ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

II Sunday before Lent – Sexagesima – 11.02.07

Fr Ivan Aquilina

Where are we coming from? Where are we today? Where do we want things to be going?
These are fundamental questions, asked since the dawn of time, as relevant today as ever. The Church, in the light of the Gospel, sheds light on these questions and offers for our consideration what she has received from its Master through the Holy Spirit. In today’s readings the Church gives us liberating answers to our questions.

Where are we coming from?

The book Genesis deals with this question. We are not products of chance, a result of a combination of factors that incidentally happened at a certain time. We proceed from the loving design of God, indeed we are the crown of His loving plan, and He is so fond of us that surrounds us with a garden in the east so that we are caressed by the first rays of the sun every morning. We carry in us His breath we share His own life and are shaped by His own hands, He knows us intimately, we are creatures of His creativity, a tangible proof of His passion. That is where we are coming from. We are loved and we are valued. We are creatures with dignity, the human dignity, that Christian concept deriving from the clear doctrine that we are created in His own image. We are coming from a family of harmony and acceptance, an acceptance so deep that even nakedness does not make us ashamed; we come from complete freedom, from pure love.

Where are we today?

Let’s look at the Gospel. We are in the midst of a storm. We are tossed about in the small boat of our existence, clinging to it to save our dear life waiting to loose everything every minute now. Indeed that is a long way from our first image. We are not naked anymore, we cover ourselves with clothes, we are not in a garden but in the eye of a storm, the most graphic image to portray disorder the opposite of the garden in which we were placed by God. We are in chaos, in a very scary place. How on earth did we get here? We all know how we got here; it is through our disobedience and hardness of mind and heart. We took many wrong turnings and rather than retracing our steps we glory in our stupidity and poverty; no wonder the waves are high and the storm fierce in a time when sin becomes human rights, murder of the unborn as emancipation, where nothing is sacred or worth fighting for or defending, when we speak about rights but seldom about duties and almost never about sacrifice where aggregation replaces integration. If like many you feel tired and disheartened and you long for serene weather and a safe harbour away from the storm no one blames you. There are so many of us. We do not want to jump on the band wagon of “everything goes”, of seeing Christianity as one religion among many others, of watering down the Gospel, re writing the Bible and re inventing the venerable person of Christ. We do not want to live in the storm of our own making, or the storm made by pseudo-Christians, we desire the freedom of the Children of God. What we need is faith and courage. We need to trust Christ and allow him to address the storm once more and say: “Stop! Be still!” He can and will say this only through your lips. We need to become the Voice for Him the Word to still the storm of our life and allow Him to lead us to safe havens. “Where is your faith?”

What are the storms tossing us about? Are they of our own making? Repent! Are they challenges of life? Respond! Are they attacks from the Evil one? Denounce! Jesus whether asleep or awake is with us, always till the end of time! This is where we are: standing in front of an opportunity for change.

Where do we want things to be going?

The book Revelation supplies the answer. Turning our back on what causes the storm, in that stillness of our heart and mind a door into heaven is opened and we are invited to see what comes next. Trusting completely in Jesus we will be filled by the Holy Spirit and taken into the presence of God. His presence can not be expressed in human words so poetry is used to take us a step nearer, and in the heart of this presence there is nothing but recognising God and therefore falling down in worship as all creation sings the thrice holy, what we strive to mirror here below every time we celebrate Mass and sing the Sanctus.

We come from God’s heart, we run away and have made a dog’s breakfast out of life, we have the opportunity for change with Jesus to go back were we belong: in God’s heart. And this not only in heaven when we die but it starts here below for those who love God and submit themselves to Christ.