Be not afraid

 Traveling back to Sydney on Saturday afternoon, I reflected on the ordination of the two young men to the priesthood and a gathering of Cursillistas at a country retreat centre. Both were joyful encounters where people gathered to celebrate the risen Christ who seeks to bring life and hope to our world. Amid these occasions, we were all shocked by the senseless murder of innocent shoppers in the Bondi Junction shopping centre. We pray for those who lost their lives, for those who are recovering from the injuries they suffered, and for the families who seek to support them. We pray for the first responders and the many brave people who sought to support people traumatized by this event. Then just as we sought to make sense of this tragedy we heard of the fresh attacks arising in the Middle East. This seems to be a never-ending story of violence and retribution that haunts us still.

Yet amid these stories of violence and senseless killing, we witness Jesus enter the upper room and proclaim peace be with you. This paradox of his presence addresses our deeper fears that we are doomed to death and destruction. There is a fear that we can become isolated in our upper room when the eddies of destructive fear whirl around us. Jesus helps to recognize that the resurrection is actually an encounter with the divine person who seeks to share life with us. This is not an abstract concept but rather a real encounter with the person who can bring hope to our world. Who holds out the promise of reconciliation and forgiveness. This seems almost impossible to be true yet it is what we are called to witness in our lives.

Thus on Sunday morning, we gathered at St Mary's Cathedral to pray for the unborn and to witness the sanctity of life in the March for Life to NSW parliament. The gospel speaks to us that in the face of a culture of death that seeks to make the weakest and most vulnerable voiceless we are called to proclaim a culture of life that cares for them. This often means entering into the messiness of life where people confront the issues of suffering, isolation, and death. Yet we witness many Christian people who accompany these vulnerable people to make choices not just for themselves but for people placed in their care. Good stewardship is found in supporting women who have difficult pregnancies, providing palliative care for those at the last stage of life, and providing shelter to those who seek refuge and protection. As a culture, we are called to inculturate the Gospel in our current age by proclaiming that Jesus is Risen. The proclamation is made in the concrete events of our daily lives. Bringing healing to those whose lives have been torn apart and forgiveness that sends to reconcile broken hearts.

Doubt and Belief

 We live in a skeptical age where everything is questioned and everyone is believed! This paradox of thinking and trusting in the goodness of another seems to be disturbed each day. Who speaks the truth confronts us at every turn. We look for vested interests and no longer take things at face value. This can breed a certain cynicism that distrusts everything and everyone which is unhealthy for the individual or the community in which they live. Yet we see so many examples of how power can be misused, where influence can mislead and opinion can misrepresent. This is almost our constant fair that we are fed through our media, our conversations, and our reflections.

Yet amid this confusion and uncertainty we meet the risen Christ with all our living questions. We seek life to be different but do not want to invest our belief in another blindly. We need to experience it with our own eyes and our own hearts. Into this scene walks Thomas who seems to ask the most plausible of questions, unless I see it for myself and touch the reality I refuse to believe. I think we can all have a heart for Thomas as he is called to touch the living heart of Jesus. We live in a very material age where we are called to touch the reality of what is true. There is a hunger to understand and experience things for ourselves. We know how easy it is for our lives to be manipulated for the interests of another that we have a longing to experience it for ourselves. It is the discovery of being present to what is real.

This is at the heart of our Easter journey because unlike Thomas we are called to believe without seeing and touching the wounds of Christ. However, we know that the wounds that Jesus experienced can be discovered even in our own age. The innocent suffer, people are unjustly condemned, people can be exploited for what they have not for who they are, and we are confronted with the reality of evil almost daily. It would be easy to lose heart and retreat into our own castles. Jesus, however, liberates us from what imprisons us. Jesus seeks to meet us with compassion that touches our fears and our doubts. It is this radical honesty that allows us to see our questions in a new light. It calls us to meet Jesus as the risen Lord who frees us to live a new life. A life that takes our questions seriously but transforms them into a compassionate life of belief. It calls for our minds and hearts to be in sync with each other. No longer are we abandoned to our own devices but we discover Jesus who listens to our inmost prayers. He enters into that locked room and offers us peace to touch his wounds. May we trust in him who can even appear in the places where we try to shut out the world. In that place where we discover who we are called to be for the good of the world.

The scandal of the cross and the shock of the empty tomb!

 The preparations for the Easter Triduum are entering their final stages and we are called to ponder how we enter into the central part of the Kerygma of Jesus Christ. The fact that God cares so much for us that he is willing to undergo suffering and death so that we may experience resurrection. This seems to run contrary to our expectations of God in that we seem to encounter one on the cross who seems powerless, poor and destitute. This is not how we would want God to be. We would much prefer a God who appears powerful, wealthy and in control. This is the scandal of the Cross that changes how we relate to God and how we pray. No longer are we relating to a God who holds us at arm's length but rather a God who holds us close in our suffering, pain and uncertainty? When we encounter God in this way it changes our own way of living because we experience a level of intimacy that does not abandon us and leave us to our own devices.

Yet we know this is only half the story. The Paschal mystery does not end on Calvary but draws us into a deeper silence. The profundity of this experience is that we are rendered speechless when everybody else seeks to explain what happened. This way of being led into what appears darkness shows us that even in the darkest night his light may shine. We are called to wait upon the Lord in places where we feel afraid and uncomfortable with what may come next. The experience of the echoes of the empty tomb seem to match our own when we have lost someone we loved who has died. There is an aloneness that no one else can fill and we long to be filled. Yet this loving emptiness allows us the opportunity to make space for the Risen Lord. It is the place where we can surrender ourselves to a God who brings a deeper appreciation of what brings faith, hope and charity at the centre of our living.

In an age where we seem to be scandalised by the trivial and consumed by so many things these three days allow us to ponder who God is calling us to become. We are called to enter into the mystery of Christ who sustains us even in our deepest fears and in our greatest uncertainties to build a world that is not our own. God draws us closer and loves us more deeply than we can imagine. God allows us to live in a new way.   

Who is welcome at our door?

 When a guest comes knocking at our door will we let them in? We see this contrasting expectation in Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. Initially, he is welcomed and the crowds gather to anticipate a new beginning. However, this quick turns to isolation, rejection, and death. At the heart of the Easter mystery, we see it played out so often in our everyday lives. We know of instances where people who can gather the crowds, appeal to the apparent immediate needs and promise results they cannot deliver. Yet Easter is not just about opinion polls but about who helps us encounter God who can love even in the face of isolation, rejection, and death. We discover a God who will walk with us even when many shy away from encountering us in our deepest struggles.

This is a God willing to act as a servant and wash our feet, as a person who discovers the anguish of discovering their true self, who can bear the departure and betrayal of close friends and be falsely accused and humiliated by others. This person helps us not focus solely on the cause of our sufferings or even how we are called to endure suffering but rather on the loving presence of one who carries the weight of that within oneself. We discover through the Easter Triduum a person who makes sense of nonsense and counters the argument that only death can relieve the pain of living with contradictions. He is in the words of Ireneus a man who is fully human and fully alive who seeks to break the chains of slavery that can bind us. He seeks to show us how even in the scandal of the cross he becomes most fully himself.

The scene played out at Calvary is never more important, especially in an age where people are only valued by their utility rather than by their personhood, by what they can do rather than who they are, and by their opinions rather than their intrinsic worth. In a world that can seem turned upside down Calvary turns things the right side up. It helps us to encounter God who cares more deeply than we can imagine. A person who frees us from what imprisons us even from our greatest fears. May we walk more closely with each other on this pilgrim path from sorrow to the joy of Easter.

Learn to know the Lord

 We live in a society where literacy is taken for granted. The ability to read and teach others is a skill that helps people learn more quickly and grow in confidence to apply what they have learned. Yet in a society that can know so much there often needs to be a greater level of discernment about what we read and whether it helps us to grow in our relationship with God and with others. It is all too easy in an age where information is prepackaged, edited, and targeted to particular audiences that we can lose a critical element of our own ability to know what is good for us. We can discover that others can deluge us with information, especially through social media, television, radio, and other mediums that we often want to push the pause button.

This is where the Gospel passage we start to notice a longing to meet the person of Jesus. Not as a prepackaged commodity but as a true encounter that helps our hearts to expand in fidelity and integrity in discovering the truth about God. This is where we need to become people of prayer who can study our environment and act in a way that reflects that relationship. God seeks for us to allow ourselves a quiet space where we can be alone with the Word of God and reflect on how we will live that daily.

As we come closer to the end of Lent, the world slows down for a short while. We can pause to take a breath and look at how we commit ourselves to discovering the person of Jesus who walks close by our side. In these moments we start to discover that our lives are called to grow in that relationship especially when we struggle to make sense of the world in which we live. Trust in God that we can learn to know the Lord not just know about him.

We are God's work of Art

 Often when I visit an art gallery or an exhibition it is hard to know what you are looking at. Our eyes have been trained over time to be engaged by movement and action whereas an art piece like a painting or a sculpture can seem fairly static. When we look at a piece of art if it does not immediately engage us we often quickly move on or when we are caught by a particular image the crowds move us on. We don't have the time to pause and soak it in.  There can also be an inner reaction that questions what message an artist may be sending us. We are drawn occasionally to that which makes us comfortable and at peace rather than what challenges us to become one with the peace of art.

Recently, I was part of an exhibition about the artwork of David Hockney. What stays with me is his insight into reverse perspective when we gaze upon art. Often we look at art from our own perspective rather than that of the artist. In reverse perspective, we are drawn to see how we are part of the artwork and it draws us to participate and become with what we gaze upon. This is present especially in Iconography where the artist writes an Icon to draw us to contemplate how we are drawn into the heart of God. This is a way in which our gaze draws us to the centre and allows us the opportunity to notice how God leads our hearts to contemplate how we participate in this divine life.

This is at the heart of what we celebrate in Lent. God seeks to shift our focus from that which disfigures, disguises, and disembodies the reality of how God created us to be in a loving relationship. Too often we can become conscious of what obscures or misdirects in life to seek our own path. God gently draws us back not by focusing on our sin, weakness, and vulnerability but rather by reawakening with us what we truly desire. God seeks to enlighten us so that we can see clearly with fresh vision.

God sees us to view the whole of creation with wonder and grace. This is by spending time relishing how we are God's work of art. This may mean that we spend time restoring, renewing, and repairing what causes us to doubt that God sees us in this way. God adjusts our vision and our perspective to draw us closer to be present with our whole self and not just with a passing glance at who it is that brings us life and meaning.

Keeping God at arm's length

 One of the realities of Lent is that God comes close, sometimes closer than we expect, and more than we desire. We discover a God who cares passionately about our own welfare and seeks to cross the barriers that we put in place. He seeks to revolutionize our relationships by seeking to cross that divide. In particular, God wants us to notice the ways that we can trivialize our relationship by seeing it as transactional rather than life-changing. When we are used to buying things that we want when we want them it is possible to approach our relationship with God in the same way. 

Yet God seeks us out in unexpected ways and overturns the tables in our temple. God seeks to deepen our relationship by understanding us and how we can seek to hide our deepest needs. God wants to consume us rather than turn us into consumers of grace. This trust of our lives in the person of Jesus seeks our belief that liberates us from that which binds us to our own limited vision of God. We discover a God who seeks to remove the barriers that we erect to that relationship. 

As St Paul notices when we discover the foolishness of God and the presumed weakness of God we notice a profound wisdom and divine power at work at the heart of creation. We notice a God who seeks to love us with a passionate and heartfelt desire to enter into the heart of the lawgiver. This is not just following a set of instructions or seeking a magical solution to our problems rather it is the freedom to notice how deeply God cares for our salvation. Just as God is at the heart of all things there is a longing not to just go through the motions of Lent but to fall into God's warm embrace. 

Wrestling with the reality of heaven and hell

 CS Lewis in his book, "The Great Divorce" wrestles with the reality of heaven and hell. As we notice in the Letter of St Peter Christ dies to save people from prison. The text can be read in many ways but it refers explicitly to Spirits. The commentators offer many plausible explanations of this scripture that can refer to the condemnation of the fallen angels, those who refused to go into the Ark and then repented, or whether it is simply those who have died before the resurrection who are to be freed from the reality of hell or alienation from God. 

CS Lewis uses the image of waiting at a bus stop in a drab place known as Grey Town waiting for a bus to take them to their final destination. When on the bus they are brought to a cliff that overlooks a beautiful valley with majestic mountains in the distance. When they get off the bus they notice that the grass is not moving and feels sharp and painful to walk on and people are torn between returning to Grey Town or crossing the river.

As they experience this reality there is a biting spirit that can cause doubt, confusion, anxiety, and torment that God can actually offer eternal life and love. The Paradox is that some people prefer to be miserable rather than humble and grow attached to the things of life: their own personal property or talent, their own ability to have influence over others, or simply an attachment to grief or the by-products of sin that seem more real than God.

God desires for us to be free and not shackled to a reality of our own creation that is not real. This is where we notice Jesus entering the desert to confront the temptations that we all wrestle with. He does not want us to be blackmailed by evil spirits into believing we are beyond redemption. God reaches out to us this Lent to not doubt the Covenant that he does not seek our destruction but our liberation. This promise is born out whenever we see the rainbow in the sky. We are called to be people of faith, hope, and love who seek the Kingdom of God.

Avoiding contagion

 Over the last years of the pandemic, we have been very conscious of seeking to protect ourselves and our communities from a virulent disease. This saw people being isolated from each other through lockdowns and the inability to make meaningful contact with others. After these years of enforced isolation, we can some of the trauma and fears that caused people to shape their lives around outbreaks of the disease. Yet even as we emerge from those days we can still be conscious that while the disease has disappeared we have adopted a very different lifestyle. While there is less suspicion of each other there can be a lingering doubt of how we are called to live in this modern age. 

In the reading from Leviticus, there is the belief that moral corruption led to physical illness that caused people with leprosy to be pushed to the margins of their community. The belief that a person suffered sickness due to sin can still linger in our own imagination. We know from modern medicine that there are some links between lifestyle and disease but they are not as explicit in identifying a person with their disease. This can be seen that there have been many public health campaigns to change people's behavior that bring into focus the dangers of what we allow to enter our bodies. Yet it is a person's choices that make the greatest difference. What emerges from a person's heart most shapes their own commitments and how they think through issues that affect their own health.

This is probably why the virtue of mercy is at the heart of faith. Jesus sees the heart of the person who desires to be clean. He acknowledges the desire to be cured. Yet as we see in the Gospel this is not just seeking Jesus as a healer of sickness but a person who calls people to a profound encounter with God. In our own age, this is a challenge for our own times. How do we seek out the good of another that acknowledges the need for healing at all levels of society, personal, social, and communal? The call is to be people who not only recognize our humanity but how we are called to model ourselves on Christ. To see the divine life that sustains our human life. This allows us to be people who rather than focusing on the cause of suffering can seep into the heart of the person and isolate them but rather see the heart of the person who seeks to alleviate suffering. In this, we see the transforming power of the love of Jesus who seeks to heal the person rather than see them consumed by their suffering.

With Every Breath I Take

 Starting a new year we can sometimes need to pause and take a breath. There seem to be so many things that are added to our agenda that our minds might feel like exploding with information and tasks that we need to undertake. There can be a focus on the many things that besiege us and that seek to question where we find our worth. Is it the years we have lived, the money we make, or the experiences that we have accumulated? They can be a sense in which we are dragged along from morning to night just taking on one thing after another. Yet it raises the question of what we focus is it on suffering or what makes us joyful.

Paul reflects on this in his letter to the Corinthians where he examines what we preach with our lives. This is not just about trying to measure the worth of the Gospel by how much we work, how much we earn, or how much time we spend on a particular project. Rather he looks at how we surrender ourselves each day to the Good News that frees us up to grow in relationship with God and each other. This helps us to reexamine each day what it is that we are seeking to live in our daily lives. That we are called to share in the blessings of the Good News.

In the Gospel, we notice a similar reflection on whether it is the busyness of daily life or how we find space to focus on what is important not just what is urgent. Thus we do not find our worth just in who seeks us out but in the time when we can be renewed and recreated each day. Thus we seek to become people who prayerfully reflect on who we are called to be and how we can become present in our activity. In allowing us to be at home with God our lives do not become an endless list of tasks or activities. We open ourselves up to God who transforms our lives into Good News.