(The Furrow, April 2001, pp.241-244)
Fourth Sunday of Easter, 6 May 2001
I used to feel embarrassed at today’s Gospel in which Jesus calls us sheep. After all, everyone knows that sheep are not too bright. They’re at the back of the slow learners’ class. If there was a flock in a large field and there was one small bog-hole in it, they’d find it and fall – no, jump – into it and have to be pulled out. Humanity couldn’t be that stupid, I thought.
Now I’m not so sure. Some twenty five years ago, there was a sea-quake off the coast of New Zealand which created a tidal wave. No one knew in which direction the wave was going to move, but scientists warned that if it came ashore it would be a wall of water about 5 metres high and moving at a speed of about 650 kilometres an hour. It would sweep all before it, and no building could withstand its force. What did people do? Instead of heading for the hills as advised by radio they went down to the sea-coast to watch it coming. Police drove along the beach pleading with them to go to high ground for safety but instead they went in even greater numbers to see what would happen. Fortunately, the tidal wave ran parallel to the coast and didn’t come ashore. Those sheep jumping into the bog-hole begin to seem less stupid.
And think of what happened recently when a fire began in a warehouse storing fireworks in a town in the Netherlands. What did people do? They went to watch it; the warehouse blew up, killing fourteen people and burning some four hundred houses. Woolly thinking!
And, not very long ago, the Ethiopian government berated the Western world for not coming quickly enough with food aid to help its people suffering from famine. But the same government spent $1 million a day on a war with its neighbour, Eritrea. And what was the war about? It was about personal animosity between the president of Eritrea and the prime minister of Ethiopia, who hated each other. That appeared to be the issue. Mutton heads!
And did you see on TV the antics of government soldiers fighting in the civil war in Sierra Leone? They looked like armed thugs. They were dancing in the streets, firing streams of machine-gun bullets in the air to celebrate some local victory. They said they could have done more but for lack of ammunition. Whoever said sheep were stupid?
You’ve heard of wars to end all war. Well, since the end of the Second World War in 1945, and the setting up of the UN to promote world peace, there have been over 200 wars in the world, according to the Swedish International Peace Research Institute. Why do people fight in them? Aren’t there young men who are swayed by nothing more than the stirring music of a military brass band, or the sight of fine-looking uniforms, or the rabble-rousing rhetoric of a jingoistic politician while the flag waves in the wind? Slow learners?
Come on, wake up, switch on the head and think! Most of our problems are self-inflicted, pure DIY jobs. My apologies, Lord, for raising a questioning eyebrow at your simile. And, while I’m at it, apologies, too, to the sheep.
Fifth Sunday of Easter, 13 May 2001
Saint Augustine said once, ‘I know what time is; but, if you ask me to tell you what it is, I don’t know.’ Try thinking about time, and saying what it is. We usually end up talking about duration, or something else which is just another word for time. We human beings cannot conceive of being outside of time; for us, everything is either in the past, the present, or the future. Eternity, or heaven, is outside of time. Time was created by God. God is outside of it. With God, there is neither past nor future, but an eternal present.
In the second reading, from Revelation, a visionary poet gives us neither a definition, nor ideas, but the image of heaven as a city where God lives with his people:
‘You see this city? Here God lives among his people. He will make his home among them; they shall be his people, and he will be their God; his name is God-with-them. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone. Then God said, “Now I am making the whole of creation new”.’
Heaven is depicted here as a new set of relationships:
- Between us and God: ‘We shall be his people, and he will be our God.’
- Between us human beings: ‘no more mourning or sadness’ – in the communion of saints, the family of all those from the beginning to the end of time who have died in God’s love.
- Within each of us individually: Jesus said to us that ‘The Kingdom of God is within you’ (Luke 17.21), and also that he has come ‘that we might have life and have it more abundantly.’ (John 10.10)
- In the whole universe: ‘The world of the past is gone… Now I am making the whole of creation new’.
Heaven is probably also, in some sense, a continuation of the present. Can we be united with God in heaven if we have been separated from God on earth? Can we be friends with God in heaven if we have been strangers to him on earth? Can we be open to God in the hereafter if we were closed to God here? If we shut out our neighbours on earth, can we be open in heaven to God who created them?
‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the human heart what God has prepared in heaven for those who love him’. (1 Corinthians 2.9, quoting Isaiah 64.3) Heaven, in the final analysis, is a mystery. May its vision and hope sustain us in our moments of darkness.
Sixth Sunday of Easter, 20 May 2001
Sometimes we imagine naively that the early Christians were always much better than we are, good holy people living together in unity, and that it’s been downhill ever since.
The first reading showed us that it wasn’t so. The early Christians had a quarrel. The heart of the issue was just what makes a person right in the sight of God: was it by observing the laws of Jewish tradition from Moses, or was it faith in Jesus Christ? The implications of this were huge: if we were to be saved by keeping the law of Moses, then Christians would probably have remained a sect within Judaism. But if it was by faith in Christ, then it meant that the community was open to people of any class, language, nationality, or social group.
How did the early Christians resolve this difference? The first reading tells us: with the concurrence of the whole church, they chose highly respected delegates to discuss it at length. These focussed on what was essential, and set aside what was not. And from the fact that they reached a conclusion which was accepted by the community and has stood the test of time, we can be pretty sure they did the job well.
They probably knew the difference between argument and dialogue. Argument is about scoring points, coming out on top and being able to say that we got the better of the others. It often means shouting at each other. Many a person won an argument but, in the process, lost the truth or a friend. Dialogue is about listening to each other, searching for what is true and good in what anyone says, using the ears and the heart more than the mouth and the mind.
Dialogue creates unity in essentials, freedom in what is not essential, and charity in all things.
Feast of the Ascension of the Lord, 27 May 2001
Jesus completed the work his Father had given him to do, and returned to him. But he is still with us. Jesus is present among us in different forms. He is present in:
- Nature: ‘Through the beauty and grandeur of creation we contemplate its author’. (Wisdom 13.5)
Conscience: The voice of God in the sanctuary of the spirit. - The community of the disciples of Jesus: ‘Wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.’
- Bible: This is the word of the Lord.
- The sacraments, especially the “real” presence in the Blessed Sacrament. All of the presences of Christ are real. For example, it is God who forgives us in confession.
- Church: I am with you always, until the end of the world.’ ‘He who hears you, hears me….’
- Charity: ‘Where there is charity and love, God is surely there.’
- The poor: ‘As often as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’
We are God’s presence in the world. ‘We lament that God is powerless, but if he were powerful in our universe, what would be left for us to do? We cannot in the one breath call for freedom, as mankind has always done, and in the next call for continuous divine intervention’. (Seán Ó Conaill, “Ireland’s Quadruple Bind”, The Furrow, Dec. 1997, p.656.) We should do everything as if it depended on us and trust as if it all depended on God.