One card

When I worked in the Clifton diocese, I had many wonderful experiences, some scary ones and many that, to this day, have made me think, especially at this time of year.

It was a week before Christmas, and of course we were very busy in school with plays, carol concerts, Advent  services,  the usual occurrences just before finishing the term for the Christmas holidays.  In the middle of it all, my parish priest telephoned and asked me to visit an old man, newly-arrived in the parish, who had broken his leg and therefore was housebound.

When my companion and I got to the house, we found that it was a two-roomed apartment in an area which was very run-down.  To our surprise, the man himself opened the door to us after some time of shuffling about and fumbling with locks.  I thought that he might have had a friend or a carer with him to help him, but he was completely alone.

His smile of welcome was heart-warming.  He had not seen either of us before, but it was obvious that we were an unexpected Christmas treat for him.  He sat us down with old-world courtesy, and offered us tea which he gave us in the manner of a butler in a large house serving refreshments to honoured guests, even though the tea was poured out in chipped mugs.

 I looked around the room.  It was sparsely furnished, but very clean and tidy.  His few possessions were lovingly cherished: he had two pictures which must have come from better days hung on the walls, and they brightened up the room, giving it a character it wouldn’t have otherwise possessed.  Then I saw a string tied around the mantelpiece.  On it was hung a large Christmas card.  This was displayed in the most eye-catching part of the room so that he could look at it often.  One card.  For something to say I said:”You’re putting up your cards, I see!”  His face broke into a smile. “Yes” he answered. “Isn’t this a wonderful time of the year? I love it!”  He then went on to tell us that this card had come from the St. Vincent de Paul Society in his last parish.  “They are so good!” he said.  They always came to see me, and gave me a present at Christmas!”  He got the card down and showed me.  It was thumbed, worn, often read.  I turned it over.  It was last year’s card.  With a smile I handed it back, making a resolution that he’d get a load more if I could help it.

One card.  Last year’s card.  Not chucked in the bin, not given to a charity for recycling, but loved, cherished, precious.  He talked with pride about his children.  His wife had died some years earlier, but he had three children, one a barrister, another a high-profile business man, and a third living abroad in a taxpayer’s haven.  All able to reach him.  All with the means to make his life more comfortable.  All too busy, or too involved with other concerns.  Yet he loved them and prayed for each of them at night.

I left that room a very changed person.  So did my companion.  We talked about it on the way home.  We had no idea how he came to be so poor when he obviously had seen better days, but the amazing thing was that he wasn’t bitter.  He was lovely.  I’ve always remembered him.  When I told a group of women who came to the Convent a little about him, without revealing who he was, they all said ”Oh can he come to my family for Christmas? We’d love to have him!”  Good, loving people.  I think he made friends, and received help.  But it would have been good if his family had remembered him. Loneliness is the disease of our times.  There are so many, and at Christmas it seems more poignant, doesn’t  it?

So let’s remember Jim – we’ll call him that. There are many Jim’s and Joan’s around us. Jesus came to offer love and friendship. He didn’t have much either, but he shared what he had.  In these days of recession, let’s do that too.  Have a lovely third week of Advent, and, like Jim, rejoice  because “Christmas is a wonderful time.”    So it is, for the generous of heart.

 

 

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light

                                                           

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light...

So Isaiah Chapter 9 starts.  Does that passage lift your heart?  If not, try again!!   Imagine a people, poor, lowly, dispirited, living in darkness – the darkness of fear, of bereavement, of lack of peace, and look around you.  Yes, we see these people all the time, every day at some time or other, and, unfortunately we get used to seeing them, used to their pain and hopelessness, so that we don’t try to do anything about it.  Isn’t that true?

This word-picture in Isaiah goes further.  Isaiah says that they “have seen a great light.”  Not a small, bobbing light that gives no relief from the surrounding darkness, but a great light , a light that will never go out, the light of the risen Christ shining on our shadowed world, lighting up the darkness, so that we can see clearly, reaching out to those still sitting in the darkness of despair, and lifting them out of it with our prayer.   This is an Advent experience.  Advent is all about hope.

“You have made their gladness greater” the prophet goes on to say, “you have made their joy increase”.   Advent is also about joy.

Yesterday morning at Mass in our local Church,  there was a chill in the air.  The Church wasn’t adequately heated, and it was very frosty and cold outside.  People were rubbing their hands and putting gloves back on, and shrugging into thick heavy coats.  Not at first a particularly joyful atmosphere for the first Sunday of Advent.  Then one of the altar servers, a young girl, picked up a taper, lighted it and went over to the newly-created Advent wreath.  She lighted the first candle and everyone in the Church craned their necks to have a look.  A flickering candle, getting stronger, the first of four lighting up the greenery around it, and picking out the purple, pink and white candles  still unlighted in the circle of time.   Most smiled.  The first Sunday of Advent!  A sign of hope.   A bit of warmth in a cold Church,  the beginning of a journey of faith – another Christmas on the way.  You could almost read the thoughts of the Congregation as they looked at that lone candle.  The symbol of hope, peace and gladness.  We all knew what it meant to us.

Advent is about a shared journey of faith which is lighted up by the light of Christ’s coming which started all those years ago in that little town of Bethlehem.

It demands something of us, as all journeys do.  What did Isaiah say as he continued the theme of his prophecy?

For (we) rejoice in his presence as people do at harvest time,  when they are happy  dividing the spoils.  For the yoke that was weighing on him,  the bar across his shoulders, the rod of his oppressor, these you break as on the day of Midian.

Why?

Advent is about laying down burdens,  and freedom from oppression because Jesus promised us that he had been anointed “to bring good news to the poor,  to bind up hearts that are broken, and to  proclaim liberty to captives and those burdened”  (Isaiah 61).  His mission was to give hope to those made poor.  It is our challenge now in this Advent.

Further, he challenges us:

For all the footgear of battle, every cloak rolled in blood is burnt  and consumed by fire.

Advent is about refraining from enmity, hatred, aggression.

Again, why?

"For there is a Child born to us, a Son given to us, and dominion is laid upon his shoulders,

And this is the name they will give him:

WONDER -  COUNSELLOR,  MIGHTY GOD,  ETERNAL FATHER, PRINCE OF PEACE.....”

Advent is about the coming of the eternal, co-existent,   all-powerful God who is “other” to our world in order to forge human and divine links which makes him one of us, imminent, enfleshed in our humanity, part of our pain and our joy.  It is about a love that will not let go, a love that invites us to hold on to those tiny hands that became the healing, out-reaching hands of the Man God of Nazareth.  It is an invitation to change our stony hearts to hearts of flesh so that he can love us the way he wants to love us.

Read the passage from Isaiah just quoted again and again, and make it your own this Advent.  It is beautiful, awe-inspiring and challenging, as are all the Advent readings.

Have a lovely Advent.  We will meet again next week, hopefully, when you have walked a few steps on the journey.  As a famous anthem of a Northern football team would sing:

When you walk through the dark, hold your head up high,

And don’t be afraid of the dark,

At the end of the road is a golden sun and the sweet-silver sound of the lark.

WALK ON, WALK ON WITH HOPE IN YOUR HEART AND YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE!

 

For we, the people who walked in darkness have seen a GREAT LIGHT.  Praise him!

 

Drawings courtesy of P Macaulay (c) 2012
Photos courtesy of BML and AK (c) 2012
Clip Art courtesy of BMcC
 

 

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!

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!