Call on his name

When scripture says: those who believe in him will have no cause for shame, it makes no distinction between Jew and Greek: all belong to the same Lord who is rich enough, however many who ask for his help, for everyone who calls on he name of the Lord will be saved. 

Romans 10:10 - 13

New beginnings. A fresh start. It appeals to our deeper selves, giving ourselves permission to move on, to accept that our previous journey has been completed.  A new start brings optimism, it stirs our capacity for resilience. But most of all a new beginning gives hope.

And hope is what Lent is. It is the anticipation of what is to come, what may be, what can be desired and sought and achieved.

Jurgen Moltmann, a German prisoner of war, who amidst the enormous suffering caused by his people, became a Christian after being given a copy of the New Testament by an American chaplain. As his story is told, Moltmann could at last see the glimmer, the possibility, of a future for his own generation of lost souls. In time he expressed his reflections in The Theology of hope. For the end times are the consummation of creation itself. For the Christian, hope is driven towards that moment when all is made anew in Christ. For Moltmann hopelessness is sin.

Paul, some 20 centuries ago, also expressed rather forthrightly what lies at the core of Christian hope and expectation:

Scripture says: The word, that is the faith we proclaim, is very near to you, it is on your lips and in your heart. If your lips confess that Jesus is Lord and if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved. By believing from the heart you are made righteous; by confessing with your lips you are saved (Roman 10:8 - 10)

If what we believe, as many would argue, is just simply fiction, a panacea for the ills of the present, then what Christians have proposed for 2000 years is an utter fabrication. The only hope then would be for ‘world peace’, for an end to world hunger, tyranny, war. This then is why Christian faith guarantees not just a perspective, but a fundamental option for human hope and aspiration.

As our world looks on in horror at Ukraine, the awful disaster of the NSW and Queensland floods, and in our own backyard, the loss of the six young people of Hillcrest Primary in Devonport - we must choose that fundamental option, but must go well beyond dreams and visions, it demands concrete responses and a clear, definitive invitation to place upon the lips of all humanity that Jesus is truly Lord.

Peter Douglas

 

A Reflection for the Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Blog by Ashley McKinless

 

“Moses said to the people:

‘Today I have set before you

life and prosperity, death and doom.

If you obey the commandments of the LORD… you will live and grow numerous,

and the LORD, your God,

will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy’” (Dt 30:50).

 

“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself

and take up his cross daily and follow me.

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,

but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Lk 9:23).

 

Reading the opening words of today’s first reading, it’s hard not to think of the war in Ukraine. Death and doom are indeed before us. As I write this, Russia is escalating its attacks on civilian targets, and the threat of nuclear war weighs on the world.

 

Choose life and love the Lord, Moses exhorts the Israelites, and “that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land” God has promised you. It is a logic that seems very distant, even empty, as we witness men and women fighting and dying in a war they did not choose. We know that in war and in times of peace there is no guarantee that the just will prosper, that the innocent will be blessed in their land. At least not by the logic of our fallen world.

 

Jesus, of course, offers us a different logic, though logic is probably not the right word. He shows us a path, a way to follow, that at first glance does not seem appealing but in a way rings true. Take up your cross daily, he says. Who can look at the world right now or their own life and deny that there are more than enough crosses to bear? Or that fighting for what is true and just often requires great sacrifice, and that even those sacrifices might not be rewarded in this life?

 

And yet this path that Jesus gives us is not one of death and doom if we believe his promise to us. Because God promises not only to be with us when we pick up our daily crosses but that this path leads to something much greater than prosperity in this life: eternal life with God.

 

Now that sounds appealing. But do I really believe it? I say I do every week at Mass. But it can be easy to forget or to doubt as I look at the senseless suffering in Ukraine and around the world and wonder what this is all for, if the sacrifices are worth it. I hope they are. “Blessed are they who hope in the Lord,” the psalmist says today. So maybe for now hope is enough. And as I stumble along the path Jesus has tread before us this Lent, I will seek to kindle that hope by remembering each day where this journey ends and that Christ always keeps his promises.

 

Published in America Media 3 March 2022