Follow Me!

Yesterday we were asked to put a special emphasis on what it means to be called by Christ to live fully.  That doesn’t mean what many people think it does, for example, what we sometimes call ‘living it up’ – having a good time while the money lasts, having as much fun as we can.  At least what we call fun until the headache kicks in! 

What Jesus meant was to live a meaningful Christian life, allowing the Holy Spirit to guide our choices in life, being in touch with ourselves through prayer and the sacraments, reaching out to the poor and the disenfranchised, taking each day as a gift rather than a burden to be endured.  That was how he himself lived.

Remember the Gospel passages when the first disciples met Jesus?  They are so simple, and yet so inspiring.  Let’s look at John Chapter 1 v. 29 - -34

The next day, seeing Jesus coming towards him, John said: ”Look, there is the lamb of God.”  Hearing this, the two disciples followed Jesus.  Jesus turned round, saw them following, and said “What do you want?”  They answered “Rabbi” – which means teacher – “ where do you live?” “Come and see”! he replied.  So they went and saw where he lived, and stayed with him the rest of that day.

So begins the story of the calling of the first two apostles. What did they do?  They spent time with Jesus, got to know him a little, loved it and immediately told their friends about it.  One of them was called Andrew and we know that he rushed out and told his brother Simon Peter, not in words we might have expected him to use like “We stayed with that preacher called Jesus – you remember him – he comes from Nazareth – and it was great. He really has something!”  but simply “we have found the Messiah”.  Then he took his big brother to meet Jesus.  The rest of the story is history....

See yourself watching that scene – the early morning sun shining down on the sea of Galilee, the fishing nets drying on the shore nearby, the small fishing boats dotted around, John the Baptist pointing out Jesus as he passed and the two disciples following him to where he was living at the time...   See Jesus turn and smile at you, including you in that invitation, “Come and see!” You follow him, perhaps a little hesitatingly, and he encourages you, asking you to tell him about yourself.  He seems so interested as if you were the only one in the world, not just a number but a person whom he loves and who matters to him.  Feel your own eagerness to talk to him and to tell him what you have been doing with your life and what your hopes and dreams are, and see his smile of encouragement.  Receive his blessing before you part company, and then realise that he is with you on the way back home, he is with you always even though you can no longer see him.

Ask yourself: “What does Jesus really want me to do with my life?”  After all you only have one life, so it is a serious matter how you spend it. Perhaps he wants you to marry and bring up a family – perhaps he wants you to find him in your work, by staying unmarried so that you can witness through your single status to what St. Paul  calls “ an undivided attention to the Lord’s affairs.”

Perhaps Jesus is calling you to be a priest or a Sister – that could be as he always calls us  in different ways to serve the Church and to build it up in love.  Pray earnestly that you find out your particular path and then, when you have an idea of what it might be, follow it up by asking the right people about it, by “coming and seeing” as Jesus put it.  It may turn out to be what he wants of you, or it may not.  You’ll never know if you ignore it, or try to follow what you want and not what he wants for you.  They are two different things!!

Let’s resolve to pray not only for ourselves but for others that the Church may be “one whole Christ loving the Father.”   That was Jesus’ dream.  It comes at a cost. 

Meditate on this wonderful hymn and see if you can answer the questions he asks.

Here are the words of The Summons (Will You Come and Follow Me) :

WILL YOU COME AND FOLLOW ME

Will you come and follow me if I but call your name?
Will you go where you don’t know and never be the same?
Will you let my love be shown, will you let my name be known
Will you let my life be grown in you, and you in me?

Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name?
Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same?
Will you risk the hostile stare should your life attract or scare?
Will you let me answer prayer in you, and you in me?

 Will you let the blinded see if I but call your name?

Will you set the prisoners free and never be the same?

Will you kiss the leper clean, and do such as this unseen

and admit to what I mean in you, and you in me?

Will you love the “you” you hide if I but call your name?
Will you quell the fear inside, and never be the same?
Will you use the faith you’ve found to re-shape the world around
through my sight and touch and sound in you, and you in me?

Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name.
Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.
In your company I’ll go where your love and footsteps show.
Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you, and you in me!
John Bell and Graham Maule.

God bless each of you. We will remember you in our prayers.

The Call of Christ - Vocations Sunday

"Thank God for the blessings of your callling, and let it become more and more precious to you each day."

Mother Magdalen

We are all called by Christ to follow him.  Let us ponder on the way that Christ is leading us even though we each have a unique path they all have the same destination - to Christ.

God will lead us. Pray that we will respond to God's call in our own lives.  Lord, wherever you go I am willing to follow. 

"God is calling all of us to follow him, and to do our best in his service.  The kingdom of God is so close, it is within us. Let us give him a heart wholly his."

Mother Magdalen

For today Pope Benedict XVI has written a letter on vocations:
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/vocations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20111018_xlix-vocations_en.html

"Every specific vocation is in fact born of the initiative of God; it is a gift of the Love of God! He is the One who takes the “first step”, and not because he has found something good in us, but because of the presence of his own love “poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5)."

PP Benedict XVI

Take a leap of faith. Dive in! Let us allow ourselves to be swept away by the grace of God.

Listen to Steven Curtis Chapman song "Dive" on letting go and jumping in with a leap of faith.

Let us conclude with a prayer:

God created me to do Him some definite service.

He has committed some work to me,

which He has not committed to another.

I have a mission.

I am a link in a chain,

a bond of connection between persons.

Therefore I will trust Him.

Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away.

If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him;

if I am perplexed, my perplexity may serve Him;

if I am in joy, my joy may serve Him;

if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve him.

He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about.

Amen.

 (Prayer of Blessed John Henry Newman on Life's Vocations)

Lord Jesus, we entrust to you the young women and men of the world, with all their hopes and aspirations.  Fill them with a love and desire to follow you with a generosity and readiness to respond to the call.

Jesus is beckoning... will you go?  Will you leave "the nets" and follow him?

Lord, give us the courage to say Yes to follow you

and to renew that Yes every day!

To be a good shepherd...

...you have to be half a sheep yourself!

The old shepherd's words rang around the kitchen of the hillside farm in the Lake District.  His companions looked up, fascinated.  "What do you mean?" one of them said eventually.  The apple-cheeked shepherd smiled.  "I think I mean that to be a good shepherd, you have to learn to be half a sheep yourself", he replied.  "You see, sheep are strange creatures, they run away, get lost, fall into holes and crevices, get burrs and thorns in their coats, don't listen to what the shepherd or the sheep dog is persuading them to do, go the wrong way and end up in a slimy pool or a muddy ditch..."  He grinned ruefully. "Come to think of it, they aren't much different from ourselves!" 

"Thank you!" whispered one of the crew of cameramen grouped around the table. The others looked at their host enquiringly. "You really think we are as daft as that!" another said.  "Maybe not", the shepherd replied.  "You appear to be very clever, especially when you point those lens at something that looks like a shrivelled bit of human hair, and when you put it up on the screen later on, it is beautiful - magic!"  The crew sipped their drinks reflectively.  The compliment seemed to be a little two-edged, but they let it pass. "Tell me", a third one asked the old man "how on earth did you find that shivering bundle over there and realise it was your lost sheep?"  "I've told you", said the shepherd, "but I'll tell you again."

"An hour ago, if you remember, you came with me to look for one of my new lambs that had got lost."  They all nodded their heads in agreement.  "You came with me in the storm to film what I did, and to tell the public who watch your programme on the BBC what a real shepherd does in lambing time, and especially what skills he uses to find an errant lamb who is out there, defenceless, cold and possibly suffering from an animal form of hypothermia.  Okay?"  They nodded again. "Well you found out tonight didn't you?"  "Not really" said the youngest crew member.  "It was pelting with rain, the wind was howling fit to blow us all over that hillside, and you want us to believe that you heard that lamb over there," as he pointed to the little new-born creature who was lying contentedly beside the open fire, sucking on a miniature bottle of warm milk "bleating piteously for it's mother!"  "Well, not exactly"  said the old man,  "but yes, I did know that he was somewhere down there, crying out for help.  Call it an instinct, if you like.  I prefer to call it 'being half a sheep yourself'  after fifty years or so working on a sheep farm!"

"Now you are going to ask me again what on earth I mean by that!" the shepherd smiled. "Yes we certainly don't know what that means" the youngest cameraman replied.  "Please tell us. Our viewers would be interested." The old man smiled. "For me, that means knowing your sheep so well that they become part of your family, part of who you are yourself.  To be half a sheep means that I learn to understand them, to protect them, to anticipate their needs, and to really love them.  That way, I can look out for them and guard against any dangers that might come to them. They are my life." 

There was a silence in the room.  "Yes, I begin to see," said one of the cameramen who had not spoken up to this. "You have to think like a sheep, feel like a sheep, know what dangers they are likely to get into, so that you can be a good shepherd to them."  "To put it in a nutshell!" answered the old shepherd.  "Would you like my job?"  They all laughed. "I think it's going to be a good series" said the chief cameraman. "We'll call it  'The Good Shepherd'. "

That BBC production is now gathering dust in the archives of that august organisation, but it made a real impact when it was released.  Many letters were received asking about the work of shepherds and some even made reference to Jesus as the one who called himself The Good Shepherd.  He became the full sheep of course, taking on our nature, leaving behind the glory that was rightly his to live our life with all its joys and sorrows, hopes and disillusionments. 

Did you know that one of the earliest representations of Jesus is that of the Good Shepherd?  I remember being in the catacombs and seeing a rather crude etching of a young shepherd with a lamb across his shoulders carved on the wall opposite me.  It was so vivid and seemed to reach out through the centuries to tell  me something about how those early Christians saw Jesus.  They were imprisoned, frightened of persecution, hidden away from the Roman authorities and the groups of dissident Jews who would condemn them and execute them for their beliefs.  Yet they comforted themselves with the Jesus many of them had known personally by depicting him as the Saviour, the Good Shepherd, the one who would look out for them and lead them to safety.   The Good Shepherd. The words he used must have often been read in those twisting passages of the old Roman cemeteries on the outskirts of the capital city:

"I am the Good Shepherd.  The Good Shepherd lays his life down for his sheep. I know my sheep and they know me.  I have other sheep who are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them too. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one fold and one shepherd."

John 10: 14-17

This Sunday we keep the remembrance of this wonderful image of Jesus as Saviour.  The Resurrected Lord who reaches out through time and space to us, his sheep, his silly sheep, his wandering, unfaithful sheep and offers us that same protection, love and contentment that he first gave to the First Christians. 

Frances Taylor, our Founder,  made her First Holy Communion on Good Shepherd Sunday!  Not in a lovely ivy-covered Church in the safety of the country, but in the kitchen of a military hospital out in the Crimea in the middle of a blood-bath!  She always loved to think of Jesus as the Good Shepherd who took on our life to lead us to his.  Praise him!

Do you like this hymn she wrote to celebrate this feast? Here is the first verse and chorus:

I met the Good Shepherd but now on the plain

As homeward he carried his lost one again.

I marvelled how gently his burden he bore;

and as he passed by me

I knelt to adore

O Shepherd, Good Shepherd,

thy wounds they are deep;

the wolves have sore hurt thee in saving thy sheep.

Thy garments all-over with crimson are dyed;

and what is this wound they have made in thy side?

(Mother Magdalen)

Have a lovely feast day, fellow sheep!  Thank Jesus that he became a whole  sheep to save us and to protect us from the enemy!  God bless.

The Resurrection

A happy Easter to all of you!  We have journeyed through Lent, and experienced the loneliness and the fear of the Passion, as well as the heart-warming act of Jesus as Servant, washing the feet of his disciples, and then giving us the wonderful gift of the Eucharist.  I suppose many of you celebrated the Seder meal, and became part of the first New Testament Seder, picturing Jesus going out into the darkness towards Gethsemane with the beautiful sound of the Hallel psalms ringing in his ears, yet knowing he was betrayed and soon would be captured and disowned.  But now we are warming ourselves, not at the brazier of Peter which just took away for a time the cold winds of fear and guilt, but the great sun of the Resurrected world.  Alleluia!

May I share with you another Resurrection?  I’m sure you have many of your own, which I would love to hear, but I’ve always been captivated by this one. Please send in your own stories of hope after despair.  Jesus offers us the fruits of his rising from the dead all the time. 

Here is my contribution:

An old man shuffled painfully along the cobbled streets of London.  He was stooped, awkward and obviously in pain. His face was pale and there were lines of pain etched deeply on his cheeks.  People passed him by, avoiding his eyes which seemed bitter and hard.  His name was George Frederic Handel.  The great musician of the 18^th century.  He had suffered a stroke some months before, and doctors held out little hope of his survival. “I am finished!” he said to himself. “I can no longer compose music.  I cannot hear those wonderful melodies in my head.  Point and counterpoint harmony no longer have any meaning for me.  I might as well die!”  Despondently he shuffled back to his lodgings.

When he got there he found a thick wad of paper rolled in a parcel standing on the hall table.  “Not another MS”, he muttered. “Will they never realise that I am no longer a musician?”  Listlessly he picked it up.  It was from his friend who had always supported him, so, listlessly he tore open the paper.  It was the story of the life of Christ.   He read on, without much interest, until he saw this:

“.. the crowds were appalled at seeing him, so disfigured did he look, that he seemed no longer human,… “   “Like a sapling he grew up in front of us, like a root in arid ground. Without beauty, without majesty we saw him no looks to attract our eyes, a thing despised and rejected by men. A man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. A man to make people screen their faces. He was despised, and we took no account of him.”   Fourth Servant Song:  Isaiah 52: 11 – 15.

“Why, that’s me!” he cried, “I am despised and of no account too!”  So, fascinated, he read on.

Afterwards he was to say:  “I saw the heavens open and I heard the most beautiful music.  Words poured into my mind.  “He was despised and rejected yet by his wounds we are healed.  I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH” he cried exultingly at the four walls of his hallway.  ALLELUIA!  For ten days he never came out of his room, refusing to eat or drink.  But he gave us The Messiah.  His greatest work.  The most famous oratorio in the world. 

London refused to put it on, as they thought he was finished.  So he went to Dublin, and they gave us “Oh thou who bringest good tidings to Sion”  “He was despised”  “I know that my redeemer liveth”  and of course the famous Alleluia chorus.  And so many more.... Handel lived on for some years after this, and became the most feted musician of the time.  Everywhere he went, he brought the portfolio of The Messiah.  It was his Resurrection. 

What are your experiences of Resurrection?  Thank God for them today, and go about humming “Alleluia, alleluia, alle- luia!"  Enjoy this wonderful time - the Springtime of the Church and ours too.

God bless.

ALLELUIA

THIS IS THE DAY THAT THE LORD HAS MADE. LET US BE GLAD, AND REJOICE IN IT.

Why look among the dead for someone who is alive?  (Luke 25:5)

When you think of Easter what image do you see?
The hint of longer, lighter days to come...
the hills bursting with new-born lambs...
the scramble for the hidden, coloured eggs in garden, house or field...
the Easter bunnies, or the dark-coated ribboned eggs decorating the sideboard?

All these perhaps, yet each is but a faint, far-off image of what it is to us as Easter people.

Our song is ever and always the alleluia of the angels as they look on him whom sin has pierced and love has healed... now risen and glorious, standing triumphant against all that would demean or limit us and offering without price the promise of a life that holds eternal joy.

Praise him!

"I wish you all a Happy Easter, full of graces; graces of renewal of spirit, of fresh strength and energy in our Lord's service."
(Mother Magdalen)

After the Easter Vigil, we should be full of joy and hope. 
So we pray:

Come, Risen Lord Jesus
Easter in us,
Be a day-spring to the dimness of us today,
and always that we may bring glory to you. (Joyce Huggett)

If you have the energy, get up at dawn to see the sunrise and pray... If not, just enjoy the day and sing "alleluia" in your heart.

Happy Easter!

Holy Week

We are at the threshold of Holy Week, the most important week of the whole calender.  This week reminds us of how much we are loved.  It is the week of our salvation.  This is the time when, as Luke puts it, Jesus "set his face like a flint" as he journeyed to Jerusalem where, in the tradition of all the prophets, he would be slain.

There is one difference, however, between the death of the Old Testament prophets and that of Jesus.  This is the story of the unfolding of salvation history. The tragic events of which lead us through betrayal, injustice, envy, hatred, and indescribable torture to a humiliating and lonely death on a gibbet with a howling mob spitting, snarling and cursing below him.

Yet this death was to lead to the explosion of joy we know today as Resurrection.  It was to open up for us the possibility of living for all eternity in that same joy and blessedness. It was the gift of forgiveness for past sins, the breaking of the stranglehold of Satan over us, the forging of a chain of love that was to unite Heaven and earth, reaching out through time and space to all peoples throughout the world until the end of time.

 Calvary is the place of the skull, the place of death, but it is also the refuge of sinners, an inexhaustible well of healing, a centre of reconciliation and of love.  Every drop of blood that Jesus shed on that first Friday we call good, was redemptive.  Each pain-filled gasp of sound that issued from his parched and cracked lips was an appeal to our heart.  "Father, forgive them, they don't know what they are doing!" he cried out on seeing the upraised fists, hearing the imprecations of hatred and envy below him, feeling the agony of pain as he tried to lift himself up on the nails in order to get breath in his lungs to speak because his whole body was contorted and out of sync. What a God! When the chips were down, and Jesus was dying in unspeakable pain as he writhed in agony on the Cross as the sky darkened around him and his eyes were blinded by blood and spittle, then his whole being shone out with love - a love that resounds today in us as we reflect on what he did for us. 

Let's remember to spend some time this week on staying close to him and to his Mother Mary, standing so bravely at the foot of the Cross as her lovely, innocent Son gasped out  his life for us.  Let's think of that poor man dying beside him who only asked for Jesus to remember him. Think of it - what a God!  No saying, "well, you've been a very naughty boy, so you'll have to suffer a lot in the next world!"  He saw that man's sorrow.  "This day you will be with me in Paradise!"  That is love, that is total forgiveness.  Two men dying together, one innocent, the Son of the Eternal God, the other a thief, who had led what we call a bad life, who, in his own words, deserved to die.  Play the Taize chant "Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom" (click on title) and think of that scene.  Thank him for all the times you have received forgiveness and a chance to start again.  He is so close to us in Holy Week. Hold hands with Mary, and ask her to give you courage.  What a woman!  She knows what sorrow is, she will listen and heal and make you feel better.  She is, after all a mother, and that's what good mothers do.

Have a lovely Holy Week starting with the joy of Palm Sunday, and ending, or should we say beginning with Easter Sunday.  We shall be praying for you too. 

Tomorrow we will talk a little about the Eucharist and the Seder meal, the meal Jesus ate with his disciples before he went to Gethsemane. We call it the Last Supper.

God bless.