We are grateful to the Chaplain of the Grand Priory, Monsignor John Armitage, for sending the text of his wonderful Meditation for Advent, given as we prepared ourself for Christmas, for many of us the most usual Christmas of our lives.
While this may seem unfortunately late, we must remember the God's eternity is not our earthly time, which truth Holy Mother Church signals to us in the ever-turning wheel of the Church's Calendar. So it does not really matter when we read things, and indeed, as so many of us are alone and quiet this year, rereading within the Octave of the Nativity of Our Blessed Lord the spiritual preparation for the Feast we have just celebrated will allow us to revisit its glorious message of Salvation and enter deeper into the Mystery. So do not just pass it by! The Truth is for all Time!
The Meditation was given at the Assumption Warwick Street, on Thursday 17th December. It was followed, most appropriately, by the blessing of the new Shrine of Saint John Henry Newman, a reliquary-bust made by our illustrious sculptor confrere Dr Neil Weir. The officiant for this, and for Benediction, was our chaplain Mgr Keith Newton. A report on this will follow tomorrow.
So often we don’t feel like praying, this is often because of the many distractions that come along when we set out to pray. If we only pray when we are in the mood, our prayer will be determined by our feelings – praying when I feel like it! Choice as opposed to feelings, feeling is about emotions, choices are about the decisions we make in life. Freedom of choice can be good or bad, freedom to choose is not to simply choose what we want but to choose the good.
Pope Francis recently said that “we are not living in an era of change, but a change of era.” reflecting onthe loss of faith in our present generation. The extraordinary truth is that men and women have lost sight of the ordinary truth built on faith in God, a reality that helps us find the meaning of life outside of ourselves, in order that we may find the purpose of life within ourselves. We have failed to see the God who is around us, because we have been blinded by the things that are around us. We fail to recognise that there are two realities in life – Spiritual and Material. When the material realities of life overwhelm us, we need the spiritual realities to help us regain our balance once again. One description of the search for this balance is given in the title and contents of a remarkable book written after the Second World War by Victor Frankel, “Man’s Search for Meaning”. In the darkness and suffering of the Camps, he reflects on the strengths that in the face of such inhumanity, men and women were still able to navigate their way through the appalling “events”that threatened to overwhelm them. “We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of breed. They may have been few in number, but they are sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. And there were always choices to be made. In the final analysis it became clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him. Mentally and spiritually. It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that make life meaningful and purposeful.” (P86, Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankel)
For so many, life has lost its meaning, the anaesthetics of modern life fail to compensate for the loss of a faith in something greater than ourselves which helps us understand ourselves. Having more, is no substitute for being more! You only find yourself by finding God, and in finding God we discover ourselves...
St Matthew’s Gospel illustrates the effect of this loss “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its savour, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” (Matthew 5:13) So many of our brothers and sisters feel “thrown out and trampled by men.”
In this extraordinary time of loss of meaning and darkness for so many, we are asked once again to bring the Good News to the Poor to the ones who have lost the “savour” of life so that by an encounter with the Good News they may ask the question arising from their sense of loss “what can make it salty again”! and find the answer to their question.
Reading the Signs of the Times
“Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.' You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” (Matthew 16:3) Surely this is the first challenge that we face, yet we so often jump this essential step and go straight to proclamation and giving the answer, but if you are not asking the question you are not interested in the answer for you don’t understand the question! One of the major obstacles to this searching for meaning in life is human inertia, complacency. Why should I search? Things are going fine. I'm basically satisfied. This is the anaesthesia of the materialistic world. The pilgrimage of faith only begins in earnest when you sense that something has been, lost, something is missing, and there must be more to life than this. Reading the signs of the times, enables us to speak prophetically, identifying what has been lost, what is missing, to our prodigal brothers and sisters so that they may return to their loving Father who awaits them. So, the first step in evangelisation is to read the signs of the times. This is what PopeSaintJohn Paul II intended to convey in his great challenge to the modern Church: “Heralds of the Gospel are needed who are experts in humanity”.
Through our desire to know Jesus in prayer, we may then speak like Jesus with authority, not the authority of power or position but the authority of the prophet, the one who knows what they are talking about because they have they accepted, treasured and pondered the Word of Life, which has enlightened them to think with the mind of Christ, and becoming Heralds of the Gospel – “experts in humanity, because we have penetrated the depths of the hearts of men and women of today, sharing their joys and hopes, their anguishes and sorrows, but who are at the same time contemplative, in love with God.” We cannot understand ourselves, unless in prayer we seek to understand the message of Jesus, and only then, will we understand the world in which we live, and the people who we share our lives with.
As we read the Signs of the Times in the light of God’s Word, we begin to understand the questions of the times and we are able to speak to the concerns of the day. A classic example are the words of three modern prophets St John Paul, Pope Benedict and Pope Francis, we hear them addressing the concerns of our world is in the area of ecology. St John Paul and Pope Francis speak of ecology, human ecology.
“Neglecting to monitor the harm done to nature and the environmental impact of our decisions is only the most striking sign of a disregard for the message contained in the structures of nature itself. When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities – to offer just a few examples – it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected. Once the human being declares independence from reality and behaves with absolute dominion, the very foundations of our life begin to crumble, for “instead of carrying out his role as a co-operator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature”.
St John Paul observed that “not only has God given the earth to man, who must use it with respect for the original good purpose for which it was given to him, but man too is God’s gift to man… the proper stewardship of the natural world is a good that is required of humanity. However, a balanced view of ecology begins with a correct understanding of the ecology of the human person.
The solution to the problem of environmental change will only lie in addressing the cause of such change, human behaviour. If we do not care for human beings how will we care for the place where human beings live even as “the very foundations of our life begin to crumble?” What has the Church to offer? The answer lies in the offer of friendship with Jesus Christ whom the Catholic Church proclaims to be the answer to the question that is in every human life. The offer also includes proposing truths essential to the rescue of the modern project from its own self-demolition: truths whose reality and veracity can be engaged by all people of good will.” (George Weigel, The Catholic Moment. First Things, Oct 2019)
When we see through the eyes of Christ, we begin to understand that this desire “to do my own thing” is in fact a misdirected inner desire of every person, which reflects our uniqueness as a human being. Without faith, this uniqueness can be turned in on itself, and we fail to see the bigger picture of life and end up only seeing the small picture of my own life.
The Renewal of the Church by Holiness
So, I come to the final point which is beautifully given at the end of the quotation by St John Paul where he calls for “Heralds of the Gospel, who are experts in humanity, who have penetrated the depths of the hearts of men and women of today, who share their joys and hopes, their anguishes and sorrows, but who are at the same time contemplative, in love with God.” We have reflected in this talk that these Heralds must first read the signs of the times in the light of the Gospel. By their life and witness, they will “raise up irresistible questions” in the lives of those around themas they see how they live.They must recognise and understand the “Pagan Temples” of our time and enable people to be “converted from the worship of idols to the worship of the true God”; inspired by the Holy Spirit they will work with all people of good will to build a new Human ecology to address the ever increasing needs of today’s world, and in our own communities we must create a new culture of vocation, turning the destructive individualism of our present age into a celebration of the unique and sacred nature of every person from the cradle to the grave.
This is what we must do, the final question is how do it? St John Paul gives us the answer, we must become contemplatives in love with God for “The saints were the great evangelisers of Europe. We must beg Our Lord to instil the spirit of sanctity in the Church and send us new saints to evangelize the world of today.” This was addressed by Pope Benedict during his visit to the UK “Christ therefore invites us to become saints; we are not to be content with second best. The key to it is very simple – true happiness is to be found in God. We need to have the courage to place our deepest hopes in God alone, for only he can satisfy the deepest needs of our hearts.”
The answer for us lies deeply rooted in the life and charism of our beloved Order. We are told “one of the paths towards Christian perfection, towards living up to our call to love God and our neighbour, is membership of the Order of Malta, where the purpose of the Order is the promotion of the Glory of God through the sanctification of its members, services to the faith and to the Holy Father, and assistance to one’s neighbours, Our Lords the Sick” (Regulations and Commentary II, The Charism of the Order of Malta.)
A tall order? An impossible challenge? A mountain too high to climb? Hard, demanding, yes, impossible no. “for all things are possible for those who believe.”
In 1852 the Church in our country was facing a new era, in 2020 we also face a new era, not just in our country, but in our world, so let us end with the words of a saint of our land, who in addressing the Church gave inspired words of challenge and courage. “Something remains to be undergone, to complete the necessary sacrifice…for this poor nation's sake! But still could we be surprised, if the winter even now should not yet be quite over? Have we any right to take it strange, if, in this English land, the springtime of the Church should turn out to be an English spring, an uncertain, anxious time of hope and fear, of joy and suffering, — of bright promise and budding hopes, yet withal, of keen blasts, and cold showers, and sudden storms? One thing alone I know— that according to our need, so will be our strength!” (St John Henry Newman. The Second Spring Sermon, 1852)
Venite, adoremus Dominum!
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