Scottish Catholic Observer

JAN 6 2017 I went to bed early last Saturday, so I awoke to the terrible news of another terrorist attack in London. Coming so soon after the ­bombing in Manchester, it seems as though we’re stuck in a nightmarish cycle of mindless violence, officials calling for calm and community cohesion, public displays of grief and social media hashtags.

Since this attack coincided with the Solemnity of Pentecost, which is surely the feast of cohesion, I sat down and quickly rewrote my homily for that day.

The Church begins with a going out into the streets, leaving behind the safe but claustrophobic space of the Upper Room. Along with a proclamation of the marvels of God, the Apostles also bring that Spirit of peace which Jesus had breathed upon them. The people who heard their words either received them with a sense of wonder or dismissed them with a sneer.

It’s a pity our Lectionary cuts the reading from the Acts of the Apostles short of that last line where it tells us that some laughed off the miracle of Pentecost, putting it down to an overindulgence in new wine (Acts 2:13).

Every Pentecost sends the Church back out into the streets because, where the people are, the Church must be too. In the wake of recent events, those streets may harbour just a little more fear and anger, or hatred and despair than they did a short while before. But we shouldn’t allow these fruits of the ­­counter-spirit to stifle the core message of the Gospel, which is peace and redemption.

That said, there is no denying that we are facing new challenges and that the threat of ­religiously motivated or justified violence isn’t going to go away any time soon.

It also needs to be said that Islam has a problem in this regard. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI drew our attention to this in his (now famous) Regensburg address in 2006.

At that time, I co-wrote a piece for the Catholic Herald with my colleague from the ­University of Glasgow, Dr Aman De Sondy, in which we discussed the fallout from the Pope’s lecture. We agreed that, uniquely, Islam has this association with violence in its DNA.

For all the sentiments of peace we encounter in the Qur’an, you can’t airbrush the fact that its prophet was a ­warrior. Yes, you can point to bloodthirsty passages in the Old Testament and we are all ­familiar with acts of terrible ­violence carried out in the name of Christ or his Church, but the fact that the foundational figure in Islam is personally implicated in armed struggle lends legitimacy to those who seek to carry out similar acts in God’s name.

But while it’s necessary to point out the elephant in the ‘inter-religious dialogue room’ from time to time, it’s also important to acknowledge that Muslims suffer as a ­consequence of this far more than anybody else.

The Syrian refugees in this parish have been uprooted by the same cycle of violence and destruction which has visited our ­communities of late. The beautiful, clever children of these refugees come ­running up to greet me in the playground in their increasingly broad Scots accents, their hands shooting straight up in answer to questions about RE in class, while my co-religionists often yawn or scratch their heads.

If I thought that anyone would be cruel to these kids, whom I regard as mine as much the others, or were to harm a hair on their heads, I would be up on a charge myself.

In the end, our chief weapons in this war of stealth in which we are now engaged are ­intelligence and love. That might sound like unrealistic twaddle, but that’s what the intoxicating Spirit of Pentecost says to us, says through us.

Our P7 Confirmations went well on Thursday of last week and, in an early answer to my request for the bishop to get out and ­confirm more, the very next day he was down at St Columba’s bright and early to confirm one of the pupils there.

It was very gracious of him to come down to the Oratory and confer the Sacrament in the presence of Chiara’s family and school friends. Plus, on top of that, he’ll be back down on ­Friday for the high school’s patronal feast day Mass. Say what you like about Bishop Keenan (and I often do), he ­certainly puts in a good shift.

Just what the Spirit is saying to the Church in this neck of the woods is very much on our minds just now. Our deanery is meeting on Wednesday to discuss the over-supply of Masses during the summer period and the under-supply of priests to provide those same services.

The aim is to coordinate a lighter summer schedule to allow those who are not on ­holiday to cover those who are.

It is just over a year now since the Diocesan Synod concluded the first part of its business. Tonight—Friday—the bishop is inviting the priests and the ­people of the diocese to join him for Mass at which will be published the Acta, the formal record of the Synod deliberations.

We have already drawn a number of principles from the Synod discussions, and these will be used to shape the diocese in years to come.

No matter what happens in the next phase of implementing these recommendations of the synod, it seems fairly clear that there will be some ‘restructuring’ to be done. This will require both a spirit of sacrifice and imagination in equal measure.

In order to attain something new, perhaps we shall have to let go of some things which are now old. Not that I’m one of those people who have a mania for novelty or discarding ‘old’ things for the sake of it.

I guess it comes down to that same message of Pentecost. We are used to the comfort of the Upper Room, but we need to be equipped for that mission of going into the streets and public squares, where the folk who

no longer come to us are to be found. It is to them that the message must be addressed with the passion of those first ‘Good Newscasters.’

This weekend I am back to teaching, offering some thoughts to the Catechists of Glasgow Archdiocese on the use of art in their own religious instruction. Art is a tremendous resource for making some of the challenging truths of our Faith more accessible.

After all, we belong to a religious tradition which has often relied more on the evocative power of images than the printed word to speak to the hearts and minds of ordinary people.

Perhaps this is illustrated in the great feast which awaits us this weekend: the Blessed Trinity. The traditions of both the Christian West and East offer us complimentary approaches to this most impenetrable of mysteries.

Whether it is Andrei Rublev’s famous icon or Botticelli’s ­Santissima Trinità, there are profound insights to be gleaned by opening ourselves to the ­language of symbol, colour and shape. In fact, the power of sacred art is such that the act of looking is itself sacramental: we are drawn from external appearances to a reality contained deep within the artefact—and deep within us too.

To be honest, such are the homiletic challenges of speaking about the Trinity that this ­Sunday is one of those times in the year when we clergy would welcome a letter from one of the bishops ‘to be read at all Masses.

Unhelpfully, the Bishops’ Conference seems determined to make us all wade into the deep water of God’s inner life without peripheral distractions. Ah well, I’ll just have to get out my ­kettle, paddling pool and ice tray again. Honestly, don’t ask.