Seasons in a life of faith.
Ordinary Sunday 31: 3rd November, 2002
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
Sometimes when people come to live in a place like Melbourne where we have such a strong awareness of the changes of the seasons, they say that they can see the shape of the year more readily here. It is obviously easier still in the countryside. We can see and experience the steady rhythm of the progress from the earliest splashes of the bright fresh new colour of early spring, through to the warmth and then the sometimes destructive heat of the summer to the fullness of autumn. In inner Melbourne that means leaves everywhere. And then whatever winter might bring by way of rain and cold and bareness before it starts all over again. If we were good gardeners, there would be many tasks specific to particular times. There would be particular pleasures associated with particular months and weeks. We would know these things and get great pleasure out of them. Indeed, we would be disappointed if the year turned out unexpectedly bad and the favourite blossoms or produce were less than they could be. But we can also acknowledge times of danger or potential threat. So it is that this season we are anticipating a bad summer. We can see the signs and we are trying to prepare. But there are connections and there is a pattern. We know it and recognise it. We do very much need to think and to connect and to be reassured that the fundamental shape of things is still there. This is in the context of a world that is all too apparently very much out of joint.
Reading my favourite weekly 'The Tablet' this week, I came across a book review for a new publication that I certainly hope we can get into our excellent Bookroom. It was a Canterbury Press imprint entitled Talking to the Neighbours, by Ronald Blythe. This East Anglian country Anglican looks to the rhythm of the seasons and ties it in with the shape of the Church year. As the reviewer noted:
"The liturgical year gives a structure to the seasons, a rotundity to the passage of time. Reassuringly repetitive, the feasts come (and until next year) go, weather, landscape and familiar views change just as we knew they would... Quite suddenly, as always, we are close to Advent."
The book reviewed is evidently a series of meditations, reflections and conversations on this theme of the connectedness of things, on the patterns of the natural year and of the liturgical year. And it sounds good to me, even if it will be upside down in a northern hemisphere sort of way. I want to read it and share in the thinking and the connecting. So I have put in my order and perhaps I can have it for a Christmas present. So the year rolls around.
But I found that the author was evidently wanting to make the same point about the reassurance that the familiar shape of the Church year offers that I had already suggested in my notes in the pew sheet this week. So of course I found that interesting. I want to develop that further though, because I am sure that this is something that resonates strongly with those who are strongly shaped by our tradition within the Church which honours this repeating pattern. Like the natural year, the Church year has clear seasons and transition points. It has highs and lows. It has times of bursting and exciting life and the steady routine. But for us it has importance. It is not a matter of little consequence. Different colours, different ceremonial, different music, different texts, different emphasis, each appropriate to the time - these are just some of the external indicators of the underlying steady movement, year by year. For us, it does make a difference. And for us, it is a difference of the heart, not just the eye or the mind.
We do value this shape, this cycle of liturgy and festival, of days of celebration, days of sadness, days that are ordinary and uneventful. This is because we are fed and our lives are enriched by the unfolding experience of our place in the scheme of things. We do this as a community of faith. We do this together and we do it not only in the company of fellow Christians everywhere in this generation, but also in the company of those in all the generations and centuries that have gone before us. This is truly impressive.
We grow as Christian people because of our sharing together in the pattern of the major events in the life of the Lord, Our Lady and the Saints. The way we address the normal and abnormal challenges of everyday life is intended to be different because of our regular celebration of the teachings of the faith, because of our deepening exploring of what it is to live as Christian people. This we engage in week by week. High days and ordinary times, season by season, year by year. We value this regular pattern and cycle in our tradition for many reasons, but not the least being that in its completeness it provides us with a personal structure for living and dying that serves us well when suddenly all is under challenge or when simply things go wrong, badly. And again, we are urged to face these things together and not alone.
For there are seasons in the life of an individual Christian person too. There is youth. There is maturity. There is fulness of years. There is the celebration of new life or new faith. There is baptism and confirmation. The first time you made your communion. There can be the celebration of relationship in marriage. There can be times that are hard or bleak or frustrating. There can be times of regret and repentance and restoration that can be approached through reconciliation and confession. There can be times of illness or suffering when the comfort and grace of anointing is a true and prayerful blessing. There are always the times regular and frequent when we share in the Blessed Sacrament. And there is the grace of a good death. In all and through all there is God. And in all and through all there are also our fellow Christians, sharing this journey, perhaps hoping these same hopes and sharing these same fears. But there is a pattern and a shape. And in this there is a promise and a hope.
We have ourselves just gone past the familiar signposts that the festival of All Saints tide offers. We are fast approaching the end of the whole cycle. And we feel we are with friends. On Friday evening, the third mass for the day was a festival celebration of all the saints. It was joyful and celebratory. On Saturday morning – yesterday – there was a solemn High Mass of Requiem for all the souls – those known to us and loved by us, those unknown to us but loved by God. Whose thoughts would not have this year been with those who have so recently died suddenly and unprepared in acts of war and violence and terrorism? Whose thoughts would not be also on those who will yet die by such means? Our fear finds a context in our faith.
We did this in a specific way two Sundays ago on the Day of National Mourning for the victims of the Bali bombings. Our very understandable grief and fear and perhaps anger was addressed and offered up. Our hearts were heavy and tears were shed. But we had come to be in church at that time and on that day. So in word and sacrament, prayer and song we here joined in the way we know best with so many all around the country. The silence we shared after communion at each of those masses was very heavy. But the important thing is that the tradition we share indeed has the word, has the sacrament and the prayers and the songs to offer appropriate for that occasion and indeed for so many others that are quite different in mood and intensity. And in the silence and the space that the individual has, we have the chance to take this community offering and also make it our own.
The Lord be with you.
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Views is a
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