Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 22 March 2015

Fr Robin Gibbons

Sunday 22nd March - 5th Sunday of Lent

I've always had a rebellious streak in me, obedience was never an easy vow. I've found that authority figures don't always act in one's best interest despite what they say. So for me issues of justice and truth are never far from my dealings with people. Sometimes I've been too impulsive, like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, but there are other moments when the world is a troubling place and I can only respond by standing with people, even if it means misunderstanding from others!

I see Jesus as one who made that type of decision so often, done with deep compassion. To follow him means that I too, like all disciples of Jesus, need to open my heart to God with my own loud cries and tears!

I suppose as I grow older I begin to understand what the gift of tears is all about. This gift comes unbidden, perhaps unwanted, but is rooted deep in our own spiritual journey, in our heart, where we learn to listen and speak to the Lord.

To weep for others, for the little ones, for the suffering, for animals in pain, for loss, for the world's troubles, is never a sign of weakness, but of belonging to the heart of a God who weeps in the same way.

This is true prayer, the prayer of the depths, where no words can ever suffice, where tears speak another language of the deep constant love of God. I glimpsed an echo of this in Jeremiah's words telling us God writes the law of love in our hearts, and "will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more".That is the gift of tears, forgiving love that heals the memory.

Yet tears also allow us to glimpse the justice of God at work, even when it does not seem so. I've often pondered on sayings of Jesus about losing life to gain it.

I'm not cut out to be a martyr, but I do understand the other martyrdom of everyday life. It's there in those small sufferings of unjust judgements, sinful arrogant behaviour, the slights and pinpricks of relationships. It is the unfairness life deals to some and not others. Yet by facing these things, opening ourselves to the truth we become the grain of wheat that dies to rise, giving life to others.

A prayer: Philip is one of my name saints, so like the Greeks I ask him; "help us see Jesus". Amen

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