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

7 May: All are welcome!

This tree stands just outside the Anglican churchyard in Winchelsea, Sussex. \it was just here that John Wesley preached his very last outdoor sermon. He was not welcome – and neither were his followers – in the church nor even the churchyard, so he preached under the shelter of a tree.

Not this very tree: the original was killed by souvenir hunters cutting into it but this successor is going strong!

Father Peter was talking about trees in this Spring’s Missio magazine, in particular the mustard tree that sheltered the birds of the air in the parable. And some of those birds would have been as unwelcome as John Wesley and his Methodists would have been in Winchelsea hundreds of years later. Let’s listen to Father Peter:

I can imagine Jesus scratching his head as to how to describe the Kingdom of God to the people, and, as we read in the Gospels, in his ‘head scratchings’ he came up with many wonderful images.

On one occasion he likened the Kingdom to a mustard seed (Luke 13) which would grow into a tree which the birds of the air could shelter in. A familiar image which everyone would understand – that the Kingdom of God was for everyone to enter and find shelter.

But Jesus was being a bit controversial here when he talked about the birds of the air and did not distinguish between, according to Jewish purity laws, those birds which were unclean and detestable (Leviticus 11: 13-19). Jesus was, in effect, saying that all the birds of the air were welcome in the tree – clean and unclean!

Of course, what Jesus is saying is that, like a mustard tree,the Kingdom of God was shelter, shade, and rest for everyone. With no distinction between those people that we, or others, might think of as ‘unclean’ or not worthy. Everyone is welcome to rest in the shelter and shade of the love of God.

Father Peter.

4 May: A Chill.

A CHILL 
What can lambkins do 
All the keen night through? 
Nestle by their woolly mother 
The careful ewe. 

What can nestlings do 
In the nightly dew? 
Sleep beneath their mother's wing 
Till day breaks anew. 

If in a field or tree 
There might only be
Such a warm soft sleeping-place 
Found for me!
           Christina Rossetti.

A robin is building in our hedge, carefully entering cover a distance away from her nest site. The squirrel who has taken up residence nearby would soon eat her eggs, as would passing rats, so precautions must be taken and will be until her babes have flown. And yes, they will shelter under her wings until they are fledged.

The lambs in our photo look almost as big as their mothers, but still they know where to find a warm drink of milk or a reassuring comfort from their ewes.

As for Christina Rossetti - longing for rest, longing for loving company - have we not felt the pangs of loneliness at some time in our lives? But read this as an Easter poem. Christina was an Easter person even if this poem leaves us hanging on desire; we are rather more complicated creatures than robins or sheep.

May all the faithful departed rest in peace and rise in glory! 

30 April: The impact of L’Arche.

Today we are happy to share L’Arche UK’s annual Impact Report. This colourful leaflet (with plenty of links to other stories of our members) will give you a taste of who and what we are in this jubilee year – 50 years of L’Arche UK, 60 years of L’Arche internationally – and what we hope to achieve in the next 5 or 50 years. Click the link and read on!

19 April: Discovering the love of God

This coming Sunday is Good Shepherd Sunday, when traditionally we pray for vocations to priestly and religious ministry. The Columban Missionaries invite us to ‘pray with us this adaption of the Pope’s World Day of Prayer for Vocations message this year’. The prayer is written by Fr. Denis Carter, who also includes all of us lay people, ‘serving those around them.’ Amen to that.

13 April: Surrounding himself with happy creatures.

O taste and see how gracious the Lord is; 
blessed is the man that trusteth in Him."
—Psalm xxxiv. 8. 

You see by these words what love Almighty God has towards us, and what claims He has upon our love. He is the Most High, and All-Holy. He inhabiteth eternity: we are but worms compared with Him. He would not be less happy though He had never created us; He would not be less happy though we were all blotted out again from creation. But He is the God of love; He brought us all into existence, because He found satisfaction in surrounding Himself with happy creatures: He made us innocent, holy, upright, and happy. And when Adam fell into sin and his descendants after him, then ever since He has been imploring us to return to Him, the Source of all good, by true repentance.

“Turn ye, turn ye,” He says, “why will ye die? As I live I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” “What could have been done more to My vineyard that I have not done to it?” And in the text He condescends to invite us to Him: “O taste and see how gracious the Lord is: blessed is the man that trusteth in Him.” As if He said, “If you would but make trial, one trial, if you would but be persuaded to taste and judge for yourself, so excellent is His graciousness, that you would never cease to desire, never cease to approach Him”.

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

”He found satisfaction in surrounding himself with happy creatures” – and so would we, if we sought the happiness of those who live around us. What will make them happy? There may be many things. How can we bring some of them about?

Can I develop a deep down belief that I am happy, despite misfortune and suffering that comes my way? Can I be a happy creature as God created me?

Our stained glass window from Saddleworth has Jesus surrounded by happy creatures – the children pressing around him and the hand-fed flock of the Good Shepherd.

2 April: A real Easter?

A Question for today: Do we believe that Easter is real? Put it another way: what does it mean? Eberhard Arnold, founder of the Bruderhof Communities, explored this:

One thing is clear to us: as the church, we must hold to Jesus. Everything depends on this, that we place the Jesus of the four Gospels, the son of Mary, the man who was executed under Pontius Pilate, in the center of our faith and our life, and keep to him. This Jesus has become unknown. His words have been distorted and disfigured, his work weakened. All the more, we must rediscover this Jesus and hold him up before all the world.

Our life together in the church must be oriented by nothing else but by Jesus’ life, his word, and his working. Our commission is to bear the love of Christ, which is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. This love, free of the unclarity of human thinking and feeling, was manifested perfectly and unmistakably in the life Jesus lived. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, his life was sealed as the revelation of God’s heart (John 6:27). The Holy Spirit, when it descended on the first church in Jerusalem, made this sealing of Jesus’ life known to the church so that it might follow Jesus and carry his life back into the world.

Perhaps the angel is free from the unclarity of human thinking! Let us make room for the Holy Spirit who found his way into the Church when they were gathered together in fellowship and prayer, seven weeks on from the events of Easter.

Arnold, Eberhard, The Jesus of the Four Gospels, 2019, Bruderhof Historical Archive, Walden, NY, USA

31 March: Easter Day: Did you not know?

Learning to Obey by Sheila Billingsley.

This poem was among Sheila’s papers when she died. Although it reflects upon the events recorded by Saint Luke (2:41-50) over three days when Jesus was a boy in Jerusalem, every line resonates with the events of another three days twenty years later, and resonates, too, with our lives twenty centuries later.

Christ is risen!

Learning to obey.

Facing inescapably our part,
Our part as man, that is.
Born as man,
Not understanding yet in immaturity
The obedience,
The willingness
Sought by his Father.
The three days waiting,

The love.

Did he even understand his Father?
Yet ...
'Did you not know?'

Was it like a cloud parting before the sun 
Irresistibly drawing into growth,
Away from known security
To verge on disrespect?

'Did you not know?'

Presuming now upon a life to come,
A life they would not share.
Until the three day waiting
The silence of the voice.
The lostness of the love.

Who fed him?
Shared with him their food?
Gave him water?

In those three days
Did he sleep curled in a corner of the temple?
A boy needs his sleep.
Did he not miss them
Those whom he loved?
Those who loved him?
But overwhelmed by love,
always love ...

'Come home,
We were worried.'
And suffering the parting
Learned to obey.

The cloud once more concealing,
Revealing,
How many years of waiting?

Commentary by Sister Johanna OSB

This is a thoughtful meditation on Luke 2:41-50.  
There are so many questions that this Scripture passage raises. I like the fact that you raise them and don't give facile answers. I like also that you put it all into the mystery of Jesus' humanity and therefore of his need to grow, mature, in obedience. The parents, too, learn to obey - and must grow and mature in relation to this sometimes unpredictable Son of theirs. 

Happy Easter to all our readers and contributors!

Christ is risen indeed!

28 March: Maundy Thursday

I like to think that it wasn’t just the Twelve who shared that Passover meal with Jesus. Be that as it may, they were definitely among those present, including ‘Judas Iscariot, which also betrayed him.’ Jesus had chosen Judas to be with him, to preach, heal and to cast out devils. (Mark 3:14-19).

Can we see Judas as a preacher? An exorcist? A healer? Judas as a privileged, chosen companion of Jesus? Do we want to believe in that? What flipped in Judas’s head or heart to be capable of betraying Jesus so thoroughly? Did no-one suspect his treachery? John 12.6 seems to suggest that his thieving from the common purse was known about.

Sadly, we are learning that traitors exist among preachers, healers, chosen ones, in our own day. Sadly, we fall short of the conduct of privileged, chosen companions of Jesus, but we

And let’s pray for those who have shaken the faith of many. May the artists of Strasbourg’s carved prayer be ours: that The Lamb of God will rescue them and that they might allow themselves to be rescued.

22 March: The Stations of the Cross in time of war in Gaza, VI.

Alnmouth: the cross marks the spot where a unifying synod took place in Anglo-Saxon times.

Here is the link for the sixth station, ‘A woman wipes the face of Jesus.

With thanks to our friends in the United Reformed Church.