Jottings for May from Fr Edward

I am going to consider someone who responded wholeheartedly to the Easter message.
 
The 80th anniversary of the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer fell on the 7 April.  He was a Lutheran Pastor and theologian who was implicated in the resistance to the Nazi tyranny in Germany.  He was imprisoned and cruelly murdered at Flossenburg concentration camp in the closing days of World War Two.  He is commemorated with a statue above the west door of Westminster Abbey as one of the ten modern martyrs of the 20th century.
 
Bonhoeffer remained true to his principles.  Whether you have faith or not, I think the lives of people like him invite us to do the same.
 
Bonhoeffer like all Christians uses the word grace – which is God’s free and unmerited reconciling of us to him through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  We experience total acceptance by God.  God’s will for us to lead an authentic life becomes a reality.
 
However, Bonhoeffer saw just how easy it is to leave it all to grace and simply change nothing.  He called this grace without discipleship - grace without commitment - cheap grace.
 
He wrote ‘Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a [person] must knock.  Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a [person their] life, and it is grace because it gives a [person] the only true life.’ 
 
Costing our life in this context is commitment.  This is something that Franciscans like me see in St Francis, committed to creation, justice and peace, someone who literally tried every minute of every day to live Jesus’s command to love God and love his neighbour as himself.
 
We are easily comfortable.  It’s easy to do nothing.  As one of Bonhoeffers’ friends put it in describing him ‘Not that he believed that everybody must act as he did, but from where he was standing, he could see no possibility of retreat into any sinless, righteous, pious refuge. The sin of respectable people reveals itself in flight from responsibility. He saw that sin falling upon him and he took his stand.’
 
What stand for creation, justice and peace will you, will I, will we take in the coming months?

                                

Reflection for the month of May

 Peace be with you.

After His resurrection, Jesus met with people who were anxious, afraid, grieving or otherwise distressed. His first words were ‘Peace be with you’. Peace to calm their fears, lift them from worries and despair, heal where they were hurting, soothing away their disappointments.

Martin Luther King spoke of peace not simply being the absence of conflict, but also the presence of justice. The peace of God restores justice, providing security, protection, health and freedom from ignorance and want. This is a peace which the world cannot give, but we can with faith in God pray for that peace, for ourselves and for others. Peace however comes not simply by sitting quietly at home or in church but by obeying the teaching of Jesus in the way we live and in the way we treat others.

Through Jesus we know God and through Him we know God’s will for us, expressed simply in two commandments: Firstly, Love God and secondly love your neighbour as well as you love yourself. Yes - God loves us his creation, his children and we must love him in return.

How do we go about putting that love of God to work to serve Him? We might serve without loving but we cannot love without serving. We have Jesus to guide us. We must care about what happens to others, and not just our family and our friends. Share what we have – including our time - in whatever way we can.  Be caring and kind and equally well accept caring and kindnesses thankfully when they come our way. 

God is our judge, His Love, mercy, and forgiveness is ever there for us all, always there to sustain us. That is the wonderful message of the Gospels, to do our best to serve our society, as we strive to bring about a more peaceful, just, merciful and caring world.  ‘Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me’