Sunday Reflections

On a liturgical note Canon Philip Gillespie On 14 September, the Liturgy keeps the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross – a remembrance of the discovery (to exalt is to raise up) in around the year 320 by Saint Helena, Mother of the Emperor Constantine, of the true cross upon which the Lord Jesus died. In the year 335, the Emperor Constantine had a shrine church built over the site of Calvary and until its destruction by the Persians in the seventh century it was known by the name Martyrium – the place of witness or the giving of life. We are reminded each time we enter church or begin our prayers that the cross with which we sign ourselves is for us a sign of life and of the selfgiving of Jesus and the action is in itself a prayer – a desire that our bodies and our living will be signed with His example of self-giving love, which is the inspiration and source of strength for our service to others. The traditional devotion of the Stations of the Cross which many of us will pray daily or weekly, and which is before our eyes when we enter into our churches, appears to have been brought back to Europe in medieval times by those who had visited Jerusalem. They wanted both to share with others their experiences of walking and standing (the statio) where Jesus himself had walked on the sad journey, the Via dolorosa, which led him to Calvary but also to reflect on the way of the Cross, a daily and living part of their own spiritual lives – as Jesus loves, so we are called to love and part of that loving will be the suffering and the carrying of the cross in imitation of the Lord. So the devotion to the sufferings of Christ is not just something for Lent and Holy Week. As we look at our communities, our society and indeed our world today, we see many examples of the suffering of Christ –and our prayer is that just as the Cross was the gateway to the new life of the Resurrection, so for ourselves and our world, there may be the fullness of life after such pain and suffering: ‘We adore you O Christ and we praise you Because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.’

Sunday thoughts

By nature, we are tribal. We are wired to be on our guard against the ‘other’, the outsider. Both politicians and newspaper proprietors understand this and appeal directly to our baser instincts. Asylum seekers and refugees make an easy target. A tough stance on immigration is a vote winner. The popular press make prejudice respectable. Accusations of ‘institutional racism’ are common. They are routinely denied. ‘I’m not racist but…’ Most prejudice is unconscious. It can be based on accent, clothes, gender or a foreign-sounding name. I’m ashamed to admit that I also make rash judgements based on first impressions. Why should I dislike someone I hardly know? But it’s when I find my superficial judgments turned upside down that my faith in the Holy Spirit is renewed. The Holy Spirit has a knack of subverting my prejudice. I believe he (or she) has a sense of humour and

Mgr John Devine OBE

enjoys proving me wrong. There’s nothing more humbling that hearing a fascinating life story from an unexpected source. ‘Remember always to welcome strangers, for by doing this, some people have entertained angels without knowing it.’ (Hebrews 13:2) I’m comforted by the few occasions in the Gospels where Jesus’s own prejudices are challenged. He says to the Canaanite woman: ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel.’ He compares her to a house dog. Surprised by her instant rebuttal, Jesus changes His mind: ‘Woman, you have great faith.’ In these Sundays we are reading from the Letter of James. For me it’s the most accessible book in the Bible. James tells it as it is. ‘My brothers, do not try to combine faith in Jesus Christ with the making of distinctions between classes of people.’

Build the Church

In 1975 I went to my first prayer group and was warmly welcomed by a man called Denis. I was a shy 15-year-old with all the baggage that comes from an alcoholic father. He was a blunt Yorkshire man who, with his friend Teresa, had been walking in the ways of love for many years. He exuded kindness and compassion, all because of his unshakeable belief in the goodness of God. I had experienced a huge encounter with God which Denis had been part of and he wanted to make sure that I grew in my relationship with God. He and Teresa became hugely important in my formative years, encouraging me to pray and to read and study the scriptures. Denis was always laughing. Even when life was tough, he smiled and laughed and thanked God. I learnt from him what it meant to say that God is good even in the worst of times and that the goodness of God was not dependent on the circumstances of my life. It was Denis’s relationship with Christ that filled him with gratitude and Jesus’s revelation of God’s love that flowed from him. It was his experience of the Lord in his life that mattered and which enabled him to be a beacon of light to others. I often think of the question that Jesus puts to his disciples: ‘Who do you say I am?’ It leads me to ask myself whether I have a living personal relationship with Jesus. It’s Peter who answers Jesus’s question when saying, ‘You are the Christ’ – the one set apart to give life real meaning. Peter is the one to respond because, just a few chapters earlier, Matthew has him walking on the water. He has experienced who Jesus is. He knows that it’s his relationship with the Lord that brings him life and that when he fixes his eyes on Jesus he can even walk on water. So he's able to say, ‘You are the Christ’. It’s on that sort of faith that Church can be built. It’s to him that the keys of the kingdom of heaven are given and what are those keys? Love, forgiveness, reconciliation, compassion and mercy. The question for us is whether we want to give our lives to those realities or not. Do we want to build a Church based on relationship and all that means – relationship with the Lord and with one another – or do we want to continue to build up a structure that is weighed down by the scourge of clericalism and power and authoritarianism. My sense is that a Church built on those things will ultimately collapse and maybe that’s what we’re beginning to see. However, a Church built on the power of faith in Christ and one another can never be overcome; a Church that is a servant seeking only to love, forgive and let compassion reign will last until the end of time. Let’s have the courage to open ourselves to the Lord and build that Church.