Month: May 2025

The painting is a somewhat unfamiliar image of the Ascension.

And that is why I have chosen it; it allows me/us to consider this feast afresh.

The painting is by the English artist, Peter Rogers (1933- ). The painting is oil on board and belongs in the Methodist Modern Art Collection.

In the centre of the picture Jesus ascends in a whitish-gold cloud, his body already off the ground, arms raised upwards, and his head thrust back, almost horizontally, in profile, in a style reminiscent of William Blake.

On the left, the two figurees clad in white are standing in the embrace of a deep-red flame that descends from the heavens and curves beneath them, while on the right a group of disciples, undifferentiated except perhaps for Mary in a brown robe, gaze upwards as Jesus is lost to view within the cloud and ascends to heaven.

This all takes place against a black and inky background with a faint glow on the horizon.

When first viewing this painting I sensed within myself the comment, “this artist has not got it right!”

Then the question arose inside me, “is getting it right impeding my hearing and then responding to the Word?”

Then, worse still, was the realisation that “getting it right” was the entire content of the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish authorities.

“Don’t pick corn on the Sabbath” (Mt. 12: 1 – 8)

“See he eats with tax collectors’ and sinners” (Mk. 2: 15 – 17)

“Is it against the Law to heal on the Sabbath or not?” (Mk 3: 1 – 6)

Then again, looking closely at the picture one becomes aware that the figures clad in white are looking out, while the other group are looking up.

The group dressed in white appeared to be enveloped in the flame of Pentecost!

Is “up” or “out” the better posture for today’s ‘community of disciples of the Lord’? (Redemptor Hominis No.21, 1979)

The house I grew up in as a boy had two doors.

The front door faced the street we lived on as a family.

The back door faced the neighbours.

The front door had a shiny brass doorstep.

I can never remember walking on the brass doorstep. I have countless memories of walking over it!

The back door was where we lived!

The verandah at the back door housed a well-used cricket bat and ball, a muddy rugby ball and other sporting paraphernalia.

The verandah was home to a pair of my father’s old shoes. Examining those shoes revealed the number of colours the house had been painted with over the years. There were liberal paint splatters.

The verandah was also home to a wooden clothes horse.

The verandah of the backdoor housed a sarcophagus type wooden container that had a menagerie of items that were important, however not worthy of entrance into the house (buckets and spades that still held seaside sand etc).

Visitors would knock on the front door and await entry.

Family and friends would walk around the side of the house (while avoiding being run over by a red tricycle travelling well beyond the speed limit); they would then negotiate the oddments at the back door, and walk inside.

Today’s Gospel, (John 14: 23 – 29) I suggest is a backdoor Gospel. Hear again the words from verse 23, “if anyone love me they will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we shall come to them and make our home with them.”

Love invites people to the backdoor.

There is no need of a shiny brass doorstep, your God is walking round the side of the house.

Your God uses the backdoor!

Nickel Creek was an American progressive acoustic music trio.

A member of Nickel Creek had written a song in which I see some resonance with this Sunday’s gospel.

The song is called “The Hand Song.”

Here is the story it contains:

A young boy breaks off some garden roses to give to his mother. Trouble is, she has  been tending these roses with great care and now he has pulled them to pieces. The thorns dig into his hands as he brings his present to her. She lovingly extracts these thorny reminders of her labour; the chorus goes

and she knew it was love.
It was what she could understand.
He was showing his love
and that’s how he hurt his hands.

Sometime later, sitting on her lap, held closely, the boy listens to stories from the Bible. He sees a picture of Jesus and cries out, Momma, he’s got some scars just like me; and the chorus,

And he knew it was love.
It was one he could understand.
He was showing his love
and that’s how he hurt his hands.

Finally grown up, the young man is called to serve in the Services. In the course of the war he throws himself in front of a friend to shield him from gunfire. He gave his life, a deed he had learned from the roses and the cross; and the chorus

But they knew it was love.
It was one they could understand.
He was showing his love,
and that’s how he hurt his hands.

Did the boy/man earn “glory” in the usual sense of the word? He learned what love was and he gave it on the battlefield. In the story there are no stadiums of people to give applause. And yet, isn’t love the very essence of human life? Jesus says so in this Sunday’s Gospel:

I give you a new commandment:
Love one another.
As I have loved you,
so you also should love one another.

The illustration contains a famous quote attributed to Jimi Hendrix, “When the power
of love is greater than the love of power, the world will know peace.”

This Sunday is designated as Good Shepherd Sunday and begins what is known as Vocations Week (May 11 – 17)

Shortly after he entered the Trappists, Thomas Merton wrote the story of his conversion and journey to a monastery in a book, Seven Story Mountain. It became a best seller that, among other things, caught the romantic imagination of his generation.

For years afterwards, Trappist monasteries were flooded with applications, not all for the right reasons of course, but many men did become good monks because of a romantic ideal that Merton’s story triggered.

Perhaps, the absence of this kind of romantic ideal is one of the main reasons why today, in the Western world, fewer men and women are responding to the call to priesthood and religious life.

We need again an ideal for priesthood and religious life that people can fall in love with, something that inflames the romantic imagination.

I sense that is absent today.

Our very sophistication, it seems, is killing us.

We are openly cautious, and at times cynical about these vocations.

No surprise we get few takers. “No romantic illusions allowed!” seems to be the catchphrase.

If we applied that criterion to marriage there would be few takers there as well.

I very much like an expression used by Marriage Encounter groups: “Love is a decision!” they say. They’re right. We can, and often do, make commitments out of naiveté, lack of opportunity, or romantic feelings, but we won’t sustain them long-term unless, at some point, we re-choose them in a new and purer way.

Maturity comes with that. We’re mature only when we choose to love, serve, obey and give over ourselves to someone or something because we accept that this is the right thing to do, irrespective of how we feel about it on a given day or what more attractive options might beckon.

But – that’s not true initially. First you have to fall in love. Every romantic, mystic or poet knows that. Married folks too know it. Granted, at some point after the honeymoon, love has to become a decision, but that’s not what initially brings you to marriage. First you fall in love. “All miracles begin with falling in love,” writes the Australian novelist Morris West. Most life-long commitments begin in the same way.

Maybe we need to put the romance back into priestly and religious vocations!
Vocations ought never be a numbers game, rather it is a question of attentive listening.

One of the facts that persons seem to dismiss from the equation is quite simply, “there are fewer persons to hear the call!” The average number of people per New Zealand household is 2.7 people, which has remained unchanged since 2006.

The word “vocation” is a descendant of Latin vocatio, meaning “summons.” Vocatio, in turn, comes from vocare, meaning “to call,” which itself is from vox, meaning “voice”.

Maybe, this “Vocations Sunday” we dare listen to the ‘voice’, calling – it may be that ‘voice’ is calling us to an entirely new way of being Church!