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Thursday 23 November 2017

Prepare for Miracles



A few days ago, in a small town in the Cordillera mountain range, we sat at a table having dinner opposite a man with a vision. I was surprised by it and at the same time knew that it would be magnificent. 

Earlier that day after Mass the Priest asked people to share any testimonies or insights on the goodness of God and my wife gave witness to a period in our lives where through prayer for healing, both the laying on of hands and prayers over the phone from overseas, I had been healed by God following a rather unpleasant brain haemorrhage I had 9 years ago. I left the hospital without any operation, without medication or any permanent ill effects.

Whenever we go away we always bring blessed oil (a sacramental) and prayer cards from our prayer group for whatever local community we encounter; but this trip was different. The apostolic zeal and intense hunger for God of the town’s folk took our breath away. We were invited to speak at different prayer and church groups, taken out into the hills, to the many dwellings on the rice terraces where the sick were waiting for prayers. 

And together with the priest and praying community so many were prayed over: a patient with multiple sclerosis, a stroke patient and finally a lady with gall stones and heart complications who was in such agony when the group arrived. By the next morning the lady we last visited was sat on the porch enjoying the sunshine and praising God, feeling better. Serious illness is a lonely place for patients and their care givers alike, and hearing testimonies of healing and receiving prayers for it injects a ray of hope into the gloom.

As we finished dinner with the Principal of the local High school, he shared his dream of Catholic groups from their community visiting the sick in their homes and hospitals, not only for company or sympathy, but to bring the healing power of God to them. His own experiences with the long illnesses of his wife and children have shown him that it was only the non-Catholic Christian sects who sent people to pray for healing. Surely, as Catholics we must do likewise. Now they will begin.

It was a beautiful thing to see such love in a community for their sick and elderly neighbours as well as this intense desire to serve them and put their faith in the living God. The parishioners have purity of heart and purity of intention; that is a rare sight. Somehow I know God will honour that and we will hear of great miracles in that town. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. (James 5:14)

Monday 13 November 2017

War against Self-Interest


Padre Pio commented once that “only a general knows how and when to use one of his soldiers” There is as wide a variety of men and strategies as there are battles to fight. 

I suspect the Celtic part of my ancestry led me to embrace the idea that you can get a lot further in battle with an axe and a kind word than you can with just a kind word but I am also inspired by the diplomacy and patience of an Englishman, William Wilberforce who stood valiantly against slavery for most of his life, completing the task of its abolition across the whole British Empire just three days before he died. 

The key to success for this great man of God was that he not only had a clear vision of what was right and wrong in the sight of God but also he knew why his opponents (almost everyone at the time) could not see it. As he put it in one of his speeches “...how self interest can draw a film across the eyes, so thick, that total blindness could do no more; and how it is our duty therefore to trust not to the reasonings of interested men, or to their way of colouring a transaction...”

He knew and made allowance for the weaknesses of man. Self-interest can justify absolutely anything in the mind of the one who wants it badly enough. Anyone can produce a litany of reasons for pursuing whatever he desires; he justifies what he wants so he can have it regardless of whether or not it is right. 

Wilberforce knew it and patiently made the blind to see, lifting the film off gradually through prayer, words and deeds until the nation understood, through a gift of grace, the horror of slavery and the ugliness of their own selfish hearts.

The same is true in the smaller details of life and this is where it becomes personal. What are the motives behind our daily decisions, choices, and speech? Do we give reasons for our actions to justify them or are they pure enough that there is no need to qualify them?

Every human heart is the battlefield and it’s only the amazing grace of God that can win the day as it enlightens individual hearts, heals the blindness of self-interest.

Whatever kind of Christian soldiers we are, whether savages or diplomats, we must hold our place in the line and with the weapon of prayer we will overcome.

Tuesday 7 November 2017

‘Ancient Paths’


When my grandfather was born, the steam train and walking were the means of transport as they had been for a long time. He lived to see supersonic flight and a man on the moon. Our last century seems to have produced such advancements in technology that it’s almost as if someone had nipped back to Eden for another bite of that apple.

Some are indeed amazing, from the heights of the Cordillera mountain range, with a laptop, a mobile broadband and harnessing the satellites that are encircling the earth, I can zoom in to the roof of a shed in old Trafford to see if my cat (Max) is sleeping in his favourite spot after a hearty lunch. His is. No amount of technology can change his nature, but alas ours has been.

In that same mountain range, I had the privilege to meet people who, in their hearts, have not moved too far from Eden.A tribal people living a simple agricultural lifestyle, very much in harmony with their ancestral land and the seasons.Organically grown food, using other plants as fertiliser and for pest control, water from a crystal clear river and mountain springs above.Vegetarians, except when a deer or a wild boar wanders by.

But the most astonishing thing, was the beauty of their hearts. A natural hospitality that welcomes strangers as family, without question. At first I found it slightly unnerving, having lived mostly in rather inhospitable places by comparison. It was an all embracing loving community, seasoned by Christianity (only a few centuries ago). Minimal crime if any, a small school and some of the most beautiful mountains and valleys that our Creator ever trod.A dead-zone for cell phones, no internet, no TV, and an improvised hydro electric system for lighting. Just what was useful.It is holy ground.

.There is something in the pace and noise we have created in the modern world that deadens the soul, crushes the spirit, we become machine-like, on a production line from birth to death, sometimes without entering into the purpose of our existence at all. We have disconnected the workings of our lives (and government of our world) from God and from each other almost entirely and so our problems multiply. The natural rhythm of life and the planet were disrupted.  How we need to go back and discover the ancient paths, the simplicity of life, see what we have lost... just how much we have given away

One retiree I read about remarked that whilst he had ‘climbed the ladder of achievement all the way to the top’ he had come to realise that the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall!

I am fortunate that circumstance has given me the opportunity to simplify my lifestyle over the years and the more I do, the more I gain. When I give something up or get rid of something I don’t really need, mostly what I feel is relief.

Permanent Revolution


I heard a sermon once, the gist of which was that whilst the church’s mission is to evangelise the world; the world also seeks to evangelise the church. Whilst there are many examples of where this has taken place, a particularly prominent one I noticed is in the area of Catholic education.

Here in the Philippines there are many religious orders and many of them are involved in education, it’s their particular gift. Arriving centuries ago they set to work starting schools. Their founding fathers focus was generally the poor children, seeking to give them their faith and values and also a way out of poverty through a good education.

If we look at these same schools and colleges now it is a very different picture. Most are for the elite, the richest of the rich and their middle class poorer cousins. Whilst there will certainly be a proportion of scholarships, most are paying top dollar because the schools are the best. 

The poor alas will remain barefoot and living under the stars for some time yet. At some point someone was seduced by the dollar or the peso; maybe for the best of reasons, they could expand, have better facilities, all they had to do was play by the world’s rules and become what it wanted them to become. Such is the weakness of man. 

Another allied area is where they were nobbled, not by weakness this time but by their strength. Catholic schools have a reputation for being academically brilliant. I think this is true from primary schools to universities. All well and good, nothing wrong with that, until it becomes the primary driving force.

I have noticed that there is a tendency to hire teachers who are well qualified and competent in their chosen field whether it’s ABC or nuclear physics but not necessarily measuring up quite so well (or at all) as men and women of God. If the teachers are atheists or living lifestyles which are incompatible with Christianity can they really pass on the faith and values of the Catholic Church? Can they give what they do not have? The focus on academic excellence at the expense of its other purpose of making saints of the young is the most insidious worldly evangelisation.

They may become the most prestigious institutions and most sought after but fail to fulfil their stated purpose. By not being mindful of this struggle for mastery we risk being in the service of the enemy camp.

Leon Trotsky believed that for socialism to thrive and not become decadent, it needed to be in a constant state of flux or “permanent revolution” as he called it; (we might call it vigilance) he knew that any deviation from the ideal would be its downfall. As Catholics, as we know our enemy is far more powerful than tainted human nature alone, we should be all the more mindful and alert to his tactics. 

Sunday 5 November 2017

Ancient Weaponry



I live in the Philippines, one of the few citadels of Christendom that has not as yet ‘flung wide its gates’ to every evil; for example abortion is still illegal here.

Perhaps the reason it remains relatively strong is the realisation that on earth we are living in enemy occupied territory, there is a great confidence and reliance on prayer not only for help and defence but also for offence as I re-discovered last week.

I was in the shopping mall, a bit distracted and irritated, (I hate shopping) and at noon, over the loudspeaker a bell rang, and everyone in the place stopped dead in their tracks, like someone pressed pause on the remote. And we began to pray the Angelus together.

A few minutes and suddenly the atmosphere had changed, people were noticeably calmer, whatever was bugging me had gone too. Had we all just refocused our hearts heavenward or had the demons fled?  Both I believe.

I noticed the same thing on another day, this time at 6pm in the grounds of a Catholic University in Manila. Again as the bells rang out over the loudspeaker, everyone stopped, even the cars stopped and the security men at the gates bowed their heads and those few thousand souls, (together with those in every Catholic school in the entire country), as one, knowingly or unknowingly, went into battle together. 
What a great victory it must have been to eliminate this ancient weapon from everyday life in Europe, the sophistication or complexity of society makes the supernatural seem remote, irrelevant or unnecessary in the age of reason, but look at the continent now.

The funny thing is that it would be quite easy to reinstate this practice in all the Catholic schools and offices in the country; the benefits would be greatly felt.


A samurai warrior (Miyamoto Musashi) was onto something when he said “This is a truth: when you sacrifice your life, you must make fullest use of your weaponry. It is false not to do so, and to die with a weapon yet undrawn”.