of all truth. To hunger and thirst for justice is to hunger and thirst for the God from whom true peace and true justice come. To search for something deeper than the externals of religion is to search for the God who cannot be contained within the narrow limits of such things. And so we pray for all searchers in the world today................Lord hear us
The wise men in today’s story came from the East, the home of all the great cultures and civilisations of the ancient world. People in places like China, India, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on were highly civilised and educated at a time when our ancestors were little more than savages. Even today, much of what passes for culture in the West is little more than materialism, consumerism and greed. And so we pray for a deep sense of respect for people from the East and a willingness to understand them......Lord hear us
Today’s feast means that, in Jesus, all national barriers between peoples have come to an end. Jesus is the saviour of every human being, revealing to the world a God for whom every man, woman or child is a beloved son or daughter, making us all brothers and sisters in Christ. Two thousand years later the world has still not understood this. We are still divided according to race and nationality. But we pray that, in the course of this millennium, the world will finally move beyond this way of thinking....Lord hear us
There can be few things worse than to come to the end of our lives and be filled with deep regrets about the way we have lived, haunted by bad decisions made at crucial moments, opportunities squandered and lost through laziness or fear, potential unfulfilled, dreams and ambitions which came to nothing because we kept putting them off until it was too late. And so we pray for the courage we need to grasp life now and to follow our star while there is still time..............Lord hear us
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