Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church and this week began with the Seventh Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VII). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (15 July) remembers Saint Swithun (ca 862), Bishop of Winchester, and Saint Bonaventure (1274), Friar, Bishop and Teacher of the Faith.
I am planning to visit Tamworth and Lichfield later today. But, before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Matthew 5: 43-48 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.’
This morning’s reflection:
We are half-through July, yet this has hardly been perfect summer weather. Today is Saint Swithun’s Day, so many people – in a very traditional English way of being superstitious – may be half concerned that whatever weather we have today is going to continue for the next 40 days, imperfect as it may be.
Last night’s England v Spain Euro final could have been a very perfect evening indeed. But iin many ways it was a good end to what has been a very good championship for an English team that represents so much that is good in England today. They were more than good enough as a team, but too often in our lives we demand what is perfect at the expense of delighting in what is good and what is good enough.
However, this morning I am wrestling with the advice in this Gospel reading: ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5: 48).
I certainly cannot ever see myself as being perfect, or even aspiring to be perfect. But this Gospel advice this morning reminds me of Patrick Gale’s novel, A Perfectly Good Man, one of the books that was part of my holiday reading some years ago.
I had never read any of his novels before, but this book was recommended to me by someone who felt she was eerily reading a book about someone who knew more about me than she realised was possible.
TS Eliot’s ‘East Coker’ begins with the words:
In my beginning is my end.
And it closes:
In my end is my beginning.
Without giving away the story line of this book, in many ways these two lines could describe how Patrick Gale narrates his story in A Perfectly Good Man. As I read it, I was not waiting to discover what happens in the end, but was waiting for an end that could tell me why all that is happening is taking place.
I was surprised at the writer’s twists and turns, but more taken aback when I felt I was holding up a mirror to myself.
There is the description of farm life that brought me back to a time when I lived on my grandmother’s farm.
There was the religious experience in teenage years that become life-changing for the main character, Father Barnaby Johnson.
There is his approach to spirituality and liturgy, his choice of reading, and the off-centre involvement of Quakers.
I am more positive about my experiences of old second-hand bookshops, but I could identify with his experience of visiting the old ancestral home in rural England.
There is his dysfunctional relationship with his father, his liberal boarding school or minor public school education, a sibling who died while he is still in his teens, an adoption, and a feeling of being marginalised or even being an outsider at a parent’s funeral.
There is his participation in street protests in 1980s England that parallels my own role in CND protests.
There are developed interests in art and the artist, in museums and music.
And there is the powerful use of a Facebook group today and the impact of social media.
Even the graffiti on the church walls, which may shock many readers, even those who are not church-going, reminded me of graffiti I found on a church wall many years ago while I was providing Sunday cover.
And there is the chilling parishioner, Modest Carlsson, who shows that cruelty and evil can stalk the land.
This is a very Anglican story about a very Anglican priest.
It is a life story presented almost like a series of photographs that have fallen out of a family album and that are put back in a random way, yet only make sense when they are all looked at each in turn. The primary suspense in this novel lies not in the ‘what’, but the ‘when’ and ‘how.’
Time and again, in recent months, I have asked who decided in recent years that ‘good enough’ is simply not good enough, that we have to excel?
‘Please don’t feel you always have to be good,’ eight-year-old Barnaby Johnson is advised close to the end of this novel. ‘Sometimes you’re so good it hurts to watch you.’
They are wise words, indeed. But too often they go largely unheeded. Father Barnaby is a complex and nuanced character. Yet he is also an ordinary man, with all the sinfulness, temptations and ambiguities of a good but ordinary man.
It is also about cruelty, deception and love, and it is written with compassion and understanding.
I have only been to Cornwall once, but many his descriptions of England could be of places I know and love near Lichfield and in rural south Staffordshire, or in East Anglia, North Wiltshire or the West Country, although the setting could easily be moved to many parts of Ireland too.
This is a discussion of what it means to be a good person that should be read by every priest and every aspiring priest. Once again, it is an example of a novelist dealing with religion and belief in the 21st century, and with so many of the issues debated in pastoral theology today.
In the many flashbacks I have from my childhood, one is of being told I needed to try harder.
‘I’m doing my best,’ was my quick retort.
‘Well, your best is simply not good enough’ was the cruel response from an adult who thought this was being smart and witty, but who never knew how to be loving and encouraging.
Rather than crumbling under his response, I have been content enough ever since to try to do my best and to accept that as being good enough. I do not seek to be perfect or need to be perfect in the eyes of others.
Today’s Prayers (Monday 15 July 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Advocacy, human, environmental and territorial rights programme in Brazil.’ This theme was introduced yesterday by the Revd Dr Rodrigo Espiúca dos Anjos Siqueira, Diocesan Officer for human, environmental and territorial rights in the Anglican Diocese of Brasilia.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 15 July 2024) invites us to pray:
Pray for the advancement of sexual and reproductive rights for all, especially women and those affected by gender-based prejudice and violence.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
by whose grace we celebrate again
the feast of your servant Swithun:
grant that, as he governed with gentleness
the people committed to his care,
so we, rejoicing in our Christian inheritance,
may always seek to build up your Church in unity and love;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Post Communion Prayer:
God, shepherd of your people,
whose servant Swithun revealed the loving service of Christ
in his ministry as a pastor of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.
Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
• Patrick Gale A Perfectly Good Man (HarperCollins UK/Fourth Estate, 2012).
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
No comments:
Post a Comment