Twenty Seventh Sunday

Saturday 7 October 2006

“Anyone who does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it”. The Apostles must have been a bit surprised when Jesus said that. They were grown men, hefty fishermen who had made their living battling storms and risking their lives; they were people who had experienced the difficulties and pain of life. And in spite of all that experience of life, Jesus told them that they needed to become like little children!

It is true that as we grow older, we can become wiser in many ways – not always! But sometimes we can begin to lose two vital things that children can show us. We can begin to lose our sense of wonder. It is great to see a little child exploring the world always ready to be surprised by good things and happy events and flowers and animals and new games and new places. Everything is new. Life is an adventure. We adults easily begin to feel that we have seen it all before, that there is no use in hoping for things to get better. We begin to realise that our efforts are never going to produce everything we hope for.

The other thing that children can teach us is trust and hope. When you see little children in their mothers’ arms or playing with their fathers, you can see their trust and their confidence and their belief that they are safe.

But these things do not just happen. Children are trusting and full of wonder because they have felt the love of their families; they know they are loved and cared for. That is why they can look at the world with confidence. It is not good for a human being to be alone. God means marriage and family life to be a relationship of love where ‘they are no longer two but one’. Mothers and fathers are meant to love one another putting one another first. By teaching them that they are loved they allow their children to grow in an atmosphere that helps them to wonder and to trust, to know that they belong and that they matter.

That atmosphere is provided not only by their family but by their neighbours and by their whole community. This is a community that has a special place for children but it is also a community which has seen much sadness, recently and down the years, through tragedies and disappointments and hard times and even through the deaths of young children. It is a community which, because of the struggle to combat lack of resources and investment and facilities may sometimes be tempted to lose sight of the love and the loyalty and the strength of purpose and the generosity that is all around us here in Moyross. It is important that we can look around and wonder and be glad at the gifts that are here.

It may sometimes be hard to trust that things will begin to improve – there have been so many disappointments and tragedies. In recent weeks the eyes of the country have been on Moyross, and there is a justified sense that a very unfair picture has been painted of this community. But there are two things to be remembered –firstly we must not allow ourselves to believe and be affected by the bleak picture that this publicity has painted. We must not become cynical and lacking in hope and trust. The second thing to remember is that the publicity, painful as it has been, is also an opportunity. It has brought a sense of guilt to the Ireland which has grown so wealthy while communities like Moyross were neglected and it has brought a willingness to try to make a difference to the disadvantages this community has suffered. Other such occasions have passed with some improvements to show, but they fell very much short of what is needed.

One of the things that we need in order to respond is to show this community as what it really is – full of community spirit, full of people willing to cooperate in doing what needs to be done.

We need to see our community in that way for another reason. It is one of the most important tasks of the adults of Moyross to build the atmosphere that will awaken a sense of wonder and a sense of hope and trust among the young. To communicate a sense of hopelessness and cynicism would be a sure recipe for blighting their lives and for leading to the fear and aggression and despondency that spring from hopelessness.

What we are celebrating here is the fact that we are all surrounded by the love of which is more powerful than anything in the whole universe. We are the Body of Christ; that is what Corpus Christi, the name of our parish means. We are children of God. As he did with the children in the Gospel, Jesus embraces us and blesses us and lays his hands on us. When we feel wonder and trust, we are not fooling ourselves. The most fundamental thing about us is that we are people who believe in God’s love for us (Deus Caritas Est, 1).

We can trust God; we can wonder at his mercy and his care and his promises to be with us always. That is our hope, even when we suffer as terribly as his Son, who experienced death for all of us. What he wants of us is to work together with hope and trust in his love: it is his purpose to bring us into a glory which fulfils all our deepest and most extravagant hopes.