Views from the pews

I would like to thank all the people in the Ssvp, the parish & beyond who prayed for my great niece Macy Whitehead (& myself) after she was knocked down by a car in Newcastle with me crossing a busy road whilst on holiday. She suffered horrendous injuries but thankfully she’s alive (no head trauma just a bump) and making a good recovery.  

Many thanks to Fr Alex for offering a mass for Macy’s recovery & to Marion at St Pats for lighting Margaret Sinclair candles for Macy. Macy had a Margaret Sinclair prayer card & a battery operated candle at her bedside in both hospitals.   We asked for her intercession the night before her surgery.

A mass will be offered up for you all. Thanks once again for your prayers & good wishes. 

God Bless. Maureen Martin (SJV)

Justice matters: Changing of the times

On Tuesday I realised I had an alarm clock that I had yet to reset since last weekend. The adjustment to daylight hours and routines in moving between BST and  GMT takes a day or two.  It can take too many years to adjust to changes in the kind of times we are living in: this is much more complicated. World-view, expectations, concerns, actions and hopes all need to be reset.

SEE   We now live in a time when we know humans are harming the Earth.  It's been talked about for decades and at last we are starting to respond.   We have the chance to create a better future, or to allow the suffering of the most vulnerable people, and indeed other creatures and ecosystems, to continue irreversibly as we damage the Earth.

It is a time of particular possibility - of just transition or of continuing harm.  Such a special period is sometimes termed a “Kairos time”.

REFLECT  I first met the term Kairos in Albert Nolan’s brilliant book, “God in South Africa”, from the 1980s during apartheid there, when justice for all its people was sought, rather than the violently imposed privilege for the few.

Around 2008 the term “Kairos” began to be used by Palestinian Christians (sabeel-kairos.org.uk), in a very similar sort of time.  Palestinians had for decades been suffering from Israel’s apartheid state, as they still do. This is now widely acknowledged e.g. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-south-africa-former-ambassadors-call-occupation-apartheid, a statement by former Israeli ambassadors to South Africa and reports including  from Israeli NGO B’Tselem. The whole Earth is in a Kairos time, as we see from the speeches at COP.

The signs of the times are to do with who is suffering in poverty, whose lives are unsustainable, who are denied rights, who is lacking hope for the future?  It leads to more questions: how do we act for justice? Justice after all is compassion in action, compassion for future as well as current generations. It entails our own conversion, seeing where we are part of systems that are oppressive and diminish rights of others – and seeing that our humanity connects us to all people and all the planet.

The signs pose questions that uncomfortably challenge how I live and use money, time and energy. Words like this article are “blah, blah, blah”…. The question I need to ask myself is, “How should I be living?”… and then actually take steps to do it.

ACT   Pope Francis asked us to be alert to these times, their challenges and potential. (e.g. in his book Let Us Dream) Let’s continue to pray for COP, for leaders there, for leaders not there, that we have decisions and vision and the actions that those who share the Earth, their children and subsequent generations need. 

Maybe we can reflect on how we might respond to the signs of the times, including the needs in our locality. Click on the picture above to watch the song  "Enough is Enough"

Mike Mineter