February 2013

GOSPEL COMMENTARIES

1 FebruaryMk 4:26-34Jesus said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’  He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’  With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

For ‘kingdom’ say ‘presence’. Then read it again. “The presence of God is like this: a man scatters seed upon the soil. Whether he is asleep or awake, be it day or night, the seed sprouts and grows, he knows not how.” The seeds of awareness of God are in us. They will not suddenly leap into the air, bypassing all stages of growth, and fill the grain-loft to the door. Instead they will lie in the damp earth, lost and forgotten, seeming dead. But the miracle of life is happening there where no one can see and no one can understand or explain it. Then one day the most vulnerable part appears just above the ground. It has no defences, it doesn’t find itself in a glasshouse; it is exposed to everything that could happen to it…. That's life. Only love could take such risks. In this parable Jesus says that the presence of God is like that. Now, for ‘presence of God’ just say ‘God’. God doesn’t appear with flashes of lightning and claps of thunder. God appears slowly, microscopically, humbly, tenderly…. “The kingdom of God does not come with observation,” Jesus said (Lk 17:20); “nor will anyone say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!” And still, like advertisers, we never stop trying to make the brand recognisable. (You have to wonder how the poor man of Nazareth would react to clerical motley.) The part of a disciple is to wait, to listen, to have the wise humility of the earth, and to have faith and hope and love.

2 February [Presentation of the Lord]Lk 2:22-40When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord"), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons." Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying, "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." And the child's father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon

blessed them and said to his mother Mary, "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

The Law is mentioned three times in this reading: everything is being done “according to the Law.” Jesus appears as fully within the Law; everything is being done the right way; he is fully identified with the Jewish people, or as a commentator with a lot of hindsight put it, “completely immersed in humanity.” Very well, if there is to be hindsight, then let’s see this child as a grown man put to death in accordance with the same Law. But can you still see the eight-day-old baby once you have mentioned his death?

What else is mentioned three times in this reading? The Holy Spirit. But remember, this is the Old Testament Holy Spirit. It is not yet the divine Person of the Christian Trinity. It was the undifferentiated Spirit of God that hovered over the waters at the beginning of creation (Gen 1:2). The new Spirit would take people right out of the embrace of the Law.

Sometimes it can be a good thing to try and set aside some of our hindsight. When hindsight gets in before sight itself, it can blind rather than illuminate. We have to give Jesus time to grow up – not only in himself but in us.

It took an old man, Simeon, to discern the new thing that was happening. And the old woman, Anna, is also aware. They are wonderful examples of the clarity that can be found in old people. Every night of life the Church’s Night Prayer repeats Simeon’s canticle. “Now, O Lord, you can dismiss your servant in peace....” It is deeply meaningful. Every day is like a short lifetime, and nightfall reminds us of approaching death. The end is therefore not to be dreaded as something we have always excluded from our consciousness, but welcomed as a fulfilment – much as the body welcomes the prospect of rest and sleep.

3 February [4th Sunday in Ord. time]Lk 4:21- 30Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph's son?" He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, 'Doctor, cure yourself!' And you will say, 'Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'" And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian." When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

In the gospels we often see people suddenly opposing Jesus very soon after they had been acclaiming him. They go along with him for a while, thinking that he is part of their dream - party to their dream - but soon they discover that he is not. Their dream is everyone’s dream: that “we” are superior to all others. There is a built-in contradiction in this, but it doesn’t seem to wake us up. In today’s gospel reading Jesus disappointed the dream of his own townsfolk, so they tried to throw him over a cliff. He praised foreigners and pagans, and that could not be allowed to stand.

I heard a wise word the other day: “You can never get enough of what you really don’t want.” Deep down you don’t want it because it doesn’t satisfy any real hunger in you. The reason it doesn’t satisfy you, you imagine, is that you are not getting enough of it; so you multiply it. But multiplying it does not satisfy you; it only multiplies your disgust. What you need is a different diet. This is true not only of bodily food, but of mental and spiritual food as well. Trashy novels will never fill your heart and soul, no matter how many you read. Spirituality without the edge of truth will disgust you in the end.

Jesus can be relied on to disturb our dreaming, if we allow it. The problem is that we cling desperately to our dreams. We have to see and admit that much of our waking life is a succession of dreams. We see the world largely through language: through descriptions that we have heard, through thoughts and memories, through fears and hopes, some of which may be partly our own, but most of which we have wholly caught from other people. Language is like an updraft of air that can lift us right off the ground. It takes a great deal of effort to stay down. Animals do so effortlessly; we have to keep on striving.

We can even use the words of Jesus as a way of remaining asleep. “People are just thirsting for the truth, Father!” said a contemplative nun to me, laying her hand on her heart, dimming her eyes, and inclining her head to one side. I soon discovered what she meant by the truth: a tiny cluster of nervous, rigid cant-phrases, with no life and no power to give life. Anything that fell beyond that narrow beaten track she called ‘New Age’. She is not representative of her kind, thank God, but all over the world there are millions of people clinging to dreams and calling them divine revelation. The test is not the words we repeat, but the kind of life we lead. “It is not those who say to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of my Father in heaven” (Mt 7:21).

4 FebruaryMk 5:1-20They came to the other side of the lake, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; and he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.’ For he had said to him, ‘Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many.’ He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; and the unclean spirits begged him, ‘Send us into the swine; let us enter them.’ So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the lake, and were drowned in the lake.

“My name is Legion.” Another translation has ‘Mob’. ‘Mob’ suits a madman: it conveys the sense of being invaded by chaotic forces (legions are all discipline). Which madmen does it suit especially? All of us! A good way to read the Scriptures is to put oneself in the shoes of everyone in the story.

It is certainly a dramatic story. In his book, Why I am Not a Christian, Bertrand Russell brought up this story to support his claim that Jesus was not a perfect man. The philosopher was focusing on the pigs and the fate they met at the hands of Jesus. But

there are other characters in the story: in particular, a deeply troubled human being. St Jerome thought there must have been two thousand demons, since there were two thousand pigs. One demon one pig. The text doesn't quite say that. Never mind: no one could be so interested in demons – or in pigs, for that matter – as to keep an exact tally of them. No one, that is, except Tertullian (3rd century), who wrote: “Even the bristles of the pigs were counted by God, just as were the hairs of the heads of the just.” That would have consoled Bertrand Russell. He was certainly partial to pigs: he was no vegetarian, and probably never came face to face with a pig that wasn’t cooked. Ninety-nine years of bacon and sausages would account for quite a large herd of pigs, possibly even two thousand; and all of them suffered more gruesome deaths than their distant relatives in the story.

Mark’s focus is the sorely tormented man. It is a story full of symbolic meanings. Every element is significant. The story is full of unclean things. Demons, of course, were unclean. Jews could not touch a dead body or a tomb without becoming ritually unclean (this is why sepulchres were whitened; because of their greater visibility, people were less likely to bump into them accidentally); but this man even lived in the tombs. Pigs were regarded as unclean animals, and would never be found in Jewish territory. In addition, Jews had a great fear of water; they were no sailors; for them the sea was the abode of Leviathan, the monster of the deep. So the possessed man was surrounded and invaded by vile forces.

By the end of the story the demons have left the man and taken up residence in the pigs, the most appropriate place for them; and the pigs have plunged into the water to join Leviathan. Meanwhile, the man is “clothed and in his right mind,” and is told by Jesus to go home to his family and friends. Everything has returned to its proper place.... If it were a film we would see Bertrand Russell seated at home enjoying his breakfast.

5 FebruaryMk 5:21-43When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered round him; and he was by the lake. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.’ So he went with him.

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Immediately her haemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?” ’ He looked all round to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’ But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’ He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, ‘Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.’ And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were

with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

The Old Testament took thousands of years to unfold, but the events recounted in the gospels unfolded in just a couple of years. Mark’s gospel in particular leaves an impression of breathless haste; it is like a child telling a story. Many sentences begin with “And”; he often uses phrases like “straight away”, “and immediately”; he uses the ‘historic present’ (“Jesus says to them,” not “said”), which gives a feeling of urgency. He also ‘sandwiches’ events, adding to the feeling of urgency: in today’s reading, for example, Jesus healed the woman while he was on his way to save the little girl. There is an urgency about the whole gospel that makes it quite clear it is not just for reading; it is for doing.

Coming back to the beginning of the passage: look at the synagogue official. Synagogue officials differ – or rather their circumstances differ. In Lk 13:14 we saw an angry one: he was angry that Jesus healed an old lady on the sabbath. But in today’s reading we see one who “threw himself at Jesus’ feet and asked him earnestly” to heal his little daughter who was dying. It would be wonderful if we knew that it was the same official! There is nothing like a crisis to restore our humanity: not any kind of crisis but one of the heart. Any crisis that only challenges your mind is not deeply challenging; you are not really open till your heart is open. Your real inside is not your mind but your heart. Culture and travel and training can open your mind, but that isn't much. You are not open till your heart is exposed. As soon as the official had a sick child he ceased to be an official and became a father.

In both stories there is a child. The words Jesus spoke to the little girl in the ‘outer layer’ story are quoted in Aramaic, his native language: talitha kumi, “little girl, get up!” The New Testament is written in Greek, but the writers kept just a few words in Hebrew and Aramaic: for example, the last word in the Bible, maranatha, and Abba! And talitha kumi, an expression of great gentleness and tenderness. It must have been as distinctive as his prayer; they remembered it forever in its own language. Talitha kumi.

6 FebruaryMk 6:1-6He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said to them, "Prophets are not without honour, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about among the villages teaching.

“They took offence at him.” What was his offence? His background was the same as theirs; he was just like them: “Is not this the carpenter?” But he had not remained in the role the village had assigned to him. Villages can be intensely conservative places. The word ‘conservative’ is in itself a good word: to conserve is to keep intact, to guard. But everything depends on what one is trying to conserve: the best or the worst. Because of the human capacity for self-deceit, we can use a fine word to make mean things look good. In the reaction of the villagers to Jesus a narrow village mentality showed itself.

The smaller the society, the more controlling this narrow spirit. “Beneath the charm of the rural town or village, there often lurks a lethal intolerance.” Nazareth was such a place. People who have known you all your life see you as the child you were, even when you are a middle-aged man or woman. They see where you came from and they remember all your youthful mistakes. If they are villagers they also want to make sure you are not getting above yourself; “who does he think he is?” This is a sort of envy, or perhaps something more primitive: a tribal spirit. It tries to destroy you, or at least to discredit you, if you are not just like everyone else.

So we are safe if we don’t live in villages? Unfortunately no. A whole section of society, or even a whole society, can lock itself into a village mentality. Listen for the worst accents of the village in some television programmes; look for them in the printed media. There we can see, for better and for worse alike, the global village.

The terrible fact is that it works. It tied Jesus's hands: “he could work no miracles there” (v.5). It is a frightful thought that we have the ability to prevent miracles. The villagers wanted to keep him within his limitations: he was a carpenter and the son of a carpenter. But elsewhere the gospel says “he broke through their midst and went his way” (Lk 4:30). We have to break through the midst of many things in order to become adult Christians. Many people, even in the Church, will try to keep us in a pre-adult state. Yes, Jesus said we must be like children: we must have their qualities of simplicity, honesty, freshness…. “Like children,” he said. We must be adults who are like children, not children who are like adults.

7 FebruaryMk 6:7-13He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.’ So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

There are many ways to approach a text, just as there are many sides from which to approach an object. We could approach today’s reading as follows. What's an extra tunic for? It is for tomorrow. What is a bag for? It is for carrying things that I will need tomorrow. What is money for? It is for tomorrow’s food and shelter.

But “Now is the time,” Jesus said. To live intensely in the present is to be less worried about the past and the future, and that enables us to be less preoccupied with possessions.

What we think of as the past is a memory trace, and the future isn't even that (it is a projection of the past, a projection of a memory trace). These, like the moon, have no light of their own; any light they have is a reflection of the light and power of the Present.

We think of time as originating in the unimaginably distant past and flowing forward into the present and beyond us into the future. Could we not reverse that image? Time originates now, it wells up into existence in the present moment and flows away into the past. Time flows backwards! This moment is the Big Bang! Take nothing for the journey – because you have already arrived!

Many people are cheated of life by their love of money. Money is many things: it is your love of things, your escape from people, your security against death, your effort to control life…. People who can't love people start loving money. When anyone comes too close they want to push them away, in case they ask for money. People who love money become like things: dead, closed. For people who love people, money can be a means; but for people who love money, people are just a means. Love becomes a means, even prayer becomes a means: their prayer is for more money.

8 FebruaryMk 6:14-29Some were saying, ‘John the Baptist has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.’ But others said, ‘It is Elijah.’ And others said, ‘It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.’ But when Herod heard of it, he said, ‘John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.’

For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her. For John had been telling Herod, ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.’ And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, ‘Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.’ And he solemnly swore to her, ‘Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.’ She went out and said to her mother, ‘What should I ask for?’ She replied, ‘The head of John the baptizer.’ Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, ‘I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.’ The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.

‘Herod the Great’, five times married, and father of the Herod of this story, had the dubious distinction of having killed everyone he ever loved; there was a saying, “It is safer to be Herod’s pig than to be his son.” Still, this son survived somehow, and continued the family tradition of lust and cruelty. Innocent people die at the hands of such people: the Holy Innocents at the hand of the father, John the Baptist at the hands of the son.

Josephus, the 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian gave an account of the incident in today’s reading, filling in further details. Herod’s wife, whom he repudiated in favour of his own brother’s wife, was the daughter of Aretas, king of Petra. Aretas took a dim view of this and waged war on Herod, and destroyed his entire army. Eusebius (c. 260-340) wrote: “He suffered this calamity on account of his crime against John.” Today we would be more conscious of what all those soldiers suffered for Herod’s drunken bravado.

“I had John beheaded, yet he has risen from the dead!” Don’t be surprised; he has inevitably risen. If you want the truth to sprout, cut off its head. It will grow twenty heads. This was Herod's experience. However, because of his misdeed and his guilty conscience it was not a pleasant one for him. John was his bad conscience. John rose up again before him like a ghost, not like a resurrected being. He cannot be beheaded again; it is impossible to behead a ghost. That phantom pain will be with Herod for the rest of his life. But wasn’t there forgiveness for him? Yes, but he was a tyrant and didn’t know that word.

What’s in this reading for people who are not tyrants? What could we possibly have in common with Herod? Read what St John Chrysostom said about that. “Do not make this cold reply: ‘What does it matter to me? I have nothing in common with him.’ With the devil alone we have nothing in common, but with all humanity we have many things in common. All partake of the same nature with us. They inhabit the same earth. They are nourished with the same food. They have the same God….. Let us not say then that we have nothing in common with them.” We have to stand in the shoes of every character mentioned in the New Testament.

9 FebruaryMk 6:30-34The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while." For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognised them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

Today we see the Twelve returning from their mission (see Feb. 7). Obviously they were the worse for wear. He told them they needed to rest: to rest and to be silent.

He himself knew that same need. Scattered here and there through the gospels are verses that tell us volumes about Jesus by their very silence. "When daylight came he left the house and made his way to a lonely place" (Lk 4:42). Another is Mk 1:35, "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed." See also Lk 5:16, "He would always go off to some place where he could be alone and pray." And Lk 6:12, "He went out into the hills to pray, and he spent the whole night in prayer to God."

“The apostles had no time even to eat.” That sounds more like today. There are things that never change, despite all the change we see in our world. We need rest and silence. Have you noticed that watching TV doesn't really relax you? At the end you usually feel just empty and wasted. Rest, the art that the animals practise to perfection, is one that we have to learn all over again.

The nature of the mind is to postpone. When that obviously doesn’t get us anywhere we say, I mustn’t be going fast enough. So we go faster. This may be the origin of the fascination with speed. We are running away from ourselves. Self-knowledge is almost impossible in this atmosphere. In the time of Jesus a bullock-cart was the fastest means of transport. What would they think of the speed with which we live?

10 February [5th Sunday in Ord. time]Lk 5:1-11Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Simon answered, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets." When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signalled their

partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

Among the many books written by Henri Nouwen (1932-1996), one stands out as an enduring little classic, The Wounded Healer. For those who knew him, this book is especially powerful because, without expressly intending to, it describes so well the man himself. It was because of his own wounds that he was able to touch the lives of so many people. “By his wounds we have been healed,” St Peter wrote of Jesus (1 Peter 2:24). However, there was a different reaction to Nouwen’s book from a fundamentalist Christian who reviewed it and announced that a Christian minister should not come before people as a wounded healer but as “a prophet of God and as a helper in their afflictions.” These different reactions show a gulf between Christians that is probably deeper than most of the issues that divide Christians Churches.

Are you helped by someone who defines himself as a helper? Can you feel cared for by someone who defines himself as a prophet? If the Christian life were only a matter of external prescriptions, then probably yes - in the way that you can get help from an accountant or a lawyer. But since it touches the innermost places in us - the very springs of our thoughts and actions - this approach is less than helpful. From Nouwen, a contrasting approach (in Out of Solitude): “When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares…. By the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness we can participate in the care of God who came, not to the powerful but powerless, not to be different but the same, not to take our pain away but to share it. Through this participation we can open our hearts to each other and form a new community."

In the first reading at today’s Mass, God’s call made Isaiah aware of his own weakness and unworthiness, exactly as Jesus’ call to Peter made Peter blurt out, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" If Christians do not carry the precious knowledge of their own weakness and sinfulness, then all their attempts to help you are nothing but an ego-trip: by ‘helping’ you they are feeding on your strength and making you weak; by ‘loving’ you they are seeking ways to snare you and make you dependent on them; by ‘caring’ for you they are preening their own image. (And by the way, do those televangelists remind you too of Pro Wrestlers?)

Back to Henri Nouwen: "We tend to look at caring as an attitude of the strong toward the weak, of the powerful toward the powerless, of the have’s toward the have-not’s….[But] the word ‘care’ finds its roots in the Gothic ‘Kara’ which means lament. The basic meaning of care is: to grieve, to experience sorrow, to cry out with.”

11 FebruaryMk 6:53-56When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognised him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And

wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

Today's reading stands in strong contrast to tomorrow’s. Today Jesus is among his own people, the Galileans; they recognise him and flock to him. But tomorrow a delegation from Jerusalem, the Judaean capital, will arrive, and from there the hostility of the religious leaders will begin. It will lead to his death.

A preacher known to me was boasting after he got a standing ovation for one of his sermons. It had gone to his head. But a friend of his helped him back to reality. He said, “There’s something odd here, isn’t there? Jesus preached and they crucified him; you preached and they gave you a standing ovation!”

Popularity is a fickle goddess: the crowd that cheered “Hosanna!” for Jesus was crying “Crucify him!” a few days later. Jesus experienced both reactions; the rest of us, with few exceptions, would settle for just Hosanna! Popularity looks like glory, and it is a kind of glory: someone called it “glory’s small change.” There is the personality type described as ‘the pleaser’. Such a person will never challenge you; they rely too much on your good opinion of them. But it backfires; most people would prefer that you said what you thought. “He more had pleased us had he pleased us less.”

12 FebruaryMk 7:1-13Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, ‘Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?’ He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, “This people honours me with their lips,   but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me,   teaching human precepts as doctrines.” You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’ Then he said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, “Honour your father and your mother”; and, “Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.” But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, “Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban” (that is, an offering to God)— then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.’

Here they are: the scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem. They are not bringing their sick, like the Galileans in yesterday’s reading. So they are not vulnerable, they don’t have to bother about love. That clarifies their minds so that they can think about the law. Immediately they find fault and go into the attack. Shallow, Jesus called them: more concerned with external regulations than with the inner reality; more concerned with law than with the heart (in the Scriptures the heart is a symbol of the whole inner life of a person).

Briefly, the word ‘corban’ means ‘gift’. Anything brought to the Temple treasury was said to be ‘corban’ and could never again be put to secular use. Now, a rebellious son might say to his parents, “Any benefit or enjoyment you might have by me, I now declare ‘corban’!” It meant that he was no longer bound to help or support them in any way! “So

it frequently happened,” wrote St Jerome, “that while father and mother were destitute, their children were offering sacrifices for the priests and scribes to consume.” Jesus raged against this. “You abandon the commandment of God [the commandment to love and honour your parents] and hold to human tradition [corban].” For all their talk about God, religious lawyers can't cope well with God. God seems too concerned with individuals, and is therefore unpredictable. Love just muddies the pitch for lawyers.

It is pleasant to rail against these Pharisaical customs, but in the end I have to enquire what my own similar customs are.

13 February [Ash Wednesday]Mt 6:1-6, 16-18‘Beware of practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. ‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. ‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. ‘And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

How can you expect to breathe in if you refuse to breathe out? An anonymous ancient Christian writer has this: “You who have offered nothing to God, what do you expect to receive from God?” Breathing is a kind of giving and receiving. We know at once when we begin to suffer from a disease of the respiratory system: asthma, bronchitis, emphysema…. But there is the spiritual counterpart of these diseases: the inability to give and receive freely.

‘Nowhy’ is a word I have never seen written till I wrote it now. It is a word we used as children. It was useful when explaining to parents our reason for doing the things we did for no reason. “Why did you do that?” “Nowhy!” If ‘nowhere’ is an accepted word, why not ‘nowhy’? Others have invented similar words when they needed them: such as ‘nohow’. But it is a word that could have a big future; it has a wider use than we made of it in childhood. For example: Why do you help people? Nowhy. Why do you do good? Nowhy.

Here I bring in Meister Eckhart in support. “If you should ask a good person, 'Why do you love God?' - 'I don't know - for God's sake'. - 'Why do you love truth?' - 'For truth's sake'. - Why do you love justice?' - 'For justice’s sake'. 'Why do you live?' - 'Indeed I don't know - I like living!'” It would have been simpler just to say, Nowhy.

Doing something for a reason sounds like good business practice and common sense, while doing something for no reason sounds rather shiftless and irresponsible. Advertising is serious business, we know; and it is all about projecting your product and your image – being seen. But Jesus said that if you do good in order to be seen doing it, then “you have had your reward.” In other words, that's all there is to it; your action has no substance. As the ancient writer put it, “What is done to be seen by others is poured

into the wind…. What is human praise but the sound of the whistling winds?” Your solid reasons and your good sense amounted to nothing.

But didn’t Jesus say on another occasion, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Mt 5:16)? How do we square this with today’s reading? The anonymous writer I mentioned above comes to clarify it for us. The Lord doesn’t want us to become invisible, he said, but wants the light to come from the right source. “Every good thing becomes better when it is hidden by us but revealed by God.... and it is God who will reveal things at the right time.” A saint is not a ‘personality’ but rather a kind of ‘transparency’. If we all lived from beyond our egos we would all likewise be transparent.

Lent is a time to start all over again with this difficult work: to be free of the tyranny of the ego. Why? Nowhy.

14 FebruaryLk 9:22-25"The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised." Then he said to them all, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?

Suffering looms large in the Christian faith. This is no surprise, because it looms large in every kind of life. The task for us Christians is to ensure that our attitude to it remain Christian.

St Paul called Christ’s cross “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:23-24), while the world around us calls it foolishness and a stumbling-block. St Thomas Aquinas was asked where he got all his wisdom. "At the foot of the cross of Christ," he replied. There, contemplating the life and death of Jesus, he found a wisdom that went beyond human wisdom.

Wisdom is described in the Scriptures as "reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other" (Wisdom 8:1). In Jesus we see this as no abstract thing, but as a lived experience. He reaches mightily from one end of the human scale to the other, and beyond. He so identified with us that St Paul could say he not only shared our suffering but became sin for us: "For our sake God made the sinless one into sin," (2 Cor 4:21). And at the other end of the scale: "Through him we have access to the Father" (Eph 2:18).

We have two ways of living with suffering: we can take it on our shoulders and try to walk with it; or we can just sit down under it and feel like victims. No one suggests that either way is easy. If it was easy it wouldn't be suffering. Our instinct is to run away from suffering, and when we can't escape from it, to treat it as an enemy that has defeated us; then we run the risk of becoming full of complaints and self-pity. This is the harder way: harder for ourselves and for everyone around us. The wisdom of the Gospel is quite different; it tells us to face our suffering, not to treat it like an enemy but like a friend, to learn from it, to let it draw us away from self-centred thoughts and feelings, and ultimately to see it as a sharing in the Passion of Christ.

"People who have not suffered, what do they know?" said Henry Suso, a man who suffered more than most in a century (the 14th) that suffered more than most. Here is his statement in context: "There is nothing more painful than suffering, and nothing more

joyful than to have suffered. Suffering is short pain and long joy. Suffering has this effect on the one to whom suffering is suffering, that it ceases to be suffering. Suffering makes a wise and practised person. People who have not suffered, what do they know...? All the saints are the cup-bearers of a suffering person, for they have all tasted it once themselves, and they cry out with one voice that it is free from poison and a wholesome drink."

15 FebruaryMt 9:14-15Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?" And Jesus said to them, "The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved."

Then the disciples of John came to Jesus, saying, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding-guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.’

It seems there was a certain amount of rivalry between the disciples of John the Baptist and the disciples of Jesus. The fourth gospel plays this down by ending John’s career before Jesus’ began, and by having John say: “He [Jesus] must increase and I must decrease” (3:30). What is interesting is that the gospel writer felt the need to do that. In today’s reading we catch a glimpse of that rivalry. So did John Chrysostom, who wrote: “It was likely that the disciples of John the Baptist were thinking highly of themselves as a result of John’s suffering.... So Jesus put down their inflated conceit through what he said.”

Rivalry is a very human thing, and many people see it even where it isn't. If Chrysostom is right, John’s followers were rather proud of the fact that their hero was a martyr. I can't imagine Jesus being party to the rivalry, but I can well imagine his followers. Instead of joining in the potlatch, Jesus spoke about joy.

He did not make a religion of hardship, yet he never avoided pain or sorrow. Joy does not come from avoiding; on the contrary it is possible only when we have gone into the heart of our pain and sorrow. If we avoid the process nothing happens; we will have to continue all our lives to avoid it. That way there is no joy, only endless desperate flight.

Happiness can be manufactured to some extent, just for short periods; but joy is a stroke from beyond. Joyless religion may be the profoundest denial of God. If there is no joy in it, it is all your own work, so what need have you of God? If the Resurrection is not visible in you, you are preaching death without resurrection. One of the fruits of the Spirit is joy, and it is mentioned next after love in St Paul’s list, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22). If you had no love in you, you could hardly claim to be a Christian; likewise joy (and all the others).

16 FebruaryLk 5:27-32After this he went out and saw a tax-collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up, left everything, and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax-collectors

and others sitting at the table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax-collectors and sinners?’ Jesus answered, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.’

When I was a child the only publican I knew was Molly Looney, the owner of the local bar, and I was always a bit wary of her because of what I had heard about publicans in the gospel. But a ‘publican’ in the gospels means a tax-collector. Cyril of Alexandria (5th

century) gave no quarter to those tax-collectors: “Levi was a publican, a man greedy for dirty money, filled with an uncontrolled desire to possess, ignoring justice in his eagerness to have what did not belong to him. Such was the character of publicans.” That was rather harsh, given that he didn’t know Levi personally; he only knew the type. Thinking in types is always unfair: it gives the impression that you are thinking about people, while in reality you are thinking only about a concept. Then the individual is made the bear the whole weight of the type.

Had Jesus been thinking in types he would never have approached Levi (or Matthew, as he is called elsewhere). Thinking in types was alien to him; he made friends with people of every type. It would be strange if the Word became flesh, but stopped short of taking the final step: mingling with the common people, all of us, even tax-collectors. In today’s reading there was not just one tax collector but “many”. It was inevitable that the Pharisees too would arrive on the scene. These Pharisees needed those tax collectors. The name ‘Pharisee’ means ‘Separated’: their special righteousness separated them from the common people. Naturally they needed those others to be different: otherwise they themselves could not be ‘Separated’. It was essential for the Pharisees that there should be lots of tax collectors and sinners; it is essential for some ‘good’ people that there should be great numbers of ‘bad’ people. But how disconcerting it always is to find Jesus among the bad!

17 February [1st Sunday of Lent]Lk 4:1-13Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'" Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'" Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

John the Baptist had no questions about his own identity, even when he had been thrown into the dungeon, this child of the desert. He sent word to Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?'" (Luke 7:20). ‘Are we to wait for another?’ He had doubts about Jesus but not about himself.

What are we to make of the temptations of Jesus? Were they real temptations? If they were, then he was seeking to understand his own identity and considering different ways

of spending the rest of his life. If they were not, then the whole scene was only a charade. It is not at all to doubt his divinity if we take the temptations seriously. He was divine, but his human mind was human: that is, limited. The three gospels that tell of his temptations link them with his baptism in the Jordan. He came to the Jordan as an unknown carpenter, and the Holy Spirit came and “rested on him” (others are touched or moved by the Spirit, but the Spirit “rested” on Jesus). He was catapulted out of his old way of life; Mark says the Spirit “drove him out into the desert” (1:12). The Voice had said to him “You are my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you.” To see how he was going to spend the rest of his life, he had to have time to think and pray and struggle.

A temptation may come from the outside, but unless it goes to the inside it is not a temptation. The first temptation was to be a material provider. This is a good thing to be. How do you tempt a good person? – with goodness, because good people will not take an evil bait. It is not so difficult to be a material provider, and in fact most people can do it for themselves. But if Jesus had given in to this temptation, the work would have absorbed him completely, distracting him from his real task. The next temptation was to power. This is always a subtle one, and very easily rationalised. Any kind of power will do. It was said of someone that he entered the priesthood in order to do good, and did well instead. I can persuade myself that a position of power would give me greater opportunities of doing good. Jesus avoided this trap too. The most distinctive thing about him throughout his public life was his refusal of power. In the end he made himself utterly powerless on the Cross. It is very moving to see that that choice was not automatic, but conscious and deliberate. The third temptation, which cannot have occupied his mind for long, was to become a celebrity.

Some scholars suggest that this gospel passage was a summary story; that is, that it describes a process that went on throughout his life, rather than a single occasion. Whether or not that is likely, it is certainly the case that these temptations are ever-present for the disciples of Jesus, the Church. Most of us would find it easier to buy groceries for someone than to sit for hours and listen to their pain and confusion, or their anger…. As for power and glory: that is a long story! We can imagine we are defending the power and glory of God when in reality we are only defending the worldly power and pride of the Church. The Church’s identity does not consist in titles and honours and regal dress, but in following the poor man of Nazareth. We, the disciples of Jesus, the Church, have to be driven into the desert again and again… until we understand profoundly and embrace wholeheartedly the way the Cross.

18 FebruaryMt 25:31-46"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.' Then he will say to those at his left hand, 'You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me

nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' Then he will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

Some people have a recurring nightmare in which they are being judged and found totally wanting. Today's reading sounds just like such a nightmare. Earlier generations of Christians thought about “that day” (dies illa) more than people want to do now. For centuries they sang that austere sequence Dies irae (Day of wrath), meditating on that ultimate scene of judgement.

It is impossible to evade the question of ultimate judgment, however you think of it. In the sight of God what will my life amount to in the end? In the face of that ultimate question we all feel naked and ashamed. Human beings have imagined a scenario where they can start all over again: reincarnation. But the same question arises again and again. This is not how the Judeo-Christian tradition sees it. In the words of Qoheleth, “Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where it falls, there will it lie” (11:3). There is no coming back, as the rich man discovered in Jesus’ parable (Lk 16:19-31). These are grim thoughts.

But the point of this reading is not to divide the world into good and bad people (does anyone fit perfectly in either of those categories?), but to make the point that in serving one another we are serving God. Our ultimate destiny, the thing that seems farthest away, actually hangs on the things nearest to hand, the most proximate: on how we treat the Lord in “the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned.”

19 FebruaryMt 6:7-15When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

It is a great pity that many people still identify prayer with ‘saying prayers’. We do this despite what Jesus said: "When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.” We have long neglected contemplative prayer, willing to leave it to people who live in monasteries. But lay people are just as likely to feel the need of it as monks and nuns; and this is now becoming evident all around us. Not finding any interest in it in their local parish, many people began to look elsewhere for it; hence the interest in non-Christian religions. But contemplative prayer is now being rediscovered in Christian circles in our own time. However, Church authorities (with the exception of one Australian bishop) have shown no interest in it. This is surely a major tragedy – perhaps even another scandal – in the Church today. Leadership has been seen as administration; but the crying need now is for spiritual leadership.

Has it ever struck you that in the Our Father, “the pattern of all Christian prayer,” there is no mention of Jesus, his life, death or resurrection, nor mention of any of the Christian mysteries? This absence suggests that it was his own prayer. In prayer he was seized

by one single awareness: the Father; he was not thinking about himself. When we pray the Our Father we are not praying to him, but with him; we are praying his prayer. We are so close to him that we do not see him. We are (so to speak) inside his head looking out through his eyes and seeing, like him, only the Father and the world. We are praying in him. All Christian praying is praying “in Christ.” The normal ending to every Christian prayer is: “through Christ our Lord.” At the end of the Eucharistic Prayer we say, “Through him, with him, in him….” All Christian praying is praying “in Christ.” Repeating the words will bring us to the Holy Place, true; but by itself it will not lead us into the Holy of Holies.

20 FebruaryLk 11:29-32When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, ‘This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so the Son of Man will be to this generation. The queen of the South will rise at the judgement with the people of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here! The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!

The Book of Jonah is a delightful and amusing book – and short: only a few pages. The introduction to it in the Jerusalem Bible calls it “a droll adventure…and its doctrine is one of the peaks of the Old Testament…. Broadminded, it rejects a too rigid interpretation of prophecy…. It rejects, too, a narrow racialism…. All the characters of this story are likeable, the pagan sailors, the king, the populace, even the animals of Niniveh…. We are on the threshold of the Gospel.”

A “droll adventure” it may be, but the drollery was lost on the early Christian writers. Gregory Nazianzen (4th century) called Jonah’s antics “utterly absurd and stupid and unworthy of credit, not only for a prophet but even for any sensible person.” Augustine (5th century) said the book was a cause of “much jest and much laughter to pagans,” but not, he thought, to Christians. Some of these sombre Fathers, however, could not avoid being unintentionally amusing. Jerome (5th century) noted that when the sailors tossed Jonah overboard into the sea “the text does not say they seized him or that they threw him in, but that they took him, and carried him as one deserving respect and honour.” And Cassiodorus (6th century) said that for Jonah the whale’s belly was “a house of prayer, a harbour, a home amid the waves, a happy resource at a desperate time.” Paulinus of Nola (5th century) alone made an insightful remark: “What a worthy prison for God’s holy runaway! He was captured on the very sea by which he had sought to flee.” That's how we all get caught: by our own efforts to escape from what we have to do.

Someone tried to persuade me that Jesus never laughed, since it is nowhere recorded in the gospels that he did. Non sequitur. Laughter is so much part of being human that if he had never laughed, that surprising fact would surely have been recorded. The capacity for laughter – risibilitas – the mediaevals said, is so peculiar to humans, that it could be a test of whether some creature was human. Hyenas and kookaburras only make a noise that happens to sound like human laughter. Yet there are many instances in Christian literature (in the Rule of St Benedict, for example) where laughter is frowned on. They probably meant silly noisy laughter.

It is easy to imagine Jesus as a young man laughing at the antics of Jonah, and the animals doing penance, and Jonah arguing heatedly with God (God: “Are you right to be angry?” Jonah: “I have every right to be angry!”)

In today’s passage, Jesus uses Jonah as a headline for his own preaching. That's how close we are to the Gospel. Don’t go to bed tonight without reading it!

21 FebruaryMt 7:7-12"Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! "In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

Do we always think of ‘goods’ when we read, “Ask and it will be given you, search and you will find…?” Are the Father’s “good things” always things? Is love a thing? Things (gifts) can be signs and proofs of it, but it is not itself a thing. The Father’s greatest gift to us is love, and all the other gifts are enticements to that greatest gift.

The French mystic Madame Guyon (1648 – 1717) wrote: “Do not stop at the graces or gifts of God, which are only as the rays that issue from His face, but which are not Himself; mount up to His very throne and there seek Him; seek His face evermore until you are so blessed as to find it.” Psalm 104 says, “Constantly seek his face.” This is also the advice of Meister Eckhart, and indeed of all the saints; and when you think about it, it is just evidence of good breeding. There’s something chilling about a business relationship that keeps human contact to an absolute minimum. The commercial world can be a very chilly place. It would be tragic if some of that chill were to enter into our relationship with God. I remember (vaguely I'm afraid) an essay by D.H. Lawrence in which he poured scorn on a writer who was unwise enough to reveal the details of his daily routine: “Rose at 6. Worshipped the deity. Ate breakfast.” That frosty description was bound to draw the ire of Lawrence, a passionate writer if ever there was one. And it made prayer look like another chore – like feeding the canary.

If we see God in that passionless way, we will be primarily interesting in what we can get. “Some people regard God as they regard a cow,” said Meister Eckhart. “They want to love God as they love a cow. Thus they love God for the sake of external riches and of internal solace; but these people do not love God aright....” He didn’t say it just once. “Some people love God for the sake of something else that is not God. And if they get something they love, they do not bother about God. Whether it is contemplation or rapture or whatever you welcome, whatever is created, is not God.” “Whoever loves God for anything else does not abide in Him, but abides in the thing he is loving Him for. If, therefore, you want to abide in Him, you must love Him for nothing but Himself.”

In that warmth, gift-giving and receiving make sense. Without it, religion is a cold-hearted business.

22 February [The Chair of Peter]Mt 16:13-19Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are

Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’

Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350 – 428) commented: “Having said that Peter’s confession is a rock, Jesus stated, ‘Upon this rock I will build my Church.’ This means he will build his Church upon this same confession and faith.” This is the “key to the Kingdom of heaven.”

When Jesus asked the disciples who the people believed he was, they gave him a list of dead men: “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” All dead. Peter alone mentioned life: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” This is the key to the Kingdom of heaven. It is to see Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” He is not a dead man, he is living. There are many who have an interest in keeping him dead: then he is controllable, predictable, even saleable. But he is not dead.

The key is to see that he is everywhere: he is looking out of the eyes of the stranger and the sinner and the outsider. A key can be turned into an instrument of exclusion and control. But this key is meant to be the opposite: it is for opening.

Chrysostom: “He did not ask ‘Who do the scribes and Pharisees say that I am?’ even though they had often come to talk with him. Rather, he asked, ‘Who do people say the Son of man is?’ as if to inquire about common opinion. Even if the common opinion was far less true than it might have been, it was at least freer of malice than the opinion of the religious leaders, who were reeking of bad motives.” The latter, and their successors throughout the ages, would like to see his tomb sealed, the heavy stone securely in place for all time.

Let’s not say ‘they’; let’s say ‘we’. The Gospel is always about us, not about ‘them’; Jesus spoke in the second person, he was not a social commentator or a journalist. The heavy stone represents the past; we live too much under its weight; we interpret the present not as something living and new but as something already dead and old. But there are moments when the stone moves aside, even if only a fraction of an inch, and we glimpse the living Christ, as Peter did. In such moments our faith is in living continuity with his.

23 FebruaryMt 5:43-48You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

An anonymous ancient Christian writer has this: “We are to love our enemies – not because our enemies are fit to be loved but because we are not fit to hate.... If you hate your enemies, you have hurt yourself more in the spirit than you have hurt them materially. Sometimes you may not harm them at all by hating them; but you surely tear yourself apart. If then you are benevolent towards your enemies, you have spared yourself and them. And if you do them a kindness, you benefit yourself too.”

“Love your enemies,” Jesus said. It is a strange thing for a religious leader to say. Many have said – sometimes in so many words – that we should hate our enemies, or at least distrust them, look down on them, and have nothing to do with them. Religious hatred is the worst of all; sacrilegiously, it borrows something from the infinity of God: it says that your enemies are God’s enemies; it is unlimited and it settles in for eternity. But on the lips of Jesus, "love your enemies" must have sounded, at the time, like saying black is white, or evil is good.

You have two kinds of “enemies”, to be carefully distinguished. There are those whom you regard as enemies, and there are those who regard you as their enemy. If you do not regard the second kind as your enemies, they are not strictly your enemies; they are so only in their own opinion. If you refuse to reflect back their enmity to them, you can still be said to have opponents, but not strictly enemies. A real enemy is an alienated part of yourself, and if you refuse to make that alienation you have no real enemy. Even if the whole world hated you, you would have no enemies. Enmity grows by being reflected, and if you stopped reflecting it, in a while there would be less of it in the world. Usually we get into tangles of blaming and justifying and asking “who started it”; but all this is futile. The only way to stop it is to stop reflecting it. Gradually the tangle loosens and we are left with just ourselves, variously wounded and fearful. We are God's boisterous children. To know that is to know some kind of love.

24 February [2nd Sunday of Lent]Lk 9:28-36Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah" – not knowing what he said. While he was saying this, a cloud came an overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!" When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

In all three liturgical cycles we have the strange story of the Transfiguration on the second Sunday of Lent. What does it mean? The second reading is a kind of echo of this gospel reading, and perhaps it gives us a key to open up its meaning for us. The Lord, St Paul writes, "will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body." The Transfiguration, then – whatever we discover it to mean – is not only about Jesus but about us. It is to make some discernible difference to us today.

There was the everyday Jesus who was well known to his friends; and then there was the moment when they scarcely recognised him, so transformed – transfigured – was he. Divinity shone through him, revealing depths that they had never imagined. Can this happen only to Jesus? When the little girl was asked what a saint was, she replied (thinking of the stained glass windows in the church), "A person who lets the light through." Lovely – but is it only an image? Can it also be a reality? Could you and I let the light through? We are probably far too aware of our wretchedness to think thoughts like that. But it is just these "wretched bodies of ours" that are the material of transfiguration, according to St Paul.

In a beautiful poem called The sunrise ruby, Jelaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) the Sufi mystic, imagines a girl asking her beloved, 'Do you love me or yourself more?

Really, tell the absolute truth.’He says, 'There's nothing left of me.I'm like a ruby held up to the sunrise.Is it still a stone, or a worldmade of redness? It has no resistanceto sunlight.'

There it is: in one way it is a stone, but in another it is a world of redness. This gives some impression of what transfiguration might mean. When you are completely absorbed and self-forgetful as you look at the sea, or at a sunset, or the night sky, or a tree, you are still yourself, of course; but you are also more than yourself. At any rate you are a kind of larger self, and not the small self that thinks before speaking, and counts money, and always looks after his or her own interests. But we would like to hear what Christian mystics have to say about it. Johann Tauler (1300-1361) wrote the following: "God fires the spirit with a spark from the divine abyss. By the strength of this supernatural help the soul, enlightened and purified, is drawn out of itself into a unique and ineffable state of pure intent toward God….This complete turning of the soul toward God is beyond all understanding and feeling; it is a thing of wonder and defies imagination….In this state the soul, purified and enlightened, sinks into the divine darkness, into a tranquil silence and inconceivable union. It is absorbed in God, and now all equality and inequality disappear. In this abyss the soul loses itself, and knows nothing of God or of itself, of likeness to Him or of difference from Him, or of anything whatsoever. It is immersed in the unity of God and has lost all sense of distinctions."

Sadly, this aspect of the Christian faith is not as familiar to many as it could be. We have learnt to settle for less. Most people believe that the best things are not for them. But we are all called to deep enlightenment and union with God. Does this mean that we are to be somehow unreal and up-in-the-air? Hardly. Tauler and the people of his time had to be intensely practical. But his words live for centuries beyond the time he uttered them, because he was in touch with the living heart of our Faith. It is he, and the likes of him, who will lead us to the heart of God.

25 FebruaryLk 6:36-38Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.

God’s mercy is infinite and unconditional. But isn't there some kind of condition built into the phrases of today’s reading? “Judge not and you will not be judged.” “Forgive and you will be forgiven.” “The measure you give is the measure you will get.” Don’t these phrases suggest that if you do judge you will be judged; if you refuse to forgive you will be refused forgiveness; and that God is only as merciful as you are? How are we to understand this?

St Augustine was at his best when he was struggling with the most difficult passages. “What do you want from the Lord? Mercy. Give it, and it shall be given to you. What do you want from the Lord? Forgiveness. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Then later he added: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given you: These are the

two wings of prayer, on which your spirit soars to God.” Our spirit is meant to soar, not just to be lifted up like a stone. God's mercy, forgiveness, and generosity are not just exercised on us; they are to exercise in us. By being merciful, forgiving and generous, as best we can, we are receiving God’s gift rather than just being credited with it.

Think of it this way. If you cannot give you cannot receive either. The measure you give is the measure you are capable of receiving. A saint would give you his or her life, but a thief only wants to take from you. “With every creature, according to the nobility of its nature, the more it indwells in itself, the more it gives itself out,” wrote Meister Eckhart. If I refuse to give (or forgive), this shows that I have not entered into the human and divine mystery of what we are. God does not limit mercy, forgiveness, and generosity; we do. Finally, a comment from Cyril of Alexandria: “Why do you judge your neighbours? If you venture to judge them, having no authority to do it, it is yourself rather that will be condemned, because God's law does not permit you to judge others.” Then he quoted psalm 129:3, “If you, O Lord, should mark our guilt, Lord, who would survive?”

26 FebruaryMt 23:1-12Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practise what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honour at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the market-places, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father—the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

In many languages today the word ‘Pharisee’ is synonymous with ‘hypocrite’. This solid reputation is probably due to the later part of this chapter of Matthew’s gospel: the repeated phrase, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” Jesus acknowledged the value of some of what the Pharisees were teaching: “Do whatever they teach you.” What he objected to was the discrepancy between this and their own lives. They had made themselves interpreters of the Law of Moses (“they sit on Moses’ seat”), and were applying it without mercy. This was the reverse of their own stated claim: to be as lenient, or as strict, with others as with themselves. They were imposing the burden of the law on others while they themselves enjoyed precedence and privilege. It is less the sinfulness of sinners than the hypocrisy of the pious that causes people to abandon religion. Atheism is caused mainly by religious hypocrites.

There’s a story about a rabbi who gave money to a drunkard. When criticised for it, he said, “Should I be more particular than God who gave me the money?” An authentic religious person doesn’t judge the sinner but identifies with him, like Jesus queuing up with sinners for John’s baptism of repentance (Mark 1:9). But fake religious people are always judging; they exist on it. They are religious in order to be able to condemn others. They haven't acknowledged their own sinfulness, so they project it onto others; then all their fury is fuelled by a hidden self-hatred. Even when the content of what they are saying is correct, everything they say is vitiated. I once heard an old man say to a group of young priests, “If you don't love people, for God's sake don't preach!” You may be able to express some true opinions, but you will not be able to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). The very truth of what you say will blind you to the underlying

hatred. An anonymous 5th-century Christian writer said: “Mistaken laity may be more easily set straight, but clerics, if they are evil, are almost impossible to set straight.” Anyone who presumes to teach is inviting comparison with the historical Pharisees, and is in the direct line of fire.

The Pharisees have long disappeared from history, but the Church has us reading about them frequently in the Liturgy. Why? Because we haven't gone away, you know!

27 FebruaryMt 20:17-28While Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside by themselves, and said to them on the way, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised.’ Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favour of him. And he said to her, ‘What do you want?’ She said to him, ‘Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.’ But Jesus answered, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ They said to him, ‘We are able.’ He said to them, ‘You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.’

When the ten heard it, they were angry with the two brothers. But Jesus called them to him and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’

Mark says that it was the James and John who asked Jesus for important posts in his kingdom (10:37). But Matthew puts the blame on their mother! However, the cover-up is transparent in the text when you check the original Greek. ‘You’ is both singular and plural in English, but Greek makes it clear. “Jesus said to the brothers, ‘You (plural) do not know what you (plural) are asking. Can you (plural) drink the cup that I am about to drink?’” He was speaking to them, not to their mother. Furthermore, the others were angry “with the two brothers.” John Chrysostom tried to steer around it by saying: “It seems that both the mother and the two sons of Zebedee together came to him.” Nice try.

The anger of the others reveals something else. Why were they not just amused, or perhaps embarrassed for them? Their anger reveals that they had a personal stake in the matter. They too saw themselves in the running for the top posts! This is all the more absurd because Jesus had just been speaking about the suffering and humiliation he himself was about to endure.

Today's reading, then, has the same theme as yesterday’s. The only difference is that yesterday’s was about the Pharisees, but today’s is about the Apostles! If there is an excuse for the two, it is possibly that they were very young and inexperienced, and didn't have much awareness of what they were saying. An ancient writer saw it that way. “If the Lord, when he had entered into his suffering, said, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me’ (Mt 26:39), how much more would they have been incapable of saying ‘We are able’ if they had known what the challenge of death was like?” Indeed, he added, if the other ten had understood what they were all being called to, they would not have been angry with the two: for they were being called to great suffering. Chrysostom added that they seem not to have grasped the logic of Jesus: that the first

would be last. “James and John disgraced themselves by seeking the first place. That puts them among the last.”

Through the ages, that logic – much more difficult than Aristotle’s – has been more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Its implications have not fully sunk in. There is still a culture of privilege, precedence and power in the Church. Has it ever sunk in, in any age? The same ancient writer said, “If James and John were installed at Jesus’ right and left, how could there be any room left for the rest of us?”

28 FebruaryLk 16:19-31‘There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.” But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” He said, “Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.” Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” He said, “No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” ’

Dives and Lazarus – Rich and Poor. We used to call the rich man Dives, but Jesus did not give any name to this character in his story: ‘dives’ is just the Latin word for ‘rich’: a translation of the Greek ‘plousios’. The poor man does have a personal name, Lazarus. (As it happens, Jesus had a friend called Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary.) St Augustine wrote: “Jesus kept quiet about the rich man’s name but gave the name of the poor man. The rich man’s name was well known around, but God kept quiet about it. The other’s name was lost in obscurity, but God spoke it. Please do not be surprised…. God kept quiet about the rich man’s name, because he did not find it written in heaven. He spoke the poor man’s name, because he found it written there, indeed he gave instructions for it to be written there.”

The story tells us something about riches: the rich are inclined to define themselves by what they own, not by what they are. Riches can clog up your inner being, so that you do not know who you are. Then you look out from that place of not-knowing and you see other people, but you do not really see them; you only see what they own – or do not own. Others looked through the doorway and saw a poor man there; the rich man looked and saw nobody. That is the subtlety of this story: the rich man was neither cruel nor kind to Lazarus; Lazarus was invisible to him.

There is another rich man in the gospel – this time it was not a story but reality. When Jesus invited him to follow, “he went away sorrowful, because he was very rich” (Mt 19:22). There is nothing quite like wealth for closing the ears and the mind, for deadening the conscience. After a while it also closes the eyes, and like the rich man in the story we no longer see the poor. That rich young man is never heard of again in the New Testament. He might have become a greater apostle even than Peter or John.

Sahajananda, from outside the Christian tradition, wrote this about him: “The young man became very sad because he was very rich. He identified himself with his riches.... Without them he had no existence. With these riches he could not enter into the kingdom because the door to the kingdom is narrow. Not narrow in the sense of space, but in the sense that only the essential aspect of our being goes through it; all acquired things have to be left out.... This treasure can neither increase nor decrease. No thief can get there and no moth can cause its destruction.”

The story of the rich man and Lazarus is not focused on Lazarus but on the rich man. Focused on Lazarus it might mean: Put up with your lot now and you’ll be happy in the next life; you’ll even be able to watch the rich man suffering. But no, the focus is on the rich man. Jesus told this story to the rich, to their faces, as an accusation against them. He told it to the Pharisees, who as Luke said, “loved money” (16:14). It has the same import as Luke's version of the Beatitudes: “Alas for you who are rich!” (6:24).

BETWEEN OURSELVES

[Atheism]

Dear Mr O’Shea,

Your website was recommended to me by someone who likes to prowl around in such places. But don’t take it that I'm one of your supporters. I put all religious beliefs behind me many years ago. That doesn’t stop me from taking an interest in the religious scene. You don’t have to be a player to be interested in sport. I take it you’re a religious guy, since that's what your website is about. I now ask you the question I keep asking such people: how can you still believe in God after all the evidence of science and, shall l say, the evidence of common sense? I don’t know if you are familiar with the work of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. How can religious belief survive such onslaughts? Religious people are comfortable with soft arguments, but what do you do when you are faced with tough arguments and searching questions? I don’t think you will want to try to answer this question or to publish it but I think it’s good for you to hear it anyway. Carry on with whatever it is you do. DM

Dear DM,

Thank you for your letter and for making things easy for me by having no expectation of a reply. I'm glad you raised this fundamental question. I'm not at all sure I can give you an answer you will find interesting or enlightening to any degree. But even if one or two related matters are clarified, that will have been useful.

Thanks, as I say, for asking a hard question. I don’t think there’s a great difference between an easy and a hard one: most questions are hard if you pursue them far enough. Ours isn’t the first age to ask hard questions of religion, nor is it even characterised by hard questioning; it is characterised much more by a lack of interest and a dismissive attitude. You have to be very precise and very passionate to ask a real question. Just think of Nietzsche in the 19 th century: it is quite impossible to remain unmoved or unchallenged by him. He was my favourite antagonist when I was a student, and later when I taught philosophy. I came to prefer other philosophers, but I never lost the excitement of reading him. He was the Mike Tyson of philosophy. I have to tell you that religious people are not always cowering in fear of argument. Not at all - because they have as much to learn from such arguments as the one making them; perhaps more, if they are more passionately interested.

It is true that very many believers think of God as an explanation of the world and the problems in human life. But this is not sensible, because God is an even greater mystery than the world. Belief is not an easy option or a readymade answer to everything. The problem of suffering, for example, is as great a problem for believers as it is for atheists. Jürgen Moltmann wrote: “'If there is a God, why all this suffering?’ is the fundamental question of every theologian too, from Job down to Christ dying on the cross with the cry: 'My God, why have you forsaken me?'”

Arguments about God, when they clarify anything, usually do so negatively. I learn more every day about the God I don’t believe in. I don’t know of any argument that proves the existence of God. I would never rest the weight of my own faith on a philosophical argument. I can hear you say that this is just moving the goalposts. I don’t think it is; I never relied on such arguments, even when their validity was not being challenged. I think religion is still relying on philosophical modes of thought and neglecting its real subject, which is religious experience. You could read and argue all day about the taste of a lemon, but you would never come to know it by that means. You could be told it is not like the taste of an orange or an almond – and that is true – but no argument will ever deliver the taste of lemon to you.

Everything in religion is meant to bring you to religious experience. It is not about proving anything to you. God is not an object whose existence can be proved. More simply, God is not an object – not even when you write it with a capital O, or with the word ‘supernatural’ accompanying it. Religious experience doesn’t ‘grasp’ an ‘object’ in the way that philosophical reasoning tries to do. Most of the attacks on religion treat it as if it were a philosophy, or a system of morality or of social organisation. These are secondary aspects, not the heart of the matter. Many of the attackers are working from their own childhood or teenage understanding of religion, laying siege to positions that have been abandoned by religious people. I find many of the attacks on religion tedious, because they are saying things I already mostly agree with, but missing the real point.

Lest you think that this is just evasive action let me quote a couple of things written by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. If these were quoted without reference to Aquinas, many people would believe they were written by an agnostic or even an atheist. They are just a few of many such passages in his writings. (I quote them in translation; excuse the exclusive pronouns.)

Neither Christian nor pagan knows the nature of God as he is in himself.This is the final human knowledge of God: to know that we do not know God. The truths of faith, which can only be known completely by those who see the essence

of God, can be known by human reason only in similitudes, which are not sufficiently clear to give comprehensive knowledge of that truth as if by a proof - or as if understood in itself. Nevertheless, it is useful for the human mind to exercise itself in such enquiries, inadequate as they are, provided there is no presumptuous claim to complete understanding and proof.

Our intellect speaks of divine things, not according to their own mode of existence - for it cannot know them so - but according to the mode of existence found in created things…. Whatever is comprehended by a finite being is itself finite.

God is ultimately known as unknown, because the mind knows God most perfectly when it knows that his essence is above all that can be known in this life of wayfaring.

To anyone familiar with Christian literature these passages are in no way exceptional. Many others Christians through the centuries have written in the same vein. I can give you the references if you would like to check them. These passages illustrate, at the

very least, that religion is a much harder target to hit directly than is often thought. Besides, it is impossible to be a neutral outsider to this question, because atheism (unlike agnosticism) is itself a theological position. Heinrich Böll once said, “I don't like these atheists. They are always talking about God.” Atheists have to attempt to say what they understand by ‘God’ when they deny God’s existence. The very attempt to do so makes them theologians and lands them in the company of Aquinas as quoted above.

You wrote: “How can you still believe in God after all the evidence of science and, shall l say, the evidence of common sense?” Scientists today are in fact much less dogmatic than they were, for example, in the 19th century. The few who go beyond scientific method and attempt to pull down religion deserve the same amount of attention as religious people who dogmatise about science. As for common sense: people say it is not very common. But I think the problem with arguing from it is that it is far too common: at different times it will support any position or its opposite. There’s really no substitute for tasting the lemon oneself.

Even though arguments bring us nowhere, “It is useful, [as Aquinas said above] for the human mind to exercise itself in such enquiries.” They purify religious belief, illustrating what it is not, cornering it, forcing it to discover its own identity. This purification is on-going because religious experience takes place in the human mess. The Word was not made “clear and distinct idea,” but flesh.

I don’t know, DM, if you have read this far. If you have, I wish you the best, and I assure you that your letter was welcome; and I would welcome more from you.

Donagh

JACOB’S WELL

MAKING CONNECTIONS: A view from inside the Dominican Order

(from In Touch with the Mystery: a Spiritual Anthology, ed. By Daphne Dwyer, Bradshaw Books, Cork, 1999)

I once met a Cistercian monk who admitted that he entered the monastery because he loved jam. When he was a child his mother always used jams that were made in the local monastery, and every jam-pot had the picture of a cowled monk on it. So from earliest days he associated jam with monastic life, and loving one he was sure he would love the other.

When he told me that, I found the courage to admit (after about thirty years) that my subconscious reason for joining the Dominicans was that they were robed in white, unlike the black-robed priests I had known and disliked in school. At some level or other I thought they must be as different from those black ones as day from night.

I suppose God can use any bait in the bag, and they all work, in different waters. What we call our rationality is probably a very thin crust on the surface of something strange and immense...and yet human, because it is ours, it is us.

Would you put up with a minute’s word-chasing? Words are like people. Like us they have an ancestry, and it is a pleasure to discover something interesting there from time to time. Ballein, in Greek, means ‘to throw’, syn means ‘together’; so syn-ballein is ‘to throw together’, and that is where we get the word ‘symbol’. Then dia means ‘apart’, dia-

ballein is ‘to throw apart’, and that's where diabolos, ‘the devil’, comes from. The devil is the force of disintegration, disconnection, alienation.... And he is the enemy of symbolism. Why bring this up here? Because I think that being a Dominican has something to do with making connections rather than disconnections - and not only logical connections, but connections between everything.

It is a story that goes back to the 13th century. Dominic Guzman, a Spaniard, got a close look at what Albigensianism was doing to people's minds and spirits in northern Spain and southern France (in fact, throughout Europe in different concentrations). It was a sect claiming to be Christian, but it held for two Principles: the good God, from whom souls emanated “just as rays emanate from the sun,” and the Evil Principle, creator of the physical world: the world of change and suffering, of degradation and death. The Albigensians (who were named after the city of Albi) could not believe that one God created both the Kingdom, where there is no place for evil, and this transient world where evil abounds. They had a profound sense of the suffering and evil of the world, and it drove them to this ultimate dualism or disconnection. Like them Dominic went out on the roads, preaching, unlike them, the goodness of the material world, and of the body, and marriage... all the things they disowned. To exclude something is to leave it unredeemed, and Jesus came to redeem the whole creation: “From the beginning till now,” wrote St Paul (whose letters Dominic knew almost by heart), “the entire creation, as we know it, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth” (Rom 8:22f). It is not a write-off, it is the substance of the resurrection.

None of Dominic's sermons has survived - which is a good thing, I always think. With the passing of the years, a founder’s every word is given a permanent importance that the founder probably never intended. But we know what he must have been saying to the Albigensians: that matter is not the enemy of spirit, that time is not the enemy of eternity, that the physical world is not the enemy of the Kingdom. In modern language, we would say he was preaching a holistic spirituality. And this emphasis is the deepest instinct in Dominican spirituality; it is somehow in the bones of every Dominican (but well hidden in some!).

I knew nothing of it when I presented myself thirty-eight years ago at the Popes Quay priory in Cork. All I sensed was that the colour-code was somehow right. Nearly everything in my suitcase too was white; the list specified it: socks, shirts, jumpers.... I was entering a white world. Or rather a cream-coloured one - which is even more archetypal. On the outside I would look like mother’s milk, but on the inside I was a radiant green!

There was a distance of less than twenty miles between this new world and the world I had left, but they might as well have been on different planets. The new world was full of cream-coloured friendly beings who uttered mostly Latin. And so they continued to do for some years, until “The Changes” (the Second Vatican Council). The leap from The Changes to the present makes the other leap look so limited and local, so endearingly naive, that our early days look like a strange place to us now, or some remote age. The past has become a foreign country. Some older people continue to talk like exiles. I knew an elderly community where the topics of conversation at lunch were always the same three: The Troubles (the Irish war of Independence and the subsequent civil war), The Emergency (that unruffled word in Ireland for the Second World War), and The Changes. They had lived through all three wars, but only in the third had they been out at the front.

Five years after entering the Order I was sent to Switzerland to continue studies, and to Italy for the same purpose three years later. The Dominicans are a world-wide family of about seven thousand priests and brothers, about thirty thousand nuns and sisters (nuns

are cloistered), and many times that number of lay people. It is always pleasant to meet members of the Order from other countries, people unknown to me before; it is something I have always enjoyed. This person is entirely unknown to me, and yet there is a tangible bond; it is a very satisfying combination of the known and the unknown. Even now, when there is much more diversity than before, this warm bond is always there. It is hard to put words on it. ‘Family spirit’ would do, but you would have to think of a huge family, a very uncontrolling and friendly one.

My first job was teaching philosophy in a seminary for diocesan priests in England. I was the only Dominican on the staff at that time, but there was one the previous year, and another two years before. By my time they were beginning to compare us. During the course of the year several people - staff and students - remarked to me how alike we were. This surprised me greatly, because I was more conscious of the differences between us; and I had heard it said that while Jesuit formation produced character, Dominican formation produced characters! When I asked why they thought us alike, the answers boiled down to two things: “You have the same kind of God!” they said, “and you have the same attitude when things go wrong.” One could hardly imagine two more basic headings: God and providence. In fact these probably simplify in the end to just one heading: God. Sometimes outsiders can see the spirit of a family - or an Order - better than insiders can. Insiders feel it in their bones, or mostly they don't feel it at all, because it has become completely ordinary for them.

We don't ‘package’ our spirituality in the way that many other groups do. It is extremely difficult to put experience into words; this is why there are so few poets in the world: it is a real translation. It is easy, on the other hand, to put theoretical positions on paper: in fact nothing is easier, because they already exist principally on paper. I think St Dominic would be very surprised at the expression, ‘Dominican spirituality’. His passion was to preach the Gospel and to establish a gospel way of life for preachers. Very much later, in the 19th century - the age of nationalism - with the restoration of religious Orders in France, each religious Order seems to have become obsessed with having its own spirituality; it was a kind of nationalism on a small scale. This self-conscious slant continues in our own time, and is even accentuated in ways that remind one of nothing so much as the ‘branding’ of products in the commercial world. There are books in which each chapter is a study of a particular brand; and the brand-names (until recently at any rate) were still those of religious Orders: Benedictine, Franciscan, Carmelite, Jesuit.... That must leave diocesan clergy and lay people wondering if they have missed the last bus. But there was often a special one put on at the end for their benefit: ‘the Spirituality of the Secular Priest,’ or ‘the Spirituality of the Laity.’ And there always have to be newer brands (that's the nature of branding), so we have ‘Celtic spirituality’, ‘Creation-centred spirituality,’ and so on. Whatever helps, helps of course! And one ‘brand’ may open a door for someone that other brands keep firmly closed or make invisible. But in my own opinion it would be wiser not to pay a lot of attention to the brand, and to concentrate simply on unfolding the Gospel in our own experience and in our own context. “Today we speak the language of experience,” wrote St Bernard in the 12th century. They are wise words in any age, and they are in fact being taken greatly to heart in our own.

After I had been teaching philosophy for six years in England and Ireland it began to undermine me (which is what philosophy does best). Also at that time (the 70s) numerous confrères were abandoning the priesthood and religious life. The Changes were not just changes within a game, so to speak; for many they became changes to a different game. Somehow I survived, thanks to a large-minded superior who allowed me to train as a potter! Pottery, I see in retrospect, was a means of reaching back to something lost: the connection with the earth and the body. It saved my life, in many ways. I threw myself into the restoration of some old buildings in Ennismore (a retreat

house in Cork) and set up a pottery and meditation centre there. All that physical labour was a great relief after years of academic life; it was an attempt, in its way, to “speak the language of experience.”

If we don't speak the language of experience we speak as spectators, by-standers, commentators... in other words, outsiders. The commentator’s voice, the voice from the outside, is given extraordinary authority in our age. One paragraph from a journalist, a psychologist, a theorist of any kind, is thought to debunk any amount of first-hand experience. I found clay to be a wonderful medium for exploring in the other direction. It activates your own resources and helps you to learn a greater sensitivity through the body. It can do this because it registers every touch with mirror-like fidelity. I found that it opens a new door to meditation. Every summer for twenty years I have been giving these ‘Potter retreat-workshops’, and at each one I am amazed again at what it can bring to the surface for people. Clay is a wonderful substance for simplifying us. We are too clever by half, too rational and too evasive. Try to express in clay your fears, your love, your pain, your hopes.... You will find it impossible to put in any evasions, any qualifications, any ‘subordinate clauses’. Clay is just a main clause. To say something in clay is to make a direct statement and leave it there. In its simplicity it is like the cry of an animal. In John's gospel a desperate man said to Jesus, “Sir, come down before my child dies!” (Jn 4:49). It must be one of the most basic prayers of any time or place. There isn't a human being in the world who could fail to understand it. Even the animals and birds would pray like this if they could talk. Sometimes our religious sensibility becomes so polite and tame that we can't even believe in it ourselves. Prayer or meditation has been called “an hour of truth”, but it can become the place where we tell the most barefaced lies.

If we had space I could tell many stories of connections that clay has helped people make in different parts of their being. I feel that this work is in continuity with the healing of the Albigensian disconnection that Dominic was attempting for the people of his time.

Almost any medium can be used to help heal the disconnections in ourselves and in our world. At present I do a lot of writing…. It is like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it out to sea. Sometimes you get a reply, and it comes as a surprise, because you generally forget what you did before. I remember a letter from a Venezuelan sailor who said one of my books was a companion to him for many months when he was on the high seas in every sense. It touches you deeply, not because you think you did something useful, but for nearly the opposite reason: something useful happened of itself, without any reference to you, some moment of grace happened for someone unknown to you. Our best moments are when the ego is set aside and we are drawn beyond ourselves into some unknown region….

With everyone in the world we await the millennium in silence. Is there a long view? At the turn of a century, people usually like to paint mental pictures of the future; but this time (have you noticed?) almost no one feels confident enough to make any serious predictions at all, even in small matters. If this is strange at the turn of a century it is ten times more strange at the turn of a millennium. This time the future is a bigger mystery than ever: it is not only unknown, it is unthinkable.

We may not be able to think the future, but with other sentient beings we are able to feel the present. In stark contrast to thirty years ago, the western Church today is wearing a sad grey face. There have been great scandals, and a consequent loss of morale. But many (even most) of those crimes were committed decades ago when everything looked fairly good on the outside. Consequently there is a feeling abroad that clergy and religious cannot be trusted any more. This is a very deep wound, and it is being borne by every priest and religious. Years ago, when I was a student in Switzerland, Charles

Davis left the Church, saying it had been “losing its soul to save its face.” His was a famous case, because it was one of the first, and it occasioned a great deal of soul-searching at the time. What can we say now, thirty years later? Now that the Church has lost a lot of face, there is hope that it can save its soul. There are some among the clergy (and the laity) who harden their face instead, taking up rigid unfeeling positions, with a kind of ‘take it or leave it’, ‘in yer face’, attitude. “Good riddance!” wrote a priest in the Irish Times in reference to some Catholics who had left the Church. A lay person wrote in reply, asking pointedly what that priest made of the parable of the Prodigal Son, or the parable of the Lost Sheep, or the parable of the Good Samaritan. Could the Good Shepherd have said “good riddance!” to the lost sheep? Shepherds, according to Jesus's use of the metaphor, typically go after “the weak, the sick, the wounded, the strayed and the lost” (see Ezek 34). There is still the urge to save face. It is a measure of our distance from redemption.

When we emerge from this crucible we will be a deeply humble, even humiliated, Church. We may know more then about compassion, about powerlessness, about seeking the lost rather than defending the secure: in a word, we may know more about spirituality than about ideology. From being itself more deeply immersed in the mystery of dying and rising, the Church will be better able to mediate to us the Paschal Mystery, the dying and rising with Christ. The laity will have come into their own, and they will bring a new vitality and practicality to the Church. But these are prayers, not predictions. Ultimately we are at the mercy of God, and that is the right place to be.

I travel to many countries, in every continent, giving courses and retreats. It has something to do with belonging to an international Order. It is usually hard work. There are climates that are pure pain when you are not used to them, and there are strange diets and strange diseases; there is always some degree of culture shock. And when they bring you from so far away they have high expectations of what you can do: that is the severest pain of all, when you know nothing but your own limitations. All the same, it is a great adventure to travel far from home. It is full of interest, and it gives a wide perspective on the Church. And that is useful thing in our present state. In many countries, especially in Asia and Africa, the Church seems younger, somehow, and simpler: full of hope and joy (and young people). There are problems everywhere of course. But it is not problems that deaden us; it is we ourselves in the problems, as Johann Tauler, a Dominican mystic of the 14th century, put it.

If making connections is so important for spiritual health, then at present we need to make as many as we can. There are always connections and reconnections to be made:

- within our own being: with all the sources of our energy (Albigensianism is not dead yet);

- with our past, so as not to disown it and be left floating adrift in a world without direction;

- with the earth itself and the creatures we share it with. The Albigensians despised the world in a theoretical way, but we actually destroy it: we poison the earth and call it progress; and anyone who kills animals for fun we call a sportsman.

- with one another in ever deeper and more human ways, to beg God to heal in us “the sore that no one can cure: a lack of heart.”

- and above all with God, the source, the centre. Without God everything and everyone is lost property.

It has been a wonderful life, so far. I have nothing to lament but my sins.

Donagh O'Shea

WISDOM LINE

FRANÇOIS FÉNELON

The soul, in the state of pure love, acts in simplicity. Its inward rule of action is found in the decisions of a sanctified conscience. These decisions, based upon judgments that are free from self-interest, may not always be absolutely right, because our views and judgments, being limited, can extend only to things in part; but they may be said to be relatively right: they conform to things so far as we are permitted to see them and understand them, and convey to the soul a moral assurance, that, when we act in accordance with them, we are doing as God would have us do. Such a conscience is enlightened by the Spirit of God; and when we act thus, under its Divine guidance, looking at what now is and not at what may be, looking at the right of things and not at their relations to our personal and selfish interests, we are said to act in simplicity. This is the true mode of action.

Thus, in this singleness of spirit, we do things, as some writers (writing from experience) express it, without knowing what we do. We are so absorbed in the thing to be done, and in the importance of doing it rightly, that we forget ourselves. Perfect love has nothing to spare from its object for itself, and those who pray perfectly are never thinking how well they pray.