3rd Sunday of Lent

Go to a marae and before you enter the wharenui you will remove your shoes.
Shoes sit in front of the door to the wharenui (meeting house).

When visitors enter a wharenui they should remove their shoes and leave them at the door (though there are some wharenui in which shoes may be worn inside).

One explanation for this is that the dust from the marae ātea (courtyard), which is the domain of Tūmatauenga, the god of war, should not be brought into the wharenui, the domain of Rongo, the god of peace.

Another explanation is that the wharenui, also known as the whare tipuna (ancestral house), represents a tribal ancestor.

The tekoteko (carved figure on the gable of the house) is the head, the maihi (barge boards) are the arms, the tāhuhu (ridgepole) is the backbone and the heke (rafters) are the ribs.

Respect is shown for the tipuna (ancestor) by removing shoes.

We are who we are today due to those who have gone before us.
Family is where our stories begin.

When inside the whare tipuna we have entered “holy ground”.

Today’s first reading from the Book of Exodus is the story of the encounter between Moses and his God (Ex. 3: 1-8ff) .

“When the Lord saw him coming over to look at it more closely, God called out to him from the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

He answered, “Here I am.”

God said, “Come no nearer!

Remove the sandals from your feet,
for the place where you stand is holy ground.

I am the God of your fathers, “he continued,
“the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.” (Ex. 3:4 6)

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the tipuna of Moses; it is where his story began.

Their story is his story.

The story is “holy ground”.

2nd Sunday of Lent

L’Arche is an international movement concerned with the care of people with intellectual disabilities.

Many of these people live together in community.

One such community member was a man named Pierre.

Pierre had a mental disability.

One day, one of the workers in the community asked Pierre, ‘Do you pray?’

Pierre answered, ‘Yes’.

And the questioner asked, ‘And what do you do when you pray?’

Pierre answered, ‘I listen’.

‘And what does God say to you?’

‘God says, “Pierre, you are my beloved son”’

Maybe this too is what we ought do – listen.

The author, Max Picard, in his book titled “The World of Silence” writes, “When language ceases, silence begins. But it does not begin because language ceases. The absence of language simply makes the presence of Silence more apparent.”

And in the quiet listening space hear a Voice say, ‘You are my beloved.’

 

1st Sunday of Lent

Lent is here again.

Retreat for a moment to remember your childhood.

    • Sweets gather in an Agee jar in the cupboard.
    • Fasting and abstinence are to the fore.
    • Self-restraint in all things is the order of the day.
    • No meat on Fridays.
    • Strong determination to do something more worthwhile.

My strongest memory is that I have always celebrated my birthday during Lent!

Why did my parents choose early March as my birth date?

My image for the season of Lent is living with the blinds pulled down!

The word subdued comes to mind.

Sackcloth would be the Old Testament equivalent.

There are, however, I suggest some anomalies in our season of Lent.

The first is in the “liturgical sackcloth” we use. Our Lenten liturgical colour is purple, the same colour used most frequently during our ritual for the dead.

In antiquity, purple was one of the most challenging colours to produce, making it highly prized and often reserved for the elite.

The most famous purple dye, Tyrian purple, was derived from the mucous secretion of sea snails, particularly the Murex brandaris.

This painstaking process required thousands of snails to produce a tiny amount of dye, contributing to its high value and association with nobility and power.

The Roman emperors famously donned purple togas, symbolizing their supreme status.

The rare and expensive Tyrian dye of antiquity is now widely available through the synthetic pigments of the 19th century.

To this day purple is associated with royalty, wealth and power. If in doubt, Google search images of King Charles III and Queen Camilla waving to the gathered crowd immediately following his coronation!

Following his coronation at Westminster Abbey, Charles III retired to a side room and re-dressed in a specially made purple satin coronation tunic.

The second anomaly is the very word itself – Lent.

The word originates from the Old English word “lencten” which means Spring.

Spring is the season of new budding, of new growth.

It is the season of new colour, of freshness, of awakening.

It is the season of new lambs and calves, daffodils and tulips.

The world is anything but subdued. The world is noisy with new life.

The third anomaly, in my opinion, is our use of ashes.

If you participated in the Ash Wednesday liturgy and the ritual of the ashes, you may notice that an element of the usual Mass ritual was omitted, namely, the Penitential Rite.

The Penitential Rite has been replaced by the blessing and giving of ashes.

The ashes have been given a “penitential” feel. However, ashes are anything but penitential; wood ash provides potassium and lime, essential for healthy growth.

“When you fast do not put on a gloomy look as the hypocrites do: they pull long faces to let people know they are fasting.” (Mtt.6:16)

8th Sunday Ordinary Time

The ICC Men’s Champions Trophy is an international cricket trophy currently being played with the host nation being Pakistan.

Teams from all over the world are competing.

The image attached to this reflection looks, for all the world, like a local cricket match between club sides.

And it is.

The game is being played at a local park in Kooyong, a suburb in Melbourne, Australia.

The rules governing this game and the games being played before tens of thousands in stadia throughout Pakistan are pretty much the same.

Each team has eleven players. Each team has a turn at fielding and at batting.

The game is played on a ready-made surface called a “wicket.”

The pitch is rectangular, 22 yards/20.12 m in length and 10 ft/3.05 m in width. The bowling creases border it at either end.

Each team, in turn, uses a bat and ball.

Two umpires are used to assess dismissals.

However, significant differences exist between the grounds at Kooyong in Melbourne and the National Stadium in Karachi.

The wicket in Karachi has a grass base that is heavily mown and rolled.

The wicket in Kooyong is concrete!

The ball used in Karachi is a regulation cricket ball made from a cork core bound in several layers of nylon or wool. The core is then placed inside a leather exterior with a raised seam of six rows of stitching.

The ball used at Kooyong is made of white plastic with metal washers inside to give the ball an audible sound when bowled or thrown.

You have it – the game being played at Kooyong is “blind cricket”

Invented in Melbourne in 1922 the game of blind cricket is a version of the original game which has been adapted so that it can be played by blind and partially sighted players.

Today’s Gospel has Jesus’s caution about the “blind leading the blind” (Lk. 6: 39).

For ‘sighted’ cricket players to play blind cricket they may well have to “take the plank out of your own eye first.” (Lk.6 : 42)