Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 2 July 2017

Jesus with the rich young man

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Quite frequently I find myself reflecting on the Christian journey I have made, the people who were my inspirations and guides on it and the direction I travel now. It seems to me to be a good time to bring together in my own way, much as Augustine did in his Confessions, the route that the Lord has taken me as his disciple.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a particularly good one and battles I have had a plenty, especially with the conception of true obedience, which to me isn’t doing what another person wants, but is listening very carefully, dialoguing and discerning, weighing up things with a trusted person and ones conscience, that small still voice of God.

Discernment seems key to following Jesus, so his words in Matthew 10, about discipleship, placing loving Christ one step ahead of normal relationships has taken me many years to work out and I haven’t fully got there yet! I have followed and treasure the Rule of St Benedict as a guide in my life, and in Chapter 7, On Humility, Benedict writes that after trying to deal with all the aspects (ladders) of humility in his or her life:

“…the monk will presently come to that perfect love of God
which casts out fear.
And all those precepts
which formerly he/she had not observed without fear,
he/she will now begin to keep by reason of that love, without any effort,
as though naturally and by habit.” ( RSB Chapter 7)

This phrase has helped me dig below the surface of some of the hard sayings in Scripture and spiritual classics, it suggest that we have to wrestle with some aspects of Christian discipleship, a bit like Jacob with the Angel at Peniel, not because we are sinful, bad or negligent, but because we have to embrace what God is actually doing with us and make it part of our own life.

A struggle for what we believe in can be hugely constructive, especially when we realise that we have been on the right road all along! So, for me at any rate, the call to put Christ first isn’t about losing things, we have enough of that ain life, it’s about hope, placing everything in the long perspective, beginning to see things from the loving God’s point of view. Of course we have to love others, we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t, but that love has in the end to be grounded in God’s perfect love that casts out all fear, a love that sees in everyone the touch and presence of the living Christ.

Thought from St Bede

“The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all.”

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