I confess I haven't really made up my mind yet what I'm going to preach on this Sunday, but it's probably going to be one or other of these two:

“He taught them with authority and not like their scribes.”

Three weeks ago, my old French teacher died. When we were boys of 11 or 12, religion didn’t mean very much to us. We had not yet experienced for ourselves any real need for God. But our new French teacher, Mr Sammons insisted on starting our French class by teaching us the Rosary in French. We found out that it was the first thing he taught every class he took. And he explained to us very simply why he did that ­ it was because he believed that the most important thing he would ever teach us was not how to communicate in French, but how to communicate with God ­ how to pray when you are facing the moments of great crisis that occur sooner or later in all our lives.

For him, that crisis was when he was in the Second World War, fighting in Africa. His army was being regularly and heavily defeated ­ losing ground and men. Most of his regiment; most of his friends ­ had already been killed or injured. Every day, he faced terrible dangers. It was at that time in his life that praying the Rosary became the most important thing in his lfie. The Rosary celebrates the great moments of crisis in the life of Jesus. By praying over these times and seeing how Jesus continued to trust in the goodness and power of God, even at the most fearful moments in his life, Ted Sammons was able to find the Faith to endure his own time of great crisis.

I have long since forgotten most of the French that he taught me. But I have never forgotten his lesson on prayer. Because he taught us with the authority of a man who had been there ­ a man who had faced the desperate struggles of life with Faith triumphant. Let us pray that we too may face our crises with Faith and with Prayer.

And let us stand and profess our Faith in God in whom we never walk alone.

Year B: 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time

“He taught them with authority and not like their scribes.”

Ernest was a small man diminished in his old-age and he did not much trouble the atmosphere of the Justice and Peace Group. But he followed the fierce and caricatured debate of the spiky red-hared young woman for whom all war is unutterable evil and the self-important young man in blue who contended that some wars were necessary to counter evil when all other forms of persuasion have failed. We were joined by the ghosts of men we have never met - Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao-tse-Tung, Marx, - and by the mention of far away places we have never been ­ the Falklands, Rwanda, Bosnia, the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan - and Passchendaele, where (the spiky red-head tells us) thousands of men died young for causes they did not understand in territory neither side really wished to hold, but only to deny to the other.

Then Ernest said, very softly, “I remember Passchendaele.” And began to weep. And suddenly with us in the room was the silence of forty thousand graves. And we knew ourselves in the presence of a man who knew whereof he spoke. He did not speak long ­ just of the school friends who ­ as she had said ­ knew only the crude simplicities of the cause for which they died. But ­ as he had said ­ they had the courage to put their bodies in harm’s way against the apparent evil of their day - for Home and Hearth, rather than King or Kaiser. For dead young men have no nationality. He claimed no final answers ­ no timeless Truths. Even he could not tell us whether or not his friends had died in vain. But he taught us with authority and not like our scribes.

Mount Street Jesuit Centre,
114 Mount Street,
London SW1K 3AH.
ENGLAND.
fatbaldnproud@yahoo.co.uk