That they may all be one

²⁰ “I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, ²¹ that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. John 17:20-21

We pray what we call "The Lord's Prayer" - if we are Catholic, we pray it 6 times whenever we say the Rosary; once when we go to Mass.  We pray, in particular, "...forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."

That prayer is - or ought to be if we listen to what we are saying - daunting.  We ask for forgiveness as we forgive those who trespass against us.  We are, in fact, asking for the same sort of forgiveness we give others.  Indeed, our Lord gives us this prayer in Matthew's version together with precisely this warning:

⁷ “And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. ⁸ Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. ⁹ Pray then like this:

Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
¹⁰ Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
    On earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread;^[b]
12 And forgive us our debts,
    As we also have forgiven our debtors;
¹³ And lead us not into temptation,
    But deliver us from evil.^[c]

¹⁴ For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; ¹⁵ but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.  (Matthew 6:7-15)

Trespasses ...  There are, of course, big deals.  The woman who is raped has been trespassed against.  Those who love her have been trespassed against.  These are terrible things to be told to forgive.  Yet, for most of us most of the time, it is the tinny squeaky rhythmic sounds coming from the earphones of the person on the train; the thoughtless sarcasm of the family member; the car on the motorway dodging dangerously in front - these are the trespasses that must be forgiven.

If I do not forgive these trespasses, neither will mine against my Father be forgiven.

Why is this?  Is it that God could, if He chose, forgive me whilst I am not at one with my neighbor?

God is absolute unity of Being - and His Being is love.  God is a Trinity of Persons Whose mutual love is infinite.  There can be no slightest disunity in God.

And we are called to be united with that awful unity of love - all of us are called.  It is not that God arbitrarily wills that we forgive - forgive absolutely and love without reservations everyone who trespasses against us (and who is there who does not in some way trespass against me?); it is that the unity of love to which we are called just is that forgiving-and-being-forgiven state.  To the degree I am other than absolute in loving you and seeking your good, to that degree I am outside of that unity - outside of God.

God grant that each of us may respond to the grace given us that enables us to forgive - to be one.

He taught as one having authority

²⁸ And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, ²⁹ for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes. (Matthew 7:28-29)

 Jesus's teaching was astonishing - and, to many, offensive.  For did not say to His hearers, "Moses taught you ... but <i>I</i> say..."?  On occasion, indeed, He sought to call witnesses to His authority:

¹² Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” ¹³ The Pharisees then said to him, “You are bearing witness to yourself; your testimony is not true.” ¹⁴ Jesus answered, “Even if I do bear witness to myself, my testimony is true, for I know whence I have come and whither I am going, but you do not know whence I come or whither I am going. ¹⁵ You judge according to the flesh, I judge no one. ¹⁶ Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone that judge, but I and he^[c] who sent me. ¹⁷ In your law it is written that the testimony of two men is true; ¹⁸ I bear witness to myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness to me.” (John 8:12-18)

Not as the scribes!

We have, still today, His authority.  When His Church speaks to us, we have heard the voice of authority:

¹⁶ “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” (Luke 10:16)

As those who heard the Sermon on the Mount, we should also be astonished.  The Church does not call any witness to her teaching but Christ's.  We should be astonished; God grant that we be not offended.

 

 

 

 

His fame spread throughout Galilee

²¹ And they went into Caper′na-um; and immediately on the sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught. ²² And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. ²³ And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; ²⁴ and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” ²⁵ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!” ²⁶ And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. ²⁷ And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching! With authority he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” ²⁸ And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee. (Mark 1:21-28)

When I was, oh, about 16, I think, disaster - a consequence of my own behaviour - threatened.  Although I had never had any religious upbringing, never even been to church - I prayed, frantically, "Oh, God, let it not happen!!  Let it not be!!  Oh, God, please, God, please, please, please!!"

Even pagans pray.  Everyone prays when in need.  There are, it is said, no atheists in foxholes.

I have been a Christian for 48 years.  I still pray like a pagan.  "Grant this; give that."  To be sure, my prayer is more often for others now; it is more often for spiritual benefits.

Ah, well, Our Lord Himself taught us to pray for our daily bread, it is true.  But His fame has spread throughout the world now.  And we are unable not to respond, for we know what He can do.

What is certain, nevertheless, is that many of those who remarked with astonishment, "With authority He commands even the unclean spirits" were amongst those who, at His words about eating His flesh and drinking His blood, "...drew back and no longer went about with him." (John 6:67) - some - God forbid! - may have been amongst those who cried "crucify Him!"

I do not know precisely what has prompted me to write these thoughts, except that I know it is not enough that I know of His fame; I know of His power; I know of His goodness and I go to Him for what I long for.  He wants my love, my obedience, my submission to the Cross that He bears daily for me.  I do not always pray like a pagan.  He answered my desperate prayer at age 16.  He has answered my prayers since.  I do pray, and often, that I will be changed into His likeness, be made one who follows Him, one who, like Simon of Cyrene, helps to bear His Cross - that I will, one day, be one who shares His Resurrection glory.

To fulfil all righteousness

¹³ Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. ¹⁴ John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” ¹⁵ But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness.”

Jesus's baptism 'fulfils all righteousness.'  Our salvation is ours in Christ.  It is in Him that we are baptised; in Him that we  are crucified; and, please God, in Him that we are resurrected.

Our own baptism, then, is the placing of us in Christ.  Our daily taking up of the Cross is our own crucifixion.  And in our dying whilst remaining in Christ will be our own Resurrection.

I have done nothing on this blog for a very long time - many years.  I hope to put in the odd thought from time to time in future.

Reconnecting

It is, surely, a sign of approaching senility when a man who announces his distaste for travel to his fiancée, declares his wish never to change his routine, emphasises his determination to stay at home, speaks of his desire, not simply to visit his relations in America – that, after all, might well be credited to a praiseworthy familial piety – but as well to do so via Tonga and Samoa.

 

That, at least, may have been Susan’s view.

 

We did it that way, anyway.  I think it actually cost more (a bit); certainly took longer.

 

But I enjoyed it – even the delays.

 

Such as our departure.  I don’t remember exactly what time we were supposed to leave Auckland – maybe 10 in the morning.  In fact we didn’t leave until something like 4 in the afternoon.  The reason?  Air Pacific – which is now called Fiji Airways – had only one aeroplane – and something was wrong with it (our return flight was by Air Pacific but on a Qantas ’plane) – I don’t remember what.  The engine dropped off or something J  Anyway, they had to fly in a part – or perhaps a new engine – so we could leave.

 

Which we did, landing in Tonga and then Samoa, briefly, going on to Honolulu.  Sue especially remembers chatting with an American whom we picked up in Tonga.  He was in charge of something like the insurance for the King of Tonga, lived in Honolulu, and had to fly to Tonga every three weeks or so.  He was, she says, pretty drunk by the time we left Tonga.

 

We had to stay overnight in Honolulu, because our flight arrived in the evening, after the last flight to Hilo – and doing so was a wonderful thing, because we stayed with Ken Rehg.

 

Ken had been one of my closest friends when I was a linguistics graduate student.  Most of the rest of our fellow students were no longer in Honolulu; Ken was.  Ken picked us up at the airport, bedded us down in his house, and drove us to the University the next day.  It was a trip of many reconnexions – in the linguistics department itself (George Grace, Bob Blust, and I think I ran into Anatole Lyovin, who had been my teacher and was now a Russian Orthodox priest); and Sue and I wandered around the campus a bit, reminiscing.

 

We had only a short time there, however.  In the afternoon we were off to Hilo.

 

This also was reconnexion time.  We stayed at my father and mother’s house in Hilo – but an astonishingly wonderful reconnexion was with Greg Trifonovitch.

 

What can I say about Greg?  If I almost owe my Christianity to Candace, I do, perhaps, also to Greg and his Baptist church.  Greg had been a graduate student when I was, though a couple of years ahead of me.  In the two years from September, 1968 until September, 1970, my life had pretty much gone to the dogs – and come back up again.  As I have written earlier, I came to Christ at the very end of December, 1969.  Quite apart from my expectation, September, 1970 saw me return to the University as a student – and a new Christian.  I remember how excited I was to tell Greg (who I knew to be a Christian) that I had become a Christian.  His reaction was little disconcerting: “What?!  That’s impossible!  My adult Sunday School class has been praying for you for two years!”  How little our faith may be that our prayers will be answered.

 

My first few years as a Christian were ones in which I struggled through many uncertainties, since I had had no Christian background to work against.  Greg, again, with his wife Bev – now gone to be with the Lord – was my great help and support.

 

And when, in the summer of 1974-5, I was called to Yap to give instruction on the new orthography we had developed, I stayed at Greg’s house in Honolulu both going and coming, Greg advised me to put a proposal to them to hire me to help.  In March, 1976, when Sue, Johnny, and I moved to Yap, it was to do a job which would not have happened had Greg not encouraged me.

 

So it was that, when we went to the Big Island, we, knowing that Greg and Bev had retired there, determined to see him.

 

We drove to their house south of Hilo – ‘volcano side’ – one evening, past what Sue still thinks of as the ‘monkey trees.’  Large tracts of bush, these were, which were inhabited by tree frogs which made the most amazing noise.  I think I recall we went to see Greg twice, once in an evening, and once during the day.  The day trip was because we had heard that C-J – Charles-James Nice Bailey (that is genuinely his full name) – was living near Greg.

 

He was!  He lived in a house shaped like a large letter ‘O’ – rooms all ’round, with a central atrium or area – and the rooms mostly were filled with books.  C-J was a memory from when Susan and I had been together in Honolulu.  He was surprised to find we were Catholics now.  C-J, a native of the American South (South Carolina, perhaps, or Virginia) was Greek Orthodox.

 

And we spent two or three nights on my father’s farm in Pa’auilo, with my sister.  Her son Kaleo made us the most amazing coffee – from the beans on their coffee plantation, which he roasted in a frypan there on the stove.

 

San Francisco – well, the connexion with the flight to Chico was supposed to be enough time.  It was – barely.  We arrived at San Francisco airport – where we had never been before – to find that gate to the small ’plane to Chico was nearly a mile distant.  We were told to take a taxi.  I didn’t know where one was, nor exactly how to instruct one.  We ran.  We got there to find someone telling us to hurry!  Hurry!  so we did, and made it.  I don’t remember when I was last so panicked.

 

And in Chico we spent a week.  There was far too much that happened, in that one week, to retail it.  Peter took us to Oroville, where he and I had lived through our last years in intermediate school and our high school years.  We went to Mass.  Edna, Kathleen, and Kathleen two sons Zach and Joshua came and spent – what?  a couple of nights? – in a motel.

 

And Candace came out from New Jersey.  Susan had last seen Candace in, I think, 1982; I had last seen her in 1970.  This was in a way the height of the trip, for both of us.

 

San Francisco, a less panicked flight to Honolulu, Air Pacific to Samoa – where we had to overnight at Aggie Grey’s – and wandered around Apia.  Stop in Fiji on the way back, and home.

 

I have gone into some detail about this trip.  I confess I do not find descriptions of people’s travels interesting, and, except for those of you whom we saw, do not expect this post to interest many.  But it was important, I think, for me in that it brought me back to much of my early life in a way that will not likely happen again.  I have been asked, at times, whether I would want to go to Yap again.  I have said I would not wish to – and that is probably fundamentally true, except for this: that a large portion of my adult life was oriented around Yap, its language, and its people.  Yet … it is different from what the trip to Hawai’i and California in 2003 were.  This is partly because the people I connected with on that trip were my family and persons I had known when quite young; but partly, also, because it had not, after all, been all that long since I had seen some of them – my brother in 1997, for example; Edna and Kathleen in 2002.  Sue and I left Yap thirty years ago.  Some of the people we knew then are still there; many have moved on, or died.  I do not know whether I would not simply find such a trip more upsetting than anything.  I shall not worry about it, in any case; it is unlikely to happen J

 

One other thing happened to us whilst we were in Hilo, however; Adele returned to Pukekohe from Martinborough.

 

 

Blogging by e-mail

I have, I hope, set up my blog so that I can send posts to it by e-mail (using a secret address J - those of you who are authors may apply to me to find out the top-secret address!!).

I am hoping that this will make it more convenient for me to post – possibly more frequently.  I am trying out this one sitting at home, whilst Susan is at an Opus Dei thing in Auckland.

In order to put some news into it, I will comment on the recent stressful business of FAR.  FAR stands for Faculty Administrative Review – and perhaps the link I have put in on the word FAR above.  FAR is definitely going to mean a major job change for me.  I have worked for the Business School (Faculty of Commerce as it was first called, later Faculty of Business and Economics) as System Admin since 2 December, 1985.  From sometime in September this year, I will be doing one of the following:

-          Working for ITS – the central IT group for the University

-          Working for some other part of the University (unlikely)

-          Be made redundant and trying to find work – at my age, almost certainly contracting rather than permanent – somewhere

The FAR project is affecting administrative personnel, but they are also including computer support people, because the University is centralising its computer people.  I won’t know my fate until sometime after mid-July, when they make some decisions.

Anyway, this is my first test post, and just to make it more fun, I will include a picture here, to see if it also gets posted:

This is what the union are using.  The majority of admin staff are, indeed, women.  Oh, yes, and in the above list, in either of the first two cases my pay would drop.

 

Holy-day

Naturally, it was not reasonable for Susan to go to the canonisation ceremony for Saint Josemaría.  It was to be held in Rome - much too expensive to consider such a trip.

I said she should go.  There was to be a group going from New Zealand.  They would be housed inexpensively in Rome in a place called Domus Croata (ok, that site is in Croatian; it's the only one I could find!).  I knew we would have to borrow the money, but I wanted her to go.

I did want her to go for her own reasons; I had, however, an ulterior motive.  I had seen my brother in 1997 (I think it was), when he and his wife visited us in New Zealand.  I had discovered something then that I had not realised theretofore: I discovered that I loved my brother.

'Discovered' is the right word.  I had last seen my parents and my sister in, I think, 1980, during the trip I had made whose consequence was that we returned to New Zealand in 1984.  When I last saw my brother, I don't know; perhaps not since 1966, when Edna and I moved to Hawai'i.  At that time I was 23 years old - still not much more than a child.

Of course one loves one's brother and sister, barring any positive reason not to; nevertheless, at 23, I don't think it is a matter one gives much thought.  And during the years between then and 1997, I had done a fair amount of growing - perhaps, one may hope, maturing.  Still, realising that I had a brother whom I loved came as a bit of a shock.

Sue was talking of going to Rome.  I decided that I wanted to go to Hawai'i.  I wanted to see my father and mother - by the time I went (late September, 2002) ages 88 and 87, respectively - and my sister.  I hoped that Peter could come to Hilo to meet with me.

The event was infinitely better than I could have hoped.  Peter did come - and so did Edna and our daughter, Kathleen.  Although there was a sort of official state of forgiveness, of letting bygones be bygones, between me and my ex-wife and our child, I felt in need of sealing matters with a meeting, a touch of hands, a look of the eyes.

So it happened.  Sue went to Rome.  She may like to post separately about her experience there.  I believe they had only two weeks for the whole trip, and part of the time, of course, was spent in travelling to and from New Zealand.  I believe they were able to visit Florence - Sue can say.

The experience for me was an unexpected joy.  I stayed at my parents' house in Hilo.  Peter, I believe, stayed in a motel somewhere.  But we saw one another quite a bit.  And Edna and Kathleen stayed in a hotel.  We met in the hotel's bar, had only a few hours together.  I had a little over a week in Hilo and had to come home.

The impact of the visit may be measured by the fact of what I said to Susan, when she and I were together again in Pukekohe.  I told her that I wanted - insisted, in fact - that she and I go - together, this time - to Hawai'i - and to California - the following year.