Category: Lent

Posted on

2nd Sunday Lent

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) was born in Northern Ireland. His acclaimed volumes of poetry, plays, criticism, and translation established him as one of the leading English-language poets of his generation. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The vividness of the pictures, the ocean, the foam and glitter, the earthed lightning, almost demand us to read these lines with our senses. We are invited to touch, taste, feel and smell our way between these lines, “the wind and the light are working off each other.”

Then, the final two lines remind us of an experience many of us have felt: sitting in a car with the wind buffeting the car and ourselves inside, from side to side. Only here in the poem is it “catch the heart off guard and blow it open”.

This Lent, do I dare sit and permit my God to “catch the heart off guard and blow it open.”?

The illustration is a view of Flaggy Shore, Co. Clare, Ireland

Postscript – Seamus Heaney

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly.
You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open

Posted on

1st Sunday of Lent

The celebrated Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s sixth volume, Station Island, takes its name from a centuries-old Irish pilgrimage site in Lough Derg Co. Donegal, in the Republic of Ireland.

“Station Island XI” is one of the poems in the collection.

The poem opens with the poet’s memory of having ruined a kaleidoscope he had been given as a child, by plunging it ‘in a butt of muddied water’.

There is in the poem a sense that Heaney has confessed, and he hears the words, “Read poems as prayers,” he said, “and for your penance, translate me something by Juan de la Cruz.”

Throughout this Lent, I invite you/us to do the same, “read poems as prayers.”

Poems cannot be read quickly; rather, they demand a savouring.

The image I have is what in my childhood was called a “gobstopper” – a round fruit-flavoured candy, which, when popped into your mouth, had to be sucked for what seemed like forever. The flavour would last, and if you dared remove it from your mouth, you would notice it had changed colour!

Also, it was well-nigh impossible to hold a conversation with a mouth filled with such delight.

During these Sundays of Lent, I will post a poem and an accompanying image.

The poem will fit the mood of the Sunday and reflect the readings.

I suggest you take the poem and imagine it to be that round candy.

Poetry needs to be read aloud and read aloud again. Then there can be added value in hearing the poem read to you (each person has a unique cadence. There are occasions when the best form of talking is by listening.) Watch the poem change colour.

Our liturgies are filled with words as the season of Lent moves forward until we are called to read the entire Passion of Jesus twice. Then, nine readings are given for those who worship at the Easter Vigil!

“In prayer more is accomplished by listening than talking” wrote St Francis de Sales living in the latter half of the 15thC and early 16thC.

I will use poems from a book titled, “The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter.”

The compiler is a poet, priest and singer-songwriter named Malcolm Guite and is available as an e-book through Amazon.

I have refrained from writing a reflection on the poem; such a reflection might well disrupt the reading of the poem as a prayer.

Our poem for this First Sunday of Lent is titled, “The Bright Field” by R. S. Thomas

The Bright Field – R S Thomas
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

Posted on

5th Sunday of Lent

This Sunday’s Gospel is considerably long – it is the story of the death and raising to life of Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary. Proclaiming the story offers its own challenges, standing and listening I would well imagine offers considerably more!

Did you know Lazarus has his own website? For those with the slightest interest it  “is a Delphi compatible cross-platform IDE for Rapid Application Development. It has variety of components ready for use and a graphical form designer to easily create complex graphical user interfaces.” I have absolutely no idea what any of that means!!

However, back to our Gospel.

Elements of the story that have given me cause for reflection.

Firstly, the story is recounted only in the Gospel of St. John. I would have thought such an astonishing event would have been recorded ‘everywhere’. Today, such a miracle would have been front page news on Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, and media outlets worldwide! Why the silence on the part of Matthew, Mark, and Luke?

Secondly, while the story itself is long, maybe we could well compress the story to one sentence, and in fact two words – “Jesus wept”. While the story is indeed about Lazarus, it also affords me the opportunity to reflect on the response of Jesus. “Where have you laid him?” is the enquiry of Jesus, and when shown the sight, the immediate, spontaneous, response of Jesus is one of tears.

Tears are an integral part of our being human; they come as a response to joy, to happiness, to delight, to wonder, to awe. They come too as a response to deflation, to disappointment, to sadness, to pain, and to grief.

Tears are in fact an important part of the human persons  communication system – when the human vocabulary seems at a loss to express the feeling quality associated with an occasion or a person, the vocabulary of emotion takes over. Tears communicate all manner of feeling. This is communicated again in our Gospel story, “so the Jews said, ‘see how he loved him!’ “.

The third reflective point for myself is that all this happened in public! Jesus’ grief was overt, available for all to see! He was in fact a Jewish man exhibiting his Jewishness! As ‘mature’ Caucasians we are more inclined (though not all of us) to weep in private. Consider the number of movies you have watched where an adult begins to weep, grabs a hanky or a tissue and hurries from the room!

One of the after-effects of a stroke is that persons often experience emotional and behavioural changes. The reason is simple. Stroke impacts the brain, and the brain controls our behaviour and emotions. As a consequence, a person may well be sitting watching a TV programme, or listening to a piece of music, and quite spontaneously tears well up and roll down the cheeks (and inevitably there are others in the room!).

The final reflection point for myself is the request of Jesus, “unbind him, let him go free.” This request is given to those who had gathered at the burial site. Hold on a moment! I don’t mind standing at the place of burial! I don’t mind shedding a ‘private’ tear or two! However, getting that up close and personal?? “Unbind him, let him go free.” Ultimately, the individual’s freedom arrives when I unbind them!

Prints from other masters inspired Van Gogh during his stay at the hospital in Saint-Rémy, and he made his version of the Raising of Lazarus from an etching by Rembrandt (1642). With his ginger beard, Lazarus bears some resemblance to Van Gogh himself.

The painter may have seen a parallel between Lazarus’ return from the dead and his struggle from mental illness towards recovery.

Art critics note that Van Gogh’s depiction left out the central figure of Christ with his arm raised as is very evident in the painting by Rembrandt.

Note, however, the colour of each painting; for myself, Van Gogh has painted with the vibrancy of light. Rembrandt is dark and sombre. Possibly, the vibrancy of light in the Van Gogh painting is the new life of Christ experienced by Lazarus!

Posted on

4th Sunday of Lent

The illustration is a contemporary modern watercolour with the title, “Eyes Gazing”

When I was living and in ministry in the city of Christchurch I had the use of a small car to get me from A to B and on occasions even as far as O and P!

The car was nifty and ran well and being small was easy to park.

However, as the driver, I noticed the car had a blind spot!

The framework of the chassis which held the left front window in place prevented me, as the driver, with a clear vision, from looking for oncoming motorists, cyclists and indeed pedestrians.

I found myself becoming concerned and frustrated.

Eventually, I took the vehicle to the dealership and explained what I considered a major manufacturing fault.

The gentleman listened attentively, and then we went and examined the vehicle.

To my surprise ( and chagrin), the gentleman sat in the driver’s seat, moved the seat forward a little and suggested I myself take the seat, and as it says quite simply in this Sunday’s Gospel, “ he was able to see!” ( Jn 9:7).

This Sunday, the Gospel is the story of a blind man receiving his sight.

The story in the Gospel involves spittle, dust from the ground forming a paste, washing in the pool of Siloam, a testy encounter with the Pharisees, and indeed disbelief.

All I needed to do was make a small adjustment to my sitting position!

However, while it was easily managed in the motor vehicle, in life, the shift maybe a little more difficult.

Where I sit and/or stand gives me a certain viewpoint; however, it may also provide a “blind spot”.

A blind spot is an obscuration of the visual field.

One could get all technical; however, from a medical point of view, it concerns the lack of light-detecting cells.

Perhaps from a Christian living viewpoint (or lack of!) if I sit or stand in the same place, I may in fact be preventing the light from penetrating, thus promoting a “blind spot”.

At the end of the Gospel, Jesus says, “ I came into this world, so that those who do not see, may see.” (Jn 9:39)

The illustration is a contemporary modern watercolour with the title, “Eyes Gazing”