Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 26 October 2014

Edvard Munch - The Scream

30th Sunday in ordinary Time

Have you ever had that feeling of being a complete stranger in a foreign place? I don’t simply mean being on holiday, when we are visiting somewhere abroad for the first time and therefore find it all a real adventure of new discoveries, what I’m thinking of is that sense of really being in an alien, ‘other’, cultural setting where we have nothing to hold on to, everything being unfamiliar? If you say no, then think again.

I suspect all of us have had this sense of dispossession, feeling really lost and alone, perhaps the innocent victim of somebodies nastiness at some point or another. I went to an Old Wimbledonian’s reunion recently and going back to Wimbledon College brought back all those half hidden memories of school, yes, including that first day experience, common to so many, of feeling lost in a very new environment.

That simple flashback took me into a reflective space, where I recognized that terrible sense of hopelessness and loss that refuges, asylum seekers, disposed peoples must feel was also something I can empathize with. Although I have had other experiences of a bewildering (and once a very frightening sense of really being lost in a hostile and unfriendly place, that childhood memory is perhaps more raw and deep because a child hasn’t the wisdom , insight or experience that adults have and is in a very real sense truly vulnerable.

I am glad for that insight for it also helps me to penetrate the ‘anger' of God towards those who harm others. We need to be reminded of this side of the Most High, for it is not so much anger as we know it in ourselves, but the white hot blast of love that burns away the wrath, evil and sheer nastiness of others by its passion and intensity.

We must not forget the sacrificial aspect of the great commandment to love God, and the second to love our neighbour as ourselves. The pastoral care of the little ones of God, which the writer of Exodus describes as orphans, widows, children, the really poor, the asylum seeker is absolutely essential if we are to be true disciples of Jesus, but so is the love of God, which means the ‘good fight’ for justice and truth, but with compassion and mercy!

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