REFLECTION ON THE FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT

There is a very famous play by the British playwright Samuel Beckett called Waiting for Godot. In it, two characters spend their time sitting at the side of a road, waiting for someone called Godot to arrive. From the beginning of Act 1 to the end of Act 3, they sit there, idly and vainly, going round and round in circles in the same absurd conversation. At the end, they are left waiting as futilely as at the beginning. They have no idea who Godot is. They sometimes wonder whether they are really waiting for anyone at all. Yet there is nothing else for them to do but to sit around and wait in utter futility.

Life for an unbeliever is something very like this. Some years ago, my attention was drawn to the description, by a contemporary painter, of the message of his art: “My work attempts to express the sense of loneliness, of alienation and utter frustration felt by modern man, as he struggles to extract some kind of meaning from his apparently senseless existence.” Does this not sound just like the senselessness of the two characters in Waiting for Godot? Even the name of the person for whom they are waiting, Godot, sounds like a diminutive form of God.

There is an emptiness, an aching void, at the center of godless modern man. He is aware of this emptiness, and will go to any lengths to avoid it, or to fill it. Some find an escape in the oblivion of drugs or the brain-bashing rhythms of modern music in whichever form is current. Some seek to impose meaning on their lives through the strait-jacket of political ideology. Others seek an answer in exotic religious sects and offbeat mysticism, anything from astrology to witchcraft to worship of Gaia the earth-mother, the latest in a whole series of modern back-to-nature godlets. But the emptiness nevertheless persists. Godless modern man is waiting for something, but he knows not what. And he sees no hope, no meaning, because he does not know for whom or for what he is waiting. It is an empty waiting, dark with ignorance, bereft of hope, bleak with despair. Godless modern man is still waiting for Godot, and Godot, like tomorrow, never comes.

How different is the waiting of the Christian! The Christian inhabits the same world as godless modern man. He sees the same sorrows, the same suffering. He experiences the same evils, must watch his work corrupted and come to nothing in the same way. He knows, as surely as godless modern man, that there is something desperately wrong with this world of ours, something that urgently needs to be set right. He longs for the world to be changed, to be set right. All the ugliness, the loneliness, which besets godless modern man with such emptiness and despair, is known as surely to him. And yet, in the face of it all, the Christian is not beset with despair, but filled with an unquenchable hope. Ahead he sees not impenetrable darkness, but inextinguishable light. And the reason for this completely different response is simply explained; for the Christian is not waiting for Godot; he is waiting for God!

A Christian is not waiting for some vague manifestation of God; the Christian is waiting for God made Man amongst us. When the Christian waits for God, he waits for the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh who lived among us In the midst of sorrow, suffering, tragedy, even apparent meaninglessness in the world, the Christian has glimpsed the glory of the Lord, something of the inconceivable end he has in store for his creation. All the dark and ugly things we experience are things which the power of God overcomes, which he can even use for our good. And all of them ultimately make sense because we are waiting for a God who really is coming, a God whom we can and do know face to face. The God for whom we wait is a person, and he has come to save us.

So it is that the Christian waits with unquenchable hope for a God who comes. The darkness of this world is for us merely a shadow which will be banished forever when God sheds his glorious light upon us. It is significant that the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, is a book which practically explodes with a message of hope in the midst of disaster. And the climax of that book, in its final verse, is the cry "Come, Lord Jesus!" Let this be our hope, our message for this Advent. Let us not be a hopeless people, waiting in despair for a Godot who never comes. Rather, let us be a people brimming with hope and joy, our eyes fixed on the glorious future He has already prepared for us; let us be a people waiting - for God. Amen.

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION FOR CHRIST THE KING

“Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!” “Christ conquers! Christ reigns! Christ commands!” These words begin the great Christ the King hymn we will sing at the offertory today. The feast of Christ the King was brought into being in 1934 by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quas primas. Why would he do this in that particular year?

1934 was a fateful year in the world. Adolf Hitler had been in power as dictator for a year, and had established his complete authority over Germany. In the Soviet Union, Stalin had just completed the first Five-Year Plan to turn his country into a modern super-power, at the cost of uncountable lives and terrible economic and agricultural disaster, which left millions starving to death in a man-made famine. In Mexico, a terrible civil war was raging, leading to a tyranny which was hostile to the Church and persecuted and killed priests and lay people alike. Those who have read Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory will be familiar with this. 

In the East, both Japan and mainland China were likewise in chaotic situations and slipping into an authoritarianism controlled by powerful military interests. In all these cases, governments were taking on an authority and total power of an almost infallible character for themselves. The western democracies were either feeble in their response, as in Europe, or withdrawing from involvement in the world, as in the case of the United States.

Against this, Pius XII asserted the real and ultimate source of authority in the world, the Kingship of Jesus Christ, as the Irish constitution has it, “from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred.” All these dangerous movements which had arrogated such power to themselves are, in fact, subject to the Lord Jesus Christ. They rule by his authority, and are accountable to Him for all that they do, whether they acknowledge Him or not.

The readings allocated for today’s feast emphasise all this. In the first, the prophet Daniel has a vision of a “Son of Man” (a divine figure of human appearance) intervening directly from heaven in the affairs of human beings. In the second, Jesus appears, as the figure in Daniel, a heavenly being of unlimited authority and unstoppable power. Linking to this figure, who has been “pierced,” is the gospel, in which Jesus is presented as the Suffering Servant of God, the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” whose authority is not of this world, but something greater and higher, despite his apparent powerlessness and helplessness in the hands of Pilate, who represented the apparently unstoppable power of the Roman Empire.

We should note that in the gospel Jesus speaks, not of his kingdom, but of his “kingship” or reign. Jesus is King, not of place or time, but wherever human beings have responded and turned to Him for salvation. Where He is loved and obeyed, where his power is uppermost in human hearts; this is his kingship. There is no earthly power, from the Roman Empire of his day to the powers-that-be and colossal economic forces in the contemporary world, that can defeat Him. And while it sometimes seems as though the victory is theirs, as long as He reigns in our hearts, the ultimate victory is his; and ours. To this hope we must all cling, no matter what comes our way; for we know that to Him belongs the victory and glory and the power, for ever and ever. “Christ conquers! Christ reigns! Christ commands!”

Fr Phillip

REMEMBRANCE DAY AT CBC

The Cenotaph after the laying of wreaths.

On 11th November, St Joseph’s CBC celebrated Remembrance Day. The celebration is held in honour of all the deceased of the school. Its triple Cenotaph in front of the main building incorporates a monument to pupils, one to teachers and another to those who died serving their country in the Armed Forces. 

The celebrations included a votive Mass for All Souls, celebrated by Fr Phillip Vietri C.O., followed by a short memorial service at the school Cenotaph in which wreaths were laid and an extract from Laurence Binyon’s For the Fallen read by Mr Vincent Daly, a teacher of long standing at the school. 

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,

England mourns for her dead across the sea.

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,

Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.

There is music in the midst of desolation

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables of home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.

REFLECTION FOR THE THIRTY THIRD SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

During the 1960s, group sharing became a common practice at conferences and “workshops”. The idea was taken up with gusto. Under the guidance of a “facilitator”, the discussion was carried out in such a way that everyone was able to contribute. Someone was chosen to “report back”, preferably with the “findings” of the group written up with multi-coloured Koki chalks on large sheets of blank newsprint specially provided for the purpose. The method generated course…after course…after course. And in the end, they all started to look exactly the same, whether the topic was the Holy Trinity or Icelandic cookery.

Why was this? It was because the method began to become more important than the actual discussion itself. When one came back one was frequently handed an “evaluation  sheet”. The questions on this “evaluation sheet” never asked what new insights or creative thoughts were produced by the group. This was presumed. In fact, the content of the discussion never seemed to matter much at all. What was important was whether everyone had had ample opportunity to express themselves, whether or not the “facilitator” had been encouraging of the quieter members, whether the discussion had been “non-judgemental” or “non-threatening”; and so on. What was important was that the method itself had been applied. Whether or not the method had engendered any meaningful discussion or conclusions seemed to be a non-question. It was all about the method, rarely about the content.

Jesus often has a similar problem with his co-religionists. For the Jewish people, with their lofty and unapproachable understanding of God, the Law was their only means of drawing near to him. Loving and obeying the Law was the bridge that drew one close to God. But the Law became so important  that it started to replace God in the religion of Israel. What was important was not whether the Law drew one closer to God so much as whether the Law in itself was applied. In fact, just as people who used the group-discussion method all too often showed signs of feeling superior simply because they were using the method, so did many of the Pharisees feel morally superior simply because they obeyed the Law.

Christians can also be guilty of this. We are privileged to live in a relationship with the Lord Jesus, risen from the dead. It is in this personal, living relationship with Jesus that our salvation lies. But how often do we try to feel superior by counting up the obligations we have fulfilled. By attending superior liturgies. By doing things rather than loving God and one another. What is important is not what we do for God, but how much we love him and offer our lives to him. He himself gave up everything for us.

It is God whom we love and serve, God as he has revealed himself to us in and through the living Lord Jesus. We need to give ourselves to him completely, to offer up our lives to him in service. But mostly, to let all things be paths to him, not ends in themselves. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Fr Phillip

REFLECTION ON THE THIRTY SECOND SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

ON BEING “THERE” FOR GOD

One of the problematic symptoms of modern Christianity is how often we unthinkingly and uncritically absorb the clichés of the modern secular world into our faith, even when these clichés are at odds with what we believe.

The first of these is “being there for us.” How many school pupils I have taught speak of their parents as “being there for us” whenever they want or need those parents. It is used of God, too. “God is always there for us.” The mind-set of this, if you think about it for even a moment, is that we get on with our busy lives while God sits around waiting for us to call on him when we have need of his services, rather like a love-sick boy or girl sitting next to the telephone, waiting for their significant other to call. Gone is the idea of living a life of service to God; gone, the idea of his constant presence in our lives, making us holy, guiding, protecting. God is merely there to fill in the gaps we can’t fill in for ourselves.

It would be truer to say that we need to be “there” for God. We need him rather than the other way round. We need to be aware of him, to await his presence in our lives. As Elijah the prophet said, “O rest in the Lord; wait patiently for him, and he will give thee thy heart’s desire. Commit thyself unto him and trust in him.” Seen in this light, nothing could be less true than that God is “there for us” in the modern meaning. Only in the sense that he loves us and is ever-present in our lives is this true. But it must not obscure the essential fact that it is we who must constantly seek his presence in our hearts.

Another cliché that we often absorb uncritically is the desire that other should “accept me for who I am.” This suggests that I am a static person who does not grow or change, and especially someone who does develop, “become,” so to speak. “Take me or leave me as I am; I’m not going to change,” is the eventual outcome of this. The fact that we have potentiality that must develop, sins that must be forgiven, is pretty much excluded by this line. But we are in a process of becoming what God wants us to become, not remaining trapped in what we are now. To accept this secular idea is in effect to refuse to change, to grow into God’s plan for us.

Finally, we are taught to “believe in ourselves”. However we may qualify this, it always ends up making us the centre of our own little universes. “We believe in one God,” begins the Creed. And in God alone we believe; to believe in anything less is to worship a false God. We should certainly have confidence that the gifts God has given us are real, and that with his help, they can be developed into the fullness of their promise. This preserves the link between us and God. The modern clichés separate us from Him, and isolate us within our own little worlds. But this is not what God wants. That is why he sent the Lord Jesus into the world, that we might know Him and love Him, that we might be drawn into a deep relationship with God, who alone can unlock our full potential, who alone can make us become what we were created to become.

And so: let us be there for God. Let us accept that we need to become what He wants us to become. And let us believe in him, who has revealed himself to us through Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to take away our sins, and rose from the dead to give us life, with all our hearts and minds.

Fr. Phillip