Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 23 May 2022

May 21st, 2022

8th Century Mozarabic Manuscript `New Jerusalem'

Sixth Sunday of Easter -

Recently I have become involved with an online group, who because of various disabilities feel unable to worship in a public space and throughout Covid have evolved into a real and very important online ministry of prayer, worship and sharing. This is something that many of us found a life line during that period of intense isolation, but now the fact that we can return, albeit with caution, to community worship, does not negate their ministry and mission, far from it, many of those who connect with this have also been badly hurt in their faith lives. Like many of you I was fine during Lockdown, but isolated from my own community of faith, so turning to the practices of monastic life I drew on them to give me the nourishment I needed. Yes, I felt sustained, but I also joined in on line worship.

I am a regular part of what Notre Dame cathedral calls its tele-spectateurs, and sees as their online parish, we are welcomed to get in touch and this in turn allows us to feel connected in different ways. I often 'attend' the daily sung vespers and can join in by means of their system of online files for the daily offices and masses! This discovery of the web, computer and media as a means of engagement for good and for faith cannot be dismissed. It does not in any sense take away that communal need for the `Assembly' in Liturgy, but it calls out to us to rediscover ancient and forgotten aspects of our domestic Christian life, agape, blessings, house prayers, feasts celebrated by special meal and maybe a reading, the context of fast and feast and the love of Scripture! I just wonder as I sense a deeper movement in faith communities, and have to ask if this is not the real promptings of the Holy Spirit, she of whom John has Jesus tell us "The Advocate, the holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name-he will teach you everything and remind you of all that [I] told you. (Jn 14:26) To remind does not imply always in the same way?

In one sense I am a firm believer that Covid has and will have a transformative role in the world, it is still amongst us, Long Covid and its constant effects show this in many people's lives (I am sill suffering from it), but as one extraordinary video in Italian called, a letter from Covid19 put it in the voice of Covid (I paraphrase here), "when I have gone you must not forget what I was here for, learn from me to enjoy the simple things of life, each, day, fresh air, friendship, nature, take nothing for granted, care for each other and your earth'. The hint there was and is that if we don't learn, go back to our bad old ways then other and worse things will come upon us. So for me Covid has been a wake up call, a darkened angel calling us to radical change!

I know I cannot return to where `I was before, for our world has changed and we can sense the instabilities and uncertainties of this fragility about us. Thus, as we move towards Pentecost it is imperative that the Church itself does not stifle the Spirit pulling, pushing and prodding us into new things. In a sense just as that first community had to make the momentous decision to deal with the gentiles and abandon deeply help portions of the Law, such as forbidden food now allowed, circumcision abandoned, blood sacrifice outlawed. These were not done lightly or without synodal debate and discernment but it was the Spirit they invoked for help and it is by the Spirit they made these decisions known: 'It is the decision of the holy Spirit and of us not to place on you any burden beyond these necessities' (Acts 15: 28)

From where each one of us is, can we see a call to new things, new ways of doing things, old and loved ways renewed, upheld, and loved rather than being used as a rigid set of observances to be simply obeyed? Our second reading puts before us a new heaven and a new earth, but also that City of the New Jerusalem our destiny, our final home which must be the desire of each one of us.

There worship has no need of temple or community space because all is holy and within that holiness the Glory of God shines:'

The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it,
for the glory of God gave it light,
and its lamp was the Lamb. (Rev 21:23)

But we are people still on the journey and I commend any way forward that allows us to bridge the gaps between others, to heal the brokenness of this our earth and its people. Jesus again hands to us on the plate of the `Gospel the way we are to go, the Advocate will help us, and that is my prayer for us all, that we really learn to love and ask that Spirit to enable us, for we do it for and with the love that is God:

'Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give it to you.
Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid". (Jn14 :27)

Lectio Divina

Aelred of Rievaulx

The Mirror of Love

"If someone wishes to love himself he must not allow himself to be corrupted by indulging his sinful nature. If he wishes to resist the promptings of his sinful nature he must enlarge the whole horizon of his love to contemplate the loving gentleness of the humanity of the Lord. Further, if he wishes to savour the joy of brotherly love with greater perfection and delight, he must extend even to his enemies the embrace of true love.

But if he wishes to prevent this fire of divine love from growing cold because of injuries received, let him keep the eyes of his soul always fixed on the serene patience of his beloved Lord and Saviour".

Karl Rahner

The Shape of the Church to Come

"Our present situation is one of transition from a Church sustained by a homogeneously Christian society… to a Church made up of those who have struggled against their environment in order to reach a personally clearly and explicitly responsible decision of faith. This will be the Church of the future or there will be no Church at all.

A call to declericalised Church.

A Church in which the office-holders in joyous humility allow for the fact that the Spirit breathes where he will and that he has not arranged an exclusive and permanent tenancy with them. They recognize that the charismatic element … is just as necessary as office to the Church; that office is never simply identical with the Spirit and can never replace him; that office too is really effectively credible in the sight of men only when the presence of the Spirit is evident and not merely when formal mission and authority are involved".

And a prayer:

Prayer-thought for those who fear Old Age or Dying

Though I am getting old

and the years are less ahead than they were before;

I am also nearer that Kingdom

Where there is no more beginning or ending,

No more pain or sorrow,

Where all that is broken is mended,

Where all that is damaged is healed,

Where all loves,

Broken and unbroken,

Are caught up in the One Love