Witness:
I was into gangs and violence and some drugs. My emotional life was a series of messy relationships, which I won’t go into. My Father had been in Borstal when he was 14 and prison, on and off, from 18 on. His big view on life was that I should follow in his footsteps. And I would have done. But we used to pass this Church with a large statue of a woman outside. When I was younger I had thrown brick ends at her, but she was made of more than plaster and I didn’t seem to do her much harm. I can’t remember why I walked in. It was dark. There were two things in it, a small light and a large crucifix. I don’t think I’d seen a crucifix before. I’d done brutal things occasionally, but I’d never really been hurt myself. But when I saw that cross it seemed as if it were happening to me. I didn’t know who or what he was, but I was vividly aware that he was there. I hadn’t cried since I was 4. For nearly three years, I cried for about an hour every day. I was away from home by then so it was easier. When I ‘got religion’ it really upset my stepmother. The Holy Spirit who, I’d never heard of, gradually healed me and simply started me off again. Sometimes I meet priests who mistake me for a good Catholic and who say things like, “What we need for more vocations is good Catholic families”. I always reply, “What we need is the Holy Spirit!”
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Hosea 2:14-23 - get your Bible!
You know the story of the Prophet Hosea. God invites him to a prophetic act and asks him to live out the tragedy of betrayal. Hosea is invited to play the part of God who loves faithfully, who even cares for the loved one who betrays him for her lovers. The Lord loves the lost one (In the story it is the prophet’s unfaithful wife, Gomer - but this is not a story about gender!) The Lord speaks; he speaks with the breath of his mouth, the Holy Spirit. The Spirit invites the lost one to start again at the point where their love began, in a wilderness of homeless hunger and thirst, where there is no noise to silence the breath of the voice that speaks to the heart.
The loved one calls on the Lord’s name, and in that love a new covenant of peace is offered. The Lord says: “I will betrothe you to myself forever, in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love and mercy, in faithfulness and in the knowledge of the Lord.’
Forever - sempiternum
We are not talking about a nine to five job or seventy is the sum of our years. We are talking about beyond time. Eternity is a word we don’t understand; but we have known moments when we wanted time to stand still because what was happened seemed too wonderful to leave behind.
Righteousness - iustitia
If only I could get it right! This gift of the Spirit cannot be prized out of the skies. It is simply a given. Ask for the disorder in your life to be put right for you. It works.
Justice - iudicio
We can’t live without justice, in Latin iudicio - right judgement - and we are not asked to. Justice is not the opposite of mercy or charity, as if God said, “In strict justice you should be shot at dawn, but I’ll be lenient just this once.” Justice is a perfect equality of rights between people. We are taken into the Spirit, together in love, in the mystery of the blood of Christ who has made us one as the children of the Father, because that is what we are.
Steadfast Love - misericordia
In the Hebrew this is ‘hesed’ - a word that has no equivalent; the latin misericordia gives it a different spin - it means mercy of the heart. Hesed is a whole story. Hesed is the brother of the one-time thief who goes to jail on his sibling's behalf. Hesed is the stepdaughter who nurses her father’s second wife, paralysed after a car crash, though the woman constantly lies to the girl’s father about her behaviour. Hesed is what Hosea does for Gomer; it is the love that drives a man to forgive the wife who betrayed him. This is God’s love.
Mercy - miserationibus.
If steadfast love is love in action, miserationibus is love in contemplation; it is compassion, a sharing in the depth of the heart - of God’s heart. A great twentieth century theologian - a friend and teacher of our Father Benedict XVI - Romano Guardini, said simply, “The Holy Spirit is the heart of Christ.”
Faithfulness - fide
“We may not be faithful - but God is always faithful.” Jesus is faithful to us. There is a story of the Brothers Grimm. It is about a servant who is destined to defend his master from evil but may not justify his actions. Eventually he is forced to do so and is turned to stone. The Lord is our faithful servant. He came amongst us as one who serves. He has chosen to ask for our trust in his goodness. This is the lot of humanity from day one. We are still living in a garden with a tree (It takes an endless variety of shapes and forms). We are asked to trust in God’s goodness when we are told that the tree will do us no good. And we are asked not to eat of it. There is just one prohibited tree in a huge orchard of delight; as there are just ten commandments - so few things are actually forbidden and so many good things have been laid faithfully at our feet.
The Knowledge of the Lord - cognosces Dominum
Like the rest, this is a gift of the Spirit. A hidden, secret gift by which one is invited to be betrothed in love. It is not intellectual, it does not require a DVD of the Biblical Dictionary of Theology. When scripture says Adam knew his wife, it is talking about intimacy, not intellect. God invites us into his love - which is his Spirit. He invites us into his body which is the Church. He invites us to receive him in our bodies in the Eucharist. He invites us to hunger and thirst for his love that he may feed us. And learning love by loving we will, some of us, come to long to know a little of his mind - and he will teach us in his Word and in the Church.
Let us pray
Father of all good gifts,
you send the Spirit of your love
into our hearts to teach us to pray.
you offer us your eternity in exchange for our time,
your righteousness in exchange for our wreckage,
your justice in exchange for our oppression,
your steadfast love in exchange for our uncertain fears,
your mercy and compassion in exchange for our self destructiveness,
your faithfulness in exchange for our unfaithfulness,
and tender knowledge of you in place of our ignorant selling of ourselves.
We say, yes Lord.
We make this covenant with you,
through Christ, our Lord.
Amen.
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