6 April, Maundy Thursday: Peace be with you.

At the Last Supper, Jesus said to his disciples: Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. John 14:27.

I was teaching an RE lesson to 14 year olds when an almighty disturbance broke out between two girls who were best friends and sitting next to each other, an arrangement that had worked well so far. The lesson was going to be wasted and the next one would be more difficult if I got this wrong!

The expected course of action would have been to despatch them to the deputy head, which would mean escalating the matter and possibly involving parents. I sent them to Sister Carmel in her warm chaplain’s room round the corner. They made it back to us before the end of the lesson with sheepish smiles.

I would have appreciated a resource like this in those early days of teaching. It is not always easy for young people to step back from a disagreement and make peace, but if they do not learn this skill when young, when will they ever learn?

At Christian CND we recognise the importance of children’s and youth work and see the children and young people as vital members of the Body of Christ.

We have published a new resource called ‘Peace be with you’, which helps young people to be peacemakers. The resource looks at different aspects of God’s peace and explores what that means in our everyday lives. It contains varied activities which are rooted in scripture with real-world applications and is suitable for all ages.

Youth and children’s workers and volunteers can request a free copy from us using the form at: http://christiancnd.org.uk/youth-resource/

Source: Christian CND via ICN.

The Dove of the Holy Spirit is also the Dove of Peace. This one is at the Church in the Attic that welcomed Catholic worshippers in Amsterdam after the Reformation. Though they were worshipping illegally, they were tolerated, left in peace.

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1 April: Praying with Pope Francis: For a culture of peace and non violence

As we approach Holy Week and all its violence, jealousy, fear and betrayal, Pope Francis asks us to pray for the spread of peace and non violence, by decreasing the use of weapons by States and citizens.

The flowers, candles and other tokens in the square after the bombing represent just one instance of people coming together to reject violence and darkness in favour of peace and light.

It is not only states that must renounce violence, but citizens, you and me. Remembering that the pen, and the tongue too for that matter, is mightier than the sword, let us be courteous and respectful in speech at this time commemorating betrayal, false witness and fear. A silent smile will do no harm!

P.S.

Let us take a leaf out of Pope Francis’s book and show our care for those around us, including those who work hard to care for us. Despite being ill, he took the opportunity to baptise a little boy and encourage his mother, and later to share a pizza with the staff who were caring for himself. Shared meals are part and parcel of being Christian!

4 February: Pope Benedict’s Angelus I, 1/1/2010

There is a tradition for the Pope to greet pilgrims at Angelus time, around midday and share a few thoughts, often on the readings for the day. We are glad to offer a selection from Pope Benedict XVI’s reflections, aimed at a general audience rather than academic theologians. Sometimes there are interesting asides addressed to particular groups of pilgrims, showing Benedict’s human side.

I am glad to meet you for this first Angelus of 2010. I address those of you who have gathered in large numbers in St Peter’s Square and also those who have joined us in our prayer via radio and television. I wish for you all that the year which has just begun may be a time in which, with the Lord’s help, we may satisfy Christ and God’s will, and thus also improve this world of ours.

One objective that may be shared by everyone, an indispensable condition for peace, is the administration of the earth’s natural resources fairly and wisely. “If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation”, is the timely theme to which I have dedicated my Message for today’s 43rd World Day of Peace. When the Message was published, the Heads of State and Government were meeting in Copenhagen for the Summit on the climate at which, once again, the urgent need for concerted approaches at the global level became apparent. At this moment, however, I would like to stress the importance that the decisions of individuals, families and local administrations also have in the preservation of the environment. “We can no longer do without a real change of outlook which will result in new life-styles” (cf. Message, n. 11). In fact we are all responsible for the protection and care of creation. Therefore in this field too education is fundamental; to learn to respect nature, to be increasingly disposed; to begin building peace “with far-reaching decisions on the part of individuals, families, communities and states” (ibid.).

If we must care for the creatures that surround us, what consideration we should have for people, our brothers and sisters! What respect for human life! On the first day of the year I would like to address an appeal to the consciences of all who belong to armed groups of any kind. I say to each and every one: stop, think and abandon the path of violence! At the moment this step might seem impossible to you; but if you have the courage to take it, God will assist you and you will feel returning to your hearts the joy of peace which perhaps you have forgotten for some time. I entrust this appeal to the intercession of Mary, the Most Holy Mother of God. The Liturgy today reminds us that eight days after the birth of the Child, together with Joseph her husband she had him circumcised, in accordance with Mosaic law, and called him Jesus, the name given to him by the Angel (cf. Lk 2: 21). This name, which means “God saves”, is the fulfilment of God’s revelation. Jesus is the Face of God, he is the blessing for every person and for all peoples, he is peace for the world. Thank you, Blessed Mother, who gave birth to the Saviour, the Prince of Peace!

Elham parish church, Kent.

Pope Francis, pilgrim for peace.

An extract from Pope Francis’s Angelus address, Sunday 29 January.

Dear brothers and sisters, in two days I will depart on an Apostolic Journey to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and to the Republic of South Sudan. I thank the civil authorities and the local bishops for their invitations and for the preparations they have made for these visits, and I greet with affection those beloved peoples who await me.

These lands, situated in the centre of the great African continent, have suffered greatly from lengthy conflicts. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, especially in the east of the country, suffers from armed clashes and exploitation. South Sudan, wracked by years of war, longs for an end to the constant violence that forces many people to be displaced and to live in conditions of great hardship. In South Sudan, I will arrive together with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Together, as brothers, we will make an ecumenical pilgrimage of peace, to entreat God and men to bring an end to the hostilities and for reconciliation.

I ask everyone, please, to accompany this Journey with their prayers.

And I wish everyone a good Sunday. And please, do not forget to pray for me. Enjoy your lunch and arrivederci!

More about Fr Tom Herbst’s funeral rites.

For Father Tom, the dividing wall is broken down!

We can now share more details of Fr Tom’s funeral arrangements, thanks to the indefatigable Rob Meredith.

Just to confirm, Fr Tom will be brought into church on Friday 25th at 18.00, Helen has kindly agreed to play some music. The Mass will be at 12.00 on 26th to be followed by the celebration of Tom’s life. It will be held in the Kentish barn in Canterbury Cathedral lodge directly after the service, about an 8 minute walk. There will be a condolence book in church. Please feel free to put your thoughts down, we will send this to the mission in San Luis Re afterwards. Finally, regarding flowers. Fr Ton asked that donations in lieu of flowers be sent to Oxfam.

The Mass will be live streamed. Follow this link: https://stthomasofcanterbury.com/livestream/

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Later, in California:

A funeral Mass will be celebrated for Fr Tom by the Provincial on Saturday December 3rd at 10.30 a.m. at Old Mission San Luis Re, 4050 Mission Avenue, Oceanside CA. His ashes will be inurned with his family at San Luis Re Cemetery following the Mass. A reception will be held at the San Luis Re Pavilion after the inurnment.

Here is another reflection by Fr Tom in Agnellus Mirror. This one comes from Pentecost, 15 May, 2016. You can find more at Agnellusmirror.wordpress.com then search for Herbst. But read and enjoy this one!

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Many years ago, in my hometown, I had a powerful experience while riding on a bus. I don’t know why I was taking the bus that day, as at that time I drove a motorcycle, nor do I recall where I was going…but, really, all of that is beside the point. The experience I had, while staring aimlessly out the window, remains fresh in my memory, even decades later.

Now, please, don’t misunderstand what I am about to write – as if it were a claim to some privileged mystical experience. Rather, it came in the form of a daydream; a sparkling thought, caught up with an image, all in an instant…that made me blink then smile and begin the first of many re-plays. What occurred was a kind of visualisation that I have come to call the ‘breakthrough’; a great, shattering, re-arranging, expansive, irresistible, all-encompassing force pulsing through a billion shards of what seemed like brightly coloured stained glass, all rushing forward and constantly re-configured in near-endless patterns of dazzling complexity and creative expression. It was also immediately apparent that the thrusting force was purposeful, even rational, and, above all…exuberant.

I reckoned right away that it must have been a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

Over the years I have remembered and cherished that image, tried (with varying degrees of success) to represent it in art, and have also discerned it in some others’ experience as well. As I have done so, many different dynamic aspects of the fundamental breakthrough have emerged. The first is scriptural and that is of a Triune God on the move; nearly peripatetic, even mendicant. This has always been obvious in terms of the Second Person of the Trinity, first in terms of the explosive creative agency of the Word and then through the itinerant ministry of the Incarnate Word; preaching and working miracles on the many byroads of Palestine- the foxes have holes and the birds build nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. But what of the other Trinitarian Persons? The Holy Spirit blows like the wind, wherever he wills, defying all of our attempts to place God within perceptible perimeters or even (God forbid!) a box. He also dances and flickers like tongues of flame; dead, static religion has no place in that raucous Kingdom. What of the Father? Moving, always moving with his desert people in the great covenantal Ark; a mendicant God for a pilgrim people, sparkling with the guiding light of shekinah even in the dark nights of weakness and despair.

And like Siva in a very different religious tradition, that Spirit of wind and fire, ever moving – siempre adelante – can unmake as well as make. But God being God is necessarily all in all and utterly good. When Love unmakes it is only to pave the way for the exhilaration of renewed freedom. Thus, St. Paul in Ephesians 2:14, For he himself is our peace, who made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall… I have seen many a wall tumble and, when it is the work of Christ attested by the Holy Spirit, people invariably look up, rubbing weary eyes in wonder at undreamed of promise…fulfilled.

TJH

2 October: A Franciscan Bishop on Peacemaking

Peace starts at home

We will soon be celebrating Saint Francis’s feast day. His motto was Pax et Bonum, Peace and Goodness be with you. What does this mean? Not shallow sweetness; it means hard work, following Jesus in prayer, community and service.

For Saint Francis it also meant working for peace, each one in his or her own heart and their local community, as well as looking at the bigger picture, as when he went to meet the sultan. The American Franciscan bishop John Stowe recently celebrated the half century of Pax Christi in the USA with this challenging article from National Catholic Reporter. Do follow the link to read it. Here is a short extract.

As we observe this golden jubilee of Pax Christi USA, we continue to long for the realization of Isaiah’s vision of swords and spears becoming instruments for cultivation of food. But we do not wait idly, we contribute to the building of that peaceable kingdom which Jesus inaugurated with his death and resurrection. We cultivate inwardly and demonstrate outwardly that peace which was breathed by the Risen Christ upon the apostles.

25 September: Season of Creation, Blood upon the Rose.

Godshill, IoW.

I was looking for posts to mark the Season of Creation – which starts on 1 September, the Day of Prayer for Creation, and ends on 4 October, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology beloved by many Christian denominations. This poem leapt off the page.

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.
I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice—and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words. All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.

Joseph Plunkett

I learned that Joseph Plunkett was one of those who signed the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and he was executed for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising.

Shortly before his execution on May 4 1916, he married his fiancée, Grace Gifford, in the jail’s chapel. Plunkett was just 28 years old.

There are multiple painful contradictions here. How to reconcile Plunkett the poet of creation with Plunkett the man of violence against other men, created by God?

Meanwhile, when Plunkett was fighting for an Irish Republic, other young Irishmen were signing up to the British Army to fight the Kaiser. Their recruitment was not necessarily an exercise in honesty on the part of the authorities.

When I chose the Godshill Lily Cross to head this post I was forgetting that in the churchyard there is the grave of

THOMAS FRANCIS O’NEILL
A SOLDIER OF THE KINGDOM OF IRELAND
WHO DIED OCTOBER 18TH 1918
AGED 35 YEARS
R.I.P.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI

So, not every Irishman agreed with Plunkett. Thomas O’Neill saw things differently as his widow recorded on his memorial (but why did she erect this stone rather than the standard white Portland stone for War Graves?)

The Latin verse is another irony: ‘sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country’, an irony picked up by another poet, Wilfred Owen, who saw many men endure painful ends before dying himself in the last days of the War. Violence in Ireland continued for many years, and is not yet about to be forgotten or totally set aside.

Let us pray for peace, the peace implied in Plunkett’s words, peace on earth to people of good will, and peace to all creatures that share this world with humanity.

He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. Isaiah 2:4.

25 August: L’Arche pilgrimage I; Prayer by Therese Vanier

May oppressed people and those who oppress them set one another free.
May those who are disabled and those who think they are not, help one another.
May those who need someone to listen to them move the hearts of those who are too busy.
May the homeless give joy to those who, albeit unwillingly, open their door to them.
May the poor melt the hearts of the rich.
May those who seek the truth give life to those who are satisfied because they have already found it.
May the dying who do not want to die be comforted by those who find it very hard to live.
May those who are not loved be authorised to open the hearts of those who are not successful in loving.
May prisoners find true freedom and free others from fear.
May those who sleep on the streets share their kindness with those who do not manage to understand them.
May the hungry tear the veil from the eyes of those who do not hunger for justice.
May those who live without hope purify the hearts of their brothers and sisters who are afraid of living.
May the weak confuse the strong.
May hatred be surmounted by compassion.
May violence be neutralised by men and women of peace.
May it surrender to those who are totally vulnerable, so that we may be healed.
Therese Vanier

In L’Arche Kent Community Pilgrimage handbook 2022. Therese was one of the founders of L’Arche Kent in 1975.

11 August: Feast of Saint Clare; Pope Francis meets the Poor Clares

Pope Francis visited the Poor Clares, the Franciscan enclosed sisters, in Assisi on the World Day of the Poor, 19 November 2021. The report below is from Vatican News; we can gain some understanding of the contemplative calling, but also a few challenges for our own lives. Happy Feast Day!

Pope Francis asked the Franciscan nuns to pray for the Church so that it may not be corrupted by sin, calling on them to be attentive contemplatives. Pope Francis said attentiveness to the Lord requires having peace of mind, serenity of the heart and serenity of the hands, lest we miss Him when He passes by. It is not watching the world pass by and chatting from a window, but being aware of what is going on with a pure mind, thinking well and not badly of people, he remarked.A “serene heart” implies going back in memory to the origin of religious vocation, to the reason of God’s call, to love and let ourselves be loved.

There is also the serenity of the hands: hands must move not only to pray, but also “to work,” Pope Francis said, recalling St. Paul’s words in his Letter to the Thessalonians: “Whoever does not work, must not eat”.

When mind, heart and hands do what they have to do, consecrated people may find a balance which is “full of love and passion”, making it easy not to miss what the Lord tells us when He passes by.

He pointed to the core of the Poor Clares’ contemplative work: “You carry on your shoulders the problems of the Church, the pains of the Church and also – I dare say – the sins of the Church, our sins, the sins of the bishops, we are all sinful bishops; the sins of the priests; the sins of consecrated souls … And bring them before the Lord”.

The real danger in the Church is not being a sinner, but allowing oneself to be corrupted by sin, to the point of seeing sin as “a normal attitude” and not feeling the need to ask for God’s forgiveness. Pope Francis therefore called on the cloistered nuns to pray that corruption might not affect the Church, stressing that God “only asks our humility to ask for forgiveness.”

Concluding his speech, Pope Francis asked the Poor Clares to think and pray for the elderly, who are often considered “disposable”, for those families struggling to make ends meet so they can bring up their children well, and for young people and children exposed to so many threats and dangers in today’s world.

Finally he asked them to pray for the Church, in particular for priests and bishops so they consider themselves pastors and not “heads of office”.

10 August: Living in the light II

From a Pax Christi prayer car

This is a second extract from Archbishop Wester’s pastoral letter on nuclear weapons. He is Scriptural and concretely contemporary, challenging us to think, pray and act.

It is interesting to note that shortly after Jesus commanded His disciples to love their enemies, according to Luke’s account (9:54-55), they asked if they could kill their enemies. They wanted to call down hellfire from heaven on their enemies, as Elijah did. This passage is particularly important for us here in New Mexico . . .

One Samaritan village refused to welcome Jesus because He was heading toward Jerusalem where their enemies, the Judeans, lived. When James and John heard this, they asked Jesus, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?” (Luke 9:54). Jesus had just commanded them to practice universal love and creative nonviolence, to love even their enemies, yet here they were—ready to kill their enemies. They preferred the teachings of the prophet Elijah, who called down fire from heaven and killed his enemies. 

Luke says simply, “Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they journeyed to another village,” (9:55). 

Jesus rebuked the disciples because they wanted to call down fire from heaven. He absolutely forbids even the thought of it. He rejects violence of all kinds, including retaliation and warfare. He will not tolerate it among His followers. Jesus wants us to be as nonviolent and loving as He is, come what may. We are not allowed to kill people. 

Two thousand years later, here in New Mexico, we not only want to call down hellfire from heaven, but we have also actually built the most destructive weapons in history to do it, and then we used them to kill hundreds of thousands of sisters and brothers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then, we have built tens of thousands of more nuclear weapons that can destroy the entire human race. We have surpassed James and John, who wanted to call down hellfire from heaven. We have done this and continue to prepare to do this.