Author: Martin

Imagine three people: person A, person B, and person C. Imagine that person A tells person B to do whatever person C tells them. In an absolute sense, no one can ever say such a thing – at least not without taking huge risks. I say this because as human beings we are all of us sinners: we do wrong things, but perhaps more importantly we fail to do right things, and often we just do not really know what is the best course of action. We suffer from not knowing the full situation, misreading another’s feelings, inherited and deep-set prejudices, etc, etc. In other words, we can never fully submit our will and our conduct to another human being. Person A should never ask person B to “do whatever he/she (person C) tells you”. Never.

Yet there is perhaps one area in human life where this instruction must apply: to an army in wartime. A soldier submits to do whatever his/her commanding officer orders him/her to do, even to the point of killing. Without this complete obedience an army, especially in wartime, just wouldn’t function, and the consequences for it’s survival would be grim. But this total obedience comes at a great cost: the soldier may be involved in brutalities and atrocities. Effectively, a soldier signs his/her conscience away. This is one of the many evils of warfare, and the psychological effects of that for the individual soldier can be crippling, as in Post Trauma Stress Disorder (PTSD).

OK, so in normal life, no one can order or should obey such a command. And yet in the Gospel, Mary, the mother of Jesus, says precisely this! At the Wedding Feast at Cana (John 2: 1 – 12), when the wine for the feast runs out, potentially causing the newly weds a huge social embarrassment, Mary, who is ever attentive to the needs of others, turns to Jesus and asks him to do something to help. He at first seems to rebuff her request, but the Gospel story makes it clear that he is nonetheless content to be subject to her parental authority. She then without hesitation tells the catering staff: “Do whatever he tells you”. As we know Jesus performs his first recorded miracle and the blushes of the newly weds are saved – indeed the wine Jesus transforms from water is superb! Divine even!

Great story, and impressive demonstration of what Christians believe to be Jesus’ divinity as the Son of God. But the point I want to take from this story is quite simply that Mary is perfectly right to tell the servants to “do whatever he tells you”. OK, she is saying this in the context of a local social emergency – but all Gospel texts have a much bigger relevance, and Mary and Jesus’ words are meant for all humanity, and for always. So we can take it from St John that Mary is also speaking directly to us: she is point blank telling us: “Do whatever he tells you”! This instruction is a succinct description of true discipleship.

But my real point is this: Mary can only say what she says to us – because she knows who Jesus is – the sinless Son of God. Jesus, as the incarnate God, is the only person we can ever give our full heart, soul and mind to. We can always, and with perfect trust, obey His will – though let’s be honest, knowing the will of God is not to be taken for granted.

And so when Mary says her few brief words to us, let me capitalise the H in ‘he’:

“Do whatever He tells you”.

In His will is our peace,

Martin

I think there are three basic levels of knowledge, and there is a profound hierarchy to them.

At the lowest level we have what might be called ‘learning’. This is where a person fills themselves with facts. Such a person may be good at quizzes and may outshine less knowledgeable folk. They can be studious but without ‘setting the world on fire’.

The middle level of knowledge is ‘intelligence’. This is where a person may not always have amassed a huge body of facts, but what they can do is evaluate and use their knowledge. They may not win at quizzes but they often surpass others in being able to see the crucial issues from the welter of information.

I think most people can make an attempt to learn stuff, but not everyone seems able to have the gift of intelligence – through no particular fault of their own. Intelligence seems to be an innate quality: some folk appear to sail through exams without much study, whereas others cram and cram and still don’t excel.

The highest level of knowledge is ‘wisdom’. We might define wisdom as “knowledge for life”, that is, the ability to understand not just facts and ideas but to be able to apply a thorough common-sense to what life throws at them. As such, wisdom doesn’t depend on great learning or even the natural gift of intelligence. Indeed, the most unlearned person can be the wisest. Folk who have never had the benefit of education may nonetheless have wisdom. In fact, I think great learning and intelligence can often be a hindrance to attaining wisdom as such folk tend to rely on their own skills and talents. Whereas we sometimes meet young people who, without great experience, seem to be ‘wise beyond their years’. Wisdom is therefore precious beyond calculation. And – wisdom can be acquired – by anyone.

What then is this ‘knowledge for life’ and how do we get it? I think it has to be grounded in a deep awareness of who we are, what are our limits and rightful ambitions, and what ultimately is our true destiny. As such a purely ‘human wisdom’ is not really true wisdom, because it fails to understand the scope and purpose of life. Any wisdom system that posits that we have only this earthly life is not wisdom at all and will not set us aright for daily living. We are immortal – we come from God and will only find our true fulfilment in God.

The psalmist cries out:

“Make us know the shortness of our life, that we may gain wisdom of heart!” Psalm 90: 12

As such, true wisdom is inseparable from a relationship with God. And any relationship is built on time spent in each other’s company, and, for our relationship with God, this must be based on prayer. And this is why the most unlearned and lowest IQ person can be the wisest – if they are a person of prayer. I have met monks and nuns who radiate joy and ‘simple wisdom’ by virtue of long hours spent in the presence of God. I have also met ‘ordinary’ folk who make a deep impression of goodness because again they have based their daily lives on an intimate relationship with God.

Another way of looking at this is in the context of love. Most people would ascribe to the principle that love is the most positive aspect of human life. But in spite of ourselves we hurt others, we let them down, and try as we might we often fail to know how to love. What wisdom provides is the best chance to get love right: to know what is best for those we love and how to get that ‘best’ across to them, even when it may seem to them that we are being unloving.

We can all of us aspire to success, to money, to status, to power – but surely the single most precious quality of all is to gain wisdom: to know how to live and love properly. Therein lies the secret to joy and meaning.

In His love, Martin

The title of this blog may seem somewhat strange: what do I mean by “twisting God’s arm”?

What I am trying to get at here is simply that for many people, that is, people who believe in God, if they are honest then they have a concept of prayer as precisely that: trying somehow to persuade God to give them what they want. Prayer for them is a case of – attempting – to twist God’s arm. And perhaps behind this attitude is a belief that God is reluctant or too aloof to be bothered?

We might phrase this question slightly better: is God ever persuaded to change His mind about something or do something in response to our – sincere – pleas? And we’re not just talking about something relatively trivial like can I have a new bicycle. Sometimes our pleas are for something very very important: for example, a child you love is seriously ill, perhaps dying, and you “storm heaven” that the child might be cured. And even when what we ask for is borne of love and is something vital, even then, we often times do not appear to get it. Is God heedless?

Prayer has many aspects. Perhaps the greatest and ‘purest’ form of prayer is simply to praise God – not to ask for anything but just to adore His infinite perfection. But the aspect of prayer I’m alluding to here is called the prayer of intercession – when we ask God for something. And this aspect of prayer is valid because Jesus Himself refers to it and actually encourages us to ask, to knock, and to persevere in our petitions (Matthew 7: 7). We may qualify this by stating that Jesus is speaking about a loving Father who knows what His children need, and therefore Jesus is encouraging us to ask for the good things that God wants to bestow on us. But what about things that – possibly – are not in God’s plan for us? This could be the hard realities of life that God has never promised to shield us from – after all Jesus Himself earnestly prayed: “If this cup can pass me by” (Matthew 26: 42). And of course God did not save His own beloved Son from a cruel and unmerited death.

If God will not change His mind for Jesus, why should we ever think He would do so for us? In the example of a dying child, such a thing happens in life, and while such suffering is never ‘sent’ by God there can be no doubt that He ‘permits’ it. Do we then have the right to ask Him to change the situation and possibly work a miracle?

This is a hard question that I rarely ever hear addressed by ministers of religion: does God respond to heartfelt pleas to ‘fix’ something that we experience as bad or cruel? All too often we get fed pious platitudes, something like “this suffering now will gain you a shorter spell in Purgatory”? That don’t impress me much…

There is a maxim about prayer that I treasure as it seems to me to go to the heart of this mystery:

prayer does not change God, it changes us.

What this maxim is telling us is that when we pray, pray from the heart, we change – and then we tune in to God’s will and see the deeper meaning of His ‘way’ which is always so much better than our ‘way’. The power of sincere prayer is precisely that we “put on the mind of Christ” (Philippians 2: 5) and then we know what really is for the best, and we begin to see life from an eternal perspective – which is always God’s perspective. Then we can begin to trust Him and to know His peace, even in the midst of horrendous suffering.

This may be fair enough – hard but fair – but is it still worth asking: does God ever respond to our pleas by changing His plan in favour of what we ask? Is this what a ‘miracle’ is, and do miracles really happen?

I don’t think we can give a definitive answer to that, if only because we are always “looking through a dark glass” (1 Corinthians 13: 12) when it comes to discerning His will, and perhaps when something truly unexpected and wonderful happens, such as a child recovering from a terminal illness, who’s to say that wasn’t in God’s plan all the time? But I want to say that I like the idea of a Father God who is responsive while never compromising His better way. Jesus did indeed tell us that if we had faith we could ‘move mountains’ (Mark 11: 23), that is, work miracles in His name. Perhaps the challenge for all believers is just that: to take our God seriously and to so align our hearts with His love that we become open channels for His grace and He can then be prodigal with His blessings – through us!

We can never ‘twist God’s arm’ but we might become His arm and thereby allow Him to do mighty things here and now in this life. Otherwise He is truly Unmighty God in this life and we experience this as His absence.

God is with us! Martin

In early 1985 I travelled with a friend to what was then Yugoslavia to see for myself what was happening in a small village called Medjugorje, where it was reported that a group of young children were seeing apparitions of the Virgin Mary. This was before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the terrible Balkan wars, so we went ‘behind the Iron Curtain’ with some trepidation.

Whether one believes in apparitions or not – and I have to say that the whole Medjugorje story leaves many unanswered questions – I can honestly say that the week I spent there was one of great blessing for me. I saw no supernatural signs but I did meet many people who were impressive in their commitment to God, including Maria Pavlovic, one of the young visionaries. She certainly came across as a straightforward and humble soul who didn’t strike one as in any way trying to gain celebrity through faking a unique experience – indeed she seemed somewhat strained by her sudden fame.

Equally impressive for me was the core message which the visionaries were claiming they were receiving from Mary herself, a message of peace through rededication to God. And one particular aspect of this message struck me as hugely resonant with Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels. Mary was reported as calling all Christians back to a sincere practice of prayer and fasting. I emphasise those words because it is the combination of both prayer and fasting that is crucial here. Sincere heartfelt prayer, of whatever form, is always beneficial to the soul, and fasting on its own may have benefits for one’s health and general equilibrium. Combine the two together in a sincere and concerted practice and you have: spiritual dynamite.

Jesus Himself spoke of the unique power of this combination: talking with his disciples after He had healed a young boy of possession (a possible case of epilepsy?), Jesus stated that such matters are only healed by ‘prayer and fasting’ (Matthew 17: 21). This startling statement can be understood as Jesus saying that prayer – on its own – has its limits! I understand His point in this way: God is never limited, but He works through our humanity, and it is our limitation that has to be factored into the situation. We need the spiritual tools to overcome our own spiritual blindness and lethargy, and our lack of real faith. What a practice of prayer and fasting does therefore is radically attune our spirits to the will and ways of God, and we then become much more open to His grace and thereby much more effective in manifesting His power in our lives.

Perhaps the word ‘dynamite’ is somewhat inappropriate here, but I do want to emphasise that we are talking here about raw power that can transform our ordinary discipleship and witness with explosive possibility. Can I sincerely suggest to you that if you have a difficult situation in your life, perhaps a chronic stress, long standing trauma or a loved one who you are very worried about, and perhaps you have been calling on God with a feeling of no response, then seriously take up a practice of prayer and fasting in recognition of Jesus’ advice? Arising from my week in Medjugorje, I wrote a poem called “Penny’s Nephew”, which may throw some light on what I mean here:

Penny’s Nephew – Poems for Pilgrims

I don’t know about you but I love my food, and I have to be honest, I have always struggled with the very concept of fasting! The teaching on fasting coming out of Medjugorje is quite interesting and encouraging here. According to the visionaries – and we are talking about a message delivered by young village children – fasting is not going without food! We all need food and drink, especially as busy, caring folk. There is no great benefit in starving oneself to the point of weakness and illness. Rather the teaching on fasting focusses on eating very simple food, and thereby denying ourselves the range and variety of tasty foods that we can eat. For example, to spend a day on bread and water, taking as much bread as you need to get through your day. The point here is not to experience hunger so much as to choose to deny an available pleasure, and this choice is a spiritual discipline which, combined with heartfelt prayer, radically attunes our spirit with God’s Holy Spirit. And then the miracles can begin!

If the great mantra is:

“Prayer does not change God, it changes us”,

then we might say:

“Prayer and fasting does not change God, it radically transforms us”.

Go for it!

Martin

Being in my sixties now, I can remember when Holy Mass was celebrated in Latin and the priest had his back to the congregation and was busy doing ‘holy things’ while the rest of us quietly watched on from a distance or just fingered our rosary beads. I was certainly brought up in a pre Vatican II milieu where religion was taught in a dogmatic and fundamentally ‘black and white’ moralistic way. As Catholic school children, we were drilled – religiously – every week with Mass, Benediction, rote-learning of catechism and of course frequent confession.

I have to say I was never aware of, nor a victim of, any sexual abuse by priests and nuns – and there were plenty of them around me – but clearly it was going on. If I suffered any abuse from these ministers of religion I would have to say that it was a theological and spiritual oppression, based on a scary view of human nature and – crucially – a scary view of God. It may be strange to say that I then went on to become a priest myself, but one factor in that was certainly that Vatican II had made some impact on the local Church by the time that I was old enough to discern my way in life. But while the ‘fresh air’ generated by Vatican II was liberating for me as a young person, it was also clearly destabilising and threatening to many others, particularly the older folk.

At the heart of the Church’s traditional understanding of the Gospel and therefore how it presented the ‘things of God’ and humanity’s role, was the centrality of sin. It might be overstating the point but when I was young sin was everywhere. Sin had its precise gradings, into venial (minor) and mortal (serious) sin. Many folk, good decent folk, lived in constant terror of the possibility of committing a mortal sin and suddenly dying before managing to get to confession and receive absolution: thereby going straight to hell, which was eternal damnation and the everlasting loss of God and His heaven. And mortal sin was certainly doable in those days! Not surprisingly confession was widely frequented and especially before Mass, because receiving Jesus in Communion while being in a state of serious sin was anathema, a kind of mega-mortal sin, if that were possible.

In those days of my youth, the nineteen fifties and sixties, churches were packed and Catholic practice was impressive in terms of numbers. Numbers… But did we ever really evaluate the quality of our personal and collective faith? Was it perhaps that folk attended their religious duties out of fear, sometimes fear of societal pressure, sometimes naked fear of damnation? What levels of neurosis and stress did people carry in their psyches? And what picture of God did we all hold in our hearts?

When I ministered as a priest in the nineteen eighties, the emphasis had shifted in the main from Crucifixion to Resurrection; from sin to grace; from our attempts to love God to His freely given love for us; from God as stern Judge to God as loving Father; from Original Sin to Original Blessing. I say ‘in the main’, because there were many who never really accepted the renewed theology of Vatican II: often these were older people but by no means always older people.

I was – thankfully – formed as a priest in the spirit of Vatican II, and sought as best I could to preach its values. For such as me, Original Blessing trumped Original Sin: God and His love were primary, the absolute starting point for any journey of faith. As a parish missioner I frequently met people who were profoundly alienated from the Church, either by a traumatic experience at the hands of a priest or nun, or through a failed marriage and an unsympathetic and unforgiving Church, or indeed by being thoroughly sickened by the sin-soaked mentality of those earlier days. I met folk who were terribly constricted by scrupulosity: religious scrupulosity is a terrifying and immensely difficult psychological neurosis, akin to paranoia, and easily induced by an over-sensitivity to the sin-obsession of that time. It would be hard to over-emphasise how debilitating and literally soul-destroying religious scrupulosity can be.

Ultimately, the pre Vatican II mentality centred on ‘going through the motions’, a surface religious practice, regimented by fear and authority. This of course also reflected a wider societal milieu. There was no emphasis on inner spiritual experience, and not that much on emotional fellowship either. In contrast, the message of Vatican II is broad, fundamentally positive and in direct opposition to the earlier sin-centric mentality. But many of us ask, has the spirit and the practice of Vatican II been diluted or even reneged on in the years since the nineteen sixties?

Is the Catholic Church of today thoroughly convinced of the veracity and relevance of Original Blessing, or is it still clinging on to many aspects of the Original Sin mentality?

Catholics, love the Church, because we are the Church!

Martin