Issue 70 - The Pilgrim - April 2018 - The newspaper of the Archdiocese of Southwark

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Family Life The Pilgrim April 2018 A diplomat’s wife By Liana Levoir Due to my late husband Derek’s job in HM Diplomatic Service, we lived abroad on and off for about 19 years and were fortunate to enjoy, value and experience different ways that Catholicism is celebrated. When serving abroad you have to adapt pretty quickly. It’s a gypsy sort of life, but with great benefits, trials and above all experiences. One of the comforts was belonging to the local Catholic community wherever we ended up. During our 19 years abroad living in six different cities, of which three were “Third World”, we certainly had many experiences. Our first Third World country was Paraguay, bang in the centre of South America, run by the dictator President Stroessner. Going to Asuncion, the capital, with two children aged 20 months and three years, Francesca and Luisa, was not easy due to the unavailability of normal necessities. The feeling of isolation at the beginning was difficult and sadly we had an ambassador who didn’t like children and he and his wife were rather unhelpful in our settling in. I used to go to the local market at 5am to get the meat before too many flies got to it; but all the vegetables and fruit were seasonal and always fresh, natural, with no insecticides so we all ate well even with limited choice. Derek was deputy ambassador: his dealing with political, consular, and trade work meant I had to entertain many of his contacts in Asuncion. I spoke fluent French and Italian and a little German, but no Spanish to begin with. So I started talking to our dinner guests in Italian, they to me in Spanish, and we got on really well. Wherever we had been posted I made a big effort to mix with the local people, and not just with the resident Brits as some people do. This way our lives were so enriched by their friendliness, their culture and of course language. The girls especially benefitted by accepting people of different colour, race, religion and language at an early age. It was a very good education for them. I learned that a Mass in English was said by a lovely American priest, Father Robert Hopward (“Father Hoppy”) in a little chapel only a few blocks away from the rented house we lived in. The church’s congregation were 95 per cent American. Everyone was so very friendly and welcoming. Francesca, Luisa and I used to walk to the chapel as Derek, then, was not a Catholic. One Sunday on our way back home, Francesca noticed a tall, thin, poor looking lady carrying a very long thick branch of a tree. All of a sudden she gave a huge cry, ran over to us and began hitting me on my head, shoulders and back with the branch. I never scream and I didn’t even then. I tried to shove the girls away from holding on to my skirt, as I knew if she hit them they would have been killed. They hung on. I pushed them onto the pavement and lay on top of them to protect them. The lady kept on with her blows. I then got a Popeye moment (when he eats spinach), stood up and grabbed the large branch with difficulty due to the woman’s height. She then ran off. A passerby who had witnessed all this ran to get Father Hoppy, who took me to the local hospital and a parishioner took the girls home. I had been severely badly beaten and had a piece of wood had to be removed from my head. But at least I was alive and more importantly were the girls. We later learned that the lady had walked out of the local lunatic asylum, which used to open its doors each Sunday so the residents would walk to the market to pick up scraps of food. The ambassador’s wife came to visit me with a bunch of flowers with a card that said “My, you do look ugly”, as I was all black and blue. I later went to visit the asylum to try and understand something of the life of the woman who attacked me. I realised that I was just unlucky to have been in her path on that Sunday and must have reminded her of someone she disliked. We can be angry with God By Lucy Russell The 1st April marks Easter Sunday for Western Christians. It is a wonderful day which I like much more than Christmas! I love the joy of Easter. We are an Easter people and it is easy to be an Easter person on the day itself. But it’s also easy to forget that Easter lasts longer than Lent, Easter is 50 days liturgically. Sometimes the boys do still have an Easter egg left when Pentecost comes around. To be honest, I’m not sure how good I am at celebrating all 50 days of Easter and I’m even less good at being an Easter person every day of the year. Life changes and is unpredictable and my faith sometimes takes a buffeting. This column was almost finished, when I had a phone call from St Edmund’s School in Dover. Please could I cover half a day’s English teaching? I picked up my car keys and headed for the front door. Life has been a little less certain in terms of family finances since last summer, teaching supply at St Edmund’s is an exciting opportunity which landed at my feet at the exact moment we needed it most. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised about that. After all, we are told in Proverbs to “Trust in the Lord”. But it had been a long time since I had been in charge of my own classroom. I’d spent ten years teaching at Goldsmiths College in the Education Department. When Edgar and James were born I turned to freelance writing. When the opportunity came up, I found myself accepting - almost without trepidation. I knew the school and knew some of the students, but I was surprised I wasn’t nervous. It wasn’t easy, but I had a definite sense that God had faith in me and was with me in the classroom, so I placed my trust in God. There have been occasions when James has been quite anxious and upset, most recently on the day of the Year 6 party to celebrate the end of his time at St Mary’s Primary School in Deal. As I drove him to the party, I suggested that he just enjoy the evening, and give the rest of his feelings to God. “Why would I do that?” he said. “I wouldn’t wish these feelings on God, so why would I want to upset God?” “Because God can handle it, God won’t be upset” I replied. God is big enough not only to take on James’ feelings of apprehension, God takes on our rage and lets us get it out of our systems. We can all sometimes be a bit like a cross toddler who hasn’t got their own way. As pre-schoolers, there were only a couple of times when James or Edgar told me that they hated me. Whenever that happened I just used to smile and tell them that I loved them. I knew they didn’t mean it. God accompanies us, God is there with us as we sit on the stairs sulking, whether we like it or not. When life has been at its toughest, I have undoubtedly found God is closer to me. Although that can sometimes be something I don’t recognise until later, when I’ve stopped whinging at God that something or other isn’t fair. The Psalms which are full of ranting and raving – anger and depression - are usually concluded with lines which praise and thank God. The fact that God lets us rage at him is itself worthy of praise. Since having James and Edgar, I increasingly identify with God as a parent. We are all his children. Our rage might even be seen as a demonstration of our faith. If we didn’t believe, if we didn’t have hope, why would we bother getting cross with God? God gave his only Son so that we could all live, now and in the next world. Easter calls us to embrace the freedom from fear trusting instead in God and God’s love for us. Whatever we have lost: loved ones, financial security, jobs, good health, understanding our vocation, God is always there. Page 8
The Pilgrim April 2018 Viewpoint How adult baptism has changed By Father Ashley Beck Last month we considered the baptism of infants; this month, just after Easter, we think about adult baptism. There are many ways in which the ways in which we mark Lent are very different from a generation ago. One of them, in most parishes, is the way Lent is defined each year by the progress of what we call the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, RCIA. Before the reforms to the liturgy following the Second Vatican Council, at least in developed countries, if someone expressed a wish to become a Catholic he or she was normally prepared one-to-one by a priest according to an informal structure suited to the prospective convert’s needs and taking account of any prior religious background. Then, at the end of the process he or she was received into the Church and if necessary baptised. Often – and this wasn’t meant to happen – converts were baptised conditionally just in case they had not been baptised validly in another Christian community. Such a ceremony was normally very quiet and restricted to a few friends of the new convert. Confirmation normally took place at a later stage, and in a way which some thought was rather perfunctory. When the liturgy was reformed it was decided to move away from this model, if you can call it that. A big change came about, prompted by two pastoral factors in different parts of the world. First, the Church in the 1960s was rapidly expanding in the developing world and large numbers of converts were being prepared; and in the developed world, more and more converts were actually coming into the Church without being already baptised, let alone brought up in Nearly 400 people took part in The Rite of Election service at St George’s Cathedral in February. another Christian body. The Catholic Church with converts was increasingly “starting from scratch”. Therefore, the preferred way for converts to be prepared is for this to happen in a corporate setting, that is, in a group; and the preparation is expected to take place over a number of months, leading to baptism at the most important act of worship in the Christian year, the Easter Vigil. In our diocese the Centre for Catholic Formation in Tooting does a great deal each year to support parish RCIA groups and co-ordinate what is done across the diocese, also providing training for RCIA catechists. As many of you will know those who join the process are enrolled initially usually in Advent; at the beginning of Lent they go to the Rite of Election in St George’s Cathedral, when they are “chosen” by Archbishop Peter. And during Lent they undergo the special ceremonies at the three central Sundays known as the “scrutinies”, focusing on the three great accounts from John’s gospel of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman, the healing of the man born blind and the raising of Lazarus. At the great Easter Vigil itself the baptism of the adult converts is one of the climactic points. It helps to root the whole community’s Easter faith in the meaning of baptism and the Church’s missionary and evangelistic ethos. We certainly ask more of converts than we used to, in that they are made the focus of big public acts of worship repeatedly, but in my experience most find this something which really strengthens their new Christian faith. In the RCIA process we are not only getting closer to the life of the early Church; we are engaging effectively with mission. In the ceremony of the second scrutiny the priest prays in these words: “Free these elect from the false values that surround and blind them.” Men and women who freely decide to become Catholics are making a definite choice to engage in clear journey from one place to another, and we use the powerful contrasts of thirst v water, blindness v sight and death v life. When you become a Catholic you move away, sometimes very clearly, from your previous way of life. Traditionally in the early Church this involved leaving some walks of life (often being a soldier, but also jobs like being a Temple prostitute); we are probably less severe about this, although a male convert would be expected to leave organisations like the Freemasons, which is at odds with the life of the Church. But in our preparation programmes we share the whole of what Catholic moral teaching is about, so that new Catholics can discern real evil in the world, perhaps where they had not done before. In baptism are reborn – they enter a completely new relationship with God. This RCIA process and its culmination in the baptisms at the Vigil are not simply for the converts themselves. Their new Christian journey is something we support at these ceremonies at Mass. But it is also a model and example of all of us. In Lent we try to undergo a re-conversion; and most of us still need to be freed from false values that surround and blind us. So at Easter we have an opportunity to renew our own baptismal commitment and faith. n Father Ashley Beck is assistant priest of Beckenham, senior lecturer in pastoral ministry at St Mary’s University and dean of studies of the diocesan formation programme for the diaconate I believe in the resurrection By Sister Janet Fearns “Humankind cannot bear very much reality,” said T.S. Eliot. Okay. Just for a moment, take Jesus and Mary out of the crucifixion and see a young man in his early thirties, tortured and executed in front of his mother. What if the mother were you? How would you feel? Would you utter pious reflections about it being Good Friday, knowing that your son would rise again from the dead within three days? Would you, instead, experience indescribable agony, longing to spare him by taking that pain upon yourself? Might a sense of utter helplessness and despair threaten to overwhelm you? Would you have flashbacks to your innocent son’s infancy and childhood? When he eventually died before you and was placed in your arms, were there any words to express how you felt? What about when he was hurriedly buried, knowing that regulations prevented you from showing the love, respect and tenderness that he deserved? How did you feel afterwards – numb, angry, vengeful, despairing – or joyfilled, hopeful and rejoicing? Did Mary, the mother standing beside her crucified son, skip happily away from Calvary? Or did she need the supporting arms of grieving friends and relatives to help her away from the tomb; to make her way back home towards a new life, changed forever by Good Friday? Would Easter Sunday take away those memories or merely give them a different perspective? Be real. What was it like? Belief in the resurrection is a conscious decision. It does not happen automatically. Our massproduced images of Calvary anaesthetise most people to the reality. Crucifixion was the ultimate indignity, signifying abandonment by heaven and earth as the condemned hung suspended between both. The death of Jesus means everything to the Christian world. Yet it happened before the mass executions of early Christians, before someone invented the words “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”. Our beautiful Easter gardens in churches and chapels exclude the thousands of subsequent crucifixions of Jesus’ first followers across the Roman Empire. Jesus’ crucifixion was not even the first such event: following the Spartacus rebellion in 71BC, more than six thousand slaves were crucified on the Appian Way. Jesus, although unique, was also one of many. History has never accurately recorded the names and numbers of Christian martyrs during the past two millennia: even the Church reaches its limits. Although there were an estimated eight to ten thousand Korean martyrs during the 19th century, the Roman martyrology records only one hundred and one by name. Similarly, in Vietnam, where an estimated 130,000-300,000 people died for their faith, only 117 have been canonised. The numbers are so vast that most of those who suffered fall into the category of the “also ran” – or, to use more ecclesiastical language, “and companions” - and so the story continues across the world. Yet each individual had a name and a personal life story, belonged to a family and had a circle of friends and acquaintances. Because they died before we were born does not mean that they were faceless anonymities. Just as Calvary can become sanitised, so also have we become used to hearing of mass killings in various countries across the world. How many Christian martyrs have been created by militant Islamists during the past few years? We will never know. Sometimes it takes the media to bring forward to our minds the full horror of the crucifixion and to translate it into our own times and circumstances. We know from the Gospels that the Apostles did not automatically expect the resurrection, even when they had heard Jesus speaking of it. They did not return to the Upper Room in order to hold a party in anticipation of Easter Sunday morning. Peter and John had to see the empty tomb for themselves before they could believe the incredible story they heard from Mary Magdalene. Thomas declared, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, and put my finger in the nail holes and my hand in the wound in his side, I will not believe it.” Can the Apostles really be blamed for not celebrating the resurrection in advance? It took the empty tomb to convince them into making a conscious decision: “I believe in the resurrection!” Mary Magdalene met the risen Jesus in person – and believed. None of them would ever forget Good Friday: Easter Sunday put it into perspective. In our own lifetime, the world has witnessed the brutal disregard for life amply demonstrated by violent extremists. Through them, countless people are still experiencing their Good Friday. May God bring them – and us – to Easter Sunday. May we all, one day, say “I believe in the resurrection” – and mean it from the bottom of our hearts. Page 9
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Issue 70 - The Pilgrim - April 2018 - The newspaper of the Archdiocese of Southwark

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