After his beatification last week in Birmingham by Pope Benedict, I would like to reflect this week on the life of Cardinal John Henry Newman. I wanted to do this anyway, and so when I turned to this week’s readings, I was hoping there would be something in them which would provide me with a starting point for our reflection. Well, I was not disappointed. There it was, right at the start of the second reading. “As a man dedicated to God” Paul writes to Timothy, “...fight the good fight of the faith and win for yourself the eternal life to which you were called when you made your profession and spoke up for the truth in front of many witnesses.” These words could have been written about Newman himself and so I would like to begin by reminding you of some simple facts about his life.
He was born in London in 1801 and at the age of fifteen, after a profound religious conversion experience, he entered Trinity College, Oxford. Fifteen might seem very young to have such an experience, but the evidence suggests that our most powerful experiences of God do come when we are young. My own, for example, was at the age of eleven. And so, in passing, I invite you to remember any important experiences of God you yourself may have had as a child. Six years after his, however, in 1822, Newman, having got his degree, was elected a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and in 1826, having been ordained an Anglican priest two years earlier, became a tutor there. As well as tutoring at the University, he worked, first as a curate and then as vicar of St Mary’s in Oxford, and when, after a dispute he resigned as a tutor in 1832, he continued his ministry at St Mary’s. His Sunday afternoon sermons were famous and students packed in to hear them. And in an age when our capacity to listen to anything serious for more than ten minutes has virtually disappeared, you might be interested to know that during those Anglican days Newmans’s sermons lasted about fifty minutes, although in later life, after he became a Catholic, he cut them down to thirty. My own, in case you are wondering, last between seven and eight.
And it was during this time in St Mary’s that Newman’s conversion to Catholicism began to happen. He was a leading figure in what was known as the Oxford Movement, and despite the fact that earlier in his life he had been very anti-catholic, his study of history and the Fathers of the early Church gradually led him to the conclusion that the one, true Church which he was searching for, existed, not in Anglicanism, but in Catholicism. And so in 1845 he was received into the Church and a year later was ordained a Catholic priest. His conversion caused great scandal at the time. His Anglican friends shunned him and yet he was never fully accepted by Catholics who were deeply suspicious of him. This led to years of painful isolation and it was only towards the end of his life that this particular suffering came to an end when Pope Leo XIII, in 1879, made him a Cardinal. He died in 1890 and we saw what happened last week in Birmingham. But what relevance does this man’s story have for us ? Well, I offer you just three of many reasons why he remains important today.
And the first is the importance of conscience, an idea very closely associated with Newman. He had a deep sense of the fact that God has a unique dream for each of us, that there was something God wanted him to do that nobody else could do, and he was prepared to do it. This meant being to true to himself, and he was prepared to go wherever that led him, even when it led him where, at another level of himself, he would rather not have gone. Becoming a Catholic brought great sadness into his life. It ended his academic career in Oxford and many of his friends, including one of his own sisters, never spoke to him again. But he did it because it was the right thing to do and in this he challenges each one of us to look at ourselves. Are we true to ourselves? Are we seeking to do that unique thing God wants us to do and which no one else can do, or do we take the easy road, pleasing others and allowing all kind of forces outside of ourselves, like the media, to determine what we do and what we think?
And the second thing is Newman’s commitment to truth itself. Truth for him, as it was for Pope Benedict last week, is not something relative. It is not simply what we think it is or want it to be. Truth is something outside of ourselves, something objective which we have to seek until we find it. And for that to be possible, we have to be willing to let go of anything and everything which is not the full truth. “To be human” he famously said “is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.” And so again he challenges us, inviting us to examine ourselves to see how willing we are to change, to embrace new ideas and new ways of thinking, to stop clinging to the things we have always thought, to move beyond our prejudices and open up our minds to the fullness of truth which comes from God.
And the third thing, closely linked to the first two, is the importance Newman put on education. In nineteenth century England, Catholics were not allowed to go to University. It was against the law. And so, after he became a Catholic, one of the things Newman did was found a Catholic University in Dublin which at that time was still part of Britain. He himself was one of the great academics of his day and when he joined a Church which many in England saw as a Church for Irish navvies, he was determined to do everything he could to raise the level of education in it. And in this he challenges us to look at how willing we are to engage with what is now known as life-long learning. How willing are we to make the effort, by reading or by attending appropriate courses, to learn more about the things of God so that we come to deeper personal faith and are better able to share that faith with others?
Blessed John Henry Newman challenges us at many levels. To be who we are and to be committed to the truth in all its fullness is not easy. But it’s what it means to be human.
BIDDING PRAYERS
Blessed John Henry Newman’s deep conviction that God has a unique dream for individual and that there was something God wanted him to do which no other person could do, was the basis of the spiritual journey he made throughout his life. As a result of this conviction, he had the courage to be who he was and follow his own conscience wherever it took him regardless of whether others approved or disapproved. And so, inspired by his example, we pray for the courage to do the same in our own lives.......Lord hear us
Cardinal Newman’s commitment to searching for the truth led him through many stages. For him, truth was more than what he himself happened to think it was at any given moment, and this conviction forced him to change the way he thought many times. But he was always willing to go where truth led him. And so we pray for something of that same willingness in ourselves so that we can go beyond our prejudices and not remain forever trapped in the limitations of our own narrow thinking........Lord hear us
This commitment to the truth led John Henry Newman to see the importance of life-long education. During his lifetime, most Catholics in Britain were poor and uneducated and he saw clearly the need to do something about this. In our own time, we have advantages people then could not have imagined, but we pray for the grace never to lose sight of the importance of education so that, regardless of age or intellectual ability, we are always open to the possibility of learning new things..........Lord hear us
Although Newman was one of the great writers and intellectuals of his day, after he became a Catholic he spent his life working as a priest in a very poor area of Birmingham. So great was his commitment to the poor during those years that, when he died, more than thirty thousand people lined the local streets for his funeral. And so, remembering the story of the poor man outside the rich man’s gate, we pray that Catholics in Britain today will always stand firmly on the side of the poorest in our society.....Lord hear us
The story Jesus tells today has, of course, world-wide implications. In terms of this week’s readings, we ourselves are the rich man dressed in purple and fine linen and feasting magnificently every day. We are the ones whom the prophet Amos speaks of: the people lying on ivory beds, sprawling on divans and dining on lambs from the flock and stall-fattened veal while others go hungry. And so we ask God to stir in us today a deep sense of this sinful and unjust situation which we are all part of......Lord hear us
In this week’s second reading, St Paul reminds the young Timothy of the day when he made his profession of faith and spoke up for the truth in the presence of many witnesses. He urges him to be faithful to this commitment and to fight the good fight of the faith in Cyprus where Paul has left him in charge of the community there. And so we pray for that same grace for ourselves: to be faithful to our own baptism and confirmation and to be witnesses to the Gospel, not in Cyprus, but here in West Kilbride.....Lord hear us
Saturday, 25 September 2010
Saturday, 11 September 2010
24th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR
I decided this week to have another look at a book a friend gave me over twenty years ago. It was first published in 1975, and in it the author, who when he wrote it, worked in Beirut, explores how the parables of Jesus would have sounded to the people who first heard them two thousand years ago. And he does this by taking Jesus’ stories into isolated peasant communities in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq to see how the people there, whose culture and attitudes had changed little since New Testament times, reacted to them. I was particularly interested, of course, in the Parable of the Prodigal Son and want to share with you how the book helped me see more clearly where the moment of conversion for the younger son lies.
The obvious place, of course, is in the pigsty. It was there, after all that the young man, according to Luke, ‘came to his senses.’ And this is certainly an important moment in the drama. Having asked his father to divide up his property while he was still alive, he had done what was unthinkable to the people of those days. He had then compounded this lack of respect for the traditions of his family by selling off his share of the land quickly, within a few days, presumably at a reduced price, before leaving. But what would have really shocked the people who first heard the story was the fact that, by squandering the money, he allowed the family inheritance to fall into the hands of gentiles. This was the last straw plus one. Any Jew in Jesus’ day who even sold a piece of land to a gentile would have instigated a ceremony called the ‘Kezazah’ by which a pot was publicly smashed, symbolizing that someone had, in effect, ceased to exist. It was the ultimate disgrace...Except that it got even worse.
If you had been a story-teller in Jesus’ day trying to describe the lowest point a Jew could sink to, you could not have bettered this story. It would be working in a pigsty owned by a gentile. Jews not only did not eat pigs, they would not even touch them, let alone eat their food. And yet this is what the prodigal son finishes up doing. The polite way to get rid of a worker in Middle Eastern society in Jesus’ day – something everyone would need to do during a time of famine – was to ask them to do something they could not possibly agree to. Except that the younger son, so desperate was his position, did it. He was prepared to do what no self-respecting Jew would ever do, touch pigs and eat pigs’ food. If there were ever a personal gutter lower than which it was not possible to sink, this was it, and there, Luke tells us, the younger son came to his senses. But despite everything, this was still not the moment of conversion for him, as the speech he prepares for his father clearly indicates. “Father” he decides to say, “I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called you son. Treat me as one of your paid servants,” words, you might think, of one who has learnt his lesson. Except that it’s not quite what it appears.
In Jesus day, you see, there were three types of people worked on an estate. There were slaves who were part of the estate, lower class slaves who were not, and paid servants. The paid servant did not belong to the estate – he was a casual labourer – but the crucial thing about him was that, unlike the slaves, he was free. Some paid servants were quite skilled and so were considered the equals of those they worked for. They could earn money and when the people in those remote communities of the Middle East heard Jesus’ parable for the first time they saw quite clearly what the younger son was up to. He wanted to work his way out of the mess he was in and eventually pay his father back. Like his elder brother who had ‘slaved for his father all these years’ he had not yet understood the nature of his father’s love. Each in his own way represents the way of religion rather than faith. The religious person, like the Pharisees two weeks ago, thinks he can save himself by performing good works and religious actions. The person of faith is one who has met the God of today’s story and it’s when the younger son does this – not in the pigsty – that the real moment of conversion comes. It’s only when his father interrupts his speech calls for the best robe, puts a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet that he makes that greatest of all spiritual journeys. He leaves the limited, narrow world of religion, where his brother, with all his rule keeping, still lives, and enters the mind-blowing world of faith.
But there’s one other key thing in the story: the fattened calf. What the younger son had done had shocked the whole village. The ‘Kezazah’ involved everyone. There was no way back for the prodigal son in this community, which was why the father killed a calf. If it had just been the family and a few friends the goat the elder son speaks would have been big enough. But the killing of a calf means that the whole village is invited to the celebration. They are all called to forgive the son the way his father does and this is the real point of the story. The father is God. The villagers are ourselves and quite simply we are called to love the way the father does. Just as the father drew the whole village into the circle of his love, so God calls us into the circle of his love. The prodigal son comes in all shapes and forms. He is the world. He is found in every family and every town. He is, if you like, the personification of human weakness in all its shapes and forms. He is, in the end, each one of us and until we learn to love and forgive the way we have been loved and forgiven we have understood nothing about God
I suggested last week that the Gospel, when lived, is the most powerful revolutionary force in history. Like Paul’s invitation to Philemon to take Onesimus back as a brother rather than a slave, the teaching of Jesus has locked away within itself the power to change the world. And even if everything else Jesus ever said had somehow been lost to history, in this single story the world would have everything it needs to know about God.
So take time to ponder it deeply this weekend.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The parable of the Prodigal Son can be seen as a story about the whole of humanity. Like the people in the first reading this week, humanity in every age is quick to leave the path marked out for it by God and worship false gods. The calf of molten metal which we read about in the first reading takes different shapes and forms at different moments in history and we pray for the wisdom and insight we need to recognize the false gods which lie at the heart of our modern consumer-driven society…Lord hear us
In that same first reading, Moses pleaded with God and God relented. He did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. This story reflects a very early, even primitive, understanding of who God is and yet already the writer has begun to have some sense of God’s love for his people. And so we pray that the men and women of our time will move beyond the limited and inadequate understandings of God which currently dominate our world and learn who God really is…....Lord hear us
Just as the father in the story told by Jesus draws the people of the village into his love and invites them to be part of it, so God draws us into his love and invites us to love the world the way he loves it. And so we pray for this grace. We pray especially that God will enable us to move beyond our natural human tendency to judge others and hold their sins and mistakes against them. We ask him to teach us instead to forgive others and reach out to them in love no matter what they may have done............Lord hear us
The Prodigal Son – or in some cases the Prodigal Daughter – is alive, if not well, in many families. Many of us will know this from personal experience. And so we pray for families, especially here in West Kilbride, where there has been estrangement. We pray that, with God’s help, we may be able to reach out across the barriers of pain and resentment and be reconciled with those from whom we have become separated but whom, deep down, we continue to love as we always have done...........Lord hear us
The Prodigal Son represents, in many ways, young people in every age. The process by which we cease to be children and move through adolescence into adulthood can be long, painful and difficult. At no other time in our lives is the old saying that we always hurt the ones we love more true. At times the gap between love and hate can be very narrow as we struggle with the strong emotions involved. And so we pray for all involved in this struggle, both parents and young people……...Lord hear us
In the second reading today, St Paul speaks of how he himself is the greatest of sinners. Writing to Timothy, a much younger man than himself, he recalls his earlier life: how he was a blasphemer and how he did everything he could to destroy the Church. And so we pray that, during Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain this week, the Church in our country will be more inclined to acknowledge openly its own past sins, especially in the area of sexual abuse, than to condemn the sins of others........ Lord hear us
The obvious place, of course, is in the pigsty. It was there, after all that the young man, according to Luke, ‘came to his senses.’ And this is certainly an important moment in the drama. Having asked his father to divide up his property while he was still alive, he had done what was unthinkable to the people of those days. He had then compounded this lack of respect for the traditions of his family by selling off his share of the land quickly, within a few days, presumably at a reduced price, before leaving. But what would have really shocked the people who first heard the story was the fact that, by squandering the money, he allowed the family inheritance to fall into the hands of gentiles. This was the last straw plus one. Any Jew in Jesus’ day who even sold a piece of land to a gentile would have instigated a ceremony called the ‘Kezazah’ by which a pot was publicly smashed, symbolizing that someone had, in effect, ceased to exist. It was the ultimate disgrace...Except that it got even worse.
If you had been a story-teller in Jesus’ day trying to describe the lowest point a Jew could sink to, you could not have bettered this story. It would be working in a pigsty owned by a gentile. Jews not only did not eat pigs, they would not even touch them, let alone eat their food. And yet this is what the prodigal son finishes up doing. The polite way to get rid of a worker in Middle Eastern society in Jesus’ day – something everyone would need to do during a time of famine – was to ask them to do something they could not possibly agree to. Except that the younger son, so desperate was his position, did it. He was prepared to do what no self-respecting Jew would ever do, touch pigs and eat pigs’ food. If there were ever a personal gutter lower than which it was not possible to sink, this was it, and there, Luke tells us, the younger son came to his senses. But despite everything, this was still not the moment of conversion for him, as the speech he prepares for his father clearly indicates. “Father” he decides to say, “I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called you son. Treat me as one of your paid servants,” words, you might think, of one who has learnt his lesson. Except that it’s not quite what it appears.
In Jesus day, you see, there were three types of people worked on an estate. There were slaves who were part of the estate, lower class slaves who were not, and paid servants. The paid servant did not belong to the estate – he was a casual labourer – but the crucial thing about him was that, unlike the slaves, he was free. Some paid servants were quite skilled and so were considered the equals of those they worked for. They could earn money and when the people in those remote communities of the Middle East heard Jesus’ parable for the first time they saw quite clearly what the younger son was up to. He wanted to work his way out of the mess he was in and eventually pay his father back. Like his elder brother who had ‘slaved for his father all these years’ he had not yet understood the nature of his father’s love. Each in his own way represents the way of religion rather than faith. The religious person, like the Pharisees two weeks ago, thinks he can save himself by performing good works and religious actions. The person of faith is one who has met the God of today’s story and it’s when the younger son does this – not in the pigsty – that the real moment of conversion comes. It’s only when his father interrupts his speech calls for the best robe, puts a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet that he makes that greatest of all spiritual journeys. He leaves the limited, narrow world of religion, where his brother, with all his rule keeping, still lives, and enters the mind-blowing world of faith.
But there’s one other key thing in the story: the fattened calf. What the younger son had done had shocked the whole village. The ‘Kezazah’ involved everyone. There was no way back for the prodigal son in this community, which was why the father killed a calf. If it had just been the family and a few friends the goat the elder son speaks would have been big enough. But the killing of a calf means that the whole village is invited to the celebration. They are all called to forgive the son the way his father does and this is the real point of the story. The father is God. The villagers are ourselves and quite simply we are called to love the way the father does. Just as the father drew the whole village into the circle of his love, so God calls us into the circle of his love. The prodigal son comes in all shapes and forms. He is the world. He is found in every family and every town. He is, if you like, the personification of human weakness in all its shapes and forms. He is, in the end, each one of us and until we learn to love and forgive the way we have been loved and forgiven we have understood nothing about God
I suggested last week that the Gospel, when lived, is the most powerful revolutionary force in history. Like Paul’s invitation to Philemon to take Onesimus back as a brother rather than a slave, the teaching of Jesus has locked away within itself the power to change the world. And even if everything else Jesus ever said had somehow been lost to history, in this single story the world would have everything it needs to know about God.
So take time to ponder it deeply this weekend.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The parable of the Prodigal Son can be seen as a story about the whole of humanity. Like the people in the first reading this week, humanity in every age is quick to leave the path marked out for it by God and worship false gods. The calf of molten metal which we read about in the first reading takes different shapes and forms at different moments in history and we pray for the wisdom and insight we need to recognize the false gods which lie at the heart of our modern consumer-driven society…Lord hear us
In that same first reading, Moses pleaded with God and God relented. He did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened. This story reflects a very early, even primitive, understanding of who God is and yet already the writer has begun to have some sense of God’s love for his people. And so we pray that the men and women of our time will move beyond the limited and inadequate understandings of God which currently dominate our world and learn who God really is…....Lord hear us
Just as the father in the story told by Jesus draws the people of the village into his love and invites them to be part of it, so God draws us into his love and invites us to love the world the way he loves it. And so we pray for this grace. We pray especially that God will enable us to move beyond our natural human tendency to judge others and hold their sins and mistakes against them. We ask him to teach us instead to forgive others and reach out to them in love no matter what they may have done............Lord hear us
The Prodigal Son – or in some cases the Prodigal Daughter – is alive, if not well, in many families. Many of us will know this from personal experience. And so we pray for families, especially here in West Kilbride, where there has been estrangement. We pray that, with God’s help, we may be able to reach out across the barriers of pain and resentment and be reconciled with those from whom we have become separated but whom, deep down, we continue to love as we always have done...........Lord hear us
The Prodigal Son represents, in many ways, young people in every age. The process by which we cease to be children and move through adolescence into adulthood can be long, painful and difficult. At no other time in our lives is the old saying that we always hurt the ones we love more true. At times the gap between love and hate can be very narrow as we struggle with the strong emotions involved. And so we pray for all involved in this struggle, both parents and young people……...Lord hear us
In the second reading today, St Paul speaks of how he himself is the greatest of sinners. Writing to Timothy, a much younger man than himself, he recalls his earlier life: how he was a blasphemer and how he did everything he could to destroy the Church. And so we pray that, during Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain this week, the Church in our country will be more inclined to acknowledge openly its own past sins, especially in the area of sexual abuse, than to condemn the sins of others........ Lord hear us
Saturday, 4 September 2010
23rd Sunday of the Year C.
For the last couple of weeks, both in the Sunday readings and in the weekday readings – which, of course, not all of us hear - the liturgy has been dealing with why the world finds the teaching of Jesus so difficult. It began a fortnight ago when we heard him tell us that we should enter by the narrow gate, adding, rather alarmingly, that many will try to enter and will not succeed. And had we used Matthew’s version of the same incident, he would have gone even further, telling us that the road that leads to perdition is wide and spacious and many take it, whereas it’s a narrow gate and a hard road which leads to life and only a few find it. And as if that were not enough, we hear Jesus say in today’s Gospel that if a person comes to him without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes and his own life too, he or she is not fit to be his disciple. By anyone’s standards these are difficult sayings. They are what we would call today counter-intuitive in the sense that they are the very opposite of what we would expect. We are told that only God can offer us the lasting happiness we all long for. But talk of entering by a narrow gate, or travelling along a hard road or, as we heard today, taking up our cross, does not seem a particularly promising way of getting there. No wonder the author of the book of Wisdom muses this morning on how difficult it is to understand the mind of God or make sense of his ways.
And for the last week and a half, St Paul has been speaking about this very thing as those able to attend weekday Mass have been making their way through the first letter to the Corinthians. Paul had arrived in Corinth from Athens in 50AD just after one of the most painful experiences of his entire life. Athens was the most famous seats of learning in the ancient world, and at the Areopagus there – where the learned men of the city met – Paul had tried to explain the gospel in the language of philosophy. And they had laughed at him, something which, for Paul, was far worse than all the stones thrown at him in many of the places he visited. And so, he reminds the people of Corinth in his letter, written from Ephesus in 56AD, that when he had come among them six years earlier it had not been with any show of oratory or philosophy. Still hurting from his experience in Athens, he had come among them in fear and trembling relying completely on the power of the Spirit. Ever since then, he writes, he has been teaching, not in the way philosophy is taught but in the way the Spirit teaches. Anyone, he says, who thinks of himself as wise must learn to be a fool before he can be really wise, because the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. And this, in the end, is why, after two thousand years, the world has still not taken on board the teaching of Jesus.
I’ll never forget the day, nearly fifty years ago, when, as a teenager, I was allowed to drive a tractor. It was my first experience at the wheel of a vehicle which was actually moving and I was absolutely thrilled by it. We were potato picking at the time, which meant that the tractor had a trailer attached, and I always remember the mess I got into trying to reverse it. I don’t know if you have ever tried it, but what I learned the hard way was that, in that situation, right is left and left is right. If you want the trailer to go to the right you turn the steering wheel to the left and vice-versa. And what I invite you to understand today is that the Kingdom of God is like that. Everything is the other way round from what we would expect. Up is down and down is up. In is out and out is in. If you want to save your life you must lose it. In the world, the powerful lord it over the weak. In the kingdom, the powerful become servants of all. It the world everything has to be earned and paid for. In the kingdom - as the Pharisees could not begin to understand in last week’s Gospel - nothing is earned or paid for. Instead, it is freely given to all who are willing to accept it And instead of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth people love their enemies and do good to those who hate them. To enter the kingdom is like reversing a tractor with a trailer and there could be no better example of this than in today’s second reading from the letter to Philemon.
The background to this extremely short letter is this. Philemon, a rich man in whose house a small Christian community meets, has a slave called Onesimus who has run away and is with Paul. The penalty for doing what Onesimus has done is death, but Paul writes to Philemon, either from Ephesus or Rome – it is not entirely clear which - and asks Philemon to take Onesimus back, not, as we heard, as a slave, but as a dear brother. And the reason is simple. Christianity has turned the values of the world on their head. The law says Onesimus should die. The gospel says something else which made no sense in worldly terms and which, if it had been widely applied would have shaken the very foundations of the ancient world whose whole economic system was built on slavery. And in this we see the full power of Christianity. It has within itself the power to change everything. It is without doubt the most powerful revolutionary force in history, and it is because at some level we understand this that we have sanitized it and by reducing it to a series of intellectual beliefs and external religious actions have stripped it of its power to change the world.
And so we are all the man in the Gospel today who started to build a tower and could not finish it. Called at baptism to be signs of the kingdom in the world, we – and by that I mean the whole Church down through the ages - are the ones who have begun to build and, frightened by what carrying on with the building might involve, have left the job unfinished. And it will remain unfinished until we learn to speak the language of the kingdom. No wonder GK Chesterton said that the trouble with Christianity is that it has never been tried.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The world today faces many problems to which politicians, economists, diplomats, Aid Agencies and many others struggle to find solutions. But no matter what they do, little seems to change. The poor continue to be poor and the rich grow richer. Conflicts go unresolved. We show no real sign of confronting the problems of the environment. And so we pray that this world of ours will come to see that the beginning of a solution to our greatest problems lies in the teaching of Jesus.............Lord hear us
This week, one more attempt has been made to resolves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of the most difficult and intractable of all the historic conflicts around the world. People on both sides are filled with an anger and bitterness which flows outwards and not only engulfs the surrounding area, but poisons international relationships everywhere. And so we pray that the people of the Middle East will move beyond an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and, through a miracle of grace, learn to love their enemies.........Lord hear us
It is unreasonable of us to expect people in the Middle East to put the past behind them and reach out to those who have done them harm if we are not willing to do the same in our own lives. As Christians, we are called to be living signs of the kingdom and show the world that the teaching of Jesus is more than a good idea and can actually be put into practice. And so we ask God to help us reach out to those in our own lives from whom we may be estranged in any way, especially within our families.....Lord hear us
Our society today is deeply materialistic and slowly but surely we have swallowed the completely fallacious notion that material things on their own have the power to make us happy. Material things are profoundly good, gifts from a God who pours goodness into the world, but on their own they can never satisfy us. We are more than matter. We are also Spirit. We do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God and we pray that the world will come to see this........Lord hear us
Slavery may have been officially abolished two hundred years ago, but for millions of our fellow human beings slavery is still very much a reality in the world today. Millions in the developing world are virtual slaves to their employers. They are paid a pittance, have no rights and are at the mercy of people who, on the basis of slave labour, grow rich by selling perhaps even the very clothes some of us may be wearing here at Mass today. This, too, is abuse and we ask God to stir our consciences about it.......Lord hear us
One of the fastest growing industries of our day is human trafficking. All over the world human beings, mostly women and children, are being bought and sold to satisfy the sexual desires of others. And this is happening, not only in far away places, but here in Scotland right under our noses. Those caught up in it, often from poorer parts of the world, are living in conditions far worse than those experienced by many a slave in biblical times and we ask God to stir our national conscience about this too..........Lord hear us
And for the last week and a half, St Paul has been speaking about this very thing as those able to attend weekday Mass have been making their way through the first letter to the Corinthians. Paul had arrived in Corinth from Athens in 50AD just after one of the most painful experiences of his entire life. Athens was the most famous seats of learning in the ancient world, and at the Areopagus there – where the learned men of the city met – Paul had tried to explain the gospel in the language of philosophy. And they had laughed at him, something which, for Paul, was far worse than all the stones thrown at him in many of the places he visited. And so, he reminds the people of Corinth in his letter, written from Ephesus in 56AD, that when he had come among them six years earlier it had not been with any show of oratory or philosophy. Still hurting from his experience in Athens, he had come among them in fear and trembling relying completely on the power of the Spirit. Ever since then, he writes, he has been teaching, not in the way philosophy is taught but in the way the Spirit teaches. Anyone, he says, who thinks of himself as wise must learn to be a fool before he can be really wise, because the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. And this, in the end, is why, after two thousand years, the world has still not taken on board the teaching of Jesus.
I’ll never forget the day, nearly fifty years ago, when, as a teenager, I was allowed to drive a tractor. It was my first experience at the wheel of a vehicle which was actually moving and I was absolutely thrilled by it. We were potato picking at the time, which meant that the tractor had a trailer attached, and I always remember the mess I got into trying to reverse it. I don’t know if you have ever tried it, but what I learned the hard way was that, in that situation, right is left and left is right. If you want the trailer to go to the right you turn the steering wheel to the left and vice-versa. And what I invite you to understand today is that the Kingdom of God is like that. Everything is the other way round from what we would expect. Up is down and down is up. In is out and out is in. If you want to save your life you must lose it. In the world, the powerful lord it over the weak. In the kingdom, the powerful become servants of all. It the world everything has to be earned and paid for. In the kingdom - as the Pharisees could not begin to understand in last week’s Gospel - nothing is earned or paid for. Instead, it is freely given to all who are willing to accept it And instead of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth people love their enemies and do good to those who hate them. To enter the kingdom is like reversing a tractor with a trailer and there could be no better example of this than in today’s second reading from the letter to Philemon.
The background to this extremely short letter is this. Philemon, a rich man in whose house a small Christian community meets, has a slave called Onesimus who has run away and is with Paul. The penalty for doing what Onesimus has done is death, but Paul writes to Philemon, either from Ephesus or Rome – it is not entirely clear which - and asks Philemon to take Onesimus back, not, as we heard, as a slave, but as a dear brother. And the reason is simple. Christianity has turned the values of the world on their head. The law says Onesimus should die. The gospel says something else which made no sense in worldly terms and which, if it had been widely applied would have shaken the very foundations of the ancient world whose whole economic system was built on slavery. And in this we see the full power of Christianity. It has within itself the power to change everything. It is without doubt the most powerful revolutionary force in history, and it is because at some level we understand this that we have sanitized it and by reducing it to a series of intellectual beliefs and external religious actions have stripped it of its power to change the world.
And so we are all the man in the Gospel today who started to build a tower and could not finish it. Called at baptism to be signs of the kingdom in the world, we – and by that I mean the whole Church down through the ages - are the ones who have begun to build and, frightened by what carrying on with the building might involve, have left the job unfinished. And it will remain unfinished until we learn to speak the language of the kingdom. No wonder GK Chesterton said that the trouble with Christianity is that it has never been tried.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The world today faces many problems to which politicians, economists, diplomats, Aid Agencies and many others struggle to find solutions. But no matter what they do, little seems to change. The poor continue to be poor and the rich grow richer. Conflicts go unresolved. We show no real sign of confronting the problems of the environment. And so we pray that this world of ours will come to see that the beginning of a solution to our greatest problems lies in the teaching of Jesus.............Lord hear us
This week, one more attempt has been made to resolves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of the most difficult and intractable of all the historic conflicts around the world. People on both sides are filled with an anger and bitterness which flows outwards and not only engulfs the surrounding area, but poisons international relationships everywhere. And so we pray that the people of the Middle East will move beyond an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and, through a miracle of grace, learn to love their enemies.........Lord hear us
It is unreasonable of us to expect people in the Middle East to put the past behind them and reach out to those who have done them harm if we are not willing to do the same in our own lives. As Christians, we are called to be living signs of the kingdom and show the world that the teaching of Jesus is more than a good idea and can actually be put into practice. And so we ask God to help us reach out to those in our own lives from whom we may be estranged in any way, especially within our families.....Lord hear us
Our society today is deeply materialistic and slowly but surely we have swallowed the completely fallacious notion that material things on their own have the power to make us happy. Material things are profoundly good, gifts from a God who pours goodness into the world, but on their own they can never satisfy us. We are more than matter. We are also Spirit. We do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God and we pray that the world will come to see this........Lord hear us
Slavery may have been officially abolished two hundred years ago, but for millions of our fellow human beings slavery is still very much a reality in the world today. Millions in the developing world are virtual slaves to their employers. They are paid a pittance, have no rights and are at the mercy of people who, on the basis of slave labour, grow rich by selling perhaps even the very clothes some of us may be wearing here at Mass today. This, too, is abuse and we ask God to stir our consciences about it.......Lord hear us
One of the fastest growing industries of our day is human trafficking. All over the world human beings, mostly women and children, are being bought and sold to satisfy the sexual desires of others. And this is happening, not only in far away places, but here in Scotland right under our noses. Those caught up in it, often from poorer parts of the world, are living in conditions far worse than those experienced by many a slave in biblical times and we ask God to stir our national conscience about this too..........Lord hear us
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