Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons - 14th March 2021

Medieval Missal MS 25588, BL

4th Sunday of Lent

I am aware we keep Mother's Day in the UK this Sunday and I wish all who are mothers, no matter in whatever form you may appear, a very happy day and with a smile of joy, tinged with a sense of loss, think of my own late Mother and all who have nurtured me through life. I've been looking at my own matrilineal ancestry, we have in our French family a zealous genealogist who has compiled a magnificent family tree, of people descending from one particular common ancestor in the Jura Region of France, happily my own family matriarchy is very clearly and carefully explained by my direct 'mothers' down to the 16th Century, all except for my own Mother, born in the villages in a small area around Poligny and Arbois in what is known to wine aficionados as the 'Triangle d'Or'.

Why share this? Perhaps because my Catholic faith came through my Mother and Grandmother and is rooted in the piety and fidelity to Christianity in this region, also very much dedicated to a robust and sane love of the Mother of Jesus, and as in the Jewish tradition, knowing a maternal line certainly gives me a sense of truth, of who I am connected with, of a deeply rooted life, of belonging somewhere. It is as though bound to the terroir, earth, of this place by my 'mothers', I see and feel in a heightened way that God's love is somehow encapsulated in this location as one of my sacred places, and there with the ancestors I sense the plan of Providence who as called me out to be a servant of the Gospel. This Covid lockdown Lent has done me some good because in missing visiting my French home I have though a lot about it in a constructive manner!

Perhaps this thought written down for you was occasioned by the sense of place that comes out in the story of Cyrus, who inspired by Jeremiah recognizes that need we all have for a pivotal place in our lives, destroyed Jerusalem will be rebuilt, that Holy City where the Divine and Human world collide, where memory brings alive the unending mercy of God, '"Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given to me all the kingdoms of the earth. He has also charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. All among you, therefore, who belong to his people, may their God be with them; let them go up."

(2 Chr 36: 23) Our lives need this rebuilding after a year of strangeness, not quite a 'lost year' as many put it, but a strange jubilee where we have been forced by the Virus to look again at our world and see what it is that really matters. Have we learnt this lesson? Well I believe we will when we move out of it all and then to our surprise find we have been changed despite ourselves, like Abraham we have moved on, another Promised Land beckons. There is ore, for us Christians this time has been a meeting with Christ in the most bare, raw and horrible situations, it has brought us all to realize just how dependent we are on each other, how much we affect others and our world. Now it is our time to do something, for that is also our vocation. In thinking of my mothers this day I also think of those, the great company of witnesses who push us onwards, ask us to help forgive, reconstruct, and remember as the letter to the Ephesians states this foundational point: "For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works
that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them" (Eph 2:10)

May we thank our 'mothers' in family and faith, and all who have brought us to this day!

Lectio

John 3: 17-20

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

Julian of Norwich

Revelations of Divine Love

God is Mother

"It is a characteristic of God to overcome evil with good.

Jesus Christ therefore, who himself overcame evil with good, is our true Mother. We received our 'Being' from Him and this is where His Maternity starts And with it comes the gentle Protection and Guard of Love which will never ceases to surround us.

Just as God is our Father, so God is also our Mother.

And He showed me this truth in all things, but especially in those sweet words when He says:"It is I".

As if to say, I am the power and the Goodness of the Father, I am the Wisdom of the Mother, I am the Light and the Grace which is blessed love, I am the Trinity, I am the Unity, I am the supreme Goodness of all kind of things, I am the One who makes you love, I am the One who makes you desire, I am the never-ending fulfilment of all true desires. (...)

Our highest Father, God Almighty, who is 'Being', has always known us and loved us: because of this knowledge, through his marvellous and deep charity and with the unanimous consent of the Blessed Trinity, He wanted the Second Person to become our Mother, our Brother, our Saviour.

It is thus logical that God, being our Father, be also our Mother. Our Father desires, our Mother operates and our good Lord the Holy Ghost confirms; we are thus well advised to love our God through whom we have our being, to thank him reverently and to praise him for having created us and to pray fervently to our Mother, so as to obtain mercy and compassion, and to pray to our Lord, the Holy Ghost, to obtain help and grace.

I then saw with complete certainty that God, before creating us, loved us, and His love never lessened and never will. In this love he accomplished all his works, and in this love he oriented all things to our good and in this love our life is eternal.

With creation we started but the love with which he created us was in Him from the very beginning and in this love is our beginning.

And all this we shall see it in God eternally."

From "Revelations of Divine Love" by Juliana of Norwich (1342-1416)