18 May: I had to share my reserves.

“18th May, 1866.—The country is all dry: grass and leaves crisp and yellow, yet the great abundance of the dried stalks of a sort of herbaceous acacia with green pea-shaped flowers, proves that at other times it is damp enough. The marks of people’s feet, now baked, show that the country can be sloppy. The head-man of the village where we spent the night is a martyr to rheumatism. He asked for medic-ine, and when I gave some he asked me to give it to him out of my own hand. He presented me with a basket of siroko and of green sorghum as a fee, of which I was very glad, for my own party were suffering, and I had to share out the little portion of flour I had reserved to myself.” From The Last Journals of David Livingstone.

Dr Livingstone practising medicine on his travels! Many of the East African villages he tramped through had lost much of their food crop to Arab raiders, and some of his porters proved unreliable. On this day he received in payment for his professional skills food for his party and himself. Interesting to see that he had reserved for himself some (presumably wheaten) flour. Did he see this as a luxury or a necessity? Whichever, he was prepared to share it with his companions.

What am I holding back that others need?

*I did not discover what siroko might be.

17 May: An Unobtrusive Spirit

 Newman challenges us to be resigned and contented even as we try, day after day, to be more at one with the person our Creator made us to be.

The spirit of the Gospel is a meek, humble, gentle, unobtrusive spirit. It doth not cry nor lift up its voice in the streets, unless called upon by duty so to do, and then it does it with pain. Display, pretension, conflict, are unpleasant to it.

What then is to be thought of persons who are ever on the search after novelties to make religion interesting to them; who seem to find that Christian activity cannot be kept up without unchristian party-spirit, or Christian conversation without unchristian censoriousness?

Why, this; that religion is to them as to others, taken by itself, a weariness, and requires something foreign to its own nature to make it palatable. Truly it is a weariness to the natural man to serve God humbly and in obscurity; it is very wearisome, and very monotonous, to go on day after day watching all we do and think, detecting our secret failings, denying ourselves, creating within us, under God’s grace, those parts of the Christian character in which we are deficient; wearisome to learn modesty, love of insignificance, willingness to be thought little of, backwardness to clear ourselves when slandered, and readiness to confess when we are wrong; to learn to have no cares for this world, neither to hope nor to fear, but to be resigned and contented!

from “Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) by John Henry Newman.

16 May: St Augustine’s day service in his abbey

Saint Augustine was the reluctant missionary sent to the Kingdom of Kent by Pope Gregory the Great. He arrived here in 597 and began by holding services in the ancient church of Saint Martin’s until he could establish his Cathedral on land given by King Ethelbert. There were also two monasteries that soon became centres of learning, the Cathedral’s Christ Church Priory and what became St Augustine’s Abbey. Saint Augustine’s feast day is 23rd May, next Thursday.

Starting at St Martin’s Church at 17:00, we shall process to St Augustine’s Abbey for the main service, then to the Cathedral Chapter House. This service is powerful, as it is the only time in the year that the altar in the ruined crypt of the abbey is still used.
This service will replace the usual 17:30 evening service at the Cathedral. All are welcome.
Organized by Canterbury Christ Church University.

15 May: Implicit Prayer

Love and truth belong together. Love is more than a feeling, more than physical passion. Love is a force that lives in the depth of us, a force stronger than death, that cannot be bought — a longing for life so intense that it may at times seem to be more than we can endure.

When you find that nothing you possess, nothing that surrounds you, is enough, remember that what you are meeting is not just your own limits; you are perceiving the beginning of God’s unlimitedness. That kind of experience is an implicit prayer. Remember that you bear the Spirit’s seal, that you are more than flesh and blood. That is your deepest truth.

You receive the seal in the form of a cross. On the cross our Lord Jesus Christ carried all that is human through death into life. Nothing in us, nothing about us is hopeless. That is the message of Easter.

My friends, today you are confirmed for life! Live, then, in accordance with your origin, live by the seal you receive. That way your life will have a beautiful meaning, it will have a goal.

From a homily addressed to Confirmation candidates by Bishop Erik Varden, April 2024.

After reflecting yesterday on Newman’s reflections on not praying enough, along comes Bishop Erik to say that ‘nothing is hopeless’, and that the feeling that nothing we have or experience is ever enough is actually an implicit prayer. We are closer to God than we can ever imagine.

Let us pray that the Spirit may teach us to recognise these moments of implicit prayer in our daily lives, and to give them our conscious assent.

Sculpture at Saint David’s Cathedral, Pembrokeshire

14 May: Newman on Daily Prayer.

That table, laid for a feast, surely reminds us to say our Grace before we start our meal today. There have been times when busyness and tiredness have overwhelmed my good intentions to pray every day, but at least the instinct to say or sing Grace has always been there, even if the prayer springs to mind only after the first coffee of the day.

And Grace – or should I say Thanksgiving – was always the last thing at night when the children were ready for bed, but the questions that Newman poses below would have been more challenging then, when working and child rearing, than now when there is the occasional time to stop and stare.

Is God habitually in our thoughts? Do we think of Him, and of His Son our Saviour, through the day?

When we eat and drink, do we thank Him, not as a mere matter of form, but in spirit?

When we do things in themselves right, do we lift up our minds to Him, and desire to promote His glory? When we are in the exercise of our callings, do we still think of Him, acting ever conscientiously, desiring to know His will more exactly than we do at present, and aiming at fulfilling it more completely and abundantly? Do we wait on His grace to enlighten, renew, strengthen us?

From Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII of 8 by John Henry Newman

Photograph from Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Littlehampton

There will be more from St John Henry in the next days leading to Pentecost.

13 May: The Impact of L’Arche, II.

Once again we share an interesting and topical post from the Catholic Union on a matter very close to our heart.

The Holy Father and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences met last week to discuss ‘Disability and the human condition’. The President of the Catholic Union, Baroness Hollins, addressed that plenary session; and the work (outlined below) of an award-winning organisation led by one Scotland-based subscriber to our Weekly Briefing demonstrates the vital contribution our laity undertakes at the praxis of these important issues.

Chris Gehrke, Director of L’Arche Highland, writes:
Earlier this month, in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, Pope Francis commented on the stuttering progress made by the international community in acknowledging the rights and dignity of persons who live with disabilities. Our “throwaway culture”, he said, discards people with disabilities by failing to recognise their contributions to the shared project of human flourishing.

Pope Francis is right about this. Today, we excessively value qualities such as autonomy and efficiency. And no group is more acutely excluded by this than people with learning disabilities.  The Pope’s remedy is to seek out “forms of social friendship that include everyone”.  If you want proof that such friendships are not just utopian fantasy, I suggest a visit to L’Arche Highland, in Inverness.

L’Arche is a Community movement, bringing together people with and without learning disabilities in equality and mutual respect.  Our shared life is a joyful rebellion against a society that’s often unfair and unkind to people with learning disabilities.  The form of inclusive social friendship we have in L’Arche is neither utopian nor perfect. But it is real – in the stories and daily life of individual people, with and without disabilities, who come together in our Community.

12 May: I will be your God.

Behold, I will bring back again Jacob’s tents, and have mercy on his dwelling places; and the city shall be builded upon her own heap, and the palace shall remain after the manner thereof. And out of them shall proceed thanks giving and the voice of them that make merry: I will multiply them, and they shall not be few; I will glorify them, and they shall not be small. Their children also shall be as afore time, and their congregation shall be established before me, and I will punish all that oppress them.

And ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.

Jeremiah 30:18-22.

A hopeful message from Jeremiah today. The photo shows Truro Cathedral on its hill or heap, a place of merry singing when we were there. Other cities are not peacefully set on their hills, with war and its consequences making life impossible.

Let’s pray that leaders of nations and warring factions will strive to make Jeremiah’s vision a reality. And that each of us might strive to bring about peace in our families, work places, schools and communities.

11 May: Safe at Anchor

Safe at anchor, now at rest,
With the many of our fleet,
But once again we will set sail
Our Saviour Christ to meet.

This verse is inscribed on the grave of William Marsh, one of at least three master mariners in Saint John’s churchyard, Woodbridge, Suffolk. He was in his 80th year, so surely he did not drown at sea, but died safe at anchor in his own house in the town.

One last time he set sail to meet Christ; the One he would have met more than once on the ‘lonely sea and the sky’ of Masefield’s poem, Sea Fever. Or as Psalm 107 has it:

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths: their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses.

Let’s pray for all seafarers, and thank God for their hard work and the good things they bring us. Let’s remember, too, the port chaplains of Stella Maris, ministering to sailors and their families often far away.

HMS Vale, in the upper photo, saw service with the Swedish Navy before becoming a Royal Navy training vessel and finally a cafe on the River Deben near Woodbridge. There you can sit in peace, watching the birds and the constantly changing light over the water.

10 May: 7+3=10

My four-and-a-half year old grandson announced the other day: ‘seven and three make ten’. He had been fascinated by numbers for some months, counting anything countable, enjoying the numbers on house doors or buses, but understanding the meaning of this simple addition sum was at another level of numeracy. This was not matching of a picture of three cats to the figure 3, this was a meaningful truth about the world and truth is truth; truth is fascinating. Why else share it with grandad?

I was reflecting on this encounter and how to write about it when I read Bishop Erik Vardon’s homily, ‘Seeing and believing’. Here is an extract:

Western philosophy since Descartes has tended to assume that the perception of reality results from inference; that I can, in isolation, think my way to the truth. The Gospel’s philosophy is different. It submits that truth is discovered by way of encounter.

For the truth, in Christian terms, is no concept, but a personal presence, a presence capable of saying, ‘I am’ — ‘I am the truth’.   

My grandson arrived at the truth of 7+3=10 through playing with bricks, and trains, dinosaurs and sharks. But in the background to his playing towards truth have been adults – family members and nursery staff, willing to affirm the truth that he has arrived at in his games.

Pray that all we adults, by our living example, may help our children to become and remain ardent lovers of the truth.

9 May: The Ascension of Jesus

Ascension and Pentecost

The Ascension and Pentecost are connected in this stained glass window. The two feasts are close together in the calendar, but the connection goes deeper than that. They represent the beginning of a new chapter in the Salvation Story, the chapter we twenty-first century Christians are mentioned in.

Saint Luke is our witness here. The end of his Gospel and the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles show how the disciples went from running scared to finding solidarity in shared fear and confusion, and finally on to boldness in proclaiming the Good News. What inspired this boldness? And where do we come in?

Saint Paul tells us: The things that are of God no man knoweth, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit that is of God; that we may know the things that are given us from God. Which things also we speak, not in the learned words of human wisdom; but in the doctrine of the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

The sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined. But the spiritual man judgeth all things; and he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that we may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

1 Corinthians 2:11-16

Even as he goes up to Heaven, Jesus bears the scars of this foolishness: the marks of the nails in his hands and feet. That foolish gesture of dying for us is recorded by the artist as an element of his glory. Hands raised as they were on the Cross, his seamless garment embroidered with his monogramme in case there was any doubt who this window is about. Yes, it is about Jesus, but it’s about us too, represented by the disciples gathered around him.

The disciples are present in the second window, linking the two chapters in our salvation story. Notice the descending dove of the Spirit, mirroring the outstretched arms of the risen Lord. He had to go away for the Spirit to come and take over but we remain in the care of the one God.

In this time between two feasts, between two Ages, let us pray that we may have the courage and strength to live with holy fire in our hearts, and to seek Jesus, not in Heaven but wherever in this world we may have been placed.