The Piercing of Jesus' HeartPieter Pauwel Reubens
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Timing is everything, as Shakespeare once said. How apt then are the comments of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams concerning the church in Ireland, an unfortunate echo of the Establishment view. To say that our church 'has lost all credibility' has, in a simple wave of hand, reduced our Christian witness to naught. It seems that all we are fit for is to hang, condemned and despised, on the cross. But we are not alone!.
Like a sapling he grew up in front of us
like a root in arid ground
a thing despised and rejected by men
a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering
he was despised and we took no account of him.
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And yet ours were the sufferings he bore,
ours the sorrows he carried.
But we, we thought of him as someone punished,
struck by God, and brought low.
Yet he was pierced through for our faults,
crushed for our sins.
On him lies a punishment that brings us piece,
and through his wounds we are healed.
.The next words of Isaiah, read we had all gone astray like sheep, a fitting description of our human condition and no doubt for the sins of some clergy in Ireland. However, unlike the earthly divines, we ask the Lord to look not on our sins but on the faith of your church! This is why, contrary to Dr. Williams, our credibility ought to sourced from our normative beliefs not our positive failings. This requires the humility to meet our Lord at eye level as he falls to His knees carrying our cross and to reject the idolatrous temptation to create our own religion or mold it to the fashions of sneering goats.
And so the trial by media of the catholics in Ireland continues! But let us not lose heart! We are following in the footsteps of our Saviour. In the company of the good thief, we cry out 'Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom!'
St Patrick, St. Brigid and all the martyr saints of Ireland, pray for us!
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