Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 8 September 2013

SW entrance mosaic. Virgin Mary in centre with Child Christ. On her right emperor Justinian I, offering model of Hagia Sophia. On her left, emperor Constantine I, presents model of the city. - Wiki image

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time year C

The great Church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, once Constantinople, is one of the wonders of the ancient world and still a sacred place for Eastern Christianity. Repaired many times, first a church, later a mosque and now a museum, it faces an uncertain future in today’s Turkey. Nevertheless its Christian ancestry cannot be hidden, holiness pervades the place. The great mosaics of the past still gaze on the travelling pilgrim, their Byzantine power still able to convey the sense of a divine world mixed in with our own. But it is the name that captures my imagination, Holy Wisdom, that attribute of God given to human beings so that they may perceive and understand the divine love manifest in knowledge, learning and the desire for God.

We need to pray for holy wisdom in our own lives because the Gospel way is not an easy one. At times subtle contradictions make us pause and wonder just what Jesus might mean in some of his teachings or in the circumstances of our own lives. Luke gives us a very hard statement where Jesus seems to suggest that we have to ‘hate’ our family, friends and even our lives in order to be a true disciple. Now I know that we can look at the word hate and placing it in the context of the rest of Jesus teaching, understand it in a more positive way. Yet it is a challenge that pulls at the fabric of our carefully constructed human wisdom. It demands from us a greater vision and yes, a deeper wisdom, that looks beyond immediate horizons.

Families, friendships and our own lives are important and Jesus does not say get rid of them. What we are asked to do is place God right at the heart of everything, see the Wisdom of God penetrating the whole of our life and creation, a different understanding that calls us to see a greater family than that of our own narrow confines. This new family of God is given to us in baptism, and sealed in confirmation. It is the vision of life bound up with God and all living things. That is what hate means, the hardship of being a disciple who has to get out of our comfort zone and love in another way just as Paul told Philemon to do in the case of Onseimus!

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.