A few years ago I picked up a John August Swanson work – only a print unfortunately, but still full of power, and colour.
So much colour.
Today’s post-resurrection encounter with Jesus reminds me of this great Swanson work “The Big Catch.”
These fishermen previously endured a mere existence in black and white, getting through each day, their regular routines dictated by the demands and fears of friends and foes.
Note the physicality of today’s gospel reading.
Physical features (hearts, hands, feet, mouth, eyes) abound and emotional realities are strong (peace, alarm, fright, agitation, doubt).
I had planned to continue the daily reflections through this Easter Week but I’ve already missed Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday and now it’s early morning on Easter Wednesday. Thank you to those who emailed with “where are you”, “what happened” and “I haven’t had a FFF email this week.” Thank you for your enthusiasm and for keeping me on my toes.
There is a great old Easter greeting: “We are an Easter people” to which hearers respond “and Alleluia is our song!” I love this, and if I see you in this Easter Week, this Octave of Easter Sundays, you are welcome to greet me in this way. The reason I need to be reminded that we are an Easter people is that I too often reduce the Easter life we are offered to ideas and categories, words and formulas, customary ways of thinking and acting.
Consider the range of emotions that the disciples of Jesus moved through over the days of his final suffering and his crucifixion and resurrection. Such extremes of feeling cannot be imagined or pondered with disinterest. They must be experienced.
This day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is an in-between day, a liminal time between where we are and all we desire.
Our natural instinct would be to call a Good Friday reflection THE Tragedy but the classical definition of dramatic comedy (from 500 years before Christ) gives us a broader perspective.
Think of the stage comedies and tragedies which follow the understanding of dramatic genres in ancient Greece two thousand years before Shakespeare.
Here we learn that dramatic tragedy is drama ends in despair, desolation, death, or (even better), all three.
When I was a kid all family meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner (or dinner and tea as we called the midday and evening meal) were eaten at the kitchen dining table.
Sunday evening was an exception. Cheese on toast (Mousetraps) or saveloys (with toast and tomato sauce) made an informal meal eaten in comfort in the living room, perhaps watching the Wonderful World of Disney or Country Calendar.
I understand Judas and I look forward to meeting him when I get to heaven.
He was not a bad man (that perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor), but he often put his own interests first, (helping himself to the common purse) and wanted to be in the “in” group (what will you give me if I hand him over to you).
There is a bad old joke that suggests that giving a homily is the art of twisting whatever the preacher wants to say to fit the scriptures.
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It’s one of my favourite feasts today, that of Peter and Paul. The message for me every year in this feast is one of the extraordinary love of Jesus for sinners. Peter and Paul each did things that are considered objectively bad (to say the least).
“God never permits anything to happen unless it is for our maturity”. (Luigi Giussani)
The gospel reading assigned to today’s feast of the birth of John the Baptist concludes with an often overlooked fact.: through his toddler and teenage years John the Baptist grew and his spirit matured.
Most of my recent weekends have been spent with groups of people on weekend retreats and the most recent of these was last weekend at the Trappistine Abbey of Our Lady of Mount Matutum near General Santos in the southern part of the Philippines.
“Here is the man: a desire for life, for love, for happiness”.
The title says it all and nothing is more adequate than “all” for any person including the thousands who overflowed the magnificent Cathedral of Milan for Wednesday’s funeral of Sergio Berlusconi, a man who dominated the Italian political scene for three decades.
Orvieto is a beautiful Italian hill-top settlement where all roads lead to the magnificent medieval Cathedral. The ‘treasure’ of this church is the corporal onto which the host was said to bleed during Mass at the nearby town of Bolsena in the year 1263.
In that Middle-Age era of scepticism and instability, reports of the miracle spread rapidly and widely as a message of hope and confidence in the reality of Jesus present in the form of bread and wine. What Christians knew to be true was verified once again. The people were delighted.