Brave New Year!

I wish each of you a very happy, hopeful and brave New Year!  Why do I add the word 'brave' to the list?  Well, it seems to me that we are on a new journey, and for that we need most of all, courage!  They say that even the longest journey starts with the first step, and it is that first, tentative step into the unknown that requires courage.  The second thing we need for our journey into 2013 is support - people around us whom we can trust, companions who will be there for us and see us through the bad times and laugh with us in the good times.  Together we can do great things.  I believe that, don't you? 

To be an optimist is not usually to be naive, although of course it may be, but essentially it is to look at the reality of our situation and find a path through it that is possible to traverse safely.  Optimists look at possibilities and take risks. Pessimists see only the negative side and are afraid to risk being wrong!

We need role models don't we, leaders who have the courage to take the first step on a new, untried road, and beckon us to follow. 

There are many role models we can take through this New Year, many saints, many people in our own lives, perhaps.  I'm going to ask you to take a fictional character, a figment of a gifted writer's imagination, if you like. And when I tell you who he is, don't say "But he isn't a real person!"  He is an intrinsic part of an allegory, and allegories are very important in showing us something about ourselves.  Jesus used that device in his teaching - we call them parables.



JRR Tolkien



Have you seen "The Hobbit"?  If you haven't, do try to do so  The film version of Tolkien's "Unexpected Journey" is really three stories intertwined and focuses on one character in its title, a hobbit.  Let me tell you how a genius's mind works.  This genius was a lecturer at Oxford.  He was correcting some student's essays. When he got to the last one in the pile, he found that  there was a blank page at the end of the examination paper, which this particular student had not filled in.  Absent-mindedly, Tolkien scribbled something on the paper.  When he looked at it, he realised that it had nothing whatever to do with the essay he was supposed to be marking.  He had written:

In the earth was a hole and a hobbit lived in it...

He looked at it,  bemused.  But, being Tolkien, he wondered "Hole?" "Where is it?"  And he proceeded to find out what a hobbit was, and where he lived. He peopled his world with amazing characters - dwarves, wizards, magicians, the stuff of fantasy.  But he gave us Middle Earth, The Lord of the Rings, and now this Unexpected Journey we call The Hobbit for screen purposes. You may not like fantasy films, I don't think I like them usually, but this one, like the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe series, says something important, especially for us facing a new beginning, an adventure if you like.

The Hobbit

The main character is called Bilbo Baggins, who is the hobbit.  He lives in Bag End, and he loves nothing more than to sit by his fire quietly enjoying his solitude or entertaining his friends. He was shy and not very charismatic, if you know what I mean.  Then one night, he is visited by thirteen noisy and demanding dwarves, and Gandalf, who asks him to go on a journey with the dwarves to regain their lost kingdom.  He is an unexpected hero, yet the story is about his finding in himself the ability to lead and to find the lost home of the dwarves, and also to fight the dragon who guards it.  He is a hopeless fighter, and in the beginning has no confidence in himself. Yet he succeeds. One might say that he was naive.  Yes he was, but what he had was a sense of adventure and a growing belief in his mission. As well as that, he had unselfishness. After all, he had a home which he loved, and didn't want to leave, but he felt sorry for the dwarves who had lost theirs, and he wanted to help them to regain it. 

He also held on to his beliefs.  He arrived at the end, battered and bruised, almost dead, but he held on to the ring.  Maybe Tolkien saw that ring as not good.  I don't know.  But if we are looking for an allegorical meaning, then we can say that, to be faithful to what we believe in is good, and to hold on to what we have been given to guard is life-giving for us.  Tolkien was a devout Catholic, and he too believed that faith is very important, and without it we live a half-life.  Little Bilbo Baggins believed that someone was helping him to keep going on a journey that was well-nigh impossible, and he clutched the ring as a talisman. 

In our Congregation we have what we call our charism which is the spirit and values which our Founder, Mother Magdalen lived by and passed on to us.  We try to pass them on to others as Good News.  To be faithful to them is our challenge. We are Christ-bearers to the people of our time, being asked to bring Christ to every situation, especially where there is conflict or lack of forgiveness.  In his own way, little Bilbo did the same, although he would not realise what he was doing.

The Hobbit is also something of an allegory of leadership.  Perhaps we are reading too much into it, but I can see what people mean when they say that.  No one with any judgement would choose Bilbo Baggins as a leader, still less would they have confidence in his ability to lead others through hard times, and show them the way forward.  Yet he did it where others failed. 

So this New Year is about facing whatever comes with courage, even with a spirit of adventure, like Bilbo.  It is about helping others on the journey and finding enough courage within ourselves to pick ourselves up when things go wrong, and start again.  Those are New Year challenges!

I wish each of you once more a lovely 2013 and a special Year of Faith.  Think of Bilbo. He set out on a journey of adventure, probably found it terribly hard, but kept on, didn't turn back and came to the end of his journey stronger, more in tune with himself and others, and more at peace!  I wish the same for each one of you and for myself and each member of my Congregation.  See you next year!

(Photos courtesy of http://thehobbit.sqpn.com/, http://biographyonline.net)

(Photos/Graphics courtesy of Sr. Agnes Kavanagh and BMJL)

Living in the Power of the Spirit

In the early days of the Second Vatican Council, Cardinal Montini, who later became Pope Paul VI, said that one of the main purposes of the Council was to ensure that the fresh breath of the Spirit swept through the Church.   He wanted families to be renewed, old quarrels mended,  nations to be at peace with one another.  It was a dream, and like all dreams part of it faded into the darkness of reality.  Yet the hope remained.

That was in 1963, 49 years ago.  Look at the world around you. Has this dream faded into antiquity?  No. Has it survived intact?  As a hope, yes! As a reality in our lives? Only partly so.  Why is this? Well we don’t have to look beyond ourselves.  We have been baptized, confirmed, educated in the faith for many years perhaps, and yet we still remain unfulfilled, static even.  Is that the fault of the Holy Spirit?  Emphatically “No!”  We know very well that the fault lies with us.  We lack that spark, that passion, that intense desire to bring about, in our time, a new Pentecost which will transform our world, transform our Church, transform ourselves, so that we become communities of faith, reaching out to one another through our prayer, through our lives.

The First Christians seemed so happy, so alive.  Didn’t  they? They shared their goods, they prayed together each day, they lived lives of honesty, integrity and joy. But reading between the lines of the Book of Acts we see the struggles they had – the differences of opinion between the apostles themselves with regard to the work they had been given to do, and much more.  We see Paul, that loose cannon, thrown among them by the Damascus event, allowing the Jewish converts to keep their food laws, his implacability when opposing Peter, their leader, when he clearly believed him to be wrong.  We see the greed of some of the converts,  Ananias and Sapphira, for example, who wanted to defraud the community of part of the money they had promised them.  It couldn’t have been easy for those First Century Christians, even though they had received the Holy Spirit in a blistering, never-to-be-forgotten way through huge globules of fire that rested over each of their heads.   Is anything that is worth-while easy?

We know it isn’t. But those Early Christians never forgot the experience of receiving the Holy Spirit.  They clung on to it through thick and thin, and passed its wonders and its effect, on to their children and their grandchildren.  It became a reality for them.  A transforming reality that made others say in amazement: “Look how the Christians love one another!”   Acts, Chapter 2: 42-47 give us a picture of the transforming power of the Spirit:

They remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood (and sisterhood!), to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers.

The many miracles and signs worked through the apostles made a deep impression on everyone.

The faithful all lived together, and owned all things in common: they sold their goods and possessions and shared out the proceeds among themselves, according to what each one needed.

They went as a body to the Temple every day, but met in their houses for the breaking of bread; they shared their food gladly and generously.

They praised God, and were looked up to by everyone.

Day by day the Lord added to their community those destined to be saved.

(Acts 2: 42-47)

So now we know what we have to do. It won’t be easy, but it will be transforming, alive, joyful, enriching, and life-giving.  We could go on, but it isn’t necessary.  God will do the same for us, if we let him.  There’s the rub, as Shakespeare would say.  We have to give ourselves to him generously, openly, courageously, and he will transform the world through us.  It is as simple as that.  Maybe not in our lifetime, maybe in years to come, but he will do it.

This Pentecost, which is on 27^th May this year, is an opportunity for us to give ourselves again to God, so that the fresh breath of the Spirit may blow on us again and wake us up from our stupor. Let’s start on the 18^th  May and say this prayer as a novena prayer each day.

Come Spirit, who is our light, shine among us;  warm and transform our hearts.

Come Spirit, who makes a home in us, change our way of thinking and acting

Come Spirit, our comforter and consoler, heal our woundedness, soothe our anxieties

Console all those who grieve and ache.

Come Spirit who energises us, keep us from the distraction of fleeting pleasures,

and lead us to moments of prayer and silence.

Come Spirit, consuming fire of love, fill us with enthusiasm for your vision,

That the desire for truth may be vibrant in us always.

Come Spirit, joy of our souls; teach us to dance your dance of love

among the wounded, the lost, the lonely.

Come Spirit, heart and centre of our world, warm the hearts of those grown cold,

and launch us into life!

Have a lovely Pentecost.  We will be praying for you.

Click on the picture for a song on the Holy Spirit

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.