The pandemic is a portal (Arundhati Roy)

Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’

April 3, 2020 by Arundhati Roy

Who can use the term “gone viral” now without shuddering a little? Who can look at anything any more — a door handle, a cardboard carton, a bag of vegetables — without imagining it swarming with those unseeable, undead, unliving blobs dotted with suction pads waiting to fasten themselves on to our lungs?

Who can think of kissing a stranger, jumping on to a bus or sending their child to school without feeling real fear? Who can think of ordinary pleasure and not assess its risk? Who among us is not a quack epidemiologist, virologist, statistician and prophet? Which scientist or doctor is not secretly praying for a miracle? Which priest is not — secretly, at least — submitting to science?

And even while the virus proliferates, who could not be thrilled by the swell of birdsong in cities, peacocks dancing at traffic crossings and the silence in the skies?

The number of cases worldwide this week crept over a million. More than 50,000 people have died already. Projections suggest that number will swell to hundreds of thousands, perhaps more. The virus has moved freely along the pathways of trade and international capital, and the terrible illness it has brought in its wake has locked humans down in their countries, their cities and their homes.

But unlike the flow of capital, this virus seeks proliferation, not profit, and has, therefore, inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the direction of the flow. It has mocked immigration controls, biometrics, digital surveillance and every other kind of data analytics, and struck hardest — thus far — in the richest, most powerful nations of the world, bringing the engine of capitalism to a juddering halt. Temporarily perhaps, but at least long enough for us to examine its parts, make an assessment and decide whether we want to help fix it, or look for a better engine.

The mandarins who are managing this pandemic are fond of speaking of war. They don’t even use war as a metaphor, they use it literally. But if it really were a war, then who would be better prepared than the US? If it were not masks and gloves that its frontline soldiers needed, but guns, smart bombs, bunker busters, submarines, fighter jets and nuclear bombs, would there be a shortage

Night after night, from halfway across the world, some of us watch the New York governor’s press briefings with a fascination that is hard to explain. We follow the statistics, and hear the stories of overwhelmed hospitals in the US, of underpaid, overworked nurses having to make masks out of garbage bin liners and old raincoats, risking everything to bring succour to the sick. About states being forced to bid against each other for ventilators, about doctors’ dilemmas over which patient should get one and which left to die. And we think to ourselves, “My God! This is America!”

The tragedy is immediate, real, epic and unfolding before our eyes. But it isn’t new. It is the wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track for years. Who doesn’t remember the videos of “patient dumping” — sick people, still in their hospital gowns, butt naked, being surreptitiously dumped on street corners? Hospital doors have too often been closed to the less fortunate citizens of the US. It hasn’t mattered how sick they’ve been, or how much they’ve suffered.

At least not until now — because now, in the era of the virus, a poor person’s sickness can affect a wealthy society’s health. And yet, even now, Bernie Sanders, the senator who has relentlessly campaigned for healthcare for all, is considered an outlier in his bid for the White House, even by his own party.

And what of my country, my poor-rich country, India, suspended somewhere between feudalism and religious fundamentalism, caste and capitalism, ruled by far-right Hindu nationalists?

In December, while China was fighting the outbreak of the virus in Wuhan, the government of India was dealing with a mass uprising by hundreds of thousands of its citizens protesting against the brazenly discriminatory anti-Muslim citizenship law it had just passed in parliament.

The first case of Covid-19 was reported in India on January 30, only days after the honourable chief guest of our Republic Day Parade, Amazon forest-eater and Covid-denier Jair Bolsonaro, had left Delhi. But there was too much to do in February for the virus to be accommodated in the ruling party’s timetable. There was the official visit of President Donald Trump scheduled for the last week of the month. He had been lured by the promise of an audience of 1m people in a sports stadium in the state of Gujarat. All that took money, and a great deal of time.

Then there were the Delhi Assembly elections that the Bharatiya Janata Party was slated to lose unless it upped its game, which it did, unleashing a vicious, no-holds-barred Hindu nationalist campaign, replete with threats of physical violence and the shooting of “traitors”.

It lost anyway. So then there was punishment to be meted out to Delhi’s Muslims, who were blamed for the humiliation. Armed mobs of Hindu vigilantes, backed by the police, attacked Muslims in the working-class neighbourhoods of north-east Delhi. Houses, shops, mosques and schools were burnt. Muslims who had been expecting the attack fought back. More than 50 people, Muslims and some Hindus, were killed.

Thousands moved into refugee camps in local graveyards. Mutilated bodies were still being pulled out of the network of filthy, stinking drains when government officials had their first meeting about Covid-19 and most Indians first began to hear about the existence of something called hand sanitizer.

March was busy too. The first two weeks were devoted to toppling the Congress government in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and installing a BJP government in its place. On March 11 the World Health Organization declared that Covid-19 was a pandemic. Two days later, on March 13, the health ministry said that corona “is not a health emergency”.

Finally, on March 19, the Indian prime minister addressed the nation. He hadn’t done much homework. He borrowed the playbook from France and Italy. He told us of the need for “social distancing” (easy to understand for a society so steeped in the practice of caste) and called for a day of “people’s curfew” on March 22. He said nothing about what his government was going to do in the crisis, but he asked people to come out on their balconies, and ring bells and bang their pots and pans to salute health workers.

He didn’t mention that, until that very moment, India had been exporting protective gear and respiratory equipment, instead of keeping it for Indian health workers and hospitals.

Not surprisingly, Narendra Modi’s request was met with great enthusiasm. There were pot-banging marches, community dances and processions. Not much social distancing. In the days that followed, men jumped into barrels of sacred cow dung, and BJP supporters threw cow-urine drinking parties. Not to be outdone, many Muslim organisations declared that the Almighty was the answer to the virus and called for the faithful to gather in mosques in numbers.

On March 24, at 8pm, Modi appeared on TV again to announce that, from midnight onwards, all of India would be under lockdown. Markets would be closed. All transport, public as well as private, would be disallowed.

He said he was taking this decision not just as a prime minister, but as our family elder. Who else can decide, without consulting the state governments that would have to deal with the fallout of this decision, that a nation of 1.38bn people should be locked down with zero preparation and with four hours’ notice? His methods definitely give the impression that India’s prime minister thinks of citizens as a hostile force that needs to be ambushed, taken by surprise, but never trusted.

Locked down we were. Many health professionals and epidemiologists have applauded this move. Perhaps they are right in theory. But surely none of them can support the calamitous lack of planning or preparedness that turned the world’s biggest, most punitive lockdown into the exact opposite of what it was meant to achieve.

The man who loves spectacles created the mother of all spectacles.

As an appalled world watched, India revealed herself in all her shame — her brutal, structural, social and economic inequality, her callous indifference to suffering.

The lockdown worked like a chemical experiment that suddenly illuminated hidden things. As shops, restaurants, factories and the construction industry shut down, as the wealthy and the middle classes enclosed themselves in gated colonies, our towns and megacities began to extrude their working-class citizens — their migrant workers — like so much unwanted accrual.

Many driven out by their employers and landlords, millions of impoverished, hungry, thirsty people, young and old, men, women, children, sick people, blind people, disabled people, with nowhere else to go, with no public transport in sight, began a long march home to their villages. They walked for days, towards Badaun, Agra, Azamgarh, Aligarh, Lucknow, Gorakhpur — hundreds of kilometres away. Some died on the way.

Our towns and megacities began to extrude their working-class citizens like so much unwanted accrual

They knew they were going home potentially to slow starvation. Perhaps they even knew they could be carrying the virus with them, and would infect their families, their parents and grandparents back home, but they desperately needed a shred of familiarity, shelter and dignity, as well as food, if not love.

As they walked, some were beaten brutally and humiliated by the police, who were charged with strictly enforcing the curfew. Young men were made to crouch and frog jump down the highway. Outside the town of Bareilly, one group was herded together and hosed down with chemical spray.

A few days later, worried that the fleeing population would spread the virus to villages, the government sealed state borders even for walkers. People who had been walking for days were stopped and forced to return to camps in the cities they had just been forced to leave.

Among older people it evoked memories of the population transfer of 1947, when India was divided and Pakistan was born. Except that this current exodus was driven by class divisions, not religion. Even still, these were not India’s poorest people. These were people who had (at least until now) work in the city and homes to return to. The jobless, the homeless and the despairing remained where they were, in the cities as well as the countryside, where deep distress was growing long before this tragedy occurred. All through these horrible days, the home affairs minister Amit Shah remained absent from public view.

When the walking began in Delhi, I used a press pass from a magazine I frequently write for to drive to Ghazipur, on the border between Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.

The scene was biblical. Or perhaps not. The Bible could not have known numbers such as these. The lockdown to enforce physical distancing had resulted in the opposite — physical compression on an unthinkable scale. This is true even within India’s towns and cities. The main roads might be empty, but the poor are sealed into cramped quarters in slums and shanties.

Every one of the walking people I spoke to was worried about the virus. But it was less real, less present in their lives than looming unemployment, starvation and the violence of the police. Of all the people I spoke to that day, including a group of Muslim tailors who had only weeks ago survived the anti-Muslim attacks, one man’s words especially troubled me. He was a carpenter called Ramjeet, who planned to walk all the way to Gorakhpur near the Nepal border.

“Maybe when Modiji decided to do this, nobody told him about us. Maybe he doesn’t know about us”, he said.

“Us” means approximately 460m people.

State governments in India (as in the US) have showed more heart and understanding in the crisis. Trade unions, private citizens and other collectives are distributing food and emergency rations. The central government has been slow to respond to their desperate appeals for funds. It turns out that the prime minister’s National Relief Fund has no ready cash available. Instead, money from well-wishers is pouring into the somewhat mysterious new PM-CARES fund. Pre-packaged meals with Modi’s face on them have begun to appear.

In addition to this, the prime minister has shared his yoga nidra videos, in which a morphed, animated Modi with a dream body demonstrates yoga asanas to help people deal with the stress of self-isolation.

The narcissism is deeply troubling. Perhaps one of the asanas could be a request-asana in which Modi requests the French prime minister to allow us to renege on the very troublesome Rafale fighter jet deal and use that €7.8bn for desperately needed emergency measures to support a few million hungry people. Surely the French will understand.

As the lockdown enters its second week, supply chains have broken, medicines and essential supplies are running low. Thousands of truck drivers are still marooned on the highways, with little food and water. Standing crops, ready to be harvested, are slowly rotting.

The economic crisis is here. The political crisis is ongoing. The mainstream media has incorporated the Covid story into its 24/7 toxic anti-Muslim campaign. An organisation called the Tablighi Jamaat, which held a meeting in Delhi before the lockdown was announced, has turned out to be a “super spreader”. That is being used to stigmatise and demonise Muslims. The overall tone suggests that Muslims invented the virus and have deliberately spread it as a form of jihad.

The Covid crisis is still to come. Or not. We don’t know. If and when it does, we can be sure it will be dealt with, with all the prevailing prejudices of religion, caste and class completely in place.

Today (April 2) in India, there are almost 2,000 confirmed cases and 58 deaths. These are surely unreliable numbers, based on woefully few tests. Expert opinion varies wildly. Some predict millions of cases. Others think the toll will be far less. We may never know the real contours of the crisis, even when it hits us. All we know is that the run on hospitals has not yet begun.

India’s public hospitals and clinics — which are unable to cope with the almost 1m children who die of diarrhoea, malnutrition and other health issues every year, with the hundreds of thousands of tuberculosis patients (a quarter of the world’s cases), with a vast anaemic and malnourished population vulnerable to any number of minor illnesses that prove fatal for them — will not be able to cope with a crisis that is like what Europe and the US are dealing with now.

All healthcare is more or less on hold as hospitals have been turned over to the service of the virus. The trauma centre of the legendary All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi is closed, the hundreds of cancer patients known as cancer refugees who live on the roads outside that huge hospital driven away like cattle.

People will fall sick and die at home. We may never know their stories. They may not even become statistics. We can only hope that the studies that say the virus likes cold weather are correct (though other researchers have cast doubt on this). Never have a people longed so irrationally and so much for a burning, punishing Indian summer.

What is this thing that has happened to us? It’s a virus, yes. In and of itself it holds no moral brief. But it is definitely more than a virus. Some believe it’s God’s way of bringing us to our senses. Others that it’s a Chinese conspiracy to take over the world.

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to “normality”, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.

We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

Transvaluation of Values (Keith D'Souza, SJ)

The present crisis has served to transvalue the jaded values of our world:

Personally:

o   We have been compelled to slow down and to change our lifestyles

o   We realize how we have taken our many freedoms for granted

o   In a situation of scarce resources, we become more aware of, and grateful for the otherwise insignificant aspects and graces of life

Domestically:

o   There has never been as much time and opportunity to relate with our loved ones

o   The young have a better chance to express their playfulness and curiosity, and the old to offer their wisdom and care

Intellectually and academically:

o   Home-schooling and domestic value education may soon become the new normal

o   The development of personal skillsets may gradually supersede the need for a long, laborious, and often unfocused formal education

o   Educational and entertainment resources are shared more willingly, calling into question the notion of “intellectual property rights”

Economically:

o   We recognize how we have taken our services for granted: especially the hidden and underpaid services of manual, monotonous, “unskilled” and unorganized labour

o   We live in two intertwined nations: India and Bharat. We have overvalued and overpaid India, while exploiting Bharat to the utmost

Politically:

o   Geo-political boundaries and turf wars don’t make sense anymore: we are more interrelated and co-dependent than we think

o   Power lies at the peripheries, where local leaders and communities are better able to decide how to live life fully and in harmony with others

o   We are better able to distinguish between leaders who unite versus those who thrive on suspicion and division

Organizationally:

o   We can lighten our travel-based carbon footprint enormously, by hosting national and international meetings online

o   We could do more work from home, causing less local pollution and reducing unnecessary intensity, stress and hype related to work

Ethically:

o   Our new heroes are not those who have money, power, fame or educational degrees, but those who are willing to reach out and help

o   Our true character and values emerge in such crises, and are reflected in the choices we make, as persons and as communities

Environmentally:

o   The earth is slowly beginning to heal and rejuvenate itself

o   We are more able to recognize the presence and beauty of other life forms

Existentially:

o   We are obliged to consider the purpose and value of life, without being able to escape into our usual distractions and addictions

o   Perhaps the most important learning of all is our vulnerability: life is fragile and mysterious, and we are not entirely in control of it

We are neither masters of our destiny nor slaves of harsh natural forces: we have before us a chance to co-create a new set of values, lifestyles and relationships, based on our new learnings.

Burdens

“Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest.”

In today’s gospel passage (Mt 11:28-30), Jesus invites us to go to him with our burdens and sorrows. So we should go to him and, indeed, we will find our rest. These are some of the most comforting and consoling words of the gospel. And Jesus means it.

Having met Jesus, people found new meaning in life and new ways of living. He restored their human dignity, helped them to overcome their obstacles, healed them, and forgave them. In short, Jesus freed them from their burdensome pasts, their troublesome lives.

All of us have our share of worries and anxieties. We even feel weighed down by our life at times. What about the sleepless nights that we have endured? What about the restlessness and the tensions that we may carry around? There might be times we carry our burdens without having time even to share them with our family members or close friends. We know life is beautiful, but at the same time life is difficult. The moment we are able to accept both these sides of life, we are able to live in relative peace and joy.

This is what Jesus offers us when he invites us to him. He doesn’t promise the removal of the yoke or of the burden. He rather tells us, “My yoke is easy and my burden light.” This is the effect of Jesus in our lives; he helps us to carry on with our lives joyfully. Amidst our sorrows, we will find joy and happiness.

Tensions are necessary for our growth. But we need to learn to hold them creatively. It seems that so very little is really resolved or solved, settled or answered. We live in the in-between, holding the tensions, discovering and even loving the paradoxes, realizing we ourselves are the contradictions. We ourselves really are the contradictions! The more we accept our condition the better and joyful our lives will be.

In other words, paradoxically, we need some tensions and problems to keep us going. A problem-free life is an illusion. Jesus helps us precisely to accept ourselves, and everything that may come our way—including our sufferings.

We too can have a Jesus-like effect on others who are suffering. If anyone starts to tell you of her worries, what do you do? Do you take time to listen to people in distress? Do you lighten the burdens of others? Do you give them comfort and consolation? Let us shoulder Christ’s yoke, and learn from him. Let us above all learn his gentleness and humility. Let us learn to live in exquisite, terrible humility before reality. How hard, but how sweet and beautiful!

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Love and Detachment

In the first reading, St Paul instructs his readers that the only debt they need to be in, is the debt of mutual love. Love is the summary of all the commandments. By loving our neighbours, we can fulfil the Law. In fact, when you give central place to love, many problems get settled. Love seems to be the only solution for all our problems—personal and social. To fight greed in oneself, one has to increase one's love. To deal with war and violence, we have to certainly use love. To be joyful, we have to open our hearts to love. To be fully human then is to be as loving as possible.

We do receive love, but at times we expect it from all the wrong places. There are few lies that we tell ourselves (and others too perhaps):

People should love me.

People should care for me.

People should not criticize me.

People should help me, support me.

People should respect me.

People should not hate me.

People should not misunderstand me.

People should appreciate me.

People should not judge me.

When you believe the myth that people should care for you, you’re too needy for their love. (This is not love, this is “co-dependency.”) The experience of love can’t come from outside; it can come only from inside you. When people truly love you, you know that they reflect something divine, which is actually inside you.

The only truth that we can be certain about is: God is good. God is love. God cares. God loves me.

Should others love me? Should people care for me? They are not proper questions. I should love myself. I should care for myself. If I receive love from others, that’s good, that’s not merely bonus, but the reflection of God’s love itself. The source of all love is God himself. Human love is only a reflection—though a poor, imperfect reflection—of divine love. So why should I overdepend on human love? I need only to depend on the Lord and His love.

This makes me responsible to give love to others. As I receive love day in and day out, minute after minute, so I need to pass this love to others.

If ever you come across any of the above lies in yourself, for instance, that people should love me. You could turn it around to give at least two true statements: I should love myself. I should love people.

St Paul’s advice in today’s reading is not empty, or haphazard. It comes in the context where he wants our love to be genuine and sincere, without any utilitarian or ulterior motives. And, moreover, we know that mutual love is not co-dependency. Reflecting on Paul’s words, we too could say the same: I realise that I am not loving very well. I am meeting only my needs, which is nothing but “co-dependency.” This kind of love is impure and self-seeking. Perhaps a lot of what we call love today is not love at all.

In the gospel reading, Jesus is even more radical. You need to give first place to God and to loving God. You can’t give that place any human person or thing. As disciple, you have to “deny” yourself and even “hate” your loved ones. Strong words! But they mean you can’t love anything or any person more than God, your Creator.

Also, poverty or detachment is at the very heart of the Gospel. Jesus asks his disciples to carry their cross if they want to follow him. He also says, “None of you can be my disciple unless you give up all your possessions.” God has to be the only treasure of a disciple; any attachment—to material possessions or persons—won’t make you a true or full disciple.

Sinners

"I did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners."

As we celebrate the feast of St Matthew, tax collector turned apostle of Jesus, we could reflect on our Lord's attraction and attachment to sinners. In the Jewish religion at the time of Jesus, either one wasn't a sinner or was a sinner. It might have had a moral connotation, but it certainly signified a social category.

The majority of the people in Palestine of Jesus' time belonged to the lower class, who were poor. All sorts of people belonged to this class, such as orphans and widows, the blind, the crippled, and the mentally ill. Having no other means of livelihood, people with physical and mental handicaps became beggars. To this class also belonged outcasts. One can be an outcast without necessarily being poor economically. Such were tax collectors and sinners. The tax collectors were Jews who collected taxes from fellow Jews for the Roman Empire. They made their living by charging an extra amount. They were considered traitors who became wealthy by collaborating with Roman authorities at the expense of their own people. The sinners who are grouped with the tax collectors were not ordinary sinners. These were people who deliberately and persistently transgressed the requirements of the law. Included in this group would be money-lenders who charged interest on loans advanced to fellow Jews. Also in this group of sinners were prostitutes.

Yet, Jesus apparently associated with such people at dinner parties. The Pharisees charged that Jesus was "a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners" (Luke 7:34). It's not hard to see why the Pharisees and others were upset that Jesus had table fellowship with people who were morally questionable. These individuals were profiting by disobeying the command of God and betraying their own people. They were what the Old Testament calls the wicked, unworthy to be part of the people of God.

What infuriated the Pharisees was that Jesus had accepted this category of the wicked as they were, and was freely having dinner with them without requiring that they first clean up their lives. Jesus' message was not, "Straighten up your life and keep the law." Rather, his message was, "The kingdom of God is yours; you are included." By eating with them, he was extending to them the kingdom of God.

When we read about the protest of the Pharisees, we are quick to condemn them and to side with Jesus. But if Jesus were physically present in our world today, would we as church people be comfortable if he spent his time with cheats and swindlers, thieves and 420-s, LGBTQIA+? Would we be okay if he rejoiced and danced at the Supreme Court's decriminalization of same-sex? Would we not be infuriated if he constantly went to their dinner parties and just occasionally turning up at ours? Jesus seems completely fit for an excommunication case! But that is whom we follow. A man who shattered all boundaries, who loved without boundaries, who broke all possible rules just to befriend a person, just to express God's boundless love and forgiveness!

When we pray the second part of the "Hail Mary": Pray for us "sinners," do we really mean it? Before participating in the Holy Communion we say "I am unworthy." Do we really mean this? Or do we add mental footnotes to our unworthiness: But I am not like that murderer, or that rapist, or that criminal. I am a sinner, but not like "that" sinner.

Pope Francis when asked in his first interview after being elected Pontiff, "Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?" he told us: “I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech.” Before hearing confessions in St Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis kneels in confession himself—because one cannot accompany a suffering world without acknowledging one’s own faults.

We are part of the evil that we are fighting against. We are part of the sin that we condemn. There is a certain amount of projection on my part when I am able to see sin outside of me. If we don’t own our own evil, we will always project it elsewhere and attack it there. Our Lord by "eating with sinners" is inviting us to a greater integration and also integrity, which is often a willingness to hold the dark side of things instead of reacting against them, denying them, or anxiously projecting them elsewhere.

Welcome to the communion of sinners!

Staying Close to Jesus

Every three years on this Sunday we hear this brief story of Martha and Mary. We hear it every year in the daily celebration at Mass and usually during the first full week of October.

Maybe we find this event in the lives of Martha and Mary a little confusing. Are we supposed to spend our lives as followers of the Lord sitting at the feet of Jesus? That sounds like the advice we get. Set aside your work and sit down with Jesus. It sounds like a beautiful invitation, and it is. But it’s not the only invitation and example we have.

Abraham and Sarah served the Lord in service and hospitality. The meal was carefully prepared, and the hosts attended to the visitors’ comfort. That was our first reading today. Moses led the people from the slavery in Egypt and gave them the law of God. David was a warrior and a king. Jeremiah spoke words of truth to the powerful and words of hope to the faithful. Paul served the Lord in preaching, prayer, travel, suffering, and writing. We have lots of examples of people of faith who were active in the service of the Lord in the Scriptures. We have lots of examples of great saints in our history who were active is so many things. We have lots of examples of people in our community who share their lives and share their faith serving the poor, teaching those who want to learn, caring for the sick, and welcoming the stranger. With the great examples from the Scriptures, the saints, and our own community, we could be still a little confused about the story of Martha and Mary. What are we supposed to do?

Maybe we can look at it differently. Maybe we can look at Martha and Mary and focus not on what they are doing, but simply on where they are. Martha and Mary are close to Jesus. Serving and sitting, they are close to Jesus. Sitting and serving, Mary and Martha are near the Lord. And whether we are sitting or serving, whether we are busy about many things or focused on only one thing, we are near the Lord Jesus.

In the celebration of the Eucharist, we are close to Jesus. We admit our faults and meet his mercy. We listen to his Word and we offer our prayers. We bring the sacrifice of our lives, the offering of the many things we are busy about, and we unite them to sacrifice of Jesus. And the Lord Jesus gives us the gift of himself. He feeds us with his Body and Blood and strengthens us to sit with him and to serve him. Sitting or serving, we will stay close to Jesus.

There is no comparison between Martha and Mary here. We should not play out Martha against Mary, or Mary against Martha, neither when judging the lives of others nor our own life. The ideal is to combine the two attitudes Mary and Martha symbolize. “Ora et Labora” is the old saying you often see in monasteries and convents: “Pray and Work.”

We need both Martha and Mary; both action and contemplation. The most important word in this is neither action nor even contemplation, but “and.” There is no apostleship (sending out) without discipleship (being with Jesus).

Even in our dynamism, we need to keep a listening or contemplative heart. Jesus never asked Martha to come and sit down with Mary and himself. But only one thing was missing in Martha. She was most likely not present to herself, she was not present to her own feelings of resentment, perhaps her own martyr complex, her complaining attitude. If she was not present to herself, Martha could not be present to her guests in any healing way, and spiritually speaking, she could not even be present to God. Presence is of one piece. How you are present to anything is how you are present to everything. How you are present to anything is how you are present to God, loved ones, strangers, those who are suffering. To repeat, unless you are present to yourself, you can’t be present to others, or to God.

Aren’t we many times like Martha “distracted” with all our serving? We are serving the Lord, but we are distracted. Martha is doing the reasonable, hospitable thing—rushing around, fixing, preparing, and as the text brilliantly says, “distracted with all the serving.”

Jesus doesn’t lose the occasion to affirm Mary, “who sat at his feet listening to him speak.” Mary knows how to be present to him and, presumably, to herself. She understands the one thing that makes all other things happen at a deeper and healing level. Prayer is not one of the ten thousand things, but it is the one thing necessary to see all those ten thousand things. It is the presence that is needed to live those ten thousand things in a healing way.

There should be a balance between word and deed, between talk and action, between prayer and work. Both are important. The two belong together; they are interwoven. Yet, let us not lose sight of the priority of prayer or contemplation. Our actions should rather be an overflow of our contemplation, our communion with God and the world. The quality of our lives should define the quantitative activities of our lives. Otherwise it may be mere restlessness or impatience, and a presence that may not be healing.

Without a Mary’s attitude we can land into an idolatry of words and actions. Without a Mary’s attitude we can be serving ourselves instead of serving Jesus.

That is the one thing necessary! To have a listening heart even in our active moments. To stay close to Jesus. To stay close to Jesus we need both serving and sitting. And let them be done in a healing way.

Faith Journey

Today’s first reading describes the beginning of the long journey out of Egypt to the Promised Land by way of Mount Sinai. The journey began in the city of Rameses in the very north of Egypt, where the Hebrews had been employed virtually as slaves in the Pharaoh’s great construction works. They set off for Succoth which lay to the south-east about half way between Rameses and the Sea of Reeds.

However, they had left in such a rush that the flour they had with them had no time to be leavened, so they made bread with the unleavened flour. They left in such a rush that they did not even have time to prepare any proper food for their journey.

It was the end of a long sojourn in Egypt – estimated by the Bible as 430 years – from the time Joseph had first invited his family to settle there. It was seen as the greatest event in the history of Israel. They had also started on their journey by night so future celebrations of the event were forever more to be observed by a vigil. “This was a night vigil for the Lord, as he led them out of the land of Egypt; so on this same night all the Israelites must keep a vigil for the Lord throughout their generations.”

And, as we have seen, it will be the foreshadowing of a much greater Passover, a more significant vigil to come – the Christian Easter Vigil.

In the gospel reading we see that Jesus has become a figure of controversy. We saw yesterday how he was accused by Pharisees of condoning the breaking of the sabbath on the part of his disciples. Far from apologising, Jesus defended his followers and implied that he himself was greater than the Law. Immediately afterwards he went to a synagogue and, in spite of a challenge about healing on the sabbath, went ahead and cured a physically handicapped man.

At the end of this story, Matthew says, “The Pharisees went out and began to plot against him, discussing how to destroy him.” He was seen as a severe threat to their authority. And that is where our reading begins today.

Jesus was fully aware of their plotting and so he disappeared from sight for a while. We should be clear that Jesus did not go out of his way to confront and attack people. Still less was his behaviour deliberately designed to create trouble for himself. There are people like that; they go out of their way to make trouble for others and for themselves. Jesus never behaved in such a way. He did not want to attack or be attacked by certain people. He did not deliberately engineer his own sufferings and death; quite the contrary. So now, as things get hot for him, he withdraws for a while.

At this point, Matthew, who, we remember is writing for a Jewish audience, shows how Jesus’ behaviour corresponds to a prophecy in the Old Testament. This is something he does a number of times.

The passage is from the prophet Isaiah (42:1-4) and it shows Jesus as full of the Spirit of God campaigning for justice for peoples everywhere. He is the servant whom God has chosen, “my beloved in whom I delight. He will not contend or cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.” He moves around quietly and, at the same time, is tolerant and understanding of the weak. His behaviour is described beautifully as, “The bruised reed he will not crush; the smouldering wick he will not quench.”

We, too, are called to live and proclaim the Gospel without compromise but to do so without any taint of arrogance or bullying and, at the same time, with patience and understanding for those who are not yet ready to answer Jesus’ call. As the Israelites started their journey towards the promised land with faith, may we also start/continue our faith journey with gentleness, patience and compassion.

The Passover

For today’s first reading we have the passage of the institution of the Passover. We have skipped several chapters of Exodus to come to today’s reading.

The sufferings of the Hebrews became intolerable and eventually God sent what we call the Ten Plagues on Egypt in order to persuade the Pharaoh to let the Hebrews leave. After each one, his heart hardened and he refused to the let God’s people go.

With these plagues we are coming to the great finale and the high point of the Exodus story. Nine plagues inflicted on Egypt have not softened Pharaoh’s heart and “he would not let the Israelites leave his land”.

The Hebrews are now told to prepare for the final catastrophe with which God will strike the Egyptians. The passage consists of formal instructions to a later generation on how to celebrate the great event that is about to take place. The instructions are presented as coming from God to Moses and Aaron.

First, the month in which it is taking place is from now on to be regarded as the first month of the year.  On the 10th day of that month each family is to procure for itself a lamb. If a family is too small to finish one lamb, then it can join with another family and they can share the lamb between them, including perhaps the cost of purchasing it. The lamb must be male, one-year old and free from any blemish. It may be a sheep or a goat.

The animal is to be kept until the 14th day of the month, then it is to be slaughtered in the presence of all the assembled Hebrews. In every house where the lamb is to be eaten, its blood is to be applied on the doorposts and lintel of the house. This, in a way, was the most important requirement.

On the night of the 14th day of the month, the same evening on which it had been slaughtered, the roasted flesh of the lamb will be eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The animal is to be roasted, not to be eaten raw or boiled, and the whole animal, including head, limbs and internal organs is to be roasted as one.

Nothing must be kept over till the following morning. Anything that is uneaten is to be burnt. It is to be eaten standing, with loins girt (that is, with clothes belted), wearing sandals and with a walking staff in one hand. In other words, the meal is to be taken like people preparing to make a hasty departure.

And it is to be called the Passover of the Lord. On this very night, the Lord would go through Egypt and strike down every first-born in the land, humans and animals alike, and thus pass judgement on all the gods of Egypt. But, because the blood of the lambs has been smeared on all the houses of the Hebrews, when the Lord sees the blood, he will pass over, or skip over, those houses and no harm will come to them. Hence the name of the feast.

Then comes the final instruction to Hebrews of every future generation: “This day shall be a memorial feast for you, which all your generations shall celebrate with pilgrimage to the Lord, as a perpetual institution.” An instruction which Jews continue to observe to this day.

For us Christians all this has great meaning because we see in it a foreshadowing of another Passover which Jesus celebrated with his disciples. It took place at the same time as the celebration of the traditional Jewish Passover but, because of what immediately followed, it was seen as the sacramental anticipation of the new Passover in which Jesus is the Sacrificial Lamb whose blood poured out becomes the instrument of our salvation and liberation.

It is significant that, in the descriptions of the Last Supper, no gospel mentions the lamb as the main dish. There is now a New Passover Lamb – Jesus himself. And in the eating of the Bread and the drinking of the Wine, those present had ‘eaten’ and ‘drunk’ of the Lamb.

Yahweh (YHWH)

Exod 3:11-20

We are still with Moses as he speaks with God at the burning bush.

God has asked Moses to be the leader of his people to rescue them from their life of slavery and hardship in Egypt. And Moses has heard this with some alarm. He feels unsuited to such a huge task. He is wanted by the Pharaoh for the murder of an Egyptian and he had angry words with some of his countrymen, making his acceptance even by his own people not very likely.

But God assures Moses that he will be with him all the way and the confirmation will come when the Hebrews will one day worship their God on Mount Horeb.

However, Moses is still not at ease with the proposed mission. If he tells the people that the God of their fathers has sent him and they ask “What is his name?”, what is he to tell them?

He wants to know what credentials he can bring to justify his being leader and the truth of his message. He asks God to give his name as proof. To know a person’s name was to have a certain power over them; to know the name of a deity was to be sure of a hearing. By being able to give God’s name, Moses would be able to claim a certain authority.

God replies, “I AM who I AM.” And Moses is to say to the people, “I AM sent me to you.” He is to say that it is “the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has sent me to you.” Further, “‘I AM’”is my name forever”.

In a sense God’s words say everything and they say nothing. The Israelites are being given a name they can use but it does not give them, as with pagan gods, a power over God that they cannot have. “I am who I am” can be loosely translated as “I will be whatever I will be”—why worry about my name!

This also means that God is pure and infinite Being. He is not a being, one of the beings, but He is Being itself—existence and life and ground of all being itself. God simply is and everything else that is comes from him. His name is above all names; His nature is supreme to everything that is.

Many Christians think the second commandment (You shall not take the name of God in vain. Exod 20:7) is a prohibition against cussing. But perhaps the real meaning of speaking the name of God “in vain” is to speak God’s name casually or trivially, with a false presumption of understanding the Mystery—as if we knew what we were talking about!

The phrase ‘I am who I am’ apparently is the source of the word ‘Yahweh’, also written as YHWH, the proper personal name of the God of Israel. Many Jewish people concluded that the name of God should not be spoken at all. The Sacred Tetragrammaton, YHWH, was not even to be pronounced with the lips! Out of reverence this name was not pronounced; the term ‘Adonai’ (my Lord) was used as a substitute. In fact, vocalizing the four consonants does not involve closing the mouth. Jews know that God’s name was not pronounceable but only breathable: YH on the captured in-breath, and WH on the offered out-breath!

God’s eternal mystery cannot be captured or controlled, but only received and shared as freely as the breath itself—the thing we have done since the moment we were born and will one day cease to do in this body. God is as available and accessible as our breath itself. Jesus breathes the Spirit into us as the very air of life (see John 20:22)! Our job is simply to both receive and give this life-breath. We cannot only inhale, and we cannot only exhale. We must breathe in and out, accept and let go.

Today let us take several minutes to pause and breathe mindfully, surrendering to the mystery of wordless air, the sustainer of life. Part your lips; relax jaw and tongue. Hear the air flow in and out of your body:

Inhale: yh

Exhale: wh

Let your breathing in and out, for the rest of your life, be your prayer to—and from—such a living God, an utterly shared God. You will not need to prove it to anybody else, nor can you. Just keep breathing with full consciousness and without resistance, and you will know what you need to know.

Let this deep breath (in and out) be a way to know our God ever more deeply and become closer to Him. He is really the only thing (being) that matters.

Moses

Having heard the difficult situation in which the Hebrews were living in Egypt, we are now introduced to the hero of the story of Exodus in our first reading.

As all male children were to be drowned at birth, the baby – who does not yet have a name – was hidden by his mother for three months. However, the bigger he grew the more difficult it would be to hide him, so she took the drastic step of waterproofing a basket and sent it floating down the river.

In a clearly providential happening, the Pharaoh’s daughter and her attendants had gone to the river to bathe. The floating child is found and immediately recognised as a Hebrew and she was full of pity for the abandoned baby. The boy is eventually adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. This probably happened when the child was weaned or a little later. He was given the name Moses because, as Pharaoh’s daughter said, “I drew him out of the water.” Actually, ‘Moses’ in Hebrew is mosheh but the word translated ‘draw out’ is mashah. The words are not linguistically connected and it is rather a play on words.

Then we are suddenly brought to a time when Moses was already a grown man. Once on seeing an Egyptian strike a Hebrew, he killed the man and buried the body, hoping that he had not been seen.

Later he scolded two Hebrews who were fighting among themselves, telling them that was no way to win their freedom. They, however, turned on him and asked if he was going to kill them in the same way he had killed the Egyptian. Moses, aware that his secret was out and that it had even reached the Pharaoh’s ears, fled into hiding and stayed in the land of Midian. He becomes a fugitive from the law.

Later, Moses would indeed liberate his people but in a very different and unexpected way.

Let us today ask ourselves what mission we have been given by God as our contribution to building the Kingdom. And, if, like Moses, we are only too conscious of our shortcomings, let us remember that one of the greatest prophets of Israel was a man who had committed murder, even if that murder was in defence of fellow-Hebrews. God, unlike society, does not look at our past but at our present and future potential. He can transform us in order to make us transforming agents in the society and the church.

St Bonaventure

Bonaventure, the son of a medical doctor, was born in 1221 at Bagnoreggio, near Orvieto (Italy). He became a Franciscan in 1243. His intellectual gifts were soon recognized and he was sent to Paris to study under Alexander of Hales. In 1248 he received his licence to teach and in 1253 he became Master of the Franciscan school at Paris. His work _The Journey of the Mind to God_ has become an enduring classic.

In 1257, at the early age of 36, he was elected Minister General (i.e., Superior General) of the Franciscan Order. He has been called the second founder of the Franciscan Order. The Franciscans were coming under criticism at the time as a result of a huge increase in numbers, poor organisation attributed to Francis of Assisi with the resulting divisions into factions, with each one claiming to be faithful to the Founder.

While strongly defending the ideals of Francis, Bonaventure insisted, against Francis, on the need for study, on having libraries and proper buildings. He approved of the Friars studying and teaching in universities. He saw the Franciscan role as complementing the work of the diocesan clergy through preaching and spiritual direction. The clergy of the day were often poorly educated and lacking in spirituality.

Within the Franciscans he urged a middle way. He opposed the so-called ‘Spirituals’ who promoted material poverty above all as being the true teaching of Francis. At the same time, his own ideals of a simple life of frugal poverty, hard work and detachment from the rich as well as from riches were a reality in his own life. He wrote a Life of Francis, which was approved by the Chapter of 1266 as the only officially authorised version.

As Minister General he visited Italy, France, Germany, and England. In 1265 he was nominated Archbishop of York by Pope Clement IV but declined the honour. However, in 1273 he was made Cardinal-Bishop of Albano by Pope Gregory X, with a command not to refuse. When the papal messengers called on him, he was washing dishes in the Mugello friary (near Florence). He asked them to wait until he had finished. 

He played a prominent role in the Council of Lyons which was called to bring about a reunion with the Eastern churches. Thomas Aquinas died on his way to the same council. A temporary reunion of the churches was achieved and Bonaventure preached at the Mass of reconciliation. However, he did not live to see Constantinople reject the reunion.

He died on 15 July 1274 at the age of fifty-two.

His achievements in theology and administration should not allow one to forget dominant traits noted by his contemporaries: a gentle courtesy, compassion, and availability. 

Bonaventure was canonised by Pope Sixtus IV in 1482 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1588. He is often called the Seraphic Doctor.

For Bonaventure, everything is a footprint and a fingerprint revealing the nature of God. And God is the One whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. (Try to take a long, loving, and lingering look at something—at anything!) God exists in an unrestricted way in everything. We need to learn to find God in everything and everyone. Perhaps that’s one way to be convinced of God and His love which is without conditions and without expectations. God loves things by “becoming” them: by becoming fully present in them! He can be found in the darkest of our moments, and in the lowest of our feelings. As Jesus teaches us, the only measure and criterion for spiritual things is God’s infinite compassion and never our ability to understand it or perfectly respond to it.

The Good Samaritan

The parable of the Good Samaritan is one of our Lord’s best known short stories. A story that is larger than life, so much so that Jesus himself is called the Good Samaritan. Every Christian needs to be a good Samaritan. He—the good Samaritan—teaches us how to be Christians, good Christians. A stranger teaches us how to be a good neighbour! This parable from Luke’s gospel is truly a treasure, from which we can draw many life lessons for us.

The lawyer’s question “Who is my neighbour?” doesn’t make sense for Jesus. But how to be a neighbour, that’s the real question. Jesus reframes the question thus: “Which of these three, do you think, proved himself a neighbour to the man who fell into the brigands’ hands?” We can define only the subject of love, not the object.

The priest and the Levite (=an assistant in the Temple) were not bad people, but they thought they were good people because they were obedient to the Law. They were not supposed touch a corpse. If someone is half dead, s/he would realistically seem a corpse. Thus these two characters of the priest and the Levite were possibly afraid to approach the injured man because they thought he was already dead and consequently would have to ritually defile themselves. They were law-abiding people, but failed to extend their help to the one who was almost dead. They were concerned about themselves not getting defiled, or just being “pure” in a legal sense. Was he dead or alive? They were not concerned about the person lying there. Were they selfish or self-righteous? Perhaps self-righteousness is much more treacherous than selfishness.

Jesus compares the above failure of the ministers of God to the unselfishness of the hated Samartian, who is able to see the unlimited nature of the duty of love. The Samaritan man’s love and compassion is the starting point, which leads him to do what is necessary and appropriate for the injured person. Jesus’ concern therefore is not moral or legal, but mystical. We cannot approach reality with readymade solutions and answers (of laws), but accept reality as it is and encounter God in it. Only there we can be a true neighbour to anyone and everyone.

Have we faced any situation where we could obey the law but be disobedient to God? Have we blindly applied rules without having any consideration or compassion towards some people? In the name of religion and God, have we done hateful things instead of putting love as the centre of our lives? The challenge of today’s parable is real and practical. It is not about debating and understanding the meaning of law or eternal life but about “doing,” which has its source in compassion itself.

If we value our discussion and reflection of the above parable, then it has to be proved simply by listening to Jesus telling the lawyer and us, “Go and do likewise.” It should inspire us to take up Christ’s challenge of “doing” and “acting” as the Good Samaritan did and thus proved a worthy neighbour.

Divine Blessings

We conclude our readings from the book of Genesis today. We hear Jacob giving his final instructions before his death. He wants to be buried close to his ancestors, Abraham and Isaac with their wives.

With the death of Jacob, the sons were full of trepidation that Joseph would now want to settle his accounts with his brothers for all they had done to him. They pre-empted any vengeful action by sending Joseph a message.

They quoted their father as telling them to go to Joseph and beg forgiveness for all the wrong they had done to him. “We beg you, forgive the crime of the servants of your father’s God.” Once again, Joseph weeps on the receiving their message.

They prostrated themselves before him and expressed their readiness to be his slaves. They need not have worried. Their prostration is another example of the prophetic dream which Joseph had shared with his brothers many years previously. And, ironically, in times to come, the Israelites will be reduced to virtual slavery in Egypt and this will trigger the Exodus.

They did not reckon with their brother; Joseph was a much bigger man than they. “Do not be afraid; is it for me to put myself in God’s place?”

He then tells them that all the evil they planned against him has, in God’s plan, been turned to good and has resulted in the liberation of many people. Joseph then promises to provide for them and all their dependants. It was now the brothers’ turn to be deeply touched by the magnanimity of someone who could, with some justification, have made things very nasty for them. We see here a clear pre-figuring of the teaching and example of Jesus later on. His teaching on the love of enemies, turning the other cheek and forgiving seventy times seven.

This may well be said to be the central lesson of the whole Joseph story. A lesson which we can apply to unpleasant experiences in our own lives. As Paul says, “Everything works together for the good of those who love God.” And probably it is only when we love God that we can understand the place of the evil and the tragic in our lives.

From now on, Joseph stays with his own family and lives to be 110 years old, long enough to see many of his grandchildren.

It is now his time to leave the world. He tells his brothers he is confident that God will look kindly on them and, in time, bring them back from Egypt to the land he had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in perpetuity.

And finally he asks his brothers to swear an oath that his bones be taken back to be buried with his fathers. This will not in fact happen until centuries later when Moses, mindful of Joseph’s last wish, will take Joseph’s bones with him as the Israelites begin their long trek to the Promised Land (Exod 13:19). Joseph’s bones were eventually “buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought… from the sons of Hamor” (Jos 24:32; see Gen 33:19).

The last verse of Genesis, which is not in our reading, says: “And Joseph died, being 110 years old; he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.” For the Egyptians the number 110 was seen as the perfect life span and would signify divine blessings on Joseph.

Note too that the very last word of the book is “Egypt” and is the setting for the opening of the next book, the Exodus, and the next stage in the history of God’s People. In the coming weeks we will be reading passages from that great saga.

God’s Designs

In today’s first reading we see Israel (Jacob’s new name) setting out from his home in Hebron to Egypt with all his family members and all his possessions.

Before leaving Canaan he offers sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac at Beer-Sheba, which lay to the west of the southern end of the Dead Seas and south of Hebron on the road to Egypt. Here God speaks to Jacob in a dream. It is the last of God’s appearances to the patriarchs. He commands Jacob to go down to Egypt just as he had commanded Abraham to set out for Canaan. The move is clearly presented as God’s will and not just a family decision.

God promises Jacob his protection and tells him not to be afraid to go down to Egypt. There he will make Jacob and his descendants into a great nation. “I myself will go down to Egypt with you.” He also promises to bring Israel back to his ancestral land.

And there is a promise that, in death, it will be Joseph, the son he thought he would never see again, who will close Jacob’s eyes.

Jacob’s sons, together with their wives and children come to take their father to Egypt in wagons provided by the Pharaoh. The whole family – brothers, wives, children, grandchildren all move to Egypt to settle there.

On the way, Judah, the eldest son, goes ahead to arrange that Joseph should meet his father at Goshen. Joseph, riding in his official chariot, goes to meet his father. One can imagine the feelings of the old man as he saw Joseph, the son he thought was long dead, arriving in a magnificent chariot befitting his rank.

Not surprisingly, it is a very emotional meeting. Joseph throws his arms around his father’s neck and weeps for a long time on his shoulder. Jacob says to his long-lost son: “Now I can die, now that I have seen you again, and seen you still alive.”

Later, Jacob and some of his sons will be introduced to the Pharaoh and are invited to settle in Goshen, which was situated in the north-east part of the Nile Delta, a place very suitable for sheep-grazing. Jacob’s sons were shepherds.

Once again we see how what originally seemed like a certain tragedy turn out to be a source of blessing for so many. It may help us to take a second look at events in our lives in which we wondered where God was present. To see God’s designs in our life, we may have to wait. We need patience and faith. God loves to write our life story even with crooked lines.

St Benedict, Abbot

Benedict of Nursia (480-547) known as the Father of Western monasticism had a huge influence in his own time and in succeeding centuries. His monks were a source of stability in the highly disordered state of Europe following the collapse of the Roman Empire and the invasions of the northern tribes (Vandals, Huns, etc.) and laid the ground for the emergence of the cultural wealth of the Renaissance from the 12th century onwards.

Benedict was born about 480, the son of a Roman noble from Nursia (modern Norcia, in Umbria) and it is believed he was a twin sibling of St Scholastica. Benedict began studies in Rome but left before completing them to become a hermit in Subiaco. Over a period of three years in solitude, Benedict matured both in mind and character, in knowledge of himself and of his fellow-men. At the same time he became deeply respected by people in the neighbourhood, so that when the abbot of a nearby monastery died, the monks begged him to be their abbot. Although he did not agree with their lifestyle, he finally accepted. However, it did not work, so much so that the monks tried to poison him and he went back to his hermit’s cave. The legend is that they tried to poison his drink but, when he blessed the cup, it shattered. They then tried to kill him with poisoned bread but, when he blessed it, a raven came and snatched it away. Many other miracles were attributed to him and many people came to him for direction. So he built 12 monasteries each with a superior and 12 monks. He himself lived in a 13th with some whom he thought were more promising. Benedict, however, was the father or abbot of all the groups.

Benedict later left for Monte Cassino, near Naples, where he drew up the final version of his Rule. This contained much of the traditional monastic teaching of earlier monks like Cassian, Basil and probably also the so-called Rule of the Master, though much modified by Benedict. His vision was a life characterized by prudence and moderation rather than severe asceticism and lived within a framework of authority, obedience, stability, and community life. ‘Stability’ meant that a monk would generally stay permanently in the monastery which he had joined. It was a way of life which was complete, well-ordered and practical. The monk’s day was taken up with liturgical prayer, complemented by sacred reading and manual work of various kinds which took care of the community’s needs.

Benedict was not a priest and there is no evidence that he intended to found a religious order. His principal goal and achievement was to write a Rule or way of life. Today’s Order of St Benedict (OSB) is of later origin and not a “religious order” as commonly understood but rather a confederation of congregations into which the traditionally independent Benedictine abbeys have affiliated themselves for the purpose of representing their mutual interests, without however losing any of their autonomy. Benedict’s own personality is reflected in his description of the kind of person the abbot should be: wise, discreet, flexible, learned in the law of God, but also a spiritual father to his community.

Because of its inner qualities and the endorsement it received from secular rulers and other founders of religious institutes, Benedict’s Rule became the standard monastic code in the early Middle Ages. Because of it flexibility, it could be adapted to the different needs of society in different places. In a world of civil turmoil with the break-up of the Roman Empire, it was the monasteries which became centres of learning, agriculture, hospitality, and medicine in a way which Benedict himself could never have imagined.

Benedict spent the rest of his life realising the ideal of monasticism contained in his rule. He died at Monte Cassino, Italy, according to tradition, on 21 March 547.

He was named protector of Europe by Pope Paul VI in 1964. His feast day, previously 21st March, was moved in 1969 to 11th July, a date on which his feast had been celebrated in several places.

Together with Saints Cyril and Methodius, Catherine of Siena, Bridget of Sweden, and Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) Benedict was declared a Patron of Europe by Pope John Paul II in 1999).

Heaven is near

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus summons his inner circle of twelve disciples. Moreover, these twelve disciples are now called apostles.

A disciple is a follower, someone who learns from a teacher and assimilates that teaching into his own life. An apostle is someone who is sent out on a mission, someone who is deputed to disseminate the teaching of the master to others.

The two roles are complementary. All of us who are called to be disciples are also expected to be apostles, actively sharing our faith with others.

Applied to the twelve men the word ‘apostle’ does have a special sense. They would become, so to speak, the pillars or foundations on which the new Church would be built, with Peter as their leader. They would have the special role of handing on and interpreting the tradition they had received from Jesus, a role which in turn they handed on to what we now call the bishops, with the pope, as leader and spokesperson.

Later on, Paul as well as Barnabas would be added to their number, and Matthias would be chosen to replace the betrayer Judas. In fact, it is interesting to see the mixed bunch of people that Jesus chose. We know nearly nothing about most of them but they were for the most part simple people, some of them definitely uneducated and perhaps even illiterate. And yet we see the extraordinary results they produced and the unstoppable movement they set in motion. The only explanation is that it was ultimately the work of God through the Holy Spirit.

The first instructions they are given are to confine their activities to their own people. They are not to go to pagans at this stage or even to the Samaritans. As the heirs to the covenant and as God’s people, the Jews are to be the first to be invited to follow the Messiah and experience his saving power. And their proclamation is the same one that Jesus gave at the outset of his public preaching: “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” That is, heaven is near.

There are times in our lives when all we know is the bad news. We feel that heaven is just so far away. Our woundedness and sinful brokenness can contribute to this feeling. But today’s gospel gives the true picture: that God is near, that heaven is near. This is the good news that we need to hear again and again. Heaven is near and one just has to turn around and enter it. We need to turn from our old idea about God, sin, and hell, and embrace the new revelation of God manifested in Jesus Christ. The good news is that our sins are forgiven, and our woundedness is healed. We can always celebrate that in our confession. We are safe. No more fear. No more doubt.

And the merciful surprise is this: God loves you precisely in your woundedness and sinfulness. He loves you precisely in your obstinate unworthiness. The very blocks of my life can become my gifts. Our woundedness and brokenness can become true gifts. Whatever be our woundedness and brokenness, they could become true spaces of grace. God can touch us, and reveal Himself precisely in our woundedness and brokenness. God can resurrect our deaths, and give new life to us.