Holy Living

The Sermon on the Mount, detail, Jan Breughel the Elder

Published in Grapevine, the monthly newsletter for the Nenagh Union of Parishes, for February 2025

Recently, I have been pondering the Beatitudes, the blessings which Jesus taught to his disciples at the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-10). Members of the Community of Brendan the Navigator, of which I am one, say them responsively every time we meet for worship, as we do every month in Killodiernan Church. They are a wonderfully concise summary of the Christian values we must seek to live by to receive God’s blessings. I see them as a recipe for holy living.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

We are poor in spirit when we know what we have is enough. Then we can give up the constant struggle to get more than we need, we can share what we have with those who have too little, and we will find true happiness.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

We mourn for the people and things we have loved but have lost. We may feel heartbroken, but when we remember them as a great gift of love, and not dwell on their loss, we will be comforted and find healing.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

The meek respect and value other people. We must try our best not to be selfish, egotistic or narcissistic, so that we can work with others to make the world a better place for all.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

When we work passionately for what is right, just, true, and beautiful, we will attract kindred spirits, we will begin to make a positive difference, and we will be filled with life.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

God cannot forgive us, thereby freeing us from corrosive guilt, unless we also forgive those who have wronged us.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 

The pure in heart focus on the love that God showers on all his creatures. When we respond to this love by loving God and our neighbours, we see God’s love at work in the world.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Peace is not just the absence of war. It is being free from hatred, free from threats of violence, free from fear. Jesus, the Son of God, urges us to love our enemies, and shows us how to deal with hatred, threats and fear. We must imitate him to be like children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

It takes courage to speak up for what we know is right in the face of evil. But we must stand up for what is right, come what may. Nothing that evil can do to us would be worse than the shame of betraying the love God has shown us.

The Beatitudes are so easy to say, yet so very hard to live by, aren’t they? We cannot do so without God’s help, so we need to pray for it.

Loving Father, send your Holy Spirit to help us live by the teaching of your Son Jesus Christ, that we may live holy lives, and receive the blessings he promises. Amen

 

Christian Unity Week 2025 in Nenagh

The Nenagh Church of Ireland and Catholic parishes invite you to join them, with Christians of all traditions, in an ecumenical prayer service for Christian Unity Week, in St. Mary’s Church of Ireland, Church Road, Nenagh, on January 24th at 7pm. All are welcome!

The service will be based on materials prepared by the community of Bose, an ecumenical monastery of women and men in northern Italy. They have been distributed by Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. We will listen to Martha confess her faith in Jesus, ‘Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world’. In this 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, we will affirm the faith we share by saying together the Nicene creed in its original form, shared by both the Western and Eastern churches before the ‘filioque’ schism. And the moment will be marked by sharing the light of Christ, symbolised by lighted candles, as the flame is passed on from the Paschal candle to candles held by the congregation, filling the church with light.

Deborah O’Driscoll, Minister for Catechetics in the Ódhrán Pastoral Area, comments:

“God calls us to unity, not uniformity. Each of our Christian traditions has its own gifts to share, and when we come together, we enrich one another through the love of Christ. Let us celebrate the diversity God has made and recognize that, though we may worship differently, we are one family in faith. Unity doesn’t mean thinking the same way—it means walking together in love, listening, and learning from one another as we strive to build God’s kingdom together. We are better together.”

Echoing her words, Joc Sanders from the Church of Ireland Nenagh Union says: 

“God surely loves the diversity of our Christian traditions, just as he loves the wonderful diversity of life he has made. We do not all need to worship in the same way, nor even hold exactly the same beliefs. But when we gather to pray together as Christians of different traditions, I believe the Spirit urges us to the unity Christ prays for, which is unity in diversity. We have much to learn from each other. We need each other to be salt and yeast to build God’s kingdom in the world. We truly are better together than apart.”

A version of this article was printed in the Nenagh Guardian edition for Saturday January 18 2025

Faith in uncertain times

Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 14th January 2025

I don’t know about you, but I am fearful. We are living in a time of great uncertainty. More uncertain even than at the height of the Cold War, perhaps, when people of my age thought seriously about how we should respond to the threat of nuclear annihilation, which seemed all but inevitable at the time.

Today, we see narcissistic demagogues rise to power across the world. We see wars on our screens that bring obscene destruction to cities, and those who live in them. We see the benign climate we have enjoyed, the climate in which we humans and nature have flourished together for millennia, collapse into a nightmare before our eyes.

WB Yeats experienced something similar in his own time, when he wrote this in his poem, The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre  

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst  

Are full of passionate intensity.

St Paul speaks to fears like this in today’s reading (1 Corinthians 1:18-31). He calls us to consider our own call to follow Christ Jesus. ‘Not many of us are wise by human standards; not many are powerful, not many are of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. God is the source of our life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.’

Paul calls us, I suggest, to personal holiness, to the holiness modelled for us by Jesus Christ. The Beatitudes he gave us show us how we should respond, humbly but without fear, to sin and evil in the world. It is no accident, I think, that they were chosen as the Gospel reading at the state funeral last Thursday of that good and faithful Christian, President Jimmy Carter.

We spoke the Beatitudes earlier. They are easy to say, aren’t they? And so very difficult to live up to. But let us do our best to model them in our lives.

And let us, in John Wesley’s words, ‘do all the good we can, by all the means we can, in all the ways we can, in all the places we can, at all the times we can, to all the people we can, as long as ever we can.’