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That dark held a memory of sunset and a rumour of dawn
Simon Stewart
‘Mercy, not sacrifice’
Having become a regular in the prison, I occasionally get invited to lead a service on Sunday mornings. I am on a rota of invited speakers from very varied traditions so the format is completely free. Faced with such scope and freedom, I invariably come up with Mass minus Communion! Not that the structure is of great concern to the guys in the prison. As long as they can sing their favourite hymns (‘Here I Am, Lord’, ‘Amazing Grace’), and have an open space for spontaneous prayer they are happy. And boy can they sing! The notes are not always in the right place but they are hit with gusto, and lift the heart.
When it comes to ‘breaking the word’, I tend to cheat, asking them to reflect and share first. When they have finished, there is little significant left to say. They know they are sinners, and they also know that Jesus came for them. Their deep need for forgiveness and the rebuilding of their self-respect makes them vessels ready to be filled to the brim. The heart of the Gospel is revealed in all its power and relevance. I come away humbled and often thoroughly evangelised.
In search of some good news
I attended a national conference looking at the possibility of producing a national resource on evangelisation. Advisers, agency directors, four bishops, priests, sisters and an awful lot of acronyms! It was held at a conference centre outside London – whether north, south, east or west, I’m not sure, since when I go to the ‘big smoke’ I wander round like a lost soul worrying that someone will mug me. Wherever it was, it had beautiful grounds in rolling countryside and would have been an excellent place for a retreat.
I ended up in an excellent discussion group, but the process of the two days became snarled up in an old trap of trying to pin down exact definitions of terms – this, despite the fact, that it began with a very clear paper on evangelisation given by Bishop Malcolm MacMahon. As participants debated evangelisation as personal conversion or community transformation, it became clear that of course it is both and everything in between, and that we’d better get on with it.
On the second afternoon, restless and overloaded with theory, I wandered into the woods. I was stopped in my tracks by a blaze of pinkish-red through the green. It was a rhododendron bush next to a murky pond. I felt a bit like a small boy finding treasure and my delight was increased when a heron suddenly took off and laboured into the air through the trees.
On the final morning I sat with the experience while sitting under a tree from which white blossom was falling and carpeting the grass. Words can be helpful but maybe the good news is more like something beautiful catching you when you least expect it.
A “bit of a do” for Fr. Val
It was an emotional affair as these things are. The liturgy was a wee bit chaotic but punctuated by moments of profound insight. I was moved by two things that were said in particular. Fr. Val suggested that a good starting point for evangelisation would be if all our churches were turned inside-out. He also told a story that confronted us all with the question: ‘Do we have a word of encouragement for the people out there?’ It’s not much to ask. It may be all that people need to turn them to Christ. But the question also weighed heavily in a different way: ‘Do we have a word of encouragement for each other within the Church?’
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