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Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - June 17th 2018


Tapestry by Dom Robert of Encalcat

Tapestry by Dom Robert of Encalcat

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

* So we are always courageous, although we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight". (2Cor 5:6-7)

It's odd what we react to in the news! Sometimes it is the great tragedies like Grenfell Tower that sear themselves into our minds. I can never pass the shrouded tower when I come into London on the Oxford Bus without a deep sense of sorrow and prayer for those who were killed, for those who grieve and all who work for better conditions. That image of the flames in the burning tower will always haunt any who saw it. Yet there are also the small but nonetheless important events that mark other more hidden catastrophes. Any stories about the destruction of our planet or the extinction of life causes me to be upset, the horrible unkindness's of us humans to animals, is one ghastly area of sorrow, but it's the relentless ending of one species after another, slowly, inexorably that fills me with a deeper sadness.

I wrote a poem, not yet finished, about the 'Prayer of the Grey Long Eared Bat', trying desperately to sum up enough courage to voice an opinion about the extinction of this little creature in Sussex and to somehow offer to the Creator an apology for what we have done to this innocent mammal! I still feel inadequate and humbled in trying to write it, because the world about me seems to tread heavily on anything that stands in the way of human expansion and so called progress. Yet the insight of William Blake's poem, Auguries of Innocence, that the smallest things matter is truer than ever:

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour".

Perhaps that is the hope we glimpse in the voice of God contained in the vision of Ezekiel, that even when things look bad, the Lord cares and will put things right. There is hope, isn't there, when Ezekiel can say to us about the cedar of God:

"It shall put forth branches and bear fruit,
and become a majestic cedar.
Every small bird will nest under it,
all kinds of winged birds will dwell
in the shade of its branches"?(Ez 17:23)

We cannot lose sight of hope for our condition and world, nor of love for it, but as Paul suggests, what we see is not the whole picture, 'we walk by faith' a hard road, for whatever may seem to be happening in the world and the Church, no matter how bad things are, faith must be our walking stick and hope, our lantern in the dark, love the source of our courage. Jesus' words encourage us; the Kingdom of God is not diminishing but growing, yes, imperceptibly like seed sown, a harvest waiting to be gathered in. But it is growing and our faith should hold fast to that great hope! It will be as Edith Sitwell wrote: "Love is not changed by death And nothing is lost And all in the end is harvest".


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

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