More than all the stars in the heavens

How do you tell your children that you love them totally and unconditionally? When my sons were very young I often told them, when it was time for sleep, that if they could imagine all the grains of sand on every shore, or all of the stars in the heavens, then I loved them even more than that. My children, grown up as they now are, could never doubt the love I have for them.

The ancient Hebrews, too, considered the stars in the heavens as being too many to count. The stories they told attempted to express their relationship with their God, about his infinite love, of his plan for humanity, of his desire to provide all that his creatures needed. Humanity’s fall is matched by the promise of reconciliation, of redemption, of our God’s constant invitation to return to him. Recorded for all time, begun around the campfires, remembered in oral tradition, and recorded in print over many hundreds of years, often mixing older stories with newer ones, the recurring theme of God’s fidelity to, and his love for, his chosen people is epic.

So, as Abram is taken outside by the Lord, he is shown the heavens: Look up to the heavens and count the stars if you can. Such will be your descendants (Genesis 5:5). Having performed a ritual sacrifice, Abram is bound by a covenant with the Lord: To your descendents I give this land, from the wadi of Egypt to the Great River (Genesis 5:18). The narrative wends its way through the trials and tribulations of the Hebrews to the promise, then the birth of Jesus himself.

You and I have become a part of this story, through our baptism, through our being part of God’s New People. How many descendants in faith does Abram have? As many as the stars. How much does God love us? More than every grain of sand on the shore, more than all the stars in the heavens. God still invites us, daily, every moment, to be with him.

This Lent, know how much you are loved, let those who care for you know how much you love them, and then find an opportunity one of these very fine evenings to stare into the night sky to see the proof of God’s love for you.

Not by bread alone

In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs food is a basic survival requirement that must, like other physiological needs, be satisfied before higher order needs can be addressed (safety, belonging/love, esteem, then ultimately self-actualisation). Bread is a staple for much of the world. Made from whatever grain is available, bread is a symbol of nourishment. The manna in the desert given to the Hebrews was seen as ‘bread from heaven’.

In our tradition, bread fulfils not only a fundamental, physical need, but in the Eucharist, bread seeks to satisfy our ultimate and highest needs – self-knowledge, acceptance, understanding, encountering the divine.

Grain is harvested, crushed and broken to be made into flour. The flour is leavened with yeast, kneaded and rolled, baked, cooled, broken and shared. Bread is made by human hands, by human intervention. Because it is such an earthy food, it is not surprising then that the image of bread should have such a rich history in our language, our thinking, our theology, our community stories. In linguistics, a word such as companion is made up of two Latin words com – together with, and panis, bread, which together initially meant ‘one who breaks bread with another’.

In Luke’s Gospel (4:1 – 13) Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days. There he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing, and after that time he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, Man does not live on bread alone.”

This conversation plays out the tension between the bread that provides physiological nourishment and the bread that gives everlasting life. One that fulfils the immediate need to satisfy hunger, the other which is that bread shared at the heavenly banquet. If the stone was made into bread, it would merely satisfy the lowest of our human needs, we need more than this kind of bread, we need that true bread of life.

As Lent begins there is an opportunity to reflect on what our most fundamental needs are beyond those raw, physical necessities; how do we lift ourselves beyond these to become fuller and deeper participants in the divine life? Again, our ancient tradition invites you to enter this season through prayer, penitence and almsgiving, and most particularly through the Table of the Lord. The same Table to which we take plain, simple bread and from which we are offered the ‘Bread of Angels’ (Ps 78:25).

We start with hope

New beginnings. A fresh start. It appeals to our deeper selves, giving ourselves permission to move on, to accept that our previous journey has been completed. A new start brings optimism, it stirs our capacity for resilience. But most of all a new beginning gives hope.

And hope is what a new year is. It is the anticipation of what is to come, what may be, what can be desired and dreamed.

Jurgen Moltmann, a German prisoner of war, who amidst the enormous suffering caused by his people, became a Christian after being given a copy of the New Testament by an American chaplain. As his story is told, Moltmann could at last see the glimmer, the possibility, of a future for his own generation of lost souls. In time he expressed his reflections in The theology of hope. For the end times are the consummation of creation itself. For the Christian, hope is driven towards that moment when all is made anew in Christ. For Moltmann hopelessness is sin.

Paul, some 20 centuries ago, also expressed in his rather rugged and forthright way what lies at the core of Christian hope and expectation:

For if the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, you are still in your sins. And what is more serious, all who have died in Christ have perished. If our hope in Christ has been for this life only, we are the most unfortunate of all people. But Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, the first fruits of all who have fallen asleep.

1 Corinthians 15:16 – 20

If what we believe, as many would argue, is just simply fiction, a panacea for the ills of the present, then what Christians have proposed for 2000 years is an utter fabrication. The only hope then would be for ‘world peace’, for an end to world hunger, tyranny, war. This then is why Christian faith guarantees not just a perspective, but a fundamental option for human hope and aspiration.

You have expressed that faith presenting your children as students of this Catholic School, you have baptised them, raised them in loving and nurturing families and you have dreamed dreams for them, given them hope. 2010 is not only a new year, it is a chance for a new life.

I look forward to sharing this new year, our Christian hope, our shared faith with you and your families.