24 February: Three Elements of Penance.

St David’s Cathedral

We continue with Sister Margaret’s reflections on Penance as lived by Saint Francis.

Penance, as metanoia then, has three main elements:

• An innermost change of heart under the influence of the Word of God;
• Changing one’s life in harmony with the change of heart;
• Bringing forth fruits worthy of penance.

Putting this another way, we then see that penance consists of three key elements:

• Conversion: a change of mind, a change of heart, a turning from self to God;
• Repentance: this change of heart, this conversion, reflects itself in a change of life (style, habits formed, etc.)
• Fruits of Penance: the change of life results in the fruits of penance, in doing penance, in doing good deeds

By way of conclusion … it is important that we realise from the above that for Francis the life of penance begins with God, the initial action comes from God, and then come the visible signs of repentance. This fact is crucial to a true understanding of Franciscan Penance.

This ties up completely with the biblical teaching of penance as metanoia in which conversion (turning from self to God) is the central dynamic of the life of penance. For Francis, and for us, the way of penance is the way of choosing God in response to His invitation, the way in which God, and not ourselves, becomes the very centre of our existence.

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17 January: Introduction to the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity starts tomorrow. I have no idea what shared service might be possible, but we’ve been learning how to stay together in new ways for months now. If we cannot gather in each other’s buildings, we can pray together at Pope John Paul II’s ‘Altar of the World’.

The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in 2021 has been prepared by the Monastic Community of Grandchamp in Switzerland. The theme, “Abide in my love and you shall bear much fruit”, is based on John 15:1-17 and expresses Grandchamp Community’s vocation to prayer, reconciliation and unity in the Church and the human family.
The Grandchamp Community has its origins in Europe in the 1930s, when a group of women of the Reformed tradition sought to rediscover the importance of silence and listening to the Word of God. Today the community has fifty sisters, all women from different generations, Church traditions, countries and continents. In their diversity the sisters are a living parable of communion. They remain faithful to a life of prayer, life in community and the welcoming of guests.
In producing the material for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity for 2021, the sisters are inviting churches across the world to enter into their tradition of prayer and silence that is rooted in the ancient traditions of the Church catholic.

Jesus said to the disciples, “abide in my love” (John 15:9). He abides in the love of the Father (Jn 15:10) and desires nothing other than to share this love with us. The Father is the centre of our lives, who centres our lives. He prunes us and makes us whole, and whole human beings give glory to the Father.
Abiding in Christ is an inner attitude that takes root in us over time. It demands space to grow. It can be overtaken by the struggle for the necessities of life and it is threatened by the distractions, noise, activity and
the challenges of life.
We who know the full value of a spiritual life, have an immense responsibility and must realise it, unite and help each other create forces of calmness, refuges of peace, vital centres where the silence of people calls on the creative word of God. It is a question of life and death.

Agnellus Mirror will reflect some of the meditations and prayers suggested for each day of the week of prayer; let us pray today for the gift to be silent with others, allowing them room to speak or just be quiet with us.

10 July: Foraging Season in Kent.

I think we can declare the foraging season open! There have been a few wild cherries that the birds have not eaten, not enough to make a mall jar of jam, but the first blackberry was picked today, 6th July, about 9 days earlier than expected. Like the cherries, it was a little tart, but early, like the first apricots – a revelation to 9 month old David!

Last week I was harvesting lime – linden – flowers by the river, when a man, who looked Mediterranean, saw me. He grabbed a handful of the flowering branch-tips and plunged his face into them, inhaling the scent deep into his lungs. What memories were quickening for him?

This evening I went to look at a tree I had marked as likely to be in full bloom today. So had someone else. Being taller than most people, there were still a few flowers within my reach. I went home along a path I rarely take, and soon reached another lime tree in flower, scenting the wind. Plenty for me and those who might come after me.

Our other discovery was two walnut trees in public thoroughfares, ripe for foraging the soft-shelled nuts for pickling. As our daughter said, the longest day is past, Christmas is coming!

Let us pray for good harvests throughout the world, an end to the locusts in East Africa, and freedom for those fighting famine to do their work in peace.

15 June. What do the Saints know? VI: Gifts of the Holy Spirit

Harvest

We have been pondering some wonderful things about the theological virtue of faith and using St. Thomas Aquinas as a guide. Consider this: in St. Thomas’ system, each theological virtue is attended by corresponding gifts of the Holy Spirit, which enable the virtue to exist more profoundly within our mind and heart. The idea is that no virtue is static. So faith does not just ‘sit there’ accumulating dust in our mind. It grows, deepens, flowers, bears fruit. We can count on this.

Thomas says that the gifts of Knowledge and Understanding attend the virtue of faith. In the gift of Understanding, he explains, we are supernaturally enlightened in order to penetrate further into the very essence of faith, and gain a sound grasp of the things to be believed (II.II. 8:1, and 9:1). And, the gift of Knowledge is a spiritual enlightenment by which we acquire a “sure and right judgment” about matters of faith. This knowledge, he says, is a ‘participated likeness’ to God’s own knowledge, and to God’s way of knowing. And God’s way of knowing? It is “not discursive, not argumentative, but absolute and simple” (II.II. 9:1).

So, in the gift of faith we are not given something that will ‘wear out’, that can be ‘used up’, go out of style, grow stale. We are given something that participates in God’s very life, in his way of knowing, and is sustained by further gifts of the Holy Spirit: Knowledge and Understanding. And these gifts continue to work within us, leading us to a participated likeness to God.

1 February: A week with Rabindranath Tagore: IV

I cannot choose the best.

The best chooses me.

Stray Birds XX

I cannot always explain why a particular picture ends up with a post on this blog. Yesterday’s picture of the shadows was one I had on file, waiting for the right words. They came. Today’s jumped out of the file as I flicked through. ‘Of course! It’s about mercy!’ I said. The best chose me, even when I was not feeling at all capable of choosing the best. 

So, take courage. When all was about to fall apart, the best told his disciples:

You have not chosen me: but I have chosen you; and have appointed you, that you should go, and should bring forth fruit; and your fruit should remain: that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.

John 15:16.

30 October: ‘You spare all things because all things are yours, Lord, lover of life’.

‘You spare all things because all things are yours, Lord, lover of life…’

Wisdom 11:22-12:2

About two years ago, Sr. Helina and I were working in the kitchen at Catching Lives Community Shelter when another volunteer decided to tidy the window sill.  She picked up from it a little reddish plant which was sitting in a yoghurt pot of dirt, sporting one sorry-looking leaf.  This, she quite sensibly proposed to tidy into the dustbin.  ‘”No!”’ cried Helina and I in unison and we immediately offered to take it home and look after it.  Our rescue plant surprised us.  When it flowered, we discovered it was a begonia.  This year, it outgrew our chapel and had to be moved to a roomier spot.  Over the summer, it put out a cascade of exotic blooms and the beginnings of new leaves all along its stems.

Jesus challenges us to treat each other with mercy as we treated the plant, never giving up on anyone but allowing people the time and the conditions they need to grow and change.  That is why He told a parable about a gardener who asked the landowner to spare a fruitless tree from being cut down.  The gardener wanted it to have another year of nurturing to help it bear fruit.  He could guarantee no results for the following year …but as there are no limits on God’s mercy, I can picture him going back to the landowner every year with the same request until the fruit finally appears. (Luke 13:6-9)

‘…you are merciful to all, because you can do all things and overlook people’s sins so that they can repent.’

FMSL

October 20: Bitter Fruit, Bitter Seed

Blackthorn opens at the end of Winter, but never one flower alone, always a constellation of Hope. 

… waiting, as at the end

of a hard winter

for one flower to open

on the mind’s tree of thorns.[1]

I could not shake off yesterday’s image of a fleshly body, hanging on that tree. Waiting for a flower to open in my mind, I recalled this tree of thorns, the lynchings of black men in America: Strange Fruit:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Abel Meeropol

Strange Fruit

While the song was written in response to lynchings in America, we are more than aware that the sudden smell of burning flesh could appear on any breeze, anywhere in the world.

Bitter crops come from bitter seeds. Let us pray for the insight to see how to relieve whatever bitterness we encounter in our neighbours, and the courage to reach out to do so.

MMB.

 

 

[1] Waiting SP p137

 

19 October: A Physical Body, A Physical Cross

 

Godstone, Isle of Wight

R.S. Thomas knew a quiet place to pray, ‘In a country church’.[1]

He … saw love in a dark crown

Of thorns blazing, and a winter tree

Golden with fruit of a man’s body.

I was walking through an apple orchard the day I composed this post, and enjoyed a golden apple left behind by the pickers. In brilliant sunshine it was warm to the taste. Come the winter, that orchard will be muddy and less inviting; the trees bare of all but small and deformed fruit, waiting for the birds to devour them, peck by peck.

Many church crucifixes are golden, from thinking that precious metal should be used to represent the precious death of the Lord. Perhaps R.S. Thomas has some thought of the love of the artists who made the crucifix or glass in his country church, but principally it is the body of the Lord he contemplates.

The physicality of that body came home to me as I bit into that warm golden apple. A man’s warm body growing cold on a winter tree, but a loving heart, crowned with flaming thorns, never growing cold.

The scandal of the cross is that it happened – and yet we adopt this as our Christian symbol, rather than an empty tomb, say, or the star of Bethlehem. Thereby we proclaim ourselves as sinners: the cross is not a good luck charm, it is a true story.

Let us pray that we do not ignore the fruit that is ripe for the picking on that winter (or spring, summer, autumn) tree; may we taste and see that the Lord is good. (Psalm 34:8)

MMB

[1] SP p29

 

Saturday 25th June: Mercy: fruit of brokenness

FMSL

Mercy is the fruit of brokenness in our lives. Fruit comes out of broken ground. Jesus’ body was completely broken on the Cross and when his heart was pierced there sprung the fountain of divine mercy. Mercy is the fruit of emptying oneself. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains alone, but if it dies then it yields a mighty harvest (Jn. 12:24). In our life too we need to acknowledge our brokenness, weakness, vulnerability and nothingness before God.  This awareness creates in our heart a desire to die to oneself and opens our inner eye to see the brokenness of others.  Mercy is a free gift from God. Jesus said: ‘Be merciful as your Heavenly Father is merciful’ (Luke 6:36).

In the Beatitudes Jesus says ‘Blessed are those who are merciful, they will receive mercy’ (Matthew 5:7).  To receive the gift of mercy requires surrendering of our brokenness to God. This gift will help us to accept others as they are, without judgement. In this way, we become instruments of God’s compassion and mercy.

So, let us place our weaknesses, struggles and vulnerabilities under the blessing of God’s mercy, who tells us: ‘you are very good’ (Genesis 1:31) and ‘you are my beloved son/daughter. On you my favour rests’ (Mark 3:17), and let us say with the psalmist ‘I thank you for the wonder of my being’ (Psalm 139). Then our brokenness becomes a blessing for us and for others.  We are blessings to each other when we remember that God’s favour rests on each one of us.

 

FMSL

Friday 24th June: Bear Fruit Worthy of Repentance!

FMSL

‘BEAR FRUIT WORTHY OF REPENTANCE!’ (Matthew 3:8)

Today we are celebrating the feast of Saint John the Baptist. So today we can spend a little time to meditate on God’s mercy through the words of the Baptist. Always and especially in this year we are continually listening the proclamation of the mercy of God. In the Bible we can see that after the proclamation of Saint John the Baptist thousands of people confessed their sins and converted their life.

Now we may be confessing our sins and receiving God’s mercy in different ways. Is it enough? Is God expecting anything more from us? Can we do anything to please God or to express our gratitude? Let us listen to the words of Saint John the Baptist. He instructed all the people who received God’s mercy and converted their life, ‘BEAR FRUIT WORTHY OF REPENTANCE’ (Matthew 3:8).

How can we bear fruit?  We are not able to feed all those who are hungry. We have human limitations. We are not able to do many things. Then what can we do? We can behave mercifully to all those who are weak.  We can overcome our judgmental attitude to all people. We can give love to those who are sick and needy. We can spend our time to spread Word of God. Perhaps we can even dedicate our lives to it like Saint John the Baptist. Without any blaming, Jesus has accepted us. We have received enough mercy from God and freely, so Jesus says, ‘GO AND DO LIKEWISE’.

FMSL