What comes round........

" I give him thanks in the land of my captivity,
and I show his power and majesty to a nation of sinners.
Turn back, you sinners, and do right before him;
who knows if he will accept you and have mercy on you."
Tobit:13:6

This is a verse from the second reading in today's Morning Prayer of the Church. The verse stood out for me as I read it and it seemed to speak directly to the state of Christians today in this country. We are not physically exiled from our homeland, as were the Israelites; but we are spiritually exiled from the mainstream of life in this our homeland. We worship different gods; we follow different patterns of living; we are culturally very different: that is if we are truly following Jesus.
The life of an exile is difficult and often painful in the seperation from the homeland; but what does the writer of the book of Tobit say? "I give him thanks in the land of my captivity" is his response. He still believes, trusts and hopes in his God, though all evidence and experience seems to suggest that God and his people have been vanquished by a stronger people, leaving only the options of pining for what is lost or assimilating into the new culture. As Christians we must follow his example and give thanks to God for our present situation and not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by that situation.
He goes on to say that he shows the power and majesty of God to a nation of sinners and exorting the sinners to turn back and do right before God in the hope of seeing his mercy.
Reading this, it does not seem to me that he is referring to the nation that holds his people captive; rather he is referring to the people of Israel who are rightly punished for their iniquity,but still have God to redeem them.
So if we can parallel the Israelites situation with our present situation, we can also apply the writer's analysis and his exortation to ourselves. True we live in a sinful nation; but is that not a result of our failure to preach and to live the Gospel? We have compromised the Good News.The captivity of the Israelites was seen as God's punishment for their failures. We see all around us the evidence of our failures.
So let each of us, and each Church thank God for his mercy; let us repent and do right and live and preach the Christian Way. It is the only way out of this land of bondage.

The man in the next room

Suppose you had someone staying with you in a room in your house. You really liked the bloke and spoke about him and occasionally, say once a week, he prepared a meal for you and you went along, had the meal then went back into your own part of the house until the next weekly invitation came. If anybody asked you about the man, you might be a little bit embarrassed and reluctant to talk about him, although to yourself you would say that he had become the most important person in your life. And you still just kept seeing him for this weekly meal and having told yourself again how wonderful he was and how important he was, you went back to your 6+ days of life and he stayed alone in his room. You didn't think of him much during the 6+ days and certainly didn't share that part of your life with him or involve him in it. When he talked during the meal he talked of things that were very different from your "other life" and when he was talking they made sense. But after the meal was over it was as though the words had to be kept between the two of you inside that room and could not be carried out into the rest of the house and the rest of your life; they had no place there. It might be because you thought the words were so precious and beautiful that they had to stay in the special surroundings of his room; or it might be that the words seemed different outside the room and made the rest of your life less comfortable and more challenging than it had been.
Imagine that there are lots of rooms all over the place and the same man is sitting down with many other people to a weekly meal only to be left alone until the next week. Is this how we should treat the most important person in our lives? Isn't this how we so often treat Jesus?

There is somebody out there

A comment and an encouraging one at that. Please, if there is more than one reader please add your comments. Thoughts, opinions, experiences, suggestions all are welcome, positve or critical.
So you are out there,now let me know.

Is anybody there? Does anybody care?

The bell has rung and Round 2 of Fit For Mission is well underway; this is the consultation on the first consultation and I heard something that makes we wonder if it really matters to anybody in the pews what happens. One parish, trying to be open and consultative sent out 500 simple questionnaires with acccompanying information to their parishioners. The response? 20 were returned: 20 out of 500! Questionnaires are a notoriously uncertain way of opinion finding but this is a truly desperate response. So why this desperate apathy? Even given the level of cynicism and the common view that decisions are already made, surely people have enough interest in their faith to want to express a view about its future, let alone fight for it. Surely more than 20 out of 500 have something to say.

We talk about the lapsed who don't attend. This response suggests that there are many more lapsed who just happen to turn up. Sorry if this upsets any more Traditional Catholics: but turning up for Mass on Sunday is not enough! It is not living your faith and it is probably not a Living faith. Get the message people. We are dying as a faith in this country. We are under attack from powerful secular influences and we respond with apathy and indifference. I forget sometimes that this is Lancashire and the soil of Lancashire Catholicism is drenched with the blood of martyrs. Do I hear them whisper "why did I bother"?

It's now or never.

No this isn't Elvis alive and doing a blog. Shame really because listening to him sing would be preferable to listening to some of the desperate stuff that has bounced off my eardrums these past few day. You don't mean Fit for Mission? Well yes and no. I have heard of things that I find intensely irritating: examples of the parochialism and pettiness of what passes for Church life; of people creating unnecessary obstructions to the development of a well planned programme of evangelisation and of individuals choosing to spend their own money rather than jump through the silly little hoops set out for them with the dubious possibility of some cash at the end of the process. On the one hand you have a group of Christians wanting to evangelise and on the other you have a system, a process, rules, bureaucracy.I tell you Jesus would have had a tough time getting funding for his Mission.

So why the Fit for Mission connection? Well simply that unless there is a radical intention to simplify and liberate the system of doing things; until we have openness and an end to the protectionist attitudes of the "elect" in parishes and on deaneries; until we realise that WE are the church, not the building not the hierarchy not the system, then Fit for Mission will be neither fit nor a mission.

I understand that the next stage of the review is upon us. Well I hope there is wider consultation than before. Nobody up there (not Heaven) seems to appreceate the disconnection between where they are at and the vast majority of Catholics in the Diocese.
A priest suddenly announces he is to stop the evening Mass on Sunday. No consultation or discussion, just an arbitrary decision. Apparently it's against canon law to say so many Masses.
Maybe so; but is this how a family communicates?

Anyway there you are. If you want to have your say now is the moment. Get in there; say it as you see it. At least, even if you are ignored you have been true to yourself. There is just a possibility that this consultation could be genuine if you do.

I have to go now, Elvis wants to use the computer.

Here I stand

Good quote from Martin Luther. Why I quote it is in relation to some of the previous posts which are critical and unfavourable to the Fit for Mission review. I have already deleted some critical blogs and had thought about deleting these too; but I have decided aginst it. It would be dishonest and I do think that the Church as an organisation and a hierarchy should be criticised when necessary. In challenging the day to day operations is in no way an attack on the Magesterium of the Church. As laity we are more than entitled to voice our opinions and views on how our churches are run and, more importantly, how we fulfill our evangelical commission from Christ. So the blogs can stay. Now is the time for the laity to speak out and to take a lead. Even if that means challenging the traditional set-up then so be it. (Is that OK, Martin?).

The Maze

I was in Church, before the Blessed Sacrament, and this image came to me. People wander around looking for direction in their lives, but they are like people in a maze trying to find their way to the centre, but at every turn choosing the wrong direction. Sadly what they don't know is that at every turn Jesus is standing there and saying: "Follow me. I am the Way. I will show you to the centre." So they go down one path and there at the corner is Jesus; but they choose the other way. They come to the next corner and the next and so on, and either wander all their lives down blind alleys, or someone says to them: "when you get to the turning next time, look for the man who is there: he knows the way." Until they know about Jesus they will not see him;and if they don't see him they won't follow him. That's where we come in.