Fr Aidan's sermon 23-05-2004

I suppose our biggest problem in life is that we don't believe in God and yet you are here today, what the heck are you here for if you don't believe? If we examine the God we believe in he is very much tailor made to our own descriptions. In our ability to imagine him, he is very much a human God . Continually in our faith we need to clarify our idea of God and we will never, never reach it, we will never comprehend God.

Our existence is like a speck of dust ; the distance between God and us is similar to an ant crawling on the ground and ourselves There is no comparison since God is the beginning and the end - the Alpha and Omega - the first and the last, so before all creation God is. When we think of our planet earth, earth one of the planets going round the sun and that being one star in the thousand of stars in our galaxy which is one of millions of galaxies. We think of God existing from eternity to eternity. There may have been millions of galaxies which arose and were destroyed from all eternity; there may have been other earth's existing billions of years ago. If we live for what 70 80 90 100 years it is nothing, it's a flick of the finger; in God's eyes it's a second.

It must have been something trying to grapple with that. It must have been part of what was happening in Jerusalem to Mary and the apostles. Mary, so much nearer to understanding the Godhead of her son. It was slowly dawning on the apostles that the one they had grown to love, Jesus, was the Messiah. The Christ was the son of God and they were beginning to enter into the mystery of his divinity. It's something we need to do because the extraordinary thing about the Ascension, the extraordinary flight of the ascension means that we no longer believe if you like the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; we believe in Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. In other words we can't now describe God without humanity, which is for eternity linked and sealed with God forever because "the word became flesh and dwelt amongst us." Humanity has been dragged into the heart and mystery of God that is so extraordinary that we can only begin to grasp what on earth Christ means and that also is a sign of God's love, the condescension, the mercy the love of God that drove him to uniting himself with us the human race forever. The creator forever so united with this creature now who is humanity, a passion for unity which is beyond our understanding but is a sign of the love of God. And so we too need to share Christ's passion for unity so vividly described in his prayer which you have heard in the gospel "that they may be one as you father that all may be one father in us as you are in me and I am in you". Human words of Our Lord trying to explain what his incarnation means, what his Ascension means. This is something that Mary and the apostles must have been pondering between the Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit. The apostles beginning to glimpse the consequences of that, so that they too were driven with this passion to bring this good news to all men; to bring all men into unity and so Christ changes our lives.

Now a story for you I heard when I was at Lourdes I met Father Perry Gildayo the Ascension father who I have known for a long time. I asked him how he was as I'd heard he had not been well and had moved back to Belfast after teaching in Strawberry Hill the Catholic Teachers Training College for many years. He said he was out for a walk one day in Cliftonville which is a very divided area between protestants and Catholics. He went to the old reservoir and he saw a young lad fishing and said to him being a fisherman himself "What are you fishing for " the lad replied "brown trout" Father Perry thought "Oh well" and said "Are you sure" to which the lad replied "yes" Father Perry was amazed by this. A few days later he was again up there and saw a man fishing. Father asked him "What are you fishing for?" "Brown trout" replied the man. "But there isn't any brown trout in the reservoir" said Father Perry. "Of course there is" retorted the man, "I know. I put them there" and so he told his story:
Three years ago this place in the middle of the Protestants and Catholics was for the children a war zone. It wasn't a good place for them to be because the junkies also used and left their dirty needles there. This fisherman thought what could he do to restore this beautiful place to become an amenity to the people of Belfast. Being a fisherman he thought of fish and applied to the E.C. for a fund to introduce brown trout into the reservoirs. He got fishing tackle also paid by the E.C. He set up a fishing club and it now has three hundred families who are members of it. Now that it is cleaned up and beautiful fanatic fishermen use it and take joy, delight and respect it. There is no longer any trouble and no junkies. It is only because of this man's vision how on earth could he bring unity to his divided neighbourhood - he saw the connection between his hobby and the place he lived and he worked out of a passion for unity and a love of God's creation and now he can share this with the three hundred poor families that live in the area. A great story and he is someone living out toady's gospel, someone sharing the passion for unity which Our Lord has.
First of all what we must do is understand the passion of Christ that all may be one, to understand the extent of the Godhead, to bring unity to the human race. Then to work out how we could be a source of unity to our families, community and in our work.

I would suggest that between now and Pentecost we tackle the first part of that. Enter in prayer in union with God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

©Kitabu Web Design