Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 4 September 2016

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Once upon a time my holidays had a different quality, they allowed a rest and detachment from everyday life, but foolishly I take my mobile phone with me, which means that decisions and questions from work and church keep intruding, eating into what should have been a time of respite. It's my own fault, but it's also the way we have allowed the media easy and frequent access into our intimate lives. Is this a good thing? I'm not at all sure, but I have decided to restrict my use of phone, emails and media a lot more after the intrusions of this summer!

Part of my reflection on this has been prompted by my own need for silent times, that place of balance between the demands of living and the inner call of God. There are a lot of calls on my time, but I know I won't help people well if I simply respond to each request without allowing myself time and space to just be and let the silence of God speak to me a little more. That need, that desire, is part of what the gift of Holy Wisdom is about. The insights of the Spirit, of Sophia, Wisdom, are given us to grow with, respond to, and help us journey onwards, inwards and outwards, but it's not something we can immediately grasp. Like nearly everything in life it's about being open to new things, always learning from what we encounter.

I think this is about is getting things into proportion in our lives, as part of earth and its concerns we are rightly focused on life, but as faith persons there is more. The Christ of the Gospels tells us so. I can hear Paul's tiredness in his letter to Philemon, but he is still open to a greater wisdom. Onesimus, Philemon's runaway slave has become his spiritual son, and Paul wishes to reconcile the two by pointing out that in Christ we have new, free, relationships with each other.

Isn't this what Jesus means when he states: "If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,wife and children, brothers and sisters,and even his own life,he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14.25).

I've long pondered this, but realise its about grounding all our relationships in the reality of God, underpinning all we are and have and do with the overarching power of God's love.

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain and Ecumenical Canon at Christchurch Cathedral, Oxford