tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86523363032702948902024-03-16T18:52:55.957+00:00Michael Sadgrove's Sermons & AddressesAquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.comBlogger230125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-70764270217983174242022-04-12T20:51:00.012+01:002022-04-12T22:04:04.556+01:00In Memoriam Bill Hugonin<i>Bill Hugonin was for many years one of the churchwardens at St Michael's, Alnwick, including the years I served there as vicar of the parish. He died in March 2022. He had asked me to speak at his funeral, not to give a formal eulogy (which was beautifully offered by one of his oldest friends) but to introduce the prayers by reflecting briefly on his faith and the part it played in his long and active life.</i><br><br>
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It is exactly 40 years ago this year that I first got to know Bill Hugonin. I came as the new, young and raw incumbent of this parish of Alnwick. How much I had to learn, and how good a mentor he proved to be! I wasn’t to know the importance he would come to have for me not only during my years here but in the decades that lay ahead. I owe him a very great debt of gratitude for being one of the key influences of my life. He would have laughed at the thought - and did, when I tried much later in life to thank him. But it is true.<br><br>
Latterly, he spoke often about what he called the “end-game”. He was not afraid of death, though he hoped his dying would be gentle. He had wanted to live well, he said, to be a human being with integrity, to try to make some difference in the world. Which he did, as we’ve heard, with characteristic generosity, practicality and kindness. And he wanted to die well too, if that was possible. His funeral was worked over with great care: the hymns, the readings, the prayers. A good funeral, he said, must always celebrate a person’s life, give thanks for all that he or she meant to family, friends and the wider community. It should try to reflect character, values, what really mattered to that person. So Bill wanted this service to reflect the faith that was so central to his life. He saw his funeral as a ceremony in which we would give back to his Maker and ours a precious life that was lent to us for a while. Which is to say, today is first and foremost an act of worship, of celebration, of thanksgiving, of prayer, and of loving commendation to God. <br><br>
Bill’s faith was understated and modest. In a very Church of England way, he was not given to extravagant displays of piety. He valued the quieter, more reflective spirit of Christian wisdom informed by the best insights of theology and literature, poetry and art. His faith went deep, very deep indeed, for Christianity had borne and shaped him, nurtured him, made him aware (one of his favourite words). But conviction was nuanced by what I would call his tentativeness. He was wary of religious certainties and of those who claim to know too much about “God’s will”, how God is involved in human history or the evolution of the cosmos. Religious faith is precisely not to have easy answers but to look for and glimpse God in the arena of life as it is lived in the real world. His was the journey of the relentless questioner, a seeker-after-truth. For him, soul-making was always a work in progress. He believed faith should expand our horizons, stretch our minds beyond what is comfortable or conventional or familiar. And he undertook this lifelong work of striving to become a human being who is fully alive.<br><br>
You get a feel for his faith in the quotations at the end of this order of service. It’s in the spirit of the reading from T. S. Eliot that we heard: “we shall not cease from exploration” - or, as St Anselm said, "faith seeking understanding". He pondered life’s sorrowful mysteries: suffering, cruelty, injustice, for he felt and grieved deeply for the pain of the world. But at the same time, he had learned that even in dark times, all of life is gift, transfigured by goodness, truth and beauty. And by joy. “Rejoice in the Lord always” said St Paul in the Bible reading Bill chose. And transfigured above all by the love he knew surrounded him: in his family, in his many friendships, in the goodness of things, and supremely in “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars". <br><br>
In this Holy Week of Jesus’ cross and passion, we face death in all its darkness, all its bitterness and loss. But, as Bill used to say to me at times when I faced worry or despondency, we remember that Christ Easters in us too, rises within us as the bringer of love and joy and peace. In a few days we shall celebrate this resurrection once again, and glimpse how it is love, not death, that speaks the final word. <br><br>
To that great and everlasting Love we turn now in trust and thankfulness, in the words Bill chose for us. Let us pray. <br><br>
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<i>The prayers that followed were all chosen by Bill, as were the Bible and poetry readings, hymns and a selection of texts printed in the service order that reflected his values and aspirations as a man of faith.</i>
Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-14313903002758849492022-04-10T17:55:00.005+01:002022-04-10T18:11:30.750+01:00In Memoriam Peter David ManningAdolescent friendships can shape our lives. Peter and I were school friends back in the 1960s. We were close. He was a little older than me, which meant that he was a big influence in my teenage years. He encouraged me to audition as a chorister at Hampstead Parish Church where he already sang, a decision that had lifelong consequences for me as a cathedral precentor and dean. We did chemistry experiments together in the science sixth form, lightly supervised in those days, including trying to create an explosive detonating device (we didn’t succeed - the school is still standing). We cycled round north London, listened to choral music on our crystal-sets, and pottered with our reel-to-reel tape recorders (with his flare for electronics, he had built his own and my parents paid for me to have a replica). We played piano duets (he was a better musician than me because he practised properly) and listened to each other navigate Bach on the school organ. Peter taught me about isobars, occluded fronts and cloud forms. He had his own barograph, an exquisite device of which I was intensely envious, still I’m told performing faithfully in his and Liz’s home at Cornsay where he was honoured as the local village meteorologist. <br><br>
His family had a house in the Cotswolds, and I spent happy weeks there in school holidays. I would take my bike on the train and we would enjoy days roaming the hills, visiting village churches, picnicking by streams and pondering the mystery of things at evocative sites like the nearby Rollright Stones. We laughed helplessly at The Navy Lark and The Clitheroe Kid on the Light Programme, and at Flanders and Swann (At the Drop of a Hat, At the Drop of Another Hat) on two scratchy LPs we must have listened to daily. We talked incessantly, as teenagers do, about God, the universe and everything. Given Peter’s legendary wine collection at Cornsay, I’m wondering if Bordeaux and Burgundies featured at the dining table at Over Norton. I don’t recall. But that cottage was always a place of welcome and warmth during the turmoils of adolescence. Even now, three quarters of a lifetime away, it holds fond memories. <br><br>
One day Peter’s father asked us if we’d like a men’s day out in their stylish Triumph Vitesse (“0 to 60 in eight seconds”, Peter had told me proudly). The plan was to visit the Three Choirs Cathedrals of Worcester, Hereford and Gloucester. It didn’t end well. Taking a bend in the road too fast, the car struck the bank and careered off on the opposite side. Finding a lucky gap in the oncoming traffic, the Vitesse skimmed across a ditch, ploughed through a hedge, and turned over in a field. The three of us hung there upside down. There was a long silence. It was broken by Peter’s plaintive voice from behind, “O dad, what have you done?” Understated, seemingly unfazed, cool even. That was very Peter. Then, in the face of his father’s helplessness and mine, his practical instinct took over. He instructed us to extricate ourselves from the car and push it back upright. “Try starting it” he ordered. The ignition fired first time. We got back in and his father drove the off-piste Vitesse diffidently out of the field (through the gate this time). The rest of the journey was taken up with a discussion about tactics on getting home, for it was decided that on no account must his mother know what had happened. So a not very convincing story was concocted about an overhanging branch that gave way just as we were passing underneath it, which explained the dent in the car. She cross-examined me in private. Somehow, I held to the official line. I don’t know if she ever found out.<br><br>
Our paths diverged after schooldays. Peter came to Durham to read music and stayed for the rest of his life. Who could blame him? Nearly four decades later, I followed him here. His was among the warmest of welcomes that greeted me when I arrived as Dean at the cathedral where he had sung as a choral scholar in undergraduate days. I’d followed his career from afar, so I knew he had become an internationally recognised expert on Electronic and Computer Music, to quote the title of his best-known book. What I found as I mingled with Durham’s music community was how respected, admired and even loved the Professor was by those whom he had taught, supervised, made music with and worked amongst. There’d always been that spark of inventiveness and creativity about him that had nudged me to think in new ways (that I never got the hang of things electro-acoustic is my fault, not his). But there was something else too: his capacity to focus on the task. He’d learned at school, the hard way I think, that imagination and flair are not enough: there need to be discipline and hard work to shape inspiration and ideas into productive teaching, writing and research. We honour his professional achievements. They are very significant and will endure.<br><br>
But what I most want to celebrate today are Peter’s personal qualities. I’m thinking of what I already knew in our schoolboy friendship: generosity, patience, tolerance, care, a wry sense of humour, and yes - a capacity for forgiveness. The child was the father of the man: beneath the reserve, the slight but perhaps cultivated eccentricity, lay warmth, kindness, humanity, playfulness, gentleness of spirit. In later life when we got to know each other again, we had both changed of course. But those remembered aspects of his character were there - now shaped and sustained by a long and happy marriage and a rich family life. To have reached and celebrated their golden wedding last year was, I know, an event of great significance to Peter and Liz, Clare and David and their families. Marriages that endure into older age and yield their harvests of faith, hope and love are always beautiful and moving. <br><br>
We treasure our memories and are the richer for them. Rest in peace Peter. God keep you in his care.
Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-66795350879096381442020-05-21T08:30:00.003+01:002020-05-21T08:30:52.872+01:00Ascension Day: a reflection<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 13pt;">Even in these times of ordeal, we must celebrate. All around us, people are lonely and afraid. They are suffering and dying. They are grieving, lost and sad. There isn’t a household in England that the virus hasn’t touched in some way. We could easily feel as forlorn as the disciples gazing at the sky Jesus has disappeared into. Like them, we could imagine he had abandoned us.</span><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Yet as it says in the funeral liturgy of the Orthodox churches, ‘even at the grave we sing ‘alleluia’. Forty days after Easter, it is still the season of resurrection. Christ is risen. In our troubles it’s all the more important to celebrate and allow this marvellous springtime to help us say ‘yes’ to life. For death is swallowed up in victory. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">And today, Ascension Day, we celebrate Jesus as Christ the King, our Sovereign enthroned in glory. It is as he has been proclaiming throughout his ministry, that God reigns. Ascension affirms that the exalted Christ ‘fills all things’, as the Letter to the Ephesians puts it, so that he may be in our midst and all around us, among us and within our deepest selves. Far from having left us orphaned and alone, he is Immanuel, God-with-us in time and eternity. And he invites us to embrace his reign and renew our citizenship of this glorious kingdom. Our hearts are full of joy.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Jesus’ ascension is of a piece with everything he has been to us in his incarnate life. In the New Testament his exaltation is spoken of in the imagery of the coronation of the kings of Israel. The Letter to the Hebrews quotes a chain of texts from the Psalms to show how the hopes and longings projected on to Israel’s human rulers are realised in Jesus who has sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, ‘You are my son; today I have begotten you’ (Psalm 2); ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever’ (Psalm 45). </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">But if we follow that imagery back to its source we find we are drawn to the duties of kingship as well as its privileges. The king is to be God’s servant, loyal to the covenant. He is to be the agent of peace and justice, the guardian of the vulnerable and poor. In another psalm (82), God sits in a cosmic court with the heavenly beings gathered round him. Are they worthy to be called</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">gods, he asks? The test is simple. ‘Maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute; rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.’ </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">But these lofty princes fail dismally and are condemned. ‘How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?’ ‘I said you are gods, nevertheless you shall die like mortals and fall like any prince.’ In high office they have forgotten who they are and why they have been raised up. They have forfeited the right to govern. They have ascended the hill of the Lord only to be toppled by the sin of pride. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Not so the exalted Christ. For he bears the imprint of the nails on his body, and takes us with him into God’s very heart. As we should have been singing today in the Ascension Day hymn:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">See! the heaven its Lord receives<br />
Yet he loves the world he leaves: <br />
Though returning to his throne,<br />
Still he calls mankind his own</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">The Letter to the Hebrews speaks of him as our great high priest who even in his exaltation is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters and to be with us. ‘We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect was tested as we are.’ That letter could not be more emphatic on this point that Jesus passes the test of what it means have ascended as the highest of the exalted ones, above all principalities and powers. High and lifted up as he is, nevertheless he is present to the lowliest of his family to deal gently with us, and especially with the needy whom he calls in St Matthew ‘the least of these my brothers and sisters’. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">So humility and service, not pomp and pageantry, describe the ascension of Jesus. For he is the same Lord who healed the sick and spoke kindly to the neglected, washed his disciples’ feet, felt the agony of Gethsemane and went out to die. Any other messiah would not have been born in a stable with nowhere to lay his head, been executed between thieves, risen secretly behind the stone, or ascended on an obscure hilltop with only a handful of witnesses to tell of it. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">But this Messiah has taken the form of a servant, never more to lay it by. His ascension is as ‘kenotic’ as his incarnation and crucifixion: an act of humble self-emptying, for this is how he is not only in time but in eternity. There is one glory for the Lord who took the form of a slave: one abasement, one lowliness, one meekness, even in his exaltation and enthronement. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Only this Messiah could still bear the marks of the nails as the risen Lord. Only this Messiah could be pictured as a Lamb upon a throne. Only this Messiah could be our great high priest who feels for humanity, intercedes on our behalf, and serves us by washing our feet. Only this Messiah could humbly come to us in bread and wine so that we might welcome him and exalt him in our hearts. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">We want to know in these times that God is not far away from any one of us. It’s the </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">marvellous paradox of Ascension Day that while in one sense Jesus has ‘gone away’ as he said he must, yet he is closer to us than our own souls. He walks alongside us to lighten our burdens and share our joys. We can trust him to comfort us and help us, answer all our longings and make us whole again.</span></div>
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Ascension Day 2020<br />
Ephesians 1.15-23, Acts 1.1-11, Luke 24.44-53</span></div>
Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-50922128787684650532020-03-14T10:07:00.002+00:002020-03-14T10:07:52.998+00:00Home from Exile: the lost son and the loving father<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Why do we love this story so much? It’s one of the most beautifully told in the entire Bible: Luke is the supreme craftsman of the New Testament when it comes to storytelling. Think of the birth narratives or the passion story or the Good Samaritan or the Emmaus Road. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">But no doubt the subject matter has a lot to do with the way we feel about this story. I put it that way deliberately, for the parables are addressed as much to our capacity to </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">feel</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> and </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">imagine</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> as they are to our ability to </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">think</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">. It presents us with so many themes that that resonate within us at a profound level: our love for our parents and children and siblings; our anxiety at the prospect of being distant from those who care for us; our fear of finding ourselves in some kind of exile or estrangement; our longing for whatever </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">home </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">means for us and our lifelong quest to find it. These themes are universal to our human experience: family, kinship, journey, exile, homecoming, welcome, love.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">The three parables in this fifteenth chapter of St Luke are all concerned with finding what was lost. The setting is the familiar grumble: ‘this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’ – familiar in the gospels, familiar across two thousand years of Christian history, for it will not do, say the scribes and Pharisees and their plentiful successors, to associate with the wrong sort. In the case of the lost sheep and the lost coin, the pattern is the same: the happy gathering together of friends and neighbours to celebrate: ‘rejoice with me, for I have found what was lost!’ And Jesus’ twice-repeated comment, ‘Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents’.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">In the case of the lost son, Luke does not need to elaborate on the story, simply to tell as tenderly as he can of losing and finding, turning away and then turning round, coming home and finding joy. For </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">repentance </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">is </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">metanoia</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">, changing your mind, reorienting yourself, turning to face a different direction. This is the emotional and spiritual drama of the beloved son. His father longs for him not to leave, but go he must and make his own way in the world. Does the father intuit that it will not be for ever? And yet he gives him his share of the inheritance – how final that must have seemed as he stood and watched him disappear over the horizon. How long did it take the son to contemplate turning round? How many days, months, years are collapsed into that telling phrase ‘But when he came to himself’? And then, how much time had to elapse before he climbed that last hill (why do I always imagine the return journey being uphill?) and there was his father running to meet him?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">‘Home is where we start from’ said the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. He meant our mother’s womb, for however painful our early lives may have been, whatever loss we have known, whatever damage we have suffered, the womb was our original place of safety. Our mother was once our world. And if we were born well and had good enough parenting, the world in turn became our mother and we were at home as children of the world. Some of you will remember the 1950s advert for children’s shoes. ‘Start-rite and they’ll walk happily ever after.’ Being born, growing up, becoming an adult, starting work, every threshold we cross on the human journey is a starting-out, a fresh beginning. I am learning that in this, to me, still quite new life-stage called retirement. Inevitably, what we knew before, if it was good, takes on the aspect of what was familiar and trusted and safe, like the home we started out from. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Yet the more we travel through life, the more we are aware that exile is a fact of human existence. I don’t mean that it’s the whole story, or that we always experience it as sharply as the bitter cry of Psalm 137. With Jeremiah (but this takes time), we learn to negotiate it, befriend it, find ourselves at home in what we would once have called a strange land. But that only serves to underline what becomes increasingly clear to us as life goes on, that ‘here we have no lasting city, but we look for the one that is to come’ (Hebrews 13.14). We long for a place of rest. We long to be held and loved. We long for home. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">It’s not primarily a matter of geography, but of the spirit. The ‘distant country’ of the prodigal may not have been further than the town across the hill, just far enough to be out of sight, but father and son both knew they were separated by a great gulf that only </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">metanoia </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">could bridge. And this is the point of the parable, of course, the greatness of spirit in both the father and his prodigal son that was able to cross that bridge and come home. And yes, for there was a coming home for the father too who had been in his own exile ever since his beloved boy had left. Compare them both with the meanness of the older son who, when the others rejoiced at this marvellous homecoming, refused to have anything to do with either of them. Always at home with his father, yet never at home, for ever in the far country of self-righteousness and surliness and moral rectitude. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">One more point about home as the place we start from. We must understand that what the younger son came back to was not the same as the home he set out from. His relationship with his father had changed, and with his elder brother too. He no longer had his inheritance. His experience of estrangement and reconciliation had shaped him in ways that nothing else could have done. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Home</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> had changed and </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">he</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> had changed and </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">they </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">had changed. He, they, all had to learn to inhabit this new place they all called </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">home. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">The famous words of T. S. Eliot in the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Four Quartets </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">were true for all of them but especially for the one who had travelled furthest: ‘we shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time’. We may think we are going back. But we never are. And like the cherubim and the flaming sword that guarded the way back to Eden at the end of the Genesis story, it’s an illusion to think we ever can. The only way to travel is onwards. Which, once we understand it, takes real strength and courage. It calls upon the deepest resources of faith and hope we can ever summon within us. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">How does</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; background-color: white; font-size: 13pt;"> this story of the prodigal son speak to us?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">The point of the parable is of course so that we may learn what kind of God Jesus is pointing us to. It’s not so much about the prodigal son as the tender father who longs to find his beloved child once again and goes running to meet him when he returns. We don’t need to hear the words we heard in those earlier stories, ‘rejoice with me, for I have found what was lost’. We can see for ourselves the beautiful truth that there can never be more joy in heaven or on earth than when in some state of alienation or exile, we find ourselves once more, experience that change of mind and heart called </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">metanoia</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">,</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">and come home to the God who looks for us because he loves us</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">This is spiritual work, heart-work if you like, that I need to do all my life if I want to be true to my Christian faith. And in every way I can, to reflect this divine way of being in all my human relationships, reaching out in compassion and tenderness to all whose paths cross mine, as God reaches out to me. And finding my true self as well, coming home to who and what I am, fearfully and wonderfully made by the God welcomes me and loves me. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">I have preached this text all my life. I don’t underestimate how hard it is in practice. But I think we need to hear what this story says to us collectively too. I mean our churches and faith communities especially. I believe that the ideas of </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">home </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">and </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">hospitality </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">are intimately linked. If </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">home </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">means space for us to find ourselves and flourish in, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">hospitality </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">means creating space for others. When the loving father made space for his returning son and gave him a seat at the feast, he was doing what God did in creation, stepping back and giving space for creation to come into being and exist, and within it, for humanity to live in his image. Creation is always an act of love. Redemption in the parable means recognising how that movement of love belongs to the centre of all life where God is perpetually looking to mend our brokenness, heal our wounds, welcome us home, place us at his table, feed us at his banquet. This is the invitation we need to hear when we are beginning to find ourselves, so to speak, alienated and exiled by a virus that is instilling fear in the land we think of as home and a place of safety. If we are going to find God in this strange land of the Coronavirus, it is going to be in the acts of solidarity, kindness and care we offer to one another, and especially to those who are most vulnerable in our midst.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Are we capable of this kind of hospitality? The thing about love is that it doesn’t prescribe boundaries, draw up tests of worthiness. Only prejudice does that, precisely what the Pharisees and scribes were doing when they complained about how Jesus welcomed sinners and ate with them. The hardest truth about love is that it is a sea without a shore, a sun without a sphere, as all-present and all-pervasive as God himself. This is what the elder son in the parable could not bear. Love that is too generous, kindness that is too profligate, what kind of corrupt morality would that lead to! </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">There are some poems that have meant everything to me in my years of preaching. This is probably the last time I’ll have the opportunity to quote one of them. Perhaps it is George Herbert’s greatest. I think it was inspired by our parable. It speaks to me about coming home to God, coming home to others, coming home to myself. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;"> Guilty of dust and sin.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;"> From my first entrance in,</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;"> If I lacked anything.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;"> Love said, You shall be he.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;"> I cannot look on thee.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;"> Who made the eyes but I?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;"> Go where it doth deserve.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;"> My dear, then I will serve.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;"> So I did sit and eat. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Luke 15. 11-end</span></div>
Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-5422796510960742502020-03-09T09:41:00.000+00:002020-03-09T09:45:52.075+00:00A Path by Land and Sea: the Way of St Hild<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">This is a remarkable gathering in a remarkable place on a remarkable day. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">And all because of a remarkable woman. It’s St Hild we have to thank for inspiring this celebration that begins here at Hartlepool and ends at Whitby this afternoon. Two places that cherish the memory of this great Saxon woman, and now a pilgrim path along the North Sea coast to link them, the Way of St Hild.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">You might think it’s a little eccentric to look back across more than</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;"> thirteen hundred years to find inspiration for this project. But the North is fiercely proud of its saints: Aidan, Oswald, Benedict Biscop, Wilfred, Chad, Cuthbert, and Bede whose writing</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;"> lovingly tell their stories and help us imagine the world they lived in. Hild was one of these men and women of Northumbria’s Golden Age who shaped the culture and spirituality of the North East, to whom we owe so much of the North East’s identity and character and its marvellous ‘sense of place’. To Northerners, these legendary saints aren’t locked into some remote an</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">d distant past. They are our contemporaries, our fellow-travellers, our friends. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">St Hild would have known intimately the rou</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">te that bears her name. As Abbess first of Hartlepool and then of Whitby, she must often have made the journey between them, whether walking or riding the marshlands and the high cliffs, or viewing them from afar as she plied the highway of the great grey ocean. What’s more, her family links to the Northumbrian royal house at Bamburgh and to the mother house on Lindisfarne would have taken her to the northern reaches of the kingdom too, past South Shields where there is another church dedicated to her and where she may have founded her first convent. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">‘All who knew Hild the handmaiden of Christ called her </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">mother</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;"> because of her outstanding devotion and grace’ says Bede. He writes about her as ‘a jewel in the land’, a shining light as a Christian leader, teacher, reconciler and healer. Her name means </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">battle </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">and she did indeed live through turbulent times. A Synod at Whitby in 664 at which King Oswiu presided called for leadership skills of the highest order when church and state were bitterly divided. She died full of years in 680. On her deathbed she urged her brothers and sisters ‘to preserve the gospel peace among themselves and towards others’, to live out the virtues of service to others as she herself had done throughout her life. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">Our new Way of St Hild sets out to tell her story and celebrate her legacy. It does this not only by referring back to the events of her life, but by setting her in the context of her times, of the natural landscapes her path traverses, and of the events that subsequently changed the world she knew, sometimes, we can safely say, beyond anything she could have imagined in her lifetime. The natural environment of salt marsh and estuary and cliff top, the profusion of birdlife and wildlife, the fossil memories from aeons past she would recognise today. The sound of the salt sea crashing against the old eternal rocks would always have been music to her ears, for it was this that she taught Caedmon the cowherd to sing about as he found his voice to praise the Creator. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">But what would she have made of the heavy industry of Teesmouth, the comings and goings of rigs and tankers, the steel, iron and alum works on the edge of the moors, feats of heavy </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">engineering like the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge, or facilities along the coast dedicated </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">to tourism, sport and leisure? One of the fascinations of creating this route has been the </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">extraordinary contrasts you encounter on the Way of St Hild. And inviting reflection on what it could all mean to men and women of our twenty-first century. So this pilgrim path is as much a celebration of human activity and achievement – with all its dilemmas and compromises - as it is of the beauties of the natural world and the life and times of one of our greatest saints. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">It’s a remarkable collaboration between Hartlepool Council and neighbouring local authorities, the churches, tourism agencies, the Royal Navy, and people and organisations that care for and interpret our natural and built heritage. Hild would have liked that spirit of common purpose. And given her adventurous spirit, she’d have liked, I think, the digital access to the pilgrimage that’s been created through augmented reality stations, so that people with limited or no mobility can still be pilgrims and walk the route on their smartphone. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">It’s appropriate to be doing this in 2020 as our contribution to this ‘Year of Pilgrimage’ that’s being observed by cathedrals and pilgrimage sites across the land. Durham Cathedral is the focal point of a cluster of new pilgrim routes being launched this year, one of which connects with the Way of St Hild here on the Headland at Hartlepool. The capacity of saints and holy places to inspire pilgrimage is evidence of the interest being awakened today in what’s being called ‘religious tourism’. Stories like Hild’s are Christian in origin. Yet like the pilgrim routes to Compostela, Jerusalem and Canterbury, interest in pilgrimage is alive in people of many faiths and of no faith in particular for whom the spiritual search is a fundamental aspect of being alive. I don’t hesitate to claim that Hild’s faith prized inclusion as a basic Christian value. That’s the spirit in which we have tried to create this pilgrimage.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">Which brings me to my final point. The more I study Bede’s writings about St Hild and her </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">legacy as a Christian leader, the more remarkable I find it that a woman should have been entrusted with the authority conferred on her as a medieval abbess by bishops and kings. Saxon </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">monasteries were not primarily places of retreat but centres from which the land was Christianised and ruled, and affairs of state were managed. Politics and religion were inextricably intertwined in places like Hartlepool and Whitby. The woman whose memory is enshrined in our pilgrim path belonged to the front rank of leaders in the Saxon world. No wonder Bishop Aidan ‘loved her heartily for her innate wisdom and her devotion to the service of God’.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">So you’ll not be surprised that there was a fond wish to launch The Way of St Hild on International Women’s Day 2020, Sunday 8 March. This year’s theme is Generation Equality, meaning the empowerment of women and girls not only for good citizenship but also for leadership in the worlds of today and tomorrow. Like Ruth in our first reading, Hild speaks to us across the centuries of all that represents the best and noblest in human character, giftedness and service. She is a woman </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt;">for us all to be proud of, and whether as women or men, to emulate as we ask ourselves what it might mean to serve God and our neighbour in whatever capacity he calls us to at just such a time as this? </span><br />
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Sunday 8 March 2020</span></div>
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Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-53332040813356060872019-12-24T10:07:00.003+00:002020-01-06T21:05:17.979+00:00Be Born in us Today<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">One of our wedding presents we still use is a leather-bound visitors’ book. It’s much battered now, after forty five years; but it is a precious record of guests whom we have welcomed into our home – family, friends, strangers, and who knows, perhaps even angels entertained unawares. The shifting patterns of our personal relationships are traced through its pages: people we have worked with; people we were once close to; people who have died; people we have grown to love increasingly over the years.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">In our book, there are four entries from 1977 to 1983. Those guests couldn't write their own names, so we did it for them when they crossed our threshold for the first time, long expected and already much loved. I needn’t tell you that they are our four children. The book brings it all back: the long months of waiting, the careful preparations, the sense of expectancy - joyful, but tinged with anxiety in case things should not be exactly right, or we might not be good enough parents, or we might not have enough love to give to this infinitely fragile creature who will be so dependent on us. There is nothing you would not do to welcome a child. And if that child does not arrive, or the visit is cut short, the pain would be unbearable. There is no loss like the loss of a child.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Each year in our churches and homes we prepare the crib to receive its honoured guest. It is an act of love, for there is nothing you would not do for this Child who comes to visit us. And like the preparations you make for any birth in the family, it is not just that we want everything to be outwardly right, though that matters. We want everything to be </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">inwardly </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">right too. The crib becomes a picture of our own lives being put back together, made beautiful for Christ. St Teresa of Avila talked of the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Interior Castle </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">of our lives; but she might have spoken of the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Interior Crib, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">with the heart as the manger-throne to receive the King of kings. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">How do we prepare this inward crib of ours? I said that there is no loss in life like the loss of a child. Yet our society has, in a way, lost a child, and Christmas brings it home with particular force. Who is this child we have lost? I think it’s the child within us capable of expectation and wonder, happiness and delight. Once upon a time, those qualities were in full flower in us. We call it innocence, which perhaps means the capacity to be open the world in all its beauty and generosity and see into the life of things. It’s a capacity that in many of us grown-ups tends to unripen until it is has shrivelled to a bud. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">To me is, as they grow up, where they go.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Love, wonder, marvellous hope. All these can wither</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Or to some piper's tune vanish for ever</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">This year I have felt it again, the way Christmas erodes to the tired, tinselled routine, a thousand </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">miles away from the simplicity and mystery of this wonderful festival. Perhaps only the very young, the very poor, the very lonely and the very hurt understand Christmas: they have nothing to get in the way. So what does it mean to say that Christmas is a time for children. How do we acknowledge that in us all is an infant crying for the light? Don’t we yearn for that child to emerge from the dark and start playing? Don’t we ache to feel what we feel as we gaze as if for the first time on the ox and ass and shepherds and Mary and Joseph and the baby? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>‘In the lonely barton by yonder coomb</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Our childhood used to know,’</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I should go with him in the gloom,</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Hoping it might be so.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">We can hear this as nostalgia. I see it more as a longing for meaning, the kind of meaning that children more easily grasp than adults. Jesus says that unless we become like little children, we can never enter the kingdom of heaven. And what is that but to rediscover not only the lost child in ourselves but the holy Child of Bethlehem. If only we could find him again! But Christmas says he is not far from any one of us, the one who brings truth and love into our world. He comes as the stranger we do not recognise, yet he is the friend who cares about us. He comes as the sovereign of the universe, yet he is the humblest of subjects. He comes as the almighty creator, yet he is the slave who empties himself to be among us as one who serves. He is nearer to us than our own souls. He asks for house-room in our crib. He stands at the door and knocks, and waits to see what we will do </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">with him. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">The fourteenth century mystical theologian Meister Eckhart said: “We must all become God’s mothers, for God desires to be born in each of us.” A poem a friend wrote a few years ago for her Christmas card captures beautifully the ‘how’, the ‘what’ and the ‘where’ of Christmas, the three life-changing questions we put to the nativity and the nativity puts to us. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>just miss you altogether; land instead</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">where earth’s turn must face me with a shadow.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>to bend my knee; will all the food be gone,</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>leaving scattered embers and camel dung?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Where shall a baby safely lay his head</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">and not be overlooked or trampled on?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">‘Within the manger of your heart,’ he said.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">The first text quoted is from Charles Causley’s poem ‘School at Four O'Clock’. The second is from Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Oxen’. The final poem is by Sheila Bryer, ‘Advent’ (© S Bryer 2007, used with permission).</span></div>
Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-14020297680117322382019-12-20T17:14:00.001+00:002019-12-20T17:14:19.786+00:00Values for Advent 4: Illumination<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.5px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;">‘What if this present were the world’s last night?’ The seventeenth century metaphysical poet John Donne puts that question in one of his </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12.5pt; font-style: italic;">Divine Poems. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;">He was much exercised by thoughts about the end of the world and about death, the end of </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12.5pt; font-style: italic;">his </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;">world. ‘This is my play’s last scene, here heavens appoint / My pilgrimage’s last mile’; ‘Oh my black soul! Now thou art summoned / By sickness, death’s herald, and champion’; ‘Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste, / I run to death, and death meets me as fast, / And all my pleasures are like yesterday’. And with death come thoughts of darkness, for his was a troubled soul. ‘To see God only, I go out of sight: / And to ’scape stormy days I choose An everlasting night’. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;">For Donne, the Winter Solstice held powerful significance: the shortest day, the ‘year’s midnight’ as he calls it. This precarious axis of the seasons when the sun’s light almost fails is for him a metaphor of his spiritual condition: wondering, hoping but not always expecting that the light will grow strong again, half believing that it might not. Midwinter raises anxiety about the last things: </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12.5pt; font-style: italic;">solstitium</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;">: the sun stands still in the sky, the light burns low, and life is short, and nature holds out no promise that she will ever renew herself or that this pale sun whose rays barely penetrate to earth could ever warm another living thing. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;">For most of us, the Solstice (at 4.19 am on the morning of Sunday 22 December) will pass unnoticed. We are insulated from it not just by electric light and central heating and the ceaseless flow of online activity, but by the business that occupies us in the days before Christmas. But those whose lives are tuned to the rhythms of the seasons and the rise and fall of light pay attention: Pennine farmers, market gardeners, seafarers, meteorologists, astronomers, poets. For billions in our world, less burdened by technology than we are, these primal rhythms are close to what it means to sustain life, hold out the prospect of a tomorrow as well as a today. ‘What if this present were the world’s last night?’ is not the private fantasy of a morbid soul. It is the question to ask when the planet is spinning relentlessly towards an irreversible climate catastrophe. The first victims to suffer will be the poor and voiceless of the developing world. The world’s last night is no longer the fantasy of a fevered imagination. The apocalypse is now.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">In these days </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;">before Christmas, you may wish I’d lighten up (an apt image for the solstice if you think about it). But while modern Anglican texts soften as Christmas approaches, the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12.5pt; font-style: italic;">Book of Common Prayer</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;"> maintains a tougher Advent focus. Sunday’s collect is one of the most majestic in the book: ‘O Lord, raise up thy power and come among us, and with great might succour us’: we call on God as those who are helpless because he alone can rescue us. In the Prayer Book communion rite</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12.5pt; font-style: italic;">, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;">both the third and fourth Sundays of Advent give us gospel readings about John the Baptist, hardly comfortable reading for Advent. The Great O antiphons of Advent are a crying for the light at this dark time of the year: ‘O Morning Star, splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness: come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death’. And when Advent at last utters the name ‘God with us’ in the antiphon of the final day before Christmas Eve, it is longing and desire that run through it: </span><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">‘O Emmanuel, our King and our Lawgiver, the hope of the nations and their Saviour: come and</span><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;"> save us O Lord our God’. Come…. Come….It is futures that we fasten on in Advent: futures promised, futures glimpsed, and yes, futures feared as well. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;">At the Solstice, people used to kindle fires to keep light and warmth alive and cherish them for the long year ahead. Perhaps it is the distant origin of fairy lights and Christmas trees; perhaps we still need to echo our forebears and in ceremony and symbol act out the issues of light and dark. In many cathedrals and churches, the traditional Advent procession moves up the church from west to east: a movement towards the light, at first experienced partially, brokenly, as if it might be swallowed up again by the immense darkness in which we stand and wonder and wait. Gradually that fragile light is established; it grows until it reaches its full strength, luminous, radiant like the heavenly Jerusalem, the city that ‘has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.’ ‘Eternity’s sunrise’ to quote Blake’s famous phrase.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;">Yet the hope remains future. We don’t yet possess it. We still pray ‘Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus!’, for the kingdom is not yet present and God’s purposed not yet fulfilled. We ask every day in Advent that we may ‘cast away the works of darkness’ and that God may put upon us ‘the armour of light now in the time of this mortal life’. We glimpsed the light of God’s presence in that great climax of the Advent Procession, but then it was taken from us again: for it was but a glimpse of glory given for a while. It had to subside, for at the end we have to go outside again into the night, like the winter sparrow in Bede’s parable who flies into the warm lit hall only to fly out again into the cold and dark. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;">It’s in that half-light of daily existence that the prayer, ‘Come thou long-expected Jesus’ becomes most real. It breathes desire, expectancy, hope. We know we can face the night, for </span><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">this vision will sustain us, Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun who is the glory of the nations. We know that though we walk in darkness we have seen a great light and need not be afraid. In midwinter the darkness envelops us again, fraught with ambiguity. The bright clear long light of summer is but a memory. For now. But darkness is not necessarily ominous and bad. In the Bible clouds and darkness are where you find the presence of God. ‘There is in God a deep and dazzling darkness’ says the poet, drawing on a long Christian mystical tradition. ‘Churches are best for prayer, that have least light’ says Donne.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">It was on </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;">Christmas Day in Durham Cathedral ten years ago that the ‘new creation’ high altar frontal was unveiled. It shows the rising sun, its golden rays penetrating to and animating the extremities of creation. It rises out of a blue sea, as if to remind us of Advent and waiting for the God’s purposes to be fulfilled. For even the birth of Jesus is not the end but the beginning of our world’s redemption, the dawning of the light. The sun has yet to rise completely and fill the sky. Across the frontal is a thin red arc, almost invisible until you come close to it, the thread of pain and passion stitched across glory which is the cost of it, the destiny of the Holy Child. On Solstice day, which this year falls on the first day of the week that we call Sun-Day, we celebrate the light that is coming among us while at the same time we hold in our hearts those who in the dark places of pain and passion wait each day for deliverance.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12.5pt;">‘What if this present were the world’s last night?’ Only when we ask John Donne’s question </span><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">for our world and for ourselves can we begin to hope. It is a clarifying question, for it tells us </span><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">that there is work to do and darkness to dispel and lives to change. There are four days of </span><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">Advent left to us. We must make the most of them, especially as after Sunday the days will </span><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">start getting longer again, and the light become stronger; for ‘the night is far spent and the day </span><span style="font-size: 12.5pt;">is at hand’, the day of Christ whose glory fills the skies. </span></div>
Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-53512348271900566632019-12-18T18:25:00.000+00:002019-12-18T18:29:24.541+00:00Values for Advent 3: Joy<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">This month I’m reflecting on some of the values that might help us keep these short precious weeks of Advent with what I suggested we might call ‘spiritual intelligence’. You can find my previous offerings below this one on the website. The first was </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">longing</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">, when we looked at how Advent is meant to focus our desires on God and to nurture our hunger to see his kingdom come. Last week’s theme was </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">contentment, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">which I saw as rooted in thankfulness, the only way to cure the relentless drive to possess that is so evident before Christmas. Today I want to look at a third value that I believe is fundamental to Advent. That value is </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">joy</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">‘Rejoice always’ says St Paul. In all things, let the watchword be joy. Joy is the particular focus of this particular week. Last Sunday, the third of Advent is known as </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Gaudete </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">from the opening word of the traditional introit at Mass: </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">rejoice</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">! But joy is meant to mark all of Advent. It is not a penitential season like Lent when we sing </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Miserere </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">and lament the brokenness of things. Rather, it’s a time to take up the ringing acclamations of the Hebrew scriptures that Zion’s ancient longings for God’s coming are about to come true. ‘Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices, together they sing for joy, for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion. Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem; for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem’ (Isaiah 52.8-9). And this glad expectancy is not only for human beings, still less the religious. The whole creation utters its inarticulate song of joy at what is coming on the world: ‘let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar and all that fills it. Let all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord; for he is coming to judge the earth’ (Psalm 96.11-13). And when the time comes for the forerunner to arrive, his birth brings not fear but delight: ‘you will have joy and gladness’ the angel tells his father Zechariah, ‘and many will rejoice at his birth’ (Luke 1.14). </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">The word in Greek is </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">chara, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">close to </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">charis, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">grace, and </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">eucharistia, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">thanksgiving. So joy belongs both with God’s generosity (which is what grace means) and our response to him of gratitude. The capacity to be joyful, then, flows from the capacity to recognise, celebrate and embrace God’s acts as our creator and saviour. We are what we are, a people of joy, because of what he is, a God who is all-justice and all-goodness. Augustine says that ‘the authentic life is to set our joy on you, grounded in you, caused by you’ (</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Confessions </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">10, 32). For God has made room for us in his world. He has given us all that is lovely to enjoy. He has come among us as our Saviour Immanuel. We find ourselves re-orientated towards his own life and love, like a sunflower being turned towards the sun and opened up by its light and warmth. In all this, our wellbeing, our </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">shalom, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">is secured. What we call gladness, joy, happiness, delight well up within us because we know that ultimately all shall be well. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">St Augustine is a great theologian of joy because he is not afraid to explore his own human experience of pain and pleasure. Here, you feel, is a man who has truly lived, who knows his own hungers and drives, satisfaction and disappointment, has tasted both sensuality and emptiness. In his </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Confessions, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">he lays bear a soul discovering how the experiences of human life and relationships both point to the secret of lasting happiness while at the same time withholding it. He learns how to see into the life of the things so as to discern the God who beckons us there to know and love him. He glimpses how our ordinary joys point to a larger, enduring joy. ‘When I love you, what is it that I love? It is not physical beauty nor temporal glory nor the brightness of light dear to earthly eyes, nor the sweet melodies of all kinds of songs, nor the gentle odour of flowers and ointments and perfumes, nor manna or honey, nor limbs welcoming the embraces of the flesh: it is not these I love when I love my God. Yet there is a light I love, and a food, and a kind of embrace when I love my God - a light, voice, odour, food, embrace, of my inner man, where my soul is floodlit by light which space cannot contain, where there is sound that time cannot seize, where there is a perfume which no breeze disperses, where there is a taste for food no amount of eating can lessen, and where there is a bond of union that no satisfaction can part. That is what I love when I love my God.’ (</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Confessions </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">10, 6) Was ever delight more movingly or sensually expressed?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">But Augustine knows, as we do, that even the best we enjoy of God in this world is partial and fragmented: fugitive pieces of a larger picture that still eludes us. In the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Confessions </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">he recalls his habit of looking for happiness in the wrong place, how he has had to learn that joy has a future tense that keeps waiting and longing alive: ‘Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new, late have I loved you. You were within and I was living outside and looked for you there, and plunged into the lovely things you had made. You were with me but I was not with you. Those things kept me far from you…. But you called aloud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and beautiful. I drew in my breath and now I long for you. I tasted you, and now I feel hunger and thirst only for you. You touched me, and now I am on fire for the peace which is yours’. The paradox of Advent is that its joy is both now and not yet: both with us but still to come. Only the future brings with it a joy that is without end. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">This is why, when Jesus came proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand, ‘the common people heard him gladly’ as the gospel puts it. They knew that only God’s future could bring what they longed for, only his kingdom of righteousness and peace could usher in true and lasting happiness as the Sermon on the Mount makes so clear. So it’s right to come back to the last things which ought to be our focus in this season. What we look for in Advent is nothing less than a new world, God’s final word of judgment on all that is evil and wrong and the establishment forever of the kingdom of Immanuel in righteousness, joy and peace. ‘God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes; death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away’ (Revelation 21.4). </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">This is the faith we confess in the climactic words of the Nicene Creed that ought to make our spirits dance and summon up a rush of joy every time we say them: ‘I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come’. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Expecto </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">in Latin – not just </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">hope for</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> but </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">look for</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">, which is what New Testament hope is. At the eucharist, we celebrate the risen life of Jesus in our midst and proclaim his death ‘until he comes’. And that reminds us, even in the midst of so much that makes us afraid, to hold in our hearts and our hopes the consummation of all things at the end of the age, when hope is emptied in delight, and we know him as he is. It is the source of the joy that sustains us. It’s the joy that no-one can ever take away. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Helvetica-Oblique; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></div>
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Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-9716812143715756302019-12-07T10:00:00.002+00:002019-12-07T10:00:15.378+00:00Values for Advent 2: Contentment <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I am offering a series of reflections in Advent in which I am suggesting some spiritual values we might cultivate during this precious but demanding season.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Last week I spoke about Advent as a time to of longing and desire.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Today I want to explore the value of contentment. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">At first sight, contentment seems to be incompatible with longing; after all, if we desire because we do not yet possess, it follows that we must be discontented in some way because of something we lack. There is certainly a paradox here, for we know that we should be content with what we have and are, yet we hear the gospel promising us something that in St Paul’s words is ‘even better’. We know that everything in this life is provisional, here only for a time. At the Lord’s coming, it will be changed and we with it. It will become God’s new world; and we are taught to long for that day and to pray for it. This is the focus of all God-given desire. And because our condition falls so far short of what God would it to be, there should indeed be a divine </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">discontent</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"> in us that throws us back on his mercy and recalls us to depend completely on his help and grace. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">At the same time, we are taught to recognise the goodness of things and to see in them God’s generosity and kindness. We know we must learn how not to crave what we do not really need, nor to invest more than we should in what we are given. Immanuel Kant’s insight helps here: ‘we are not rich because of what we possess but because of what we can do without’. And by riches I don’t simply mean material things. I mean any gift that promotes wellbeing and gives us pleasure or fulfilment, whether in the body, the intellect, the emotions or in our faculty for spiritual awareness that we call the soul. Perhaps we can’t be content unless we could renounce even the best that God has given us. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">We need to lay alongside each other these two strands that run through the Bible. This means learning how to desire God himself in all things and above all things. We know that nothing less can ever ultimately satisfy. So contentment and longing are held together when we see how it’s as much about appreciating the Giver as the gift, and that being content is to glimpse how every gift is a kind of sacrament of God’s loving generosity, not an end in itself but another means to knowing and loving him. To turn it round, as St Paul does in the early chapters of his Letter to the Romans, the cravings and sins that lead human beings into depravity and destructiveness have the effect precisely of making the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">creature</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"> the ultimate end of our concern rather than the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Creator. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">The Bible consistently calls this idolatry. Augustine describes sin as being ‘curved in upon oneself’, the ‘worth-ship’ that properly belongs to God our ultimate Source and End being deflected instead into the penultimate, the created, the transient. Perhaps idolatry is surrender to a perverted kind of discontent that can never rest in the goodness and worth-ship of another. And when we give our lives to these ends, we are, says St Paul, as good as dead already. In an image of St Francis de Sales, we are like a bride who pays so much attention to her wedding-ring that she never even notices the bridegroom who gave it to her. <br />
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What is the secret of contentment? How do we achieve it in our western society that is so hungry to possess, whose besetting sins are so blatantly laid bare and played upon in this run-up to Christmas, the sins of avarice and its close relative, envy? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">St Paul has a key passage about this in his Letter to the Philippians. It comes just after the well-known Advent exhortation to ‘rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice’. He has spoken of his joy in the Christ whose coming is near and then says: ‘I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed, and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need’ (Philippians 4:11-12). This owes more than a little to the Stoic philosophers whose ideal was to reach an inward contemplative stability by becoming more and more indifferent to outward circumstances. The soul’s health, they said, did not depend either on prosperity or adversity, and to allow good fortune or bad to influence it would be to regress to a childish, even infantile state. St Paul gives Christian meaning to this by saying that Christian stability is found not within but beyond himself. ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me’ he says. ‘My God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 4.14, 19). Like everything else, it is given. We cannot achieve it on our own.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">We can, however, cultivate a mentality that makes it more possible. The clue, I believe, is </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">thankfulness</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">. This means more than merely saying thank-you, though the words are important. It is about being thankful at the core of ourselves, as when the psalmist begins his praises by saying ‘I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth’ (Psalm 34.1). This is a worshipper for whom thankfulness and praise are a </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">habit</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">. For him it is as natural to bless God as it is to sleep, eat and breathe. This is fundamental to Jewish spirituality. Everything in life is made holy, not by blessing </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">it </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">but by blessing God </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">for</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"> it: ‘Blessed are you Lord our God, King of the Universe: you make this new day to dawn. Blessed are you for the sleep I have enjoyed; for this food and drink, for the sabbath, for our homes and those who love us, for our lives and the hope that sustains us’. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">This is what Jesus did at the Last Supper. He blessed God for the bread and the wine and commanded us to do this in memory of him. His command was much more than an instruction to celebrate the eucharist. It was a summons to </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">be eucharistic </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">in our own selves, to develop the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">habitus </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">of always and everywhere blessing God for the goodness and mercy shown to us and to all living things. The word </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">eucharistia </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">simply means thanksgiving. It defines the man or woman or faith. To be eucharistic people, men and women for whom thankfulness is a way of life, is to be on the path of true contentment. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">I have met a few people in whom I have glimpsed this. When I became an incumbent in the early 1980s, I followed a priest who had died of a brain tumour without warning. He was not even the age I am now, and had only been in the parish for a few months, yet in that short time he had earned a good deal of respect and affection. When my wife and I went to the vicarage to measure up for carpets and curtains, we met his widow who was on the point of moving out. We stumbled around as you do, trying to say something appropriate, but the words wouldn’t come. But she said to us: ‘when John was alive, he taught me that the only real way of living well is to be thankful for everything. And when we are, we find that sense of gratitude sustaining us even in the darkest of times. I have so much to be thankful for in a lifetime of memories together. It doesn’t take away the pain or the loss, but it does carry me through it.’ I have never forgotten it. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">As the General Thanksgiving says in its incomparable poetry, we are to bless God ‘for our creation, preservation and all the blessings of this life, and above all for the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace and for the hope of glory’. We could hardly do better than to pray that prayer every day in Advent, as retailers try to ratchet up our hungers. It will help us keep Christmas with integrity, for we shall have begun to learn both the virtue of contentment, and with what gratitude to receive the greatest of all gifts when he comes. </span></div>
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Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-54413440464736520082019-12-01T15:31:00.000+00:002019-12-02T09:53:47.079+00:00Values for Advent 1: Longing<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Each year, Advent puts a question to us.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">It asks us what our values truly are.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">This is because at no other time of year does liturgical time seem so dislocated from secular time.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Even against the backdrop of political turmoil when the future is uncertain, this is not a time of year when reflection is easy.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The traditional Advent focus on the Last Things, death, judgment, hell and heaven sits uneasily alongside Christmas fayres and lights and shop windows.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">We wish we could sustain for these brief weeks what Philip Larkin called the ‘hunger to be more serious’, for then what a joy Christmas Eve would be.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Will we achieve it this year?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">It’s easy for preachers in Advent to rally to the cry against consumerism and the plea for a less materialist and a more charitable, frugal, spiritually aware way of celebrating Christmas. But we need to be careful, because we are all implicated in the values of our society and its febrile, often superficial approach to this season that prefers frippery and feel-good to real depth of challenge and possibly some pain. So without pretending that I have any easy answers about how to observe a good Advent, I should like in these coming weeks to suggest values that could focus on its deeper meaning for us as Christian people and help us on the path towards spiritual intelligence. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">My first value is </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">longing. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Longing, hunger, desire, is basic to the human condition. We would not be human if we did not long for what we do not have to enjoy. I am not speaking of selfish gratification here – I trust we have moved beyond that. Globally, we long for a safer, more peaceful world, an end to human cruelty and the kind of terror we have seen in India in recent days. We want to see the endemic needs that diminish the lives of so many met in a lasting way: poverty, hunger, disease. In our nation we long for wholesome communities where neighbours care for one another, where there is a more developed instinct for what is right and just in our midst. More personally we long for fulfilled intimate relationships, satisfaction in our work, the healing of what is broken within us, the feeling that our lives make some kind of sense. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">We long for these things. And when I say we ‘long’ for them, I mean more than that we merely wish</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">for them or sigh for them. True longing engages our passions and our wills. It involves the commitment of our entire being. It does this because we know that human life is marred and flawed without the things we long for. More than that, our very longings themselves are signs that we still have the capacity to envisage a better future for others and for ourselves. Not to long for a better tomorrow would mean to settle for the compromises and shortcomings of today. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Advent presents us with the prospect of the future. It is, as theologians say, eschatological. Its thrust is tomorrow, what is coming upon us and upon the world, and how tomorrow influences and shapes how we think about today. But ‘tomorrow’, for Christianity, is not what blindly evolves out of today as events unfold. If we thought we were at the mercy of the relentless chain of causes and effects, we would be better not to dwell on the future too much, for we would be overwhelmed with hopelessness and possibly despair. But to focus on </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">God’s </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">tomorrow is to ponder how he intends to shape the world and us with it in order to bring about his good purpose. So Advent challenges our habit of thinking about the future as somehow inevitable, whether it is the march of progress towards an ideal utopian future as much of the nineteenth </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">and twentieth </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">centuries assumed, or whether it is the collapse of civilisation into the dystopian abyss of anarchy and chaos. The optimists and pessimists are both wrong: neither the </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">best nor the worst will happen come what may. Instead, the Bible gives us the vision of a re-imagined God-shaped future and invites us to begin to craft our present in the light of it.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">When Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand, this is what he meant. He believed, as his contemporaries did, that God would shortly bring history to an end and </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">usher in the new era of righteousness and peace.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Some of you standing here will not taste death until </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">you see the kingdom of God come’ he said.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">So is our New Testament reading, Jesus finds a donkey and comes riding into Jerusalem on it, deliberately fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah that this is how Zion’s king would arrive in his city.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">And the crowd’s hosannas, culled from an acclamation in one of the royal psalms, tell us that the people knew exactly what they were seeing and celebrating.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!’.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The kingdom is upon us.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">The old is about to be swept away and with it, all that depraves and corrupts human life.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">Behold, the new is here.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">I said that the people knew what they were caught up in. The truth is that they did and they didn’t. This is the critical point. They thought that this messianic act was nothing less than the inauguration of the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">eschaton. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">The last days had arrived, and with them, the overthrow of Roman political power and the reinstatement of Israel as the kingdom of the saints, ruled over by one like the Son of Man coming on the clouds in power and glory. And when the man on the donkey wreaks havoc in the temple precinct, and goes on to speak about how not one stone of the temple would be left standing upon another, his messiahship seems assured. How could anyone doubt that their ancient longings were about to be fulfilled before their very eyes?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">But we know, as they did not, that less than a week later this messianic hero would be nailed to a tree. And for those with eyes to see, this gave a wholly new meaning to words like ‘messiah’, ‘king’, ‘Son of Man’. It radically re-defined what it meant to pray ‘thy kingdom come!’. And if so, then it inevitably put a question against what the people had shouted for on the roadside into Jerusalem. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!’ – indeed; but not like the great stone of the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">apocalyptic writings hurled from heaven to crush to dust the great world empires. Rather, to confront humanity with the truth and for the sake of that truth to die. The crowd thought it knew what wanted. But the passion unfolded a more excellent way. This was to do with altogether more profound hungers and desires, deeper than the crowd could ever glimpse or dream of. It exposed the shallowness of what they shouted for. The very fact that it took just days for the cry of hosanna to be </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">poisoned into crucify tells us this.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">I am saying that it is good to have longings and hungers, but by itself it is not enough. We must educate our desires, learn to hunger </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">accurately</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">, so that they become aligned to God’s own longing for the world and the redemption of the human race. It would take a Saint Augustine to explain what this means. But we could meditate in Advent on his profound insight that all our desires are fundamentally desire for God. It’s only that sin has twisted and distorted them so that they become focused not on the Creator but on the creature with all the self-absorbed disordering consequences that idolatry always leads to. Advent, I think, comes as an invitation to look at what we really want out of life, and what we want for the world, and to set it alongside and allow it to be interpreted by what Christian faith tells us is the source of true and lasting joy. Advent can help us not only to understand and befriend our desires, but to try once again to focus them on God and his good </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">purposes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">This is how we shall learn how to cry hosanna to the king and to welcome him when he </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">comes. This is how our hearts, so restless at this edgy time of year, will find their rest in him who is the hope of </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">creation and the Desire of Nations.</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Matthew 21.1-13</span></div>
Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-20692189670375652332019-11-29T15:28:00.002+00:002019-11-29T15:55:04.324+00:00The Deadly Sin of Envy<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 13pt;">A Lecture given to the Carlisle Theological Society in October 2009</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13pt;">Posted on Black Friday 2019</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13pt;">When I agreed to speak to you tonight, we were probably at the lowest point of the recession.</span><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">At that time of despondency, it did not look likely that the economy would show signs even of the beginnings of recovery before the middle of next year.</span><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Now, the financial environment appears to be a little less gloomy, and analysts are daring to talk about ‘green shoots’.</span><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">I am no expert, so I can’t judge whether such hopes are well-founded.</span><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">In north-east England, there has been considerable attrition as a result of this tsunami and I expect it is the same here.</span><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">It will be years before we see manufacturing industry in the north-east revitalised, if it ever is, employment levels back to where they were earlier this decade, and inward investment in our region once more flourishing. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 13pt;">A disaffected public continues to ask why so little regulation has existed to check reckless speculation and the cynical exploitation of the markets.</span><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">We all hope, though we do not necessarily expect, that out of this debacle will emerge a more disciplined, more accountable culture that will begin to restore trust.</span><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">But a better managed economy will not necessarily address the underlying causes of this crisis.</span><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">These are, I am sure we agree, human, moral and spiritual in character.</span><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">Religious leaders are right to ask for some serious reflection on what the recession is teaching us about ourselves and our society. </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">One book to do this is remarkable for having been written by the chairman, formerly the chief executive, of one of the major world banks. So it is an insider’s view on the crisis and a refreshingly honest analysis of its roots. But its author, Stephen Green, is also a non-stipendiary priest of the Church of England. He is not ashamed to identify what he sees as the underlying malaise in western society that he describes as its Faustian deal with Mephistopheles. To simplify, this amounts to the selling of our collective soul for the sake of short term material gain. There is nothing new in this, as the power of the Faust legend down the centuries illustrates. What is new is the global scale on which this age-old drama is acted out in the world’s financial markets. The near-failure of the world banking system last year was as near a miss from global disaster as the Cuba Missile Crisis. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Archbishop Rowan Williams has focused on the erosion of public values and regretted that there have been few signs that the powerful financial institutions and their leadership have begun to reflect on the moral and spiritual causes of this financial debacle. He has called for repentance. Repentance, as we know, means a change of mind. It is close to what the third Benedictine vow calls </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">conversio morum</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">, the conversion of life. It looks for a new way of living, a new set of attitudes and ambitions, a life that is focused not on our own selves but on God and what he looks for in humanity. In a renewed, God-fearing society, there would still be accidents and they might be damaging, even catastrophic, but perhaps there would not be economic crises so patently traceable to basic faults due to the relentless pursuit of self-interest. Such a society would be marked by </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">caritas, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">generosity, mutuality, collaboration, self-giving and service. The church is called to model precisely this vision of human beings living together in genuine </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">koinonia. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">But what are the sins which we should repent of, and from which we should want to be delivered? The usual candidates among the seven deadly sins are </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">gluttony</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> (which is over-</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">indulgence) and </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">avarice</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> or </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">greed </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">(which is the inordinate hunger to acquire and possess). </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">These are both, like lust, sins of excess. There is a long Christian tradition that understands these in relation to acquiring wealth. What makes greed sinful, says Thomas Aquinas, is that it is the abandonment or collapse of spiritual desire for what is material and temporal. Dante illustrates this in the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Divine Comedy </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">by depicting the greedy as tied up and laid face down on the ground because they concentrated too much on earthly things. (It is a good example of what is called </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">contrapasso</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">, literally ‘counter-suffering’: you are punished by the very thing you practise.) Stephen Green’s book suggests that the Faustian bargain so many wage their futures on is a symptom of precisely this. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">However, I want to suggest that Green doesn’t go deep enough into the human spirit. All the sins of excess are disorders of desire, as Augustine so profoundly understood: it is not that we don’t love, but that our love is wrongly directed. And if we ask where the origins of disordered desire are to be found, the answer is in the two fundamental sins of all. The first of these is, of course, pride. Pride is usually regarded as the worst of all sins because it is the most far-reaching in suppressing or perverting the love that should be directed outwards to God and to our neighbour. It is, as Augustine says, ‘turned in on itself’. And this obsession with ourselves is, says the tradition, nothing short of idolatry because there is no place in it for God. (There is another graphic example of </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">contrapasso </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">in Dante where he shows the proud condemned to wander round for eternity bent double under the weight of their gorgeous copes which are made of lead.) </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">But there is another perversion of love which is turned outwards, or at least looks as if it is, and that is </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">envy.</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> I want to focus on envy this evening because I believe it is the besetting sin of our age, and because apart from texts on moral theology, it is not given nearly enough attention in Christian reflection on our human state. I don’t know, for instance, when you last heard a </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">sermon on envy or when I last preached one. But the Bible focuses on it a great deal as I shall illustrate, possibly more than it does on pride. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13pt;">What is envy? It is an inward state of mind and heart. I am careful not to say it is merely a feeling or emotion, though of course we experience it that way. We could say that the seedbed of envy is our awareness that we lack something that someone else possesses. This could be their material possessions, their human qualities, their successes or status in life, their religious faith, their personal relationships, their happiness. All these can be the focus of envy. But envy is not by itself knowing that someone else has something we do not possess. Our chairman has the name Richard. I do not have that name myself. I recognise this lack. But it does not make me envious of him. Envy is born when I want what the other person has for myself, or simply wish that the other person could be deprived of it (which they would be if I took for myself what belonged to them). </span></div>
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We need to be clear about the difference between </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">envy</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> and </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">jealousy</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> and resolve that we shall use these words accurately. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Jealousy</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> is the fear of losing someone we love or who is important to us to another person. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Envy</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> is the frustration caused by another person having something that I do not have myself. So envy involves simply two people, myself and another, and is focused on a </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">thing</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">, while jealousy involves three (or more) people and focuses on a threat posed to a significant relationship. We use that word accurately when we say, ‘I love her jealously’, meaning ‘I will not let her go to another person’. It is exactly in this sense that Yhwh is a ‘jealous God’ according to the Second Commandment, because he will not ‘lose’ his chosen people to the worship of idols and graven images but shows ‘steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments’ (Exod 20. 4-6). Try </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">substituting ‘envious’ for ‘jealous’ in that command, and it ceases to make sense. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Aquinas says that envy as sorrow on account of another person’s benefit or good, drawing on Aristotle’s definition of it as the pain caused by other peoples’ good fortune. In this tradition, Dante says that envy is the love of my own good and resolve to pursue it perverted to a desire to deprive other people of theirs. In his </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Purgatorio</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">, the punishment for the envious is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire because they have gained sinful pleasure from seeing others brought low. This tells us straight away that the other side of envy is </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Schadenfreude, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">the pleasure we get at other peoples’ misfortune. They belong together because the usual way of dealing with envy is to damage or destroy the object of my envy, or to deprive the other person of it (possibly, though by no means necessarily, by taking it for myself). In the last of the Ten Commandments, the prohibition against coveting what belongs to my neighbour is not forbidding me from admiring his house or his wife, his slave, his ox or his ass, nor acknowledging that I am not as well-endowed as he is. It prohibits any action of mine that could spoil his enjoyment of them, what the French call </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">jouissance, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">a legal term meaning the ‘proper enjoyment of possession’</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">either by stealing them, damaging them, violating or abusing them, disparaging them, or (and this is the inward attitude the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">torah </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">wants absolutely to guard against) becoming so fixated on my neighbour’s fortunes that I lose sight of him as a person and destroy myself in the process. The moral and theological point is that envy dehumanises. It degrades the image of God in us. It robs us of our dignity and worth because it deflects us from a person-centered relationship with God and with other people, which alone is the way towards human flourishing, into an idolatrous concern with what is material and impersonal. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13pt;">This dynamic of envy as emptiness or need allied to the instinct to ‘spoil’ the good that others have is studied extensively in the Bible,. I should like to explore this theme in three Old Testament texts, the third of which begins to suggest how envy can be addressed as a spiritual problem. I shall then comment on some New Testament texts that develop these themes before returning to our own day and asking what these biblical insights might suggest to us as we try to read the signs of the times and understand the human hungers and longings that permeate our society. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">My first text is a </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">locus classicus </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">of envy, the story of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21.). It is a simple enough narrative. Naboth has a vineyard up against the royal palace. King Ahab wants it: when it comes to real estate, location is everything. Naboth will not sell his patrimony, whereupon Ahab goes to bed and sulks. Jezebel devises a scheme whereby Naboth is accused of sacrilege for resisting the royal, and therefore divine, will. Naboth is stoned to death and Ahab takes possession of the vineyard, only to find Elijah already there to pronounce judgment for his contempt of his subjects and of his God. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">This looks like a story of avarice, inordinate desire, and so it is. Ahab wants something so desperately that it occupies all his waking thoughts. In his emptiness of spirit, the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">ennui </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">that so many rich and powerful people know, he obsesses about something he does not need. But there is an important clue about his deeper mental state. ‘Ahab said to Naboth, “Give me your vineyard, so that I may have it as a vegetable garden”.’ In other words, the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">wanting </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">is accompanied by a </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">destructive impulse. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">The vine, like the olive and the fig tree, symbolises the best and most productive that the land is capable of. To degrade a vineyard into a vegetable patch is to spoil what has been handed down in an ancient family for centuries. What is spoiled is not simply a vineyard. It is part of a family’s sacred geography. It is terrain that holds long-cherished memories that are not transferrable to another place. It is the patrimony not only of a man’s ancestry but of a people to whom the land was a divine gift and the charter of their freedom from tyranny. Tyranny, always deeply implicated in envy, is precisely what Naboth resists. A tyrant’s envy costs him his life, though as the story goes on to relate, the envier meets an altogether more ignoble end. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">My next text is more complex. It is the story of Saul and David in the First Book of Samuel, one of the finest tales of the ancient world. Its greatness as tragedy comes from recognising the need to ‘speak what we feel; not what we ought to say’, as Edgar puts it in the final speech of </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">King Lear</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">. Like Lear, Saul is ‘every inch a king’: not ague-proof, but for all that, a man whose flawed dignity elicits our compassion and even our regard. He starts out so well, the young, charismatic hero whose prowess with the sword wins him acclaim from the tribes of Israel longing, in their fragile bond, for some unifying symbol of their kinship that will offer stability in the chaotic, uncertain world of the 11</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.67pt;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> century BC. But Saul’s problem is that he is never given the space to develop as king and as human being in his own right. The scenery is always populated with others who surround him, in particular Samuel the prophet, Jonathan his son and heir, and David the bright-eyed youth whose magnetic looks and personality pulls all three of them into his orbit and whose sunny presence casts Saul into ever deepening shadows. We have only to recall how Saul takes a rash oath to kill anyone who breaks a needlessly imposed fast, only to find that it is his own son Jonathan who is implicated, and how the people turn against Saul so that Jonathan may live; or how Saul is bowed down with melancholia and is soothed by David’s music; or how he frets about David’s absence from the feast, inventing every kind of reason why he has not come, then hurling a spear at his son because of his friendship with David; or the exquisitely crafted scene in the cave where David calls to Saul and delivers a long self-righteous speech, to which Saul listens and simply replies, ‘Is this your voice, my son David?’ and weeps; and at the emotional climax of the tragedy, the worn out king going in disguise by night to the woman at En-dor and learning from Samuel’s ghost that the coming day will be his last. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13pt;">Tragedy, in the strict sense, is a story told about greatness that is brought down by some failure in character, some ‘basic fault’. What is Saul’s? I propose that it is envy. His obsession is not his own grandiosity (this was Solomon’s fault). It is his preoccupation with what others have that he himself does not (or, if he has had it, he becomes deprived of it). Again, we sense the void in his life, the emptiness that gives birth to envy. He is envious of Samuel (even after he is dead) because of his direct access to the word of the Lord, something Saul has once enjoyed but now lost: ‘Is not Saul also among the prophets? He is envious of first of his own son Jonathan and then of David for their military success and popular acclaim, qualities that fitted them so well for leadership, an art in which Saul for all his good beginnings, progressively fell short of Israel’s aspirations for what was required in a king. There is a telling moment in the story when David returns from killing Goliath. The women turn out (‘to meet Saul’, the text says carefully, not to adulate David directly) dancing and singing: ‘Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands’. It is meant, I think, as a celebration of them both, with the thousands-ten thousands comparison meant simply as a dramatic figure of speech to intensify their adulation: common enough, in Hebrew poetry. But Saul takes it literally and is ‘very angry… “They have ascribed to David tens of thousands, and to me they have ascribed thousands; what more can he have but the kingdom?” So Saul eyed David from that day on’ (1 Samuel 18.6-9). This malevolent ‘eyeing’ (or, we could say, the ‘evil eye’) is envy in its purest form, with all its destructive intention laid bare. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Most powerfully of all, in the way the story is told, he envies the love between David and Jonathan. It is true that here we are dealing with a story about jealousy as well as envy, for both David and Jonathan pose a threat to Saul’s own attachment to each of them: each of them, he thinks, is taking the other away from him. There are shades of </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Othello </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">in this sad and beautiful tale. But I think we can safely say that overshadowing his jealousy of his double attachment is his hard-edged envy of </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">what </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">existed between Jonathan the heir, and David, Saul’s friend turned (as he supposes) supplanter. Such a friendship is what he does not have, and imagines he can never have. And this, reinforced by his envy of David’s military success, is what he is determined to spoil by killing David and thereby destroy the very thing that animates and gives life to both his son and to himself, the love David is prepared to offer to them both. There is only one way the mental distress of despair can end. Saul falls on his own sword on Mount Gilboa, defeated by his own demons. Who is to say whether, in the complex mysteries of the human mind, envy is the symptom or the cause? But the symbolism is clear. Envy always has the tendency to destroy. In the end, say both the stories we have looked at, it visits destruction at home, in the very seat of the human soul. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">I spoke about the symbolism of Saul’s mental collapse and suicide. This is a layer of the story we should pay attention to. I said that envy always has the propensity to spoil. In the psychoanalytic literature, this insight is associated with Melanie Klein whose work </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Envy and Gratitude </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">(1957) proved ground-breaking in post-Freudian theory. She says of envy that it entails an attack on the ‘good’ object because of its goodness, because the awareness of being separated from the ‘good’ which arouses envy becomes intolerable. So acting out envious impulses is to relieve the tension between the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ objects. Klein develops this theory in the light of her observation of infant behaviour at the mother’s breast, and the tendency of the infant to ‘split’ the ‘good breast’ from the ‘bad’. What I want to stress is her insight that envy attacks the good object </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">because it is good. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">And this perfectly explains Saul’s erratic behaviour towards David. The good that is ultimately spoiled by his own envy is not external but internal, his love for David and the wholesomeness that comes from it. More than that, the clarity of his moral vision, the integrity of his own motives and attitudes becomes increasingly clouded and compromised through his envy. In this sense, Saul has already ‘died’ as a human person long before he throws himself on to his own sword. The seven sins, of which envy is perhaps the most potent, are rightly known as ‘deadly’. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13pt;">My final text from the Hebrew Bible is one of the psalms. Envy is a frequent theme in the Psalter, particularly among the wisdom Psalms. Psalm 37 warns the feverish complainant against the destabilising effects of envy: ‘Fret not thyself because of the ungodly, neither be thou envious against the evil doers’. The antidote here is a calm and equable spirit, for the evil doers will soon be cut down like the grass. Psalm 49 is more probing. ‘Be not thou afraid, though one be made rich: or if the glory of his house be increased; for he shall carry nothing away with him when he dieth; neither shall his pomp follow him.’ There, the argument turns on human mortality: there is no point in being consumed by envy when death is the great leveller of high and low, rich and poor. It is a bleak way of dealing with envy, though undeniably potent. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13pt;">However, the Psalter’s most searching anatomy of envy is to be found in Psalm 73. It is unique in the Old Testament for its acute psychological and spiritual perception of human envy, not least as a meditation that autobiographically charts the landscape of the psalmist’s own life. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 13pt;">The Psalm begins with what looks like an orthodox statement of belief: ‘truly God is good to the upright’ (or to ‘Israel’ depending on how we read the Hebrew) (1). Statements like this (perhaps meant to be read in implied quotation marks?) are very easy to make, but the theme of the Psalm is to test whether the credal assertion matches experience. So, without further ado the psalmist launches out on his story. ‘As for me, my feet had almost stumbled… for I was envious of the arrogant’ (2-3). Psalm 37 may warn against futile worry, but here the psalmist could not help himself. The prosperity of the arrogant is described with striking imagery as if the psalmist has personally had his nose rubbed in their graceless affluence. He sees them gliding around ‘sound and sleek’ (4), wearing their pride like a necklace and violence like clothing (6), a kind of second skin. Porcine eyes bulbous with fat (7), mouths gaping open to the sky and tongues greedily scouring the earth for fodder (9) build up the unpleasant image of a grotesque self-inflated beast – for such people, to the psalmist, have forfeited their right to be called human. And this is the symptom of their deadly underlying disease, the functional atheism we have already met in Psalm 14. Like the fool who says, ‘there is no God’, the arrogant proudly defy their Maker with the question that most characterises the arrogant: ‘How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?’ What does a remote, transcendent deity know or care about anything (11)? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">After this graphic and colourful portrait of </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">hubris </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">the psalmist returns to his testimony. If the arrogant are so favoured, what is the point of being wise or good or religious – this is the heart of the psalmist’s dilemma. ‘All in vain have I kept my heart clean, and washed my hands in innocence. For all day long I have been plagued and am punished every morning’ (13-14). The inward struggle between the faith of verse 1 and the experience of the following verses is an unbearable burden, for there is simply no answer to this conflict (15-16). The circle of theodicy cannot be squared. Until, that is, the great turning point of this Psalm. ‘I went into the sanctuary of God’ (17). In this life-changing moment, illumination happens; there is a sudden disclosure of how things truly are. ‘Then I perceived their end’ (17). It’s as if the psalmist has been given spectacles so that where previously there had only been hints and nudges of reality, now at last everything comes into focus. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Something very striking happens to the psalmist’s discourse here. Up to now, the story has been told in the 1</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.67pt;"><sup>st</sup></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> and 3</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.67pt;"><sup>rd</sup></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> person: this is how it is with </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">them</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">; these are the consequences for </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">me. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">But no sooner has he experienced this sudden reorientation of perspective than he turns to address God himself. ‘Truly </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">you </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">set them in slippery places; </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">you </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">make them fall to ruin’ (18). Narrative turns into prayer, and remains in that mode for the rest of the Psalm. In other words, it is as the psalmist turns towards God that everything else begins to make sense and his envy begins to subside. He understands now the truth already sketched out in Psalms 37 and 49. Above all, he recognises that good fortune is a chimera, an insubstantial dream (20); once seen for what it is, those favoured by it are to be pitied, for it blinds them to the infinitely better, more lasting rewards the psalmist has now discovered. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">What are these rewards? The psalmist likens his earlier, pre-enlightened state to that of a ‘brute</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> beast’ (22). So while the arrogant had become bestial through their pride and avarice, there had been a comparable risk to the psalmist: that he too would be brutalised through the sin of envy (3). But what he now describes is how the corrupting effects of envy are transfigured by humanising desire. This is no longer the destructive envy of others’ wealth and success but the life giving hunger for God. Where envy had poisoned his vision, desire for God transforms and renews it. And so the Psalm rises to a magnificent climax of faith: ‘Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel and afterward you will receive me with honour. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever’ (23-26). So the journey ends with an elaboration of the opening credal statement, but this time without quotation marks, for the conventional rewards-and-punishment formula he had trotted out has become his personal confession of a lived faith. ‘But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge to tell of all your works’ (28). He has made the pilgrimage from the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">words</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> of religion to the inward </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">experience</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> of it, the most important journey a human being can ever make. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Melanie Klein’s work was entitled </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Envy and Gratitude. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Her thesis was that gratitude is the polar opposite to envy and the antidote to it. She defines gratitude as our response to what we experience as the true ‘good’. She means by this that when we experience something as gift, our response is not the envious instinct to attack and destroy but the loving instinct to care, appreciate and give in return. It awakens a life-instinct that is generous and transformative and that is the antithesis of the death-instinct that gives birth to envy. This is because contentment is the hard-won realisation that we are not empty after all: the good permeates our lives, if we </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">can only see it. And the recognition that our cup is, so to speak, full of what is good, and the gratitude that flows from it, drains the poison out of our propensity to envy. I think we can see this transformation happening in Psalm 73, which provides us with a happier ending than the stories of either Naboth’s vineyard or King Saul. The psalm’s turning point marks the threshold at which the psalmist crosses over from envy to gratitude, from destructive impulse to the opening up of the self to all that will be integrative and healing. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">For a Christian theologian, this Kleinian language has strongly eucharistic overtones. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Eucharistia, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">thanksgiving, is of course a liturgical act commanded in the gospel in memory of Jesus on the threshold of his passion. However, the eucharist is what it is in the larger sense that it expresses the offering of all of life to the Creator and Redeemer of the world. To be a disciple is to live eucharistically. To be the church is to be the community of disciples who are shaped by gratitude as the fundamental Christian virtue, and who are thereby being humanised by the transformative gift of grace. So I want to say that in a fundamental sense, the antidote to envy is the eucharist, because it is in the eucharist that the human race does what it was created to do, to offer God its praise and thanksgiving, to ‘glorify God and enjoy him for ever’ as the Westminster Shorter Catechism has it. And the consequence of this is as the broken, disordered fragments of our lives are gathered up, like the broken fragments of the eucharistic bread, and put back together again and healed. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Eucharistia </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">is the answer to envy because it takes us out of our narcissistic self-absorption with our own envious desires, and instead invites us to gaze on larger things until, as the hymn says, we are ‘lost in wonder, love and praise’. This integrative, individuating journey into divine lostness is envy’s ultimate anthithesis. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">There is one passage among many in the New Testament that encapsulates this perfectly. Writing to the Philippians, Paul constantly underlines the life-giving, transformative effect of </span><span style="font-size: 13pt;">gratitude and joy on the believer and the church. Towards the end of this most beautiful of his letters, Paul captures his major themes. His final chapter reiterates the command to rejoice in the Lord always, and promises that because of God’s goodness, believers do not need to worry about their needs (‘fret’, in the language of Psalm 37). It is the peace of God, passing all understanding, that will guard against anxiety. Therefore, believers are to focus on the ‘good’: ‘whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.’ Paul elaborates on his own circumstances. ‘Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty, In any and all circumstances, I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me… My God will satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.’ (Philippians 4) </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">The key word here is </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">contentment. Autarkeia </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">literally means ‘self-sufficiency’, being able to support oneself without being dependent on others. By extension, it came to mean in Stoic philosophy being free of my own inner desires, a state of equilibrium in which I am no longer driven by my needs and drives and envious desires, in other words, ‘contentment’. We could say this equates in a theological sense, to not being empty. This is, I think, what Paul means here. He is saying that only when we have begun to transcend our envy with all its destructive tendencies can we experience true liberation. In Stoic philosophy such a state is achieved by the discipline of living contemplatively. It would be tempting to say that for Paul contentment is God-given, arising spontaneously in the heart of the believer because of his or her free justification by faith in Jesus Christ. It is, of course, but not in a </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">simpliste </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">way that excludes the</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> contemplative way we have explored in the Hebrew wisdom literature. It is I think a subtle marriage of gift-and-response: gift, because salvation cannot be earned by anything that we do, even contemplation; response because the gift is nothing until we do the lifelong ‘work’ of making it our own and inhabiting it. ‘I have </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">learned</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> to be content’ he says. It is spiritual </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">askesis, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">part of the artistry of being formed in the image of Christ that is both God’s and ours. It begins with gratitude, for contentment means, theologically, that state of spiritual balance (to use a Benedictine idea) that comes from knowing that we are loved by God and are on the way to salvation. Only then, as Paul says in the Letter to the Romans, can we offer our lives as as ‘living sacrifice’ (Romans 12.2). With gratitude, it is an act of grace. Without it, it is merely Pelagian effort. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Envy infiltrates every aspect of modern life. The reckless competitiveness and bonuses on a scale that beggars belief that have driven our financial institutions to the brink of ruin are a clear symptom of it. On a smaller scale (but not always so small in the context of modest domestic finances) the advertising industry cleverly plays straight into our envious propensities, and largely encourages them in the young, whether it is electronic games, fast cars, must-have gadgetry or the cult of youth and the body beautiful. It is perhaps futile to expect society to change very much, for its values have been formed now over many generations. I do not think we should be too quick to blame post-Enlightenment economics for this: Christians flourished in the 19</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 8.67pt;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;"> century market place by developing the virtues of thrift, prudence and an ethic of hard work. Is it too much to ponder whether this was because our forebears had a deeper awareness of the importance of gratitude and contentment than we? If so, then the cultivation of these virtues would seem to be a high priority if our society is, like the prodigal son, ever </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">going to come to its senses and understand the life of a human being in a larger context than simply the gratifying of needs and desires. I have argued that if envy is the besetting sin of our day, its greatest need for moral and spiritual health is to recapture the life-enhancing generosity of </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">eucharistia </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">and </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">autarkeia, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">of gratitude and contentment. With these given house-room as fundamental values in our society, we might perhaps lose interest in even considering, let alone embracing, the Faustian bargains that put our souls in such danger. </span></div>
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Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-58174449719552091502019-11-16T12:32:00.001+00:002019-11-16T12:32:18.769+00:00"Mary Ann Did Not Go": George Eliot stays away from church<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg28X5jx2EAqVXmNLJI-7SV3ZRTt8QjP41DIgZWZH-hdhlZ_cQJZo6BGhcdBUOK9V2PJY4GjibZ4XzK4xbRwIFyqvynwRJppo_BXiGOXeTBAfzVMi9ZhAnTI3r3dNVNAclZWVEUMn-QNmdZ/s1600/George+Eliot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="620" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg28X5jx2EAqVXmNLJI-7SV3ZRTt8QjP41DIgZWZH-hdhlZ_cQJZo6BGhcdBUOK9V2PJY4GjibZ4XzK4xbRwIFyqvynwRJppo_BXiGOXeTBAfzVMi9ZhAnTI3r3dNVNAclZWVEUMn-QNmdZ/s320/George+Eliot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I
first gave a version of this lecture in 1992. That year marked
the 150th anniversary, little noticed in either the literary or the theological
worlds, of what I believe was the great turning point in George Eliot's life:
that wintry Sunday morning in 1842 when she took her resolve in both hands,
defied convention and her father, and refused to go to church. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Since
then, of course, George Eliot has joined the big-time authors, with the
television adaptation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Middlemarch</i>.
Now you can buy her on station bookstalls for around a pound. The TV <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Middlemarch</i> might have made a very
interesting topic for the 1994 George Eliot Memorial Lecture, for the interplay
between the written text of a novel and its reworking for the screen, small or
large, is one of the more absorbing topics of media studies. Should we speak of
television's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Middlemarch</i>, or merely
of its `Middlemarch'? In other words, was the screen version the authentic work
of George Eliot, albeit collapsed, cut down to size?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or is the outcome of that process of collapsing
great literature so distorting in its effects that it should not bear the same
name as the original?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>It is probably
elitist to say that any reworking of a written text for a visual medium is
bound in the end to be a deconstruction, and that any purist should shun
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nevertheless, most reviewers not
only praised <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Middlemarch</i> as good
television. There appeared to be a consensus that in an important way it did
attempt to be true to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">spirit</i> of
the novel whose name it bears, even if it took some liberties with its <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shape</i>. More cynical observers recalled
that the BBC had served notice that if this hugely expensive adaptation was not
well received by the critics, it would be the last of the big-budget costume
dramas to be seen on television. Some would say that this would not have been a
disservice to literature. For we have all had to reconstruct for ever our
mental images of Dorothea and Casaubon, Lydgate and Rosamund, and that is the
price you always have to pay for the easy access television offers to the
storylines of classical literature. It is a medium short on imagination,
precisely the quality that makes great literature great. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Meanwhile,
those of us who live in George Eliot's Midlands also had to re-envision the
novel's chief character of all, the town itself. Here, there was perhaps more
to complain about. Stamford, Lincolnshire, where the film was made, is
undoubtedly one of England's most beautiful towns, and I am not going to
begrudge it the dividend <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Middlemarch</i>
has earned it in visitor income since the broadcast. Nevertheless, the town as
portrayed did seem a long way from the west midland setting the author had
created. Of course, `Middlemarch' is not a geographical place, but a town of
the mind. Nevertheless, it was unkind for a stage-coach to trundle on to the
set boldly bearing the east-Midland names of Grantham and Newark rather than
Leamington, Nuneaton or Birmingham. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Shortly
afterwards, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Observer</i> rang to ask
me for a clergyman's quote from the town of Middlemarch-alias-Coventry
itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Were Coventrians buying the book
of the film, I was asked; were they talking about it on street-corners; how
was it affecting Coventry's self-awareness on the literary map of England; and
were there many Casaubons (male or female) left nowadays in the Church of
England, and if so, what mythologies are they attempting to discover the key
to? My wise and thoughtful answers went unrecorded, apart from my wish to see
another <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Daniel Deronda</i> on screen if
the BBC were looking for another of George Eliot's novels to adapt. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 0pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><em>Middlemarch</em>, as I have said, means middle
England, the England of Warwickshire, of Nuneaton, of Coventry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the real George Eliot country is the
landscape of human life. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Middlemarch</i>,
her study of provincial life, we recognise the provincialisms of the worlds we
ourselves inhabit, the shifting sands of human relationships, the struggles
for power and recognition, our quest for value and meaning. George Eliot is one
of her century's most brilliant portrayers of the human spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simon Callow, in his autobiography <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Being an Actor</i>, says that the important
thing in acting `is not to feel a lot, but to feel accurately.'</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_edn1" name="_ednref1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> That is what George Eliot
excels at: not so much tidal waves of emotion, but an uncanny accuracy in her
depiction of human life. Hers is an art that is sharply focused, profoundly
true. She herself embodied in her writing those qualities she so much admired
in Dutch painting: what she called `this rare, precious quality of
truthfulness'. Her plea for realism in the great 17th chapter of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Adam Bede</i>, "In which the Story Pauses a
Little", bears quoting again, because it seems to embody the programme George
Eliot set herself as a writer:<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /><em>I turn without shrinking, from cloud-borne angels,
from prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors, to an old woman bending over her
flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner, while the noonday light, softened
perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim
of her spinning-wheel, and her stone jug, and all those cheap common things
which are the precious necessities of life to her....<o:p></o:p></em></span><br />
<em>
</em><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /><em>"Foh!" says my idealistic friend, "what vulgar
details! What good is there is taking all these pains to give an exact likeness
of old ugly women and clowns?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What a low
phase of life! - what clumsy, ugly people!"</em></span><br />
<em>
</em><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /><em>But... things may be lovable that are not altogether
handsome... human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it
does not wait for beauty - it flows with resistless force and brings beauty
with it.... Paint us an angel if you can.... paint us yet oftener a Madonna....
but do not impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the region
of Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those heavy
clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house, those rounded backs and stupid
weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of
the world - those homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough
curs, and their clusters of onions.... Let </em></span><!--[if supportFields]><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'><span style='mso-element:
field-begin'></span>XE "Art"</span><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'><span style='mso-element:
field-end'></span></span><![endif]--><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><em>Art always remind us of them: therefore let us always have men ready to
give the loving pains of a life to the faithful representation of commonplace
things.<o:p></o:p></em></span><br />
<br />
********<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">But I want tonight to look at George Eliot's art in
the light of that particular event in her early life with which I began. It is
appropriate perhaps that a Coventry clergyman should be giving this lecture,
because it belongs to the Coventry period of her life, when she was living in
Bird Grove, Foleshill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was on
Sunday, 2 January 1842 that her father wrote a laconic entry in his diary:
"Went to Trinity Church in the forenoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Miss Lewis went with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mary Ann
did not go. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stopd the sacrement (sic)
and Miss Lewis stopd also." Few words to describe a momentous and life-changing
decision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two weeks later, again: "Went
to church in the forenoon. May Ann did not go to church".</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_edn2" name="_ednref2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />Robert Evans, the fine looking man whose portrait
hangs in Nuneaton, was less interested in Marian's inner religious struggles
than in making sure that his daughter behaved as was proper for a middle class
young woman with eligible prospects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
so often, religion was not so much a matter of conviction or truth, rather a
convenient social tool. We know what grief this wayward act of subversion
caused Marian's father. We know that she and her father were barely on speaking
terms for two months, communicating only by letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One Monday February morning, she wrote about
her intellectual difficulties with Christianity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /><em>Such being my very strong convictions, it cannot be
a question with any mind of strict integrity, whatever judgment may be passed
on their truth, that I could not without vile hypocrisy and a miserable truckling
to the smile of the world for the sake of my supposed interests, profess to
join in worship which I wholly disapprove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This, and this alone I will not do even for your sake. </em></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_edn3" name="_ednref3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><em>[3]</em></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<em>
</em><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />What she called her "holy war" lasted four
months. After that, she agreed to conform, resume churchgoing, and restore the
status quo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Robert Evans sighed with
relief. But for Marian, nothing had changed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She had not reverted to orthodox Christian belief, and would never do
so again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Far from it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For this profoundly inward woman had been
rocked to her foundations by a deep spiritual crisis. For her, things could
never be the same again.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />Now, I suppose that as a clergyman, I am bound to
find this little episode particularly fascinating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, most of us clergy spend a great
deal of time asking why people don't go to church.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Large sums of money, and an inordinate amount
of time, are spent on considering that question. The Decade of Evangelism,
which we are in at present, shows that it has not gone away. So when an
erstwhile evangelical churchgoer suddenly throws it all over and does a
dramatic spiritual <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">volte face</i>, well,
any ordained admirer of George Eliot will find in that little drama much to
ponder.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />It is my view, as I have said, that what happened to
Marian Evans in Coventry in 1842 was of the profoundest importance for the
rest of her life: that, together with her meeting George Henry Lewes. I
cheekily suggest that whereas it was Nuneaton that gave the world the woman, it
was Coventry that conceived the writer; after which it was Lewes, as the best
literary midwife of the 19th century, who eventually brought the novelist to
birth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Marian's crisis brought to
the surface hitherto repressed energies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It marked, I think, the beginning of what was to be characteristic of
her life and her art:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>rigorous,
relentless questioning of what she took to be a superficial <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">status quo</i>; an upsurge of radical doubt
within her as to the validity of any belief or position that she had not
ruthlessly made her own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hers was a
determination to discard for ever what she called "crutches of superstition";
and to be as truthful with herself as it was possible to be, even at the cost
of hurting those to whom she felt closest. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />At one level, all this can be read as the search of
any young man or woman for identity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Most of us need, in adolescence or later, to make our protest, put our
mark on things by questioning what was handed down to us, daring to doubt that
our parents and grandparents had a monopoly of wisdom. Robert Evans' daughter
was always very much a free spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her
various spellings of her name suggest a restless seeking after her own
authentic self: first Mary Anne, then Mary Ann, then Marian, and right at the
end of her life, Mary Ann once again. Whether we should see the name `George
Eliot' as part of this search for self, or simply a literary convenience can
be discussed. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">But Marian's sitting at home one Sunday morning while the rest of
the family went to church is of a piece with the pattern of her life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The outrage she caused her domestic circle
was repeated, on a far bigger stage, when she chose to live with the married
George Henry Lewes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is as if she was
destined to be a perennial thorn in the side of the Victorian establishment.
We could say that life, for her, was more complex, more elusive, more subtle
than conventional wisdom could see; that her life-choices entailed a difficult
balancing act between public morality and private faith. This of course is one
of the themes explored in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Middlemarch</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you read George Eliot, you know that
like those Dutch interiors she loved, you are touching the experience of
someone who has truly lived. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />Alice Miller, in her study of infant trauma <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Drama of Being a Child</i>, suggests
that the world's greatest art often seems to emerge out of struggle of some
kind,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mental, emotional, or
physical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our most searching novelists,
musicians or artists are often people who stand somewhat on the margins of
human life, who are able to look into it from the vantage point of "the
dangerous edge of things", to quote Robert Browning's great phrase. They seem
to know, so many of them, social ostracism, loneliness or pain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is as if struggle sets a man or woman
apart, enables a person to see in a new way, interpret the life of his or her
contemporaries back to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
fashionable west‑end preacher singled out Bulstrode, he of the "serious
Christian beliefs", and described how he shuddered at the novelist's "awful
dissection of a guilty conscience. That is what I mean by the prophetic
spirit" he said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The great novelists
are the prophets of their day, and perhaps that is because, in Wordsworth's
words, their experience leads them to "see into the life of things".<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />Now, prophets are by nature disturbers,
protesters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We don't always like them,
but we need them. It seems to me that only those capable of protest are capable
of great art. To give a counter‑example, so much of the art of the Third Reich
or Stalinist Russia strikes us now as devoid of inspiration precisely because
this astringent element of protest was absent. So we must not think that Marian
Evans' little protest in not going to church was unimportant, nor that it was
easy, or impulsive, or petulant. Romola has a telling comment: <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><em>The law was sacred, yes; but the rebellion might be
sacred too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It flashed upon her mind
that the problem before her was .... the problem where the sacredness of
obedience ended, and where the sacredness of rebellion began. <o:p></o:p></em></span><br />
<em>
</em><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />If I read her aright, it cost her dear to stay at
home that January Sunday morning, just as it cost her dear to enter into a
relationship with George Henry Lewes and forgo not only the respect of society,
but, much more important to her, the love of her brother as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems to me at least plausible that had
Marian Evans gone to church that day, we might never have had George Eliot the
novelist whom we celebrate tonight. Instead, we should have had merely a
virtuous woman of impeccable evangelical orthodoxy and irreproachable
habits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She would have married well and
borne seven children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she would have
left not the slightest trace in history at all.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
********<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">What was the religious crisis that led Marian Evans
to give up going to church in 1842?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />The 1840s were a time of seething religious foment
in England. The Church of England was racked by bitter disputes that many said
would split it apart. The Victorian crisis of faith was a crisis at many
levels. The Church of England was already losing its grip on the population.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were a number of reasons for this: the
rise of nonconformity, the effects of the industrial revolution and the shadow
of the dark satanic mills, the growth of cities. But for many thinking people,
the difficulties with religion were more intellectual. Natural science, in
particular, seemed to pose a huge question mark by the revealed truths of
scripture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Charles Darwin (himself once
destined for the Anglican priesthood until his conscience got the better of it)
was yet to write his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Origin of Species</i>
that was to bring the science‑and‑religion debate to a head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Charles Lyell's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elements of Geology</i> had been published in the early 1830s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its theme was that the evidence of geology
pointed to the world being far older than the six thousand or so years suggested
by Genesis. What science was disclosing was that the world around simply didn't
seem to fit the narrow categories conventional dogma tried to force them
into.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The universe was more elusive than
that: it had outgrown the tired formulae of organised religion. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />And so had many thoughtful men and women of the
1840s. It was not without regret.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Matthew Arnold, born three years after Marian Evans, became the
spokesman of this spiritual malaise:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><em>The
Sea of Faith<o:p></o:p></em></span></span><br />
<em>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Was
once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore<o:p></o:p></span></em><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><em>Lay
like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.<o:p></o:p></em></span><br />
<em>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">But
now I only hear<o:p></o:p></span></em><br />
<em>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Its
melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,<o:p></o:p></span></em><br />
<em>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Retreating,
to the breath<o:p></o:p></span></em><br />
<em>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Of the
night wind, down the vast edges drear<o:p></o:p></span></em><br />
<em>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">And
naked shingles of the world.<o:p></o:p></span></em><br />
<em>
</em><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />There is no poem that so perceptively catches the
mood of the religious dilemma of the 19th century as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dover Beach</i>: both its despair at ever finding meaning in the new
understandings of the universe natural science was opening up, and its
incurable nostalgia for the past, when everything seemed secure, and religious
faith timeless. Like Matthew Arnold, Marian found herself on Dover Beach,
gazing into the void. She probably approved of the sentiment that:<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><em>There lives
more faith in honest doubt<o:p></o:p></em></span><br />
<em>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Believe
me, than in half the creeds.<o:p></o:p></span></em><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />as Tennyson put it in that manifesto of the
Victorian search for meaning, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In Memoriam</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1842, Marian Evans publicly joined the
company of honest doubters. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />She had Coventry to thank for that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1841, when she had lived at Bird Grove for
only a few months, she met Charles and Cara Bray, and Cara's family the
Hennells. At the Brays' home at Rosehill, she fell under the influence of free
thought. It was said that `everyone who came to Coventry with a queer
mission....or was supposed to be a "little cracked" was sent up to
Rosehill, where they all sat on a bearskin under an acacia tree, talking
endlessly about phrenology, labour co‑operatives, the repeal of the Corn Laws
and how the new science of geology had undermined the sanctity of holy writ. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Charles Hennell's book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">An Inquiry into the Origins of Christianity</i> had been published in
1838. This painstakingly researched book was a key influence on the young
woman's inquiring mind. So was the epoque-making book by the great German
theologian David Friedrich Strauss, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Das
Leben Jesu</i>. This work was one of the pioneering works of New Testament
criticism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Strauss set to work to reinterpret
Christianity in a non‑supernatural way. He wanted to probe beneath the surface
of the gospels, remove the mythological accretions he saw there, so as to
discover a historical Jesus modern 19th century men and women could identify
with. It was an influential, and subversive book. In 1839, at Charles Hennell's
invitation, Marian began to translate the book into English, so we can assume
that by that year, she was already moving swiftly away from the Calvinism of
her youth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />There was a rigour of thought and argument in this
book, published in English in 1846 as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Life of Jesus Critically Examined</i>, that her finely-tuned mind, with its
love of detail, could respond to. Her evangelical friends tried to win her
back, but in vain. The die had been cast.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">********<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 0pt 72pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br /></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">It seems to me that there is a strong connection
between Marian's religious faith of a few years before, and her rejection of
it in 1842.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The link is in her fervour,
in the passion with which, one year she is obsessed with Christianity, and not
long after, is turning her back on it. You remember that, in her letter to her
father, she talks about her loathing of hypocrisy. That letter is as deeply
felt as any religious writing can be: there is something evangelical about her
rejection of religion, something crusading. And that stems directly from the
kind of faith she had practised up to that time at the evangelical school of
Mrs Wallington, and the Calvinistic establishment of the Misses Franklin.
Evangelical belief looked for a personal relationship with God, a radical
honesty that refused to hide behind rituals or priests or formulae, but instead
called for "truth in the inward parts".<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Churchgoing, as such, was of no virtue at all, said the leaders of the
evangelical awakening at the end of the 18th century, unless it corresponded to
an inner disposition, a heart set free by the love of Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The perennial danger of organised religion
was that it so easily led to hypocrisy, literally `play acting'. From this
well, with its call to relentless self-examination of inner motive and
disposition, Marian had drunk deep. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />What is more, the evangelicals taught that in
Christ, every man, woman or child was equal before God, accepted, not on the
basis of what they had achieved, but solely because of God's love. In other
words, evangelicalism was an emancipation from a dogma‑ridden system of
belief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It taught the primacy of
personal value. It stressed the part feeling played in religion. It proclaimed
that no‑one else could believe on your behalf, do your thinking for you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You had to do your spiritual work for yourself.
This, too, became a hall‑mark of Marian's world view. She wrote of it in the
following year in a letter to Sarah Hennell: <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /><em>Speculative truth begins to appear but a shadow of
individual minds, agreement between intellects seems unattainable, and we turn
to the truth of feeling as the only universal bond of union.</em></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_edn4" name="_ednref4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><em>[4]</em></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<em>
</em><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />It is precisely these same, evangelical instincts
that were at work in the 22 year old Marian as she resolved that she could no
longer go to church. Organised religion, I think we may say, was just too
facile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> "</span>Falsehood is so easy, truth is
so difficult" writes the novelist in Adam Bede. At Holy Trinity Church,
evidently, not enough was demanded of her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Her evangelicalism had taught her that she could find happiness only in
thinking her own thoughts and becoming her own person. And that must mean
saying farewell to evangelicalism. For her, as for John Henry Newman on the
brink of joining the Church of Rome three years later, it was "the parting of
friends". <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />But evangelical belief was still on the agenda some
years later. From the portrayal of clergy in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scenes of Clerical Life</i>, it is true, as Graham Handley says, that
"fifteen years after her rejection of her faith George Eliot could look back
with tolerance, compassion, understanding and irony to what she had left
behind". </span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_edn5" name="_ednref5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But from much the same period of her life
comes the piece of writing that first convinced George Henry Lewes of her
genius. Here is how it begins:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard
not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and great glibness of
speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth and money, he may
most easily attain power and reputation in English society?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is the Goshen of mediocrity in which a
smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where
platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal,
unctuous egoism as God-given piety? Let such a man become an evangelical
preacher; he will then find it possible to reconcile small ability with great
ambition, superficial knowledge with the prestige of erudition, a middling
morale with a high reputation for sanctity. </span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_edn6" name="_ednref6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />There is nothing very tolerant here. What occasioned
this piece was the writing of Dr John Cumming, a Scottish Presbyterian
preacher who drew large crowds at his London chapel through his extravagant and
bizarre account of Bible prophecy. I myself once possessed a copy of his
lectures on the Book of Revelation. Mary Ann Evans is unsparing in her
withering condemnation of the rhetoric of what we now call fundamentalism: its
preoccupation with hell, its lack of charity, its superficial notion of truth
and its subversion of personal responsibility and public morality. But we seem
to hear more in the diatribe than the examination and exposure of a kind of
religion that fraudulently manipulates men and women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What we overhear is Mary Anne Evans
confronting her own past, the convert freethinker disowning, with the same
apostolic vehemence as in her letter to her father, what she perhaps only half
realises will always be a part of herself. The tone of this review is in
striking contrast to the sympathy with which she writes of religion in the
novels, as we shall see. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
********<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />What, then, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i>
the faith of the mature Marian Evans? <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />In her changing attitude to religion, as I have
suggested, George Eliot accurately symbolises and embodies the profound changes
in society at large as it wrestled with the great religious questions of the
19th century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Victorian crisis of
faith was Marian's.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She charts its
progress from faith to doubt with uncanny accuracy. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />It is difficult to be too precise, however, about
the exact nature of her beliefs. On the one hand, there are plenty of
indications that she abandoned all belief in a supernatural God, adopting
instead a positivist, Comte-ian `religion of humanity' in which the ethic of
Christianity, shorn of its metaphysics, becomes the governing principle. In the
article I have just quoted, she writes: <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />The best minds that accept Christianity as a
divinely inspired system, believe that the great end of the Gospel is not
merely the saving but the educating of men's souls, the creating within them of
holy dispositions, the subduing of egotistical pretensions, and the perpetual
enhancing of the desire that the will of God - a will synonymous with goodness
and truth - may be done on earth.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />Fatally powerful as religious systems have been,
human nature is stronger and wider than religious systems, and though dogmas
may hamper, they cannot absolutely repress its growth: build walls round the
living tree as you will, the bricks and mortar have by and by to give way
before the slow and sure operation of the sap.... The idea of Go</span><!--[if supportFields]><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'><span style='mso-element:
field-begin'></span>XE "God"</span><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt'><span style='mso-element:
field-end'></span></span><![endif]--><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">d is really moral in its influence - it really cherishes all that is
best and loveliest in man - only when God is contemplated as sympathizing with
the pure elements of human feeling, as possessing infinitely all those
attributes which we recognise to be moral in humanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this light, the idea of God and the sense
of His presence intensify all noble feeling, and encourage all noble effort.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />In the same decade, she was saying:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /><em>I have not returned to dogmatic Christianity - to
the acceptance of any set of doctrines as a creed, and a superhuman revelation
of the Unseen - but see I see in it the highest expression of the religious
sentiment that has yet found its place in the history of mankind, and I have
the profoundest interest in the inward life of sincere Christians of all
ages.... where I used to delight in expressing intellectual difference, I now
delight in feeling an emotional agreement.</em></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_edn7" name="_ednref7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><em>[7]</em></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<em>
</em><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />There is the famous story of her meeting Frederic
Myers in the garden of Trinity College Cambridge in the rain in 1873.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /><em>Taking as her text the three words which have been
used so often as the inspiring trumpet calls of men - the words </em>God, Immortality, Duty<em>, pronounced,
with terrible earnestness, how inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable was the second,
and yet how peremptory and absolute the third....
I seemed to be gazing on a sanctuary with no Presence to
hallow it, and heaven left empty of a God.</em></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_edn8" name="_ednref8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;"><em>[8]</em></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<em>
</em><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />And then there is her discovery of the ideas of
Ludwig Feuerbach, whose book The Essence
of Christianity influenced her deeply.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Feuerbach believed that the entire edifice of religion could be
collapsed into a single truth, that "Love is God himself, and apart from it
there is no God". Religion is the consciousness of the infinity of the
consciousness, and "God" is but the outward projection of the inwardness of
human beings. Marian's translation of this book was occupying her in the 1850s,
a decade during which her religious convictions were evidently arriving at
stability after the foment of the 1840s. Perhaps significantly, this was the
only book to bear her own name on the title page - Marian Evans, as if to say that
the Feuerbachian version of religion was, so far as she was concerned, her
final position. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />On the other hand, Marian's deep interest in the
figure of Jesus is an important clue to her inner self. There is the well known
story of how Marian, immersed in Strauss and getting bogged down, like
Casaubon, in this key to all mythologies, became, in her own words, `Strauss‑sick'.
Her antidote was to set up a statue of Christ in her study, and contemplate it.
That is of a piece with that contemplative scene in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mill on the Floss</i>, where Maggie, in the aftermath of the crisis
that has ruined the Tullivers, goes in search of something, anything, to read.
Her brother Tom's trunk of school books yields only Latin, Euclid and
Logic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But on the window sill, unnoticed
until now, she finds "a little, old, clumsy book" which turns out to be<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas à Kempis' <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Imitation of Christ</i>. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /><em>A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while
she read, as if she had been wakened in the night by a strain of solemn music,
telling of beings whose souls had been astir while hers was in
stupor....Here...was a secret of life that would enable her to renounce all
other secrets ‑ here was a sublime height to be reached...here was insight and
strength.<o:p></o:p></em></span><br />
<em>
</em><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />This is the classic account of evangelical
conversion, as Wesley had recounted it when he told of his heart being
`strangely warmed' at Aldersgate Street, and as the young Marian Evans had
herself experienced it. Maggie's soul, adrift on the chaotic streams of her
emotional life, begins to find an anchor. She discovers the strength to
renounce Stephen's seductions, to rescue Tom. Religion issues in moral
courage, in being good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <em>The Mill</em>, George Eliot quotes the text
of The Imitation of Christ at
length. It is said that this well‑thumbed book was found by George Eliot when
she died, along with her Bible. She could not worship Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she could endorse, and celebrate, the
moral and spiritual insights she saw in his teaching; be drawn to the charisma
of the man. You could even say that she longed to imitate him. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />Despite the clear autobiographical material in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Mill</i>, we must not assume that
Maggie's faith is necessarily that of Marian Evans'. Nevertheless, in the
sympathetic light in which personal religion is portrayed in that novel,
indeed, in all her novels, "atheism" (John McDade is only the latest
commentator to use that word in a recent article on George Eliot's religion)
seems too crude to describe her own finely nuanced religious position. The
mysticism of "The Choir Invisible", as personal a piece of writing as you
could find in her canon, while hardly an orthodox Christian statement, is far
removed from the bleak positivism of Auguste Comte and his disciples. Her
lifelong interest in religion (not, incidentally, shared by Lewes) seems to
have been the pursuit of the "essence of Christianity" which she found in
Jesus' call to personal responsibility, to moral seriousness. Kierkegaard
said that every human being needed to find "that idea for which he can live and
die". Marian Evans found it in the solemn word "duty". It was easy for Matthew
Arnold to caricature that kind of religion as "morality, tinged with
emotion". That memorable epithet accurately portrayed a good deal of Victorian
society religion, and the species is not dead yet. But for Marian, the word
"duty" connoted the life task of achieving personal authenticity. It was a
profoundly religious, because inwardly experienced, vocation. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />In that sense, you could say that what happened to
Marian Evans in 1842 when she `did not go' with her father to church, was as
much a conversion, that is a turning-point in life, as it was a rejection of
faith. It was, perhaps, a moment of illumination, a discovery of that idea for
which she knew she could now live and die. And because I believe that throwing
away the "crutches of superstition" is always the prelude to a truer finding of
oneself, I want to say that George Eliot is really a profoundly religious
writer. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">This, to me, marks her out as very different from Charles Dickens,
whose novels strike one as remarkably untouched by any spiritual vision,
despite their marvellous perception of the humour and incongruity of so much
of life, the agony and ecstasy in the often unobserved fortunes of men, women
and children, the fierce protest against the injustices endured by the London
poor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is different again from
Anthony Trollope, whose own deep interest in religion seems somehow to be the
more detached view of the professional clergy-watcher. While celebrating
sincerity when he finds it (in Mr. Harding, for example, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Warden</i>), Trollope's account of
Victorian religion is so laced with irony that the overall effect, for all
his establishment loyalties, is actually far more subversive of traditional
values than George Eliot's. Perhaps she is more akin to Thomas Hardy, who,
like her, had lost confidence in orthodox religion to provide answers to life's
riddles; yet who, from his profoundly pessimistic, even tragic, view of
things, never abandoned a nostalgic instinct for religion and the transcendent
element in life ‑ call it God, call it destiny ‑ mysteriously at work in the
inscrutable changes and chances of the world, "hoping it might be so" as he
puts it in his poem `The Oxen'. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />Anyone who reads George Eliot will, I think, be
struck by this sensitivity to what is spiritual, this openness to life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is what makes her novels so generous, so
illuminating, so humane.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let me offer
one more example of her insight into the spiritual order of things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It comes from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Adam Bede</i>, and in view of our church going theme this evening, it
is all the more significant that the maturing George Eliot, and not the
adolescent Marian Evans, should have written it.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /><em>But Adam's thoughts of Hetty did not deafen him to
the service; they rather blended with all the other deep feelings for which
the church service was a channel to him this afternoon, as a certain
consciousness of our entire past and our imagined future blends itself with all
our moments of keen sensibility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to
Adam the church service was the best channel he could have found for his
mingled regret, yearning, and resignation; its interchange of beseeching cries
for help, with outbursts of faith and praise ‑ its recurrent responses and the
familiar rhythm of its collects, seemed to speak for him as no other form of
worship could have done.<o:p></o:p></em></span><br />
<em>
</em><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />That passage could only have been written by someone
who understood Anglican worship very well indeed, knew it from within,
understood the connection between liturgy and living that is basic to religious
faith. It is, I suggest, a deeply nostalgic piece of writing, in the same way
as the Imitation of Christ passage
in Mill on the Floss. It is as if the
novelist is once more in dialogue with her own past, just as she had been in
her polemics against Dr Cumming and his evangelical fundamentalism. The
difference is that in the novels, she is able to affirm and celebrate her
religious past which, in the diatribe against Cumming, she is rejecting and
disowning. Of course, they are different sides of the past. Her angry rejection
of evangelicalism is a disowning of a more recent and tumultuous religious
experience than the gentle village Anglicanism of her childhood. Perhaps in
the novels, she found herself returning, if not to the doctrines, then at least
to the eirenic temper and ethos of the faith in which she had been brought up
before she encountered Calvinism. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />So it matters less to me that George Eliot should
have severed her links with organised religion than that she learned to read
the map of the human heart. In that, the novelist makes common cause with the
priest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The art of both is to invite men
and women into an experience of life that is richer and deeper than perhaps
they have yet glimpsed, "larger life" as she calls it in Daniel
Deronda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their common vocation is to
explore meanings, make connections, point to the possibility that human life,
in the midst of its brokenness and pain, can reach out towards wholeness.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />Let me end with a twentieth century tribute to the
moral power of George Eliot's writing. Vera Brittain, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Testament of Youth</i>, describes how the novelist helped her make the
choice at the start of the Great War to renounce Oxford (an ambition for which,
like Marian Evans, she had defied her father) in order to serve as a nurse. She
is contrasting the significance she had hitherto attached to her private life
with all its immediate, absorbing personal concerns, with the remoteness (as
it then seemed to her) of the dramas being played out on the wider stage of
current affairs. Suddenly, with the outbreak of war in 1914, her entire
world-view was overturned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /><em>Now, suddenly, the one impinged upon the other, and
public events and private lives had become inseparable.... Uneasily, I read a
passage from Daniel Deronda that I
had read in comfortable detachment the year before: <o:p></o:p></em></span><br />
<em>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></em><br />
<em><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">"There comes a terrible moment to many souls
when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which
have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an
earthquake into their own lives ‑ where the slow urgency of growing generations
turns into the trend of an invading army, or the dire clash of civil
war....Then it is that the submission of the soul to the Highest is tested,
and....life looks out from the scene of human struggle with the awful face of
duty."</span><a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_edn9" name="_ednref9" style="mso-endnote-id: edn9;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></em><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />Like Maggie Tulliver, like Marian Evans, that writer
found the moral courage to do what was required of her and chart a course
through life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She found the idea for
which she must live and die, as we all must do. It may not be religion in the
conventional sense. But there is a fire in the belly that to me is religious
in all but name. Our own religious and moral vision of life would be the
poorer without her.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><em>October 1994<o:p></o:p></em></span><br />
<br />
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<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 0pt;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_ednref1" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Being An Actor</i>, London, 1985, 100.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 12pt;">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_ednref2" name="_edn2" style="mso-endnote-id: edn2;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Robert Evans' Journal 1842; cited
Gordon S. Haight, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">George Eliot: A
Biography</i> (Harmondsworth 1985), 40.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_ednref3" name="_edn3" style="mso-endnote-id: edn3;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Letters</i>, I, 128-30; cited <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ibid</i>.,
41-43.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></o:p></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_ednref4" name="_edn4" style="mso-endnote-id: edn4;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Letters, I, </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_ednref5" name="_edn5" style="mso-endnote-id: edn5;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Graham Handley, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">George Eliot's Midlands: Passion in Exile</i>
(London, 1991), 109.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></o:p></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_ednref6" name="_edn6" style="mso-endnote-id: edn6;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>`Evangelical Teaching: Dr Cumming'
(1855) in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Selected Critical Writings </i>(ed.
R. Ashton), Oxford, 1992, 138<o:p><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_ednref7" name="_edn7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Letters</i>, III, 230-1.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_ednref8" name="_edn8" style="mso-endnote-id: edn8;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Century Magazine</i> 23, November 1881, 62-3; cited Haight, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">op. cit</i>., 464.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/Owner/Dropbox/AA%20DEAN'S%20FOLDERS/900%20SERMONS,%20TALKS,%20WRITING/970%20LECTURES%20&amp;%20SEMINARS/ELIOT2.DOC#_ednref9" name="_edn9" style="mso-endnote-id: edn9;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-no-proof: yes;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>cited Vera Brittain, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Testament of Youth</i>, London, 1933, 98.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p><span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span></o:p></div>
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Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-10080694691859884192019-10-17T23:03:00.002+01:002019-10-17T23:21:12.394+01:00In Praise of Etheldreda<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 13pt;">I’m very glad to be here in Ely to celebrate the Translation of St Etheldreda. I come to you from Tynedale in Northumberland, the lands where Etheldreda was once queen. As does your new Bishop of Huntingdon who is installed as a canon of this Cathedral today. She, indeed, follows literally in the footsteps of your saint, since it was Queen Etheldreda who granted estate to Wilfrid to build his legendary church at Hexham where Dagmar was rector. We celebrated Wilfrid’s feast day just a few days ago. It was he who prevailed on the Northumbrian King Ecgfrith to release his Queen from her marriage vows and take the veil. He got into a lot of trouble for it, and was exiled from his see for a while. Meanwhile, she founded her monastery here at Ely in her native East Anglia. So Ely owes its existence to a northern saint, which makes it an honorary member of the great Northumbrian family of Saxon religious foundations. I am sure this is something Dagmar will remind you of from time to time.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Etheldreda is </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Aethelthryth</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">, “noble strength”, a lovely way of describing her. She has a beautiful window in Hexham Abbey that commemorates her benefaction, but she was of course always your saint rather than ours, being the daughter of an East Anglian king who only found her way up to Northumbria because its young king Ecgfrith needed a royal bride to give him offspring. Famously, she insisted on remaining a virgin. She had always believed herself called to the religious life. So she came home to the Fens and founded a double monastery for men and women here on the Isle of Ely along the lines of Hild’s communities at Hartlepool and Whitby. Bede tells us that she presided over her community in a spirit of humility, piety and devotion, living an intensely austere life until she died in 679. Proclaimed a saint, her relics were translated to the shrine of her abbey church in 695, the event we commemorate today. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Wilfrid was present at this great ceremony, the man who had witnessed to her virginity, consecrated her as a nun and watched the elevation of her untarnished remains. Bede wrote a hymn in honour of her as “an example of heavenly life and teaching”. He might have had our reading in mind, for the church’s memory of her was of a woman free of “malice, guile, insincerity, envy and slander”, no mean achievement in the febrile world of the Saxon kingdoms and their politics. Indeed, in the imagery of the letter of Peter where Christ is the cornerstone of the new temple of God’s people, he sees the household of faith as built upon precisely the Christian values and virtues that Aethelthryth herself embraced. Her memory, etched into this shrine, bears witness to vision of God’s kingdom on which her life was premised and from which she never allowed her gaze to wander as queen, wife and abbess.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">It’s just four years since we left Durham. People sometimes ask me not only what I miss from our thirteen wonderful years there, but what I learned from cathedral life. I could speak for England in answer to both those questions. But as to the second, one big insight that gradually worked its way into my spiritual bloodstream I owe directly to St Cuthbert. I used to say to visitors that Durham is not a cathedral that holds the shrine of a saint, but a shrine around which a cathedral has been built. And the thing about putting it that way round is that it requires you to focus primarily on the person, not the building. I asked myself: what kind of saint was Cuthbert, that he should be so cherished and loved, not just in Durham but across the North? I used to kneel at the shrine and reflect on his holiness, his simplicity, his single-heartedness as a man of God. This is what a dean should try to model, I thought, how the community ought to envision itself as God’s people holy and humble at heart. It stopped me being seduced by the majesty of the building, the power it embodied, “pride of man and earthly glory” as the hymn says. It told me that while tower and temple fall to dust, the spiritual principles on which they are built are the things that abide for ever, that are for eternity our temple and our tower. Cuthbert put me in my place. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">I think there’s a similar truth here. The whole world loves Ely just as it loves Durham. Romanesque crowned by gothic, water to set off a world class building, a peerless vista from the railway station, a compact cathedral city huddled round its sacred space - what could be more enticing? Maybe what matters most is the spirituality that connects them, founded as they both are on a pre-Conquest story of faith that was embodied, made visible and tangible, in the lives of holy men and women, then lived out and borne witness to by religious communities during the Benedictine centuries, and finally by us who succeed them in our post-Reformation Anglican cathedrals. Saints like the lamps in the gospel giving light to the whole house – its they who impart so much of the character, the spiritual texture, of these great places.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">So to lay a relic of St Etheldreda on her shrine during this service is not do anything bizarre or superstitious. It’s an act of gratitude to acknowledge our roots and treasure the memory of a holy woman but for whom we would not be here today. It helps us to touch directly a life of sanctity and devotion, of purity of heart and faith in the gospel, of undying hope in the coming of God’s kingdom of truth and peace. Hers was a life lit up by the light and love that she saw, and we see, in Jesus. There was nothing she would not do to serve that light and love. There is nothing we would not do. The shrines of the saints are our inspiration never to lose heart but to be faithful unto death, in the hope of receiving the crown of life.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">What matters is that we allow the memory of the saints to shine a light on our own times, our experience as men and women of our century who are stirred by the words of Jesus, “You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven”. What would it mean for the dark places of our national life, our politics and our society to be lit up in that way? The dark places of our church? The dark places of our personal lives? Etheldreda who walked palace corridors and sat on an earthly throne, yet renounced them to embrace the poverty of the gospel and walk in the light of God: she is just the kind of saint we need to keep hope alive. The meaning of her name, “noble strength” with its connotations of stability, steadfastness, confidence in the gospel – these are the spiritual virtues we need to cherish and cultivate today. Which is why we give thanks for this Cathedral and its testimony to God’s mercy and wisdom and love. And for the memory of Etheldreda kept alive here in her holy place, and for her companionship and prayers as we trace her footsteps and journey on together full of hope towards that City set on God’s holy hill, the goal, the light and the joy of every pilgrim heart.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 13pt; font-style: italic;">Ely Cathedral, 17 October 2019<br />
1 Peter 2.1-10, Matthew 5.14-16</span></div>
Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-69148276983733992562019-10-13T08:14:00.000+01:002019-10-13T08:48:49.573+01:00Learning from St Wilfrid<div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Today in Rome, an Englishman is being proclaimed a saint: John Henry Newman, the famous Cardinal of the nineteenth century who, we must never forget, was initially formed not as a Roman Catholic but as a child of the Church of England. He is the first English person born since the seventeenth century to be canonised.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">But here in Tynedale we celebrate today an English saint of thirteen hundred years ago. We owe a big debt to St Wilfrid. Everyone knows about Hexham Abbey which he founded, and the Saxon crypt and Frith Stool that survive. Fewer people associate him with this church a few miles downstream, yet he founded it too, maybe before Hexham. They are links in a chain of Saxon churches dedicated to St Andrew that marches east along the line of the Roman Wall as far as Newcastle. Wilfrid almost certainly built his crypt at Hexham as a shrine for the relics of St Andrew that he brought back from Rome. He had a particular devotion to Andrew, one that is shared by your incumbent whose first anniversary as Vicar of Corbridge this is. So a lot of themes coalesce happily today as we celebrate this festival.</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">It’s lazy to say that the church isn’t a building, it’s people. There is a truth in it of course: the church is a community, “the household of God, built upon the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ himself as the cornerstone”. It’s an organism that grows, says our reading from Ephesians, “into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together in the Spirit into a dwelling-place for God”. But if you’d asked Wilfrid why he built these great churches in worked stone, and on such a scale, furnished so lavishly and adorned with treasures, he would have said something like: if this people is to be a casket of holiness, goodness and truth, then everything that makes it visible – its buildings and its ceremonies – should bear witness to all that is to be valued most: the glory and beauty and love of God as we know him in Jesus Christ. A church building is a sacrament of the One who is among us as Immanuel. It should bring us to our knees, make worshippers and disciples out of us. It’s not either-or. People and building belong together in a God-given both-and. This is what we celebrate on our festival of dedication.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">But let’s speak about Wilfrid. The are plenty of people who revere the northern saints like Oswald, Aidan, Cuthbert and Hild, but who have little good to say about Wilfrid. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">Proud, pompous and prelatical</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"> would sum up the popular view, more like a Saxon prince than a servant of the humble Man of Nazareth. It’s true that he was not like gentle Aidan as we call him, who had been his teacher on Lindisfarne. Wilfrid – fervent, combative, self-regarding, complex - could never have been accused of the virtue of simplicity. Nevertheless, Bede goes out of his way to mention the obedience, thoughtfulness and humility he learned as a child. He speaks of his devotion and purity meaning, I think, his unwavering commitment to his vocation as a monk, evangelist and bishop. The call to lead boldly burned hot within him. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">But what especially mattered to Bede was Wilfrid’s vision for the English church. Although schooled in the Irish tradition of faith he had learned from Aidan, his travels on the continent, good European that he was, gave him a larger perspective on what we call catholic Christianity. As Bishop of Hexham, he brought back to Tynedale customs he had come to admire in Rome: great churches built of stone, splendid liturgy and ceremonial, fine music, the Rule of St Benedict for his monks, a love of learning embodied in books and manuscripts, devotion to the saints and not least, high ideals for the status and authority of bishops.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">It was conflict over the date of Easter that brought about a crisis for the English church. It could not be right for Christendom to be divided on the celebration of the greatest festival of the liturgical year. </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">King Oswiu, a Northumbrian, and his Queen Eanflaed who was from Kent, followed different </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">traditions, so that in some years, one would still be fasting in Lent while the other was feasting in Eastertide. The Synod of Whitby was convened in 664 to resolve these differences, and it was Wilfrid whose advocacy for catholic custom won the day. His argument came down to being obedient to the apostles Peter and Paul and the undivided church they had bequeathed. To Bede, who knew how mathematics and astronomy come into the complex calculations of the date of Easter, bringing the northern church into unity with the rest of Christendom was of profound importance. It still is, whatever those who want to fix the date of Easter may say.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Arguably it was Wilfrid who helped pave the way for what we call Northumbria’s Golden Age. The kingdom now saw itself as connected to European civilization in a new way that brought inspiration and energy to its leadership. It was open to influences from across the continent, not just from Ireland. In art, literature and politics, the flourishing of the kingdom was envied across Europe. Our fine Saxon churches here in the North East, like Corbridge, bear witness to it. Think of the Durham and Lindisfarne Gospels, the Saxon crosses at Bewcastle and Ruthwell, the Franks Casket that may owe its origins directly to Wilfrid, Bede’s biblical, poetic, astronomical and historical writings. Where do I stop?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">But it was religion that was the golden thread. In the middle ages, sacred and secular belonged together. Church and world, politics and faith, all of life belonged to God and was subject to his rule. Perhaps we can see the colossal Roman arch under the tower as a symbol of that. Probably it was brought here from the Roman town at Corbridge: why go to the trouble of dressing newly-quarried stone when there was so much of it left behind by the departing legions a couple of centuries before? Here in this church is an emblem of the might and panoply and culture of antiquity, the people who once lived and died along the edge of empire, and of the alien gods they worshipped. Wilfrid’s Christianity was big enough to embrace even these, to ennoble and put to a higher service the relics of the civilization that once held sway in these lands.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">For me, this is the significance as the founder we celebrate today. For all that we may not want to endorse every aspect of his way of leading, I think we are bound to find ourselves honouring the breadth of his vision. If he was ever prone to imagine there was nothing he could not do as a bishop, he was right to recognize that there was nothing God did not care about, did not own as his. This is what it means to be </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">catholic</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">. It’s not simply to care about the formal sacramental unity of the church (though that matters, and we should pursue it by all the means we can). It’s to affirm the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">catholicon</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">, the wholeness of all things, how everything is knit together and gathered up in the Christ who is Lord of all. “All that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours is the kingdom O Lord, and you are exalted as head over all. And now our God, we give thanks and praise your glorious name.” Wilfrid would say a heartfelt amen to that. As we do on this festival day.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">St Andrew’s, Corbridge, 13 October 2019</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">1 Chronicles 29.6-19, Ephesians 2.19-22, John 2.13-22 </span>Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-80425241036059905732019-08-05T18:35:00.000+01:002019-08-05T18:35:37.100+01:00A Memorial Service at Alnwick: Tom Moralee RIP<div style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">I got to know Tom Moralee during my time as Vicar here in the 1980s. He was a stalwart of this church, rarely missing a Sunday, always there to help out in whatever way he could. As a new incumbent, I recall thinking: there’s one of those people you instinctively know belongs to the backbone of a place. He was quietly spoken and didn’t draw attention to himself, yet he was a reliable, strong presence who imparted confidence. You are always glad of such people you know you can trust and whose support and friendship you can count on.</span></div>
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Tom was a native North Easterner, Northumberland-born and bred. He had lived in Alnwick since his father’s work brought him here as a teenager. He, Sheila, Brinley, Clare and her husband Steve were - are - a close family. He was utterly conscientious in his work, whether it involved wearing a boiler-suit or an immaculately laundered collar and tie. He was the kind of man we call “public spirited”. He cared about this place and took his citizenship seriously. As a special he was commended by the Chief Constable for his role in connection with a stabbing in the town. Here at St Michael’s he was a sidesman and member of the Parochial Church Council. But he contributed to the social capital in unseen, unsung ways too. If Bailiffgate looked clean and tidy, the chances are that Tom had been there to pick up litter. If the grass in the churchyard looked well-cared for and the weeds kept down, that too could well have been Tom’s work. When elderly parishioners shared Sunday lunch together, Tom was part of the team that did the hard work. He wouldn’t have thought of any of this as exceptional. It’s what you do if your community matters to you and jobs need doing. But goodness doesn’t mean doing extraordinary things. It means doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way. </span></div>
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He knew a lot of people in and around Alnwick, and it’s not surprising that so many are gathered here today. Whether you are among his family and friends, colleagues or neighbours, you will have your own memories of him. There are many stories told about his kindness and care for people. One elderly woman remembered how at Christmas, he took heating oil round to her home because she had run out of fuel. Someone else said that if you were having a bad day, the one person you would have been glad to bump into was Tom. For a private kind of man with what he would have said were traditional values, he had a wicked sense of humour and was famed for his jokes and stories, though as a vicar I didn’t necessarily get to hear the more risqué ones! </span></div>
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All this speaks of a sociable, well-respected man who, perhaps without realising it, acted as a glue to the society of our town (as someone how once lived here, I can’t help thinking of it even after all these years as </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: Arial-ItalicMT; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic;">our </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">town). He helped bind it together in the bonds of friendship, good neighbourliness and citizenhood. Whether in public roles in church or community, or in the intimacies of family and personal life, such good men and women are a precious gift. It’s when they are gone that we become keenly aware of the debt we owe to them. </span></div>
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Which is why we bring our memories to this place where the people of our town have been named and honoured across the centuries. To remember and pay tribute to someone we have lost reminds us how precious they were to us, and always will be. Not simply because of our treasured memories but because death is not the end of the relationships we cherish. Those whom we have loved and lost are always alive to the God in whom all of human life is gathered up in a Love that is more profound than ours can ever be. Today is a day to remind one another that we are always held by God’s everlasting arms every moment from the cradle to the grave and beyond it.</span></div>
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Our Bible reading reassures us on this point. “Nothing can separate us from the love of God” says St Paul in those marvellous words we heard just now, not even the power we are most afraid of, death itself. How could it when Christianity tells us that Jesus suffered, died and was buried; and in rising again at Easter opened the way to everlasting life? In St John’s Gospel, on the night before he died, Jesus bade farewell to his disciples and comforted them. “In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” There is room enough for us all: that’s the promise. So he tells us. “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” </span></div>
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Words like these mean everything in our grief. They bring us strength when we feel lost, confidence when we despair, comfort when fears and doubts assail us, light to see by when we are afraid of stumbling in the dark. We say our goodbyes in tears and sorrow, yet edged with hope because of the promise that God will not abandon us. That makes it possible to release our loved ones, give them back to the God who lent them to us, with hearts full of gratitude for all that they were to us. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">When I knew I would be leaving Alnwick more than thirty years ago, I decided I would visit each member of the church council personally to let them know. I don’t know why I’ve retained such a clear memory of Tom walking me to the front door after our conversation and his saying to me, “Michael, thank you for these last few years. We won’t forget you when we’ve gone.” Now it’s my turn to say those same words to him, which I do on behalf of all of us. Tom, thank you for the life that we have lived together in these years that have now come to an end. We shall always remember you. Go in God. Rest in peace, Rise in glory. And may God bring us all to the eternal mansions of his love.</span></div>
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</span></span></span></span></span></span></span>Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-17165092429345042562019-08-04T13:08:00.000+01:002019-08-04T16:22:40.976+01:00Haydn, Happiness & Hope: A sermon at the Edinburgh Festival<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">When the first Edinburgh International Festival took place in 1947, it was “to heal the wounds of war through the language of the arts” by providing “a platform for the flowering of the human spirit”. The brief looked for a city with a distinguished setting and townscape that would embrace the opportunity “to make the festival a major preoccupation not only in the City Chambers but in the heart and home of every citizen, however modest”. That’s an aspiration to admire, not least for its idea that the arts need to find a place in our healing and flourishing, and that they belong to everyone, not only the wealthy or well-educated or privileged. An event that was any less generous or inclusive would not be the Edinburgh Festival we cherish.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Among possible festival locations, Salzburg was mentioned as the kind of city to emulate. So how apt to have the city of Mozart represented at this mass through his sublime <i>Ave Verum</i>, and indeed eighteenth century Austria, the homeland also of Joseph Haydn whose <i>Little Organ Mass </i>we are enjoying this morning. In its way, our music from the German-speaking world (including a Bach organ voluntary) affirms a confident Europeanism, our belonging to this continent that has enriched Scotland in so many ways and to which (setting a fine example to England) it remains sturdily committed. Brexit is not a word that’s understood in the world of music, theatre, film, letters or art. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Haydn brothers Joseph and Michael, both great composers, were deeply religious men. Of Joseph’s <i>Little Organ Mass </i>one of the experts* has said: “in this music, Haydn’s religious character becomes glowingly apparent: instinctive and unquestioning in faith, yet celebratory and reverent, seeking devotion through the contemplation of beauty.” Near the end of his life he was taken to a performance of his <i>Creation </i>to celebrate his birthday. When they reached that glorious C major chord that bursts out of the representation of chaos at the start of the score, “And there was light”, Haydn, it is said, “raised his trembling arms to Heaven, as if in prayer to the Father of Harmony”. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He spoke to his biographer about composing an <i>Agnus Dei </i>for one of his late masses<i>.</i> “I prayed, not like a miserable sinner in despair but calmly, slowly. I felt that an Infinite God would surely have mercy on his finite creature, pardoning dust for being dust. I experienced a joy so confident that as I composed to the words of the prayer, I could not suppress my joy but gave vent to my happy spirits and wrote above the <i>miserere</i>, <i>Allegro.</i>”<i> </i>Not at all like the more reflective <i>adagios</i> we are used to at this point in the liturgy. But that is Haydn, always taking us by surprise, not least spiritually. My daughter and I once went to his mausoleum at Eisenstadt in Lower Austria, near the Palace of the Esterhazys he’d served so loyally. Inside they were playing a cd of one of his masses. I needed to honour the great man and thank him for all that he’d meant to me. It was most moving. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Why am I telling you this? Because I want to go back to that phrase I quoted, <i>seeking devotion through the contemplation of beauty. </i>This seems to me to be one of the functions of music and the arts for people of faith. Perhaps a hint of this lies behind the vision of those who created the Edinburgh Festival, a belief in the power of art to bring life back into some kind of beautiful order and ordered beauty. Making contemplatives of us means learning how to <i>see</i>, to <i>pay attention, </i>to be <i>present to</i> our experience and glimpse its inner meaning, what Gerard Manley Hopkins called <i>inscape</i>. And as we are doing the work of God at this eucharist today, we should celebrate the capacity of liturgy to achieve this, help us live in a more contemplative way so that we “see into the life of things” as Wordsworth put it.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">So let’s ponder the juxtapositions within our worship today. Into the words of the mass and the music of Haydn and Mozart, the lectionary inserts readings that ask questions that are among the most fundamental we can face. Where does meaning lie, asks the preacher in Ecclesiastes, exhausted by the ever-circling years that bring no age of gold, only vanity and <i>ennui. </i>Psalm 49 examines the futility of living only for your power or wealth or fame or reputation, for death is the great leveller that will bring us all down to the grave like the beasts that perish. The gospel reading about the rich fool warns that there is no gospel of prosperity and we can take nothing with us when we die. Even Colossians, so radiant with the spirit of Easter, warns that we must put to death our self-serving behaviours and “set our minds on things that are above”. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I wonder whether we can set up a spiritual conversation between these readings and the Viennese mass we are enjoying. On the one hand the readings underline the realities of living and dying. They belong to the world of a series of medieval paintings in Hexham Abbey where we often worship, that show the “Dance of Death”. A skeleton brandishing a scythe comes up to different kinds of people and engages them in deadly waltz that tells them that their time has come. These sombre readings call on us to face our mortality and ask what it means to become wise in the light of our human condition. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">On the other hand, Haydn’s music is shot through with a God-given happiness. Not I think because “Papa Haydn” was cheerful by temperament (though he was remembered for it), but rather that his music evokes the confident faith in which it was composed. The gospel reading ends with a striking turn of phrase. It speaks of those “who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God”. Might we experience the liturgy, enriched by the arts of the church and especially Haydn’s music, as one of the ways in which we might become “rich towards God”? <i>Seeking devotion through the contemplation of beauty </i>we said. That seems to me to be one of the God-given paths to wisdom because it enables us to see ourselves as we truly are, “frail and feeble, doomed to die”, yet in Christ raised from the dead, given back our lives, put together again, transformed, discovering the wisdom that teaches us how to be “rich towards God”. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The sixth century writer Boethius authored a famous book called <i>The Consolations of Philosophy. </i>He wrote it in prison as he faced death at the hands of his political enemies. It calmed his spirit and brought him peace at the last. Medieval theologians loved his writings because of their message that through wisdom, the soul attains to the vision of God. I believe music and the arts bring consolations too when they find their place in liturgy, prayer and a contemplative outlook. In this sacred space, in the environment of the holy, Haydn’s music is a source of grace and wisdom that strengthens us, steadies our gaze, comforts us and gives us confidence at the grave and gate of death. We lift up our hearts in gratitude, and find ourselves once again caught up in the movement of God’s everlasting love towards creation. And here’s the miracle, that we are risen with Christ, learning to seek the things that are above, discovering how to be rich towards God. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Old St Paul’s Church, Edinburgh, 4 August 2019<br /> Ecclesiastes 1.2, 12-14, 18-23; Psalm 49.1-11, Colossians 3.1-11, Luke 12.13-21<o:p></o:p></span></span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">*H.C. Robbins Landon & David Wyn Jones, <em>Haydn: his life and music</em>, 1988 </span>Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-35994234142891841962019-07-28T15:39:00.000+01:002019-10-21T16:45:04.264+01:00The Wager: Religion is Worth It!<div style="color: #333333; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Tonight we read from the story of </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Joseph. Let me leap forward to the end where Genesis sums it all up. After all the twists and turns, Joseph speaks to the brothers who had done him so much wrong: ‘even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good’. Until now, even though Joseph has been reconciled to them, the outcome is not yet clear. Will he, the powerful Egyptian officer of state, treat them as family or as vassals? What will forgiveness mean for him and for them? Joseph reaches a true ‘my Lord and my God’ moment. “You intended evil…. God intended good”. In conspiracy and catastrophe, God has done all tings well. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">When is it a true act of faith to say ‘it was for the best, and good has come out of it’, and when is it just a thoughtless cliché to make us feel better about the bad things that happen? We don’t say it, and shouldn’t say it, when we hear of a child who has been abused, or bystanders blown to pieces by a suicide bomber, or a pensioner murdered in her own home. We condemn wickedness, and we do what we can to help its victims, but we try not to theorise because we know that words can make things worse as well as better. In the face of what is wrong or just bewildering, we won’t try to guess what God intends in the perplexing, inscrutable events of human life. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">Yet the instinct to find meanings is also part of being human. And this is where Joseph helps us with an insight of faith into life’s meaning. Faith tells a story of how God has been moving within the ordinary processes of cause and effect to work his wise and loving purposes in the world. It is not always apparent from the evidence: it’s faith that makes the connections. It takes the long view where we can only see the foreground. That brings strength and hope. It’s possible to pick up the pieces and carry on. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">I was talking once with a distinguished astronomer. ‘Where is the ground for your beliefs?’ he asked. I said it was as much a matter of the heart as the head, for the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. I went on to say that I had a strong instinct what my life would have become if I had not been a Christian. I would have been only half alive, and served the wrong gods. Now I have been a Christian for fifty three years and a priest for more than forty, I have staked my whole adult life on Christianity being true. As my retrospect lengthens, I echo Joseph’s words. God did indeed intend it for good. But they are still said in faith. Suppose Christianity turned out to be a fantasy? Would my life have been wasted? I have only this one life to live. I can’t go back and start again, choose a different ladder to climb up on. We stake our lives on the beliefs and values that matter to us. Pascal’s Wager taught us how much of an act of trust faith is.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12pt;">You may recall, a few years ago, the slogan on </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">London buses: ‘There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life’. The word ‘probably’ is the clue. It tells us that atheism is not so much a cool decision of unbiased reason as a true act of faith. It’s a wager: weigh up the evidence, then stake your life on it. Worry is only for religious people. But what if it said: ‘God may exist, so stop being frivolous and start living well’? I can only speak for myself. I concluded years ago that I would rather have lived as a Christian and tried to make a difference in the world than serve the gods of money, power, ambition and self. The wager is that Christianity is true. Even if it turned out not to be, the Christian life would still be worthwhile. It would still add to the sum of human happiness including my own. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Faith doesn’t mean knowing for </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">certain. If only we could! It’s trusting that this is good news worth investing the whole of life in, a wager that makes sense because of the man who calls to us to follow. Two thousand years of Christian experience tell us about the life-changing power of goodness. My scientist conversation partner had a lot to say about how religion divides and demeans people. He is right: debased religion is mad, bad and dangerous to know. But, I said, why not judge religion as you judge science, not at its worst but at its best? For me, it is the goodness and integrity of so many Christians I have known that makes Christianity not only attractive but believable. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 13pt;">On this first day of the week we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. He is God’s pledge that our hope in this good news is well placed. If ever it was true of an event that ‘you meant harm but God meant it for good’, it is the crucifixion. Who’d have thought it on Good Friday? Yet Easter makes it both possible and believable. It is not the certainty we crave. Faith still has to be faith. “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” There is still a wager in entrusting ourselves to Jesus and his kingdom. How can we know where it will lead? But to construct our life on this rock gives us stability amid shifting sands. With the years the conviction grows that it was a wise decision. It was worth believing that “God intended it for good”, that ‘love is his meaning’. In that faith we can both live and die. </span></div>
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Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-7604576783988523352019-07-01T20:46:00.000+01:002019-07-02T17:44:46.904+01:00The Way of St Hild: a new pilgrim route<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXqulehdfdb9TigUQLkkS5nz7a0M3f8EfIzbaP1kkLRi9kZCNak7T2BXethyphenhyphenmgqmSlxyB8CiMbrDjpJzcVB9VRRnIYaPnqfL4x9Yq67yMbGsQnkHk4cXNAjIuomRmZuV-JrBq5Ev78pU_4/s1600/IMG_5037+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1067" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXqulehdfdb9TigUQLkkS5nz7a0M3f8EfIzbaP1kkLRi9kZCNak7T2BXethyphenhyphenmgqmSlxyB8CiMbrDjpJzcVB9VRRnIYaPnqfL4x9Yq67yMbGsQnkHk4cXNAjIuomRmZuV-JrBq5Ev78pU_4/s320/IMG_5037+copy.jpg" width="212" /></a><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 15pt; line-height: 21.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">When we think about <i>The Way of Saint Hild</i> our first thoughts are naturally about <i>Hild </i>herself, the life and times of this great Saxon woman, and how the themes of her life might speak to us today. And I shall come on to her shortly. But before we do, I want to look briefly at the other important word in this project title, <em>Way. </em></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 15pt; line-height: 21.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"><em><br /></em><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 15pt; line-height: 21.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 15pt; line-height: 21.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 15pt; line-height: 21.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">The idea of pilgrimage trails is ancient. For centuries people have criss-crossed Europe to undertake pilgrimages to the great Christian shrines of Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago da Compostela where I was two months ago. Here in England among prominent pilgrim destinations have been, and still are, Canterbury, Walsingham and Glastonbury. And in the North East, Lindisfarne, Hexham, Jarrow, Wearmouth and Durham where I was privileged to spend thirteen years of my life as, you might say, a guardian of St Cuthbert’s shrine.<br /><br /><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 15pt; line-height: 21.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 15pt; line-height: 21.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 15pt; line-height: 21.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 15pt; line-height: 21.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">Among those honoured places here in the North East are, or ought to be, South Shields, Whitby and Hartlepool, the three sites most closely associated with St Hild, and through her, the Saxon saints of the seventh century. The Way of St Hild will link the two southern sites associated with her, a pilgrim path along the North Sea that connects St Hilda’s Church on Hartlepool’s Headland to the Abbey on the cliffs above Whitby. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 15pt; line-height: 21.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 15pt; line-height: 21.399999618530273px;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">What is a pilgrimage <i>for</i>? Why would anyone want to walk the path we are creating? Why do people already walk the St Cuthbert’s Way from Melrose to Holy Island, and the St Oswald’s Way from Holy Island to Heavenfield? This seems to me to be a fundamental question to ask if we are going to make sense of this project. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">A pilgrimage is <i>a journey with a purpose. </i>Traditionally, that meant a religious purpose, making an often long and arduous journey to visit a place associated with some key event in the story of faith, or with the lives of holy men and women who are revered in that story. The tradition speaks about holy places, sites that have been touched and lit up in some way because of those associations. “Hild was here.” And insofar as the whole journey is inspired by this sense of holy purpose, we can say that it comes to define a <i>sacred geography</i>, a landscape <i>imbued with historical, cultural and spiritual meanings</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">So pilgrimage declares: this is not just any landscape, however historic, however beautiful. The pilgrim way contributes to what we can call <i>place-making</i>. Its very existence enhances our understanding of our native geography, its <i>genius loci </i>or “spirit of the place” that makes it what it is, or as we tend to say nowadays, its <i>sense of place. </i>The journey may already be familiar or be travelled for the first time. The important thing is that pilgrimage lends it added significance. It suggests new ways of looking at it because of the stories it commemorates. There are new interpretations, new meanings, new textures. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">Historically, pilgrimage has been defined in terms of journeys with a <i>religious</i> purpose, but I need to broaden that understanding. A journey can have many kinds of purpose that are not always overtly religious. Veterans travel to honour war graves where their comrades lie buried. Holidaymakers visit distant places they haven’t been to before to learn about their culture and art, meet their peoples and admire their landscapes. People go back to their birthplace or where their ancestors have lived. These are all pilgrimages in their different ways. A <i>holiday </i>is literally a <i>holy day</i>. That makes the point. <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">The Way of St Hild is offered as a journey that carries multiple significance. We can see this clearly from the twelve proposed stations for the “augmented reality” interpretations. It begins </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">and ends with churches associated with St Hild herself, a traditional way of setting out and </span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">completing a pilgrimage at a sacred site. Some set our saint in the context of the Saxon era and explore how her story was told and her pilgrimage developed into the later middle ages and beyond. Another identifies her as one of a North East cluster of holy men and women who were honoured by pilgrimages. But some stations are more historical. They make us aware of the Anglo-Saxon culture in which Hild lived and that the pilgrimage landscape has a prehistory going back to Roman times. One of them opens up an aspect of the natural world, the wildlife of the Tees Estuary and helps us understand the landscapes that Hild knew and that formed her as a northern saint. Not all of these are directly focused on Hild herself, but all of them contribute to the rich texture of this pilgrim journey and place her story in a larger context than simply her own life and times.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">One of the important aspects of any pilgrimage is that while it often commemorates people or events in the past, at its best it is never backward-looking. That is to say, good pilgrimage makes a distinction between the past in itself, the past as it’s featured in the stories told about it by subsequent generations, and the past as we ourselves encounter and experience it as people of today. Theologians talk about <i>anamnesis</i>, bringing the past into the present so that it has the potential to shed light upon our contemporary concerns and even contribute to shaping the future. This is what is happening when Christians celebrate the eucharist and take bread and wine “in remembrance of me”, not to relive the past memory but to actualise it in the present, make it a real agency of transformation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">This seems to me to be crucial in the way we set about the project of imagining this particular Hild-inspired journey and creating it as an offer to enrich people’s lives. How do we avoid setting up an exercise that is no more than an exercise in recreating the past? By taking an intentionally holistic view of what we are engaged in, not least in its connections with our contemporary world. This means broadening the scope as far as we can while preserving the integrity of the controlling theme of St Hild. I shall come back to this later on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">I began by defining pilgrimage as </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">journey with a purpose</i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">. Ultimately, I guess that purpose </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">means our own self-understanding as contemporary men and women. A </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">way </i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">is more than a </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">physical path. It suggests our way of life, a spirituality of being human, the journey we cannot help making if we are serious about human life and being good citizens of our age. We want in our best moments to know our place in the world and how we can leave a legacy that will have added value and enhanced not only our own lives but those of our successors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">So much for the meanings of pilgrimage. I want now to turn to Hild herself and how we should commemorate her in this pilgrim journey. Let me say something about her life and times, and then suggest themes to consider as we create this pilgrimage that bears her name. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">Our source for the life of St Hild (in Latin, <em>Hilda</em>) is the Venerable Bede, that great chronicler of the late seventh and early eighth century to whom we owe the very idea of “England”. As a Northumbrian living in the double monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow, his focus was inevitably northern which makes him the best (and often only) authority on Christian Northumbria in what we’ve come to call its golden age. It is agreed by all that Bede was a scrupulous historian when judged by the criteria of his times, and a wealth of information about the Saxon kingdom and its people has been preserved to us which would otherwise have been lost.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">He tells us that Hild was a Saxon princess who was brought up in the court of King Edwin of Northumbria. When he converted to Christianity in 627, the first Northumbrian king to do so, he and his entire court were baptised by Paulinus at York, including the thirteen-year old Hild. Sent away to the safety of the south when Edwin was killed by the Mercians in 633, she returned to Northumbria at the summons of Aidan of Lindisfarne who asked her to found a religious community somewhere north of the River Wear. Tradition identifies this with the ancient Christian site on which St Hilda’s Church in South Shields was later built. In 649 Aidan</span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"> appointed her as Abbess of the double monastery at Hartlepool, a community of men and </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">women who took vows and lived separately but worshipped together in their abbey church. In </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">keeping with Northumbrian Christian tradition instituted by Bishop Aidan, himself an Irishman, their rule of life would have drawn on Irish rather than Roman Benedictine monasticism.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">Again, we don’t know precisely where the community was situated but we can assume it to have been on the Headland by St Hilda’s Church where the remains of the medieval sea wall and the convent cemetery can still be seen. Perhaps we should see the Headland as a second Lindisfarne, an almost-island that was conducive to spiritual reflection and the life of prayer. The Saxon church loved these semi-detached places by the sea, isolated in themselves yet always connected to the mainland. Even today, the Headland retains these qualities despite – or perhaps because – of its urban character. It’s one of the most magical places I know. In my book <i>Landscapes of Faith </i>I said of it that “it is quintessentially north eastern in its marriage of a centuries-old Christian history and more modern urbanisation”. Like Bede’s churches at Wearmouth and Jarrow, the Saxon churches at Billingham and Escomb, and Durham Cathedral itself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">Hild founded Whitby Abbey in 657. This too was a double monastery, and there is no reason to doubt that it was situated on the cliffs near the Benedictine abbey that was built there in the thirteenth century. (Indeed, it could even be possible that it was “double” in the sense Wearmouth-Jarrow was: a single convent on two geographical sites, Hartlepool and Whitby.) Bede commends Whitby as a model of its kind, a house of discipline, prayer, learning, good works, peaceability and charity. Its greatest moment took place in the year 664. Oswiu, Oswald’s brother and successor as King of Northumbria, convened a synod there to resolve matters of dispute in the church of which he was the leading lay person. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">The principal point of contention concerned the date of Easter. This may seem arcane to us today, but to Christians in the early centuries of the church’s history it was a matter of extreme importance to celebrate the festival of the resurrection on the correct day and together. Bede himself wrote about the mathematics and astronomy that underlay the complex calculations. </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Irish tradition, inherited by the influential community on Lindisfarne, calculated the date one </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">way, Catholics, taking their lead from the continental European church and St Augustine’s mission in the southern kingdoms, in another. This was a sharply personal issue for Oswiu because while he like his brother followed the Irish calendar, his queen Eanfleda who had been brought up in Kent followed Roman practice. This meant that one of them could be feasting in Eastertide while the other was still fasting rigorously in Lent. What was at stake was the unity of the Northumbrian church. But more than that, the kingdom’s political relationships with the rest of England and with the continent had everything to gain by reaching agreement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">Oswiu listened carefully, then decided in favour of the Catholic way and imposed it on his kingdom. This was how decisions were made in those days. <i>Cuius regio, eius religio – </i>you followed the religion of whoever reigned over you.<i> </i>Those on Lindisfarne who could not accept it returned to Iona where they had come from, and then to the north of Ireland (where, in due course, the church fell into line with the Catholic south, thus ending a schism that had divided the western church). For Bede, the Synod of Whitby was a turning point in the history of the northern church. And we can see Hild’s role in the synod as presiding over bitterly contested ground, acknowledging the outcome of the dispute, and promoting its acceptance among the company of those gathered in her monastery and in the wider Northumbrian church – all the more impressive for the fact that she personally inclined to the Irish tradition in which she had been formed, rather than the Roman.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">Hild died on 17 November 680. It was not long before her memory began to be venerated. We know this from a church calendar from early in the eighth century, not long after the Lindisfarne Gospels were written. I think we should remember her for her holiness, her piety, her administrative skills, her wisdom, her learning, her charity and, not least, her extraordinary energy even in old age. Two stories endeared her to the ordinary people of her day. Bede tells the story of how she enabled the simple cow-herd Caedmon to sing and compose poems in praise of God. He is the earliest English poet whose name we know, so Hild came to be </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">celebrated as a midwife of poetry and song. A legend was told of her turning snakes to stone </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">during an infestation of the town, which supposedly explained fossils found in the cliffs; hence the ammonite symbol long associated with her which you will see on many churches and institutions dedicated to her.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">********<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">Why does her story matter to us today, and how should we set about commemorating it in our Pilgrim Way of St Hild? Let me make three suggestions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">First</span></i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">, <i>we should respect and honour</i> <i>our Christian heritage</i>. What do I mean by invoking that slippery word? I mean, among other things, the “landscapes of faith” that we are fortunate enough to live in here in North East England. In England, it’s perhaps only in Cornwall and the North East that we have such a rich legacy of saints from early Christian times. The difference is that whereas in Cornwall, so many of them have survived only in village names and church dedications, here in the North East we know a great deal about who they were, how they lived and what they achieved that left such a mark on the collective memory that they were canonised as saints. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">Most people have heard of Aidan, Cuthbert and Bede. Fewer could name Oswald, Wilfred, Benedict Biscop, St John of Beverley, Chad and Cedd. Hild belongs in that second group of saints who had a real and lasting impact on the history of the English, but remains comparatively little known. I think it is the duty of places associated with any great men and women to promote their memory and celebrate their contribution to our history. It helps if natural and built heritage create obvious ways in which to do this, which they indeed do in this part of England. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">But <i>intangible heritage </i>is as important as what is visible and concrete. Intangible heritage has to do with stories and their meanings, the values and aspirations, that human beings assign to </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">their surroundings to explain why they matter and should be cherished. It is the story itself that </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">must be told in order to interpret the “sense of place” I spoke about at the beginning, and bear witness to the importance of events that shaped our past. So our project is an act of piety, that is, an explicit acknowledgment of what makes our places what they are, and what we owe to them as people who are, consciously or unconsciously, formed by them. In her case, we should not be afraid of speaking about promoting spiritual values, those dimensions of human life that are intanglible but influential and formative, whatever content we choose to give to that kind of language.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">Secondly, we should draw on the narratives of the past so as to inform our present and future. </span></i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">I am thinking of two aspects of Hild’s story as a leader in public life that I think speak directly to our society today. She was a woman, perhaps the most accomplished of the women Bede makes a point of celebrating in his <i>History</i>. An abbot or abbess was always a person of significance in Saxon England. But her oversight as a woman of one of the great institutions of Saxon England, and her capacity to open up educational possibilities for young women and girls in the convent tells us much about her stature. Her presiding role in a monastery important enough to host a royal synod is all the evidence we need of her standing in the kingdom. This speaks volumes to the times we are living in as we struggle to achieve equality in our gender roles in public and personal life. By extension, we could see her role as symbolic of our quest for a genuine inclusion of all who are marginalised in our supposedly equal society. We can see Caedmon, the singer whom Hild brought in from outside as an instance of the literally voiceless person on the edge of her privileged circle being recognised, heard, taken seriously and given back their power. As a practitioner of social justice, she speaks eloquently into our own divided society. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">And this is what Hild’s conduct at the Synod of Whitby particularly witnesses to. As far as we can tell, she demonstrated the capacity to reach across a society fractured by ideological debates in order to achieve unity and common purpose. We can see her, I think, as a broker of </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">reconciliation towards those hurt by the king’s decision, for while loyal to the agreed outcome, as a woman herself shaped by Ireland and Iona, she did not lose her sympathy for those on the losing side. In our increasingly fraught politics, there are all kinds of lessons those in public life can usefully draw from the career of a leader whom tradition honours for her celebrated wisdom in turbulent times.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">But <i>thirdly, we need to respect the pastness of the past and while learning from it, we should not attempt to recapitulate it in our present experience. </i>I said earlier that we must not allow a project of this kind to become locked into the past, still less to try to reconstruct it and relive it in the utterly different world in which we live. We only do justice to Hild if we can distance ourselves from her and recognise that she was a woman of her time. There is so much we can learn from her, but it doesn’t follow that we should inhabit the cultural assumptions and thought-world of seventh century Northumbria. We must beware of nostalgia for our Saxon past. <i>Nostalgia </i>is literally aching for home. But the past is not our home. The present is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">This hardly needs to be said, but there is a strain of heritage activity (which has influenced some sections of the church in its take on Northumbrian Christianity) that risks romanticising the past, subtly – or not so subtly – suggesting that it was better, kinder, more noble, more courageous than the present. I think this is a point worth dwelling on at a time when nationalism is on the rise, often driven, it seems, by a nostalgic harking back to the days of empire or the wartime spirit. More than thirteen centuries after the event there are still people who will tell you that the decision at the Synod of Whitby was a terrible mistake, fatally compromising the purity of a supposedly primitive Celtic Christianity as against the corruptions of Rome. When heritage colludes with nostalgia to convey the message that the past was always better than the present, we should beware. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">The fact is that the Anglo-Saxon world was cruel and harsh to an extent that we don’t always realise when we look at our Christian sources. Christian monarchs thought nothing of slaughtering their foes as a matter of daily reality. The saints of that era practised extreme </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">asceticism of a kind we might be tempted to regard as eccentric or even abusive, especially </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">when the young were trained up in these practices. I am thinking of Cuthbert walking into the North Sea and reciting Psalms all night long while the waters rose up to his neck. We are impressed and moved by that story but I doubt that we should emulate it, especially knowing the North Sea as we do. So it’s important that we do not regard historical figures as our contemporaries, however much we may admire them. We need to learn from them intelligently, exercise discernment as their critical friends.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">This is how we must respect Hild as a great woman who belongs to our common past. We honour her by respecting the distance that lies between our times and hers, the gap of the centuries across which we reach back to her story and try to tell it as people of today. This entails understanding how her memory come down to us endlessly worked on and reshaped by those who received it, cherished it and bequeathed it to those who followed. Tradition<i> </i>is <i>traditio, </i>literally “that which is handed on”. It is never free of the influences of those who receive it and pass it on. This is part of its richness, that layered, textured quality the deep structures of our best stories acquire precisely because they have been handled with such reverence and love. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">So the interpretative task is: how do the horizons of the Saxon and our modern worlds encounter each other in ways that respect the distinctiveness of each and enrich our own? The Way of St Hild ought to help us pilgrims who walk it understand our own times all the better for the insights that our past sheds on it. Here is where the choice of augmented reality stations and the interpretative experiences we offer is fundamental. If the enterprise is to realise its cultural and spiritual aims, it must demonstrate a holistic understanding of pilgrimage that sets it in our own times and addresses contemporary concerns. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">For example, I could see further interpretation points) focusing on themes such as: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"><br />-<i>the natural maritime heritage</i> of this stretch of the North Sea coast (recalling how the Saxon </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">saints lived close to nature), together with threats to the environment, species diversity and natural habitats;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">-<i>industry</i> on the coast including mining, shipping and fishing;<br />-Hartlepool’s role as <i>a gateway to safety</i> for those given sanctuary at Durham Cathedral and embarking on exile<br />-<i>sea and land communications</i> along the coast (in the middle ages, the sea was the highway of choice that connected nations and societies);<br />-<i>poverty, need and social justice</i> in the North East (of which the Saxon saints were champions);<br />-<i>war and conflict</i> from the Viking invasions, military fortifications along the coast, and the air raids of the Great War;<br />-<i>education and learning</i> (promoted in Hild’s convents as a key aim of monasticism);<br />-<i>the arts</i> in the North East from Caedmon, Hild’s poet, to the present;<br />-<i>sport, leisure and recreation</i> as they respond to the opportunity of “sabbatical time” whether chosen or enforced by unemployment, age, sickness or disability. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">This can sound contrived, I know. And pilgrims would see straight through any bogus attempt to make connections. But I could make a plausible case for a Hild pilgrimage broadening its reach in all these ways. And that includes connecting it with other pilgrim “ways” that already exist or are being developed in the North East. They could link us to Holy Island, St Oswald and St Aidan, Durham and St Cuthbert, Hexham and St Wilfrid, and Wearmouth-Jarrow and St Benedict Biscop and Bede. Once the controlling idea was worked out, so much else could flow from it. Natural heritage, our Christian past, the lived experience of the people whose “places” the route passes through, the larger dilemmas of contemporary North East England, all have a part to play in contributing to the wholeness of pilgrimage in these parts, its capacity to raise questions and make connections across the entire breadth of human life as it is experienced in this region of England. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;">The “pastness of the past” is part of its gift to us. By resisting nostalgia, but instead receiving and understanding it for what it is and what it has become helps us become genuinely contemporary citizens of the present who are able to contribute to today’s world with renewed insight, imagination and vitality. The Way of St Hild has an enormous amount to contribute to our common life here in the North East. “Augmented reality” could be another word for pilgrimage, in whatever ways we experience it. It’s very good to have a small part to play in realising this imaginative project.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 18.546667098999023px;"><em>At a seminar to discuss the development of a pilgrim trail "The Way of St Hild"<br />Hartlepool, 2 July 2019</em></span></div>
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Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-56612295108356679762019-06-30T18:17:00.001+01:002019-06-30T18:17:43.690+01:00A Priest at the Altar - for the first time
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;">When
you do something for the first time, you can never repeat that moment. That
first time is also a last time, because only once in your life do you
experience it as the first time. It can be, often is, a defining moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You will have your own memories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here are some of my landmark first-times.
Singing the music of Bach. Glimpsing what calculus was about. First communion. Someone
saying to me “I love you” and saying it back. Setting eyes on Durham Cathedral.
Being at the birth of my first child. Visiting the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;">And
yes, the first time I presided at the eucharist, as Ian is doing this morning. In
one way, an important way, this is just another eucharist on an ordinary Sunday
in ordinary time. Today the church is doing what the church always does on the
first day of the week. Like Peter in our gospel, we acknowledge that Jesus is
the Christ, the Son of the living God, so we are here to worship him. What else
would we do on a Sunday morning?</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;">Yet
today is not ordinary for Ian, and therefore not for us. For a new priest, his
first celebration of the eucharist is an occasion to remember for a lifetime.
Somehow the very ordinariness of the event highlights what is special about it.
How many more times will Ian in the name of the church do this in remembrance
of Jesus? Be it many or few, it will never again be like today with that blend
of anticipation, excitement, nervousness, gratitude and the sense of privilege
that belong to the first time. </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;">Yesterday
I gave an address to the priest candidates at the end of their retreat. I had
the privilege of conducting their deacons’ retreat last year, so we were old
friends. I quoted some passages that the twentieth century Cistercian monk Thomas
Merton wrote about his ordination as a priest, and the first mass he celebrated
the next day. He says of those days of ordination and first eucharist “they
crown this portion of my history… for this I came into the world”. I hope Ian
feels today that he was <i>meant </i>to do this, stand at the altar and preside
at the eucharist as God’s priest. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;">But
Merton goes on to say something else. Some people had warned him that he would
be nervous the first time he stood there, anxious to make sure he got everything
right. Yet he confided to his diary: “I did not find that to be true at all. I
felt as if I had been saying mass all my life”. So today is ordinary and
not-ordinary just as the eucharist itself is ordinary and not-ordinary. That is
its paradox. In and through the stuff of matter, ordinary things like bread and
wine, we glimpse God. He comes to us in the grace and glory of self-giving
love. Ordinary yet God takes the stuff of everyday life and transforms it so
that he may transform us. That’s what a sacrament means.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;">Why is God so
humble as to choose this way of being among us in and through ordinary things?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today we are honouring Saint Peter whose
festival was yesterday. In the gospel we heard, he recognises Jesus as God’s
Messiah, God’s Christ. And Jesus says of that moment, “flesh and blood has not
revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven”. How could an ordinary,
rough-hewn fisherman rise to that great confession of faith? Jesus says that
it’s not his own doing. Rather, it’s God gift to him, this revelation of the
Son of the Living God. And because of it, another gift is given, his role in
God’s church which Jesus will build upon this rock. Everything is gift. Faith
is gift, and hope, and love. And church, priesthood, and eucharist. And the love of friends, our companions in faith with whom we break bread. All of life is gift. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;"></span></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 0pt;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Garamond;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;">The
ordinariness and not-ordinariness of today says something important about how
Ian will be among you as a priest. Yesterday he was set apart to do God’s work in
the church and in the world. You might think that would make him someone
special. Ah, how seductive it is to put our priests and bishops on pedestals
and defer to them. But that is not the way of the gospel. We do the priesthood
a disservice when we elevate it above our humanity. Ordination doesn’t take someone
away from us. The best priests are those in whom people recognise something of
themselves, taken, blessed, broken and given, just like the ordinary bread of
the eucharist. </span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;">It’s
the action of God that makes the difference. Pusey said that holiness was not
doing extraordinary things, but doing ordinary things in an extraordinary way:
extraordinary because it is God’s work. Priests are walking sacraments of God’s
presence in our midst. That is what makes priesthood holy and not-ordinary, a
sign of contradiction in a world that thinks it has no need of spirituality and
sacraments and sacred spaces. The world needs priests who by what they
symbolise point people to God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
perhaps a priest is never more a priest than when he or she is at the altar,
just as the church is never more the church than when we do what we are doing
now, making eucharist, giving thanks, offering our life to God, receiving it
back transformed.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;">The
church’s priesthood and sacraments belong not to us but to God. Yet his work is
also ours. For Ian and for us, today marks the seal of his journey towards
ordination. A new priest stands among us. The altar stands ready, with bread and wine. It is
time to do what Jesus commands, to celebrate the feast, and once more and once
less, show forth the Lord’s death until he comes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;">St
Bartholomew’s, Whittingham, 30 June 2019<br /><i><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;">At
the first celebration of the eucharist of The Reverend Ian Chadwick </span></i></span></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 0pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt;">Matthew
16.13-19</span></i></span></i></span></i></div>
Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-44668973709770872452019-06-29T12:57:00.001+01:002019-06-29T12:57:20.794+01:00Walking on Water: an ordination retreat address<em>Last year I gave five </em><a href="https://northernambo.blogspot.com/2018/07/ordination-retreat-in-newcastle-diocese.html"><em>ordination retreat addresses</em></a><em> to the deacon ordinands in the Diocese of Newcastle. This year I was invited to be with them again to give their final retreat address on the day of their ordination as priests. In 2018 I took as my theme five of the "signs" of glory in St John's Gospel. I suggested that ordained ministry could be seen as a sign that bears witness to God's glory and love in the world in such a way as to evoke faith. This year I decided to continue that theme with an address on a sixth sign in St John where Jesus walks on the water. Here is my reflection. </em><br />
<em></em><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">A year ago it was my privilege to explore with you the signs
of glory in St John’s Gospel. We looked at the turning of the water into wine
at Cana, the healing of the Roman officer’s son, the feeding of the five
thousand, the man born blind, and the raising of Lazarus. We asked how these
familiar stories shed light on our ministry as ordained men and women,
specifically as deacons. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">You’ll remember that John bears witness to these signs<i> </i>because
they disclose who Jesus is and what he has come to do. They are <i>signs of glory
</i>because glory is John’s word for God’s giving of himself in love for the
world in the incarnate Word in whom, he says, we see “grace and truth”. These
are not events chosen at random out of hundreds of possibilities. John tells us
at the end of the gospel what his method has been. “Jesus did many other signs
in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these
are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son
of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (John
21.30-31). Revealing God’s glory and bringing faith to birth – these are John’s
aims. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">How quickly a year flies by! When I was asked to come back
and give an address on this Saturday morning of your ordination as priests, I
thought, let’s return to St John’s Gospel and look at another of the seven
signs that we didn’t study last year. Let’s ask the same question, how does
this story speak to us on our ordination day, this time as we stand on the
threshold of starting out on our life’s work as priests in the church of God.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">So today let’s turn to the story in John 6.15-21 where Jesus
walks on the water. I’ve often thought that ordained ministry is like walking on
water. And that faith itself is walking on water. As clergy we are ministers of
faith who not only speak about it but model ways of believing. We don’t pretend
to cast-iron certainties but to faith in the spirit of the man in the gospels
who said “Lord I believe! Help my unbelief!” This strikes me as hugely
important in a world where everything is logic-based or evidence-led. The only
evidence for Christianity that interests me is lives that are transformed by
it. And to open ourselves and others up to the life-changing power of the risen
Christ is to launch ourselves out on the deep, as Jesus says to Simon in St
Luke. There is no shallow end in Christianity. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">I’ve long treasured a saying of Soren Kierkegaard, the
nineteenth century Danish philosopher and theologian. He says that if we think
logic or evidence could lead us to grasp God objectively, then it wouldn’t be
belief. “Precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to
preserve myself in faith, I must constantly hold fast the objective
uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms
of water, still preserving my faith.” That’s a lot of water. As ministers this
is our natural habitat. I remember an ordinand saying once that he wanted to
explore becoming a priest because he wanted a role in life where his feet
wouldn’t touch the ground. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">On your ordination day last year I asked you about your hopes
and aspirations and expectations as you approached this great moment in your
lives. “You wouldn’t be human if somewhere within, you didn’t tremble at this
threshold” I said, recalling my own ordination more than forty years ago. Now
that I look back, it felt a bit like the disciples going down to the sea, getting
into a boat and setting off on their voyage. Even if the lake wasn’t rough to
begin with, it was now, John points out, “dark”. Ahead of them an adventure
beckoned. But there was so much that was unknown to them, so much that they <i>couldn’t</i>
know. There is risk involved in launching out on to the deep at night, as they
will tell you when you visit Galilee and learn about the storms and squalls
that suddenly sweep down from Mount Hermon and churn up the water treacherously.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">But I think the key question concerns what is going on inside
us. Van Gogh said that the human heart is “very much like the sea; it has its
storms, it has its tides, and in its depths it has its pearls too”. This is a
metaphor they may not recognise in poor landlocked dioceses. But we here in
Newcastle know the North Sea and its fickleness, the calm still days where
barely a ripple laps the pristine white beaches of Northumberland, and the
storms out of the north east that crash against the basalt rocks and
lighthouses and breakwaters so violently that you wonder they are still
standing. We know our own selves too. On the night before Thomas Merton was
ordained priest in 1949, he confided to his journal <i>The Sign of Jonas</i>.
“My life is a great mess and tangle of half-conscious subterfuges to evade
grace and duty. I have done all things badly. I have thrown away great
opportunities. My infidelity to Christ, instead of making me sick with despair,
drives me to throw myself all the more blindly into the arms of His mercy.” He
knew about treading water at seventy thousand fathoms. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">Which is, not literally but metaphorically what the disciples
experienced on Gennesaret that night. “The sea became rough because a strong
wind was blowing.” They had rowed three or four miles, says John, which can
only mean that they were in the middle of the lake, out of sight of the
shoreline. At the height of the tempest, they see Jesus coming to them, drawing
near to the boat. “And they were terrified” says the text. You’d have thought
they would already be frightened for their lives because of the storm. Yet it’s
the apparition of Jesus that terrifies: that’s clear from the words Jesus
speaks. “It is I; do not be afraid”. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">As you know, the sea held many threats for Hebrews. They were
not natural seafarers like the Philistines. To them the waters, necessary for
life, necessary for flourishing, were to be respected, even feared. They
harboured demonic powers that could overwhelm and destroy people. The psalms
are full of references to the “dragons of the deep” and prayers for God to keep
safe those who cried out from waters that were rising up to their neck. In
Mesopotamian myth, creation came about because the god overcame the monster of
the primordial ocean and brought forth order and safety, symbolised by the dry
land. So to be exposed to wind and storm out on open water was one of the worst
ordeals a Jewish disciple could imagine.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">And walking over the storm-tossed waves Jesus comes. We
mustn’t miss the significance of this. For St John it recalls the first day of
creation when everything was <i>tohu wavohu</i>, “a formless void”, a chaotic
“welter and waste and darkness over the deep” as Robert Alter translates it in
his brilliant commentary on the Hebrew Bible. “And God’s breath was hovering
over the waters.” The text is telling us that this Jesus is Lord over the deep,
the One to whom sovereignty belongs because it was he who created it in the
first place. St John is taking us back to the opening words of the Bible and
the opening words of his gospel. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him, and
without him was not anything made that was made.” “It is I; do not be afraid.”
Or as we should translate it, <i>I AM. </i>Don’t miss the importance of that <i>Ego
Eimi</i>. When we hear those two words, we know we are in the presence of the
one who affirms of himself that he is none other than the embodiment of
Israel’s God Yahweh who, you’ll recall, appeared to Moses and Elijah out of the
storm cloud and bid his people to be loyal to his teaching and his covenant.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">Why am I telling you all this on your ordination day? What
does this sign of Jesus walking on water suggest to us about being priests in
God’s church?</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">There are two connections I want to make. The first is to do
with the nature of this sign. Recall that in the gospel, Jesus’ signs reveal
God’s glory and evoke faith. Last year we saw that the signs in St John’s
Gospel could suggest how ordained ministry is about precisely those same two
things: revealing God’s glory and evoking faith. What are deacons and priests for
if we don’t publicly represent God’s presence among us and invite other people
to discover glory in their midst as they find faith for themselves? </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">We mustn’t lose sight of the simplicity of what we are about
as clergy, I think. We say in the <i>General Thanksgiving</i>, and lead others
in saying, “We bless thee for our creation, preservation and all the blessings
of this life, but above all for thine inestimable love in the redemption of the
world through our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace and for the hope of
glory”. That says everything about glory and faith in relation to all of human
life. Every sign of God unveils an aspect of glory, and knocks on our doors of
perception to believe in a more profound way. And as ministers of God we are
called to play our part of that movement of God’s love and grace towards his
creation. A priest is a “walking sacrament” said Austin Farrer in one of his
sermons. That means being “an outward and visible sign of an inward and
spiritual grace” according to the Prayer Book’s definition of a sacrament. This
is what you pledge today for the rest of your lives. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">Let’s pursue the story a little further. Let’s ask what
effect the presence of Jesus has on those storm-tossed disciples, and his
disclosure “I AM: do not be frightened”. The text says that “they wanted to take
him into the boat”. Why not say that they simply received him into the boat? I
think because in their initial terror at the apparition, their natural instinct
is to protect themselves from this alien presence. But now that they know who
it is who is coming to them, there is a change of mind and heart: they <i>desire
</i>him, they <i>need </i>him to come in among them. Only that way does salvation
lie. “Immediately they reached the land toward which they were going.” John
doesn’t say that the storm is stilled. What matters is that navigation is
restored. Direction is recovered. The voyage is safely accomplished. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">Let me put to you the idea that priesthood is about bringing God-given
direction and purpose to people’s lives. You’ve already begun to discover this
during your deacon’s year. You have listened to enquirers who don’t know where
they are as the voices of many beliefs and ideologies clamour for attention,
and have helped them find faith in God. You have sat with those in distress and
brought them comfort and hope in their troubles. You have guided the faithful
in their prayers and pointed to ways in which they might deepen their spiritual
lives. You have ministered to parishioners at the key transitions of life – baptisms,
marriages, funerals – where they are open to exploring the deep meanings of
human existence. You have preached about God’s wise and loving will for the
world and for us. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">All of this continues when you become priests but in a more
focused, intentional way. As priests you are explicitly called to represent and
hold together the wholeness of the church’s ministry when the Bishop presents
you with the Bible. “Receive this book as a sign (there’s that word again!) of
the authority which God has given you this day to preach the gospel of Christ
and to minister his holy sacraments.” Bearing witness to glory and evoking
faith – that’s what a sign is for. And that means, in the words of the collect,
bringing order to the unruly wills and affections of us mortals. The ordinal is
clear about this. “Priests” the Bishop will say “are called to be messengers,
watchmen and stewards of the Lord; they are to teach and admonish, to feed and
provide for his family in the wilderness of this world’s temptations, and to
guide them through its confusions, that they may be saved through Christ for
ever.” That’s the image of the desert rather than the sea. But the message is
the same. When Jesus gets into the boat with us, our moral and spiritual
compass is restored. We are safe because the voyage finds its direction again.
We make landfall. There is order and stability once more.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">The second connection I want to make between Jesus walking on
the water and our ministry as priests arises out of the setting of this story
in St John. It’s intriguing that this sign of glory is embedded in a story
about another sign. Today’s narrative separates the account of Jesus feeding
the crowd from his teaching about it. You need to read the whole of this
chapter to get the connection. After Jesus has multiplied the loaves and the
fragments have been gathered up, the crowd clamours to make him king, this
“prophet who is to come into the world”. So Jesus withdraws from them, and
disciples get into the boat to cross the lake to Capernaum. After their
encounter in the storm, John takes us back to the crowd that has gone looking
for Jesus. This is where he speaks about himself as “the living bread that
comes down from heaven and gives life to the world”. This is John’s equivalent
of an institution narrative where Jesus talks about “eating my flesh and
drinking my blood”, sacramental language that took us directly to the eucharist
and our celebration of it as the heart of the church’s life.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">I’m saying that strange as it may seem, the sign of Jesus in
the storm belongs with the sign of the bread of life. The Lord who feeds the
crowd is the One who saves his followers from disaster by walking on water and
getting into their boat with them. Which is to suggest that what I’ve called <i>bringing
safety </i>is profoundly linked to the sacrament of the eucharist. On one day
the disciples hear Jesus say in the tempest, “I AM: do not be afraid.” The next
day they hear him promise: “this is the bread that comes down from heaven, so
that we may eat of it and not die…Whoever eats of this bread will live for
ever.” Salvation and sacrament seamlessly bound together in this story of two
signs. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">For all of you, to preside at the eucharist for the first
time will be a day you will always remember. I’m sure you have
prepared yourself for many weeks and months, offered it to God and asked to be
worthy of this great and wonderful act you will be performing in the name of
the crucified and risen Lord Christ whose table it is. Wouldn’t it be wonderful
if every eucharist recaptured the hungers and hopes we bring to our first! I’m
sure that when you stand at the altar for the first time as a priest, you will
echo Thomas Merton. “The greatest gift that come to anyone is to share in the
infinite act by which God’s love is poured out on all humanity.” He describes
how, in the joy of his ordination and first mass, “a new world has somehow been
brought into being…full of sublimity and of things that none of us will
understand for a year or two to come”. Or even after a lifetime, I think. He is
speaking of every privileged occasion when we feel ourselves caught up in God’s
mission to bring reconciliation and healing to the human family. And he says it
of himself as a new priest who is deeply aware of his role in the eucharist, the
focus of all that the church proclaims good news about the God who so loves the
world, and who wants to bring about its redemption. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">And that’s the link between these two signs which both bear
witness to glory and evoke faith. As a priest at the eucharist, your vocation
is to take, bless, break and give the living bread that is God’s pledge of
eternal life, so that the world may be saved through Christ for ever. The story
we tell and act out in the eucharist is the template of the redeemed life. In
our disorientation and darkness, it resets our compass, gives us back our sense
of direction, re-orientates us so that we travel safely and arrive where we
should be. Precisely as Jesus does when he walks on the water and gets into the
boat. As priests, you take your place in both these stories. You inhabit these
signs in your own selves as ministers of grace and truth. As walking
sacraments, you are ministers of God’s love who speak about it and live it out
as the purpose and ground of all our being. In the name of your Lord, and as
signs of his presence, you too have come so that people may have life, and have
it in all its fulness.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">“Who is sufficient for these things?” asks St Paul in his
Corinthian letters. Not me, not you, not any of the men and women who will be
ordained priest today and tomorrow. Knowing our frailty and fear, our
ambivalence and uncertainty, the inner storms and tides Van Gogh wrote about,
but knowing too the pearls and every other gift we have to bring, there is only
one thing we can do. To pray <i>Veni Creator</i>, “Come Holy Ghost” so that we
may be cleansed and inspired and equipped as only God’s Spirit can. And kneel
humbly and open our hands to receive the living bread that God wants to give us.
For we know that Jesus is in the boat with us, whatever storms we face on the
journeys that lie ahead, however many fathoms deep are the waters we are
launched on. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond",serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">Which is why we are deeply, deeply thankful for all that has
brought us to this point in our lives today. God be with you. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-72937458641542674792019-05-16T09:32:00.003+01:002019-05-16T10:06:46.164+01:00Four Pilgrim Addresses in Santiago: 4 Pilgrimage, Recognition and Hope<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0mm 0mm 8pt;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp1dthKjCuJln5N-TiDFA9Xmw4bU3M2SnklB6Brq25sB1t2tZWct0bDgY-rrs_6eIfstG693lSqIEPn-i9X8s5L2aulD9K7zrGOykgG9ThIw0DxxtYj1MyBo96-GwRnS9AOPCli0Tz2Foh/s1600/A61435A9-1469-4F70-8ACF-0A9F1FCDE310.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1066" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp1dthKjCuJln5N-TiDFA9Xmw4bU3M2SnklB6Brq25sB1t2tZWct0bDgY-rrs_6eIfstG693lSqIEPn-i9X8s5L2aulD9K7zrGOykgG9ThIw0DxxtYj1MyBo96-GwRnS9AOPCli0Tz2Foh/s320/A61435A9-1469-4F70-8ACF-0A9F1FCDE310.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 21.33333396911621px;">Who doesn’t love the Emmaus Road story, to my mind the most perfectly crafted of all the resurrection narratives? So typical of St Luke - beautifully paced, immaculately structured, full of the gracefulness and warmth and humanity we love him for.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">It’s a story that was especially linked to the Compostela Pilgrimage in the middle ages. You can s</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 16pt;">ee it in sculpture at two of the historic starting points in France, the Cathedral of Saint Trophime in Arles, and at Vézelay. I mentioned the twelfth century cloister at Santo Domingo de Silos the other day, the Benedictine community close to the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">Camino </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 16pt;">best known for its singing of Gregorian cha</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 16pt;">nt. I’ve never forgotten the cloister on two storeys, a masterpiece of Romanesque architecture and sculpture. Each corner of the cloister has a depiction of the resurrection. You have the three Marys at the empty tomb, being addressed by the angel. You have the Day of Pentecost. You have an amazingly beautiful image of the risen Jesus appearing to doubting Thomas. And opposite him you find the Emmaus Road. As I said before, it shows Jesus dressed as a Compostela pilgrim complete with scallop shell. Perhaps this goes back to St Jerome’s Vulgate translation of the story. Where the disciples ask Jesus if he is a stranger, the Latin has the word </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">peregrinus, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 16pt;">pilgrim. A medieval sermon makes the same point: “Our Lord Jesus Christ himself returning from Jerusalem after his resurrection from the dead, appeared first as a pilgrim”.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">I mentioned yesterday that I was in London preaching Holy Week and that I did my Stations of the Cross at Don McCullin’s shattering exhibition at the Tate. On Good Friday, after I’d preached at Southwark Cathedral, my wife and I spent the afternoon at the National Gallery looking at Renaissance crucifixion scenes. I suggested we end by preparing for Easter. So we went to gaze on the Caravaggio painting of the Supper at Emmaus. He captures the scene just as the risen Jesus is making himself known in the breaking of the bread. The disciples leap up in amazement at this epiphany, this recognition scene, one of them gesticulating wildly and hitting a bowl of fruit that’s about to topple off the table right into our own space. Jesus is not as you expect to see him in religious art, this long-haired, clean-shaven good-</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">looking young man. Which only makes the painting all the more memorable.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">We’ve seen how in St Luke, Jesus is the great traveller. He is born in the middle of a journey, our unique glimpse of his childhood involves a journey and he is introduced to us as an adult being driven out on a journey into the desert. Luke ends with a journey too, as in his final scene, Jesus “led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven” (Luke 24.50). In this third Gospel, he is always on the move. “Such a fast god” said R S Thomas in the poem we heard yesterday. </span></div>
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But the journey of the Emmaus Road stands as a travel narrative in its own right. This particular journey makes it, I think, the archetypal resurrection narrative of them all, at least as we read it out of our own times so distant from the events themselves. For it says to us that resurrection is not a past event in the aorist tense but a reality in our present experience. It’s in the perfect tense, so to speak, a past event with present and future consequences. For this risen Christ is our living contemporary, always travelling with us, always looking for our hearts to burn within us as we journey with him on the road.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">The two disconsolate disciples schlepping back home, joined by unknown </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">stranger; their conversation on the road, the supper at which guest turns host, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">the familiar action of bread blessed and broken, the moment of recognition, the excited return to the city to tell the others – it is exquisitely told. You feel that it is all utterly authentic, St Luke’s Easter: there is not a false note anywhere. In its intimacy and naturalness, its loving portrayal of the characters in the story is as masterful as Caravaggio. This recognition scene strikes us as entirely believable. We are there: it is happening before our eyes. Indeed, so vivid is it that we want to go beyond the sense of watching a drama happening to other people and say: </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">truly this is happening to us</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">This recognition story of broken bread, burning hearts and opened eyes is full of echoes. We saw on the first evening how near the beginning of the Gospel is a story about another journey </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">from </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">Jerusalem, like the Emmaus Road: two people once again going home at Passover time. Mary and Joseph think that the child Jesus is with them, but he is not, and when they realise this, they hurry back to the city. The Emmaus two think Jesus is </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">not </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">with them, though we know he </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">is</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">; and when they recognise him they too hurry back. When his parents find Jesus in the temple, he tells them about what was </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">necessary</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">: how he must be about his Father’s business; and the risen Christ also speaks about what was </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">necessary, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">how the Messiah had to suffer before entering his </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">glory. Christ </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">incognito, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">absent yet present, hidden yet disclosed, abased yet </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">glorified, unknown yet well-known – these are St Luke’s themes. And, says </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">today’s story, when the risen Christ comes to us in the word of the scriptures, and in the breaking of the bread, as our fellow-traveller and as our cherished guest, there is recognition. Our eyes are opened. There is joy. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">But take another, more ancient echo in the story. If Luke’s gospel is a travel narrative, it is also a story full of eating and drinking. Much of Jesus’ teaching and many of his key encounters take place at the meal table. He famously eats with tax-gatherers and sinners. It’s at the last supper that he teaches his disciples about the nature of service, and what the giving of his own body and blood will mean. Does this recall how it was through a first supper that the human race was banished from paradise? In Genesis it was when the man and the woman took the forbidden fruit that ‘the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked’. At that primordial meal, two human beings came to a recognition that led to death. At the Emmaus meal, by contrast, two people come to a recognition that leads to life. ‘Their eyes were opened and they recognised him’ says Luke; as if to say: here, at Easter, with the first supper of the first day of the week, here is a new beginning. Humanity’s long exile is over. The way back to Eden is open at last, and forever. The human race is remade. There is a new world, a new beginning, a new creation, a new joy, a new hope.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">I’ve suggested that for Luke, Jesus is God’s Pilgrim, God’s traveller, the one who comes to us as the bearer of his mystery and love here among us humans. In him, the fellow-traveller has become our literal </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">companion </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">because he breaks bread with us. It’s Matthew, now Luke, who takes up Isaiah’s promise of </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">Immanuel</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">, “God with us”, in his coming and in his final commission where he promises to be with us “to the end of the age”. But Luke’s theology is just as much about the abiding presence of the incarnate and risen Lord. You could say that in him the psalmist’s celebration of God’s presence is materially fulfilled in flesh and blood: “thou art about my path and about my bed; if I climb up into heaven thou art there; if I go down to hell thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning, and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there also shall thy hand lead me; and thy right hand shall hold me”. Whatever our journeys – up, down, far or near, he is alongside us as our fellow-traveller.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">Whatever form our own Emmaus pilgrimage takes, he is there. And St Luke wants us to know that the Ascension does not put an end to this, as if the empty sky that has taken him betokens a kind of real absence. On the contrary, as the Vézelay tympanum of Pentecost assures us, it is only so that he can be alongside us in a more intimate, more profound way.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">As we come to the end of our time on the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">Camino</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">, we want to gather up our experiences, reflections, thoughts of a week that we shall remember for a long time to come. Maybe the Emmaus Road is the perfect gathering-up story in two important ways.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">First</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">, because of how it links the themes of memory, disclosure and recognition. I think St Luke consciously intends the story to function as a summation of everything that the Gospel has been about. The narrative is very careful to pick up the significance of the past. The two disciples rehearse the passion narrative in detail (so skilfully introduced by the question, “Are you the only stranger (or pilgrim) in Jerusalem who does not </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">know the things that have taken place there in these days?”), share their </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">messianic hope that he would be “the one to redeem Israel” and go on to tell of the empty tomb. Jesus responds by setting the core of this primitive </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">credo</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">, as it looks to me to be, in a larger context. “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And out of the Hebrew Bible, “Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures”.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">Memory, and the first inklings of disclosure and recognition that will be </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">consummated at table and the breaking of the bread. “Did not our hearts burn within us?” What’s the criterion of a good pilgrimage? Not that we etherealise at every step on the way. (That’s unlikely if we are taking the spiritual and physical “work” of pilgrimage seriously with its challenges and ordeals.) No, I think that what matters and has lasting value has to do with interpretation and meanings. What made the Emmaus Road unforgettable and life-changing was that the disciples’ perceptions were permanently transformed. This was because they were accompanied by someone who understood both the journey itself and the human beings who were making it.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">In Bunyan’s </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">Pilgrim’s Progress </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">there is a key stopping point early on. This is the House of the Interpreter where pilgrims are shown the road ahead, what it</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;"> will mean and how to navigate it safely. All good pilgrimage needs reliable </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">interpreters. In the twelfth century a Frenchman named Aimery Picaud wrote a </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">Guide for the Pilgrim to Santiago </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">that no traveller could afford to be without, not only because it offered advice on finding your way across difficult or dangerous roads and where to stay, but also because it provided spiritual interpretation and sustenance. I hope that for all of us pilgrims here today, this place has been something of a House of Interpretation too. Because it’s not only the experience but the meanings that matter. The story we need to tell about our pilgrimage is not simply that we went to Santiago but, here is what it’s meant</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> to us. Which takes us back to “bearing witness” as we saw yesterday in the blind man whose life was changed on the road and who glorified God. On this walk too, eyes are opened. Which is why, perhaps, the Emmaus story is so important for St Luke because, as he seems to have been saying all through the gospel, it’s only as we walk the road in faith that disclosures happen, meanings are revealed and our hearts burn within us. Jesus walks. We walk. Life is changed. <i>Solvitur ambulando. </i></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">The Emmaus Road is a “gathering-up” story </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">secondly </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">because of how the story concludes. “That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together.” As I said the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">other day, this is the bit we tend to miss when we talk about pilgrimage. But it’s essential if we’re to see the journey as a whole. We need to remember </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">that when we arrive at our pilgrimage destination, we have only completed half of the journey. The spirituality of the return home is as important as that of setting out in the first place.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">Every mountaineer knows this. Getting to the summit is hard enough. But getting down off the mountain safely is even harder. More climbing accidents happen on the way down than the way up. Sometimes it’s the different </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">psychology of the descent, coloured by false reassurance because we made it up in the first place. More usually it’s that descent is actually more risky because you can’t as easily test the ground ahead or see where you are putting your feet. Which I think is a metaphor of how we come back from what we might call life’s peak experiences. In Peter Matthiesen’s marvellous book </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">The Snow Leopard</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">, he talks about how careful he needs to be when going back into everyday life after the rarified experience of being in the high Himalaya for many days. It’s important, he says, not to tear the delicate gossamer of life by re-entering too brutally, in too much of a hurry. We need to take time for the return journey and make it attentively.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">And being attentive is to understand that returning is not at all simply to put </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">your outward journey into reverse. It may look like it - the outward features of the Emmaus Road had not changed since the disciples left Jerusalem a few </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">hours before. Except that it was dark now, and any journey by night would have been ten times more risky. Which itself tells you that what had changed was the people making that journey - no longer sad and lonely and afraid, but animated by what they had experienced, confident, hope-filled, brought back to life because of that transforming moment of disclosure and recognition. So it was a journey back to a place that was not the same as their original starting point. They were finding their end in their beginning and knowing </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">the place for the first time, in T. S. Eliot’s language. And that made it a different journey altogether. You cannot step into the same river twice, said Heraclitus. Our journey home tomorrow is to continue the pilgrimage we began when we travelled out here. We have every reason to hope and believe that what we might call ordinary time will look different because of what we have experienced together on pilgrimage. It has the potential to change everything. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">So this return journey from Emmaus to Jerusalem is by no means to leave behind the place of heart-burning disclosure and recognition. On the contrary. The implication is that the two conclude their pilgrimage by taking with them that experience, going back to find an old, familiar place now charged with a </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">wholly new radiance because of what they experienced when they walked with that unknown Stranger-Pilgrim and gave him hospitality. The </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">transformation that began on the road has become a daily fact of Easter life. This is the point of the story. The gospel could only ever have ended here – and begun here. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">Es regreso es la salida </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">they say here about going home. The return is the departure. It’s a trope of pilgrim-talk but it’s a spiritual truth nevertheless. The </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">Camino </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">doesn’t end at Santiago. It begins here.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">The disciples’ return to Jerusalem after they had encountered the risen Jesus </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">is exactly the note on which St Luke needs to end. A lesser writer would have stopped at Emmaus with the ecstasy and the tears and the opened eyes and the broken bread. But Luke needs to take us back to Jerusalem, the holy city that was the goal of the long travel narrative in the second part of the gospel, and where his story began at the very outset with Zechariah the priest in the temple and the promised birth of the forerunner John the Baptist. Luke needs the story to end in precisely the same place, with the disciples in Jerusalem where “they were continually in the temple blessing God”. So skilfully has this gospel of the journey been constructed.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">The temple is, I think, Luke’s symbol and metaphor of Matthew’s Immanuel, “God with us”. We’ve seen how in Solomon’s prayer of dedication, it </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">dominates the inner spiritual landscape of worshippers even when they are far away, in exile even. They are to “pray towards” it, make the inward </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">pilgrimage to it at times of joy and thankfulness, grief and crisis. This is what we find in today’s other texts. The beautiful psalm of ascents would have been sung on pilgrimage to the holy place which it celebrates as the fulfilment of every pilgrim’s hungers and longings. In the vision of Isaiah, “the mountain of the Lord” has become an eschatological sign of God’s presence and peace reigning over the world, a pilgrim destination for all nations that will stream towards it so that they may learn his ways and walk </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">in his paths. We can assume that texts like these would have informed St Luke as he writes about the temple and carefully places Jesus and his followers there at key moments in the unfolding story of redemption. For the temple is a symbol of what Jesus himself is, a place of divine </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">shekinah</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;"> where the God who is present to his creation manifests himself explicitly to all who seek him, a theology that St John will develop in due course when he elaborates on the imagery of the temple and says that in Jesus, “we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth”.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">I return to the theme of hope. This seems to me to be a major aspect of every pilgrimage, the sense that something worthwhile will come out of it that will make the world a better place, make us better people. The Jarrow March </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">(wickedly parodied by Nigel Farage’s Brexit walkers) was an attempt not only to draw attention to poverty and unemployment in North East England, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">but to press for a better future for the marchers and the deprived communities they represented. The same is true of the children and young people who are coming out on to the world’s streets to protest about our lack of will in relation to climate change and to express a vision and a hope for a good and safe future for the planet that they will inherit from us. And of the million who thronged central London in March to campaign for a people’s vote in relation to Brexit. And of the Extinction Rebellion protests that brought parts </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">of London to a halt while I was there in Holy Week and succeeded in getting their message into the headlines. All these are doing more than bearing witness to the problems and challenges that face us. They are also bearing witness to the possibility of change, to the expectation that in key respects, the future must not be the same as the past but different and better. This is what we call hope.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">I don’t suppose anyone sets out on a pilgrimage without nursing the hope that things will change because of it. This is a theme explored in depth by Nancy Louise Frey in her book about the </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">Camino </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">that I mentioned before. An important part of her fieldwork was asking pilgrims what hopes they had set out with, how the pilgrimage delivered on those expectations (or failed to), </span><br />
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">and with what sense of transformation and renewal they returned home. As Christian ministers we are all “dealers in hope” as Napoleon put it. As I come </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;">to the end of my seventh decade, I don’t think I have ever seen my country at such a low point when it comes to hope. We all have our responses to this crisis in hope. But what I am more and more clear about is that hope needs to be a central theme in the church’s witness to and living out the Christian faith. It is stating the obvious to point to the way human hopes and hungers were utterly transformed by the Christian gospel. But it’s true. And at the heart of it stands the empty tomb and the encounters with the risen Jesus that we are reading about and celebrating during the Great Fifty Days of Easter.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">Which is why I wanted to end where Luke does. Emmaus is, as we’ve seen, the Easter road of disclosure, recognition and transformation. And Luke’s point in telling the story is that it is not simply some reminiscence of what took place on a glowing but far-off Easter evening two thousand years ago. It represents what is always happening in human life, in our life. As the story is told, Emmaus happens over the few hours it takes to walk there from Jerusalem, share a meal, and walk back. But I see in it an immense metaphor of our life’s journey, the months and years and decades it takes for our eyes to be opened, for resurrection to sink in, become part of us, central to our identity as an Easter people for whom alleluia is our song.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">Emmaus is our life-journey and our life-task. When we are on that road, we </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">know we are on the pilgrimage we walk not only </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">with </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">Jesus but </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">in </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">him, for he himself is that true and living way, as he says to the disciples in the upper room. And when our identity is being established as </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">peregrinos, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">people who negotiate life as pilgrims, we are bound to find ourselves not only infused with resurrection hope and bearing witness to it, but bringing hope to others, bringing it to the worlds through which our own Emmaus path leads us. “Then they told what had happened on the road” says the evangelist, “and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread”.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">The final word of the Emmaus story is </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">artos, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">bread. That tells us something about Luke’s mind. The breaking of the bread and the disclosure it brings says that for him the eucharistic life makes resurrection real and life-changing. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">Eucharist </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">means “gratitude”. To live out of thankfulness, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">eucharistically</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">, makes all the difference. We saw on the first night how the offering of life is one of the goals of pilgrimage. To practise self-offering as our thankful response to God’s goodness and mercy is always the outcome of eucharist. And when we link it to the sacramental transformation of the eucharist and how it looks forward to the eschatological transformation of all things into God’s new creation, we see that the eucharistic life is to bring hope not only for ourselves but for the world.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">The Lord’s Prayer came up in my reflection on pilgrimage and suffering. In that prayer, the petition “give us this day our daily bread”, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">artos epiousios, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">really means, according to most of the scholars, “bread for tomorrow”. That links it directly to the coming of the kingdom which is what the prayer is fundamentally about, when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven as we pray in the preceding clause. I said yesterday that the petition “lead us not into temptation” is better translated “do not bring us to the time of trial”, </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">peirasmos. </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">In the New Testament, that word has connotations of the eschatological trial, the ordeals of the last days before the kingdom breaks in. “Happy are those who endure </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">peirasmos</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;"> because having been approved, they will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him” says the Letter of James (1.12). I’m persuaded that in the Lord’s Prayer, “daily bread” is bread to sustain us on the journeys of tomorrow, equip us for their trials and ordeals. It’s pilgrims’ bread, the manna in the wilderness that not only kept the people alive on their journey, but kept hope alive too.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">So pilgrimage that is inspired and shaped by Emmaus with its eucharistic “bread for tomorrow” turns out to be future-pointed by its very nature. Hope and expectation belong at its heart. If you don’t have hope, why go on pilgrimage? Which puts to us the question, on this last full day of our week here in Santiago, what hopes we nurture as we contemplate the return journey, and how could they inform our own lives and those of our churches? “New lamps be lit, new tasks begun” says Bishop George Bell’s great hymn about Easter and the coming kingdom and “love’s unconquerable might”.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">Christ through all ages is the same: </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">place the same hope in his great name, </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">with the same faith his word proclaim.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 16pt;">Let me end with St Augustine. He says: “the entire life of a good Christian is an exercise of holy desire. You do not yet see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when he comes you may see and be utterly satisfied.” Hope will be emptied in delight. This is the essence of pilgrimage. Catherine of Siena famously said, “All the way to heaven, is heaven”. This is why we are here. This is how we shall return home. My prayer for all of you with whom it’s been such a privilege to share these few days together on pilgrimage is that the risen Christ of the Emmaus Road will always travel by your side, and that the God of hope will be with you all till travelling days are done.</span></div>
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Santiago, 16 May 2019</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-family: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; font-size: 16pt; font-style: italic;">Psalm 84, Isaiah 2.1-5, Luke 24.13-35</span></div>
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Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-32074472791981195392019-05-15T06:36:00.000+01:002019-05-15T12:22:03.918+01:00Four Pilgrim Addresses in Santiago: 3 Pilgrimage and Pain<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilrfBBKam9JTJ1Lul_ZVEfsktVgK0aUQxGKX9bBJfmNOsovKL7iuyTB0WLUg2gOautlPaAaGFu1Vgd-uuz8rjF1TPrXJVIg4bmefQ7X1fz56K-2o2R9LbxhWhq4aLDIX4vpEOvUxAGfLlz/s1600/100_0340.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilrfBBKam9JTJ1Lul_ZVEfsktVgK0aUQxGKX9bBJfmNOsovKL7iuyTB0WLUg2gOautlPaAaGFu1Vgd-uuz8rjF1TPrXJVIg4bmefQ7X1fz56K-2o2R9LbxhWhq4aLDIX4vpEOvUxAGfLlz/s320/100_0340.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">In the first of these studies we looked at pilgrimage as the offering of life. Yesterday we explored the idea that pilgrimage is related to truth-seeking. Inevitably we’ve been coming up against the question, what is pilgrimage? What makes for <i>good </i>pilgrimage? One approach is to say that it is a
journey with a purpose, a journey that is about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">discovering, exploring, participating</i>, not merely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">observing</i>. It’s a decision to travel so as to look at the world with a fresh awareness and to consider our place in it. We’ve seen how Jesus’
journeys early in St Luke’s Gospel seem to uncover this truth-seeking aspect of
his formation, both in his childhood when he was among the teachers in the
temple, and then again in the wilderness with a different kind of teacher, the
desert that says: you shall not live by bread alone. Let solitude instruct you.
Let these stones be bread for you, reveal your own heart to you, and the God
whom you encounter there. Let them be your soul-makers and purify you. “Go into
your cell, and your cell will teach you everything” said the desert fathers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Pilgrims on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino </i>often tell stories about how disorientation has felt like a
desert. In the middle ages one of the most feared stretches was the crossing of
the thick forests of the Landes in south-west France; another the Meseta in the north of Spain, an endless semi-arid plain that is punishing to
walk under a fierce summer sun. Pain comes into things when you are a pilgrim.
It’s rare, I think, for any journey of significance not to entail, if not
physical pain, then the mental and spiritual sense of dislocation that comes
from being far from home and safety. Very often it plays into the life-issues
we bring with us on pilgrimage, especially when we undertake the journey
precisely in order to understand it better and gain strength to face it with
equanimity and courage. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">I’m thinking of a married couple I read about yesterday, who had reached the end of their rope because of the sheer weight they were carrying on their backs. When a fellow pilgrim offered help, they told him they were carrying the belongings of a third person as well as themselves, their only child, the son who had packed his rucksack to walk the Camino but had died just as he was about to set out. His parents vowed to take his possessions into the Cathedral here at Santiago to offer up his life, give back that life to God, and then walk on to Finisterre to lay down this burden and lovingly leave it there at the end of the road, “the end of the earth”. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">And there’s the woman I knew about who walked the thousand
miles from Vézelay to Santiago to try to make sense of the death of a beloved
daughter to cancer. She was not looking for “answers” – how could she? – but
she was seeking a way of living with a loss that felt like the end of the
world. She kept a personal journal of the pilgrimage in which she reflected on
how the ups and downs of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino</i>,
its pleasures and hardships<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>echoed
her febrile emotional state, the wild oscillations she felt between hope and
despair, some days reliving memories with joy and gratitude, others
experiencing only a blankness in her soul that left her without any feeling at
all. She said that the walk had not taken away the pain but had helped her live
with it more positively. She said she felt more ready to face the world, more
courageous, and – yes – it</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">had made her a better person. She was not a religious
person, she said - how often do we hear that said! And we always know that there’s a “but” coming. Her “but” was that she believed that by</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">making herself vulnerable by
undertaking the walk, she had gained new insights about life and about herself.
She had found solace lighting candles in pilgrim churches, sharing the common
life of the refuges where she lodged, attending and being inspired by the
pilgrims’ mass in the Basilica. It was a healing pilgrimage, she said. It’s a
story that could be repeated a thousand times.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">If pilgrimage is truth-seeking, then it is bound
to be about suffering. Our readings focus on the relationship between pilgrimage
and pain. Psalms 42 and 43 belong together as a single lament – who knows why
they ever got separated? Here is a worshipper who cannot get to church. He is
cut off from the sanctuary by some disaster that has overtaken him – sickness
maybe, or the infirmity of old age, or most likely from the language of the
psalm, persecution. He is overwhelmed by grief: “my tears have been my food day
and night, while people say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’”. He has
only his memories to draw on: “These things I remember as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng and led them in procession to the house of God”. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">But memory can be transformative. For one thing,
it helps him to see that he can, indeed, sing the Lord’s song in a strange
land, know and love God even in his desolation. “By day the Lord commands his
steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my
life.” This is the pilgrimage of the imagination. If you journey in your mind
and heart, you journey even if you can’t put one step in front of another. The
desert fathers tell a story about a brother who set off on pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. The same day he came across a poor man who begged for alms. Moved
with pity, he gave him all that he had, everything he had needed for this </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">journey of a lifetime. He went straight to his father abbot to confess. “You did what was right” </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">said
his confessor. </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">“You encountered God in that poor man. You have made the pilgrimage to </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Jerusalem and have </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">come back.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">The other gift of memory is to confer hope. The
psalmist is tempted to think God has abandoned him. “I say to God, my rock,
‘Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy
oppresses me?’ But then there is the great turning-round we come across so
frequently in the psalm laments. There is what the scholars call a “certainty
of hearing”. Three times the refrain brings a surge of hope: “Why are you cast
down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall
again praise him, my help and my God.” Out of his pain, the memory of past
pilgrimage to God’s holy place brings the assurance of pilgrimage in the
future. </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Something like this is going on in the reading
from Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple. Here again, the people’s
separation from this place of presence is envisaged. In the characteristic
Deuteronomic way, Israel’s misfortune and exile is seen as the direct
consequence of sin. So the people must pray for forgiveness and reconciliation
so that they may be restored. What is striking is the language of imaginative
petition. “If they pray to you towards their land which you gave to their
ancestors, the city that you have chosen and the house that I have built for
your name, then hear in heaven your dwelling place their prayer and their plea;
maintain their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you”.
Recall that in Deuteronomy, the people were to make the pilgrimage at the
festivals three times each year, to “the place which the Lord your God shall
choose”. So here again is a pilgrimage of the mind, a mental and spiritual
movement towards the holy place from a state of separation. I wonder whether in
both the psalm and this reading, the subtext is that to make a good pilgrimage,
you must already be </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">making it “in spirit and in truth” we might say, imaginatively.
In both texts, it is suffering that</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">triggers this inward and spiritual journey.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">In the gospel reading, suffering becomes an intentional
aspect of the journey. Early on in Luke, Jesus takes the three disciples up the
mountain of transfiguration where he is disclosed to them as God’s Son, his
Chosen. Immediately afterwards, he begins to teach them that “the Son of Man is
going to be betrayed into human hands”. This is where Luke’s so-called “Travel
Narrative” begins, with the portentous words “When the days drew near for Jesus
to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem” (9.51). It is the
turning-point of the Gospel. From this point on, we know that Jerusalem is not
simply the destination that awaits Jesus but his destiny. Today’s text is one
of the three reiterations of that vital saying from the point in the journey
where Jesus is approaching Jericho, so not far away now from the city and all
that it represents. “He took the twelve aside and said to them, ‘See, we are
going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by
the prophets will be accomplished.’” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Telesthesetai,
</i>the same verb as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tetelestai, </i>“It
is accomplished”, Jesus’ last word from the cross in St John. I don’t believe
I’d noticed that before.) He goes on to speak about being handed over, flogged
and killed; “and on the third day he will rise again”.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">In St Luke, Jesus is portrayed as the pilgrim, as
I said yesterday, making </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">a journey with a purpose.
That purpose in the gospel is his own passion, death and resurrection, a
paschal purpose. And it’s very clear from the structure of the gospel that Luke
sees discipleship as a participation in that paschal purpose, that
cross-and-resurrection shaped pilgrimage. At the transfiguration, Moses and
Elijah had spoken about the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exodus </i>Jesus
will accomplish at Jerusalem (Luke 9.31), a word full of both pilgrim and
paschal resonances.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Immediately after
that ebent, someone says to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go” and </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Jesus has to remind them that on this journey, foxes have holes and birds have
nests but the So</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">n of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Two others want to
follow, but one first needs to go and bury his father, and the other to say
farewell to his family. Jesus has to make it plain that from the outset,
discipleship in the kingdom of God means dying to yourself and your
involvements, taking up your cross as he puts it. It’s too hard for them –
that’s the conclusion we’re meant to draw. But in today’s reading, the blind
man who is healed and can see again now wants to follow him and he does,
glorifying God. To see is to believe, and to believe is to follow and to</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"> follow
is to make the journey Jesus made, even if it means the </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">via dolorosa</i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">We need to understand this connection between
pilgrimage and suffering. This year’s Holy Week was something of a revelation
for me in this regard. I was in London, invited to give Holy Week addresses each
day in Southwark Cathedral. That brought the opportunity to revisit favourite
art galleries. I was drawn first to the Tate Britain and to an outstanding
exhibition of Don McCullin’s photographs. To me as an amateur photographer, he
is one of the greats who has influenced me the most – though the effect of gazing
on these powerful images was to wonder how I would dare ever to take a
photograph again.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">McCullin is famous for his photographs of some of
the most terrible conflicts of our time. His name is indelibly associated with
images of the Congo, Biafra, Vietnam, Cambodia, Beirut, Northern Ireland and
Iraq. Even if you don’t recognise the name, you’ll have seen his work, for
example that famous photograph of the shell-shocked US marine in Vietnam,
staring blankly not at the camera but through it, beyond it into a personal
void that is beyond imagining. I’d read McCullin’s autobiography <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Unreasonable Behaviour </i>where he speaks
memorably about his work in these calamitous war zones, his exposure to the
worst human beings can do to one </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">another. He writes: “Seeing, looking at what
others cannot bear to see, is what my life as a war reporter is all about… Our
knowing matters. These are sights that should, and do, bring pain, and shame,
and guilt.” He talks about the need to bear witness. “You cannot just look away.”
And about the pilgrimages he has had to make to record terrible things as part
of his own journey of truth-seeking and to help us with ours. “I don’t believe
you can see what’s beyond the edge unless you put your head over it; I’ve been
right up to the precipice. That’s the only </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">place to be if you’re going to see
and show what suffering really means.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">The Tate was busy on the day I visited. But I was
struck by what I can only describe as a kind of religious hush in the galleries
where the exhibition was. You did not want to talk in front of these images, so
filled with human darkness and pain, so powerful in their capacity to move us
to tears. In Holy Week, it was like progressing slowly and prayerfully along
the Stations of the Cross. It was to be brutally yet compassionately exposed to
the suffering of Jesus in his people. I knew I needed to say something about it
in my address that night. I wanted to ask where hope lay amid all this cruelty
and pain. I also saw once again, as clearly as I have ever seen it, how </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">religion, if it has nothing to say about suffering, has nothing to say.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">McCullin himself to some extent responds to that
question of hope. In old age he has taken to photographing landscapes. He says
that while he can never “unsee” what he has witnessed, and does not wish to,
his work now must be to calm his spirit. This he does by photographing the
Somerset Levels where he lives. He does this to beautiful effect. It feels
healing in a gentle and life-giving way. The images are still printed dark, with
high contrast, as if haunted by the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chiaroscuro,
</i>the light-and-dark journeys of a lifetime. But there is something of
resurrection about them too, eucharistic even. “Waking up today” he writes “to
a morning of birdsong, and </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">stepping out of my back door, I spot the antlers of
a deer emerging from the mist in my orchard. The light breaks through the
cloud, striking the Iron Age hill fort like the fingers of God. And I find
myself saying: ‘Thank you…whoever you are’.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">That brings me back to this cross-and-resurrection
shaped pilgrimage Luke portrays Jesus as being on, and not Jesus only but those
who walk with him like the blind man who sees the way</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"> ahead once more. Seeing,
discerning, understanding are all part of being pilgrims, because they are
metaphors of the truth-seeking we explored yesterday. But I want to suggest
that they especially belong to that aspect of pilgrimage that immerses us in
suffering. In our passage, Luke explicitly contrasts the disciples’ inability
to understand that Jesus’ vocation is to be handed over to suffering, with the
blind man seeing with the utmost clarity that his destiny is to follow Jesus to
the cross – at least, that’s the implication of the way these two pericopes are
linked.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">It’s striking how Luke emphasises the public dimension
of the suffering that awaits Jesus, and </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">its violence. “He will be handed over… mocked…
insulted… spat upon… flogged… killed.” Even a casual reading of the passion
narratives shows how Jesus’ death, whatever else it meant at the time or came
to mean subsequently, was the outcome of turbulent and violent politics. He was
the victim of decisions made by the public leaders of the time, Caiaphas, the
temple authorities, Pilate, Herod and the crowd as St Luke tells the story.
Like the massacre of innocent men, women and children in McCullin’s images, the
crucifixion was the result of power being wielded against the powerless. This
pilgrimage of Jesus is that of a lamb led to the slaughter in the imagery of
Jeremiah. And Jesus’ insistence on this point from the ninth chapter of St Luke
onwards, that crux that follows the transfiguration, is meant to nail home the
truth </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">that for him and for the disciples, the vocation is to drink the cup of suffering
of which the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane is the symbol.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino</i>
has its own history that echoes the politics and violence of the passion. If
you go into the south transept of the cathedral, you’ll see a twelfth century
Romanesque doorway that</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"> once gave on to the medieval cloister. In the tympanum
above the door is a fine carving of St James. He is seated on a horse like a
Roman cavalryman brandishing a banner with one hand and a sword with the other.
This is </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">Santiago Matamoros</i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">, James the
Moor-slayer, a son of thunder indeed. You can see him in baroque style above
the high altar. Along the length of the Spanish sector of the </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">Camino </i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">you come across this image of
him, as often as not trampling over a defeated Muslim, commemorating a vision that was said to have been seen at the Battle of Clavijo in 844 when St James appeared on a white charger to give victory to Christian King Ramiro the First against the Saracens. And
this reminds us how the pilgrim route in the north of Spain was the nucleus of
re-Christianised Spain, what is called the </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">Reconquista</i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">,
the expulsion of Islam over seven centuries from medieval Spain and its
reclaiming for Christian Europe. </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">And that links it too with the attempts in the Middle Ages to reclaim Jerusalem from Islam in those most terribly misnamed adventures call the journeys of the cross, </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">crusades.</i><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">It’s a history that should trouble us, this
weaponizing of pilgrimage in pursuit of territorial ends. It seems to propel us
back into our own troubled times when Islamists murder Christians at worship on
Easter Day in Sri Lanka, and a far-right extremist murders Muslims at Friday
Prayers in New Zealand. You don’t expect when you set out as a pilgrim to find
yourself implicated in a history that feels so contemporary. And however much you
feel that St James is a fellow-traveller and friend on this pilgrimage, you
can’t help being repelled by the naked </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">triumphalism with which he is depicted
as the patron saint of a Christianity that is historically embroiled in a religious
conflict that has been responsible for untold suffering and death down the
centuries.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Pilgrimage requires us to think carefully about
our assumptions. With this history of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reconquista
</i>and its politicisation and bloodshed as the background, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino </i>can never simply be about our
personal journeys and the beautiful moments we crave. No, it forces us to take
seriously the public context of pilgrimage as history and as present reality.
We shouldn’t be surprised at that, for the same is true of the passion narrative
itself, and how the cross has also been weaponised in different eras as an
instrument of subjugation and control. Postcolonial readings of missionary
activity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have linked it all too
clearly with empire and cultural appropriation. How we think about mission
today can never be divorced from the social and political givens which are the
context in which we bear our Christian witness. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">So the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino
</i>makes us think about the diverse, multicultural Europe of which we are
part, how we set about the gospel imperative to reconciliation, how we begin to
heal the memories of centuries, how we befriend those whom the iconography of
the pilgrimage depicts as Christendom’s implacable enemies. Few tasks seem more
urgent in the fractious sentient environment of our own day than addressing
relationships between the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Our
theme today is pilgrimage and pain. Jesus’ foreshadowing of his passion reminds
us that suffering will always be a dimension of pilgrimage. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino </i>presents us with it in a
strikingly vivid – if unexpected - way with its stories and images of conflict
because of the politics of previous ages that were not our own, but of which we
are the </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">inheritors, however unwillingly. It poses the inevitable question, is
healing possible? If so, what is our part in it as pilgrims who are walking
this road with the Jesus who is destined for the cross?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">It may seem ambitious to ask the question, how,
given its history, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino </i>could transform
our vision of the world and inspire us to play our part in bringing healing to
our fractured world. But maybe today’s reading from St Luke offers a clue. It
comes at the end, where Jesus has given the blind man back his sight and told
him, “Your faith has saved you”. In what I find to be one of the most moving
moments of the Gospel because of its joyful spontaneity, Luke tells us that
“immediately he regained his sight and followed Jesus, glorifying God; and all
the people when they saw it, praised God”. The clue is that this healed man,
this new disciple who leaps up to go with Jesus <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">glorified God. </i>He gave thanks, praised God for the transformation
that had happened to him. It’s a marvellous instance of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eucharistia</i>, the gratitude that always lies at the heart of the experience
of redemption and the new beginning. But this is a public act </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">of thanksgiving,
so public that others cannot but join in, as Luke is careful to tell us. In
other words, the activity of glorifying God becomes in itself an act of bearing
witness. There is a story to be told and an experience to be shared. Those very
acts of telling and sharing are, as we would say today, </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">missional</i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">. They have the capacity to alter perceptions and touch
lives. As a result, bystanders themselves become participants, glorifying God
in their turn.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Here, I think, is where pilgrimage has such
potential. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bearing witness </i>seems to
me to be everything. When you make a pilgrimage to Auschwitz or the Holocaust
memorial of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, you are told why you have come. “You are
not here to observe” they warn, “still less to be entertained. You are here to
remember and to bear witness. If this is a </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">burden you do not wish to carry,
better that you don’t cross the threshold to begin with.” Well, it’s too late
for us to turn back. We are already here in Santiago as pilgrims. And I’m
suggesting that if this pilgrimage is to mean anything, then we are here to
remember and to bear witness. What is it that we need to bear witness to?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; 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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Let me make two more suggestions as we conclude. The <em>Camino </em>exposes how Christian Europe has roots in violence and bloodshed. But the twentieth century rediscovery and reanimation of the pilgrimage has become closely associated with the new Europe - borderless, transcending national boundaries, looking for convergence and even union. The <em>Camino </em>has become a powerful symbol of integration and of healing the wounds of memory, not least as recently as the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. Nancy Louise Frey's book <em>Pilgrim Stories</em>, from which I've already drawn, explores how in practice the pilgrimage can be a witness to a holistic vision for our continent in which diversity, inclusion, peacemaking and hospitality are part of our own commitment to build a common European home in response to centuries of </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">fracture and conflict. Here in Spain, we may think of ourselves as far from home, but we are still at home here in Europe that is not someone else’s continent but ours.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; 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font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">A second idea draws on what I was reading while preparing these talks, David Wallace-Wells' recent book <em>The Uninhabitable Earth: a story of the future. </em>It is as sobering a read as the title indicates, not calculated to help you sleep at night. He outlines the science of climate change, its probable effects on the planet assuming that a temperature rise of merely 2 degrees will be impossible to attain before key climatic tipping points later this century, and the politics of how the world responds to the climate emergency, or fails to. You may meet pilgrims in Santiago who are walking the <em>Camino </em>to draw attention to the urgency of this crisis, the degradation of the environment, the protection of species and all the other consequences of this era in </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">planetary history that we are learning to call the Anthropocene. Pilgrims speak about how the </span><em style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">Camino </em><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">re-</span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">connects them to the natural world, inculcates a reverence for life, draws attention to the threats we face. This too is an aspect of bearing witness, and I'm sure you won't argue the point that our churches need to be publicly committed to it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">The cross and resurrection are both Jesus’ destiny,
and they shape the character of the journey itself, as we see in today’s
reading. And that is always the fundamental gospel reality we bear witness to,
wherever we are, whatever journey we are making. But especially when we are on
this intentional pilgrimage of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino</i>.
In terms of pilgrimage and suffering, we bear witness to the reality of pain in
the world, the brokenness of human life, the cruelty and abuse of power that
maims and destroys people, often in the name of religion. And alongside this,
there is whatever personal pain we bring to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino</i>, and how the experience of pilgrimage has enabled us to find
words to talk about it, share something of our human experience in the way that
bereaved woman did whom I spoke about earlier.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">But then there is how the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino </i>has touched our lives, maybe even transformed them as it did
for the blind man who followed Jesus on the road in St Luke. It will no doubt
be easier to tell our personal stories than a public one. Yet there is a public
story to be told if we would play our part in redeeming the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino </i>of its troubled history, at least
in our imaginations and how we choose to speak about it. This too is bearing
witness to the cross and resurrection in the life of the world and how we reach
out in warmth and hospitality to faith communities from which we have been
alienated by history. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; 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font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">When the simple act of going for a walk sows
seeds like these, who knows what fruit could come? If we tell the story and
bear witness to both the pain and the mercy, death and life, cross </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">and
resurrection, who knows how God may turn out to be glorified?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> In this diocese you are learning to articulate your vision as “Telling a joyful story, growing the kingdom of God, and building our capacity for good”. This is pilgrimage. This is Christianity </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Santiago, 15 May 2019<br />Psalms 42-43, 1 Kings 8.46-53, Luke 18.31-43</span></i></span></span></span>Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-49385440765361037062019-05-14T09:27:00.002+01:002019-05-14T09:27:40.126+01:00Four Addresses in Santiago: 2 Pilgrimage and Truth-Seeking<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_5wlpRUVGtzuH2I3dMEYr1ypc1UKxTS4B8noFk6lD2_ijAgjE98eb3iCShJY67e8QRtuJzn0OIb37FgQbinA6joAu7rwqGY5ny5P5ysiWbqJDn1pb01o1iP7NEokRNwclmMscoICq9n3P/s1600/100_0340.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_5wlpRUVGtzuH2I3dMEYr1ypc1UKxTS4B8noFk6lD2_ijAgjE98eb3iCShJY67e8QRtuJzn0OIb37FgQbinA6joAu7rwqGY5ny5P5ysiWbqJDn1pb01o1iP7NEokRNwclmMscoICq9n3P/s320/100_0340.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Yesterday we began this series of studies by looking at pilgrimage as the offering of life. Our readings this morning introduce us to the
idea that pilgrimage means discerning, sifting, refining. It is not a
comfortable process and we should not make it too easy. It involves ordeal as
well as satisfaction and fulfilment. That’s because pilgrimage is about
truth-seeking: the truth about God, the truth about ourselves, the truth about
the human condition, the truth about life. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">I spoke last night about the first time I came
here to Santiago. It was on a sabbatical journey my wife and I made from the
medieval village of Vézelay in Burgundy. It is one of the four traditional
gathering places in France from where pilgrims began the thousand mile journey
to Compostela. We were lucky enough to have a little house there. From the
Basilica of the Madeleine on the hill top, brass cockle shells set into the
street pointed down the hill past our house to draw pilgrims southwards as they
set out on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino</i>. We decided to
drive all the way across France and Spain, and to do it slowly and reflectively
over three weeks or so, stopping at all the pilgrim churches on the way, saying
our prayers, meeting pilgrims, meditating on the themes of pilgrimage.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">(Before you tell me that it wasn’t a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real </i>pilgrimage, which some people were
quick to do, let’s remind ourselves that we all came here on a jet plane. And
let’s re-examine our notions of pilgrimage, that it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a journey with a purpose, with an inner dimension, intended to deepen
our understanding and strengthen our participation in the journey we make
through this world as human beings. </i>I’m not saying that the means don’t
matter. Walking, cycling, riding can be extraordinarily enriching and offer
unique and unforgettable experiences. But I am saying that motive and intent
are everything. In the middle ages, British pilgrims who could afford it
wouldn’t travel across land with all its risks and hardships. They would sail
to nearby La Coruna and do the last part on horseback. I see us as coming here
in that spirit. A Pullman pilgrimage it may be, but if we look into ourselves
in the spirit of today’s Psalm 24 and if we find there purity of heart, the
journey will be as real for us as if we had done it on foot or on our knees.)</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">I mention Vézelay because of the Basilica that
crowns the hill. The Madeleine comes from the same era as the great Basilica of
St James here at Santiago, and Durham Cathedral for that matter, the period of
Romanesque of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was a time when the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino </i>was coming into its own as, this
great flowering of art and architecture that spoke of the confidence of
medieval Christianity in the face of Islam that was being driven out of Spain
and southern Europe, and of which St James the Great had become the patron. The
Portico of Glory is a majestic statement of this confidence, with its
Romanesque sculptures on the great tympanum above the doors showing St James
himself, and the tree of Jesse, and Christ in glory surrounded by the four
evangelists. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Back to Vézelay at the other end of the pilgrimage.
There too, inside the huge narthex, a church</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"> within a church, there is a noble Romanesque
portal with an elaborate sculpture in the </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">tympanum. Not Christ in glory this
time, not the last judgment, but an entirely different theme. It shows the ascended, glorified Christ imparting the Holy Spirit to his followers at Pentecost, and
through them, bringing light and illumination to the whole world. It’s one of
the most missionary works of art from the middle ages. The message is: when you
come into this basilica, open yourselves to the light and life and truth of God just as
the midsummer solstice sunshine burns a luminous path right down the centre of
the nave of that great church. And when you go out as a pilgrim and return to ordinary time, let
that light of the Spirit who leads us into all truth accompany you, illumine the pilgrim way you are called
to follow. “Your word is a lantern to my feet, a light to my path.” “We are
walking in the light of God.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">I want to suggest that what links those two
sculptures at either end of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino </i>is
the idea of Jesus as the way, the truth and the life. We could render that as
the true and living way, or the living, walking truth. At Vézelay in that image
of Pentecost, Christ in glory imparts the light that comes from the Spirit of
truth, the light of the Logos which, St John says in his prologue, enlightens
everyone as it comes into the world. Here at Compostela, we see that same light
of truth in the glory of Christ in majesty, whose scrutiny searches and judges
us all by his truth, and whose four evangelists symbolise all who bear witness
to him as the embodiment of God’s truth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">********</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Keep in mind those two images and the long
pilgrim road that connects them as we explore today’s texts. I said that they
focused on truth-seeking. I’ll begin with St Luke.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">We’re used to seeing the second half of the
gospel, beginning at the end of chapter 9, as a </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">“travel narrative” because that
is where Jesus begins to “set his face to go to Jerusalem” “when the days drew
near for him to be taken up”. But the whole of St Luke is really a travel
narrative, for Jesus is always on the move, never lingering anywhere very long.
At the outset of his ministry, Jesus comes to the Jordan to be baptised and
having been proclaimed from heaven as God’s Son, the Beloved, is immediately taken
into the wilderness to be tempted. It’s his first pilgrimage. It’s worth
noticing that whereas it’s the Spirit who leads him there to begin with, it’s
the devil who takes him up the mountain and it’s the devil who conducts him to
Jerusalem and sets him on the temple pinnacle. Could it be that our journeys
can be driven by a variety of agencies, and that discernment entails
recognising who or what is impelling us to travel in the first place? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">The temptation story is the theme of the beautiful twelfth
century sculpted tympanum over the left doorway of the Platerias façade of the
Basilica here at Santiago. (Thankfully, that’s one part of the Cathedral that’s not covered in scaffolding.) No doubt you were preaching on this story in Lent. It
has many layers of meaning, but a central one in all three synoptic
gospels, is that Jesus is recapitulating the wilderness journey of the Hebrews after
the exodus. But where they fell as a result of temptation, Jesus, the perfect
embodiment of all that it means to be “Israel”, succeeds. Luke significantly
inverts Matthew’s order of the last two temptations: here it’s the high
mountain first, then the temple. Luke is the great theologian of the temple,
beginning and ending his gospel there, so it’s natural that he would want to
make it the climax of his temptation story.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "garamond";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">And perhaps we shouldn’t miss the hint here that
organised religion, represented by the temple, carries as many threats to
spiritual integrity as every other temptation by putting the Lord our </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">God to
the test. You don’t need to throw yourself off a cathedral tower to do that. It’s
striking </span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">how Psalm 24, an entrance liturgy at the threshold of the sanctuary,
suddenly veers from a paean of praise to the Creator to a catechism of
self-examination. “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in
his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts…They will receive
blessing from the Lord.” Which is to say, without spiritual authenticity,
“truth in the inward parts” as Psalm 51 calls it, without personal integrity as
a pilgrim to the sanctuary, there is no entrance to the holy place, no worship
“in spirit and truth”, and no disclosure of God’s glory. Every priest must ask himself or herself from time to time how organised religion must try the patience of our good and loving God! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Peirasmos </span></i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">in this story means <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">testing. </i>It’s a much stronger word than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">temptation.</i> Both here and in the Lord’s
Prayer (“do not bring us to (or save us from) the time of trial”) the thought
is of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ordeals </i>that we have to
negotiate and pray to be kept safe through. That entrance rite in the psalm is
a threshold ordeal that interrogates the pilgrim. The ordeals of every
pilgrimage are a familiar and necessary aspect of it: the physical effort, the
mental and spiritual stamina needed, the hazards of the journey – pilgrimage
was never meant to be easy. That’s the whole point. Like the desert journey, a
pilgrimage is an opportunity to rise above obstacles, face ordeals and find a
strength beyond your own to overcome them. The Olympic Games of ancient Greece
were known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">agones</i>, public
festivals at which participants submitted to ordeals or agonies and
demonstrated physical and mental prowess. “Agonies” indeed, but as every
athlete and pilgrim knows, the necessary gateway to ecstasy.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">What are the ordeals of pilgrimage <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">for</i>? I think Luke’s story of the testing
of Jesus and in the background, the Hebrews’ wilderness journey, give the clue.
It is, as I said at the outset, about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">truth-seeking.
</i>In the Hebrew Bible, the destiny of Israel is the issue. Who is this people </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Yahweh has loved and brought out of Egypt and made a covenant with, and
promised a future to? Will they be loyal to Yahweh, keep his ordinances in
response to the covenant, embody the covenant values and virtues of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Torah </i>in their life together in the land
they will be brought to? These are questions already foreshadowed in our story
from Genesis, where Jacob wrestles with a nameless adversary in the darkness
and emerges limping but triumphant as the sun rises upon him. “I will not let
you go unless you bless me.” In token of which he receives a new identity and a
new name, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Israel</i>, “prince with God”. The
encounter has been life-changing. A </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">new dawn has broken.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">In the wilderness stories of the Pentateuch, the
outcomes are not so happy. Again and again, Israel fails the test, stumbles at
each ordeal, refuses to believe the promises that had been set before them. “Did
you bring us out of Egypt only to have us die in the wilderness?” they demand
of Moses. The golden calf is the symbol of apostasy, but all the stories are of
relentless disappointment, disaffection, what the narrative calls “grumbling”.
Whole psalms are dedicated to this depressing theme, such as 106 and 78,
evidence perhaps that negativity did not evaporate when the Israel crossed over
the Jordan. How different it is when Jesus makes the same journey. This time
the story is of faithfulness, obedience and triumph. Already, Luke points
forward to Gethsemane and the passion. This cup will not pass from him. But in
setting his face to the cross and submitting to it as the obedient Servant of
the Lord, he has overcome its evil. And that opens the way to resurrection. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">The big question of the wilderness ordeals in the
Hebrew Bible is the one that was asked at the place called Massah or Meribah, “Is
the Lord among us or not?” (Exodus 17.7). It’s referred to in Psalm 95, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Venite</i>: “Do not harden your hearts, as
at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">the wilderness”. This was where the
Hebrews railed at Moses for lack of water and he struck the rock. Exodus says
that the name commemorated how Israel quarrelled and tested the Lord. I once
stopped there on the way back from St Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai. My
wife and I were being driven by Egyptians with a reckless disregard for safety
on the torturous road that winds up the Red Sea coast of the peninsula. We were
relieved to get out of that car. There’s a small spring and a handful of palm
trees where you can buy drinks by the roadside while the trucks roar past. It’s
an unprepossessing place that lives down to its reputation in the </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">Bible.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">This was the return journey of our pilgrimage to
Sinai, the leg that doesn’t get nearly as much attention as the outward journey
– and yet it poses spiritual questions of its own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are for another day. At Massah, I found
myself pondering not only my own mortality on that road, but how it was one of
the earliest places of truth for Israel after they had crossed the Red Sea. So
soon had the exhilaration of being brought over given way to despondency and
complaint – not much longer than it took for the crowd’s Palm Sunday hosannas
to turn to the crucifys of Good Friday.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Massah means <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">testing</i>,
Meribah <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dispute</i>. Both names are
theologically significant in a place of truth. Any place of truth. I first came
across that phrase in a book by Michael Wilson published in 1971, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Place of Truth: a Study of the Role of the
Hospital Chaplain. </i>I find it a rich and resonant kind of language to use. A
hospital is a place of truth because of necessity, all pretence and falsehood
has to be unmasked if the professionals are to do their proper work, healing is
to be possible and patients are to be cared for. It’s a theatre of ordeals,
trials that are both clinical and emotional, of crises, both physiological and
mental. In the most profound sense, healthcare</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">of any kind is a truth-seeking
enterprise. The medical process we call </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">triage
</i><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">has the sense both </span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">of </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">test</i><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;"> and </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">dispute</i><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">: </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">testing</i><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;"> symptoms against agreed criteria; </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">disputing</i><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;"> in so far as symptoms need to be calibrated and prioritised
against one another and the resources that are available.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">In a book by the Freudian analyst Irving Yalom, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Behind the Couch, </i>he describes
psychotherapy as truth-seeking, a kind of detective work. P. D. James has
written about her novels in this kind of way, saying that detection is the
pursuit of truth that re-orders and stabilises a world thrown </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">into chaos and
confusion by murder and violence. The links to ordained ministry are obvious.
Our churches should be places of truth, candour, emotional honesty and
spiritual intelligence. Public ministers are to be exemplars of truth-seeking.
Which is why reflective practice is not only worth cultivating but essential if
we are to make any lasting difference to human lives. It’s heartening that the
seven </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">Nolan Principles of Public Life</i><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">
which public sector leaders now have to sign up to when they take office are heavily
focused on truth, transparency and personal integrity: </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty
</i><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">and </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">example.</i><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"></i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">I believe we should see pilgrimage as
truth-seeking in precisely the same kind of way. At Massah, the journey of the
Hebrews came to a crisis that posed the existential question, “Is the Lord
among us or not?” And this, I think, lies behind the devil’s taunts in the
temptation stories: “if you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread;
if you are the Son of God, throw yourself off the temple”. That fatal “if”! Is
the Lord with Jesus or not? Does he believe so himself? “Jesus Christ
Superstar: do you think you’re what they say you are?” The synoptic gospels are
clear that this kind of self-questioning, this facing of demons if you like, is
necessary if Jesus is to embark on his ministry with a confident sense of his
own calling. In </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Luke it’s particularly striking that no sooner has the Spirit
driven Jesus into the desert and he </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">has emerged triumphant from the test, the
next scene has him in the synagogue at Nazareth </span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">opening the scroll and reading
the words, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me”. That same Soirit who drove him out into the desert. Back to Vézelay, the starting
point of the Camino, and the tympanum
of the risen Christ with the Spirit of the Lord upon him, and the wind from God
blowing through him into all creation bringing life and light and truth and love.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">I want to see in all this a pattern for our own
pilgrimage, this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino </i>we are on
together. If we are serious about our humanity and our discipleship, we must
not evade the challenges of Massah and of the wilderness. “Is the Lord among us
or not?” “If you are the Son of God…”. They compel us to ask what the truth
about our identity is, our vocation, our destiny. What does it mean to say that
we are God’s people? What is the relationship he looks for with us? What is he
leading us <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">out of</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">towards</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">The literature of the Camino is full of stories
about ordeals, testing and truth-seeking. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not all pilgrims are people of faith, but very
many undertake the pilgrimage because they want to address personal issues of
various kinds: bereavement, an unexpected diagnosis, a crisis such as
unemployment, addressing a sense of alienation from the natural world, a need
for adventure or solitude or deepening friendship. It can be very moving to
listen to pilgrims talk about why they embarked on the walk, what they are
discovering about themselves and what they hope for out of it.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">One of the best books I know about the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino</i> is by Nancy Louise Frey, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pilgrim Stories: on and off the road to
Santiago</i>. She is an ethnographer who lives in this part of Nort</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"> known as Galicia. Her approach is to observe and describe rather than to
evaluate. One of the </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">phenomena </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">she notes is that of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">disorientation. </i>People who live what are on the whole stable,
settled lives </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">can be profoundly disorientated as they get into the walk and
begin to feel the strangeness of this way of living on the move, not nomadic
exactly but detached from the familiarity and security of life at home. She
talks about the movement from disorientation to </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">reorientation</i><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">, reconnecting with life, with our inner selves, with
other people, with God in new ways as the walk continues. She is saying that
pilgrimage transfers us into a liminal world of thresholds where nothing stays
in place for very long, except the experience of the journey itself, and the
people you are with, and your own personhood, and a destination that is not as
far as it was yesterday; and for people of faith, the presence of God. If you
have read Walter Brueggemann on the Psalms, you’ll recognise this language from
his three categories that divide the Psalter into psalms of orientation,
disorientation and reorientation. Which is to say that many of the psalms,
including all the collective and personal laments, are songs of the journey
that are truth-seeking of which a great many ask the Massah question, the
wilderness question, “Is the Lord among us or not?” Think of the agonising
questions we find in two of the best known. “My God, my God, why have you
abandoned me?” “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” (Psalms
22, 137.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">So St Luke portrays Jesus as the pilgrim, making
the same spiritual journey that his own people of Israel made in the
wilderness. In the marvellous cloister of the Benedictine monastery at Santo Domingo de Silos
not far from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino</i>, where the monks sing plainsong better than anywhere else I know, there’s a
touching twelfth century sculpture of the risen Jesus dressed as a pilgrim,
complete with hat, staff, and the emblem of the scallop shell on his scrip. As if to say, the Lord is always on the road towards crucifixion and resurrection,
always on the road with each of us, wherever our own journeys take us. That’s the theme of the Emmaus Road story in </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">Luke 24 that I’ll come back to on the last morning. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">For Jesus, for Israel, for us, it’s the same
experience of making a life-changing journey. It brings the same ordeals, the
same tests of whether we trust that God is among us, whether we have the
resolve it is going to take to be faithful to the end, whether we even believe
the pilgrimage is worth making at all. Pilgrimage, if we undertake it with all
our being, strips the spirit bare. It exposes us as the human beings and
Christians we truly are, our motives, our ambitions, our loves, our appetites,
our false selves. It is tough. It is painful. And yet, as the wounded surgeon
plies the steel, we know it to be healing too, a pilgrimage of grace, a
transforming journey that can change our lives, and on which we shall one day
look back on with gratitude. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">No-one captured the truth-seeking realities of
pilgrimage better than John Bunyan. I used to say that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pilgrims Progress </i>is a book all English Christians should read
often. I now want to include the Welsh in that too. The journey of Christian and
Faithful to the Celestial City is one of those texts that, once read or heard
is never forgotten. I quoted from the last page of it at a memorial service
recently, that marvellous passage where Christian crosses the River of Death
“and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side”. I could barely get
the words out, I was so moved. But that triumphant sense of homecoming only makes
sense if you’ve experienced the ordeals and adversaries along the way: the
Slough of Despond, the Hill Difficulty, the Valley of Humiliation where
Christian fights with Appolyon, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the city
called Vanity Fair, and that dangerous cleft in the hill just by the last river
where he learns that there is a road to hell at the very threshold of heaven. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">All our troubles, said Pascal, come down to our
inability to sit still in a room. The antidote is to keep on walking. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Solvitur ambulando </i>said Augustine:
whatever it is, it’s as we walk in obedience before God that clarity comes. It
took “forty years long” for the Hebrews to cross the wilderness and reach the
Jordan. The story they told about the journey was of how God remained faithful
to them in spite of their disaffection and idolatry. Jesus waits on God in the
desert for the appointed forty days, “the Son who learned obedience through the
things he suffered” says Hebrews, in his time of trial among the sands and
stones of the wilderness, and then again in Gethsemane and at Golgotha. Arthur
Weighall, the archaeologist who excavated in the Egyptian desert in the early
twentieth century, said. “the desert is the breathing-space of the world, and
therefore one truly breathes and lives”. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">There are the two sides of all good pilgrimage:
waiting obediently on God, and finding him to be faithful to his covenant even
at the most testing of times. This is how we pilgrims learn to know ourselves
and to know God. A good pilgrimage is always an image of the whole of life, all
the agony and ecstasy of being alive, being human, being Christian. And finding
that we are “more than conquerors through him who loved us”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the truth of pilgrimage, because it is
the truth of human living. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">Some of you may know of Daniel
O’Leary, a catholic priest and spiritual writer. Last year he was diagnosed
with a terminal cancer. In an article for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Tablet </i>entitled, “Coming Home too Soon”, he wrote candidly and movingly
about his journey towards death. “I’m falling into an abyss of uncertainty. On
the surface, and well below it, my life is profoundly changed – and sometimes
it’s a terrible hell of darkness. How do I survive? Do I pray? I have not asked
God for a miracle, or to cure me, or to shrink my tumour. Only to open my heart
as wide as it will </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">go.” It takes courage to make such a journey at all. I want
to come back to the link between pilgrimage and suffering tomorrow. But I want
to conclude with what O’Leary says about the journey he was on. “In a weird
kind of way, I feel I’m trying to exorcise out of me before I go, all that’s
deeply flawed and hidden in my make-up, all that is inauthentic and false; to
smash the wall of pretence that lies at the sick heart of my inherited
clericalism, spawned by a sick institution, Maybe now, at this very last
minute,, if, like the thieves, I take it, is the chance to say with Jesus, “It
is consummated”…. This is the dark and deadly night of my soul that I will
embrace, that I </span><i style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">must </i><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">embrace; it is
God’s greatest incarnate gift of self that lights up, so surely, my way home.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">He died soon after writing, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">truth-seeking
</i>to the end. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><em>Santiago, 14 May 2019</em></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><em>Psalm 24, Genesis 32.22-31,
Luke 4.1-13</em></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-44322643841293045872019-05-13T21:28:00.002+01:002019-05-13T21:32:06.245+01:00Four Addresses in Santiago: 1 Pilgrimage and the Offering of Life<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDmJgJEIJca0hHNjUR1kEd1ZNhHnC3Msb4HdmA7IJNWWdrFMiVZJHzaH3OS9C5H0dWVPSaZizPVJoZIpUb_Q3TQ2cqcSQ1Qtx-M_5QK_O8rtKoYs_NxKnHCvt4HWgL9X_byDleCZSfzSK-/s1600/100_0340.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDmJgJEIJca0hHNjUR1kEd1ZNhHnC3Msb4HdmA7IJNWWdrFMiVZJHzaH3OS9C5H0dWVPSaZizPVJoZIpUb_Q3TQ2cqcSQ1Qtx-M_5QK_O8rtKoYs_NxKnHCvt4HWgL9X_byDleCZSfzSK-/s320/100_0340.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">This week I’d like to offer four Bible
readings on the theme of pilgrimage. That sounds a bit obvious, given that we
are here in Santiago, one of the world’s greatest pilgrim destinations. While
we are here, we shall I’m sure learn a lot about the significance of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Camino </i>and the pilgrimage to Compostela.
But what’s particular to this and every other pilgrimage also represents what’s
true of our human existence as a whole, which is why the symbolism of life as a
journey or pilgrimage is universal. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Something of this is what I’m hoping we shall
explore through the biblical texts I’ve chosen. They will, I hope, help us to
reflect on pilgrimage in its relation to different aspects of life. Tomorrow I
want to look at our search for meaning and truth, how pilgrimage represents
“faith seeking understanding” as we try to make sense of the world’s life and
our own. Next day we shall explore the ways in which pilgrimage takes us into
dark places of suffering and pain, and how the actual or metaphorical journeys
help us to respond to these acute questions life throws at us. Finally on Thursday,
I’ll say something about recognition and hope, how pilgrimage brings disclosure,
expresses God-given hungers and longings - for fulfilment, for illumination and
for God. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">As we are travelling through the Year of St Luke,
I’m taking as the basis passages from that gospel. Of all the four, Luke is
most clearly organised around the theme of the journeys Jesus makes – as a
child, as the Son of Man, as the risen Lord. Indeed, I want to suggest to you
that Luke’s image of Jesus is that of the archetypal pilgrim. I hope passages
in the Hebrew Bible will shed light on Luke’s story. We shall use these
readings in the daily offices before my talks.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">********</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Let’s begin by looking briefly at our readings at
evening prayer. My reflection is that pilgrimage is transformative because at
its heart it is about the offering of life to God. And the offering of life has
two outcomes: a deeper wisdom, and a renewed reverence that translates into our
commitment to walk before God in our own life and immerse ourselves in the world’s
life not as bystanders but participants. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">In that snippet of liturgy from Deuteronomy, the
worshipper is instructed to bring the offering of first fruits to “the place
that the Lord your God will choose”, the text’s way of referring to the central
shrine of Jerusalem where the people were commanded to journey at the three
pilgrim feasts every year. It’s a symbol of acknowledging the source of all
that is good about the land they have inherited, and recognising God’s mighty
acts of deliverance and protection. They have made a safe journey, like we have
today, and their first duty is to demonstrate their thankfulness by making this
symbolic offering that stands for the good earth on which they stand, their
life together in this place, the memory of how they got there, and their
acknowledgment that God is the source and end of it all. The offering of life
is the offering of everything that we have and are and aspire to be. No doubt
all this is enfolded in the </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">acclamation at the start of the pilgrim psalm we
recited: “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let </span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">us go to the house of the
Lord!’”.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Going to the house of the Lord brings us to our
reading from St Luke. The pilgrim feast this time is Passover and the holy
family are doing what the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Torah </i>commanded
and going up to Jerusalem. This isn’t Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem, Luke
tells us – his parents have already brought him to the temple to be presented
after his birth. Then, the infant of forty days is compared to those two people
of great age, Simeon and Anna, who receive him so gladly. Now he is twelve, and
here he is again in the same place with others who are his seniors, “sitting
among the teachers listening to them and asking them questions”. </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Like the other pilgrim feasts of first fruits or
Pentecost, and Tabernacles, Passover is a celebration of God’s words and works
whose story brings memory into the present and transforms the future. In all
three, the whole of life is gathered up and offered in gratitude and hope. I
wonder whether this isn’t part of what Luke is getting at when, alone among the
gospels, he gives us this precious narrative of Jesus’s childhood, this unique
window on what one writer called “the hidden years”. Spanning as it does the
interval between Jesus’ birth and his baptism, is Luke telling us something
about the vocation of Jesus to be in his Father’s house as the representative
human being who is already acknowledging that his life is not his own but must
be offered up? Is Luke inviting us and all humanity to find our welfare and
peace by following Jesus in that journey, that sacred pilgrimage into God’s
very presence? </span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">For Luke, Jesus is the emblematic man who
realises the destiny we were created for in God’s image. This is why he
concludes this episode in the same way that he concludes the Presentation story
just before it, by recording that “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">in divine and human favour”. He might have said that the divine image went on
being formed </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">in him, not only as Son of God who must be about the things of his
Father” (another way of translating “being about my Father’s house”), but as
Son of Man too, the archetypal human being who is exalted in the vision of
Daniel. And in the flow of the narrative, this embodiment of wisdom, stature
and favour will be put on open display before God and humanity in his baptism,
and then driven out to be tested in the wilderness. We’ll come to that
tomorrow.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">For now, and with the sense of still having only
just arrived here in Santiago after our long journey, let’s stay with the image
of Jesus himself arrived at the temple as the destination of that childhood pilgrimage. It would have been lovely if we could, so to speak, have recaptured our own
childhood as we walked up the steps and entered the Basilica of Saint James through the Portico of
Glory for the first time. I don’t know of any other church with such a
marvellous sense of arrival. I was in tears the first time I came here. It was
as if this mighty pilgrimage church was welcoming me home with its doors wide
open, like the father’s arms open to his prodigal son, and inviting me to find
my true self in God once again. I say “it would have been lovely”, because alas much of the Cathedral is under scaffolding at present and we can’t get inside through this great entrance. We’ll have to imagine it from the photos we’ve seen. But as we do, let’s also imagine the young Jesus coming into his Father’s house at that stage
of life where he is becoming aware, can begin - I won’t say to find himself but
certainly - to understand himself and articulate his own vocation. And to offer
his life to God and glimpse how his destiny would come to be shaped as the
Child and Servant and Pilgrim of God. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;">This, I’m sure, is the
spirit in which we’ve come on pilgrimage to Santiago: like Jesus, to offer </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">our
lives afresh, to become more aware of the presence of God, how he is shaping
our lives and destinies, discern and even begin to articulate the journey he
invites us into and what he asks us</span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"> to be and do. This is what we wish and pray
for one another as we greet one another in the </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">words of the ancient pilgrim
road: </span><em style="font-family: garamond, serif; font-size: 13pt;">Buen Camino! Ultreia!</em><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><em></em></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: small;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 13pt;">Santiago, 13 May 2019<br />Psalm 122, Deuteronomy 26.1-11, Luke 2.41-52</span></i></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8652336303270294890.post-89353160814773748342019-05-05T16:57:00.000+01:002019-05-08T10:27:24.836+01:00Inspired by...Durham Cathedral: a Cambridge sermon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;">“Inspired by Durham Cathedral.” I first set eyes
on it as a schoolboy from London one bleak November day in 1966. I got off the train at
Durham and took in the spectacle of the Cathedral and Castle on their
acropolis, one of the great views of Europe says Pevsner in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Buildings of England. </i>I walked up to
Palace Green to be interviewed with a view to reading maths at the University.
I ended up at a university further south that’s a little older than this one.
But the grey towers of Durham haunted me. I married into a North Eastern family
and began to discover the region for myself. In time I became a parish priest in remote Northumberland. Later I went back as Dean of Durham and was installed on St
Cuthbert’s Day 2003, more memorable to history as the day the Iraq War broke out. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;">It felt like a homecoming to be back in the North
East. I’d loved Durham Cathedral all those years away, but I now had to get to know
it from within, its personality, its textures, how it had been inhabited down the centuries, the community whose home this great shrine now was. And where God was in it all. I had to learn that it’s so much bigger than you are. It puts
you in your place. It’s not only the sublime building that is the perfection of
Romanesque form. Or the loveliest of landscapes it sits in, the wooded
peninsula with the river curling round it. Or a history that stretches back to the
Norman Conquest and before that, the saints and scholars of Saxon Northumbria.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;">And I had to learn about the darker aspects
of its story. How many people died constructing it at a time when life was
cheap? To the Saxons, this mighty building was not so much about the glory of God as
of the conquering Normans who treated the North with great savagery. Centuries later, Scottish prisoner
were left to die in it during the Civil War. When we are inspired by something,
when we feel the breath of God in it, we must never rhapsodise uncritically. We
must learn to discern him in the shadow as well as the light.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;">But inspiration is the theme tonight. Three strands
emerge for me. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;">First, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the spirituality of
the Cathedral</i>. By that, I mean more than its public liturgy and music,
uplifting though they were. I’m thinking of the personality of the building
itself, its spiritual character if you like. I became increasingly fascinated
during the time I was dean by how profoundly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">satisfying </i>it was to pray in the Cathedral. Architecture forms us. Every
sacred space has its <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">genius loci, </i>the
unique spirit of the place that moulds us who come inside for sanctuary where
we can ponder life’s questions and struggles, look for solace or strength, seek
God. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;">To me, Durham Cathedral feels so hospitable
because of its sense of proportion. Everything seems right. The vaults are not
so high as to diminish a human being, not so low as to crush us. The nave is
wide enough to feel generous, intimate enough to enclose us and make us feel
safe. A child said it “wraps itself around you”. Its changing light, its <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chiaroscuro</i>, reflect changes and chances
of human existence. The monks who built the Cathedral followed St Benedict’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rule. </i>For them the well-ordered life was
everything, for God is a God of order. Durham is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">disciplined </i>kind of building that used to remind me that we must be
architects of the good life, learn in the school of Christ how to reframe our
lives to echo God’s own holy and beautiful order. This kind of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">spirituality</i> inspires me.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;">Secondly, there is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the history of how the Cathedral came to be. </i>It began on the Holy
Island of Lindisfarne off the Northumberland coast where in the seventh century
King Oswald invited Aidan to found a community to Christianise his kingdom.
When his successor Cuthbert died in 687, his relics were revered in a shrine on
the island. Viking raids in the ninth century made the exposed coast unsafe, so
the Saxon monks gathered up their most precious possessions, their saints’
relics and the Lindisfarne Gospel Book written in his honour, and travelled
round the North looking for a permanent home. After more than a century they
came to the hill called Dun Holm in 995 and settled there. A church was built
round Cuthbert’s shrine, and then the great Norman cathedral we see today.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;">So Durham has a history of having once been a
travelling cathedral. To the Benedictines, its pilgrimage from Lindisfarne to
Durham recalled the desert journey of the Hebrews to their promised land
carrying with them the bones of their ancestor Joseph, as we heard in Genesis.
Faith takes us on journeys of exploration, living in the light of God our
ultimate fulfilment and goal. Our second reading spoke about being strangers
and pilgrims who look for another country. The saints of Durham lived out that
insight. When I prayed at Cuthbert’s shrine behind the high altar, I knew I was
not only in the presence of the humblest and gentlest and best of souls. I was
in the company of one who lived and died and lives on in the memory as a
fellow-traveller, a pilgrim like me. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">history
</i>inspires me.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;">Lastly, there is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the Cathedral’s sense of place. </i>In a book I wrote, I describe Durham
Cathedral as the “mystic heart of North East England” because of its role in shaping
the culture and spirit of the region. Theologians talk about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sacred geography</i>, how landscapes are configured
by holy places, temples, shrines and pilgrim routes. Every faith has its sacred
landscapes. I once lived near Salisbury Plain whose Neolithic barrows and
henges and processional ways spoke of a landscape profoundly shaped by ritual
and religion. As for Christianity, maybe it’s only at England’s extremities,
Cornwall and the North East, where you feel the spirit of ancient faith and its
saints so close to the surface of the land, a spiritual rhizome in the soil of
our country. The “pull” of Durham Cathedral across the North East is why I say
that you can’t understand the region without going there. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;">But I’m inspired as much by the Cathedral’s more
recent connections as these ancient ones. The North East was once the
industrial power house of Britain with its mines and railways, its
shipbuilding, steelmaking and heavy engineering. Coal was king in County
Durham. From the start the Cathedral was closely associated with the mining
communities that surrounded it. At the Big Meeting each July, the Miners’ Gala
service is held in it, the best attended event of the year. The procession of
banners and brass bands and the book of remembrance recording those killed in
mining disasters stand for the Cathedral’s connection with the world of work
and the struggles of many in some of the most deprived areas of England. These
are among the people who love the Cathedral the most. This human <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">context </i>inspires me, the connections
between faith and lived experience.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; line-height: 105%;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;">The burning of Notre Dame in Holy Week showed how
cherished our cathedrals are. Perhaps a test of “inspiration” is how you feel
when it’s at risk. These numinous places draw visitors of all faiths and</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"> backgrounds: people who are open, or who are sceptical, or who are just not
sure where faith belongs in modern life. What I found moving at Durham was how
many visitors were themselves inspired by crossing the threshold. To be
guardian of one of these shrines, this “serious house on serious earth” as
Philip Larkin says, to be under its tutelage and be shaped by it was a rare
privilege. When we are </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;">touched by anything that enlarges our horizons, offers a
vision of the better people we could become, opens up possibilities that could change
our lives, we are right to say we are inspired. And right to be thankful too.
As I am, recalling my Durham years tonight.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0mm 0mm 8pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;">Emmanuel
College Cambridge, 5 May 2019<br />
Genesis 50.15-end, Hebrews 11.8-22</span></i></div>
Aquiloniushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15098649175728796819noreply@blogger.com0