STAGES OF THE SPIRIT

STAGES OF THE SPIRIT

            Pope John Paul II has invited the Catholic world to make l998 a year of attentiveness to the Holy Spirit. In the last decade many authors have tried to balance what they termed the “Jesus mania” by focusing on the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, who is divine, and active in the Christian community and in individuals. These authors plumb the riches of Oriental contemplation in order to restore the tilt-to-the-West theology of the Spirit (monstrously described as “pneumatology”) to an even keel. The overdeveloped Western lung is eased down to size by the Eastern lung’s intake of the inspiration of the Eastern Fathers, like Gregory of Nyssa who said, “Grace flows down from the Father through the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Another Easterner, Cyril of Alexandria, thought that the spirit is the first occupant of the heart of man. “Wiping out the sins of the one who clings to him, the Son anoints him with his own Spirit whom he inserts into the believer...and whom he pours out on us from his own substance.” He is not the Spirit of love, as popularly imagined and preached, but of power, taking possession of our bodies more strikingly than Jesus does. For a start, in fact, he took  possession of Jesus’ body, as we shall consider here.

THE MASTER PEDAGOGUE

            Though God desired to pour his spirit into our hearts and had given the Spirit without reserve to his Son, Jesus,  knowing that men are slow learners, he staggered the revelation of his desire over several centuries by dispensing the mystery in small doses  -  the mark of a true teacher and physician. For instance, in the act of creation God “breathes” his spirit into the newly formed man and woman and they become living souls. There is no evidence here of a reference to the Third Person of the Trinity, but there is a hint that God wants human beings to receive a spark of his own life.

SINFUL HUMANITY VS. THE SPIRIT

            The sin of men and women was a refusal of permanent residence to the Spirit;  the spreading corruption spelled the breakdown of the divine-human relationship, forcing God to declare, “My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh. (Gen. 6,3). Here again we cannot conclude that we have spotted the Holy Spirit rather than a mere general indication of God’s gift of life and the incompatibility between human sinfulness and divine sanctity.

THE SPIRIT OF ENABLEMENT

            As the life story of Israel progresses we begin to hear of the “Spirit of the Lord” coming upon various individuals who had some part to play in the salvation history of Israel. The Greek poets had their Muses to inspire them. Their Hebrew counterparts were figures like Joseph, Moses, kings, craftsmen and musicians, and the prophets. It is clear that this Spirit is not simply the breath of life that God blew into Adam and Eve, but a Spirit who brings new vigour and ability for carrying out God’s plans for his people.

YEARNING FOR PERMANENT RESIDENCE

            The Spirit of the Lord, however, never remained as an abiding presence. Favoured as they were by God, the Israelites were nonetheless a sinful lot, still unsuitable for the Spirit in permanent residence. A salvation was needed for Zion and the whole human race, that would make it possible for the Spirit to come upon human kind and remain. The Father’s heart yearned for that day of salvation and expressed itself through the prophets:

“And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations...A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within ...and you shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezechiel, 36,23-28).  “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions...”(Joel 2, 2-28).

A NEW HUMANITY  -  BAPTISED IN THE SPIRIT

            The Father would establish in the world a new humanity that would not only be a vessel of honour for his Spirit but also a channel of grace to the rest of human kind till the end of time. That humanity established by the Father is the humanity of his own beloved Son, who became flesh and dwelt among us, and was fully deployed with power for us. The Gospel of John is the solid witness to Jesus as the new humanity in which the Spirit could reside for good and all, and reach out effectively to all men and women. The opening words of John’s gospel, “In the beginning....”, recall the story of creation. Known as the “prologue”, it reveals with startling clarity what was hidden in that story. Having created the world through the Word, God now re-creates humanity in a way that Adam and Eve could not do. “But to all who received him (the Word made flesh), who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (John 1,12). There is a power that Jesus breathes into his believers. “And he breathed upon them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” Although the evangelist John does not explicitly describe this “power” of Jesus as the Holy Spirit, the Church from earliest times consistently interpreted it this way. The full-blown glory of Jesus came from the Holy Spirit, as John witnesses: “And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth comes through Jesus Christ” (John 1,16-17).

            Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan reveals him as the fount of the Holy Spirit. This is certified by the Baptist himself as recorded in all four gospels. Speaking to the people, he witnesses, “I have baptised you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit” (Mark 1,7-8). John the Baptist was gripped by a master inspiration in the midst of which he heard this powerful line reverberate in his body: “He on whom you see the Spirit come, descend and remain, this is he who baptises with the Holy Spirit”; as a result of which he could declare, “I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son of God” (John 1,33-34). No greater day would mark the calendar of time than when creation woke up to a man on whom the Spirit could come down and remain; one who would not grieve God’s Holy Spirit.

            A bridgehead had been established, the Spirit was abroad by the deathless breath of the God-man Jesus, and all earth and heaven resonated with the joyous heart of the Father whose primordial desire was about to be fulfilled !

INTEGRAL PATRIOTISM

INTEGRAL PATRIOTISM

Devotion to our country is deeply rooted in our nature. It is a source of power and strength, inspires noble ideals and heroic sacrifices. Loyalty to country gives sublimity  to a man’s character. The word “freedom” is not to be taken lightly. And “politics” is not a bad word. “Politics” is a good word. It enables us to have the good of the nation and community at heart. To be political is effectively to desire a community that is wholesome, healthy and secure. And for that we must have the freedom to talk about and decide any issue that affects these purposes. This is patriotism; and it has nothing to do with an exclusive nationalism, any more than loving one’s mother implies despising other mothers. Our country plays a role in the ensemble of nations, which is greater than itself. Today, especially, we must ensure that the call up of patriotic feeling is not based on selfish retreat nor identifying the nation with one particular form of religious persuasion. It is within our country and through it that we must work for the world’s renewal. Such action presupposes that our country exists and is in robust health, which in turn supposes moral discipline. Corrupt individuals do not make for a strong nation. And even this is not enough, for a country that wants to be strong must also be loved. And our love for India is not real unless it bear fruit in fair treatment for all its citizens, whoever they may be.

While to the present leaders we pledge our co-operation, and pray for their ongoing conversion, we recall with affection the leaders who have died, so also our brave soldiers who have shed their blood on the field of battle. A nation that forgets its past has no future and deserves none. The future, as far as we can see, is shadowed in trials, and calls on our courage. But the best stories of heroes are about those striding bravely into an unknown tomorrow that is fraught with risks.  So, trusting in one another’s loyalty and, above all, in the God of exodus, who will lead us, we march with firm hearts and strong steps, for we “have many miles to walk and many promises to keep.”

MOBILE MOTHER'S KOLKATA

MOBILE MOTHER’S KOLKATA

                                                                                  

            Kolkata is the great leveller. Just under two million people commute daily between the city and their homes in the villages and suburbs by bus, train, and tempo. Commuting for work, play, shopping and socializing are aspects of mini-migration. Originally, the first reaction to this mad rush were pulpit themes of alienation and rootlessness; but those who were rushing around wondered why, since they had no complaints and felt equal to everyone else.  Why cannot life, they asked, be one mad rush? After all, the best stories of heroes are about leaving the ancestral mansion and striding towards an unknown future, and about adventurous travels and conquests. Abraham leaving Ur of Chaldea, Joseph led away to greatness in Egypt, Moses leading a fighting (though ever complaining nation) to the place beyond the Jordan. The theme is almost invariably about breaking away and seeking one’s fortune in another land, and most of them are not the fantastic tales of Sinbad or Baron Munchausen. One can also think of missionaries who have dedicated their lives to peoples far away from their homelands, and of migrants who have brought fresh blood and new ideas to the land of their adoption. The founding fathers of any nation were mobile, and a society becomes static if its members cease to be on the move.

          As mobility is intimately linked to social change, those who are comfortably entrenched in their prestigious status have reason to fear for their positions of power. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s slogan “Delhi chalo” was a summons for the march of freedom from Kolkata to the stronghold of British India. The great march of Martin Luther King, Jr. to Washington and the Long March of Mao Zedong across China were movements of liberation. Yahweh himself was not a God of a particular time and locale; he was no God of the hearth. He accompanied his people on their Exodus, in fact, initiated it and “went before them;” and it was no weakling that did so but the God with “a strong arm” (Deut 7, 8).  “The despatialization of the deity moves in tandem with the appearance of a God active in historical events” (Harvey Cox, The Secular City, N.Y. p. 49).

Flexibility spells development and growth, the ability to choose one’s place of work and environment. Human beings, however, and, especially, the family, need a certain amount of stability for sustenance of mind and emotions. Mobility has its own risks.

          Jesus’ palm-laden march from Bethpage took Jerusalem by wild acclamation, a symbol of his lordship of the New Jerusalem. Jesus had “set up his tent among us” (John 1, 14), not a permanent building. He was always on the move with “nowhere to lay his head” (Mt 8, 20), going out to face fresh challenges and make new friendships. He was the essence of freedom. Like Yahweh, the resurrected Christ “now goes ahead of you to Galilee” (Mt 28, 7) where he would commission his apostles to go in all directions to proclaim his liberty of soul that knows no fixity to a particular time or place.

          In the mid 40’s, the people of Kolkata awoke to the phenomenon of a new apostle in their midst; someone who took them by surprise and with whom every encounter was a refreshment of soul and body. Frail-looking on the exterior, but, robust with rectitude and mobile with the Spirit, she led her legions from the vibrant heart of Kolkata to the wider world of the “poorest of the poor”, as no armies of Alexander or legions of Rome had ever done, and with no more intent of conquest than that of giving them God in the form of a healed and healthy humanity. This woman was inserted into the grand narrative of the God of salvation. There is no nook or cranny left on this earth that has not received the comforting benediction of this apostle, who will be known forever as

                                    “MOTHER TERESA OF KOLKATA”

GOD

GOD

Mother Teresa’s visit to South American village. “Mother, give us God.” In poverty, people want God. “Papa, I am poor.”  I hate to have to admit it, says Peter Lemmas, but my God IS an old man with a long white beard. He sits in the clouds, like a grandpa in his rocking chair. It seems a shockingly irreverent image, even a caricature, but I am not so sure. My God is old. He has seen everything, been everywhere, there is nothing new which would knock him out of his stride, not even Christian theologians announcing that God is dead.

Being over 60 myself, I’m beginning to feel there is something to be said for age. Young people, for instance, can be very censorious, devastating. Listening in to a debate among young people I am struck by the dismissive arrogance of some of the debaters. Lacking wisdom teeth, they sit in devastating judgement on politicians and others who had borne the heat of many a day.  But, “old is gold, and yellow is mellow.” Remember the “Dad”. Old does not mean static or staid. I find it delightful to hear an old man proposing a revolutionary idea, or agree with a new idea proposed by another. You feel the view of this old man comes not just from an itch for novelty, but an anguish for change, something chiselled out of experience, hard won.  Pope John XXIII was an old man when he electrified the world by his calling for an Ecumenical Council.

Taken in that sense, God is always young, always on the move, always active. “Behold, I make all things new.” “New” is his favourite word. That God is always before me, beckoning me. He calls me to be continually on the move, to recognise my pilgrim state. He calls me to trust him over prices, governments, institutions, traditions.

When we sit before God in silent prayer, we make ourselves available. I meet that God in silent prayer, especially in the silence of being “disponible.” I don’t know of a full translation of that rich French word. It means being available, at the ready, being watchful, like a sentry on duty. That feeling of “disponibilite” comes in moments of thoughtfulness, not necessarily of silence. It comes when you let yourself feel challenged by the things that other men and women have done in response to God’s call. It is reinforced in moments of prayer.  (Bishop and the lady: “Do you have a room to sit still in ? Well, begin that way.” Having time for God).

The schoolmen (metaphysicians) said that God is unchanging. God never changes, they said. How dull, I used to think ! How uninteresting he must be ! Things that do not change are lifeless, boring, dead. But that is not what I meant when I said that god does not change. It means, I think, that he is not fickle or moody; that he is steady, constant, reliable. “I AM who AM.” The One who will always stand by you. He’s a friend you can always bank on. His love of me does not depend on my behaviour, so I don’t need to be performance oriented. How many times our mood has changed due to the changing behaviour of our friends. No matter how coldly or selfishly I respond, he is always loving, welcoming, encouraging. Matt Talbot used to say, “What God wants of me is constancy.”  Constancy is a divine trait. The hours Mat Talbot spent at prayer and song in his garret room in Rutland Street were his endeavour to respond to the constant love of God.

God is always before me, always to be discovered, always more interesting, always worth travelling further for. We will not have it all with the beatific vision. It is not a single lightning flash that immediately ends all desire. Each moment of eternity will be satisfying, and at the same time call us deeper into the mystery into the mystery before us. There was a child at Knock who had a vision. She wanted to touch the figures she had seen in the apparition. The vision had delighted her, and now she wanted to enter more intimately into it, to feel it. Or like the young wife, born blind, who fell down the stairs at 32, and woke in hospital to see her husband and two children for the first time. She was disappointed with her husband; he did not look as nice as he felt, she said. But she was delighted with her children, and each day brought a fresh delight, a now tint to the trees, a new flower in the ground, a new colour to the children’s cheeks. (Sometimes, I suppose, we need to fall down the steps to wake up to God, smiling down at us. “You missed a step, dear ?)

Deepening growth of eternal life. Eternal life will be like that. Eternal life is not eternal marble. Life is growing. Eternal life is moving ever deeper into the mystery of this Father-Creator-God, from whom all beauty, interest and joy proceeds. That life is never-ending journey. God satisfies, he is the only one who does. The God who satisfies calls me to divest myself of all that is less than him. Of family, position, money, home.  This was the inspiration of Brendan and the Irish medieval monks. They did not travel to  Salzburg or Bobbio or the big flashy cities to evangelise; they travelled to get away from the props of everyday life which sheltered them from meeting God in the wilderness of the sea, of the hills and forests and deserts. Their missionary work was a by-product of the restless search for God. Search for God for themselves and for others. This divesting of self is a statement that God is God, that only God is God, that only God is the worthy end of life, nothing less.

The idea of God is important, practical, relevant. It determines behaviour here and now. It sets me free from all that is less than him. The Desert Fathers used to say that the will of man is a wall of brass separating them from God.

Angelo Roncalli and his spiritual director: “Il Dio e tutto; io sono nulla.”  The idea of God says to me: “I am nothing, God is everything. I am darkness, God is light. What there is of light in me is God.” He says to me, as he said to Job:

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations ?

Tell me, since you are so well informed ?

Who decided the dimensions of it, do you know ?

Or who stretched the measuring line across it ?

What supports its pillars at their bases ?

Who laid its cornerstone

when all the stars of the morning are singing for joy,

and the Sons of God in chorus were chanting praise ?”

At the same time, the idea of God says that the things I do today matter. It is not good enough to say, “It will do,” or “Sure, it will be all the same in one hundred years.”  A believing person, or a believing nation, could not have that as a principle. The daily decisions I make, the small hidden things I do, matter. “For it from within, from man’s heart, that evil intentions emerge. “ This means that the God I serve looks not so much to my achievements as to my person, asks not what I have done, but what I am. Nobody else can look on you that way. Bishops or Mothers General, in making appointments, however much they seek to analyse the heart, are limited to judging a person by achievements. The Western fallacy of efficiency. Only God can look to the heart. And at the same time He is the measure of my heart. I am not true, just, honest, integral, in face of the truth, justice, honesty, integrity of God. There are absolutes; they are personified in God. Pathetically, I can only approximate to them.

I meet God in failure, in sorrow, in disappointment, sometimes in depression, though mostly when moving out of depression. “The God of the gaps” or “the God of the cracks.....crackpots !” say the theologians knowingly. But it is not that I believe in God only in moments of need. It is just that when bereft of the normal supports of life, the sense of reasonable daily well-being, when shaken down to my roots, that’s the time I see clearly what is important in my life, what really matters. Christians have met God in the wilderness for many centuries. The light still shines in the darkness.  I meet God in ecstasy. Atone Wilson described joy as a “fremissement”. A shuddering, the rush of ecstasy that hits you in fleeting moments of great joy. The family greeting Daddy at the airport, the children opening the surprise on Christmas morning, the “Ex Termed” from Mozart’s Requiem, the welcome of a mentally handicapped child for a visitor to the house, the brave acceptance of tragic news. These are flashes of the presence and activity of God, and you know it when you experience them.  I meet God in the Eucharist. Not only in the action of the Mass, but in the continuing presence of the Lord in the tabernacle.

How do you teach people how to talk on television. Tell them to look at the lens  -  even to love the lens. Some find it hard to speak without people in front of them, with faces reacting. In fact, it is easier to talk to a lens than to an audience. You can only imagine the faces reacting, and agreeing. The lens does not scowl, smirk, or dissent. It is silent and still.  Eucharistic prayer is a bit like that. God-made-man is hidden under the form of bread. Compare and contrast handling the Eucharist and handling parishioners. It is easier to believe in the presence of God under the form of bread than to believe in his presence in the drug addict who skulks in the school compound, the drunkard who hangs around the sacristy door, the improvident mother who is always begging, the aggressive widow who wants to know why her husband’s name was not called out last Sunday. God is present in these as well. I ask the God of the Eucharist to help me recognise the God in my neighbour.

God is in heaven and all’s right with the world. People ridicule that approach, yet it has its merits. You can become so preoccupied with the problems of today’s world that you neglect that basic call of God to adoration and thanksgiving. God’s in his heaven and caring for the world, or calling me to care for the world. But especially calling me to be thankful for the life about me, and in me. As a Buddhist saying goes: “After the ecstasy, wash the dishes.” The true contemplative is well aware of the anguish of the world, but has a basic attitude of thanksgiving despite it. It is the deep down feeling that at the root of our lives lies the love and goodness of God, and that no matter what the global or local problems may be, that fact never alters.

On Good Friday, a parish priest brought Communion to an old man in the parish. The man said, “I’m glad you came today, because this is the day they put that young gentleman on the Cross”. An Afro-American was being instructed for the Catholic Baptism, and he was learning about the Holy Trinity.  “I forget the name of the third gentleman.” A gentleman, not in the sense of a well dressed man in suit and tie. But in the full meaning of someone who is refined, without ever needing the refiner’s fire. Rough gold needs to be refined in the fire. God is pure gold and needs no refinement. The character or personality of  God escapes me. I have no way of estimating it. School children learn of the personality of Christ. Yet even that is impossible. To evaluate personality I have to have some weakness to pinpoint, some flaw against which to judge the rest. It is easy to write about the character of Lady Macbeth, but the character of God is quite literally ineffable.

But one thing I know is that the idea of God is not stifling but liberating. Does the idea you have of God mould your life, or does life mould your idea of God ? Perhaps a bit of both. Dealing with scrupulous people  -  their idea of God is stifling, a constraint. A concept which should be liberating is in fact enslaving.  Take some time off and search your heart to formulate your idea of God. My image  of God is a concentrate of my deepest desire for goodness plus all the love that people have for me plus all the men and women I have admired in life. This is not just anthropomorphic but even egotistical. Maybe there is a rightness to this too, if I take seriously the Genesis account of creation, which sees each of us made in the image of God. Then the traces of God’s presence must be discoverable in my deepest self, my most profound thoughts, my most ardent and fervent desires and hopes. So the longest journey is the journey inwards.

God’s mystery and our deepest self.  What is at the core of every person’s deepest experience, what haunts every human heart, is a God whose mystery, light, and love have embraced the total person. God works in every person’s life as the One to whom we say our inmost “yes” or “no”. We may deny this, ignore it, but deep down we know that God is in love with us and we are all at least secretly in love with one another. One of the most important tasks of theology is “mystagogical”. It must lead persons into their own deepest mystery by awakening, deepening, and explicating what every person already lives. It must challenge persons to grasp the real meaning of their freedom as total response to or rejection of the demands of God’s love for no less than complete human authenticity. And because God has conquered the human heart through the pierced and risen heart of Jesus Christ, we can state the hope that all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well. 

SALVINO R. GALEA S.J., Founder YCW in India

Obituary

FR. SALVINO  R.  GALEA, S.J.

Founder of the  “Young Christians Workers”  in India

A native of Malta, Fr. Salvino Galea came to Bengal as a scholastic in the late ‘30’s, making his solemn profession as a Jesuit in the chapel of St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta, on 2 February 1948, with the desire “to serve the Lord alone and the Church, His spouse, under the Roman Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ on earth” (Pope Paul III, A.D. 1540). Among the many factors that contributed to his priestly vocation was the active part he played as a young lad of 16 in the dispute between the Catholic Church in Malta and the Constitutional Party. Naturally, young Salvino came out strongly for the Church. An interesting incident took place in the Cafè Internazionale in Valletta, where he met with lawyers and older people who supported the Pope against the Constitutional Party. Three Hungarian barmaids happened to enter the Coffee House, and the conversation of the others turned from the Pope to the barmaids, that was quite disedifying. The young Salvino was shocked. “I started hearing comment that were not edifying. I had the courage to stand up, turn towards them and asked them whether this was the sincerity of their religious sentiments.” He went home and removed the badge of the political party, and while doing so, heard a voice speaking in his mind: “The Church can only rely on those who love the Church above all else.” Many years later, Archbishop Mercieca of Malta would declare, “That man (Galea) loves the Church.”  That was the love he brought to Calcutta and instilled into the hearts of the Young Christian Workers (Y.C.W.).

 When in 1946 the Superior General of the Jesuits issued a letter to the whole order on the  necessity of the social apostolate, a strange intuition told Fr. Galea that he would be assigned that work. Sure enough, he received a mandate to be Promoter of the Social Apostolate in Calcutta.  The problems of young wage earners  -   the exposure and shock of working life after the comparative security of home and school, the working conditions in offices and factories, the situation of injustice and exploitation  -  touched a raw nerve in young Fr. Galea. He felt the need to contact and group together the young workers, listen to the hard facts they brought from their work places and neighbourhoods, and help them to judge the facts in the light of Gospel values. He originally called his organisation “The Social Guild”, but on hearing of the Y.C.W. in Belgium, begun by Canon Joseph Cardijn, and realising that the two movements used the same methods, he switch over to the international Cardijn model. Thus was born the “Young Christian Workers” of India.

It was not merely a matter of  rallies and slogans, though these were in place when required. Rather, the achieving of lay leadership in the world of wage earners demanded serious study of the Gospel in the environment of work, acts of self-sacrifice, indoctrination into the Church’s social teachings, reporting and judgement of “facts of the week”, humanisation of the neighbourhood, daily public evening Rosary, and call to prayer. Canon Cardijn’s triad of “See - Judge - Act” was always handy, leading to campaigns of social awareness, of cleanliness in the areas,  the successful launching of “Ladies Only” trams and buses, pasting Easter and Christmas posters (“The workers of the world welcome Christ the Worker”) and monthly recollections. If anyone succeeded to form lay leaders in the working environment, it was Fr. Galea. He also made it compulsory for Y.C.W. leaders to work at least once a week in the newly established “Nirmal Hriday” Home for the Dying. Those were the days when the young Mother Teresa was struggling to consolidate her work in Calcutta. Fr. Salvino Galea was strong in his convictions, powerfully expressive of his views, gentle in his dealings with fellow humans, and persuasive of the needs of the young workers’ movement. Through all the words and actions there radiated a childlike and loving heart. Many senior men and women lay leaders in Calcutta and abroad draw inspiration from his training still today, and they remember him all their life. Good Fr. Galea’s personal influence was  the occasion of generous response to the call of the priesthood and religious life in the case of at least eight Y.C.W. members. From the Y.C.W. flowed naturally the Y.C.S. and L.T.S., the two movements for students, that use the same method. So much more good could have come out of his work were it not cut short by ill health and certain elements of opposition. He was compelled to leave India and return to Malta. No one can forget how he kissed goodbye the Y.C.W. flag as his train steamed out of Howrah station. Thereafter he made a brief appearance in India on a lecture tour of the seminaries.

Back in his country, he was as involved as ever in youth ministry, preaching retreats, talking on social issues, and serving as confessor in Rome. And though his heart was intent on returning to India, he very sadly never made it; all those promises of a resident permit proved false. Advancing age slowed the pace. Diabetes was taking its toll;  the left leg was lost to it in November 1998, and other complications set in. His final months were spent in the Home for the Elderly Clergy, where, together with other priests and religious, he was well taken care of. The end came sweetly on 3rd. July ‘99. He died as gently as he had lived, his memory enshrined in the hearts of all who knew him.

May he rest in the Lord whom he had loved all his life.

CHRISTIAN MISSION

CHRISTIAN MISSION

                                                                                                            

“...but you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit which will come upon you, and then you will be my witnesses not only in Jerusalem but throughout Judaea and Samaria, and indeed to earth’s remotest end” (Acts 1, 18).

THE ORIGINAL MISSIONARY

            Mission begins with God, the God of divine exodus, who leaves his home and writes his mystery into the history of his people. He loves enough to extend himself in a total self-communication. “God is so incredibly in love with his creation that he personally invests himself in it” (Meister Eckhart). He could hardly wait for that day when man would suddenly awaken to the fact of God abroad as man, totally involved in a history and culture, member of a working class family, citizen of a nation oppressed; a God immersed in a world of births and deaths, with its experience of childhood, adolescence and adulthood, illness, insecurity and torture, of unemployment, work and leisure. And all with this purpose, that by the transfusion of the divine all ages and conditions of human living would be transformed, transfigured and elevated.

            In the Word made flesh, not only Spirit speaks to spirit, but Flesh speaks to flesh. Our flesh has ceased to be an obstacle; it has become a means and a mediation. It has ceased being a veil to become a perception. The Son of God did not come wearing his humanness like an overcoat, but rather brought the essence of being human to its capacity of revealing what God is like, The body of Christ is not clothed in idyllic silence, since the Incarnation means what it has always meant: something messy, noisy, smelly, bloody and painful. By becoming human, “God was writing his autobiography in the language of real flesh and blood” (Dorothy Sayers). In fact, he was in the person of Christ pulling and struggling with humanity in first-century Palestine and ever since, with his shoulder to the wheel of the human predicament, truly the Word made flesh, a force let loose in the world for man’s transformation. To believe this is good news, not only for modern man but for all humankind for all time.  A religion that constantly seeks the miraculous, the exotic, the other-worldly and  the defeat of nature, cannot help us to come to terms with our humanity, with the tasks of home and factory, of politics, school and church. Such a religion blinds us to the Risen One in the rising of the bread in the oven and the budding spring flower in the soil. Thus the full force of the tension between faith and hope are brought to bear on the world, thereby expressing itself, not by a flight from the world, but by a definite commitment to it. This is perfectly continuous with the Easter appearances of Jesus, which are quite clearly phenomena of mission. (“Go and tell.....”  “Go out into the whole world...”) Easter proclaims and promises the exodus from the world of sin and misery to one of “justice, peace, and the joy that is given by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 4, 17). It is the summons to transform the world, not fly or contemn it.

CHRIST CENTRED MISSIONARY

            All those who are centred on Jesus Christ must partake of his involvement or mission. And they will find God in the most unlikely places and human situations: in the hungry and naked, sick, criminal and oppressed.

            The secret of Jesus’ infallible insight and unshakeable conviction was his unfailing experience of solidarity with God, which revealed itself as an experience of solidarity with man and nature. This made him a uniquely liberated man, uniquely courageous, fearless, independent, truthful and hopeful. Why would anyone want to arrest, try and destroy him ? They found him too dynamic to be safe, too “missionary” to be pinned down ! He spoke about a power that they never understood: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; then you are to be my witnesses.” He could say that precisely because he had received that power already and increases it continuously by sharing it generously with anyone who is willing to witness to him even to the shedding of his blood, as he did. Those who enter this power by baptism are willing to be equipped for the mission of Christ. They are also willing to reassess their methods in terms of the personal, social and political spheres of human living today. Seminars on evangelisation are continuous with the ongoing conversion demanded by God speaking through the prophets.

PEOPLE CENTRED MISSIONARY

            Groups of people vary in size, location, character and the extent to which they welcome the faith or oppose it. But what they all have in common is the presence of the missionary among them, with the why and what he is trying to do. We find ourselves serving people  whose backgrounds and concerns vary enormously, yet  wonder whether the needs of human beings, as distinct from their temporal preoccupation, ever really change. Surely today, as in the past, human beings are in search of the transcendent, want to be affirmed, need self-understanding, yearn to discover meaning in life, require healing and reconciliation. In the best of worlds, people hinder and hurt one another. So there is the presence of the evangeliser.

            Mission and witness derive from a life that takes baptism seriously. Baptism introduced us into the  life of faith that we treasure above all other goods. We love our faith and love our fellow humans. What better way of expressing our love for them than by giving them our most precious possession, the Christian faith ? It is love that makes for missionary zeal. Bereft of every other talent, this one talent  no one can claim he or she does not have. The missionary heart of Jesus was set on his Father and his kingdom. Being one of us, knowing our pains and joys, Jesus reveals our deepest possibilities. Christ did not exhaust the potentialities of human nature, taken discretely. This would have been impossible in one historical lifetime. For instance, he was not a great painter or philosopher or statesman or a great husband, though we must admit he was an excellent teacher, combining in that activity a great amount of true art and poetry. But the point is that Jesus concentrated in himself all the power and energy that human nature is capable of for activating any of the evocations that a man or woman may choose, and he concentrated it to a degree that no one could muster, a degree so high as to make it fit to be used by God. This power was the power of his self-giving love at the service of the Word. Thus, in preference to all other possibilities, Jesus chose the essential and most distinctively human potentiality of all, the one that has the most radical claim on all men and women: self-surrendering love. Jesus was a person who tested life and was tested by it, searching out life’s meaning by listening carefully to what makes life really valuable, and he lived and died trusting that life and death are not bad jokes.

            Our discipleship is not without moral, institutional and political problems. Since we are wounded by sin, our capacity for commitment is limited. Yet, the value of discipleship is that it inspires a vision and provides a context for analysis and choice. A missionary is nothing if he does not personify Christ. Only a missionary who copies Christ faithfully in himself can reproduce his image in others. An apostle’s life is a tale of friendship with the Lord in order to be capable of acquiescing in a “missionary tension” in the martyrial sense of the example of Therese of Lisieux and Francis Xavier. Without this contemplative and apostolic tension of intimate communion with Christ that leads to the foot of the Cross, a missionary cannot proclaim him in a credible way. Witnessing to Christ is not a piece of mimicry, but a challenge to live our human adventure as authentically as he did.

CHILDHOOD AND HARRY POTTER

CHILDHOOD AND HARRY POTTER

The Limpid Years

In his old age, the English composer, Sir Edward Elgar, looked back to his childhood and wrote up some of the musical sketches that he had jotted down at that time. He called his new work “The Wand of Youth”, a sad and nostalgic piece, the opus of a man for whom childhood was “long ago and far away,” a time of innocence, a better time. We’ve all been there. And if we’re honest, something of the child still survives in us, that we can only lose to our great cost. Let the nine persist in the ninety ! In welcoming children (“let the children come to me”) and laying his hands on them, Jesus was conveying a practical parable about recapturing childhood; and his warnings about scandalising the little ones included protecting that beautiful child within us from being reduced to an ugly urchin. The controversy over adult vs. infant baptism was resolved in advance by Jesus’ word to the old night visitor, Nicodemus, “Unless you become like little children you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Nine days to ninety years, all baptisms are infant baptisms !

Sir Edward Elgar was near to what Jesus meant when he saw childhood as a time of innocence and wonder; that some of the things that adults take for granted are, when seen through children’s eyes, signs and illustrations of the creative love of God: “All things bright and beautiful......the good Lord made them all.” Their sense of wonder sees life as something new, a gift untainted by sin and familiarity. The Christian mystic, Thomas Trahern, described this marvellously by picturing a newly born child reflecting in wonderment on its entry into this world. Children easily have a sense of God and his presence in the world that adults too easily lose. In each one’s own way, the little ones reproduce the stories of obedience to God’s call. For example, the story of the boy Samuel. “Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli.” That story shows us how the open wonderment of childhood needs the experience of age to interpret the marvellous and unexpected. Samuel heard the word of God, but only knew it for what it was after Eli explained what he must do if he heard it again. Children have the capacity for great faith and forgiveness. Many thousands of people, including children, died in the concentration camp in Ravensbrook during World War II. Near to the body of a child a prayer was found. “O Lord, remember not only the men and women of good will, but also those of ill-will; but do not remember all the suffering they have inflicted on us. Remember the fruits we have borne, thanks to this suffering: our comradeship, our loyalty, our humility, our courage, our generosity, the greatness of heart which has grown out of all this. And when they come to judgement, let all the fruits which we have borne be their forgiveness.”

Teaching Adults

Not all children display such virtues, and it’s easy to sentimentalise them.

 But at the very least, young children have much to teach adults who have observed their sense of adventure and discovery. When a child chases a butterfly, tries to tie up his shoe lace for the first time, begins to jabber words and sentences that only gradually begin to make sense, adults can be amused and touched. Sometimes, something more happens. Adults can rediscover important things they had forgotten about. A child asks, “Why is that flower red ?”, or, “Why do I have to go to sleep now ?” “Why’s that man got no hair on his head ?” You can just answer that question and leave it at that; or else you can begin to question all the things you had taken for granted; and sometimes, because you’re an adult with an adult’s experience, the questions are more searching. But there is more. Their questions can be devastating: “Why is that child crying ? Where’s her mummy and daddy ?” “Why are those children so thin; and why are they dying ?”

Some of the foolish things we have done we hope they won’t do. In this calamitous world children are often the first to suffer from the violence of adults. Nothing seems so tragic or monstrous when children die with nothing to eat, unless it be those who are brutalised by human sin, cynics before their time, never having known love and hope and peace and justice.

The Period of Childhood

Yet life is more than pain and puzzlement. Besides telling them to be like little children, Jesus told his followers (his “little ones”) that God was their Father, the most reliable and loving of all fathers, and that “all will be well and all manner of thing will be well.” According to Thomas Aquinas, the child is “potentially a person”, with the capacity through appropriate formation to grow in wisdom and virtue. The characteristic of being human is the ability to find meaning through myths and belief systems by which sense is made of the world. The Christian tradition provides what is of value, giving meaning to childhood and family. For example, children bear the image of God, are worthy of respect and dignity, having an uncorrupted and spiritual nature, capable to being virtuous and heroic, ever redeemable, whatever their misdemeanours, and destined for eternal life. Childhood’s meaning in society is represented in rituals, namely, “bar mitzvah”, cubs and scouts/guides with their distinctive roles and practices. Through these transitional rituals a society guarantees the integrity of this period called childhood.

On the other hand, a society for which the education of children is essentially about pressing a child into adult or pseudo-adult roles as fast as possible has lost patience with the commitment to guarantee the integrity of the childhood period. Think of the misshapen phenomenon of “child soldiers” in revolutionary outfits or of movies where children seriously ape adults. When childhood as an icon has been lost, the void is filled with an impoverished substitute, marked by an uncritical view of the child as “consumer” or “mini-adult”, or as a means of cheap labour, or simply as an object to be tolerated. This is a travesty of the distinctive significance of children, of their dignity, destiny and rightful place in the divine scheme of things. Persistence of the travesty and a veto on the rituals and roles proper of them will compel the children to create their own mythical world. In today’s terms, they will do a Harry Potter.

Producing their Potter

The Harry Potter novels of J.K. Rowling are a big hit with the youth of today, and the movie based on the first novel, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” is the sensation of today. Harry and schoolmates want to escape from the straitjacket of adult discipline and religious conformity. They want their own way to freedom, which includes making use of sorcery and magical animals, which in turn is why certain religious interests have condemned the books. Actually Harry and friends want to save the world, even if they whiptail it upside down. At the denouement Harry has to cross wands with the sinister Lord Voldemort, an arch-wizard bent on global thraldom. It is essentially youthful joie de vivre against the controlling mind of the overbearing adult, white magic against black, good against evil  -  and guess who wins at the end and how.

Heroes without Power

Children have an entirely healthy desire to turn the world around. and this desire is an echo of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Like Jesus, the young Harry Potter rejects totally all worldly power and success -  yet another echo of Jesus’ option to join the sinners in the Jordan, followed by his rejection of religious and political power in the desert, and finally his refusal to use force at Gethsamane. Jesus himself said that his kingdom was not of this world, but the children would be at home in it. Every child not only wants to turn the world upside down, but to save it; and that is why children identify with Harry, with Robin Hood, with Huck Finn in his saving of the slave, Jim, and with George Lucas’ creation, Luke Skywalker. The final scene of the first of the Star War movies gives us an insight to every boy’s desire for recognition as hero and saviour.

Imaginative Redemption

 Somehow for Christian education to touch the boy/girl at the deepest level, our practical theology must place Jesus in that heroic context, offering a meaningful non-soppy heroism to children today, connected to the cosmic milieu in which their minds now operate. The George Lucas stories, the Narnia books, the Potter novels, and the “Lord of the Rings” all vivify the desire of children to live in a world that they can master and mould, escaping from one they patently can’t. That so many also want to escape from Christianity also is a problem that deserves the most careful thought. For instance, they have no time for those whose Christianity is merely nostalgia for a buttoned-up past, or for a Christianity that is largely the intellectual empire of those governed by fear of the present or future, or fear of youthful freedom. The children crave for a story of redemption that will capture their imaginative world, so that when they leave school they are equipped not with stale news best forgotten, but with a life story that is coherent, relevant and vitally central to them. It’s no fault of theirs if they are not, or the Harry Potter storywriter’s; it’s ours.

                                                                                                        

CHRISTMAS STORY: BOWLED OVER

“BOWLED”  OVER !

A  Christmas  Story

            Once upon a time a little boy lived with his parents, poor peasants, in a simple hut in the woods. The parents loved their child, and he returned their love and was a good son to them, young as he was. 

            Also living with the family was the grandfather of the little boy.  He was old and frail and no longer able to work.  He sat all day in his chair, and when he came to table he was so shaky that he could hardly eat, and often made a great deal of mess around his place.  One day his trembling hand caused him to drop and break his platter and spill all the food on the ground.

            The boy’s mother was furious.  She shouted at the poor man, shook him and said that henceforth he would eat all his meals from a wooden bowl as he was not fit to eat from a plate like normal people.

            Ashamed and humiliated, the old man withdrew from the table to a corner, where,  isolated and lonely, he ate only from a wooden bowl like a baby.

            One day the little boy’s parents went out to do some Christmas shopping and on their return noticed their little boy with a knife and a block of wood. Curious, they asked, “What are you doing ?  What are you making  ?”

            “I’m making bowls for you both to eat out of, when you are old, so that no one will shout at you”, he replied in innocent simplicity.

            His parents were bowled over, shocked into a realisation of what they had done. They burst into tears, embraced the old man and drew him back into the family circle, where he lived out his days, cherished and honoured. Every Christmas, the two little unfinished  wooden bowls were placed lovingly under the Christmas tree as a touching reminder of the change of heart.

“For Wisdom opened the months of the dumb and made eloquent the tongues of babes” (Book of Wisdom: 10, 20).

ANGEL POEM

ANGEL POEM

May angels rest beside your door,
May you hear their voices sing.
May you feel their loving care for you,
May you hear their peace bells ring.
May angels always care for you,
And never let you fall,
May they bear you up on angel's wings,
May they keep you standing tall!

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If we have faith, and belief,
that we are in God's care,
then we can believe that the
Lord is with us everywhere.
His angels have been sent
to protect us from any harm,
and to teach us about love,
and keep our spirits calm.
This heavenly love surrounds
each of us every single day,
and today, because you are so very special to me.
I asked the angels to bring
a little more love your way.

---------------------------------

A Little Wisdom

A mirror is only as good
As the reflection in it.
Worry enough to anticipate trouble
But not so much as to bring it about.
Look back to where you have been
For a clue to where you are going.
Melt the icy fingers of fear
With the sunshine of hope.
Step by gentle step,
You can overcome the greatest sorrow.
The sweetest grapes
Are picked from the vineyard of friendship.
Find something you truly believe in,
And everything else will have meaning as well.

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CHRISTIAN LIFE LIKE THE OLYMPICS

 Christian life like the Olympics
The Olympics represent the pinnacle of athleticism, training, and competitiveness, going all the way back to ancient times. The apostle Paul used illustrations from the world of athletics in several of his letters. In three Epistles, he used the image of all-out racing to urge vigorous and lawful pursuit of spiritual growth and service. Four times Paul spoke of his own growth and service in terms of his own such race.

To the gifted but immature believers in Corinth, Paul wrote, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24). Here, Paul compares the disciplined effort necessary for spiritual growth to an Olympic athlete’s effort to win the prize that awaits only the winner of a race. Growing Christlikeness does not just happen on its own. God certainly “works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13), but the believer must cooperate with God by exerting responsible and serious effort to follow what the Holy Spirit teaches. “Anyone who competes as an athlete does not receive the victor’s crown except by competing according to the rules” (2 Timothy 2:5). For the disciplined believer, the prize is the “upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14, ESV). To what does God call the believer? It is to become like Jesus Christ in heart and lifestyle (Romans 8:28–30).

The true believer demonstrates the reality of God’s work in his heart by enduring all sorts of tests in the development of Christlikeness. The believer is in training, much as an Olympic athlete must train for a race. No pain, no gain. That is why the writer of Hebrews exhorted, “Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart” (Hebrews 12:1–3). Jesus is portrayed as the finest runner, the One who set the pace, our model and hero in life’s race. Just as a runner in the Olympics must dispense with anything that would hinder his running, we must disentangle ourselves from sin. As a runner in the games must keep his eyes on the finish line, so we must keep our eyes on Christ and His joyful reward.

Some believers in Galatia had lost faith in God’s grace and were returning to a legalistic, performance-based religion. Paul wrote strong words to them: “You were running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you from obeying the truth? That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you” (Galatians 5:7–8). The true Christian life can be lived only by faith—faith in the pure Word of God and faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. To follow Satan’s deceitful advice to try to earn God’s grace and free gift of salvation is to stumble in our race. Trusting our own works only insults God and does us no good.

Paul wrote with similar urgency to believers in Philippi, “Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, ‘children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.’ Then . . . I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain” (Philippians 2:14–16). Paul encouraged the Philippians’ pure faith and likened his own labor on their behalf to running a race. He had invested hard work and deep suffering in teaching them God’s story, and he wanted his exertion to pay off—much like an Olympic athlete deeply desires his sacrifices to result in victory.

Another passage in which Paul uses the metaphor of a race is Galatians 2:1–2. There Paul tells how he had visited Christian leaders in Jerusalem in order to check with them the gospel he preached to the Gentiles. What was his reason for taking such care? “For fear that I was running or had run my race in vain” (NAS). It was vital to Paul that he knew, believed, and taught God’s truth. This was the way that he “ran his race.”

It was in peaceful confidence that Paul approached the end of his life. Anticipating his impending martyrdom in Rome, he wrote to his young protégé, Timothy, “The time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:6–8).

We don’t know if Paul had been an athlete in his younger years. In these references to the Olympic races, he certainly showed deep interest in and understanding of competitive running. He used that understanding of the Olympic races to illustrate the basics of the Christian life.

A runner must train for his race, know the rules, and commit to winning. A believer must endure hardship, exercise absolute and enduring faith in the Word of God, and keep his eyes on the goal. In the power of the cross, the believer grows more and more like the Savior. Despite obstacles, challenges, temptations, and even the threat of death, the Christian continues to run the race Christ has marked out for him.

WHY STUDY THE OLD TESTAMENT?

"Why should we study the Old Testament?"

Answer: There are many reasons to study the Old Testament. For one, the Old Testament lays the foundation for the teachings and events found in the New Testament. The Bible is a progressive revelation. If you skip the first half of any good book and try to finish it, you will have a hard time understanding the characters, the plot, and the ending. In the same way, the New Testament is only completely understood when we see its foundation of the events, characters, laws, sacrificial system, covenants, and promises of the Old Testament. 

If we only had the New Testament, we would come to the Gospels and not know why the Jews were looking for a Messiah (a Savior King). We would not understand why this Messiah was coming (see Isaiah 53), and we would not have been able to identify Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah through the many detailed prophecies that were given concerning Him [e.g., His birth place (Micah 5:2), His manner of death (Psalm 22, especially verses 1, 7–8, 14–18; 69:21), His resurrection (Psalm 16:10), and many more details of His ministry (Isaiah 9:2; 52:3)].

A study of the Old Testament is also important for understanding the Jewish customs mentioned in passing in the New Testament. We would not understand the way the Pharisees had perverted God’s law by adding their own traditions to it, or why Jesus was so upset as He cleansed the temple courtyard, or where Jesus got the words He used in His many replies to adversaries. 

The Old Testament records numerous detailed prophecies that could only have come true if the Bible is God’s Word, not man’s (e.g., Daniel 7 and the following chapters). Daniel’s prophecies give specific details about the rise and fall of nations. These prophecies are so accurate, in fact, that skeptics choose to believe they were written after the fact.

We should study the Old Testament because of the countless lessons it contains for us. By observing the lives of the characters of the Old Testament, we find guidance for our own lives. We are exhorted to trust God no matter what (Daniel 3). We learn to stand firm in our convictions (Daniel 1) and to await the reward of faithfulness (Daniel 6). We learn it is best to confess sin early and sincerely instead of shifting blame (1 Samuel 15). We learn not to toy with sin, because it will find us out (Judges 13—16). We learn that our sin has consequences not only for ourselves but for our loved ones (Genesis 3) and, conversely, that our good behavior has rewards for us and those around us (Exodus 20:5–6).

A study of the Old Testament also helps us understand prophecy. The Old Testament contains many promises that God will yet fulfill for the Jewish nation. The Old Testament reveals such things as the length of the Tribulation, how Christ’s future 1,000-year reign fulfills His promises to the Jews, and how the conclusion of the Bible ties up the loose ends that were unraveled in the beginning of time.

In summary, the Old Testament allows us to learn how to love and serve God, and it reveals more about God’s character. It shows through repeatedly fulfilled prophecy why the Bible is unique among holy books—it alone is able to demonstrate that it is what it claims to be: the inspired Word of God. In short, if you have not yet ventured into the pages of the Old Testament, you are missing much that God has available for you.