With very heavy-duty things happening in the world, it can be tempting to say ‘I don’t follow the news anymore’. Certainly, for those with young children, a constant challenge of parenting is to decide what to expose them to or keep them from.
You want your children growing appropriately in the awareness and social conscience that’s central to faith.
You also want them to be free enough in mind and heart to grow with spontaneity, innocence and joy. Parents are enormously worthy of our care and prayer as they embrace their sacred balancing acts!
To mourn as a choice
For others too, some temporary protection from the news and wider world might be a helpful option when something really difficult is happening in our lives. But it’s fair to say that turning a blind eye to the world as a norm of life, conflicts with a Gospel life; a life that images Christ who serves and agonises, who listens and feeds, who chooses vulnerability on the dusty roads of Palestine to embrace lives and breathe hope.
We well know the second beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount; ‘blessed are those who mourn’. Common to most mourning is some experience of one’s heart breaking open and with some sense of powerlessness.
As such, a generous application of ‘blessed are those who mourn’ can be on the wider world scale. It can be when we allow our hearts to break open and feel powerless, as we intentionally learn of the fears, sufferings and stories of God’s people and creation beyond our own circle.
Surprising comfort
The second part of that beatitude suggests that ‘they shall be comforted’. A certain spiritual director suggested that such comfort may prove paradoxical and surprising; that as we learn of others’ stories and allow un-ease in us, we may touch more deeply into our capacity for selfless love.
We may tap more into the very nature of God, in us. That spiritual director quoted a person who shared; ‘the more I let the world’s realities and pains into my mind and heart, the more I just seem to end up talking with people who want to make a difference. And the more I then see life and God through different windows and possibilities!’
How true it is that many, many people who do really good things, will so often give the credit to learning from the struggles and strains of people and stories beyond their own known zone! So many such people say that it has been that risk and stretch that continues to be the richest boost in their faith.
‘Blessed are those who mourn. They shall be comforted!’
People Power
This week Pope Leo called out asking us to pray that ‘the roar of bombs may cease, that the weapons may fall silent, and that a space for dialogue may open in which the voice of the peoples can be heard.’
He further said ‘I entrust this supplication to Mary, Queen of Peace! May she intercede for those who suffer because of war and guide hearts along the paths of reconciliation and hope.’ History affords various examples of how people-power can influence lasting newness from the ground up.
This is the real grit of people interceding, which means intervening for another. Our embrace of others in life, starting by our risk to let their stories in, can in surprising ways become interventions that bless others’ lives, and our own.
For Christ’s people, the idea of people-power is at the heart of faith, for the promise is that we can have the power of God’s very Spirit as our power to act.
The comfort of an accompanier and friend
Please God, some mass movements of such power might influence the present days. That depends, of course, on many ordinary people like ourselves becoming, more and more, recipients and agents of that power.
In this journey of Lent, I know that for me personally, a relevant challenge is to give up some more of the self-focus in order to take up some more of the other-focus.
But a great comfort in that challenge is the prospect of letting God’s Spirit in, more truly, as my constant accompanier and friend; as a Power to be truly, joyfully, with me, as I allow the stories of others to influence, form and change me.
With friendship in God’s mission – Blessed are those who mourn.
Fr Paul Roberts is the Parish Priest of Our Lady Queen of Peace Greystanes, in the Diocese of Parramatta.
This reflection is an example of the Diocesan Pastoral Plan priority of Formation to achieve the objective of becoming a Humble and Healing Church. Visit Synodality to learn more.
Fr Paul Roberts with Father Kinley Tshring SJ, the only Catholic priest serving the country of Bhutan. The photo was taken during Fr Paul’s recent visit as part of his ongoing missionary work in remote far north India, near Kalimpong in the lower Himalayas. Image: supplied
