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Meditation for Pentecost

DANIEL O’LEARY

Safe haven for the lost

O

n a dangerous stretch of coast where shipwrecks often occurred, there was once a small lifeboat station. It consisted of just one

hut, one boat, a makeshift lighthouse and a few devoted members who kept a constant watch over the sea. Many lives were saved. The turning point came when the original vision was gradually lost by new and less inspired members. They were unhappy with the poorly equipped hut and the informal atmosphere of the place. They appointed and trained new crew members, and a manual of instruction was drawn up for them, together with a code of dress and behaviour. Now the lifeboat station became a popular gathering place for its members. They fur- nished it expensively and began to use it as a sort of club. A huge flagpole replaced the small lighthouse. Fewer members were now interested in risking their lives in times of danger, and the focus of attention became the running of the new club. About this time, a straying ship was wrecked

off the coast and the still-faithful members brought in a boatload of half-drowned people. They were sick and dirty and some of them had black skin, others yellow. These were seen as an unpleasant threat to the spotless new image of the station. An element of fear, exclu- sion and control crept in. At the next meeting, there was a severe split among the members. Most of them wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities as being a hindrance to the normal life of what had now become a privileged institution. When the Church, like the lifeboat station,

forgets the original vision, it quickly loses its way. The Church exists to reveal the light that protects us when we struggle in the dark. It is there to point the way towards the true shores of our heart, to light our way home. It is there to remind us of who we are and of who we can be. The Church, like Jesus, is meant to measure us at our tallest, to celebrate our divinity from the moment of our birth, to keep our focus on the beckoning horizons of possibility. It traces for us the hidden shape of God in all Creation, the smile of God in all religions, the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in a world called the body of God. The Church is there to reveal to us another courageous way of living, a way of believing in the light while it is still dark. People are waiting to be reassured of this salvation, to be comforted and reconciled

14 | THE TABLET | 22 May 2010

within their endless complexities, wounds and restlessness. We are congenitally unfaith- ful, we are forever tempted, we sin seven times a day. People ache to belong in the inclusive company of those who believe that forgiveness is a non-negotiable way of life. This is the real universal priesthood. All our hearts are anointed by virtue of the sacra- ment of birth and baptism. Theologian John O’Donohue sees ordained priesthood as the precious sacrament of the natural and graced priesthood of every human heart. Without this sacramental vision of human holiness at the centre, all around becomes paralysed, dis- connected, and falls away. It is happening now. The Pentecost Spirit is stifled, the Gospel is domesticated, the prophet is silenced. There is no wonder any more, or silence, or gentle- ness. A hardness has set in. Damaged beauty needs a new design – a design that is already traced in the deepest spiritual centre of each member’s innermost soul, of each commu- nity’s commitment to inclusive acceptance and respect. As a mother holds her child closely while teaching about the hard lessons of life, the Church of Jesus is called to be present to us in the same way. We are all failed human beings. Too often we have spoiled what love is, broken our holy vows and damaged pre- cious lives in the process. The Church is there

The Church, like Jesus, is meant to measure us at our tallest, to celebrate our divinity

to gather us close in our sinfulness, to tell us that it is possible to start all over again, to show us how our pain can be the saving of us. If we are not carefully shown by Mother Church how to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become bitter. If we are not sensitively drawn to find grace at the heart of our pain, that very heart will go out of us. We long for the tenderness of the fully human Jesus holding and healing us in our hurting, liberating us from the ever- present temptation to despair. There is nothing so like God as being free from fear. In his poem “Escape”, D.H. Lawrence describes what it is like when we get out of the cages and “glass bottles” of our own lives, and escape into the forests of freedom:

We are all wounded human beings, and the Church is there to tell us that it is possible to start over again. But its message of the Saviour is not the preserve of the privileged, it is a beacon of love for all those struggling in the obscurity of sin

Cool, unlying life will rush in, and passion will make our bodies taut with power,

we shall stamp our feet with new power, and old things will fall down, we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper.

Our image of the God we have preached is too small. So is our understanding of Church and of sacraments. The promises of our Saviour were never meant for entitlement for the privileged, or for those who belong to any given institution. They are there as lighthouses for the lost, lifeboat stations for all who are desperate, beacons of pure love for those who are truly poor in their deepest being. This is the bright message that our people want to hear every Sunday as they prepare for another daunting Monday morning. Loved back into their blessed essence by the com- munity of Jesus, they remake their broken promises.

It is high time for another Pentecost. The

Holy Spirit is too surprising, elusive and totally unpredictable to be contained in any institu- tion. Like the wind, she is utterly free – free to sing of a God who has no favourites, who is passionate about our humanity, who forgets our sins and carries to a safe haven every single one of her children. “So it belongs to us as Christians”, Timothy

Radcliffe OP said recently in a talk to priests, “that we rejoice in the very existence of people, with all their fumbling attempts to live and love, whether they are married or divorced or single, whether they are straight or gay, whether their lives are lived in accordance with church teaching or not … The Church should be a community in which people dis- cover God’s delight in them.” We are already saved. We do not have to beg for such graces any more. We are all for- given already for everything. The time and task now is to believe those amazing graces, to thank God for them, and then to heal and empower others by reminding them of their own fragile beauty, yet their immense power. This is the emerging Church we are called to nourish anew. It is starting to blossom from within our hearts and our homes. Its seeds have always been within us.

■Daniel O’Leary, a priest of the Leeds Diocese, is based at Our Lady of Graces Presbytery, Tombridge Crescent, Kinsley, West Yorkshire WF9 5HA. Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44
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