Post Holy Week thoughts

We were still adapting ourselves from Holy Week to Easter when here in the UK we are surrounded by noise and excitement, or is it frenzy, of a General election.

It is good to take time to unpack all the thoughts that came to us during Holy Week and see how this enables us to live in the light of Easter.  While the shallowness of the fleeting world dictates that we should move from one topic to another at the flick of a button, the depths of the light of Christ points to us the need to reflect, unpack and take time.  What underpins all the actions of our Saviour, that we have just re-lived, is humility, the need to see reality with the eyes of God. We ask that the warmth of the light of the Risen Christ will melt all the vestiges of pride that still linger around us and, sadly, within us from the swamps of fallen humanity.

We need the depth of the Risen Christ more than ever before as we are surrounded by the shallowness of relativism.

Holy Week this year was under that horrible cloud of sinful child abuse, which is always horrible not only when clerics commit it. Many commentators have filled inches of our newspapers pointing to the sins of some Church members, and I cannot agree more that this is healthy. What I find worrying is that with the announcement of the General election for the UK these issues seem to be destined to be completely buried before we have time to take stock and respond to them.

Is it possible that the abuse scandal was used against the Church by those whose first priority seems to be the damaging of the name of the Church, whose vast majority of members, ordained and lay are appalled by these sins, rather than by their care towards these victims? If so they need to apologise and repent as much as the disgusting perpetrators as with their actions they are using these victims for their own ends also.

Why is it that these scandals have been used to denounce and point fingers and rarely have the commentators contributed positively in the sense of finding or suggesting ways in which to help victims and point to ways to ensure that these horrible crimes never happen again?

If this plague of child abuse, really concerns us, and it must, why limit it only to the Church and forget that it happens more frequently elsewhere, especially in what should be the sanctuary of the immediate family? Are these children not important just as the others?

I pray and hope that the Risen Lord will enable His Church to rid itself of these horrible shackles of sin committed against children. I hope that in His light civil authorities will  ensure that structures like Social Work will not only assist victims but work to prevent from having new ones. Every child matters, not only those abused by evil clerics.

Humility will allow us to see reality with God’s eyes, will allow us to use our vote properly as a means of building up the kingdom and will allow the experts of this world to repent from using abused victims for their own ends. It will allow those who harmed children in this evil manner to realise the enormities of their sins and crimes and to start the long journey of repentance ahead of them and it will assist the victims in their equally long journey to rebuild their lives and live in the freedom and dignity that God has bestowed on each one of us. I am afraid that there are no short-cuts; Jesus has shown us this last week. The way has to pass through Calvary and it is called humility.

I pray that you who follow this Parish from the pages of this blog and those, over a thousand, who crossed the threshold of this church from Palm Sunday to Easter Day, will reflect upon humility and the need to denounce the corruption of sin and work that his freedom and justice is available to all.