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VULNERABLE IS A STRANGE TOUGH WORD. We all know that both Australian cricketers, Gilchrist and Ponting, are both vulnerable early in their innings.
In our Society don’t display, confess to, or leave un-remedied any weakness. In all fields of life don’t make yourself vulnerable. “Do unto others before they do it to you”. Therefore it is very strange that Jesus emptied himself and became vulnerable to the extent of God dying - really some sort of vulnerability for God to die. Paul likewise expressed a very strange idea. When I am weak them I am strong for then the power of God can reside in me. Vulnerability therefore is only to be feared when there is no backup. Like Jesus we have the backup of the loving all powerful Father in our vulnerability. There is no need for complete control over all things. We only need to have a deep trust in the Father’s love and power.
Prayer is always about presence: sometimes about presents. Lent is about three things. Prayer, fasting and helping others. All Christians pray when they are in a tight spot. They say that there are no atheists during an air raid. But to identify prayer with merely asking what we consider desirable things from God does two things which can be quite damaging.
On the other hand if prayer is about the Presence of God, noticing him, talking and listening to him and just being happy to be in his presence like people who are really in love strive to do at all times, then our understanding of prayer is so much broader and really so much more satisfying. We become more like Jesus who strove to find the presence of his Father even in the worst moments of his life. The awareness of his presence gives us a confidence that does not depend on winning lotto or our favourite team winning the AFL flag.
JESUS’ VERY DIFFERENT IDEAS OF MYSTERY One of the great problems in religious matters is the use of words. I often find holy people use words that don’t really mean much to ordinary people. Often they are almost so obsolete that they mean almost nothing at all. Or even worse they seem to have a type of meaning that floats right across our radar screen. Take the word mystery as an example. We love mysteries and can spend hours reading that type of literature. We delight in the struggle to find the solution. Sleuthing is such great fun. When we say at Mass, Let us Proclaim the Mystery of Faith, we are in fact dealing with a special and quite churchy meaning of the word mystery. It is not something we can nut out. How do you make sense of an innocent good man of about 30 being executed as a criminal? No way. But the term mystery here means living out a reality which brings life. It is not able to be grasped by the mind alone. Only in the lived reality and in the total picture is it life giving and whole making. It like that in our own life lived with Jesus. Rough things happen. There does not seem to be a logical explanation. But when we get involved and live it out with Jesus a new and deep peace descends upon us and from the fragmentation we become whole just as the crucified Lord became the Lord of creation. Quite strange really. No real explanation but just a lived reality which starts to make us sense as we live out the total picture.
THE CHALLENGE OF THE OTHER Last year (2006) the prefects’ camp was slated to be held at Dwellingup. Bush fires made this arrangement impossible. The camp was held at Trinity. On the last night there was a barbecue for prefects and staff. It was the usual fare, sausages salads, and rolls. All the boys and teachers were really tucking in. In the half light by the side of the admin building I saw one of the prefects. He was eating very simple food, bread and butter. I got into conversation with him. His name is Saad Qamar. His religion is Islam. He was sticking to the strict laws of his belief for the month of Ramadan, no food from sunrise to sunset. We are now at the start of Lent, our season of fasting. I often think of Saad and the wonderful quiet and humble example he gave to me and anyone else wise and sensitive enough to notice.
ANOTHER USE FOR THE ASH TRAY IN THE CAR Modern cars of course don’t have ash trays. They have instead neat little compartments where you can easily store your small change. Such caches are so helpful when it comes to finding change for a parking meter or paying those people who insist on cleaning your windscreen when you stop at traffic lights. These small but helpful repositories of money don’t constitute a significant basis of our wealth and annoying though it would be, we don’t call in the police if some coins suddenly go missing. Basically they are not necessary to our continued welfare. They help us for our very incidentals expenditure.
I often think
people have this sort of attitude to what they give to Project
Compassion or similar worthy appeals. What is over and above we
willingly give but the question really is, was there a real
sacrifice involved? For may years I worked in what at that time was
the remote north west. Often well meaning but very insensitive
people would send goods to us which were a bit of
nuisance to them
but which they somehow imagined would be
GOOD ADVICE FROM CLEVER PEOPLE When you spend a fair bit if time with a person you get to know their mannerisms, their turn of phrase and the sayings which they use to guide their own lives and the lives of those connected with them. Most mothers have these types of sayings and grandparents have them in abundance. Some of them are glaringly obvious, some very trite. Occasionally we come across one with insight stamped all across it. The more you reflect on it, the truer it seems. The more you experience life the more the saying seems to have relevance. One of my favourite saying comes from Albert Einstein. He says quite simply that “No problem is ever solved by the use of the same means which caused the original problem”. This means in practice if I bad note the people who bad note me I compound not defuse the gossip circle. If I return violence for the violence that was originally done to me escalation is almost inevitable. If I mull over past injustices done to me and try to get even with my tormentors then peace will never arrive. Jesus expressed the same reality even more graphically: “Love your enemies. Do good to them that hate you” It is a real shame that we as individuals, groups and nations don’t understand these sayings.
CUT THE HOLY BIT: KEEP IT RELEVANT; When God decided out of total love for us human beings to send his Son he of necessity had to make certain choices: choice of time, choice of culture, choice of customs. It was into this environment that Jesus was born, grew up, preached, died and rose again from the dead. It all happened 200 years ago and many see this as a piece of ancient irrelevance for us in 2006. A very famous English song writer Sydney Carter sums up the problem that many modern people have with Jesus. His song goes like this: ‘Your
holy hearsay is not evidence; The purpose of this song is not to rubbish the contribution of Jesus: most certainly no. It is rather to awaken us to the challenge of making Jesus alive and active in our own day and in our own lives. That is the challenge of the Gospel: it is the challenge of everyone who calls themselves Christians.
CHANGE IS SURE TRANSFORMATION IS PROBLEMATIC A long time a wise Greek guy called Heraclitus said a simple but profound thing: all things change. This keeps the weather bureau in business; keeps hairdressers busy and the whole of our lives are a testimony to this simple but profound statement. We start off inside our mother, come to birth, grow to maturity and then gradually our physical and mental powers begin to wane. Transformation is very different: what was before becomes something different though the seeds of change are already there. An event in our lives, an intervention of another brings about something quite significant. The most profound transformation in human history occurred when the dead body of Jesus was raised to life. We have the opportunity to share in this epoch making event each time we celebrate the Eucharist. It is therefore sad to hear people say that the Mass is boring. Maybe the actions and the words become pretty similar and repetitive but the reality is so much deeper. We are challenged right from the start.
Maybe people get uneasy with change but transformation is such an exciting prospect that God has reserved it for something very special, the sacrifice and sacred meal we refer to as the Mass.
WHEN IN HEAVEN’S NAME WILL JESUS COME? The early Christian Church was sure that Jesus would return pretty quickly after the Resurrection. It was the reason why they took so long (about 40 years) before they wrote the Gospels. They did not seem phased out by the possibility of his imminent return. One of their constant prayers was, “Come Lord Jesus”. In our day and age we get a bit jittery about the idea of a coming of Jesus. All that business about nations rising up against nations and roaring seas is hardly reassuring. Those unsmiling people who peddle magazines at our front doors predicting the limit of the saved is 144,000 hardly make us burst out laughing. Yet the Church does devote a special season to Advent which not only talks about the coming of Jesus for the first time at Christmas but also talks about the second coming of Jesus.
The bits about roaring seas are a standard way in the bible of indicating how nature mirrors important spiritual event. When Jesus comes again the prediction of love triumphing over the power of selfishness and the forces of evil finally comes true. For those following the way of Jesus that is an immense relief. And what is the way of Jesus?. We should study Mary, Joseph, the Shepherds and the wise men in the first coming of Jesus if we want a hint on how to act before the second coming.
JESUS DOES NOT COME THE HEAVY People adopt all sorts of strategies to get people agree with them and follow their path. 1) There is the rather crude and heavy handed approach which in good Australian slang can be described as the “biffo” method. Jesus clearly rejects this approach when he tells Peter to put away his sword after he cut off the high priests servant’s ear in the garden shortly before Jesus was crucified. 2) There is the “glitzy” approach of the grand event. Jesus rejected this approach early in his career when he rejects the invitation of the devil to jump off the highest point of the temple and drift safely to the ground to the immense admiration of those watching. 3) Finally Jesus rejects the moral bribery when he does not expect the crowd to accept his invitation to eat his body merely because they have had the best "Maccas meal" imaginable out of five loaves and two fish. He surprisingly for the Son of God invites even his friends to also go away if they find his sayings to difficult to stomach. The drama is diffused by the wonderful words of Peter. Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life. He says this because he believes that Jesus is the Son of God. So when the going becomes tough we are called on to reject the false ways outlined above and say with Peter, “You Lord have the words of everlasting life”. Quite some tribute those words.
CAN WE BLUR THE LINE BETWEEN I am old enough to remember the influx of people in the late 40’s and early 50’s. It took place in the aftermath of the Second World War. Many people from non English speaking background came to this country. Many of these people came from countries that had fought on the opposite side in the Second World War. No doubt a few dodgy characters slipped through the net. But the great thing was both the government and the opposition made a full on effort to make sure that these people were made welcome and that the natural suspicions of the local population were dealt with in a mature and non bigoted fashion. When the government changed in 1949, little if anything, changed in our immigration policy. After the Vietnam War a similar situation prevailed. The government of the day welcomed refugees from that war ravaged country. Initially the opposition was not keen on the idea but they too came around. In both these cases the majority political parties appealed to the noble side of the Australian people and in general the country was enriched. It seems to me that the situation has now changed for the worse. People from other countries and particularly those of other religions, seem to be under suspicion by the general population and this seems to go unchallenged by our political leaders. I can recall what Jesus said about being loving not only to those who love us but all people. Is this dragging religion into the politics of immigration? I leave the judgement to you.
DATA KNOWLEDGE WISDOM A few weeks back a mate and I were discussing Sri Lanka. We wanted to know the population of that country. The answer was easy to access. We just asked Google. (Just for the record the population is about 20 million). With computers adding to our stack of facts already available through print, the pile of data is immense. But it only becomes knowledge when we access it. Otherwise it simply remains data. Now days we have very smart and dedicated people with great minds, and sophisticated equipment. Yet wars rage, preventable diseases cut down the innocent and the vulnerable and prejudice and violence still have a field day. Why? Because wisdom and knowledge are quite different concepts and realities. If it is a toss up which would you take? It might be a temptation to opt for knowledge to get through the TEE I consider that wisdom, the capacity to make wise choices, is much more important. Knowledge enables us to have the facts at our disposal but wisdom enables us to see the big picture. Knowledge told Jesus of the horrors of crucifixion, wisdom told him too place his trust in the Father. Maybe we can get all our RE answers right the knowledge is there. But the way we live life shows us whether we have true wisdom. That is the ultimate prize.
GERALD FORD Gerald Ford, the elected vice-president of the United States was catapulted into the Presidency when Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace over the Watergate affair. Gerald Ford never made much impact on world or USA affairs. It was cruelly said of him that he was so thick that doing two things e.g. walking and chewing gum were beyond his capabilities: certainly a harsh judgement but surely a politically lethal statement. There are plenty of people in the world who in their religious outlook are so intense in their focus on one side of a complicated question that they obliterate the other aspect. They are "either or" people rather than "both and" people. To be an authentic follower of Christ it is often necessary to be a "both and" person. Jesus is both God and shares our human condition. We must rely on God;’s help but must strive with all our energy. We need clear boundaries in life but we must also be anxious to question. The eucharist should focus both on the God above us all and the brothers and sisters around us. We must be people of prayer and yet active in helping others. It is simplistic and destructive of our Christian calling to simply focus on one aspect of a complex religious question. It inevitably leads to fanaticism at worst or at least intolerance. Jesus provides us with the perfect balance. He could cry out " My God why have you forsaken me" and a few minutes later say" Father into your hands I commend my spirit". This balancing of seeming opposites is both the magic and challenge of the Christian life.
A DOUBLE PERSPECTIVE OF THE EUCHARIST It is amazing how after 43 years of the privilege of celebrating Mass, you come across an idea that has not occurred to you before. I was reading one of my favourite authors who remarked on the difference on the formula used for the consecration of the bread and wine at Mass. The difference is quite significant. Over the bread is said,
“This is my body which
will be given up for you”. In the first case the emphasis on the nourishment of the believers as part of God’s family. In the second the horizon widens as the sacrifice of Christ’s blood is shed for us and indeed all. There is a clear difference and a clear implication for us believers. The Eucharist nourishes the believers but it also challenges that the fruit of his death should extend to the whole world. It is the point emphasized by Pope Benedict in his first letter to the whole Church. The Eucharist has both a personal and community approach. We as faithful followers of Christ can neglect neither. To overlook the Eucharist is to produce spiritual hunger. To keep it as something purely personal is to neglect our obligation as apostles of Christ.
CAN GOOD CHRISTIANS ASK QUESTIONS OF GOD It is surely a central part of our Christian belief that all things and all people rest in the loving hands of the Father. But that does not imply we become wimps, listless and silent as things implode around us. Here are a few examples of really top flight people who loved God but certainly wanted to have their say. Mary
is told she is to be the Mother of God. Jesus asks Peter about the gossip of who Jesus is and then asks for his answer allowing him to answer and not commanding the answer. Jesus in the darkest hour of his life as he hung upon the cross addresses this plaintive question to the Father. “My God, my God why have you forsaken me”? So often in our lives, but more often in the lives of others, we rush in with answers to what we consider pressing religious questions. There are two significant dangers in this brash approach: 1) We answer
questions that people are not asking. If it was good enough for Mary, Peter and Jesus to ask questions, I am quite sure it is OK for you and me.
A SURPRISE ABSENCE I turned up at a suburban Church to help in reconciliation. I recognised the figure of one of our parents. His sons had left Trinity over the last few years. I asked the father where the two sons were. He told me that they were house sitting with a 14 year lad with cerebal palsy so that the parents could get a break from their caring duties. Immediately I thought. “Men for Others” They have left Trinity. Trinity has left its mark on these two young men.
WE HAVE GOT THE BRAND: HAVE WE GOT THE PRODUCT? All prominent firms and services have a readily identifiable logo and push a particular way of providing service. You know the ANZ logo and they push the lack of queues at their bank. Subway has their logo and trumpet the lack of fat in their product. And so it goes on. The College has a very recognisable logo, motto (men for others) but we must be honest and look very closely at the product. There was a time when Catholics were very identifiable by all sorts of actions peculiar to their faith. Sunday Mass, fish on Friday, visits to the Church, the Rosary, the Angelus: the list could go on and on. The important thing was there was a very definite point of identification and action. Now this area appears to me to be very barren and non specific. I am not advocating a return to mere routine and actions and devotions done with great swiftness and even less attention. What I do think that we as a Catholic school and indeed all of co-religionists should be able to point to actions and attitudes that make us distinctive but certainly not loopy. I was wrapped that the tuck shop decided on no meat on Fridays in Lent. Not a big deal really but certainly a timely reminded of who we are and what we stand for.
CHANGE ON WORD AND YOU WILL CHANGE YOUR OUTLOOK We are expert about talking about people not in our group. Blokes talk about women. Teachers talk about pupils and no doubt vice versa. Parishioners talk about their parish priest and presumably teachers and pupils talk about their chaplain. Christians talk about Muslims. Old people talk about the young. The general population talks about prisoners. The list is almost infinite. I suggest that if the word ABOUT was substituted by the word TO, the world would be a much saner, tolerant and supportive place. Prejudice can reign whilst we speak ABOUT people. Understanding tolerance and compassion will result when we speak WITH people. The Irish have that magnificent saying” There are no such people as strangers only friends we have not yet met”. Strangers will remain strangers as long as we talk ABOUT them. They only become friends when we talk TO them.
JESUS BREACHES THE FINAL BARRIER
It is quite
amazing to read in the Gospels how Jesus finds it difficult to face
his forthcoming death. It is quite startling and stark in all the
Gospels except that of John. It does bring into perspective how
death severs the relationships of love, support and solidarity which
have characterised our life here on earth. In the death and
resurrection we see how the trust of Jesus and his dedication to the
rugged will of the Father are rewarded with a breaching of the
barrier of death. In His Resurrection a whole new relationship with
his friends and disciples is forged . This is tellingly outlined in
the forgiveness extended to Peter when he three time professes his
love for Christ on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. It also shines
out clearly and simply when Jesus pronounces the name of Mary.
Initially she does not recognize him but the loving expression of
her name unfolds the mystery of the
Happy Easter.
HOW CHARITY CAN KILL JUSTICE. Each year during Lent the project compassion box comes to our houses. We also place one in a prominent part of the class room. We get a real “feel good” experience when we put our spare change in the box, a little inconvenient perhaps in finding coins for the parking meter but really no big deal and it does not disrupt our normal life pattern. . We kid ourselves that we have carried our Christian obligation. It is no wonder that people remark that charity is the opium of justice. We do a token kindness and we congratulate ourselves that we are really loving and supporting our brothers and sisters in need. We kid ourselves. It is only when we strive for a real level playing ground for all people that we can claim to really carry out the great command of Jesus. “By this shall all people know you are my disciples, by the love that you bear one for another”.
JESUS CHRIST & JENNY CRAIG Is it a coincidence that when the people in the pews seem to take a much more relaxed view on Lenten Fasting, that outfits like Jenny Craig have really flourished? Maybe. But really Christian fasting and the operations of Ms. Craig’s outfit come from a very different perspective, both quite legitimate. Jenny emphasizes looking good and eating healthy. No sane person would reject that approach. Our fasting comes from a the perspective that we are all in one way or another, compulsive creatures, likely to take the short term pleasurable to the detriment of the long term goal. To overcome this lack of foresight and the rush to gratification we are encouraged to use the season of Lent to practice delaying the enjoyment of the legitimate in order to take a more long term view of life and help us in sticky situations to choose the more enduring values. I am sure that Ms. Craig’s outfit will continue to flourish. I hope that many sign up to the 40 day free trial called Lent by our Church and fronted by our CEO Jesus Christ.
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