Sunday, 11 April, 2021, Divine Mercy Sunday.

 

Believing Thomas!

Thomas always seems to get a bad rap! He wants to check out what the other disciples have experienced is true. He asks good questions about how we experience life when he says if I don’t see it for myself, I cannot believe it is true. For him, faith is a personal journey even when he is encouraged by others. I feel that this is true for all of us and especially in our present age. While others can teach us about Jesus, it is only through personal experience that we learn to relate to Jesus. Even the best teacher or homilist can only lead us towards that experience, they cannot undertake the journey on our behalf. In fact, this is where we are called to begin our Easter journey. We are called to notice what happens in everyday life. To discover what leads us to an experience of life and not death. Where we find our hearts burning within us as we listen to scripture, pray and gather with others.

Yet in the reality of daily life, we are called to encounter the living wounds of Christ. Often around times of suffering and death, we experience different emotions of trauma and grief. This is perfectly natural and each of us with the support of others undertakes this part of the journey in life. What catches us by surprise is that the experience of passing through trauma and grief empowers us to encounter others in ways that bring hope and life. Much in the same way as Thomas meeting the Risen Christ, we put our hands in their side. Not to cause more grief and suffering but to encounter one heart beating in rhythm with our own.

In fact, there is often a tentativeness in each of us in standing with a community or an individual who has gone through an experience of deep grief. Often, we can be with them on Good Friday, but it is hard to stay with the silence of Holy Saturday which marks the transition to Easter Sunday. Often it is this waiting that frustrates and worries us. There is a tendency which wishes to rush a person through their experience of suffering and death because it disturbs us with our own mortality. Yet if we can wait with the person and their questions like Thomas, it opens up space within us to touch the heart of another. Often this is done with hesitation when we ask for one thing but do not expect the response to be invited in. This is a place of profound trust and vulnerability. It is in fact what Jesus invites Thomas to do. To make the first tentative steps to sense his heart beating in time with our own. Easter is a time when we are called to trust and have faith that Jesus will surprise us often in our everyday encounters. In many ways, he uses the same words: “Do not be afraid, put your hand into my side”. Trust that even in our deepest questions and our darkest night, Christ’s light will shine.

Fr. John Armstrong

4th Sunday of Lent – 14th March

 What bites us may not kill us!

 The image of Jesus suffering on the cross has often been one of the most confronting images in which we encounter a God who self-empties everything for our good. This is a very disturbing reality for most of us as we discover a God who is vulnerable and who can suffer with us and for us. There is a part of us that wishes to save Jesus from this suffering but there is also another part of us that recognises that our own personal suffering afflicts our own body. None of us is immune to the afflictions which can cause us mental, physical and spiritual pain. There is an acknowledgement that Jesus’ total offering of self for the good of another can help us to experience not only a deeper insight into our own life but also how we are called to become vulnerable to what seems unspeakable.

This reality can become part of our own Lenten experience. Through our own penance, fasting and almsgiving we discover that there is an inward desire to encounter God as ourselves. This can be about losing our false image of self which seeks to control outcomes, seeking quick fixes and listening all too easily to the solutions which are not meant for us. Lent ultimately seeks us to encounter God in our own poverty, powerlessness and frailty. This allows us to abandon our whole life into the loving embrace of God who does not seek counterfeit affection but an inward desire which wells up within us. This seeks for us to become real and become who God desires us to be.

So here we stand at Laudate Sunday hoping beyond hope that our lives are centred on the one person who matters. To discover in the midst of our daily confusion, struggles, sadnesses and the pressures of life that there is a God who sustains us in love, hope and peace. This does mean abandoning our plans but rather encountering a God who seeks to bring them to fruition with a graced awareness. The recognition that God sustains us when we make the first step. Thus, our mediation on the cross sees our own vulnerability in his own. That our lives are open to God who is all in all.

Fr. John Armstrong

3rd Sunday of Lent – 7th March

Can we buy off God?

 

 Sometimes our prayers of intercession can sound more like a wish list where we try to bargain with God. We seek to influence a particular outcome in our favour and we would like God to see it from our point of view. Often this can seem like we keep badgering God with the same request even though it may not be what God sees as the best for us. There can be a tendency to see this is as a transaction which if I pay a certain amount of money, undertake a particular sacrifice or spend a certain time in prayer that God will respond more favourably to my request. There may even be a subtle thought that if I do this God owes me the solution which is most beneficial to my circumstances.

Yet sometimes it is in our disappointments that God encounters us as we truly are. The most significant insight is that we cannot buy God off and seek him to compensate us with a certain reward for our good behaviour. Regardless of our action or inaction the love of God is constant and I believe this is what Jesus notices in the turn over of the tables in the temple. His frustration and anger are not that people are seeking to develop a relationship with God but the thought that it can be turned into a transactional relationship. Jesus desires us to encounter God in a way that transforms our lives into a way that brings us into a deeper faith, hope and charity.

I believe this is where our Lenten discipline is the most challenging because it is not what we give up but rather how we abandon everything over to God. This profound surrender seeks to engage our whole being, heart, mind and body in a way of living which acknowledges our total dependence on God’s loving presence in our lives. It is when we do that out of a profound union with the person who loves us most deeply that we start to discover who it is that we are called to be and how we are to act. It allows trust to be discovered which build up a sense of mutuality that we are created in God’s image and likeness. There is a sense that God desires what will bring us the greatest happiness and the best contribution that we can make to our own community. Lent is not what we give up but rather the relationship we are drawn into that recognises that even in our frailty, sinfulness and limited vision that God calls us to see with eternal vision. To notice how God’s presence transforms our world for good!

Fr. John Armstrong

1st Sunday of Lent – 21st February

What do we thirst for?

 

Lent is a time when we are driven out into the desert to face our own demons. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of daily life, we often are drawn to events outside of us which seem to crowd out our inner lives. There are bills to pay, people to meet, appointments to be kept and items to be purchased. Our lives can become simply a to-do list which we mark off with an inevitability there will be more things to be done. There can seem to be a relentless pressure to perform and meet the expectations of others. That there never seem enough hours in a day to attend to what we consider important.

Yet Lent is really a time when we could consider a to-be list. How have we been present to our daily activities with a spirit of thanksgiving and gratitude? What has helped us to notice the graced moments where God draws our attention to beauty, creativity and wonder? They may only be simple things like a person who unexpectedly smiles and wishes us a good day. The person who recognises that we may need encouragement with a particularly difficult task or even a person who agrees to accompany us to a doctor appointment. These are all things that we can take for granted but they transform lives.

In a similar way, we can see what most easily allows us to review what is bringing us life and leading us to a more wholesome way of living. This can be as simple as seeking to notice what we truly hunger for and what satisfies us. It can also notice what seems to be a dead weight on us and which we endure rather than carry. There are situations in life where we will all encounter difficulties but how do we find ways in which we can bring a sense of joy and peace to what to many would seem a crushing weight. 

There can also be those times when we are distracted from the very good that we seek to do by things that have the appearance of being urgent rather than important. When we notice that we are spending time on things which do not help us or others we can start to make changes which open us to the more creative use of our day. We can also become aware of the direction in which our life is taking and make small course changes which direct us to a more prayerful way of living.

In the end, Lent is about preparing ourselves for the renewal which comes about through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Recognising those things which are obstacles to the way of life we seek to live, to discover the truth which will sustain us on the journey to becoming fully alive.

Fr. John Armstrong

5^th Sunday in Ordinary Time – 7^th February

The next obvious step

 Mary Mackillop was always looking for opportunities in which she could apply the teaching of the Gospel to the life of the community in which she lived. She saw an urgency which did not put the work of today in the hope of what might happen in the future. She was not one for rainy days in which action could be postponed when it was clear that she could make a difference at this moment.

As we read through the first reading from Job for this weekend, we can have an impression that it is just one thing after another. Yet I feel this misses the point he is making which is to be present to the situation we are in rather than seeing life as an endless progression of time in which we always anticipate something in the future but never experience it now. Paul takes this theme up when he talks about preaching the gospel not as a task to be fulfilled but a life to be lived. He saw himself as sharing his life with the people he met so that he could identify the graced action which was needed. In the same way, Jesus sees the immediate need and responds to it. When he discovers Simon Peter’s mother-in-law sick, he attends to her need for healing. She responds by showing her thanks by attending to his needs. It is this ability to see the need in the life of another which draws us to be people of healing and reconciliation.

The main thing in exercising these good works is not to draw attention to ourselves but to enable us to hear the Good News at work in our lives and the lives of ordinary people. It is by doing ordinary things extraordinarily well that we discover how God opens up our minds and hearts to the people in our square metre. To encounter them prayerfully and holistically. To see the person who is in need and to take the next obvious step.

Fr. John Armstrong