These are all aspects of our life of prayer. Asking God for our own needs and the needs of others is something we learn from an early age. It is, of course, not without its problems. We don’t always get what we ask for. Later in life we learn that our prayer may be answered in a way that we haven’t anticipated.
The searching element of prayer is something which unfolds and deepens throughout our lives. We might find ourselves searching for a way through a difficult situation, or searching for our path in life. The search never ends.
And sometimes our prayer takes us to a place where we arrive at a door and we need to knock. It’s all relational. We reach out and knock and trust that a door will be opened.
Are there doors that you would like to be opened to you this Lent?
‘The people of Nineveh believed in God: they proclaimed a fast and put on sack cloth, from the greatest to the least.‘
I am very fond of the Book of Jonah. Jonah is a bit grumpy and doesn’t quite trust that his preaching mission will take off. But it does. There is no subtlety in Jonah’s message. The people have 40 days to get back on track or everything will be destroyed.
Sometimes we need a wake up call. Sometimes that call can be subtle. Sometimes it is very loud and obvious.
It is striking that all the inhabitants of Nineveh, cattle included, take part in this solemn fast. It is worth reflecting on how much the support of a group to carry us along when we feel the journey is long and hard.
The words of the Our Father are so familiar to us. Sometimes they can lose their impact and we miss the fact that the prayer is revolutionary. We are praying that God’s kingdom might come. That’s every value turned on its head. No ifs, no buts. Are we ready for this?
In his Rule St Benedict asks that the Our Father be recited several times during the monastic day:
‘Assuredly, the celebration of Lauds and Vespers must never pass without the superior reciting the entire Lord’s Prayer at the end for all to hear, because the thorns of contention are likely to spring up.
Having the superior recite the Our Father is a safeguard for community living. St Benedict knows that the small irritations can quickly become big irritations. Praying that God’s kingdom may come involves the readiness to forgive others on a daily basis. Each time we do this we build for the kingdom.
For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink…
There are times and seasons when the Scripture we hear is vivid and is played out right before our eyes. The desperate needs of the peoples of Ukraine, the plight of those caught in the cost of living crisis, all cry out to us from this Gospel text. Take a walk in any town centre or turn on your tv or computer and you will see this text made flesh. There are some images that you simply cannot unsee. It’s Christ’s face that we see.
Matthew’s picture of judgement can startle us with its directness. The idea of standing before Christ and having him show me the times that I didn’t recognise his face is very sobering. For me the text is as much about withholding as it is about giving.
Where have I hardened my heart, held on to what I had and not allowed myself to recognise Christ? When have I walked on by because it seemed like too much effort?
Let’s pray for the grace to see Christ in every circumstance of our lives.
For the first hearers of Matthew’s Gospel the scene of Jesus in the desert would have struck a familiar chord. In the preceding chapters they heard of the miraculous birth of Jesus, an attempt to kill him, the need to flee to Egypt and his passing through the waters of the River Jordan. These events all find their parallel in the story of Moses. Matthew casts Jesus as the New Moses and this time spent in the desert parallels the 40 years that the people of Israel spent in the Sinai desert.
Despondency and grumbling almost break the will of the people of Israel. Moses continues steadfast. His heart is set on the Promised Land.
Jesus too models steadfastness for us. The devil makes three attempts at weakening his resolve. Jesus wields the sword of Scripture and remains unmoved.
We are perhaps out of the habit ourselves of turning to Scripture in the face of difficulty or temptation. Our ancestors in the faith, the Desert Fathers and the Desert Mothers, might be of some help to us with this. The memorising and repeating of Scripture was the heartbeat of their strange and counter cultural existence. These desert dwellers were all seeking ‘purity of heart’. At its simplest purity of heart is a life so attuned to God that you ‘want what God wants’. Scripture was the tool that cultivated the soil of their hearts. Repetition and meditation on short pieces of text changed and expanded the inner landscape of their hearts. The goal of the whole desert tradition was tenderness and compassion.
How is God calling you to cultivate tenderness and compassion this Lent?
‘The Lord will always guide you, giving you relief in desert places. He will give strength to your bones and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never run dry.‘
Today’s reading from Isaiah repeats some of yesterday’s text and it too ends on a hopeful note. I hear in Isaiah’s words the motif of the covenantal bond between God and Israel. While the demands are high and far reaching for Israel, God promises to sustain them
Isaiah’s words were originally for a people in exile. He holds out the hope of their triumphant return to their own land. This will need a change in political fortunes and also a change in their hearts and minds. If they can make this change they are promised strength in their bones and relief from what has been the ‘desert’ of their lives in exile.
Is not this the sort of fast that pleases me – it is the Lord who speaks – to break unjust fetters and undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke, to share your bread with the hungry, and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the man you see to be naked and not turn from your own kin?
Whenever I hear this reading from Isaiah I am struck by the fact that humanity has always struggled to act with integrity. We so easily say one thing and do another. I am pulled up short when I examine my own life and remember the times when things were done for show and my motivations were questionable. Lent gives me the chance to own those times.
Isaiah’s words ring so true today. We don’t have to look far to find ‘unjust fetters’ and ‘the homeless poor.’ In the centuries that have passed since Isaiah preached, the human story has unfolded in triumph and tragedy. Each generation has the chance to take stock and to work for change. We are familiar now with what theologians call ‘structural sin’. There are concrete things that we can do to highlight this. This is important. But of equal importance is our own inner work.
Are there those whom we ‘oppress’ with our attitudes? Are there those whom we have burdened with a yoke? Are there people with whom we refuse to share the ‘bread’ of our time, our love?
Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live in the love of the Lord your God, obeying his voice and clinging to him: for in this your life consists…
Today’s reading from Deuteronomy offers us a mini framework for our Lenten path:
choosing life, living in love, obeying his voice, clinging to him.
Each day God invites us to choose life. It happens in all the small choices, the things we’d hardly notice. The big things are more obvious. Just as we can choose life, we can also live in a way that gives life to others.
How can you choose life today? How can you give life today?
‘Now, now – it is the Lord who speaks – come back to me with all your heart, fasting, weeping, mourning.’ Let your hearts be broken, not your garments torn, turn to the Lord your God again, for he is all tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in graciousness, and ready to relent. Who knows if he will not turn again, will not relent, will not leave a blessing as he passes, oblation and libation for the Lord your God?
To our British ears ‘fasting, weeping, mourning’ can sound more than a little dramatic. We prize the understated and controlled response to almost everything in our daily lives. But Lent asks of us something radical and perhaps dramatic. Lent invites us to turn our hearts to God. It is a time for us to take stock and to notice the ways in which we have become lukewarm.
However we make the journey of Lent, God is waiting for us to turn to him. Into our lukewarm hearts God waits to pour tenderness, compassion and graciousness. One of the tasks of Lent is to ensure that our hearts are open. The armour that we often feel need can be laid aside.
On this last day of Advent the Church lays before us a pivotal text in the Old Testament, 2 Sam 7. Walter Brueggemann describes it as ‘the taproot of the Messianic idea in Israel’.
After successfully bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and putting it in a tent, David now wonders if he should build something much grander. There’s a wordplay at work here. The word for ‘house’ can also mean ‘dynasty.’ The prophet Nathan tells David;
‘The Lord will make you great; and the Lord will make you a House.’
The roles are now reversed as David will no longer need to build God a ‘house’ as God intends to build David a ‘dynasty’. God makes a ground-breaking promise that in the lineage of David his faithful love will be made manifest. Up until this point God’s promises have been conditional, but now the dynasty is guaranteed in perpetuity. None of this is David’s doing. David is to be bound in relationship to the Lord: ‘I will be a father to him and he a son to me.’ The tender language of father and son always strikes me. God’s covenant is not a legal contract, but a relationship of love. As the story of salvation unfolds there are many falls from grace along the way. God’s promise remains.
Our final Gospel text in Advent brings us to the threshold of the fulfilment of all of God’s promises. In the Benedictus Zechariah sings of rescue, salvation and the promise proclaimed by the prophets. His son, John, will prepare the way for the Saviour. All of this is possible ‘by the tender mercy of our God’. Through the desert and exile, through the poor and the easily forgotten, our Advent journey has taken us to the very heart of God.
You may feel your Advent journey hasn’t quite ended and you are not really ready for Christmas to begin. Perhaps your plans have been radically changed and you are left disappointed. Into every situation of your life God is waiting to pour his tender mercy.
I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that tender mercy is the heartbeat of monastic living. The opening words of the Rule set the tone for all that is to follow:
Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart. This is advice from a father who loves you; welcome it and faithfully put it into practice.
Although there can be some limitations to the father/son metaphor, overall it is a solid basis for monastic living. I see it primarily as a metaphor for boundary setting and consistency. From the outside it might look like very strong control. But any superior will tell you that you can’t force a person to do something or be a particular way. All you can do is to try to model a middle way of mercy and love.
Throughout the Rule there are pointers to the role that mercy plays in community living. Every body, not just the superior, is tasked with making sure that others are considered. It’s not a competition where the strongest and toughest win. Rather it is an environment where ‘the strong have something to yearn for and the weak nothing to run from.’ Whether it is your job to provide clothing and footwear for the community or prepare food, all is to be done with mercy and love.
I am firmly convinced that there is a loving and merciful way to do just about everything that happens in a monastery.
Where is God calling you to show tender mercy this Christmas?
