Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you

Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 17th June 2025

‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’, says Jesus in today’s reading (Matthew 5:43-48). It is part of Matthew’s collection of the sayings of Jesus we call the ‘Sermon on the Mount’.

It is relatively easy to love our neighbours, people like us, people who like us, people to whom we can turn for help in times of trouble. But every one of us finds it difficult to love an enemy, someone who has harmed us in some way, or seeks to do so, whatever the reason.

It is important to understand what ‘love’ means here. In Greek, it is the word agape, which means a deep concern for the good of the other that reaches out, even if it receives nothing in return. It is not sexual, physical love (eros), nor is it the mutual love of intimate friendship, nor that between marriage partners (philia).

Our God is love in this ‘agape’ sense. He loves us, and desires what is good for us, whether we are good or bad. As Jesus puts it, ‘he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous’. Jesus is teaching us that we can only be good human beings, can only be ‘children of our Father in heaven’, if we imitate God’s love, and that includes loving our enemies.

And is it so unreasonable to love, to care for, to have genuine concern for our enemies, and pray for them? My enemy may hate me, but what do I gain from hating my enemy back? Anyone who hates suffers mentally, doing more damage to himself or herself, than to the supposed enemy. And if my enemy harms me, they harm themselves as well. If I have a true Christian spirit, I will reach out in compassion to that person. I will want that person to be healed, healed of their hatred, healed of their anger, and to learn how to love. Surely it is much better, and makes more sense, to pray for that person than to hate them back - to bring about healing and reconciliation, rather than deepen the wound on both sides.

What Jesus is asking us to do is not something impossible or unnatural. It is the only thing that can bring peace to me and hopefully, in time, to the person who is hostile to me. As we proclaimed earlier, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God’. (Matthew 5:9)

Jesus tells us today, ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’. This is an ideal that we can only reach for with the help of the Holy Spirit. But it is a call to do our utmost to imitate God in extending our goodwill impartially and unconditionally to every single person. This is not just a commandment. When we reflect on it, it is simply common sense, and it is as much in our own interest as it benefits others.

 

Travelling together on pilgrimage

Article published in the June issue of Grapevine, the parish newsletter of the Nenagh Union of Parishes

On Saturday 24^th May I went on a day-long pilgrimage around ancient holy sites in East Galway. This was organised by Ms Valerie Raitt, a Pioneer Minister working to develop ‘spiritual tourism’, or pilgrimage, in our diocese, something Bishop Michael is keen to promote. Around 40 of us travelled by bus around the different sites, where Dr Christy Cunniffe, an expert on Irish medieval church architecture, expertly interpreted the buildings we visited. Despite the somewhat wet day, the rain held off for the most part, and those of us who participated greatly enjoyed the day.

Holy Trinity Aughrim, with Archdeacon John Godfrey

We began at Aughrim Church, where Archdeacon John Godfrey welcomed us and led us around the community climate action park, once his historic glebe, and the site of an ancient monastery founded by St Connell c. 500, of which no trace now remains above ground. It is an inspiring place with paths mown through a flowering meadow and a walled garden, maintained by local people, with the help of school children who learn about planting, the cycles of nature, biodiversity, and sustainable living. Here, and at each of our stops, Archdeacon John shared verses from the Psalms to reflect upon as we walked, a lovely practice of the early Irish church.

Kilconnell Franciscan Friary

Pilgrims in the choir at Kilconnell

From there we travelled to visit the C15th Kilconnell Franciscan Friary, with its high tower visible from miles around. The ruins are in a near perfect state of preservation – it would not be hard to put a new roof on and bring it back into use. The curvilinear tracery of the east window, and a magnificent tomb with statues of saints are particularly notable. We then repaired to Broderick’s Bar for tea and sandwiches.

Clontuskert Abbey curvilinear tracery

Clontuskert Abbey doorway

The next stop was Clontuskert Abbey, a C12th Augustinian Priory, with its magnificent doorway adorned with complex iconography, expertly interpreted for us by Christy, including a mermaid, similar to another in Clonfert Cathedral.

Dr Christy Cunniffe explains the iconography of the great door of Clonfert Cathedral

We then made our way to Clonfert, where we stopped for tea, provided by the ladies of the RC parish, and contemplated a rare medieval painted wooden statue of the Madonna and Child in the RC church. After that we went on to C12th Clonfert Cathedral, with its quite extraordinary Hiberno-Romanesque doorway. It became a significant pilgrimage destination in the Middle Ages, and the doorway was probably built as a shrine to St Brendan the Navigator, who founded the monastery and is buried there. After Christy guided us around the building, we sang a hymn about Brendan composed by the Rector Dr John McGinty, we prayed St Brendan’s Prayer and the Lord’s Prayer, and we finished with a group photo.

The next event organised by Valerie Raitt is a pilgrim walk on Slea Head, Dingle Peninsular on Midsummer’s Day, Saturday 21^st June at a cost of €40. It sounds fascinating if your legs are good. You can find out more at tlk.ie/spiritualtourism. If you’re interested, early booking is advisable.

We may not have such magnificent medieval churches in our Nenagh Union of parishes, but alongside our precious parish churches, there are a host of interesting medieval ruined churches and holy wells. I hope we can work with Valerie Raitt to find ways to enable visitors and pilgrims to hear the stories each of them have to tell.

Joc Sanders

27^th May 2025

Paul's advice to Ephesians - and to us

St Paul writing, from an early IXth Century manuscript
in the Abbey of St Gallen, Switzerland 

Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 13th May 2025

The first three and a half chapters of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians are deeply theological, about the relationship between God – as Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and human beings – both individually and together as the Church.

But in today’s reading (Ephesians 4:17-32), Paul moves beyond theology to look at its ethical implications. That is, how the Ephesian Christians should behave to each other and to their neighbours. He insists that their Christian faith must make a difference to how they live. Now, Paul tells them ‘Put away your former way of life, your old self … and clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness’. And Paul continues with very specific advice about how Christians should behave:

You must speak the truth to your neighbours, because you are all members of one community. By neighbours, I am sure Paul means everyone in the community, not just those who are Christians.

If someone angers you, you must seek to make it up. Anger is not wrong in itself – remember, Jesus often showed righteous anger, for instance when driving the money-changers from the Temple. But if you let anger fester – if, in Paul’s words, you ‘let the sun go down on your anger’– you allow evil a way into your lives – you ‘make room for the devil’.

You must be honest in all your dealings – you should work for what you get, not steal it. And why? So that you have something to share with those in need. Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor – but this is not the Christian way: you must work, so that you have a surplus to give away to those who need help.

You must avoid speaking words intended to hurt others rather than help them. And, in this time of fake news, one might add, you must weigh up carefully what you hear, to avoid being deceived into doing what is wrong.

So, says Paul summarising, ‘Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you’.

Paul is addressing the Ephesian Christians of his own time. But his message is just as relevant to Christians in every time and place, and that means to you and me. We must:

• Speak the truth
• Not let disputes fester
• Be honest in all things with everybody
• Be generous to the needy
• Avoid hurtful speech, our own and others’

Let us all take Paul’s advice to the Ephesians to heart.

 

The Good Shepherd and the sheep

 

Christ as the Good Shepherd …
a mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna
(Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on Sunday 11th May 2025, the 4th of Easter

‘My sheep hear my voice’, says Jesus, ‘I know them and they follow me’.

Now, I don’t have much personal experience of sheep, but one day as a child I helped my Grandfather move a flock to fresh grazing. It wasn’t easy – the sheep took every opportunity to get away through gaps and over ditches as we drove them down the public road. We got them all there in the end, but I’ve never forgotten how wilful sheep can be.

One Sunday, years ago, I was preaching about the Good Shepherd, and I remembered this experience. I expressed surprise that in Jesus’s time shepherds could expect their sheep to follow them. Surely shepherds then must have had a different relationship with their sheep than they do today, I said. After the service a wise and experienced farmer came up to me and said slyly, ‘My sheep follow me’. I asked him how he did it, and he replied, ‘I walk in front of them with a bucket of sheep nuts – they’re intelligent animals, they recognise me, and they know very well what the bucket means’. I learned a good lesson about leadership that day.

John tells us in his Gospel that Jesus said, ‘I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.’ (John 10:14)

Those who heard him couldn’t agree whether Jesus was the long expected Messiah, or not. Some thought he must be mad, but others pointed to his miraculous deeds, such as causing the blind to see, which was just the kind of thing they expected of the Messiah.

Jesus returns to this shepherd theme in today’s reading from John’s Gospel (10:22-30). He is walking in the temple, sheltering in the portico of Solomon from the winter weather, during the festival of the Dedication. This festival commemorates the re-dedication of the temple 200 years before, after the great Jewish leader John Hyrcanus had defeated the Greek Seleucid king Antiochus IV, who had desecrated it. In Hebrew the festival is called Hanukkah, and Jews still celebrate it around Christmas time – this is why some people, particularly in America, prefer to say ‘Happy Holidays’ rather than ‘Happy Christmas’.

A crowd gathers around Jesus, asking him to put an end to the debate about his identity, ‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.’ Jesus knows that many in the crowd are looking for a Messiah who is a great military leader, someone like John Hyrcanus, someone who will liberate them from Roman oppression and re-establish the kingdom of Judah, someone who will make Judea great again. But this is not the kind of Messiah that Jesus knows himself to be. He surely also knows that many in the crowd hate him, and hope he will incriminate himself as a subversive, so they can get rid of him.

So Jesus does not answer directly. Instead he says, ‘I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.’ Jesus is pointing them to God, who he calls his Father. God works through me, says Jesus, I know those who believe in me, they listen to me and follow me. But you do not.

He continues, ‘I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.’ Jesus is saying that he gives those who follow him eternal life, which is to know God, and he will keep them safe, because God has given them to him.

‘The Father and I are one’, he finishes. This last phrase infuriates the crowd. Jesus is claiming identity with God, which pious Jews see as blasphemy. In the following verses they get ready to stone him, but Jesus makes his escape and travels away from Judea, across the Jordan. His time has not yet come.

As Christians we believe Jesus when he says, ‘The Father and I are one’.

We believe that God the Father, God the Son, who is our Saviour Jesus Christ, and God the Holy Spirit are three persons but one God.

We should take great comfort from Jesus’s words. We are his sheep, and as our shepherd he gives us eternal life and will keep us safe – nothing and nobody can take us away from him, just so long as we believe in him. As the 23^rd Psalm appointed for today puts it:

‘Though I walk in the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;

for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.’

The truth is we are not alone. Jesus lives and Jesus is in and with us. And not just with you and me, here today, but with everyone who has ever believed, and will ever believe in him, from those first apostles and disciples like Peter and Tabitha we heard about in the 1st reading (Acts 9:36-43), down the centuries to us, and forward in time to Christians yet unborn. United with them, and led by Jesus our Good Shepherd, we make up the eternal church, militant here on earth and triumphant in heaven.

We should listen to the physicists and cosmologists, I think, and look beyond the four dimensions of space and time in which we live our little lives. Because God is not constrained by space and time. In God’s perspective all that is, and was, and is to come (Revelation 1:8), is simultaneously present. And that includes every one of Jesus’s disciples, dead, living, and yet unborn.

Whenever and wherever we live, we are all included in St John’s great vision of the eternal kingdom expressed in the poetry of today’s reading from Revelation (7:9-17). We all belong to that

‘great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white’.

Seen from God’s perspective, outside space and time, in a higher dimension, we stand with them

‘before the throne of God,

and worship him day and night within his temple,

and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter us.

We will hunger no more, and thirst no more;

the sun will not strike us,

nor any scorching heat;

for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be our shepherd,

and he will guide us to springs of the water of life,

and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.’

Jesus is not just our Good Shepherd, but also the Lamb who laid down his life to bring us to eternal life.

I shall finish in prayer with the Collect of the Word set for today:

Gracious God,
you sent Jesus, the good shepherd,
to gather us together:
may we not wander from his flock,
but follow wherever he leads us
listening for his voice and staying near him,
until we are safely in your fold,
to live with you for ever;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen

Walking in the light of the risen Christ

Christ in Glory, a tapestry by Graham Sutherland in Coventry Cathedral

A reflection given at Compline in Killodiernan Church on the Tuesday of Holy Week, 15th April 2025

The reading we’ve just heard from John’s Gospel (12:20-36) is about the glorification of the Son of Man. The dictionary definition of the word ‘glorification’ in the Cambridge Dictionary is ‘the act of praising and honouring God or a person’.

Jesus in the Gospels often uses the terms ‘Son of Man’ and ‘Son of God’ almost interchangeably, in ways that can be seen as referring to himself, without explicitly claiming to be divine. This is probably because observant Jews would see it as blasphemy, a capital offence for which he is not yet ready. He leaves it to others to make the connection.

Notice that in this reading he does not explicitly claim to be the Son of Man, only that ‘when (he) is lifted up from the earth, (he) will draw all people to himself’. Voices from the crowd listening to him clearly think that he is claiming to be the Son of Man. They ask, ‘How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’.

In reply, Jesus does not answer their question directly. He says to them, ‘The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.’

Who or what is the light that Jesus is talking about? We know with hindsight that Jesus will soon be lifted up to die upon a cross. Is that when the light is no longer with his disciples? No, we believe that Jesus rose again from the dead on the first Easter day, and later the risen Christ promises he will never leave his disciples – that’s you and me. ‘Remember’, he tells us, ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20). We are mortal, and our lives are short, but the light of Jesus, the glorified Son of Man, will remain with us to our dying moment. And he has left us his teaching to light the way for us, which he summarises as follows, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news’ (Mark 1:14).

We believe as Christians that Jesus, the Son of God, is also the glorified Son of Man, and as the risen Christ, we believe he is also the light that shows us the way.

‘While (we) have the light, (let us) believe in the light, so that (we) may become children of light’.

Remove this cup from me

The Agony in the Garden, El Greco c.1590

A reflection on the Passion Gospel for Palm Sunday, 13th April 2025

That was a long reading (Luke 22:14-23:56), wasn’t it! But I am certain it is good for us to hear the whole story of Christ’s Passion from beginning to end at least once a year, so that we may better appreciate the enormity of those events.

You will be glad to know that I’m not going to preach an equally long sermon too! Instead, I ask you to reflect with me on Jesus’s prayer in the Mount of Olives:

‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.’

Jesus is distressed and agitated. In his anguish, he is certain that what he is doing is the will of God, his loving Father. He knows the likely outcome – his execution as a dangerous agitator, perhaps even the agonising death of crucifixion.

And he does not want to die. He is a man in the full strength and vigour of his early 30s. He loves life. He loves his friends. And he loves his ministry to those who need healing and forgiveness. So he prays to his loving Father for himself, that his death may be averted - ‘remove this cup from me’.

But that is only half his prayer. Even more important for Jesus than his own distress at the prospect of death is that his loving Father’s will should be done. So he finishes his prayer with ‘yet, not my will but yours be done’.

This prayer of Jesus should be a model for our own prayers. When I desperately wish for something, it is right and proper for me to pray to God for it. If I cannot ask God for it, who can I ask? But I must never forget how much more important it is for God’s will to be done, than for my wish to be granted. So I should always finish a prayer for myself with Jesus’s words, ‘yet, not my will but yours be done’.

The purpose of Christian prayer is not to badger God into doing what we want, but to align our wishes with God’s will.

In the end, like Jesus, we must trust that our loving Father knows what is best for us. 

Confronting the evil cynicism of authoritarian rulers

The Sanhedrin plot to kill Jesus

A reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 8th March 2025

A brief reflection on that reading from John 11:45-57.

The context of the reading is this: Jesus has just brought his friend Lazarus back from the dead. Standing in front of his rock-cut tomb, ‘(Jesus) cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth.’ Because of this, many people believed in Jesus, that he had the power to raise the dead. His following was growing. But others reported what Jesus was doing to the authorities.

We have just heard, in John’s words, how the leaders of the Jewish client state in Jerusalem responded to Jesus’s growing reputation and influence among the people. They called a council of the elders, the Sanhedrin, to decide what to do about Jesus. They feared they might lose their own power, that the Romans might be provoked to destroy the Temple and their Jewish state. The high priest Caiaphas takes charge. He declares, ‘“You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” … So from that day on they planned to put him to death.’

The Sanhedrin’s evil cynicism is breathtaking. They resolve to kill Jesus, an innocent man, not so much for the good of the nation, but because they fear he threatens their own power and privileges. The irony is that the Temple and the Jewish client state will indeed be destroyed by the Romans after a Jewish revolt a little over a generation later.

We see the same evil cynicism at work today, as authoritarian rulers seek to increase their power, and feather their own nests. We see it in Russia, where Putin’s regime marks  opponents for assassination, and hunts them down. We see it in the United States of America, where Trump vows retribution, and seeks vengeance on all who oppose him. And lest we think such things cannot happen in Ireland, remember the cynical murders of innocents carried out by paramilitary groups in the name of their cause.

News of the Sanhedrin’s plans spread and reached Jesus. We are told that he ‘no longer walked openly among the Jews’, but he sought refuge near the wilderness with his disciples. Jesus surely knows that the time is coming soon when he must go up to Jerusalem to confront the Sanhedrin. As Passover approaches everyone is wondering whether Jesus would show his face in Jerusalem, because the Sanhedrin ‘had given orders that anyone who knew where Jesus was should let them know, so that they might arrest him’.

We know how it will end. Jesus’s friend and disciple Judas will betray him for 30 pieces of silver. Under arrest, Jesus will stand before that same Sanhedrin in a sham trial with a predetermined outcome. He will be condemned to death and die on a cross, guarded by Roman soldiers. But on the third day, Jesus will rise from the dead, defeating the evil cynicism of his time, and of all times. By imitating him, and with his help, we can and will defeat the evil cynicism we see today. We must take up our cross and follow him.

The Father, the Son, and us

Jesus speaks near theTreasury, JamesTissot1836–1902, Brooklyn Museum

 Reflection for Morning Worship with the Communion of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 11th March 2025

In the reading we’ve just heard (John5:19-29), Jesus gives us a profound description of his relationship with the God he calls his Father, and also with you and with me, his followers. I really can’t do justice to its depth and breadth in this brief reflection. So I shall confine myself to just a few points.

The background to the passage is this. Jesus has just healed a paralysed man on the Sabbath, which some perceived to be a breach of rigid Sabbath laws. When they protested, he told them, ‘My Father is still working, and I am still working’. They already hate him, but now they want ‘all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God’ (John 5:17-18)

Jesus boldly says this to those who want to do away with him. The Father loves the Son, and the Son does only what the Father does. The Son gives life, just as the Father gives Life. And the Father does not judge, but gives that power to the Son. Notice that Jesus does not explicitly call himself the Son of God – that would have been a red rag to his persecutors. But he does so implicitly, when he says, ‘Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgement, but has passed from death to life.’ How comforting that is to those of us who follow Jesus!

Jesus goes on to say, ‘For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself; and he has given him authority to execute judgement, because he is the Son of Man.’ The implications of this for us, his followers, who hear his word and believe in God the Father who sent him, are breath-taking. We will be judged not by some remote and awesome God who exercises the power of life or death on us, but by the Son of Man, the Son of Man who has lived like us on this earth, and knows us and our human frailties from the inside out. It is the Son of Man who grants us eternal life, and will judge us mercifully.

But that does not absolve us from the consequences of our actions. When we hear Jesus’s voice on the day of judgement, when we come out from our graves, ‘those who have done good’ will rise ‘to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.’

 

Transfiguration

The Broken Spectre

Address gien in Templederry Church and St Mary's Nenagh on Transfiguration Sunday, the last before Lent, on 2nd March 2025 

Mountain tops are special places, places where we feel awed by the immensity of God’s creation.

When the weather is good, the distant views reveal how puny we really are. When the clouds close in, we experience isolation from all that is familiar. And when the wind blows rain or hail or snow in our face, we understand our own frailty and vulnerability.

Like most of us, I suppose, I love walking and climbing in mountains, though I’m less able for it nowadays. I have vivid memories of many climbs. Climbing Keeper Hill as a child with my parents, each time I thought I was near the top another ridge revealed itself, until at the final summit half of Ireland was laid out in front of me. Climbing a peak called Le Dent du Chat near Annecy in France as a teenager, Mont Blanc and the snow peaks of the alps began to rise above the opposite ridge as I neared the top. And climbing Lugnaquilla by myself in my 40s - on a whim, unsuitably prepared – the cloud closed in after 5 minutes on the summit, and it grew cold, very cold – I was lucky to fall in with a soldier with a compass walking from the Glen of Imaal to Glenmalure, who showed me the right way down.

In today’s Gospel (Luke 9:28-43), Luke tells the story of Peter, James and John’s very special mountain top experience with Jesus.

High on the mountain, Peter, James and John see Jesus in a new light: ‘the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white’, we are told. Alongside him they see two men talking to him, whom they recognise as Moses and Elijah, the two preeminent figures of Judaism, representing the Law and the Prophets.

Peter, always the impulsive one, says to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’. Peter does not want this emotional moment to end – such a human response!

Then the cloud closes in around them.  They are terrified. And they hear a voice saying, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ When the cloud clears, they look around, and they see only Jesus. They do not tell anyone about their experience until later.

Their experience, which we call the Transfiguration, reveals Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God. It must have been very important to them, because they remembered it and passed on their story after the Resurrection, so that it could be told to us not just by Luke, but also by Matthew and Mark.

There is a possible scientific explanation for what Peter, James and John saw.

High on a mountain, with cloud around, is precisely when we may encounter an optical effect called a ‘glory’. In this effect sunlight is scattered back from water droplets in a mist, as a glowing halo - the technical term for it is Mie scattering.

The most famous example is the ‘Brocken Spectre’, so named because of sightings on the Brocken, the highest peak of the Harz Mountains in Germany. This appears when a low sun is behind a climber who is looking downwards into mist from a ridge or peak. The spectre is the shadow of the observer projected onto the mist, and it is surrounded by the glowing halo of a glory.

You might be lucky enough to see a glory yourselves, as I have. I saw it when I looked down from a plane at the shadow it cast on a cloud. The shadow was surrounded with a halo of light – this was the glory.

I imagine Peter and James and John close together on the mountain, with Jesus praying a little bit away, as the clouds swirl around them. Where Jesus has been standing, they each suddenly see a glowing figure – it’s a shadow, their own shadow, cast on a cloud, wrapped in a glory. And the two other shadows beside it are those of their companions, whom they take to be Moses and Elijah.

This possible scientific explanation of the Transfiguration should not disturb our faith.

I find that it helps me to believe that the Transfiguration really did take place. It was not invented by the Gospel writers to serve their own artistic or theological needs.

Their experience of hearing a voice from heaven also rings very true to me. When human beings suddenly realise something of vital importance, something which changes everything, we often talk of having a ‘flash of inspiration’ or ‘hearing a voice’. There are many such reports of deeply emotional religious experiences, not only within our own Christian tradition, but also from other faiths.

I believe that God is present in and works through the laws of the universe he created. The disciples accurately reported what they saw, even if they could not understand the physics. The true wonder and glory of the Transfiguration is how the subtle working out of the natural laws of God’s creation testify to its goodness, and God’s love for it, and for us.

If this explanation is correct, it should not change one whit our awe and wonder at God’s power and glory.

What matters, surely is what the Transfiguration reveals to Peter, James and John - and to us too - about the nature of Jesus and his relationship with God. They saw Jesus in a new light, as ‘the glory of the Lord’. The voice they heard told them to listen to him, and this they did.

I believe the Transfiguration was the moment on their long road when Peter, James and John realised their complete commitment to Jesus and his teaching. Starting from their call in Galilee, this road led them ultimately to Jerusalem, to the Cross, to the Resurrection, to the Ascension, and on to Pentecost, where they started to blossom as Christ’s Church.

And as Christians the Transfiguration should inspire each one of us to make our own commitment to follow Jesus as his disciples. Because ‘all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another’, in St Paul’s words (2 Corinthians 3:18).

I finish in prayer.

Holy God, mighty and immortal,

you are beyond our knowing,

yet we see your glory in the face of Jesus Christ,

whose compassion illumines the world.

Transform us into the likeness of the love of Christ,

who renewed our humanity so that we may share in his divinity,

the same Jesus Christ, our Lord,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Do you believe this? Yes, Lord. I believe!

A reflection given at the Service of Prayer for Christian Unity held by Nenagh Churches together on 28th February 2025 in St Mary's Church of Ireland, prepared by the Community of Bose, an ecumenical monastery  of brothers and sisters in northern Italy. It had been rescheduled from 24th January due to Storm Eowyn.

The service was led by Deborah O'Driscoll  of the Odhran Pastoral Area (RC). Lynn Kelly (CofI), Donal Mackey  (RC) and Clifford Guest (Methodist) read from John 11:17-27. Fr Pat Gilbert PP (RC) read from John 20:24-29. Joc Sanders (CofI) gave a brief reflection, and led the congregation in saying the Beatitudes. The light of Christ was taken from the Easter Candle to light candles held by the people, as all present said the ecumenical Nicene Creed, in this 1,700th anniversary year of the Council of Nicea. The people then brought the candles up to the chancel and placed them around a large cross. Rose Langley (CofI) and Siobhan Darby (RC) read  prayers from ancient authors. To send the people back into the world, Fr Vitalii Svyryd (Ukrainian Orthodox) read from 1 Peter 1:3–9. Music was provided by the Odhran Pastoral Choir.  

This will be quite a brief reflection on the words of scripture we have heard. Please help me by responding as loudly as you can when I ask you to!

When St Thomas saw the risen Jesus Christ with his own eyes, he confessed his faith in the words, “My Lord and my God!”. To which Jesus replied, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

We have not seen Jesus in the flesh, as Thomas did, but we believe what Thomas confessed. From whatever Christian tradition we come, we believe. Why do we believe? Because, through the Holy Spirit, God our loving Father has revealed himself to us in the life and ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of his Son our Lord Jesus Christ. And God continues to reveal himself to us, this and every day. So, when the risen Jesus asks us, “Do you believe this?”, we can all respond like Martha, “Yes, Lord, I believe.”

“Do you believe this?”, says Jesus. Let us shout out the answer together, “Yes, Lord, I believe.”

Help me, please, by responding to Jesus as Martha did.

“Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord, I believe.”

Let’s do it again, only louder!

“Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord, I believe.”

We are blessed, blessed because we have not seen, yet we have come to believe!

Jesus began his ‘Sermon on the Mount’ by teaching his followers, those who believe in him, the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-10). They are a wonderful summary of the Christian values that we must seek to live by, if we wish to receive God’s blessings. They are, I suggest, a recipe for holy living.

I am a member of the Community of Brendan the Navigator. We are an evolving, dispersed community in the Church of Ireland, open to members from all Christian traditions across the island of Ireland. We say the Beatitudes together responsively every time we meet for worship, as we do every month in Killodiernan Church, Puckane. The Beatitudes are so easy to say, yet so very hard to live up to, aren’t they? Yet we will all be blessed to the extent that we do so. Surely one thing that should unite us all is a shared determination to live up to them.

So, together, let us proclaim the Beatitudes, responsively – you can find them on the back page of the service booklet:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, 

for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,

for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 

for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful,

for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart,

for they will see God.  

Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those who suffer persecution for righteousness’ sake,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

When Jesus says to us, “Do you believe this?” Let us respond “Yes, Lord, I believe.”

“Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord, I believe.”

Christ the True Vine, and the Branches

 Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator, Tuesday 11th February 2025

Christ the True Vine, Lorenzo Lotto 1514, Suardi Chapel (detail)

In the reading we’ve just heard (John15:1-11), Jesus uses the lovely metaphor of the vine to describe the relationship between God his loving Father, himself and his disciples.

Vine growers know that their vines must be heavily pruned to produce good grapes. Jesus tells his disciples that he is like the roots and trunk of the true vine, his Father is like the vine grower, and they are like his branches. His loving Father prunes them to make them more productive. They must abide in Jesus, cleave to him, to produce much fruit. If they don’t, they are like useless branches, they will be pruned and wither, and be fit only to be burned.

Jesus’s loving Father God wishes them to be his Son’s disciples, and wishes them to bear fruit. Jesus loves his disciples, as his Father has loved him. He calls them to abide in his love by keeping his commandments, just as he has kept his Father’s commandments, so that he may rejoice in them, and they may be filled with joy.

What a marvellous metaphor this is for how God’s love permeates Jesus and his disciples!

God will prune the branches, but will do so with love. He does not promise life will be easy. Left to their own devices, disciples would run off in every direction. They will sometimes need to be checked, redirected. They will sometimes find life is not what they hope or expect. There will be painful disappointments along the way. But this is the price they know they must pay to be part of Jesus’s marvellous vision, to know they are loved, and to be filled with the joy of knowing they are producing good fruit.

Jesus tells his disciples they must keep his commandments to abide in his love. What are these commandments? Three, I believe, summarise them all. When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he replied (Matthew 23:37-40), ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”’ These are the first two. And the third Jesus gave his disciples on the night before his crucifixion (John 13.34-35), ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

And what is the good fruit that disciples will bear, when God’s skilful pruning has encouraged them to grow, and they keep Jesus’s commandments? I believe the good fruit are lives that deserve the blessings Jesus promised in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-10), which I wrote about in this month’s Grapevine. Or as St Paul talks of in Galatians (5:22), lives that display the fruits of the Spirit ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control’.

The good fruit is surely the holy lives of Jesus’s disciples. Let us pray that we will all bear such good fruit.

 

Fishing for people

 

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes, Raphael 1515, V&A

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan churches on Sunday 9th February 2025, the 4th before Lent

I like to imagine Gospel stories happening in places I know, to better understand them.

In this morning’s Gospel, Luke (5:1-11) describes how Jesus called Simon, James and John to be his disciples beside the lake of Gennesaret – another name for the Sea of Galilee. But in my imagination, the scene is the banks of Lough Derg - the lake of Gennesaret is just a bit larger than Lough Derg, and wider, but not so long.

So, in my mind’s eye I see Jesus, pressed in by the crowd, commandeering Simon’s lake boat from which to speak to the crowd on the beach at Dromineer, a couple of boat lengths out. Jesus must realise that Simon and his partners James and John in the second boat have had a bad night’s fishing. He does them a good turn in exchange for their help. When he has done speaking, Jesus tells Simon to take the boat out to the deep channel over by the Clare shore where they will find fish. And they do – so many that they fill both boats up to the gunwales until they almost sink.

Everyone is amazed at the size of the catch. Simon falls to his knees in front of Jesus saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ – for the first time Simon acknowledges Jesus’s power. Jesus says to him, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people’. And Simon, together with his partners James and John, the sons of Zebedee, make their life-changing decision to leave their old lives as fishermen and follow Jesus in his travelling ministry as his disciples.

This is a key moment for Christians and for the Church

On the face of it there is nothing special about these three men. Simon - nicknamed Peter, meaning the Rock – and James and John are plain fishermen, just ordinary working people. But along with others Jesus also called, they become apostles, sent out by Jesus to preach the good news he taught them. They were the first leaders of the Jesus movement we call the Church.

Jesus trained them to be apostles as they followed him in his travelling ministry. They were flawed as we all are – they often failed to understand Jesus’s message, they fled in terror when he was arrested, Simon Peter would deny knowing him three times, and only John would witness his crucifixion. But after the resurrection they all encountered the risen Christ, and at the first Pentecost they all received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

From the upper room where they had been hiding, they burst out onto the streets of Jerusalem. They preached the good news that Jesus had taught them, and they attracted a growing band of disciples – the first Church in Jerusalem. The Book of Acts tells the story of how that Church spread like wildfire across the Roman empire - 300 years later under Constantine it would take over that empire.

The explosive growth of the early Church marks the success of Jesus’s project to bring good news to all people – but it all began that day on the shore of the lake of Gennesaret.

The situation we are faced with today in Ireland seems rather different, doesn’t it?

More and more people, particularly younger folk, feel less and less connection with the Church, no matter what tradition they come from. The numbers who attend, listen to the good news, and lend financial support, seem to fall year by year and decade by decade.

Clergy and Bishops thrash about looking for new ways to fill the old pews again. Meanwhile ordinary parishioners like you and me are fearful that ours may be the last generation of our families to sit in them. We are all too aware of neighbouring churches which have shut, causing many in their congregations to lose the habit of regular worship, and to lose any but a cultural connection with the Church, for weddings and funerals.

The words of Isaiah (6:1-13) in the OT reading speak to our times, I think. Israel has ceased to flourish, just as the Church has. The future is grim. They will ‘keep listening, but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand… until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is utterly desolate’. I am reminded of the images of Gaza we see in the news every day. But notice, that Isaiah ends with a message of hope. The broken and burned stump of the great tree of Israel will be the holy seed from which it will spring again. Perhaps the great tree of the Church can sprout again from a broken and burned stump.

I suggest that today’s Gospel story has a lesson for us.

Simon Peter and James and John had spent a fruitless night, fishing where there were no fish. It was only when they did as Jesus advised and went out into deeper water, that they would haul in nets filled to breaking point.

Christian leaders who fish for people as successors to the apostles, surely need to do the same. They must go where God’s Holy Spirit directs, away from the shallow waters of our sterile theological divisions and tribal identities, into the deep waters where real people are found. People suffering from illness, poverty and injustice. People frightened by an uncertain future and change they do not understand. People searching for meaning and peace in a world of excess and violence. People who yearn to hear good news.

We faithful parishioners in the pews must support those who launch out to fish in deeper water. We must be filled with hope, hope that a renewed Church will bring the good news of Christ to a new age.

But how can we be filled with hope? Why should we believe such change is possible?

Firstly, because the Church decay we are experiencing is not inevitable. It is largely confined to Western Europe and increasingly North America. Churches in Africa, in South America, in China and other countries are vibrant, dynamic and growing rapidly, filled with the Holy Spirit and with joy. We need to learn from them.

And secondly, because the Church has suffered existential crises many times, and each time it has brought renewal of the Church for a new age:

·         A new, monastic Church flowered in the chaos of the imperial church of the disintegrating Roman Empire. That brought Christian faith here to Ireland and across pagan northern Europe.

·         The rich and corrupt church of the 13^th Century in turn spawned orders of friars like that of St Francis of Assisi, which renewed popular faith through their simplicity of life and service to the poor.

·         Abuses in the 16^th Century Church fuelled the Reformation, and with it came renewal, not just of protestant churches, but of the Roman Catholic church too, in reaction to the reformation.

·         And in the 19^th Century the Spirit drove a new wave of Christians of all traditions to mission. Some went as missionaries overseas, seeding those churches which are growing today. Others joined orders dedicated to education, health care and the relief of poverty in the new industrial towns and cities – the lovely ‘Call the Midwife’ series on BBC1 captures how that spirit lived on into the lifetime of many of us.

It is right that we should be filled with hope, because history teaches us that Church renewal follows crisis, as the Holy Spirit prepares it for changing times.

I shall finish in prayer with the Collect of the Word for today:

Most holy God,
in whose presence angels serve in awe,
and whose glory fills all heaven and earth:
cleanse our unclean lips
and transform us by your grace
so that your word spoken through us
may bring many to your salvation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God for ever and ever. Amen