Category: Ordinary Time Year C

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Sunday 15th of Ordinary Time

“The Good Samaritan,” together with the story of the Prodigal Son,  may well be the most-read stories/parables Jesus ever told.

It is somewhat intriguing that for all their drama, both parables are recalled only by the author of the Gospel of Luke!

We are familiar enough with the story of the Good Samaritan; a man is travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho, is accosted by robbers, who strip, beat him, and leave him for dead. A priest and Levite are travelling the same road, come to the spot where the man lay and “passed by on the other side” (vv. 31, 32). A Samaritan, also travelling the same road, comes upon the man, and as the text says, “was moved with pity”, and the rest as they say ‘is history’.

What would have leapt out at the first hearers of this story was that Jesus subverted his hearers’ expectations by explaining that it was a Samaritan who helped the man.

Samaritans were known as the ones who would rob Jews on this road as they went “up” to Jerusalem from Jericho for their holy days. The listeners would have not only expected a Samaritan to be unsympathetic to the plight of the victim, but they would also have expected the Samaritan to be the perpetrator!

The Dutch impressionist Vincent Van Gogh painted this Gospel scene.

On May 8, 1889, exhausted, ill, and out of control, Vincent Van Gogh committed himself to St Paul’s psychiatric asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, a small hamlet in the south of France.

A former monastery, the sanatorium was located in an area of cornfields, vineyards and olive trees.

There Van Gogh was allowed two small adjoining cells with barred windows.

One room he used as his bedroom, and the other was his tiny studio.

While there, Van Gogh not only painted the surrounding area and the interior of the asylum, but he also copied paintings and drawings by other artists, making those paintings his own through modifications he made to the painting’s composition, the colours and of course, the brush strokes.

Van Gogh copied and modified Delacroix’s painting of The Good Samaritan.

When Van Gogh was admitted to the sanatorium he had become so difficult, so sick that the townspeople of Arles, where he had been living and painting had given him the name “the red-headed madman.”

Take a look at the ‘good Samaritan’ struggling to lift the wounded man onto his mount – looks very much like “the red-headed madman” from Arles!

And many commentators agree it is!

Van Gogh has assumed the role of the good Samaritan – and when you read a comprehensive biography of Van Gogh, this helping of the downtrodden is not unusual.

Van Gogh had an extraordinary compassionate side to his person.

“The word compassion literally means ‘to suffer with”.

Despite his reputation for madness, Vincent Van Gogh was a compassionate and faith-filled man.

While involved in missionary work among the impoverished population of the Borinage, a coal-mining region in southwestern Belgium.

There, in the winter of 1879–80, he experienced the first great spiritual crisis of his life.

Living among the poor, he gave away all his worldly goods in an impassioned moment; he was thereupon dismissed by church authorities for a too-literal interpretation of Christian teaching.

Many of us have our favourite Gospel story – what does this story say about me?

Am I somewhere there?

Also, we may well have a story which is our least favourite – equally, we do well to ask, does this particular story expose a part of who I am that I would prefer to remain hidden?

 

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13th Sunday Ordinary Time

Sister Act is a 1992 American comedy film. It stars Whoopi Goldberg as Deloris, a Lounge singer forced to join a convent after being placed in a witness protection programme.

She is brought to Saint Katherine’s Convent in Saint Katherine’s Parish, in a run-down neighbourhood in San Francisco. Deloris initially objects, then relents.

The head nun of St. Katherine’s,” Reverend Mother” “, also objects to taking Deloris in but Monsignor O’Hara, the local parish priest, convinces her to go along with it as the police will pay the failing convent a good sum of money to do so.

Disguised as “Sister Mary Clarence”, Deloris initially has difficulty dealing with the rigid and simple convent life but befriends the other nuns, (Sister Mary Patrick, the elderly Sister Mary Lazarus, and the novice Sister Mary Robert).

One night, after a poorly attended Sunday Mass, with a lacklustre performance from the convent choir, led by Mary Lazarus, Deloris sneaks out to a bar, followed by Mary Patrick and Mary Robert.

They are caught by the Reverend Mother, who orders Deloris join the struggling choir. With her singing experience, Deloris is elected their director and transforms the choir.

One of the songs sung by the choir to a full Church including dignitaries is a song with the title, “I will follow Him”.

One of the verses in the song reads:

“We will follow him
Follow him where ever he may go
There isn’t an ocean too deep
A mountain so high it can keep
Keep us away, away from his love.”

This Sunday’s Gospel (Lk. 9: 51 – 62) has the same announcement, “Someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’”

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Ash Wednesday

On 20 December 2021, an eruption began on Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, a submarine volcano in the Tongan group of islands.

The eruption reached a very large and powerful climax nearly 4 weeks later, on 15 January 2022. Hunga Tonga is 65 km (40 mi) north of Tongatapu, the country’s main island.

Much of the island of Tongatapu was covered in volcanic ash.

An interesting news item some days following the January eruption mentioned that many residents were collecting the ash from the streets and putting the ash on their gardens!

Volcanic sites are frequently the most fertile sites on earth.

Volcanic ash’s primary use is that of a soil enricher.

Once the minerals in ash are washed into the soil by rain or other natural processes, it mixes with the soil to create an andisol layer. This layer is highly rich in nutrients and is very good for agricultural use; the presence of lush forests on volcanic islands is often as a result of trees growing and flourishing in the phosphorus and nitrogen-rich andisol.

It triggered a memory of my own from my childhood; the home I lived in had an open fireplace which was used extensively throughout the chilly winter months.

When cleaning out the fireplace the residue ash was frequently spread onto the garden. Apparently, wood ash is an excellent source of lime and potassium for the garden.

Not only that, using ashes in the garden also provides many of the trace elements that plants need to thrive.

As we approach Ash Wednesday there is the opportunity for each of us to re-imagine the ritual of the blessing and reception of the ashes, re-imagining the ashes, not as a symbol of sinfulness and the need for repentance, rather as a symbol of nourishment, a symbol of enrichment, a symbol of fertility.

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7th Sunday Ordinary time

If you have been watching the Winter Olympics from Beijing, you may have noticed that at each venue being used the participating nations’ flags flutter on poles.

One such flag belongs to the Republic of South Korea.

There is within the design of the flag a red and blue circle in the middle of the flag. The circle is divided into two parts, each of which resembles a comma.

The upper, red part represents the forces of yang (yang in Chinese as well), and the lower, blue part represents the forces of um (yin in Chinese).

The classic Chinese symbol is drawn in black and white – Yin, is the dark side and Yang is the light side. Interestingly each has an “eye” of the other as a part of their form.

The yang and yin together form the tao in Chinese philosophy, signifying the perpetually changing opposite yet complementary forces or principles embodied in all aspects of life: light and darkness, good and evil, active and passive, masculine and feminine.

The thick round part of each comma represents the beginning of all things, and the tail section represents the end so that where the yang begins, the yin disappears and vice versa.  [Hold onto this image as you read this morning’s Gospel – as I begin to love my “enemy”, the “enemy” disappears/reappears as love!].

The symbol and philosophy it represents is found in the I-Ching, or The Book of Changes, one of the oldest Confucian classics on Chinese cosmology. (Exact dating is not easy, however its compilation in its current form is dated to the last quarter of the 9th century BC.

A copy of the text in the Shanghai Museum of bamboo and wooden shoots shows that the text was used throughout all levels of Chinese society in its current form by 300 BC.

Yin and Yang are viewed as two basic opposing forces – complementary opposites. Everything is imagined to have both Yin and Yang aspects which constantly interact.

In the West, the I Ching was discovered in the late 17th century by Jesuit missionaries in China.

The Gospel for this Sunday, (Luke 6: 27 -38) has a strong element of Yin and Yang about it, “do good to those hate you.” (v. 27), “love your enemies.” (v.35).

If we pause for a moment and consider that the enemy may not be “outside” of me, may not be the “other”, rather is in fact my own self – you know those parts of me I keep stored away in a closet, hoping only I have a key, only to find the person holding up the line at the supermarket, or the person who has not done their allotted task on time, or the young mother coming in late to Sunday Eucharist with a snivelling and crying child, or old John O’Grady  who always seems to drop the kneeler on the concrete floor from a height of 6ft – each of these seems to have somehow found a key to my closet, or maybe (surely not!), I left the door unlocked and slightly ajar!!

In Matthew’s gospel we read the parable of the weeds among the wheat (Mtt. 13:24 – 30).

Those familiar with the parable will recollect the servants’ question to the householder, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’, and the reply, “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.

Let both grow together until the harvest.

At that time, I will tell the harvesters: First, collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

The weeds and wheat are complementary opposites (yin/yang) best left to grow together.

7th Sunday Ordinary Time