New Year Blog - Put your hand into the hand of God

It was Christmas, 1939. The Second World War had just begun.  The lights were going out all over Europe, a terrible darkness and hopelessness was around, an evil  greater than anything people had seen in their lifetime was creeping inexorably around the world. King George VI was making his speech to the nation.  He was afraid too. If you have seen the film “The King’s speech” you will know why.  He suffered from a crippling speech impediment which held him prisoner and prevented him from communicating effectively to his people.  But, through the support of two people, his wife and an unknown speech therapist, he learned to overcome his fear, and to believe in himself.  His message of that year, so long ago now, has put him in the history books for all time.  He looked at the darkness all around him,  and felt the fear and uncertainty of his subjects.  No one knew what the future was to hold.  As a nation, we were looking down the barrel of a gun.  But this shy, unassuming man, who came to kingship unwillingly, reached down into the depths of his own beliefs and said simply, quoting Minnie Haskin’s opening lines “The Gateway of the Year”:

“I said to the man who stood at the gateway of the year
‘Give me a light, that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
And he replied,
‘Go into the darkness, and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.' "

It was his legacy to us, even though he was not aware of it.

Today, we too stand at the threshold of a New Year, with all its possibilities and opportunities.  It is exciting and thought-provoking.  But it is also scary.  We peer fearfully through the bars of the gate, half-open now and leading to a new pathway which is shrouded in mist.  We think about the world we live in, the legacy of a world-wide recession, the corroding effect of drug and alcohol abuse on our young people, the violence and ruthlessness we see nightly on our screens, the hunger and despair of so many and we begin to feel afraid…  But, like the king so long ago, we know what we have to do.  We reach out, in hope, for the comforting grasp of those hands which lead us and support us through good times and bad times.   He is always there, and like the vociferous fans at Liverpool Football Club, we realise that ‘we never walk alone.’  So this year let’s ‘walk on, walk on with hope in our hearts’ encouraging one another to trust in God. 

Our Lady was told by the powerful Angel Gabriel: ’Do not be afraid!’  Why should we be afraid? That is the message we carry in our hearts through 2012.  In a newly-minted year, we too say:

     When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high,

     And don’t be afraid of the dark.

     At the end of the storm is  golden sky, and the sweet silver song of the lark.

     Walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain  though your dreams be tossed and torn.

     Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone!

Of course not.  Have a happy New Year, enjoy the greetings, the fun, the fireworks and the parties but remember:

‘Put your hand into the hand of God, that shall be to you better than a light, and safer than a known way!’  Great advice. With an assurance of our prayers here.

The Night before Christmas

Clement Moore's poem has brought into focus the Scriptural image of Christmas as a time of reflection and quiet as well as one of rejoicing:

                                 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
                                 not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.." it begins.

 It echoes the wonderful antiphon for Christmastide which is often used for Christmas Eve liturgies:

"When peaceful silence lay over all, and night had run half of her swift course, your all-powerful word, O Lord, leaped down from Heaven, from the royal throne."

It is when the rush is over, 'the' busy world is hushed' as Newman put it, that the awesome silence of the Godhead descends upon our earth.  It is the still point of the turning world, the point of intersection between God and us that we call Incarnation;  the opening up to the endless possibilities which the meeting of God and our poor, shadowed world throws up.  But to see them, to reach out to this God who comes to us as a baby, born in a stable, with only the steaming breath of two animals to warm him in this bitter night of mid-Winter, we have to experience the silence and 'otherness' of eternity;  we are touching another world.

Notice how often the carols we sing so enthusiastically at this time talk about the silence in which Bethlehem in particular, is wrapped at the coming of Jesus.

"O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!" we sing, and have you ever noticed that when we use those words, a silence and an awe descends on us too?  Then there is, of course "Silent Night" - our translation of the more profound original title "Stille nacht, Heilege nacht" which evokes the stillness that surrounds the wonder of this holy night.  It is a prayer in itself,  which has become a household word in every country where it is sung, especially on the night before Christmas.  Incidentally, it was first sung on Christmas Eve - you probably know that already - but the waves of prayer and the affection in which it is held reach far beyond that little village in Austria where Josef Mohr and his small  choir first sang it to the lilting strains of the violin, because the mice had eaten away at the organ bellows!  What a story, and what a powerful prayer!  For most of us, it is Christmas, it still has the power to draw us into the silence of the first night of Jesus' life.  It is a meditation in itself, isn't it?

Have you ever walked beneath the stars on a crisp, cold Christmas Eve night, and felt the special message of this time?  An old man who was a farmer in the West of Ireland once told me that the animals quieten as midnight approaches, and kneel down to celebrate the birth of the Saviour.  I really believed him as a child, but I never managed to catch them at it!  I lived in Birmingham at Christmas-time then. I saw the cattle in the Summer when they were out in the field; small chance I'd have of proving whether or not it was true.  Still it is a lovely idea, if apocryphal! 

I suppose we value the silence of late Christmas Eve and of other times when we really look at the Crib, and try to imagine what it must have been like for Our Lady to give birth under such circumstances, when we enter into the quiet peace that surrounded his birth.  Then we cry out with the angels "Glory to God on high, and peace to all those who are of good will!" because we have felt it,  and as a consequence, we are carried beyond ourselves and our small concerns.  That is the message of Christmas.  To go beyond ourselves, to reach out to those most in need, to kindle our small lights so that others may not stumble in the darkness.

We don't have to say "What can I give him, poor as I am?"  We know.   Have a very happy, peaceful and blessed Christmas, and let's remember to pray for those who cannot pray for themselves, or do not feel the need to do so.  Our prayer for them is a gift, wrapped in lovely, shiny Christmas paper, and we don't have the fag of wrapping it up!

4th Sunday of Advent

Prayer:   Come, Lord Jesus to me today, not just in my quiet times, but when I am fighting my way through the shops, dodging prams and skidding children, when I’m waiting in the ever-longer queues at the Post Office and in the Supermarket, when I’m frantically pulling out the burning mince pies from the oven, or looking for those Christmas cards I know I put away safely last year or....  well Jesus you know it all. 

Come especially during my busy days to help me to make a space for you, to show me how to draw my breath and make the world around me sane again.  And in the quiet times at the end of each day, come afresh and make me smile, give me the hope that this Christmas you will reach out to me in a special way, heal me, reconcile me, love me!  Bless me and all those I hold dear. 

Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus!

The dream of Jesus for our world

The Third Sunday of Advent has some stirring readings. The first one is from the prophet Isaiah which Jesus read in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth, when those blinkered people with their small-minded view of life, tried to throw him over the cliff because he claimed to be the Messiah.  "Why can't he do the things he did in Capernaum here?" they complained. But Jesus faced them squarely. "Because you do not believe in me" he replied.  They growled angrily muttering things like: "He was at school with our  Nathan (or Samuel or Moses). Who does he think he is?  He is working miracles in Capernaum and Bethsaida, but here, where he was brought up, he refuses even to pray with our sick!  Some prophet he is!"  You can imagine the angry exchanges that took place after the few words that Jesus spoke to them.  Angry and jealous, they tried to kill him, but he escaped. Here this text is given in full, and it is a beautiful Advent reading.  We can see why it contained what we might call the dream of Jesus for our world - his blueprint, or mission statement we might call it today.  This young, sunburned man had offered to his own people his dream for our healing. A dream he and his Father shared, a dream that, in the end, would bring him to that hell-hole we call Calvary - the place of the skull, the place of death.  But the dream survived because Calvary is also the place of the greatest love this tired old world has ever known. Drop by drop it came to us, as his blood landed on our earth, and we have never been the same since.  He blotted out all the hatred,  the misunderstanding, the envy by love and forgiveness. And here, in Advent we are faced once more with this dream which appeared to end on Calvary, but in reality carried on through time and space to us.  Jesus envisaged a world where the light of Christ would overcome the darkness of sin and ignorance, where no one would be left out, ignored forgotten or unhealed. Where there would be a special time of blessing, when debts would be written off, rifts healed, old scores forgiven and families would live in peace.  Not for one year of course,  as the Jewish law procclaimed, but for always. 



Christ has no hands but ours...

 We are carriers of that dream, and Advent is the time to look at it again.  St. Teresa's prayer "Christ has no hands but ours..." becomes a reality - we are offered the chance to reach out to heal, to forgive, to reconcile, to place love at the heart of the Church and the world, as St. Therese put it.  Our Foundress used to say that we are all given the hands of Christ to work with, the heart of Christ to love with, and the mind of Christ to illumine the world.  That's quite a statement, whoever first thought of it! 

We talk a lot about service, what we can do to help our neighbour, how we can best serve one another, but here we have the way given to us by Christ himself. "The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me and he has anointed me to give Good News to the poor...  the prophet cries.  And Christ answers:  "I have anointed  YOU to bring my name before Gentiles and Kings. Go and tell everyone...."   What a commission! 

Notice the responsorial psalm of this Sunday. It is Mary's Song, the Magnificat, which she quoted at the Visitation.  "My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour..."  She had just said her "yes" to being a carrier (literally) of the dream of God for our world - and her spirit was full of joy - in smaller ways we can do the same.  Have a joyful Advent!

Mary's Day

Today, we celebrate Mary's special privilege of being free from sin from her conception.  The Church has always believed that Mary was specially favoured, as the greeting from the Angel Gabriel implied in Luke's account of the Annunciation, and this was made an article of faith in 1854.  Remember that, when little Bernadette Soubirous asked the beautiful lady who appeared to her at Lourdes who she was, the lady answered: "I am the Immaculate Conception."  That was beyond Bernadette's understanding of course,  but the Bishops and priests around her understood what she meant. It was Our Lady herself who was appearing on the rock in Massabielle - she was using her title to help them to realise who she was.

We believe that Mary, as Mother of God, is, as Wordsworth said in the Ecclesiastical sonnets : "Our tainted nature's solitary boast."  He meant that Mary never went into that darkness patrolled by Satan and his cohorts which we call sin.  She was always so close to God that sin never entered her soul.  She was born without original sin, which we know is the tendency we have to allow ourselves to be pulled into sin, into doing things that harm us.  St. Paul, even though he was a great Saint, once said, ruefully, to the Christians of Rome:

"I know of nothing good living in me -living that is,  in my unspiritual self - for though the will to do good is in me, what I do is not, with the result that, instead of doing the good things I want to do, I carry out the sinful things I do not want."  That is called original sin.  We know that feeling well.   We are pulled into sin, or tempted to sin, and we often don't resist it.  But Paul goes on to encourage us - he says that, in the power of the Holy Spirit we are able to resist the attacks of Satan, and live in the light. 

Mary is the fresh breath that blows away the darkness and despair that sometimes seem to cover our world.  She reaches out to us, heals our fears, our loneliness and our pain, and makes us feel better.  That's the work of a good mother.  She is our best friend, as my mother always used to tell us.  She really is.  She understands us, and never judges us.  She wants us to "do good" as the slogan puts it.  She is our role model.  She wants the young people of our world, in particular, to use the gifts God gave them, enthusiasm, energy, joy and so much else, to bring life and love into our world.  You think that doesn't include you?  You're not young any longer?  Wrong.  If you have the Holy Spirit in your heart, if you "act justly, love tenderly, and walk humbly with your God" you will always be young in heart.  Isn't that a comforting thought?  Ask Mary to look after you today, to be your friend, to keep you young, beautiful and joy-filled.  She'll do it.  Let's pray to her:

Mary, our Mother, we wish you a happy feast.  We love you very much, and we want you to befriend us, to show us what we ought to do to be heralds of the Gospel, so that its good news may reach the ends of the earth.  Be with all those who are in dangerous places today, those who are sick, those who are bitter and angry.  Help them, and us, to be better people, more loving, more generous, more thoughtful, and help us to have thankful hearts, so that we can say exultingly with you: "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour!"    Have a good day. 

Prepare the way of the Lord!

John the Baptist was wonderful wasn't he? He never let anything come in the way of what he believed was what God wanted him to do.  He went straight for the jugular in a spiritual sense of course! Uncompromising? tough? serious? No holds barred?  A loner?  It's possible that he was all of those things, but the essential John has been captured by the readings for this second Sunday of Advent which are all about preparation, expectancy, forgiveness. John believed in preparation. "Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight!" he roared. Not a man to be ignored, I'd say, wouldn't you? He'd have made a good site manager on a modern building project.  No delays possible, no excuses, no procrastination - just get on with the job in hand - "This is what the Boss wants, let's do it for him."  You know, we like people like that - the ones who get things done, who make our lives peaceful and orderly, who help us to see where we should be going.  It makes for a stress-free existence.  But John meant a lot more than that.  He wanted us to repent!
Of what? We ask ourselves.  Well, for a start, our self-centredness, our cluttering up our lives with non-essentials, our forgetfulness of the need to pray. Advent is a lovely time. It is a time for that special peace which Jesus came to give us. It is a time for that quiet joy which is its hallmark.  Our Foundress told us:

"I want you all to be joyful at this time.  Why should we not be joyful to welcome him who comes to bring us joy?" No reason really, except the things we hold on to which block the way to God's peace - the worst one is unforgiveness. We are hurt, we smart, we get angry and want to hit back. We persuade ourselves that it isn't our fault = the other one owes us an apology!  And we refuse to be the first to reach out to reconcile our differences.  I was once at a funeral of a mother of a large family.  She had worked all her life for her children and then her grandchildren, but some sort of grievance broke out between some members of the family, and they stopped speaking to one another.  They visited the mother when she was dying on different days so that they could never meet.  She begged them to reconcile their differences but they refused.  At the  cemetery they took up their positions on either side of the open grave....  I have never forgotten that image - the mother who loved them all in the middle of two implacable enemies, both of whom wept for her.  John would say to us today:" Don't let the sun go down on your anger!"  It is good advice.  Advent is a time of mercy, of forgiveness, of peace.  "I will hear what the Lord God has to say, a voice that speaks of peace..." we read in the Psalm for the Second Sunday, and the response is: "Let us see O Lord your mercy, and give us your saving help!"  Well, how can we expect mercy when we refuse to give it to others? 

Let's try to make this Advent special by ridding ourselves of the things that make us and others unhappy. That's what John meant by preparing the way of the Lord.  Have a lovely Advent.  We will be praying for you all!

Expectancy, Hopefulness, Joy!

The Coming

God held in his hand a small globe.

"Look!" he said.  The Son looked.

Far off, as through water he saw a parched land

of fierce colour. The light burned there;

crusted buildings cast their shadows; a bright serpent,
a river, uncoiled itself, radiant with slime.
On a bare hill, a bare tree saddened the sky.
Many people held out their thin arms to it,
as though waiting for a vanished April to return
to its crossed boughs.
The Son watched them.
"LET ME GO THERE", he said.    R.S. Thomas.

This poem by the Anglican clergyman, R.S. Thomas, who died recently, has a very powerful message for us as we open the gate to Advent.  The weeks leading up to Christmas are wonderful aren't they?  Each year we experience the excitement, the hope the expectancy that lift us out of the dark days and light our lives with that tingling of the thumbs that means we are coming to life!  All around us we hear the sounds of life - the tinkling bells, the running feet of children racing to the shops for brightly-wrapped presents, the sound of carols sung outside in the crisp air of Winter days -  the monotonous ping of the tills registering another sale, the noise of laughter and excited voices drowning out the myriad voices of the beggars who throng our streets at this time. It is almost Christmas - the beautifully lighted window displays tell us so, and in odd corners and in large shop windows the simple, age-old Crib re-iterates the message.  But what message is that today?  So many regard Christmas as just a holiday, and Advent as a time of extra work which is often stressful.  But what is it for you? As Christians, we have to think about that very carefully.

Frances Taylor thought of Advent as a special time when, to quote the SMG Way of Life, she asks us "to allow the mystery of the Incarnation to penetrate our whole being, until Christ becomes our all in all." So for her as for R.S. Thomas, it was a time for reflection for quiet prayer.  Look at the poem again and try to imagine the scene.  Christ sees the darkness, the hopelessness, the longing for an escape as he contemplates the unredeemed world. His response was wrung from him: "Let me go there!" he begs his Father.  To give us hope, to give us freedom, to give us life, to give us Christmas.  The Incarnation, or the coming of Christ to share our pain and darkness as well as our joy and hope, is for Frances Taylor the ultimate sign of the worth of human beings.  If Christ thought it of value to become human, then, in her eyes all human beings were worthy of dignity and of love. All without exception.  She understood that the Incarnation happened only once historically, but in love it goes on through time and space, so that each Christmas brings Christ anew to our darkened world, reaching out his hands to heal, to reconcile, to lift us out of our own particular darknesses  in order to experience the joy of those shepherds and kings that first Christmas-tide.. And we?  Well there is no contest.  Our response in these cash-strapped days of recession, has  to be that of men and women of hope.  We are invited to help those less fortunate than ourselves: to pray for the homeless, the housebound, the lonely, the poor. 

It is now our turn, we cannot just look on Christmas as a big party time and nothing more - to do that, would be to imitate those harassed innkeepers in Bethlehem on that first Christmas night.  They ignored Jesus; they had no room for him.  The demands of the census and the subsequent influx of visitors proved too much for them.  To house a baby, a young mother and a worried father was out of the question.  Frances Taylor told us that the saints revealed that Jesus himself loves to have his infany honoured on earth, and he blesses those who do it.  I told you there was no contest!!  Enjoy Advent.

Let the praise of God always be on our lips (Psalm 34)

Let the praise of God be always on our lips!  So says Psalm 34. On first reading that opening phrase, it seems a tall order doesn’t it. No?  Then you praise God all the time?  Your lips never utter any less exalted sentiments? Join the heavenly band now – you have earned it.

Fortunately for most of us, the psalm goes on to say “my soul glories in my God... I do try to seek Yahweh, and I find that he answers me... so will you help me to proclaim him? Let us together extol his praise! ”  Now that’s more like it, we think, as we feel the attractiveness of that God our soul is always seeking – who doesn’t feel that pull towards him at times?  That soul-stirring joy that makes us say: “it’s good to be here!” Of course we do – that is what we were made for. As the next stanza says: “he frees us from our fears so that every face turned to him grows brighter” – what a lovely image. Praising God, and thanking him for all he does for us, frees us from the things that keep us away from him, and even our everyday faces become beautiful – it really happens.  You don’t need beauty aids then – you need God.

Frances Taylor realised this very early on in her life.  She loved this psalm and often prayed it during her sleepless nights in her later years.  She believed we should really try to live lives of praise – “Give thanks to God in everything you do” she advised those young women who thronged to join her new Congregation.  Not so easy, but possible if we really try?  The benefits are astounding.  And in any case we want to look beautiful, don’t we!!  Everyone loves a person who looks on the bright side, someone who really tries to find the good in people, in situations, in the lovely things around us. I know I feel a whole lot better when someone says to me “Thank you, that was great!”  It brings a glow, doesn’t it? On this lovely day in late November, we are inspired by the beginnings of Thanksgiving Day, and how the people of America still remember with gratitude, those early North American Indian tribes who reached out to the newcomers, and shared their love, their food, the little they had.  What a gift, and what a response of love this day is.  St. Paul echoes Psalm 34 when he reminds the people of Corinth how much we will be like God himself when we live in that way:

                We, with our unveiled faces reflect like a mirror the brightness of the Lord.

                All of us will grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image we reflect.

                This is the work of the Lord, who is Spirit.                              1 Corinthians 3: 18.

A habit of saying thanks will do that for us.  We will be surrounded by beauty! Have a lovely thanksgiving.