Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 23 April 2017

Second Sunday of Easter 23rd April 2017

Although you have not seen him you love him; even though you do not see him now yet believe in him, you rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, as you attain the goal of [your] faith, the salvation of your souls. (I Peter 1:8,9)

It’s a strange time to be a Christian in the UK, not because of any overt persecution but rather more prosaically the lack of education about Christianity itself. Even in my own family and in my generation let alone younger ones, I detect a real ignorance about the Christian faith and a very muddled understanding of what precisely it is we believe about Jesus and his resurrection.

This lack of basic comprehension about the teaching and message of Jesus makes it difficult for many people to enter the world of Thomas and the frightened disciples experiencing Christ in the locked room, a situation John describes in chapter 20 and one that challenges our own poor patterns of faith. We might also, if we are practicing people, link ourselves with the early Christian community described so succinctly in Acts 2. However I think a lot of us are tempted to say that the Gospel story is simply a tale and the book of Acts writes about an ideal of community that few of us can achieve in the modern world!

So how do we approach this tale of Thomas or the zeal of the early Church? I’d begin with that quote from the letter of Peter about loving and believing in the Jesus we have not seen! At the heart of my faith, even in the dark spaces and times, I do understand that though I have learning, the real key to understanding is to let the compassion, mercy and love of God into my life. I’m not like Thomas, but I can, like so many others, sense deep within me that there is somebody seeking out our love, somebody ‘greater than I am’.

Maybe that is what we who are Christians need to do, not go backwards into history, but see in these stories of salvation a mirror of what can happen in our own lives. We too yearn for a faithful and good community to belong to, we desire to be at peace and somehow be just people caring especially for those most vulnerable, not only humans but the creation we are called to care deeply about.
Salvation is about God’s mercy coming into life, the invisible One made visible in those acts and gifts of love and forgiveness. Isn’t that really what Jesus shows Thomas, by doing love and mercy we are touching the heart of life itself, that risen, undying, healing life of Christ! That is how we reach and teach those who don’t know God, by being the best we can be!

Meditation

From The Phoenix, Anglo-Saxon Poem.

The Author of light has granted us that here we may merit and gain by good deeds joys in heaven. There we may seek out realms most broad and sit upon lofty thrones, live in the grace of light and of peace, obtain abodes of genial delight, enjoy days of prosperity, look upon the Lord of victories, gentle and mild, without cease, and sing him praises in perpetual laud, blessed, amid the angels. Alleluia.

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Catholic Chaplain for the Melkites in the UK. He is also an Ecumenical Canon of Christ Church, Oxford