From the Vicar…
Dear Friends,
After several years of near-drought, we are now almost washed away. The swale (or the gully) beside S. Michael’s Church has been a lake almost weekly this winter, an occurrence that was once very rare indeed. The dark, wet days have us longing for the springtime, the brighter and longer light, and the new sense of growth and vigour.
We are delighted today to baptise Ethan William Prince, and to welcome his family and friends. Ethan’s brother Kyan, was baptised here at Easter last year.
Christian World Service is at present appealing to Church communities, and others, to provide funds to help with urgent humanitarian relief for Darfur, in the Sudan. There is some material about this on the notice-boards, and giving envelopes at the back of the church. This has been on my mind as I have been considering the Mass readings for today, especially the Gospel and the Isaiah reading. What can it mean to receive in the Eucharist the bread that is the Body of Christ, and to hear of the feeding of the multitude, the most frequently told story in the Gospels, while people are dying of starvation within telephone and email reach of us?
I have recently read a famous address that Fr Pedro Arrupe, leader of the Jesuits, gave at a World-wide Eucharistic Congress in 1976. To thousands gathered in an auditorium in Philadelphia, to celebrate and consider the meaning of the Eucharist, he said this:
‘Lord, it is good for us to be here.’ It is good to be with you and share with you this wonderful celebration. But suppose the hungry of the world were also here with us this morning. Let us think only of those who are going to die of starvation today. There would be thousands of them, probably more than all of us who are gathered in this hall. Let us try to see them; their bodies weak and emaciated, their outstretched hands, their weak and fading voices, their terrible silence: ‘Give us bread…give us bread for we are dying of hunger!’
And if, at the end of our discussions on ‘the Eucharist and the Hunger for Bread’, as we left the hall, we had to pick our way through this mass of dying bodies, how could we claim that our Eucharist is the Bread of Life? How could we pretend to be announcing and sharing with others the same Lord who said: ‘I come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly’ ?
It matters little whether these starving people are physically before our eyes here and now or scattered throughout the world… The tragedy and injustice of their death are the same wherever it takes place. And wherever it does take place, we who are here this morning have our share of responsibility. For, in the Eucharist, we receive Jesus Christ, who will one day ask us: ‘I was hungry, did you give me to eat? I was thirsty, did you give me to drink? I tell you solemnly, insofar as you neglected to do this to one of the least of these, my brothers or sisters, you neglected to do it to me.’ Yes, we are all responsible, all involved.
I quote these simple and utterly confronting words, not only to gather gifts for Darfur, but to make us all more aware of the terrifying and holy place we step into when we gather for Eucharist. There we are gathered together with Jesus Christ, at the heart of all the suffering and all the hope of the world. In the Gospel today, Jesus told his disciples as they faced the hungry crowd, “They need not go away. You give them something to eat!”
May God bless you allPeter Williams
