Rejoice - the Lord is risen today!

The Catholic Church is so often guilty, as all of us can be, of listening to the story but not hearing the message of the cross. One of the people I have learnt the most from in my life, HotProt, once said to me that the problem with Catholics is we forget that Jesus didn't stay on the cross, he got down off that cross and rose again. As Catholics I think we are taught from an early stage to dwell on our sins and failings, to be trapped in what we have down and who we have been. We are encouraged to dwell on the cross and to nail ourselves to it and trap ourselves in it.

Jesus bore the cross but he wasn't defined by it. It seems so adapt to me that a woman which such a big heart and of so previously poor reputation, Mary Madeline, was the first to see the risen Lord. Her story reminds us that He absorbed all the world threw at Him and didn't throw it back at the world. He doesn't throw our sins back at us, He takes them on board, onto the cross and transforms them into a new way of living, turning them into a new way of life.

Rejoice! Let us be happy in our redemption! Let us proclaim loudly and clearly that we are loved, forgiven and are saved.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDGE_lRI0E

Good Friday

We do not descend when we embrace the cross. We may taste the salt of our tears, we may stumble under the weight of its burden, and we may bleed as the rough wood bruises and blisters our skin, but always, we are raised up.

We ascend to the plain where Love dwells and breathes pure unbounded Love upon the world; to the height from which Our Saviour gazed upon his mother and his friend; to the level at which all is changed through, with and in Him. We rise above the confines of ourselves with all our weaknesses and frailty, straight into the open arms of our loving God. We take up our cross and follow Him.

A New Focus

So, I've decided to use my blog to post some of my poetry (uh, hum...). Yes, well, it's not as if it's comparable to Yeats or any poets I admire, but I've decided to share anyway.

I wrote this in November 2006 when living in the Catholic Chaplaincy in London. It's a mediation on the Eucharist. Funny story which accompanies this. The Chaplaincy was hosting one of its all night Eucharistic vigils. It was a friend's birthday and a few of us had done our half hour stint in the Chapel, having nice bit of quiet time with our Lord before going out for her birthday to a ubiquitous Polish bar in central London and having a few too many vodka shots. Afterwards, I went and slumped into bed. A couple of friends returned to the chapel circa 4 am. The birthday girl was so deep in drunken prayer she passed out in the chapel to be awoken in the morning by the fire alarm going off, smoke, incense, a priest aka 7 am mass. I wanted to capture the ordinary moments of our life stories which accompany the larger than life story of the Eucharist...however, the drunken moments didn't quite make it into the poem.

Eucharist (November 2006) 

In fields festooned with rippling wheat

Fertilised by the sun’s ardent kiss

On vines engorged in the summer’s heat

God easily found in rural bliss

In the pummelling of squelching dough

Beneath a waning hand

In the pounding of grapes under toe

We witness a show so grand

That in the midst of our suffering

Through our joys and our pain

In our inadequate offerings

God is with us once again