Tag Archives: love

Perhaps, I, too, must resign myself to the hills.

27 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in Atonement, Faith

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Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Our friend Neo has bid farewell. I have thought about leaving in the past and I have said as much as well. However, this blog was something of a community, one that kept drawing me back. I do hope the call of the communio calls to Neo once more, but it appears as we’re all resigned to our sinful natures that one by one each pilgrim with the evening advanced looks to rid the sweat ridden clothes of our collective ecumenical dialogue.

The greatest lesson of scripture I believe is the call for repentance. I have a co-worker who is deaf and is debating whether to get a cochlear implant. She jokingly asked me today, knowing I am a man of faith if I could heal her or pray for her to receive her hearing. I told her first off that I am far from holy and that I am still working on my faith every day, but I expressed that in many of the healings of Christ in scripture, such as the paralytic, Christ preferenced the desire of forgiving sins over physical miracles. “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk?’

Love, repenting, and forgiveness

Many will claim are not miraculous,…but… with an examination of the nature of humanity, one could easily argue are perhaps the greatest miracles we can perform with our fellow man. The Spirit gives us many gifts: Understanding, Counsel, wisdom, knowledge, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord. Gifts that aid us in communio and can give us the ability to show the world the true miracle of Christian love.

Our community is one that can only express ideas, therefore, we do not have the privilege to see each others’ love. The Word of God took flesh, one single word of utterance of God to show us His love. The Incarnation of our Lord is God’s word–it’s the  Word from the beginning. Christ has left us so that the Paraclete could guide us. As Teresa of Avila writes, Christ has no body, but as being baptized into the Body of Christ, I am the eyes, the ears, the arms, the feet so that others can hear the one utterance of God–the Word of God.–Love….Love.

My job takes me to some of the poorest parts of my community and it tears my soul. The Word of God with the guidance of the spirit has called me to show Christ’s love by starting a ministry in my parish, one that can put forth the love of the Word in our community. Ideas are grand and fun to discuss, but they do get bogged down and stale, ideas do not move mountains, but faith, as small as a mustard seed can move mountains.

I do not know what my plans are for continuing with this blog. Many of the great Protestant voices and others have left. Chalcedon has left, Geoff gone, Jess and now Neo. We may have differences, but through the Word of God, I do love you.

God Bless.

Whose Bourgeois Morality?

19 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Church/State

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A Tweet last evening guided me to an important story – here it is.

Some of you are quite familiar with Professor Charmley, as I am, I consider him a close friend, but in any case, he is exactly correct. This is required reading for any of us who wonders what in the world the Catholic Church is thinking these days. Here is the link again, and here is a snippet.

[I]n the latest round of debate over Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation on marriage and the family, a fervent defender of the document sniffed at some of its critics that “the Magisterium doesn’t bow to middle-class lobbies” and cited Humanae Vitae as an example of papal tough-mindedness in the face of bourgeois cultural pressures. It was a clever move, rhetorically, and we may hope that it’s right about the magisterial kowtow. But I fear it also misses the point—or, better, several points.

At the Synods of 2014 and 2015, to which Amoris Laetitia is a response, the most intense lobbying for a change in the Church’s traditional practice in the matter of holy communion for the divorced and civilly remarried—a proposal the great majority of Synod fathers thought an unwarranted break with truths taught by divine revelation—came from the German-speaking bishops: prelates who represent perhaps the most thoroughly bourgeois countries on the planet. Thus, one does not strain against veracity or charity by describing the German-speaking bishops as something of a lobby for middle-class preoccupations. Passionate defenders of Amoris Laetitia might thus be a bit more careful when dismissing as a middle-class lobby those who raise legitimate concerns about the ambiguities in the document; what goes around, comes around.

There was, of course, far more going on in the 2014-2015 German campaign to permit holy communion for the divorced and civilly remarried than lobbying on behalf of the bourgeois morality of secular, middle-class societies. There was, for example, the ongoing, two-front German war against Humanae Vitae (Blessed Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical on the morally appropriate means of family planning) and Veritatis Splendor (St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical on the reform of Catholic moral theology). We are told, now, that a commission is examining the full range of documentation involved in the preparation of Humanae Vitae. One hopes that that study will bring to the fore what Paul VI realized when he rejected the counsel of many and reaffirmed the Church’s commitment to natural family planning as the humanly and morally appropriate means of regulating fertility.

Do read it all, and think about the implications. I’m no Catholic as you all know, but Rome has provided the best leadership on this since the Second World War, and we will all lose if they lose their voice, and even more, will the children who will never be born lose much more than their voice.

The Touch of a Woman

21 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by in Early Church, Faith, Marian devotion, St Luke's Gospel

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In my last two posts, I have highlighted how in medieval days Mary was revered, not least because she was approachable. That’s important, I think. Women, as a rule, are seen as non-threatening as compared with even the best-intentioned men, by men but perhaps even more by women. It’s certainly true for me.

The idea of telling my sins to a man (especially when I was young) was a very frightening thing. Not so much Christ, of course, because He knew me better than I did anyway. But I wonder, and always will if Marian devotion had been available to me in those days if it might have made a difference. Not that I was any terrible ogre, mind, but I did things that even then I wasn’t proud of, and would have been embarrassed to tell my mom, so I wonder if knowing Mary then would have made a difference.

And now, as I start to draw near the end, Mary indeed provides me much comfort. Those of you who know me will know that I am divorced and without kids, and sadly see no possibility of that changing. And yes, Mary provides a comfort, nearly a companionship, that I find in no other way, anymore. She is the one I can talk about anything with. Strange how life works out isn’t it? But so it is.

But she is much more than that, of course. She is Theotokos, the Mother of God. And that is surely much more important than my little problems, but still, she finds time to tell me that she has talked to her Son about me and to comfort this old man, not that it is overt or anything, just a feeling.

But this very human and attractive side of Our Lady goes way back in our history. In our archives there is an article, bylined by Jessica (although I wonder, as it reads more as Chalcedon) speaking of The Protoevangelium of St. James

The Protoevangelium of St. James, which dates from the mid second century, belongs to that group of works which, whilst never canonical, was treasured by Christians for centuries because it filled in the gaps left by the Gospels. Nothing will shake my conviction that in St. Luke we have portions of the memoirs of Our Lady herself; where else could the Magnificat come from, or the story of the Annunciation. It thrills me to know that when I read these things, I am reading what the Blessed Virgin herself said; so I understand why it is early Christians wanted more.

The Protoevangelium filled the gap admirably. It described the circumstances of Our Lady’s birth, and how at the age of three she was brought by her parents to the Temple. It contains one of my favourite accounts of Our Lady. When she came to the Temple she was given to the High Priest who

 set her down upon the third step of the altar, and the Lord God sent grace upon her; and she danced with her feet, and all the house of Israel loved her

How adorable is that?

Here is where those charming legends that we looked in my article on Lady Day in Harvest got their start. In the 2d century, well before the Scripture was canonized. We have always venerated Mary, she is one of the things that sets Christians apart. It is our kinder gentler side and something that is lacking in most religions which tend to be ‘by the book’ and the book alone. She introduces mercy into the whole thing, and yes, it shown forth in her Son as well. But it is, I think, one of the singularities that divide the Second Covenant from the First.

God and Love

08 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by in Faith

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Newman described well the type of Christian who is so worried about ‘Judgement’ that she never shares the joy of knowing Christ, so conscious of her sins that she cannot take pleasure in her Christianity. The passage which I quoted yesterday is not only a warning to me (as I have pronounced tendencies that way) but also has wider application.

One of the things often commented upon by anti-Christian polemicists is just that tendency to be concerned with judging others which can come from judging ourselves. Jesus Himself asked how we could love God, whom we did not know, if we did not love our brother whom we did? If we hate ourself, how can we love others? What, after all, is love, save that which emanates from the mystery of the Economy of the Trinity?

The most startling insight of Christianity is not the revelation that God is one, but that He is Three. The Jews, and now the Muslims, hold the first belief; Christians alone hold the latter. When St. John tells us that ‘God is love’, he describes the relationship of the Persons of the Holy Trinity.

The only distinction between the persons of the Trinity is their mutual relations. None of the persons exists in respect to Himself alone, but each exists relatively to the other two:
…the “three persons” who exist in God are the reality of word and love in their attachment to each other. They are not substances, personalities in the modern sense, but the relatedness whose pure actuality… does not impair unity of the highest being but fills it out. St Augustine once enshrined this idea in the following formula: “He is not called Father with reference to himself but only in relation to the Son; seen by himself he is simply God.” Here the decisive point comes beautifully to light. “Father” is purely a concept of relationship. Only in being-for the other is he Father; in his own being-in-himself he is simply God. Person is the pure relation of being related, nothing else. Relationship is not something extra added to the person, as it is with us; it only exists at all as relatedness.

….the First Person [the Father] does not beget the Son in the sense of the act of begetting coming on top of the finished Person; it is the act of begetting, of giving oneself, of streaming forth. It is identical with the act of giving.

(Joseph Ratzinger Introduction to Christianity, pp. 131-132; cf. Augustine, ; De Trinitate VII, 1, 2.)

In short, each of the persons of the Trinity lives completely for the others; each is a complete gift of self to the others. The complete self-giving not only constitutes the individual persons of the Trinity, but also their inseparable oneness.

That love, it was which impelled  him to take action to help his creatures gone astray so when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman to redeem us and make us sons by adoption. If He loves us, let us love ourself too.

He is Risen Indeed!

16 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in Bible, Catholic Tradition, Easter, Faith

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The Exsultet, with which we begin the Easter Vigil, ends with the words:

May this flame be found still burning
by the Morning Star:
the one Morning Star who never sets,
Christ your Son,
who, coming back from death’s domain,
has shed his peaceful light on humanity,
and lives and reigns for ever and ever.

R. Amen.

The Latin reads:

Flammas eius lúcifer matutínus invéniat:
ille, inquam, lúcifer, qui nescit occásum.
Christus Fílius tuus,
qui, regréssus ab ínferis, humáno géneri serénus illúxit,
et tecum vivit et regnat in sæcula sæculórum.

Unbelievably, there are sad sacks such as Bosco here, who, being monoglot and poorly-educated, see the word ‘lucifer’ and imagine that here we are worshipping Lucifer – and if you find that as impossible to believe as I did, here’s a link.

The reference is, of course, to 2 Peter 1:19. The day has dawned, the Morning Star has risen in our hearts, because the Light which ligtheth the world has banished death, and our hearts rejoice, being freed from the burden of sin. Like St Peter and the Holy Women, we could not have discovered the joy of the Resurrection had we stayed imprisoned in our fears and selfishness. On this first Easter night, the angels moved the stone away, and so, too, does Christ move away the stone which imprisons us in the tomb of our sense of sin. We are not without hope. We who were lost are found, we who we hopeless are redeemed, not by anything we deserve, but by His love, freely offered for us on the Cross at Calvary. Hope is the gift of Christ to us.

On that first Maundy Thursday two of the Apostles betrayed the Lord. Judas was the one who brought the troops to arrest Jesus, but Peter, who had promised to support Him no matter what, betrayed him thrice before the cock crew. Those who mock and say how can such a man be the foundation of the Church of Jesus need more of a sense of self; when they look within do they see a sinless being? The Gospel story is all the more convincing for this detail. Who, making up a narrative, would include such a detail about the leader of the Apostles? But where Judas, in in his pride, despaired of forgiveness and hanged himself, Peter lived his shame and was forgiven and redeemed; in that, Peter is the model for us all.

Jesus knew that Peter would fail; he told him as much. But that did not mean that Jesus reproached Peter; he knew that Peter’s conscience would do that work for him. Peter spoke with confidence, a confidence which reminds us of what St Paul told the Corinthians: ‘Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.’ Peter did not watch; he fell. We, often, do not watch, and we fall. If we have been told that we ‘are saved’, then when we fall, we either despair, like Judas, or, in this modern world, think it a sign that such assurance was wrong; either way we turn from the Lord. But if we read the story of Peter aright, we know that Jesus does not turn from us. He did not suffer on the Cross, He did not break the bonds of death in order that we should be lost. Unlike Satan, who comes to kill and destroy, and whose strongest weapon is our despair and pride, Jesus came that we should have life, and have it abundantly. The hope and the joy of the Resurrection are His strongest weapons, for they are the product of His love.

St Thomas needed to put his finger in the holes made by the nails before he believed, but as Jesus has told us, it is even more blessed to believe without seeing. So, my dear friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, may the joy of the Resurrection be with us all, ever more.

Christ is risen from the dead,
by death trampling down upon death,
and to those in the tombs He has granted life.

Drinking Living Water

24 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by in Bible, Commentaries, Faith, Homilies

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Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron calls this particular event of the Samaritan woman at the well in the Gospel of John a master’s course in Evangelization. What is the good Bishop getting at when making such an assertion? Let’s examine the facts: the woman goes to the well at high noon, Jesus is already present at the well, Jesus initiates a conversation, the conversation is initiated without condemnation, Jesus offers to quench her thirst of the affliction of her soul by revealing to the woman what he knows about her.

Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. 9 ¶ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. 10 ¶ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water?[1]

As one notices by the woman and Jesus’ conversational exchange is that the woman believes Jesus to be talking about literal water, but this, of course, is not what Jesus is talking about to her.  So, Jesus further explains to her the meaning of his words:

13 Jesus said to her, “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 ¶ but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 ¶ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”

Scholars and Theologians have determined that this woman going to the well during this period of the day would mark her undoubtedly as an outcast. Jesus, himself, as the event begins to unfold eventually brings forth the condition of the woman and why she looks to avoid social interaction by drawing water from the well during the extreme heat of the Middle Eastern day.

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 ¶ for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20[2]

It’s important to notice here that before Jesus attempts to correct her or acknowledge her sins, Jesus offers her an invitation to obtain a living spring within herself. Of course, as Christians, we must refrain from thinking that this living spring in which Jesus speaks of doesn’t mean to just live by the rules of the Christian God and be subject to him in fear of damnation, but rather the desire want to praise him and glorify him–for our own benefit– by doing good works in the world.

For example, just this last Sunday prior to hearing this Gospel reading at Mass, I was walking downtown nearby my diocese’s Cathedral and at a distance, I saw a homeless man. As I used this story to explain to my PSR students, I will certainly explain to any reader as I explained to them, that I did something that was not in my personality to do by approaching the man. I asked him his story and what was going on with his life. I won’t go into the detail of what said exactly and what I did to aid him, but I can tell you certainly that after many months of digging the well of my own prayer life—in the words of St. Teresa of Avila—I was drinking living water. I truly felt the presence of Christ with me because he was acting through me. I finally understood what St. Paul meant when he said, “20 ¶ I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.[3]

After this encounter, I walked the rest of the way to the church and entered the Cathedral. When I arrived at the pew and knelt before God, I took off my glasses, put my hands over my face to hold back tears as my thoughts were lifted up toward God. All I can say is how strange and beautiful the paradox to be both Jesus and meet him at the well. After retelling the event to my PSR students, I explained to them that they can be Jesus at the well and stir forth springs of living water in their classmates, teachers, and parents. I told them that if they are to come across another kid at their school is may not be the “cool” kid go and eat lunch and play with them. If they are the one being bullied at school and the bully demands their pencil offer a piece of paper as well.

The students were perplexed by the last option, so I explained through the gifts of the Holy Spirit we can stir forth our neighbors living water so that they might believe in Jesus even the worst of situations. I offered them the idea that if a robber demanded my cell phone, I would freely give them the phone and more. At this point, a young lady jerked back and said, “Why would you just give in?” I told her “If I give them the phone freely then they are not stealing, and therefore, not a robber.”

I reminded them that at the heart of breaking forth a living spring is one of the core ideas of the Sermon on the Mount:

39 ¶ But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; 40 and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; 41 and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42 Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you.

The Holy Bible. (2006). (Revised Standard Version; Second Catholic Edition, Mt 5:39–42). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.

[1] The Holy Bible. (2006). (Revised Standard Version; Second Catholic Edition, Jn 4:7–11). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.

[2] The Holy Bible. (2006). (Revised Standard Version; Second Catholic Edition, Jn 4:13–20). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.

[3] The Holy Bible. (2006). (Revised Standard Version; Second Catholic Edition, Ga 2:20). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.

Ash Wednesday

01 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Lent, Lutheranism, Saints

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dewi-sant-3It is, of course, Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Many of us will end the day with a cross on our foreheads in oil and ashes from burning the palm fronds. It’s a good tradition, in my tradition, it is not required, but I think it serves to remind us of the humility that goes with following Christ.

Here, yesterday was Shrove Tuesday, in the UK and much of the Commonwealth it was Pancake day. Both hark back to medieval days when it was time to use up food stock which would not keep through the penitential season of Lent. Remember, refrigeration is something of the last half of the twentieth century. Besides, the flour and foodstuffs from the last harvest would have by now begun to go rancid. In those days, there wasn’t food to waste, and so it was much better to eat it, than throw it away.

In fact, Carneval also comes from this point, meaning the end of meat, as we enter the fast days of Lent. And in Medieval Christianity, fast days were never a shortage item, although food often was. Our forebears were much tougher stock than we are.

But today is Ash Wednesday, and there are plenty of others to tell you about it. I’ll just add this, which I sent it to several of my friends who are facing tough going in their lives for various reasons, this morning by email. It is one of the readings in the Lutheran Historic Lectionary for today.

Wisdom 11:24-26 New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE)
24 For you love all things that exist,
and detest none of the things that you have made,
for you would not have made anything if you had hated it.
25 How would anything have endured if you had not willed it?
Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved?
26 You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living.
Oh, and for you few, you happy few, that claim Welsh ancestry:

Bendigedig Ddydd Gŵyl Dewi!

If I got it right, it’s cause I’m brilliant, if not, well it’s Google’s fault! 🙂

Does dogma matter?

19 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by in Anglicanism, Bible, Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Faith

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In my old Church, and in my new one, the unspoken question is the one which is the title of this post – does dogma matter? Clarity is not a word readily associated with the delphic pronouncements of the present Pope, but on the ancient principle that ‘If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck‘, it would seem safe to say that he thinks ‘mercy’ trumps dogma. If this is not what he thinks then his comments about the undesirability of ‘rigidity’ and keeping the commandments in such a fashion would make even less sense than they do on that reading. We saw much the same thing at the Church of England Synod last week, where the mantra of ‘if it is love it is fine’ was used to promote the idea that gay marriage was fine for clergy. What is being said here is that whatever Scripture and Tradition say can be negated by the exercise of our reason: it was our ‘reason’ that got us expelled from Eden; it was our reason which was damaged in the Fall; it is our reason which is defective; it is our reason which needs guiding by Scripture and Tradition. It is the very essence of the division in Christianity which is evidenced here: what has priority, our unaided reason or our reason as aided by Scripture and Tradition?

When I am told that we shouldn’t read St Paul’s admonitions on homosexuality the way they have been read from the beginning, I ask a simple question: before someone needed to reinterpret what he wrote, did anyone advance that argument? The answer is no. The unanimous tradition of the Church is unequivocal on this subject and on re-marriage for divorced people, as it is on fornication, euthanasia and abortion. The fact that the world does not like the stance of the Church on these matters might well be, in the minds of some, reason to go back and reconsider our teaching; but make no mistake, that reconsideration is prompted by the desire not to be so out of step with this world – at least in its Western sexual and social mores, mores which even in the West, a generation ago, were considered sinful. So, if we want to be honest about this, advocates of change should be clear – they want to make sin into something else because they feel that in our modern Western society free choice is a prime good. Fine, but God has his ten commandments, and they are not presented to us as ‘God’s ten optional suggestions’.

Dogma is the collective wisdom of the Church and its meditation on Scripture, it is God’s guidance to us. We can ignore it, we often do because we are sinners, but at least, until recently, hypocrisy surrounded this practice, and we might recall that hypocrisy is the tax that vice pays to virtue; but now there is no need. If we have abolished sin, then someone needs to tell God that in our wisdom we do not need his guidance; the last time anyone did that they found themselves expelled from Eden. We ask, with all the petulance of a spoiled child, ‘where is God?’ when bad things happen; but we seldom stop to ask how far bad things come from our ignoring God. He is where he always is – loving us, waiting for us to repent and reach out in love to him. If we have become too wise and too grand for that, then we have indeed chosen the light of our own reason to God’s light – and may he have mercy on us and guide us to repentance.

What do we have in common?

05 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by in Anglicanism, Bible, Faith, Lutheranism

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In a comment on yesterday’s post on ‘Virtue Signalling’, Fr Malcolm wrote something which struck a chord:

It seems to me these days that there are conservatives and liberals in all churches.. I have more in common with some Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Methodists, to name a few, than the liberals in my own Church.
I can think of liberals in the C of E who have more in common with liberals in other churches than with conservatives in their own church.
The real divide these days is between are those who believe the Scriptures and those who don’t.

It would be interesting to hear from others on how they feel on this one. I must say I recognised it. Those in my own Church who want abortion, contraception, women priests and the rest of the ACTA agenda have far less in common with me than those from my own former Church who don’t; I feel much the same way about Evangelical Christians. But does that mean we all ‘believe in the Scriptures’ and others do not?

I would begin with the assumption that all who claim the name Christian believe in the Scriptures, and yet, as Fr Malcolm implies, that covers a multitude of definitions of what ‘believe’ and ‘Scriptures’ mean. Do I think the exact dimensions of Noah’s ark would ensure that it floated? Do I think that a serpent in the Garden of Eden talked to Eve? Do I think Genesis is a Primer which describes in accurate detail how the earth was created? In all three cases, I suspect not, because I think that Genesis is best read as a poetic account of Creation. Do I think that everything described in the Book of the Apocalypse will come to pass, or do I think that it, like other examples of Apocalyptic literature should be read less than literally? I’d incline toward the latter. The Bible is a book containing many genres of literature. God speaks to us in many ways, He does not just dictate a book of rules and regulations, and He has revealed Himself to us definitively in the Life and Work of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ founded a Church. There was nothing to stop Him dictating a book to the Apostles, but He chose not to do do. The maker of all things, visible and invisible, knew His creation well. Give us a book of rules and we’ll either bind ourselves so tightly by it that we will end by obeying the letter and missing the spirit, or we will so explain it away with caveats, that we will end by obeying neither the letter nor the spirit, but the devices and desires of our own deceitful hearts.

So where do I end up? Probably having more in common with some liberals than I should have thought had I just applied the labels, but still far more in common with the conservatives, to whom, spiritually and intellectually, I feel more akin. But even that amount of commonality with so-called liberals, reminds me of the breadth of the Christian community. With those who cannot avow the Trinity or the Nicene Creed, I cannot say that I have communion, with a small or a a large C, though I know at least one fellow Catholic who does not believe in the Creed literally (and I’m not sure what other sort of belief in it one can have); but with Trinitarian Christians, I, like Fr Malcolm, can hold spiritual communion and learn much.

 

In thy dark streets shineth

24 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in Advent, Christmas, Faith

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Light of Life Image

We all, I suspect, have our own favourite Christmas hymn. I can never hear ‘O Little town of Bethlehem’ without a tear coming to my eye. It captures something of the wonder of the event we are celebrating. Into a perfectly ordinary scene comes something – and someone – extraordinary. It is hard, in our urbanised, Western society, to imagine the darkness of an unlit street, but if you have an idea of it in your imagination, that, too, captures the vivid contrast between the darkness and the light. It is an image that always has relevance in this fallen world, but perhaps more so than usual in a year which has seen so much hardship for so many. There are times the darkness overwhelms us. There is, in all of us, a little of the Whig historian – that is the expectation that on the whole things get better across time. For those of us born in the decade after the end of the Second World War, that almost became the expectation. The ‘good guys’ were going to win and the ‘bad guys’ were on the losing side of history. So deeply embedded was this belief that it made contrarian attitudes almost de rigeur to some people; it at least added some salt to an otherwise bland meal. I still suspect that some of the leading Tory Brexiteers only meant to ‘blow the bloody doors off’ – but instead found, as in The Italian job that they’d blown the whole car up.

Well, the dye is cast, and we shall have to see how things go. Except here, and in the USA with President-elect Trump, there are those liberals who refuse to accept the verdict of the electorate. One can only imagine their own reaction to conservatives who had behaved as they are behaving. Our democracies stand on a precipice when those who see themselves as the well-educated elite decide that those who voted another way are so stupid that their verdict can be set aside. This is not how constitutional democracies work, and if it continues, then the consequences are clear enough; democracy will collapse. History does not have a teleology, liberal democracy is no more its destined end than is a theocracy or dictatorship. For Christians, the only end that is destined is that He will come in Glory to judge the living and the dead; however, no one but the Father knows when that time will be.

In the meantime He has not left us without guidance. Whether you believe the Christian message or not, Christ’s words, if followed, offer a better way of being in this world than any other. If we cannot bring ourselves to love God, then we can bring ourselves to love our neighbour as ourself, and we can treat all other human beings with the respect with which we expect to be treated. Whether we take a metaphysical point of view of not, most of us know there is more to this world than can be measured or weighed by us. We have, most of us, known love and given it, and we have, in that, some sense of what it might mean to say that God is love. Love, as St Paul noted long ago, is not selfish and brings out the best in us. Whether we believe in God or not, we can all try to tend in this direction; God simply offers the best explanation of why, despite our best efforts, we cannot do this without assistance.

To a world of darkness, where the darkness seems to deepen, there is one Light. So, as Advent ends and Christmas begins, let us welcome the Christ-child into our hearts, and let us resolve to do our part in spreading peace and goodwill.