Prayer and Sleep‘Rejoice always’, says St Paul, who adds: ‘Pray continually’ (1 These 5.16f.). The Fathers took this counsel seriously. They insisted it also applies when we are asleep. How can we pray when we sleep? The question has always interested me. Read More
RomaIt was only after watching Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma that I looked up the review by Peter Bradshaw (whose analyses are always sharp) in The Guardian. I found myself agreeing with him: the film is ‘thrilling, engrossing, moving’, though it’s a Read More
Behind the DoorThis afternoon I got a phone call from a young man making a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Bernadette at Nevers. It made me revisit some pages of a book I read last year, indicated here: ‘When others praised Read More
Prayer and Sleep‘Rejoice always’, says St Paul, who adds: ‘Pray continually’ (1 These 5.16f.). The Fathers took this counsel seriously. They insisted it also applies when we are asleep. How can we pray when we sleep? The question has always interested me. I found the indication of an answer in the last issue of Vita Nostra, which traces an engaging profile of some of the foundresses of Vitorchiano. One is that of Madre Maria Gentilini (1917-81), a nun who lived immersed in the liturgy; who was graced with patience; who kept the monastery’s flower garden and made lovely bouquets for the sisters’ feasts; who had intelligently interiorised the Scriptures, living within them. The nun who was next to Madre Maria in the dormitory once heard her say in her sleep: ‘Lord, do show me how you make a carnation!’ Oh to have a heart so full of the mystery of God that it fills my consciousness, my intelligence even when my mind is not awake!
RomaIt was only after watching Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma that I looked up the review by Peter Bradshaw (whose analyses are always sharp) in The Guardian. I found myself agreeing with him: the film is ‘thrilling, engrossing, moving’, though it’s a humiliating movie to watch as a man, given that the male characters of significance are perfect scoundrels. Fermín’s humiliation of Cleo is terrible. All the more luminous is her dignified humanity, utterly credible. I don’t know what it means to say that Yalitza Aparicio, who plays the part, is a ‘non-professional’. Her acting is thoroughly convincing and seems connatural. There’s a weird moment in the middle of the film. During a forest fire out in the Mexican plain a man dressed as a porcupine removes his headpiece and sings, in resounding Norwegian, this song, a hymn to our mountainous homeland. I am still trying to work out what that means in the context.
CandlemasWe confess our faith in God as ‘Maker of heaven and earth’. God is the origin of everything. He is eternal, which is to say that he is beyond any limitation of time and space. He is Spirit, which is to say that he cannot be delimited by matter. God is the source of all that exists. All that exists points towards him; but no existent thing can contain him or hold him captive. There is a chasm between the world as we experience it, we creatures wounded by sin, and the ultimate Reality God constitutes. Sacred Scripture – what a wonderful treasure it is! – tells us how our unfathomable God gradually makes himself known to his creation. He reveals himself to the patriarchs by a call that bids them transcend themselves by moving towards a new horizon and by fire that consumes their sacrifices. He reveals himself to Moses in an unfathomable name. In the wilderness, on the way from Egypt to Canaan, he teaches the people to know him through the law, which enables a new kind of society. They glimpse him in a pillar of cloud by day, in a pillar of fire by night, a vertical axis arising from the Ark of the Covenant, making Israel lift up its heart. When the temple is consecrated under Solomon, God’s glory descends upon it. The divine fullness the people had admired at a distance when it crowned the top of Sinai is now in their midst, in the city of David: the Lord has chosen to dwell among his people. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, each in his way, testify how wondrous God’s glory is, and how unendurable for those who have not been purified by fire. God dwells among his people because he wants to, in order to save and sanctify them; but he remains divinely free. When the people is faithless, the glory departs. It is hopeless to try to keep God hostage. At such times of absence, faithful women and men long intensely for his return. The promise we read of in the prophecy of Malachi, ‘The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple’, corresponds to Israel’s most passionate hope. Today it is fulfilled. Today we walk with burning candles as representatives of the believers of any age as we confess: ‘Yes, he is here; the Lord is in our midst; we have seen his glory!’ The strange thing is that it does not consume us. By his holy incarnation, by becoming a man like us, God has found a way of displaying his glory that does not overwhelm us. He adapts himself to our limitation with divine courtesy. At Candlemas we see how God lets his saving purpose be realised over time. It happens with linear clarity and with great peace. We are asked to peaceful witnesses to his works. In the Lord Jesus God comes to his people in peace, as peace. It is given us to adore him peacefully and to let his splendour of glory burn away our violence and inner darkness. Today the Lord comes to his temple as ‘God from God, Light from Light.’ He comes, too, as the Lamb to be slaughtered: the Church reminds us of this fact in the prayer over the offerings. Our God is a God who pours himself out. He is almighty and at the same time immeasurably humble. That is how he makes himself known; that is how we come to know him. Let us not forget that, by the grace of Christ’s incarnation, we are enabled to become God’s temple. He would make his dwelling in us. The Lord Jesus gives us the grace to have our sins forgiven, to do penance and to be sanctified, to live just lives. He gives us grace, too, to see the world the way it truly is, the way God wishes it to be, for our beatitude. As today, with Simeon and Hannah, we worship the Child who will be ‘for the fall and rising of many’, let us pray especially for lucid vision to see ourselves and the world with the eyes of Jesus, on Jesus’s terms, in order, thereby, faithfully to do our bit for the revelation of his gladsome light. Amen.
Behind the DoorThis afternoon I got a phone call from a young man making a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Bernadette at Nevers. It made me revisit some pages of a book I read last year, indicated here: ‘When others praised or flattered Bernadette, she simply said, ‘Oh, it might just as well have been someone else’. And that was that. As a result it was liberating to be in her presence. She peacefully embraced her own limitations. She had poor health, walked with a stick already as a young woman. This bothered her not at all. She saw it as part of her calling. ‘What do you do with a broom’, she once asked a sister, ‘when you have finished sweeping the floor?’ The sister answered, ‘I put it behind the door.’ Bernadette exclaimed, ‘Exactly! The blessed Virgin used me as a broom. When she no longer had use for me, she put me in my place, behind the door. Here I am. And here I shall remain.’ A hidden life can represent an essential task.’
A Pierced HeartOn Saturday 31 January the religious of Trondheim met to mark the annual Day of Consecrated Life, which we normally keep on the Saturday nearest to Candlemas. Malachi 3.1-4: Who will stand when he appears? Luke 2.22-40: A sword will pierce your own heart. In the Blessed Virgin Mary the Church sees an image of herself. Mary’s call was unique, prepared by an exceptional grace. No one will ever again do what she did: bear the Uncreated into the world, be a concrete, living tabernacle for God’s substantial glory. Yet the incarnation carries on. There is wonderful truth in what we sing about in many a Christmas carol: through the Church the Lord is born in our lives, he establishes his dwelling in us. All of us can say, seriously and realistically, what Paul says: ‘Christ lives in me’, as long as we do not drive him away by sin. In the Eucharist we receive Jesus in Body and Soul. That is why each aspect of the Virgin Mary’s life has relevance for each and every one of us. The course she staked out is one we must follow faithfully as best we can. How, then, are we to understand what Simeon, in today’s Gospel, tells Mary: ‘Your heart will be pierced by a sword’? In the language of the Bible the heart is more than an engine pumping blood. The heart is first referred to in the sixth chapter of Genesis, when human evil is spreading upon earth. God saw that ‘every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually’. As a result, he was sorry he had made man ‘and it grieved him to his heart’ (Genesis 6.5-6). A connection is made here which it is vital to notice. What we think of as our ‘heart’ corresponds to a reality in God himself. So intimate is the relationship between us and him that it pulls at heart strings. By bad choices and evil deeds we can cause his heart pain. God is beyond any conditioning. Theology would say he is ‘impassible’. He cannot be hurt by anything or anyone. Yet because he loved the human being so, he exposed himself to us. We in our turn, made in his image, our vulnerably exposed. To come close to God, Simeon tells Mary, is to hurt at times. That is how it must be, simply because God’s light and truth touches depths in us that are infinitely susceptible. To the degree that we learn to live by grace, to the degree that the life of Jesus flourishes in us, our inner senses will be sharpened: we shall see, hear, feel, perceive, yes, even smell with new intensity. Such ability is risky in a coarse, often brutal world. Simeon tells Mary, and us, that Christian maturing is maturing in vulnerability. We use a lot of time and energy to arm ourselves against hurt, and that may be necessary. But when it comes to the life of grace and prayer, disarmament is what is required. Then we are called to stand bare. Mary’s courage to let herself be pierced by the sword of God’s love and truth is clearly apparent in the Gospel. By saying Yes! to the life in God in her, she said No! once for all to selfishness and murmuring and stupid navel-gazing. When Jesus’s preaching set him at risk, she experienced with intensity the painful growth all parents must live through as they realise; ‘I cannot protect my child against death.’ She had to learn to give her Son back to his Heavenly Father. She accomplished that committal on Golgotha in silent, noble compassion. Thereby her heart was opened and broadened to receive an explosion of jubilant light at Easter. As consecrated women and men we are especially called to a Marian existence. Let us give thanks for the boundless, undeserved gift of our call. Let us renew our Yes! to God’s purpose for us here in this place, in this beloved Trondheim, where we have been placed to give the kingdom of God a foothold. To say yes is to be pierced by a sword now and again; for the kingdom of God is still seized with power, it’s no child’s play. But the battle is won, the victory is sure. We can therefore proceed fearlessly, in peace even when storm winds howl round about, having the Virgin Mary as our leader and guide. So to do will be the best, most consoling, most authoritative testimony we can possible give an anxious time. Amen. The Presentation in the Temple by Mantegna.
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Today is the Feast of Saint Josephine Bakhita, Patron Saint for victims of human trafficking. #stjosephinebakhita#prayforus 3 Likes
Today is the Feast day of St Paul Miki and Companions, martyrs. St Paul Miki and Companions, martyred at Nagasaki, Japan in 1597. The six Franciscans, seventeen Franciscan Tertiaries and three Jesuits died suspended on the crosses. Pray for us! 5 Likes
🌿 Preparing for Lent 🌿 Ash Wednesday is just two weeks away so now is a good time to prepare for the Lenten journey ahead. To support parishes, schools, and faith groups, we are sharing Baptised and Sent in Lent, which Read More 5 Likes
Today February 5th is the Feast Day of St Agatha, virgin and martyr St Agatha died a martyr for the faith at Catania in Sicily in the third century. She was Patron of bell-founders. St Agatha Pray for us 11 Likes
