Rest a while

Murder on the Orient Express is a work of detective fiction by English writer Agatha Christie featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The book was first published in January 1934.

There have been four film adaptations.

The 2017 screen adaptation featured such well-known names as Judi Dench, Kenneth Branagh and Johnny Depp.

The film begins with a young boy running helter-skelter through an awakening city. The boy carries a collection of chicken eggs for the chef to choose two.

The eggs are boiled and presented to Monsieur Hercules Poirot for his breakfast.

The young boy is not seen again, most of the film happening on a train. In the cast credits, he is simply named a ‘young boy. ‘

Like many others, known as ‘extras’ their presence is necessary for the film to be produced.

They are known as ‘uncredited’

When one reads the entire cast, one is faced with the fact that there at least 59 uncredited persons were in the cast!

They are necessary to the film, so necessary that nobody notices.

Today, in our liturgy for Palm Sunday, I invite you to notice an ‘uncredited’ cast member – the donkey!

“Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it . . . .” (Jn. 12:14)

All four of the Gospels record the same event, (Lk. 19: 35, Mt. 21:7, Mk. 11:7).

It is not the first occasion Jesus has been on a donkey!

While there is no Scriptural evidence, I invite you to cast your mind back to those Christmas cards you send and receive each year.

Many include a portrait of Mary and Joseph making the journey to Bethlehem and Mary is sitting astride a donkey. And Mary is pregnant.

The Gospel of Matthew also tells the story of the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt (Mt. 2: 13- 23).

Again, without Scriptural evidence, artists throughout the generations have pictured this ‘flight’ with Mary and the newborn Jesus sitting on a donkey and being led by Joseph.

Uncredited and yet essential – the donkey!

The one who carries the Word made flesh!

As companions of Jesus, that is our call also – to be uncredited and yet essential carriers of the Word!

Pope Francis visited Brazil from the 22 – 29 July 2013.

While returning to Rome aboard the papal plane, Pope Francis engaged in a remarkable candid dialogue with journalists.

He took questions from reporters traveling aboard the papal plane for a full hour and 21 minutes with no filters or limits and nothing off the record.

Pope Francis stood for the entire time, answering without notes and never refusing to take a question.

The final query was an incredibly delicate one about charges of homosexual conduct against his recently appointed delegate to reform the Vatican bank, and not only did Francis answer, but he thanked reporters for the question.

The Pope’s response reverberated throughout the whole world.

People rubbed their ears and asked themselves or others, ‘Did I hear right?’

Pope Francis words were, “Who am I to judge them if they’re seeking the Lord in good faith?” “Who am I to judge them?”

Today’s Gospel (Jn. 8:1 -11) is prefaced in the Gospel I use with the heading, ‘The Woman Caught in Adultery’, and every Bible I could lay my hands on at the time had the same heading!

However, let us be clear about one important point right from the start: this story is not about adultery!

When we know something of the culture in which Jesus lived, our understanding is broadened.

At the time of Jesus, men were allowed multiple wives, and women were regarded as property.

This story is about retaining ‘my property’.

In our world and social norms, we regard adultery as sexual almost exclusively.

In the culture of Jesus, it is about property rights!

This Gospel is not about adultery!

It is about men, using, judging and condemning women.

Little of that has changed!

This Gospel is not about adultery!

It is about finger-pointing, and, as I have said more than once, “to point a finger at another one needs to point three at oneself.”

“Let anyone without sin cast the first stone.”

We read of a gospel riddled with the unacceptable, the suspect, the devious and the weak — for the lepers and the Samaritans and the women.

We read of Jesus with thieves, of Jesus with tax collectors, of Jesus with sinners.

“Who am I to judge?”

“Let anyone without sin cast the first stone!”

The famous painting, the Mona Lisa, hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Painted by the Italian artist Leonardo Da Vinci, the Mona Lisa is one of the most valuable paintings in the world. It holds the Guiness World Record for the highest known painting insurance valuation in history at US$100 million in 1962, equivalent to $1 billion today.

The painting was stolen in 1911 and was missing for two years.

During that time more people went to steer at the blank space in the museum where it had hung, than had gone to look at the masterpiece in the twelve previous years it had hung there unmolested.

This may tell us something about ourselves and about our human condition.

It highlights our all too human tendency to fail to take adequate note of precious things while we have them.

Yet, let one of them be taken from us, and we become painfully aware of the ‘blank space’ in our lives, and our attention is sharply focused on that blank space.

What is constantly granted is easily taken for granted.

Is it any wonder the father ran? “But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him”. (Lk 15: 20)