Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 21 August 2016

21st Sunday of the Year

When I was a child the word discipline was often used both is a constructive and punitive manner. I can still hear somebody saying to me, 'what you need is a bit of discipline!' When I became a novice with the Benedictines the phrase 'follow the discipline of the Rule ' was a common utterance by my novice -master. Strangely I don't remember thinking this odd, it was part and parcel of an older European generation that had known the privation and hardship of two wars and had been forged by adversity. It's unfashionable now to talk about discipline, but nevertheless it is important, because whatever we may like to think, it is still a necessary part of growing up in life and faith.

The word discipline has several meanings, the Greek word means 'educative discipline' that of training someone by correcting mistakes. In the Bible there are two kinds, one is that of guidance through physical, intellectual, emotional or spiritual difficulties or challenges by helping others understand the necessity of training. In other words making us accountable for who we are and what we do.

There is also a more personal discipline, in spiritual terms, training for the path of righteousness, which will involve endurance, putting up with the pain of a situation, and learning to deal with it!

We can see this in the letter to the Hebrews (Heb 11.5-12). The writer is clear that life lived with God here on earth is not straightforward and will involve trials, sometimes pain, but requires us not to give up, to endure because the end is worth all that we go through.

That of course isn't much help to people in appalling situations. Even when we lose somebody in death our grief can be very angry and vicious. Yet remaining in a place of anger and pain is not the way of the Gospel, that is why Jesus repeatedly stresses the fulfillment of the commandments, the training of God, is love, love of each other, ourselves too and of God. We have the greater discipline of reaching out to each other!

This discipline is the narrow gate; it is love that has in the end to be selfless. The discipline we see Jesus exercising in the Gospel is one of reproof, not to hurt, but to put us back on the right path again. His 'training' leads to forgiveness, that in turn leads to humbleness of heart and the readiness to forgive.

Prayer

Lord, be with us this day,
Within us to purify us;
Above us to draw us up;
Beneath us to sustain us;
Before us to lead us;
Behind us to restrain us;
Around us to protect us.
(St Patrick c389-461)

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