7 April, Easter and Jeremiah XXXIV: My New Covenant with you.

The promises made through the words of Jeremiah are fulfilled in Jesus’ life, passion, death and resurrection, so let’s return to the prophet to see Easter in the context of Salvation History.

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

Our covenant should be with God but translated into our earthly daily life: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. If God’s law is written in our hearts, that is how we will act. If only, you say. More likely we will be trying to teach our neighbour, teach our siblings, teach our grandmother even.

We can do better than that with the New Covenant in our hearts. Let us allow ourselves to be transformed, as Mary Magdalene was on that first Easter morning in the garden. Let us look on each other as forgiven sinners, every man and woman of us, every one of us saved.

( Jeremiah 31:31-34)

5 April: Praying with Pope Francis, For the role of Women.

We pray for the dignity and worth of women
to be recognised in every culture,
and for an end to the discrimination they face
in various parts of the world.

This pot is part of our Easter Garden at Saint Mildred’s in Canterbury. It represents Mary Magdalene who had walked with Jesus through the Holy Land, who had supported him with her own money, who had stood by the Cross as he died, who came to anoint his body on Easter morning, who met him risen in the garden.

Mary Magdalene helped to make Jesus’ mission possible, and brought her practical skills to the fellowship of the disciples. Today, let us discern and recognise the many ways in which women build up the Church and give thanks for them. Let us celebrate their gifts and graces. Let us enable and encourage them to take on roles new to women in the Church.

1 April: A Test of Faith

Early on Sunday morning, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb and found the stone had been rolled back. She peered in and, as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw it was empty. She was weeping. This Easter we, like Mary, are peering into the darkened tomb. The darkness we are experiencing is the death and destruction in Gaza.

Thousands have been killed and people are on the edge of starvation. Mary asks the angels in white: Where is the Lord? We are asking, in this time of great sadness: Where are you, Lord? Where is our hope? Surely this Easter isn’t the time to cry Alleluia and sing songs of praise. But just at that moment, like Mary, we turn and see Jesus. He is standing with us and he says our name. We, like Mary — say Rab-boni-, teacher.

Abbot Nikodemus Schnabel (of Jerusalem’s Dormition Abbey) reminds us that Easter is an important test of faith for all Christians ‘because it is the key moment to know if we really trust in God and if we really believe what we celebrate. After the catastrophe, are we waiting for Easter? Do we truly believe in redemption?’ And he added: ‘As a rational citizen of this world, I can only see war, suffering, hate, violence. But as a man of faith, I trust that my God can redeem, can save this world, can heal, and can create new life. Forgiveness. Mercy. That’s what we celebrate in Holy Week and at Easter. I hope for all Christians that there will be a new beginning and new hope, new life.’

Last week, Pope Francis wrote a letter to the people of the Holy Land, in which he said:

In these bleak times, when it seems that the dark clouds of Good Friday hover over your land, and all too many parts of our world are scarred by the pointless folly of war — which is always and for everyone a bitter defeat — you are lamps shining in the night, seeds of goodness in a land rent asunder by conflict.

More than ever we affirm that our hope is in the risen Christ, that Jesus is Saviour and has conquered death. As we begin our celebration of Easter, let us affirm that Jesus is our peace. We know that it is the Lord who sets the human heart free from hatred, violence and the spirit of revenge.

Father Giovanni and I wish you every blessing for Easter. Thank you, to all those who have helped in any way to enable us all to celebrate these past days with joy and solemnity. May the Risen Christ fill your minds and hearts with wisdom, love, joy and courage, that you may know him in the breaking of bread and follow him in his risen life.

Thank you to Fr Anthony Charlton for this reflection from Saint Thomas of Canterbury.

15 May: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary

A SONG FOR ALL MARIES

Our Master lies asleep and is at rest;
His Heart has ceased to bleed, His Eye to weep.
The sun ashamed has dropt down in the west;
Our Master lies asleep.

Now we are they who weep, and trembling keep
Vigil, with wrung heart in a sighing breast,
While slow time creeps, and slow the shadows creep.

Renew Thy youth, as eagle from the nest;
O Master, who hast sown, arise to reap:
No cock-crow yet, no flush on eastern crest;
Our Master lies asleep.

Christina Rossetti is an Easter person, as is Mary Magdalene and the Other Mary, Jesus’ mother. Together keeping vigil, the cock-crow they await brings not betrayal but renewal and rising.

31 March, Lenten Pilgrimage XXII: Mary Magdalene

Mary Magdalene
       
WHEN blessed Mary wiped her Saviour’s feet,
(Whose precepts she had trampled on before)
And wore them for a jewel on her head,
    Showing his steps should be the street,
    Wherein she thenceforth evermore
With pensive humbleness would live and tread :

She being stained herself, why did she strive
To make him clean, who could not be defiled?
Why kept she not her tears for her own faults,
    And not his feet? Though we could dive
    In tears like seas, our sins are piled
Deeper than they, in words, and works, and thoughts.

Dear soul, she knew who did vouchsafe and deign
To bear her filth ; and that her sins did dash
Even God himself ; wherefore she was not loath,
    As she had brought wherewith to stain,
    So to bring in wherewith to wash :
And yet in washing one, she washed both.

George Herbert.

Holy Week is almost upon us. We will meet Mary Magdalene on Good Friday, beside the Cross as Jesus dies and again, early on Sunday morning, when she comes to the tomb to anoint the body of her Lord and friend. It is Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus who tends to Jesus’ feet in John 12. The other woman, the sinful one, who appears in the other Gospels is not named and is not Mary Magdalene!

But let’s set aside that matter and ask what is going on in this poem. This ‘Mary’ is called ‘blessed’ – she is forgiven, and knows Jesus brought this about. Not that Simon the Pharisee was aware of the change in her; she was still a sinner in his estimation, so a woman to be avoided.

She knew that her sins were deep ‘in words, work and thought’ but she knew well that the Lord had set her relationship with him on the right path. Jesus had already, in earthly time, forgiven her. Now, in washing Jesus’ feet, making them briefly into hair ornaments as she wiped them, she also cleanses herself in a symbolic gesture of repentance, of her changed life, her forgiven life.

And of course, she and Mary of Bethany had the idea of symbolic foot washing before Jesus did it on Maundy Thursday.

February 21: When The Thorn Blows

Another Mary Webb poem to enjoy, especially if her melancholy is a mood you can share. When will her love come to her? Even the wet stones are beautiful, the wind’s roar abates within the wood so that on the lee side he can pause to pay court to the blackthorn, one of the first trees to flower in Spring. But when will her love come to her?

Even Mary Magdalene did not recognise he beloved Jesus on Easter morning; how many times do we miss an encounter with him, though he sets dawn, sunlight and morning birds to call to us: oh, my love! when will you come to me?

Dawn glimmers white beyond the burning hill
Where sunbeams light a fire in every tree.
The morning bird is singing clear and shrill;
And oh, my love! when will you come to me?

The daisies whitely sleep beneath the dew;
On the wet road the stones are fair to see;
Cloudy, the blackthorn floats upon the blue;
And oh, my love! when will you come to me?

The wind came walking in the shaken wood;
He shouted from the mountains and the sea.
By the pale thorn he paused, in lover’s mood–
And oh, my love! when will you come to me?.

My heart has blossomed meekly as the thorn;
It has its dews, and daisies two or three.
The heavens quicken, green as April corn–
And oh, my love! when will you come to me?

20 April: The Forgotten Grave.

This very chapel and its graveyard are all but forgotten as the village it served has moved three kilometres away.

After a hundred years 
Nobody knows the place, — 
Agony, that enacted there, 
Motionless as peace. 

Weeds triumphant ranged, 
Strangers strolled and spelled 
At the lone orthography 
Of the elder dead. 

Winds of summer fields 
Recollect the way, — 
Instinct picking up the key 
Dropped by memory.
 

From Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete, via Kindle.

Two thousand years on, and people know the place of Christ’s agony in the garden, his further agony and death on Calvary; the place of his tomb; they visit them in their thousands every year.

But did Mary Magdalene return to the tomb – or Peter or John – after Easter? Mary took the Lord’s message to the Apostles: they were to take themselves to Galilee, they knew the way. Before long Peter was leading them out to the boats for a fishing expedition. But the winds of summer seas would take most of them far away, to where people were waiting to hear the Good News from the fishers of men and women. No need for the disciples to revisit the empty tomb, but James and his church in Jerusalem surely remembered and marked the spot.

We cannot all hope to visit the Holy Land, but we can go to Mass this Easter time, or slip into the back of any church, acknowledge the ever-present risen Lord, and then … go back home, back to our daily lives, to glorify the Lord by our life. To share the Good News, mostly without words, but living as other Christs in today’s world, letting the Spirit speak through our instinct.

10 April: Palm Sunday, The Passion and I.

Good Friday

Am I a stone and not a sheep
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy Cross,
To number drop by drop Thy Blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?

 Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
 Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon,--
I, only I.

 Yet give not o'er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.

Christina Rossetti

This post card was sent home by a man who himself never came home from the Great War. Ironically, it was produced in Munich, sent home to Manchester from Poperinghe in Belgium, and saved by the recipient and her descendants.

Christina Rossetti puts herself with Mary, Jesus’ mother, Mary Magdalene and other women who stood weeping, next to the Cross, owning a lack of tears on her own part. Poetic licence, I feel. Her heart in this poem is full of sorrow and self-accusation, but she is also repentant, asking God to strike her stony heart, as he commanded Moses to strike to rock in the desert:

“Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink.” (Exodus 17:1-7).

If the Lord makes our hearts run with tears, whether physical or inner tears, will we give the people living water to drink?

27 March, Laetare Sunday: Make an Easter Garden.

Laetare Sunday is three weeks before Easter. ‘Laetare’ means ‘rejoice’, have a joyful Sunday! Perhaps this is a good time to think ahead to Easter, so here’s a project for you. Last year Vincent and Maurice made Easter Gardens for the locked-down L’Arche Kent houses, and the slide show tells how we did it.

You don’t need to use big pots like these, especially if yours will be displayed indoors. Ours were outside people’s houses or St Mildred’s church for a few weeks, so we used big pots to keep the plants alive.

We think the houses could make their own gardens this year, so here’s our helpful guide. You’ve got three weeks, so start off by collecting the pits and pieces. Don’t forget to share your photos by emailing maurice.billingsley1@btopenworld.com .

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14 September:The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

When did the Church come into being? Egyptian Christians say the first Church was in their land, when Joseph led Mary and Baby Jesus to exile in what is now Cairo; others point to Pentecost, the day when the tongues of fire came down upon the 120 core members of the Church of Christ’s followers, women and men, including the Apostles and Mary his mother. You could suggest also the calling of the twelve, the sending out of the seventy, among many other key moments in the development of the community that took over Jesus’s mission; but one I had not considered was the taking down of the crucified corpse of the Lord, and the hurried burial in the garden tomb.

The Visual Commentary on Scripture recently published a reflection on this event, titled The Birth of the Church. At this critical moment, the Church had to come together to do what needed doing for his Body; the Church that was now his Body, led by two previously marginal men, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.

Paul Anel addresses this short moment through three works of art, by Rublev, Caravaggio and Michelangelo, and both the reflections and the art can be found by clicking on the link above.

And this link connects to Sister Johanna’s next reflection on the Psalms as personal prayer.

What about the angry psalms – often called the cursing psalms – where the psalmist is ranting and raving and just lets it rip against his enemies?  What about them?  Should we be embarrassed about them, and try to hide them in a dark corner where no one will notice them?