22 March, Lenten Pilgrimage XVI: lead us to the fullness of life

Once again we gladly share some wise reflections from Canon Anthony Charlton, parish priest of Saint Thomas, Canterbury. Thank you Father Anthony! Something to think about on our Lenten Pilgrimage.

At the end of his teaching on the beatitudes, Raniero Cantalamessa OFM CAP says, “The best way to take the Gospel beatitudes seriously is to use them as a mirror for an examination of conscience that is truly ‘evangelical’”.

Here are some questions that can help;

Is my deepest desire for God or for passing things that only bring temporary comfort?
Do I depend on good feelings, or do I accept that doing God’s will sometimes involves the acceptance of enormous pain?
Am I seduced by power, or am I prepared to allow God’s power to reign in me?
Do I strive for holiness, or am I, at times, satisfied with mediocrity and lukewarmness?
When a brother, a sister, or a co-worker demonstrates a fault, do I react with judgement or mercy?
Are my intentions pure? Do I say yes and no as Jesus did? The clearest opposite of purity of heart is hypocrisy. Whom do I seek to please by my actions: God or other people?
Am I addicted to the approval of others?
Am I a peacemaker? Do I bring peace to different sides? How do I behave when there are conflicts of opinion or conflicts of interest?
Is the peace of God in my heart, and if not, why not?
Am I ready to suffer in silence for the gospel? How do I react when facing a wrong or an injury I received?

When we read or listen to the Beatitudes, we have a portrait of Jesus himself. He gives us these beatitudes as a way of true happiness that will lead us to the fullness of life.

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8 May: VE Day

Sheep under cherry trees, near Faversham, Kent.

I seldom revisit reflections in Agnellus Mirror but an old friend sent a springtime video with fallen cherry petals, which reminded me of this post from two years ago.

We began with lines from Edward Thomas:

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding
On the old road where all that passed are dead,
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed.

Two years ago the weddings were put off because of covid-19. In Edward Thomas’s time it was war, and today, it is war once again that darkens the horizons of our hopes and aspirations. But there will be a May wedding at St Mildred’s, and there was one on the last day of April 2022. Kentish men are not being called on to fight, but we can see the horrors of war in Ukraine. It is hard to read Bishop Claude’s words from yesterday without asking, in bewilderment and grief, ‘What is the wise course of action?’ What does a peacemaker do in these times? Please revisit the old post by the link, and then here is Bishop Claude again.

Respect for life does not stop at protecting the unborn, but must include opposing all oppression, all forms of violence and of war. The non-violence advocated by Gandhi has its roots in the Beatitudes, is part of our Gospel heritage: Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called the children of God. No war can be counted as legitimate or justified in the name of the Gospel. Non-violence is part and parcel of the creative act of God.

7 May: The Holy Land is here.

A street of 19th Century homes in Canterbury.

Bishop Claude Rault is writing about respect for life. A timely reminder of our responsibility to the Planet and for each other. May we be peacemakers, children of God.

The tiniest baby, dying at birth in the furthest corner of the Planet, in the eyes of God is worthy of respect … is unique, created by God’s will, sacred, loved by Him. All of creation is sacred, all of Creation is a Holy Land. It is wrong to limit the Holy Land to one single region since God became flesh of our flesh. All the Land is Holy, and it is a noble vocation to seek to safeguard and develop it. Our Christian commitment is a commitment to safeguard life, to watch and waken life. It is not enough to respect life and admire creation, we must be engaged on every field where life is threatened and despised. Respect for life does not stop at protecting the unborn, but must include opposing all oppression, all forms of violence and of war. The non-violence advocated by Gandhi has its roots in the Beatitudes, is part of our Gospel heritage: Blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called the children of God. No war can be counted as legitimate or justified in the name of the Gospel. Non-violence is part and parcel of the creative act of God.

Claude Rault, Jesus, l’Homme de la rencontre, Marseille, Publications Chemin de Dialogue, 2020, pp46-47.

June 15: Today this is my vocation III, from the Shaker Cook Book.

The Shakers were North American Christians who lived in big celibate communities in the XIX Century. I happened on Caroline Piercy’s Shaker Cook Book a couple of months ago, and would like to share this passage about the vocation of daily life as they lived it.

According to the Shaker belief, work and worship are intricately intertwined: ‘give your hands to work and your heart to God,’ was their well-known motto. It is by the fruits of their labour that they became known as craftsmen of great skill and complete honesty.

To the Shakers, or Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, as they chose to call themselves, their sole purpose in life was to establish God’s Kingdom here upon earth. Their hands, their minds, their hearts were wholly dedicated to that end, and therefore their vast kitchens and numerous workshops were as sacred to them as were their meeting houses and assembly halls. Their religion taught that man was put into this world in order to establish ‘Heavens on Earth’ where universal peace, genuine brotherly love and complete honesty reigned.

Caroline B Piercy, The Shaker Cook Book, Not by Bread Alone: Crown Publishing, NY, 1953. p13.

26 September: Prayer at the start of an academic year.

Samuel Johnson was a journalist and writer rather than an academic, though he often went back to Oxford. He wrote the following prayer on this day in 1765; it seems totally appropriate for the start of this academic year, when resolutions to study well may be difficult to keep without the support of tutors and fellow students. Have a good year!

Almighty GOD, the giver of wisdom, without whose help resolutions are vain, without whose blessing study is ineffectual; enable me, if it be thy will, to attain such knowledge as may qualify me to direct the doubtful, and instruct the ignorant; to prevent wrongs and terminate contentions; and grant that I may use that knowledge which I shall attain, to thy glory and my own salvation, for JESUS CHRIST’S sake. Amen

Life of Johnson, Volume 1 1709-1765″ by James Boswell.

Image, Johnson’s statue, Lichfield

Source	https://www.flickr.com/photos/ell-r-brown/3672680073/
Author	Elliot Brown

3 December: Whose sacrifice? Francis and his Father.

Here, as promised, is Francis as a young man giving back to his father the fine clothes he had earned or been given in the course of the family business. During Mass at the Upper Basilica in Assisi, we found ourselves seated next to this Giotto fresco. A rather worried looking bishop is covering Francis’s nakedness with a towel. I can’t help but wonder what is going through the episcopal mind: this is not an everyday scene. Was he trying to keep the peace between father and son?

Many families have moments of truth, if less dramatic. We don’t expect our children to turn their backs so determinedly on all that we parents have worked for, worked hard for in the case of the prosperous merchant: his long days of travelling, hours of hard bargaining and of learning to appreciate the skill of the weavers and embroiderers who supplied him. Perhaps the bishop’s own vestments were cut from Mr Bernadone’s cloth, but he saw that it was good, and so was the comfortable family life it brought.

Francis is not turning his back on his father and on riches, but in a gesture of prayer, he offers them to his Creator. He is learning how to be a creature, rather than a self-made man.

So who is called to sacrifice here? Francis has made his decision and by this gesture he makes it public. He will live openly dependent on God, utterly crazy in the eyes of his father who has constructed a secure home with every mod con, including servants. Peter Bernadone can see poverty any time he cares to look for it and he shuns it, the cold, filth, hunger poor people endured then.

Letting his son go must have been a wrenching, tremendous sacrifice; so I wonder who needed the bishop most, once this scene was over, the son or the father?

Abraham was called, challenged, to sacrifice his son, only for Isaac to be restored and redeemed, sent back to become a patriarch, an ancestor of God’s people. Francis was to live largely under the family’s eye, dying at the bottom of the hill on which Assisi is built, a daily challenge to his former circle.

Let us pray for the wisdom  to handle moments of truth without antagonising any of the parties involved, and for the grace to be close to our families in times of trial and times of joy.

WT

Image from Wikipedia

 

 

2 December: Reminder, Carol Service tomorrow

We recently posted a notice for the Amos Trust Carol Service in Canterbury in aid of peace making in  Palestine.

This service will be tomorrow, 3 December, from 19:00 – 21:00, at St Paul’s Church, Canterbury CT1 1NH.

Join us when the Amos Trust Bethlehem Christmas carol service tour stops off at St Paul’s in Canterbury, where we’ll be joined by Sami Awad from Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem plus special guest performers.

Sami is a leading Palestinian peace activist who will be explaining why non-violence is at the heart of the Christmas message and of his family in Gaza. All proceeds will go to our 2019 Christmas appeal for our partners in Gaza and the home and peace-building work of Holy Land Trust.

Please join us.

28 November: the Amos Trust Carol Service in Canterbury

Join us when the Amos Trust Bethlehem Christmas carol service tour stops off in Canterbury on Tuesday, 3 December, from 19:00 – 21:00 at St Paul’s Church, CT1 1NH

 

 

About this Event

Join us when the Amos Trust Bethlehem Christmas carol service tour stops off at St Paul’s in Canterbury, where we’ll be joined by Sami Awad from Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem plus special guest performers.

Sami is a leading Palestinian peace activist who will be explaining why non-violence is at the heart of the Christmas message and of his family in Gaza. All proceeds will go to our 2019 Christmas appeal for our partners in Gaza and the home and peace-building work of Holy Land Trust.

Please join us.

The tour will be part of Ahlan Gaza, our new campaign that aims to share stories of life in the Gaza Strip. Join us and our very special guests as we turn our hearts and minds to Gaza to start the Christmas season.

14 November – A Peace Dividend

I recently visited Northern Ireland for the first time in many years. Belfast looked cleaner and more prosperous, although the murals and the flags on lampposts spoke of tensions that have not disappeared.

The day after my meeting I took a bus to Dublin. A bus from the Republic, running a cross-border service. No halt as we passed from one jurisdiction to the other; if I’d been looking the other way I’d have missed the border altogether.

Most passengers got down at Dublin airport, as it serves more destinations than Belfast; when we reached central Dublin the bus parked at the Busaras (bus station) like those from Sligo or Cork or Galway. And we arrived on time.

That was an example of a poetic timetable!

But we need planners as well as poets, hard heads as well as soft hearts. Such people go unsung, even unfairly criticised for lack of vision, but they have contributed to the changes in Ireland, the Balkans, the Horn of Africa …

God send us more of them!

MMB

March 4: Little Flowers of Saint Francis XVI: The Spinning Friar’s Spinning Thoughts.

Brother Masseo went by the way murmuring within himself, saying: “What is this that this good man hath done? Me he made to turn round and round like a little child, and to the bishop who hath done him such honour, he hath said not even a word, nor given him thanks withal ”; and to Brother Masseo it seemed that Saint Francis had borne himself therein without discretion.

But anon by divine inspiration coming to himself again, and chiding himself within his heart, Brother Masseo said: “Thou art too proud, who dost judge the works of God, and art worthy of hell for thy undiscerning pride; for yesterday did Brother Francis work such mighty works that, if the Angel of God had wrought them, they had not been more marvellous : wherefore, if he had bidden thee throw stones, thou shouldst have done it and obeyed: for what he did upon the way proceeded forth of God’s own working, as was set forth by the good ending that followed thereon; for had he not made peace between those that were at strife with each other, not only many bodies would have been stabbed to death, as had indeed begun to be, but many souls also the devil would have dragged to hell: wherefore most foolish art thou and proud that murmurest at that which manifestly cometh forth from out the will of God.”

And all these things that Brother Masseo spake within his heart, going on in front, were revealed of God unto Saint Francis. Wherefore Saint Francis, coming close up to him, spake thus: “Hold fast the things that now are in thy thoughts, for they are good and useful and inspired of God ; but thy first murmuring was blind and vain and proud, and by the devil set within thy mind.”

Thereby did Brother Masseo clearly see that Saint Francis knew the secrets of his heart, and for a surety understand that the spirit of divine wisdom did guide the holy father in all his acts.