Speed of Life

"Afore grind and woe,

Toiled away memory,

God’s beloved was I."

Haiku for Henri by Ross Ahlfeld




Unfortunately, I couldn’t get to Mass on Sunday; it was my own fault since I left it far too late to book a space via Eventbrite and all the parishes nearby in my diocese were all booked out. As a result I ended up ‘attending’ a live streamed Mass online from another diocese.

Out of charity I won’t name the Church  but I didn’t take too  much comfort from the homily if I’m being honest.  The basic jist of the sermon was that people who pursue a career and money are “dying alone with nobody to look after them because they’d failed to preserve and cherish relationships with family ties and friendships”.

I found this to be especially harsh on the vast majority of socially isolated and lonely elderly people who die alone because of our own lack of neighbourliness and because of the loveless and individualistic society which we ourselves have created. A lonely death is our sin not the sin of a lonely person.  As Dorothy Day teaches us ““We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

Of course, even when people do die alone, they absolutely do NOT die alone, they belong to the mystical body of Christ, they are surrounded by all the angles and saints.  

The rest of the sermon was mostly about the urgent need to make changes in our lives and to do something and how we must act to improve ourselves before it’s too late. It was a warning that the hour is late and that there is no more time left. From the pulpit came the message; hurry, hurry, hurry, time, time, time! For me this all sounded very much like the rush of the secular world and its imminent Black Friday sales.

Yet, theologically speaking, everything this priest preached was of course all true, (even if it all seemed entirely pitched at a middle class audience) but I’m not so sure if it’s really what we need to hear right now at this time when the world seems to be standing still amid a global pandemic.

I’m not sure the nurse working 12 hour night-shifts or the single Mum working three cleaning jobs to make ends meet, needs to be warned that they are neglecting their social lives and friendships

Rather, we need to hear more about God’s time. Henri Nouwen tells us that "Clock time ‘chromos’ is divided into minutes, hours, days, and weeks, and that it dominates our lives but God's time is ‘kairos’ . God's time is timeless and God’s presence in our lives must be calmly and patiently discerned.

Yes, our personal sanctification, our merits and the need to win our salvation through our work is part of the Church’s teaching and tradition but is that what a terrified and tired the world needs to hear right now?

What we need to hear from our pastors at this time is that even if we all lose our jobs, even if our worlds are falling apart, even if we lose everything - we are the beloved sons and daughters of God! We are enough, we are worthy and we are loved no matter how much we fail and we don't need to do something to prove this. We are not what we do, we are the Beloved! 

As Alexander Schmemann says –“No one has been ‘worthy’ to receive communion, no one has been prepared for it. At this point all merits, all righteousness, all devotions disappear and dissolve. Life comes again to us as a Gift, a free and divine gift, to say yes – in joy and gratitude.

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