Charity is the glory of God shining through us

Money can be something of a conundrum in the Christian life, particularly as one part of the world has vast wealth, the other vast poverty and the gap is seemingly ever widening.  Add to this the ‘natural’ tendency towards selfishness and a hostile economic system which encourages a posture of self-preservation; there will be a conflict between compassion and the fear of being irresponsible and winding up in want.

As in all things though, the Gospel turns this issue on its head and points towards eternity “Make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Furthermore, it encourages us to not be afraid. 

There are good examples to be found in this area; one grandmother I met years ago was given a large gift by her children and grandchildren so she could have the trip of a lifetime. She had never been abroad and after her many years of selfless service and kindness to her family they wanted her to have something special. This was in the mid-nineties at the tail end of the war in Bosnia and the beginning of the genocide in Rwanda. And she gave this gift to the refugees from these two conflicts instead of treating herself. I imagine she is reaping the reward of a lifetime of such acts now.

Another I heard of is a schoolboy who on hearing about the work of a charity in Africa that provides one meal a day for children so they can attend school every day, decided to forgo his birthday and Christmas presents and instead give what would have been spent to enable these children to be fed and get an education. He continued in this discipline year after year and later became a fundraiser to add to this wonderful legacy.

Sacrifice is no longer sacrifice when it is done in love, it is joy to the giver and life to the recipient.

‘Quest for Freedom’

 

The life story of Frederick Douglas remains a definitive work on slavery in pre-civil war America, because he was a slave, an eye witness, writing from experience. He secretly taught himself to read and freed his mind and the rest of him followed in due course.

Everything about slavery was designed to prevent any thought or hope of freedom; the slaveholders knew their craft well. The brutality required to subjugate their slaves and turn them into brutes, turned the slaveholders themselves into something much worse. One could say that to be a slave was to be possessed by the possessed.

It makes all the more understandable the condition of being a slave to sin, to be beholden to the cruellest taskmaster of all.

For Frederick, even though he was learned and articulate, there were so many obstacles and dangers in obtaining freedom, discouragements and temptations to resignation and settling for the certainties of slavery rather than the risk and uncertainty of freedom.  Many ensnared in sin suffer the same malaise. Freedom, whilst desirable, will make demands also.

The slave to sin initially gives reasons to sin because of the pleasure derived from it, then justifies it as not being sinful at all as the heart becomes calloused. Eventually there will come a point where the slave to sin has an emptiness that is so great that it can either lead to despair and self destruction or by God’s grace to liberation and salvation.

Eventually the yearning to be free overwhelmed Frederick.  Standing over a harbour looking at the sailing ships he prayed “You are loosed from your moorings and are free, I am fast in my chains and am a slave. You move merrily before the gentle gale, and I sadly before the bloody whip. You are freedom’s swift winged angels. I am confined in bands of iron...It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave.” Then he escaped.

For those entrenched in lives of bondage to sin, of whatever varieties, time will come when the heart cries out in a similar way. Freedom is only a step away, a decision and a prayer for mercy and forgiveness; then freedom is given by the Lord in an instant. That’s the miracle of the Divine Mercy.

Pilgrimage and Penance

Penance seems an odd word in this day and age; as is anything which is uncomfortable or can’t be done from a mobile phone app. But for Holy week I sometimes undertake a penitential walk.

I was inspired to do so by the story of a Brazilian plumber. His wife had just left him, and he was staring down the barrel of old age with a lot of failures and regrets in his backpack. He sold his van and tools and bought a plane ticket to the Holy Land. There comes a time in the life of every man when only authenticity and the truth will do and he went in search for it.

He joined a pilgrim group and on the eve of the visit to the route of the way of the Cross, he spent the night in prayer. In the morning, one of the group members would lead and carry a replica of the cross and he prayed for that privilege.  His prayer was answered.

As he placed it on his shoulder, he suddenly felt an incredible weight pressing down on him. It was revealed to him that this was the weight of his own sins only. As he walked the way of the cross, it was so difficult that he fell and struggled with it; the other pilgrims thought he was play-acting as he collapsed at the end in complete exhaustion.

Then, as he described it, he felt that all his sins were absorbed by the cross and when he stood up he felt as light as a feather. He returned to Brazil to an unknown and uncertain future but with a great love for Jesus and a growing confidence in His love to carry him through. 

Nature's Pharmacy

Last week I attended a symposium, given by a friend and her colleagues, where the anti-cancer and anti-snake venom properties of a plant were presented.

It was a 3 year multidisciplinary study and very thorough. Different parts of the plant were used:- roots, leaves, stems etc and their component compounds were extracted, identified and separated. Then they tested  their effect on cancer cells of different types (breast, lung, prostate) and compared the effect to currently used cancer treatments.

From the one plant, a number of different compounds were identified, many having a marked therapeutic use in killing off cancer cells (not all for the same type of cancer though).  More importantly, where the standard chemotherapy treatments advertently kill healthy cells, the plant extracts did not harm the healthy cells but selectively killed the cancer cells (also reduced the damage caused by snake venom in a separate study).

What struck me very strongly, was that, laying undiscovered is a vast medicine chest locked into the vegetation of the earth, waiting for us to find. Like gold and silver that are hidden in the mountain sides, natural cures to diseases are contained in the earth’s plant life.

Pharmaceutical companies seldom pay attention to this vast undiscovered region, preferring their own rather inferior synthesised solutions which in the case of cancer treatments often produce horrible and sometimes fatal side effects as in killing the cancer cells they also kill the healthy. It’s often a lottery as to which will die first, the cancer or the patient.

It would be a wonderful investment for future generations to set-up a research institute to step up research in this area. Anecdotal evidence is a good starting point. There are multitudes of plants used for centuries by tribal cultures for certain ailments, here in the Philippines, in the Amazon basin and other areas of the world rich in plant life. As the researchers at the symposium acknowledged, God is the greatest chemist, it’s all there for us to discover if we will make the journey with Him.

How easy to get to Hell

It seems quite common these days to hear of Near Death Experiences (NDE’s), one type is where the person sees Jesus and feels the bliss of heaven and the other where a great sinner is reprimanded and given a second chance and sent back with a warning for humanity.

The other day I found a German Catholic pamphlet from the 1930’s with something a bit different. It was called ‘A Soul in Hell ... the story of Annette’ . 

Annette, who had died in her twenties, was (and therefore still is) in hell. Her testimony was given (by God’s command) to a friend who had been praying for her since her untimely death in a car crash.  First she told her not to pray for her as there was no point. Then she told her about her life; her father and mother didn’t go to church more than twice a year, nor taught her to pray. She narrated how she had ignored the many opportunities of grace or conversion that were offered her by God even to the day of her death including the many admonishments given by her friend.

What I found most astonishing was that there was nothing startlingly evil in her lifestyle. She was charitable and served her mother during her illness. She was not a murderer, nor an adulterer nor thief or anything out of the ordinary; she was happily married, liked going out for the day or to the movies. She probably had a pleasant enough eulogy at her funeral.

But her heart rejected God. It was full of earthly desires, pleasures and strong attachment to creatures. The habit of prayer never formed in her, no meaningful communication with God nor desire to be reconciled and united with Him. And so at the moment of death as she was shown her life, through His eyes, she hurled herself directly into hell, having by then, no desire to repent nor change. Her indifference and coldness to all things holy was the reason for her loss. How many people do we all know who are just like her.

As to the torments of hell, apparently no one has ever exaggerated them.

The one thing that could have saved her was much prayer and sacrifice, her own and that of others on her behalf. As Annette put it “especially prayer to Her who is Christ’s Mother, and whose Name we never speak here (in hell).”

It’s a stern lesson.

A Soul in Hell ... the story of Annette (Download link)