THE P RTAL
July 2014
Page 22
Keep on Walking
When we move from one place to another, There are two
temptations. We may keep looking back, or try to forget.
Antonia Lynn examines the dangers of both.
So why
did we spend a whole day thinking, talking and praying about our experiences of journeying
into the Catholic Church? After all, Jesus told the apostles that when they left a place where they could
not minister they were to shake the dust off their feet; to move on... as St Augustine said, to ‘keep on walking’.
There are two temptations in any transition. One is we are touching the wounds of Christ. As Pope Francis
(if our memories of the past are happy) not to shake again reminds us:
off the dust: to pretend we’ve never left; to have our
‘Sometimes we are tempted to be the kind
cake and eat it. We cling to old habits and rehearse the
of Christian who keeps the Lord’s wounds
same old conversations - perhaps even with the same
at arm’s length. Yet Jesus wants us to touch
people - treading the old dust into our new path. It’s
human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of
easily done. The risk is that we devalue and ultimately
others. He hopes that we will stop looking for
lose both old and new treasures; that we become as
those personal or communal niches which
fossilised as Lot’s wife, turned into a pillar of salt
shelter us from the maelstrom of human
because she stopped and looked back when God’s call
misfortune, and instead enter into the reality
was to go forward.
of other people’s lives and know the power
I am making all things new
of tenderness. Whenever we do so, our lives
become wonderfully complicated and we
‘So keep on moving, my friends... Keep on walking,
experience intensely what it is to be a people,
don’t stop on the road, don’t turn round and go back,’
to be part of a people.’
says Augustine. ‘Especially don’t wander off the road
by turning away from Christ.’ That is, the Christ who
(Evangelii Gaudium 270)
tells us ‘See, I am making all things new.’
The second temptation is, understandably, to be so
afraid of the grief, chaos and loss of identity that come
with a time of transition that we try to forget the past,
particularly if our memories are painful. We ‘rubbish’
the past: it was all bad; we’re better off out of it. We
harden our hearts.
no evangelisation
without compassion
Pope Francis has challenged us to be a force within
the movement for the New Evangelisation. We cannot
‘do’ evangelisation without compassion (otherwise it
will turn into triumphalism or ugly proselytising); we
cannot be a truly compassionate presence to someone
else unless we’re humbly aware of the fact that we
ourselves are fellow-pilgrims with them and still thank God - works in progress.
An awareness of the contradictions of our own joys
and sorrows will help us to be patient even when the
other person’s walk is not quite synchronised with our
own. If we believe we are one in the Body of Christ
with the friends we’ve left behind and those newly
met, then when we bear gently with one another’s pain
contents page
‘
Cease, stranger, cease those
witching notes,
The art of syren choirs;
Hush the seductive voice that
floats
Across the trembling wires.
Music’s ethereal power was given
Not to dissolve our clay,
But draw Promethean beams
from heaven
’
To purge the dross
away.
Bl John Henry Newman