Plenary, 28 Apr 2004

Meeting date: Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Official Report 440KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. The first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Sister Helen McLaughlin of the House of Prayer in Edinburgh.

Good afternoon. Thank you for the invitation to share this time with you.

My reflections come out of the work in which I am engaged in the House of Prayer in Nile Grove in Morningside. The centre is ecumenical—it welcomes men and women from all Christian traditions. We offer a variety of activities that are designed to help participants to grow in their own life of prayer and in their ability to reflect on the connection between prayer, life and action.

In my work there, I have seen that it is essential to reflect on one's own life and on what is happening in our country and in our world, and to do that in the light of faith. That is nothing new, as in pre-Christian times Socrates said:

"An unreflected life is not worth living."

How many reflections were made after the tragedies of September 11 and March 11! A native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt about the tragedy of 9/11. He said:

"I feel as if two wolves are fighting in my heart. One wolf is vengeful, angry, violent. The other wolf is loving, forgiving, compassionate."

The grandson asked him:

"Which wolf will win the fight in your heart?"

The grandfather answered:

"The one I feed."

Since 9/11, we have had a collective opportunity to show to the world the loving, forgiving and compassionate face of Christ, but it is also possible to feed the other part of the heart. That very real possibility offers us matter for reflection.

In the New Testament, Jesus challenges all human beings to be compassionate as he is compassionate. Compassion is certainly not absent from our world; it exists. We all know people who bear witness to Christ's compassion and practise it in a radical, even heroic way, but being compassionate as a way of life is far from easy. Compassion—suffering with—to the point of being stirred to the depths upsets our comfortable, sometimes selfish lives. Because it upsets us, we can try to lull it to sleep and to reduce it to what we sometimes call armchair compassion: the kind that we feel fleetingly when the television screen shows us scenes of violence, fighting or great suffering.

Compassion implies a link with justice. Being compassionate means having the courage to take a stand when circumstances require it. When I read what Thucydides the Greek said many centuries ago, I was really challenged. His answer to the question of when justice would come to Athens was:

"Justice will come when those who are not injured are as angry as those who are."

Let us conclude by praying to the God of compassion to help us.

Come to us, Father of the poor.
Help each one of us
to look on our country, our world, as you do.
Give us the wisdom to see what to do
and the courage to carry it out.