Holy Week: Fr Andy Writes

HOLY CREATION, HOLY LIFE, HOLY WEEK – 2025

A CELEBRATION OF DIVERSITY

In many ways from a personal point of view, this Lent has been very reminiscent of the Lent we had during the first Lockdown in 2020. With our churches been closed I began writing a weekly “homily” based on the Lenten Sunday readings. The big difference of course is that this year I am having a “Lockdown” of my own, being confined to the surroundings of my house unable to get out and about due to a broken pelvis and various other ailments. But just as there were many positive and hopeful experiences in the first Lenten lockdown, so I have learned that there are many “magic” as well as “tragic” moments surrounding Lent this year.

For me Lent seems to have started on the 5th February (when I had the fall) and continued through Joe Long’s wife Liz who died on the 28th February. Naturally, the pain and sorrow of Liz’s death still hang in the air and I’m sure will be with Joe, his family, friends including myself for some time to come.

I have been struggling recently to keep positive and upbeat, perhaps due to an accumulative number of issues that seem to be prolonging the healing process. Many people believe that climate change and ecological crisis are an indication of a deep and spiritual crisis. The challenges we face can be difficult even to think about. Climate change, political polarisation, economic upheaval, and mass extinction together create a planetary emergency of overwhelming proportions. We need to strengthen our capacity to face this polycrisis so that we can respond with resilience and adapt with creative power.

We are faced with news from all over the world, which can be depressing if we take too much on board. But it does not stop the fact that in our world today there are human and other than human communities and populations being deprived of their homes, their food, their safety and their lives in wars, skirmishes, greedy land grabs and in fearful climate events.

We see the destruction of Nature and feel grief for species being lost because of habitat degradation, through climate change, pollution and greed. We can only imagine the suffering of other-than-human beings exposed to record breaking temperatures, high winds, fires and flooding.

Here in the UK things are relatively “normal”. We are not living in a war zone and not yet directly suffered loses like those of our homes in fires and flood, though some have experienced climate events like flooding and scorching summers. But our relative comfort is temporary as the planet warms, peoples relocate, food crops fail, refugee numbers increase, many species “move north”. Things are not improving by any means!

These are surely dark times. St John of the Cross wrote about his dark times in his prison in Spain and called it “Dark night of the Soul”. These days can be certainly called the dark night of our souls, the dark night of society, the dark night of our species and a dark night for all the non-human species in our world today.

But there are signs of new light: A few weeks ago we celebrated the lovely feast of the Annunciation, which is a truly tremendous song of hope in our time of darkness. The first century, under the imperial rule of the Roman Empire was not a pleasant time to be enduring. We know that the story that begins with the Annunciation ends with the crucifixion, and that certainly was not a pleasant happening. But then it does not end with the Crucifixion. It goes on to talk about Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit to awaken all peoples, to our capacity for goodness and beauty and justice and compassion. So the whole story in many ways begins with Annunciation, goes through the dying process of the dark night, but refuses to end there.

Into this dark night humanity is promised a child, a child who brings hope into our world, as there is so much darkness and fear we have to face. As we have mentioned previously we are facing our own extinction and millions of species have already gone extinct, and millions more are facing their own extinction. We are in this together, this suffering of Mother Earth, and as we move towards Easter, the light of Christ begins to shine even more brightly.

One would think that people who insist they believe in one God would understand that everyone on Earth is equally a child of that one God. Christians ought to be first in line to cross artificial boundaries created by nation states, class systems, cultures, and even religions. Often, we’re the last! It makes one wonder if we believe what we say we believe. Religion too often becomes the way to defend the self instead of the way to “let go of the self” as Jesus forthrightly taught.

Let us just think for a moment of the two great commandments that Jesus advocated so much in his teachings, “This is the greatest commandment, to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And love thy neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than this”. (Matt 22:36-40). Now ask yourself: what comes to mind when you hear the pronouns “we” and “us” in a religious context? Maybe, for example – “My God have mercy on us” or “May God bless us”. Who is “us”? Almost always we see it as referring to members of our own community, as in “we the people gathered here today in worship”.

But perhaps we could change the awareness and practice if we understand that the reach of these pronouns stretches much wider, to include all of humanity. To expand the boundary of “us” beyond our own tribal silos to include humans who differ by race, gender, class, sexual orientation, immigration status, education, political opinion, religion and other markers by which we hang our personal and group identities.

Jesus has already made this clear in the parable of the Good Samaritan, where our neighbour is extended to all those who are in need, that is all human beings are included in “us”. But now we live in an ecological era, with a faith in God who enfolds all creatures with affection an invites us to cross the species line and include other living creatures who are not Homo sapiens in “us”. John’s Gospel tells us that “The Word was made flesh” (John 1), not that he became human, or even a man, but flesh, suggesting that Jesus Christ is in solidarity with all living creatures that suffer and die (as Jesus did on the cross), and whose resurrection promises a blessed future for the whole world, then this “us” includes the whole community of creation.

Some people may object that humans are far superior than all other creatures, but it is well worth remembering that all species are not the same, but all need to be respected. Human beings are the most recent visitors to planet earth after a 13.8 billion years or creation. Humans it seems emerged on earth somewhere between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago from prior species of human ancestors in Africa. To help grasp this scientist Carl Sagan suggests a rough timeline that scales the history of the universe onto one earth year. So if the Big Bang took place on the 1st January, then our Milky Way galaxy formed on May 12th. After the birth and death of generations of stars, our solar system formed on September 2nd. Primitive life forms began to grow on earth on September 21st, followed by multi-cellular organisms around November 15th. The days of December saw a sequence of species emerge, ranging from worms, fish, land plants, insects, and amphibians, to trees, dinosaurs, mammals, birds, flowers, and hominids. Modern human beings emerged on December 31st at eight minutes to midnight.  

Despite our late arrival on earth we have managed much creative beauty as well as ugliness and evil. We have even figured out how to make nuclear weapons whose use would destroy most life on earth. Tragically our current use of fossil fuels is damaging the very climate that for thousands of years has made our planet so hospitable to the flourishing of life.

So when we pray “we” and “us” we speak in faith communities in relation to all the earth, its ecosystem and species, because that is where God is to be found. In union with the compassionate heart of God, we are inspired to enfold other creatures with our affection and act to save the earth under threat. The care for our common home becomes not something added on, but part of loving our neighbour, loving “us”.

Wishing you all a very happy Holy Week and Easter Celebration, love Andy