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

 

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.’

Am I blessed, or am I cursed?

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on Sunday 13th January 2020, the 3rd before Lent.

There’s a lot about blessing and cursing in today’s readings, isn’t there? And that prompts me to ask myself, ‘Am I blessed or am I cursed?’

In the OT reading, Jeremiah (17:5-10), contrasts blessings for those who trust in God, with curses for those who trust in mere mortals, whose hearts turn away from God. Those who trust in God will flourish. ‘They shall be like a tree planted by water… in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit’. But those whose hearts turn away from God will struggle. ‘They shall be like a shrub in the desert… they shall live in parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land’.

In the appointed psalm, Psalm 1, we see the same contrast, between the righteous who shall be ‘like a tree planted by streams of water bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither’, and the wicked who shall perish.

In the NT reading (Luke 6:17-26), Luke tells us how Jesus came down from the Judaean hills to a level place where a great crowd came to hear him and to be healed by him. Then Jesus begins to teach his disciples in what is traditionally called the ‘Sermon on the Plain’. It is a clear parallel to Jesus’s teaching in Matthew’s Gospel which is traditionally called the ‘Sermon on the Mount’. They may well be recalling one and the same event, although the details remembered by Luke and Matthew differ.

In Luke’s account, Jesus begins the ‘Sermon on the Plain’ by proclaiming four blessings, or beatitudes, and by warning of four corresponding woes. In Matthew, Jesus begins the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ by proclaiming 8 beatitudes. He leaves the corresponding woes unsaid, but perhaps implicit.

Notice that Jesus does not proclaim any curses. It is not in his nature. Woes are not curses - they are warnings. It is we who bring curses on ourselves if we ignore his warnings.

Let us look more closely at Luke’s blessings and woes.

Jesus points to those who are blessed, those who are included in the Kingdom of God. But he also warns others of the consequences of their choices in life. The paired blessings and warnings are:

·         to the poor - and to the rich;

·         to the hungry - and to the ‘full’;

·         to those who weep - and to those who laugh;

·         to those who are hated, excluded, reviled and defamed - and to those held in esteem.

Most of us here in Ireland are rich, we have more than enough to eat, we have happy lives, at least by comparison with the poor of this world. Does that mean that we cannot be included in the Kingdom of God? Surely not. But it matters what we do with our good fortune.

Jesus does not teach us that there can be no blessings for the rich. But he warns those of us who are fortunate that it matters how we respond to the needs of others who aren’t. Woe to us if we do not listen to him!

If I do not use my riches to help those in need and poverty, I bring a curse on myself. If I am so full of myself, and of my own importance, that I trample on those I see as unimportant, I bring a curse on myself. If I am so consumed by my own pleasure that I ignore those who are suffering and in distress, I bring a curse on myself. The curse that I bring on myself is loss of the blessings to be found in God’s Kingdom of justice and peace.

Jesus knew very well that the OT prophets called for social justice.

In his hometown, Nazareth, Luke tells us that Jesus in the synagogue read from the prophecy of Isaiah, ‘He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

Jesus knew too that the powers-that-be hate, exclude, revile and defame prophets who speak out, for he experienced that himself. So he warns his disciples that this is what they must expect if they are to follow him.

We have all heard the Beatitudes so many times that we may no longer notice just how shocking and stark Jesus’s teaching is. It completely upends the conventional thinking of the worldly wise. It challenges the world view of those who hate, exclude, revile and defame others - others who are poor or weak, of the wrong gender, sexual orientation, race or religion. In our own time, anyone who stands up in public to proclaim ‘Woe to the rich’, and acts upon it, can expect to be accused of being a communist agitator. Conservative forces of society and state will turn upon them, to hate, exclude, revile and defame them. But if we are true to Jesus, these are the forces that we must be ready to withstand.

It is ultimately up to each one of us individually to answer the question, ‘Am I blessed, or am I cursed’.

But in our human frailty, we will not find the right answer by ourselves, the answer which admits us to God’s kingdom. We need God’s help, and it is right that we should pray for it.

So let me conclude in prayer with this Collect of the Word:

Righteous God,
you challenge the powers that rule this world
and you show favour to the oppressed:
instil in us a true sense of justice,
that we may discern the signs of your kingdom
and strive for right to prevail;
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen

For Lygia Waller, 25 January 1923 - 3 August 2014

This address was given on Saturday 9th August 2014 at Killodiernan Church of Ireland at the funeral service of my cousin by marriage Lygia Janina Waller nee Bansinska.

It was a great privilege to be asked to lead the service. A lifelong Roman Catholic, it was her expressed wish that her funeral should be in Killodiernan and be ecumenical. Fr John Slattery and Archdeacon John Hogan from Puckane & Carrig Catholic parish, and family friend Rev Felix Stephens OSB, as well as Church of Ireland Rector Canon Marie Rowley-Brooke also attended and took part in the service.

We have just heard the Beatitudes, the opening section of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount.

They are radically counter-cultural. They were when Jesus spoke them, and they remain so today. Surely poverty and grief are not things anyone would wish to be blessed with?

Now is not the time or place to try to expound them, though their paradoxes do repay much pondering and meditation. Rather, let me try to relate the first two beatitudes to the Lygia that we knew and loved.

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

Lygia was a fortunate woman. She was brought up in comfortable homes reflecting the status of her father Eugene Banasinski, a Polish diplomat. He and her mother Kira, though, had both experienced being refugees with nothing in a foreign land. And Kira is celebrated in Poland today for her work with Polish refugee children. After marrying Hardress, the rootless life of an army wife must have been difficult for Lygia at times, but with his rising career came a comfortable life and many opportunities for exciting travel and appreciation of art, which she developed into her own career as a picture restorer, trained in the Courtauld Institute. I can testify that she enjoyed with relish the good things of life that came her way. I can’t conceive that she ever felt poor.

But Jesus is not talking about material poverty here. To be ‘poor in spirit’ is surely not so much about what you may or may not have, but about what you desire. For all the comfort she enjoyed, Lygia was not consumed by desire for wealth or possessions, material things – what mattered to her were qualities like beauty and honesty and kindness.

A life-long Catholic, Lygia was not conventionally pious and was seldom seen in any church. When religion came up in conversation with me, as it occasionally did, she used to joke, ‘You know, I think I’m more a Buddhist than anything else’. Buddhists, I understand, believe that desire for material things is a poison that brings suffering - it must be avoided to achieve Nirvana, release from suffering. It seems to me that as she aged, and particularly after Hardress’s death, Lygia began quite consciously to give material things up, to live more simply, to enjoy the present moment. So perhaps she was only half-joking about the Buddhism!

But the way I see it is this - she was cultivating being ‘poor in spirit’, in the sense Jesus meant it. Let us pray that she is now experiencing the blessings due to the poor in spirit in the kingdom of heaven.

May she rest in peace and rise in glory!

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

Theologians debate what this means, but today let us take it as a simple promise by Jesus, that those who mourn will be comforted.

To mourn, to grieve for lost loved ones, is part of the human condition. Good mourning, giving time to attend to grief, is hard work, but it allows us to come to terms with loss. Over time the good memories of loved ones emerge from the pain of losing them. We are comforted.

Lygia had her own share of grief, but she did not allow it to consume her – she kept her mourning quite private. Each anniversary of Hardress’s death, she would ask to be taken to Cloughprior, where we will shortly take her body, for me to lead some simple prayers. There she would spend just a few minutes remembering Hardress and her much loved grandson Ed, and laying flowers on their graves. I feel sure these little formal acts of mourning gave her comfort.

Afterwards, Lygia being Lygia, she liked to be taken for a jolly good lunch with a glass or two of wine somewhere nice, and she would be the witty good company all her friends enjoyed.

Today, Jocelyn and Tom, Alex and William grieve for a mother, a grandmother and a great-grandmother. And Lygia’s many friends are grieving too. Let us pray that they will be blessed with good mourning, and that they will receive the comfort promised by Jesus for those who mourn.