The way of imagination

     A lot can happen in a week.   Just ask Jesus.   While Jesus is, rightly, the centre of attention in the Gospel narratives of Holy Week, I’d like for us to consider this morning the “elephants in Jerusalem”, i.e. the disciples.   What were the disciples experiencing during the final seven days of… “the-Present-Age phase of”… the life of Jesus?   A lot happened for the disciples during Holy Week.   Dreams tittered on the brink of fulfillment, only to be dashed to smithereens and then resurrected in a new form, all in the space of eight sunsets.   Then again, the Bible tells us that God “made the heavens and the earth” in the space of a week… the transition from an empty, watery chaos to an ordered cosmos teeming with life was also quite a change – and perhaps the Genesis story is a worthy template of how life so often goes.   Our lives frequently swing to and fro between chaos and stability, between job loss and the beginning of new c...

       “They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem…” (Mark 10.32).   It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry as one reads this passage (you’ll see what I mean).   Once again, Jesus takes the Twelve aside and tells them what is going to happen to him in the capital – the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes who, in turn, will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him, spit on him, flog him and kill him; and after three days he will rise again (10.32-34).   Surely, the disciples will finally understand that they are not marching to victory, but rather to defeat.   Jesus will not be enthroned “in glory” as the Son of David/Son of God; rather, he will be condemned by those who hate him, he will be humiliated, tortured and killed (and after three days he will rise again).   Now it’s time for either laughter or tears (or a combination of both)…      Following upon this final prediction...

     Lent 2025, day 29.   I’m escorted into the by-now-familiar unit, the one with the densest population in the facility.   As I enter, I meet “Vietnam”, dressed in a trench coat and a cap, wearing a smile.   I smile back and grasp his hand, gesturing for him to join me at the table.   He sits, his Vietnamese-English dictionary in one hand, a pen and a scrap of paper in the other.   A painfully slow conversation ensues, but I’m used to it.   He scratches words onto the paper: “Me…long time…want…talk to somebody, but…can’t…”   I understand; Vietnam is alone on this side of the Pacific – no one can easily communicate with him.   I’ve been trying to teach him the Lord’s Prayer dans la langue de Shakespeare , but it’s slow going.   He teaches me how to pronounce his name; he is ecstatic when I finally get it right.   He goes on to write down the name of his wife and those of his two teenage children back home.   He must ...

       When I first began thinking about what to “take up” for Lent this year, I admit, spending many hours in a detention facility was not on my radar.   However, as providence would have it, Ash Wednesday found me undertaking my second day in a federal facility designed to detain, for an indefinite period of time, migrants whose status is “unresolved”.   In case you’re thinking, “Wait a minute, Sam.   You’re a Canadian citizen!”, let me explain.   The reason I often find myself “behind bars” this Lent is that I’m working as a chaplain for a facility run by the Canada Border Services Agency.      What have I learned about holiness while behind (many) locked doors?   Well, it seems to me that compassion is more frequently “caught” than taught.   Spending my days among detainees has given me a small taste of the discomfort, frustration, anxiety, anger, desperation and fear that are the daily lot, not only of detainee...

       Certain words frequently heard in the media these days serve to strike fear into the hearts of many individuals as well as many a nation – Ukraine, NATO, Gaza, Iran, Syria, China, etc.   Many countries are re-arming and increasing their defense spending in anticipation of imminent war.   As the subtitle of a book about the Russia—Ukraine war has it, we are currently witnessing “the return of history”.   If you’re wondering what it looks like to be a Christian leader in a time of violent upheaval and traumatic change, there is a 6 th -century figure which may have some relevant wisdom to offer.   Gregory “the Great” was appointed Bishop of Rome in the year 590, at the age of fifty, and fulfilled his role as “servant of the servants of God” until his death in 604.      Sixth-century Rome was a city (often literally) besieged with troubles.   The traditional date given for the fall of the Western Roman Empire is...

     The pioneers of 20 th -century Christian apologetics used the latest mass media technology to evangelize and offer a rational defense of the faith.   In the U.S.A., Fulton Sheen (1895—1979) used radio and TV to expound/defend Roman Catholic Christianity from 1930—1968.   In the U.K., C.S. Lewis (1898—1963) argued for “mere Christianity” on the BBC radio from 1941—43 and offered both rational and imaginative defenses of Christian doctrine through the publication of numerous books.   The 21 st century has seen many apologetics ministries avail themselves of the power of the internet to defend the faith.   American Catholic priest Robert Barron (b. 1959) founded Word on Fire Catholic Ministries [1] at the turn of the third millennium.   Fr. Barron began his evangelistic efforts by delivering homilies on a Chicago-area radio station at 5 a.m. on Sundays.   His first audience consisted of truckers!   Barron is the Fulton Sheen of this ...

       In the third decade of the 20 th century, while Dietrich Bonhoeffer was embarking on the path that would eventually lead him to resist Nazism in Germany, another young, politically active Christian was resisting fascism in Italy.   Maria Di Lorenzo’s Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati: An Ordinary Christian tells the story of Bonhoeffer’s Italian Catholic contemporary, who died in 1925 at the tender age of 24.   Both Dietrich and Pier Giorgio were born into wealthy, high-status families; both of their fathers were accomplished, well-connected professionals.   Interestingly, both young men would spend time in the capital of the other’s country.   Pier Giorgio’s father, Alfredo, was appointed the Italian ambassador to Germany in 1920 and the young Frassati spent 3 months in the German capital in 1921, during which time he met Father Karl Sonneschein, “the Saint Francis of Berlin”, a prominent figure of Catholic social action in Germany. ...