Why are so many people turning away from church? Some say it’s boring. Should priests take up juggling or magic tricks? My column is out today in the Scottish Catholic Observer. Read what I have to say. Full text will be here next week if you can’t be bothered to buy it.
Apathy is not what it used to be.
This article appeared last weekend in the Scottish Catholic Observer. The full text is here for those who missed the publication.
Now Easter is behind us, Jesus is risen and all is well with the world. I imagined what that first Easter was like. The followers of Jesus can happily go about spreading the word of the good news to the world. Well, that’s perhaps what we might expect but it was far from the truth. For a start the resurrection was a bit of a mystery to the apostles. The tomb was empty and there were strange stories of angels talking to people but what did it all mean? The apostles were waiting to be arrested. They were at a loss as to what they should do next.
Even the Jewish authorities were confused. They had a report from the guards at the tomb. The tomb was empty and an angel had appeared. According to Matthew, the Jewish elders paid the guards to say that the followers of Jesus had stolen the body away in the night. The confusion of the time seems to be carried forward in the Gospels. Matthew says that Jesus came to meet the women who had first come to the tomb. In Mark’s version the women went away saying nothing because they were afraid and Jesus appeared to Mary of Magdala later. Luke does not mention Jesus appearing to any of the women. John’s account is more detailed. He says that John and Peter went into the tomb first and saw an empty tomb. Later Mary of Magdala went in and saw two angels and then Jesus appeared to her.
If we think about the trauma the apostles had come through in just a few days and probably had little sleep in that time then the confusion and uncertainty they experienced seems reasonable. In short they felt lost and had no understanding of what had just happened. Far from being ready to spread the good news, they were intent on hiding and avoiding imprisonment.
It is interesting that Jesus chose to appear to Mary of Magdala first. There is no mention of Jesus appearing to his mother Mary. I wonder if he did. If I was a betting man I would put money on it. However, he did not appear to the apostles immediately. That day, we learn, two followers were on their way home to Emmaus and met a man on the road. It was Jesus although they did not recognise him. He explained the whole story, starting with Moses and pointed out the scriptural reference to the Messiah. It was only when they took him home with them and he broke bread with them that the suddenly recognised him and he vanished from their sight.
These two disciples went straight back to Jerusalem to report to the apostles. By this time the apostles knew that Christ had definitely risen from the dead. I find this story significant because of the passage;
Luke 24:35
There seems to be a message for us here. If we want to find Jesus them we can do so at the ‘breaking of bread’, in the Eucharist. We live in a time in the western world where attendance at mass has fallen and fewer Catholics are receiving the Eucharist. When I made my first communion we had to fast from midnight before going to communion. The opportunities for receiving communion have increased since those days because the Church recognises the importance of giving us the opportunity to meet Christ frequently.
Jesus appeared to the apostles on a number of occasions. We read of Jesus coming to the apostles in their closed room when Thomas was not there and how Thomas doubted what the others told him. Jesus later came back to show Thomas the holes in his hands and his feet. Thomas thus earned the name ‘Doubting Thomas’. That’s all we hear about Thomas in the gospels but a few years ago I was in India and visited the basilica of Saint Thomas in Chennai. The church is built over the tomb of Thomas who was killed there. The spear head that killed him is on show. So, despite having doubted, Thomas went on to spread the good news to distant people.
When Jesus visited the apostles he breathed the Holy Spirit into them and gave them their mission and the power to forgive sins. Their mission was to spread the word of the gospel to all people. That is the mission of the Church and is as vital and as valid today as it was in those early days.
The apostles were still afraid. They had received the Holy Spirit but were still confused and didn’t really understand what they were being called to do. They were just ordinary working men. They never expected to be given such responsibility. How could they possibly be expected to go out to a hostile world and convert the people? It never really struck me that they were just like me. They had been chosen by Jesus himself and had been given the power of the Spirit but did not realise what they had. I wonder if we, baptised Christians, realise the power the Spirit gives to us.
Things changed at Pentecost. We can all recall the image of the apostles, gathered in a closed room, and suddenly a noise filed the whole house and something like tongues of fire came to rest on them. What could be more dramatic? The apostles were suddenly empowered and went out and began to speak to the crowds in Jerusalem. Everyone listening heard them in their own language.
That must have seemed incredible then. Even now we can’t comprehend such a thing. I have always rationalised this. These men were special. They had been given special powers. God can’t expect such things from believers today, surely? But He does.
The apostles didn’t receive the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. They had already received the Spirit from Jesus. At Pentecost the Spirit activated them. He gave them the gifts they needed to perform the specific tasks they were set. What can that mean for us today? We received the Holy Spirit at Baptism and at Confirmation. We are expected to play our part in spreading the good news of the Gospel.
We sometimes feel that we are in a world that is hostile to our values and that it might be wiser to keep a low profile, hide our faith. The world the apostles found themselves in was far more hostile than our world today as we will see later. Will the Holy Spirit give each of us the power and strength he gave the apostles? When we look around us we see examples of people here who are willing to stand up for the values of their faith even though it might mean they will lose their job or face prosecution. In the Middle East we see people who are ready to give up their lives, facing barbaric treatment rather than deny their faith. Where do they get the strength to do that?
It seems to me that The Holy Spirit is the source of these things. When we need to stand up for our faith in what we say or in how we behave then we can call on the Spirit for all we need. There are plenty of devotional prayers to Jesus, Mary and favourite saints but the Holy Spirit is often forgotten. I think I’ll make a point of directing my prayers to the Paraclete when I find my faith waning. Perhaps if we all did then the Church would grow stronger.
Joseph McGrath
After the resurrection we would expect everything was fine. The disciples would be on track to convert the world.
Well it didn’t turn out that way. Things seemed pretty bleak for Christians. Does this sound familliar? How does today’s world reflect the events of the early church. See my column in the Scottish Catholic Observer this weekend.
Don’tworry if you miss it. The full text will appear here next week.
My final column in the series was published last Frifay in the Scottish Catholic Observer. If you missed it the full text is here.
This is the end of the story of the way of the cross. It is not on the traditional service in most churches but is increasingly recognised. We miss the essential message of the Way if we skip the Resurrection.
Just what happened on that first Easter Sunday? I decided to read again the gospel accounts. They are not all the same. Matthew tells us of Mary Magdalene and other women going to the tomb to complete the preparation of the body. He tells us of an earthquake as the stone is rolled away by an angel. The angel sat on the stone. The guards were so frightened they were like dead men.
The angel tells the women that Jesus has risen from the dead and has gone. Mark, Luke and John tell us the stone had already been rolled away when the women arrived and the number of angels varies between one and two. Should these differences cause us to doubt the story? Modern experience of witness testimony of crimes and road accidents shows that accounts can vary when something dramatic happens. If the story was being invented the accounts would surely be identical. I think we see four different memories of what happened on that day; Jesus rose from the dead.
The first thing that strikes me is the account is the angels. We don’t talk much about angels nowadays. They are unfashionable. We are a bit embarrassed at any mention of angels. Yet, here, at the crucial event of Christianity, the angel is the major player. I must confess that angels have not played much of a role in my adult life. That was true until one day in Nigeria when I was being driven to a small school by a local priest. He drove on the right as is the law in Nigeria, unless he felt that the left hand side was a better surface. In fact he just moved from side to side for no apparent reason. As you can imagine we had a few rear misses. That was when I rediscovered my Guardian Angel. His work was cut out that day but I survived.
Angels are a manifestation of Divine intervention in normal life. This intervention is difficult to accept for those of us who have a scientific outlook; specifically an ill-informed scientific outlook. Quantum physics would have us believe that things can exist in two places at once. Science tells us to look beyond what we can see. Real scientists recognise the limits of our understanding. I suppose if we can believe in quarks we can believe in angels.
Our Christian belief is founded on the Resurrection. It is the proof of the supernatural aspect of our existence. We can believe that our earthly life is only a tiny part of our true being. We are destined to have an eternal existence. My understanding of what Heaven is like is unclear and can only be described as sketchy. At the end of a hard week I can collapse into a chair and wonder how long I can keep this up? How would I manage to keep going for eternity? It’s a scary thought.
Of course the heavenly existence we are promised will be very different from our limited life on earth. We will hopefully he resurrected without our imperfections. I wonder how I would be recognised without my imperfections. There might not be much left if they are all removed. The nature of the afterlife has been of interest to mankind even before the time of Christ. Ancient Egyptians built enormous pyramids to house dead pharaohs and other important people. The Romans believed that emperors would become gods after they died.
Archaeologists have explored the burial places of ancient people to find, not only bones but food for the journey, money, hunting dogs and weapons. Some expected to arrive in the afterlife with all the trappings of their earthly status. They reckoned without Howard Carter and his ilk. Their graves have been opened and their riches removed. In fact the archaeologists found that most of the graves had been robbed long ago.
Of course we are more sophisticated than that. We have learned from the archaeological work that you can’t take it with you when you go. Well, perhaps not. Recent reports show that about one percent of the people hold about half of the world’s wealth and their share is growing. What can they possibly do with all that money? They spend it of course! London is apparently one of the places that the super-rich like to spend their money. They buy millionaire residences with underground swimming pools, cinemas, lavish apartments and helicopter landing pads. They have luxury yachts in the Mediterranean and fancy homes all over the world.
The strange thing is that many of these things lie unused. London has more than its share of empty mansions, their value increasing day by day and nobody enjoying them. It would appear that not only can you not take it with you when you go, you can’t even enjoy it all while you are here. Death must be a terrible prospect for the super-rich. They will have to leave all their money behind.
So what message does the resurrection have for us? There is the promise that one day we will leave this very limited existence behind and join God in a new, unimaginable life. That’s a pretty wonderful promise. Nothing we can have here can compare with what is to come. There is more. If this is not our final home then we can ignore the lure of power and riches. We have one life here. How can we use that time best? How can we best make use of the resources we find around us?
Entry into heaven will not be automatic. You can’t buy your way in with gold and silver and you can’t get in on your own. You can only enjoy heaven as part of the mystical body of Christ. We can all be part of the body and that makes all of us one person. To get into heaven we need to start behaving like that now in our life on earth. It’s how we behave towards our fellow man that will determine what kind of afterlife we will have.
As real Christians we need to show an example to the world. We need to be Christ like in everything we do in great things and small things. We are living in a world where innocent, ordinary people are being killed and enslaved from the Black Sea through the Middle East and Africa. They are not distant strangers. They are part of the same body as us. They are part of us and we must recognise this.
The poor and underprivileged here are suffering in an economic situation where others are getting richer. Can we afford to just shrug our shoulders and say that there’s nothing we can do about that? I don’t think that’s the Christian way. It’s not the way of the resurrection; it’s not the way of the cross. If we are to be resurrected and attain heaven then we will do it together. When Jesus was dying on the cross it was the good thief who was promised resurrection. He was a confessed thief but he spoke out for the innocent Christ. Who will we speak out for?
Watch out for what’s to come next month.
The Empty Tomb
A paperback edition of my last series of articles is now available in paperback from Amazon. Just in time for Holy Week.
Jesus is Laid in the Tomb.
The fourteenth station on the Way of The Cross marks the end of the journey in the traditional ‘Stations’. It has become common nowadays to have a fifteenth station, The Resurrection. That’s where we will finish our journey next month. The fourteenth station is when Jesus is laid in the tomb. There is nothing surprising about that. Being laid in a tomb or grave marks the end of human life, something we all have before us.
It is the manner in which Jesus is laid in the tomb that raises questions in my mind. As we saw last month, the fact that Jesus’ body was taken down from the cross rather than being left as a warning to others was unusual. Because of the oncoming Sabbath he was hurriedly placed in the tomb, but the Jewish authorities had a stone rolled in front of the tomb and a guard detachment placed there.
I assumed this was done to thwart any attempt of his followers to remove the body and claim that he had been resurrected. However, Jesus’ foretelling of his resurrection was worded as ‘this temple’ and the people assumed he meant the Temple in Jerusalem. This was used against him at his trial. I wondered what the Jewish attitude to resurrection was.
After some research I discovered that the Jewish religion was divided on the idea of resurrection. People could believe there would be life after death or not. The Pharisees believed in resurrection but the Sadducees did not. Some believed in some forms of reincarnation. Whatever version they subscribed to, the Jews believed that any resurrection would only be in the time of the Messiah.
Perhaps some in authority might have had second thoughts about Jesus and hoped to shut him in the tomb if he did come back to life as Lazarus did. Whatever the truth of this supposition, I believe Jesus focussed minds of the Jewish people on death and what comes after.
For us this station is a reminder that we will certainly leave this world. This has been a central part of Christian belief and practice. We are welcomed into the Church at our baptism. The ceremony of baptism has been modified and changed over the centuries. John the Baptist baptised in the river. Early Christians were also baptised by immersion. Early churches had a pool for an immersive baptism. I believe there are still some examples in existence today.
The immersion in the water represented death and rising out of the water represented rebirth. We died to our old life and were reborn into a new life with Christ. At baptism we reject Satan and dedicate ourselves to Christ. I was very young at my baptism and remember none of it. Most of us experienced baptism as an infant so we missed the significance.
It is as adults that we have to look again at baptism and realise what promises were made on our behalf. We are promised to Christ and the values he taught. We are required to renounce the values of the world and materialism. That’s a difficult thing to do. How do we know what we can accept and what to reject in today’s world? It can be difficult to reject values which are normally accepted in our society. The Church’s attitude to sexual behaviour was scorned in the sixties and seventies. We were stuck in the past and needed to get up to date.
The recent scandals where cases of historical sexual abuse have hit the headlines are really a symptom of the lax attitude to sexual behaviour our society accepted. When pop stars and celebrities come to trial you won’t hear any mention of the Church’s teaching but we know it was and is right. We have to live our lives according to Gospel values whether that brings us into conflict with wider society or not.
This new life in Christ does not last forever on earth. The time comes when we too will be laid in the tomb as we pass from this life to the next. This station is a reminder of that and the fact that it will happen all too soon. I was recently at a hospital for an MIR scan. The hospital in Clydebank was a beautiful place and the doctors and staff were friendly and welcoming. Pleasant as this was it did not really prepare you for going into the scanner.
I lay in the machine as it buzzed and clanked, classical music playing through the earphones. When the scan was completed and I opened my eyes all I saw was the top of the tube I was in. It reminded me of Sean Connery waking up in a coffin in a James Bond film. Just for an instant I looked at the ‘coffin lid’ and wondered, “Is this what it will be like?”
The fourteenth station reminds us that the end could be sooner than we think. I was once asked what I would do if I was told I only had a short time to live. It is a difficult question to answer. Some people say they would visit places they had never seen. Some would spend all their money. Others, more thoughtfully, would visit friends and relations they had not seen for a long time.
I thought about it for a few minutes and decided that if I’m really living a Christian life, using my time for the coming of the Kingdom, then that’s what I should continue to do. If you are doing what God wants you to do then get on with it. On the other hand if you are not doing what you think you should do at the end of your time here then perhaps it’s time to start.
I suppose we should live every day as if it might be our last. In our fourteen stations we have seen that Jesus was welcomed by the crowds into Jerusalem and before the week was out he was executed. It made me thing about what I do with my time. If I die tomorrow will I have regrets, things I’ve left undone or will I have the satisfaction of having tried to live my life as Christ expected?
Now this is traditionally the last station on the Way of the cross, but there are modern variations which regard the fourteenth station as unfinished business. There are churches where there is a fifteenth station. The Way only finished at fourteen for those who had missed the message. It is not the end of the road.
We are now all on our Lenten road, striving for spiritual growth by our sacrifices and prayer. I’m back to giving up drink because I found it impossible to give up coffee. I hope you are all finding something uplifting in your Lenten works and feel the benefit at Easter. The last station will be in the Easter edition of the paper, time to contemplate what we have achieved on our Lenten Way of The Cross.
Joseph McGrath
This month sees us reach the end of the traditional way of the cross. What’s so important about being laid in a tomb? Of course we are not finished yet!
This week sees this article published in the Scottish Catholic Observer. Get your copy in your local parish. The full text will be here next week.
Lent has begun. Are you ready for contemplation of the spiritual side?
Giving up chocolate, tea or alcohol is all very well (very difficult to give up red wine though) but you really need to attend to the spiritual side. If you would like something to prompt thoughts about religious belief then here’s a free offer for you.
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What’s so strange about removing a corpse?
This is the station I have been worried about. What is there to say about it? Of course Jesus is taken down from the cross, that’s what we would expect, isn’t it? What more is there to say? What message can we take from this station? Well actually there might be more to this than first appears. The Romans used crucifixion, not only as an execution but as a warning to others. The bodies were usually left to hang on the cross, visible to all who travelled into the city. This would terrify anybody who was thinking about opposing the mighty Roman army. Anybody seeing the decaying corpses would think twice and probably keep their thoughts to themselves.
In this case the body of Jesus was released that very afternoon. He was not to be left hanging as a warning to others. This seems to break the tradition of Roman crucifixion. According to the Gospel of John,
I noticed that only John mentions Nicodemus in his account. The other three evangelists say nothing about him. I’ll come back to that later. If it was the custom to leave the bodies to rot on the cross why did Pilate readily agree to Joseph’s request? Why did the Jews not object? There’s more to this than meets the eye.
What happened at the death of Jesus that seems to have caused this change of heart? Looking back we see that when Jesus died on the cross there were great signs. Matthew recounts them.
I think it is fair to say that people knew that something terrible had happened. The centurion is quoted as saying “In truth this was a son of God.” Even the heathens knew that this was no normal execution. I wonder how those responsible felt about their part in this when they saw those signs? Pilate of course had been warned by his wife and was reluctant to become involved. His hand washing at the pavement was his attempt to avoid any blame.
Have you ever had an instance of a child breaking an ornament and then hiding it under the sofa, pretending it had never happened? I think the authorities were behaving like that. The removal of the body, hiding it in the tomb was their denial. They were anxious to have the whole business forgotten, swept under the carpet. Of course we know now that that is not what happened. Things took an entirely different course altogether.
The apostles seem to have been in shock. This was not what they had expected. The triumphal entry into Jerusalem a few days before seemed to promise a great future for Jesus and for them. Now they were in hiding and everything seemed to have come to nothing. Peter, who had been made the head of the Church by Jesus had denied his master and was riven with guilt. The ‘Church’ was in disarray.
This is where Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus come in. We met Nicodemus earlier in the gospel story. He had come to Jesus in the night. He was a prominent Jew who came to believe in Jesus. He came out of darkness into light. Joseph of Arimathaea is said to be a secret believer. He was afraid to show his belief for fear of what the Jews might do to him. In the story so far they are nobodies. They have no prominence.
Now, when it all seems to be falling apart, it is these men who step forward and take charge of the body of Jesus. It is they who place Jesus in the tomb. This would normally be something a family would see to. In a sense we are seeing a new definition of family. Joseph and Nicodemus step up and ensure that God’s plan will proceed.
The authorities would have expected the execution of Jesus to scare off any followers of Jesus and, as we see in the case of the apostles, it worked. Strangely enough it was the people who had been afraid before who now acted. We see a transformation in those who, like Joseph and Nicodemus, had been afraid but now put their fear behind them. The crucifixion had strengthened their faith rather than destroy it.
This is something I had not realised before. When the Church was in its first crisis it was not the apostles who pulled it together but just ordinary followers. That rang a bell with me. The Church in Scotland found itself in a crisis again recently when the Cardinal admitted some wrongdoing. The media appeared outside the cathedral in Edinburgh to ask the Catholics coming out of mass how their faith had been affected by the revelations. I remember two Edinburgh ladies explaining that their faith had not been shaken at all. Their faith was in God, not in any of the priests, bishops or cardinals of the Church. In the days that followed ordinary Catholics rallied and showed that the Church is still the Church started by Jesus no matter what foolishness we humans bring to it.
So the message for me in this station is in the nature of a question. What kind of follower am I? When things get difficult and the Church is held up to ridicule what is my reaction? Am I tempted to shut myself away from it all? Perhaps I’m the kind of Catholic who might like to distance myself from it all. Perhaps I’ll find myself saying that I’ve always had my doubts and now I can see how wrong we were.
On the other hand I might be the kind of Catholic who sees the Church as my home. Am I the sort of Catholic who sees the Church as something made up of people rather than an organisation that I can join while it suits me? I hope I see myself as part of the family that is the Church. I hope I’m the sort of Catholic who smiles when he listens to people who say the Church should share out all its wealth with the poor; a smile because the wealth of the Church is the faith of its people. I’ve been lucky enough to witness that treasure being shared out to the poorest people in the world by priests, nuns and many lay people. It is those who give of themselves, not those who only give some money who are sharing out the treasure of the Church.
The message in this station is easy to ignore. We can just Look up at the image of Mary holding the lifeless body of her son, recite “I love you Jesus, my love above all things.” and then move on to the next station. Perhaps, though, we might pause and ask ourselves whether we would join with Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaea and keep God’s plan on track. They found themselves in the most difficult of times and found their faith strengthened. Perhaps these difficult times will strengthen our faith.
Joseph McGrath
Window On My World 