In the testament of St. Francis of Assisi he writes of his encounter with one of his deepest loathings – a leper. By the time this event took place a lot had happened in his young life. He had been wounded out of the pope’s army, rejected his father’s materialistic values, heard Christ speak to his heart about rebuilding the Church, and decided that for him poverty of life was his way to salvation. When he saw that leper on that particular day, he went over to him and embraced and kissed him. He wrote, ‘What up to now had sickened me, became pure joy.’ Conversion of life is a complex and in some cases a seemingly sudden experience. But for most of us it is slow and almost imperceptive. Like looking at ourselves in a mirror every day and not noticing the passing of time and days. When we look to the saints for encouragement and inspiration, we often only see the composed images in plaster statues. The inner conflict and struggle is often not known. Francis of Assisi spent a lot of his life in deep depression, almost despairing of the Order he had founded. He experienced loneliness, and missed the more intimate side of female company. Ignatius of Loyola was also wounded out of the army and contemplated taking his own life, thinking that the future had nothing to offer him. Conversion means a complete turn around. Often it means leaving behind a rather comfortable existence. Many religious people want a tidy religion where everything is ‘nice’, sometimes, where the more unattractive side of humanity does not impose on us. A place for instance where the poor are not too visibly close to home. Where God is in His heaven and all’s well with the world. Over the years in our religious education, I feel we have sacramentalized very well, but not evangelized enough. We know Christ is present in the sacraments though not confined to them, but present as real as you could want him to be in the dark corners of human experience. The poor and the Eucharist are intimately connected. St Paul tells us of the self emptying of Christ: ‘Though his state was Divine he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. But made himself nothing…… ………and became obedient to death even death on a cross.’ Philippians 2:6-8 Christ became poor and if we want to meet him for certain today it will be in the contemporary poor. The list is a long one. The first on the list is His Eucharistic presence which is one of poverty and accessibility. A piece of bread and a sip of wine – broken and poured out for you. Mother Teresa said that if we stop recognising Christ in the poor then we will soon stop recognising him in the Eucharist. To be at Mass is about conversion of life, it’s about change, new visions and possibilities. I do see in the breaking of bread, the breaking apart of so much of humanity, and the gathering together of the poverty of things. The elderly confused often quite isolated in nursing homes, with no one to touch or hold them anymore – its politically incorrect I believe for staff to hug them. The children in Africa starving and dying of AIDS, with the usual unhelpful fundamentalist approach to sexual health and theology. Gay people, still marginalised within society and Church. Women who feel undervalued and not equal. The youth of the western world in the death throes of addiction and despair – our generation lost the map but this generation never knew there was one. Of course, there are those who do want to make a difference. Those who give and do not count the cost – the young and the old working together. A group of our staff and young people on the recovery programme have just returned from Taize with even more hope and enthusiasm. There is an incredible amount of good but I feel a lot of us are too comfortable in our faith and church. I feel we might just need a jolt into action. Some people find our publication Edges a bit too much for them – the language, the imagery, the spirituality. There may not be too many comforting holy pictures in it but if you look closer you will see Christ in the faces and the stories of the people involved. As Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, ‘Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his.’ I guess we all need to be vigilant so as not to turn our faith into a hobby. I notice that many centres of spiritual renewal throughout the world charge exorbitant prices for courses, ranging from ‘discovering the inner me’ in Florida, to a spiritual encounter at an English monastery whilst tasting various wines from all over Europe! Of course there’s nothing wrong with all this in itself, but its not vibrant with the Gospel either. We have never been a Church that is afraid to face the sight of sin, we are not a Church that ignores people’s pain and passion. Our God always allows us to stumble and grope our way into the kingdom. We don’t need a plaster statue faith where sexless saints smile down on us and the peripheries of piety and devotion are our daily bread. We have the Gospel where Christ is God’s final word to the world, made flesh in Bethlehem, the Eucharist and the poor. Our faith is flesh bound at best and a messy business, taking place between the poverty of the incarnation and the ignominy and dereliction of the cross, nothing too tidy about this. Father John Michael Hanvey |
