Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 13 October 2019

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

'This saying is trustworthy:

If we have died with him

we shall also live with him'

(2 Tim 2:11)

One leper returns to give thanks to Jesus after he has been healed, 'where are the other nine?' asks Jesus and some preachers take this as a moment to draw parallels with ingratitude and forgetfulness. Clergy know this all to well, its part of the job, you can spend ages in preparation, care, thought for something such as a wedding or funeral, guiding people through what is a really tense time, only to be forgotten after the event. I was asked the other day how often did people thank us, about half is my answer! But this story isn't really about all that; you and I know that people can forget for very good reasons, as in this case. Jesus told them to go and get checked out by the priests, a normal requirement for healing and cleanliness, in order to take up normal Jewish life?

To my mind it's not so much a reproof, but a trenchant comment about the faith of the outcast, the Samaritan leper seeing beyond, discerning the inner truth where those familiar with faith may not. We get this often in the Gospels, Jesus showing that those not in his own faith community, may have greater insight than those who claim to be faithful religious people. In our own business I am sure we forget how strangers can sometimes cut through our issues and barriers to reach the heart of the matter! It's a reminder that truth comes through openness!

By now we will have a new English Saint in the Church's calendar, John Henry Newman. Whilst many know him for the clarity of his thought and the sharpness of his writing, he was also a person who cared deeply about others and as a priest listened carefully to ordinary people, in this sense he exemplifies what Jesus would have us do with this Gospel, take the example of the Samaritan, not necessarily to emulate but to remind ourselves that Christ is found in the encounter with other.

St John Henry Newman's motto as a Cardinal, is Cor ad Cor Loquitur , heart speaks to heart, and this is perfectly illustrated in this Gospel, but it also calls us to a greater relationship with Christ, to find his heart in our own, to be faithful even in times of difficulty, for he will not disown us. Perhaps we can also make Newman's epitaph something to mediate on, our journey of faith is progressive, it comes through change, and in our ending is that vision of God : "ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem," "out of shadows and phantasms into the truth,"

Lectio Divina

Prayer by St John Henry Newman

May the Lord support us all the day long, Till the shades lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.

Article: Cor ad cor loquitur: what does the papal visit motto really mean?

By Huw Twiston Davies - Catholic Herald August 13 2010

To understand Newman's motto fully we must go back to St Francis de Sales's original phrase: cor cordi loquitur. The translation into English is exactly the same: "heart speaks to heart". So, why did Newman change it? The word ad in Latin is used more often in relation to objects or places, and perhaps it is this more firmly grounded tone that Newman sought in altering the phrase, an implication of directness of speech.

So what does cor ad cor loquitur really mean? The phrase crops up at the end of the first chapter of Book VI of St Francis's Treatise on the Love of God, describing mystical theology and prayer:

"Do you mark, Theotimus, how the silence of afflicted lovers speaks by the apple of their eye, and by tears? Truly the chief exercise in mystical theology is to speak to God and to hear God speak in the bottom of the heart; and because this discourse passes in most secret aspirations and inspirations, we term it a silent conversing. Eyes speak to eyes, and heart to heart, and none understand what passes save the sacred lovers who speak."

The phrase, therefore, is a description of the personal relationship between God and man achieved through prayer.

(Fr Robin is a Melkite Catholic priest. He is also an Ecumenical Canon at Christchurch Cathedral Oxford, and will be giving the Newman Sermon there at Matins on Sunday - the day of Newman's Canonisation. This is the first time a Catholic priest has preached at this service.)