Category: Ordinary Time Year C

Have you noticed how we use the word Amen like a liturgical full stop?

Many of our prayers, both liturgical and others, end with the words, “through Christ our Lord, AMEN”

Quite frequently there is a physical shift and relocation – for example in our Eucharistic celebration the community sits, and activity relocates to the ambo (that is a flash term for the lectern!)

We conclude our Prayers of the Faithful with a concluding AMEN and activity relocates to the Altar.

Frequently a liturgical doxology will conclude with the word, “Through Him, and with Him. AMEN”

During the Rite of Communion persons approach the minister of Bread and/or Cup and the following interaction takes place:

“Body of Christ. AMEN”
“Blood of Christ. AMEN”

Technically the word AMEN has the meaning of “So be it”
(Beyoncé has a track on her album ‘Cowboy Carter’ with the title AMEN)

Amen has become a liturgical full stop.

I was once in ministry in a parish where for one old lady the full stop had been done away with – at least during the Rite of Communion.

This woman was a Māori kuia, that is an elderly woman of standing.

At the Rite of Communion this woman of age would approach the Minister of Communion and to the invocation “Body of Christ” the kuia would respond, “Nau mai”.

At the invocation, “Blood of Christ”, she would respond in a like manner, “Nau mai.”

Nau mai, in the Māori culture, is a form of greeting and of welcome – as far distant from a full stop as you could possibly get!

Does the Body of Christ we know as Church resemble a full stop, or a welcome.

Body of Christ Nau mai

You may have seen reproductions of the famous Andrei Rublev icon of the Trinity.

Written for the abbot of the Trinity Monastery in Russia, the icon’s original title was ‘The Hospitality of Abraham’.

The icon depicts the three mysterious strangers who visited Abraham (Genesis 18:1 -15)

In the Genesis account the Lord visits Abraham in the form of three men who are apparently angels representing God.

Abraham offers them the hospitality of foot washing, rest under a shade tree, and a meal and they offered him the announcement that God was going to give he and his wife Sarah a son, though Sarah was far past the age of childbearing.

The three persons are seated around a table in an attitude of harmony and peace; the very lines of the icon create a circle within which the unity of the persons, the manner of their presence to one another, is visible. At the focal point of the icon there is a cup between them on the table. It is a wonderful use of symbol and suggestion.

The Trinity hints at hospitality. It is as if the divine persons were saying: be one with one another as we are one. (See John 17:21) To make the invitation even clearer, there is an empty place at the table.

We are being invited and drawn into the inner life of the Trinity, to sit at that empty place at God’s table.

I suggest this feast day of the Trinity is a feast day of hospitality.

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)

The name Andrew Lloyd Webber is synonymous with musical sensations such as Evita, The Phantom of the Opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

One of his lesser-known stage musicals is titled “Aspects of Love”. The musical is based on the 1955 novel by the British author David Garnett.

The musical is not as well known as other “mega” productions of Lloyd Webber, however, there is a notable song from the musical that fits with today’s Gospel theme of love: the song is titled ‘Love Changes Everything’

As I write these words the USA and Russia are meeting Saudi Arabia to consider, as The Guardian newspaper highlights, “to explore mutual opportunities to end the war in Ukraine.”

How genuine these talks are is yet to be determined, however, if these talks begin in a spirit of mutual love then perhaps “love might well change everything/everyone.”

Love, love changes everything
Hands and faces, earth and sky
Love, love changes everything
How you live and how you die

Love can make the summer fly
Or a night seem like a lifetime
Yes, love, love changes everything
How I tremble at your name
Nothing in the world will ever be the same

Love, love changes everything
Days are longer, words mean more
Love, love changes everything
Pain is deeper than before

Love will turn your world around
And that world will last forever
Yes, love, love changes everything
Brings you glory, brings you shame

Nothing in the world will ever be the same

Off into the world we go
Planning futures, shaping years
Love bursts in, and suddenly
All our wisdom disappears

Love makes fools of everyone
All the rules we make are broken
Yes, love, love changes everyone
Live or perish in its flame
Love will never, never let you be the same
Love will never, never let you be the same