Wednesday Reflection
Wednesday of the 3rd Week in Easter-tide.
We cannot move forwards unless we know the past. If you will, cast your mind back to the Crucifixion and to the occupants of the crosses on either side of the Cross of Christ. How tragic is this? One of them, an unnamed thief and murderer, in the Very Presence of Salvation, refuses to believe. Indeed, he mocks and taunts Jesus to prove He is the Christ by taking him down from his cross. Why does he want to be taken down from the cross? Why, to continue his evil ways. When these dystopian days have come to an end and we are taken down from the cross of the coronavirus, we should not return to anything but a better way of life and a renewed and enriched vocation. I wonder if pupils, without adverting to the fact, look to their teachers as sympathisers and inspirers. Unwittingly, perhaps, they look to us to be counter-cultural. They need us to bring Christ into their de-spiritualised society. “I came into this world, that those who do not see, may see.” (Jn, 9.39) Rather cleverly and poetically expressed in Latin as “Qui non vident, videant.” The Good Thief whom we know as Dismas, was one who saw and believed. He recognised the ugliness and sinfulness of his previous life and left it behind him. Fr. Charles Plater, a priest of the Society of Jesus, a Classicist, one-time Master at Campion Hall, Oxford after whom the Catholic Workers’ College in Oxford, was named Plater College, acquired Jim, a very ugly and un-prepossesing bulldog puppy. He amusingly imagined his pet saying,
“I’m Jim the bulldog. Candid friends remark
They wouldn’t care to meet me in the dark.
My face perhaps is ugly. I don’t mind it,
I have the happiness to be behind it!”
Dear teachers, when school resumes once again, we have the opportunity to lure our beloved pupils to Christ. To leave behind, not just a virus, but anything that would detract from the great vocation entrusted to us by the Risen Lord.
Let us Pray:
Dear Lord Jesus, give us the grace to rejoice with all the saints when You come again in glory, who live and reign for ever and ever.
Amen
Monsignor Monaghan
