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DIARY:   Ruminations, Occasional thoughts & happenings - as they arise

A Good Friday Meditation - 18 April 2003
(The background to Easter Bunnies, Hats & Eggs - good and all though these things are.)

There are people, Christian and non-Christian, lay and clerical, men and women - people who ought to know better - who open themselves to evil; so much so that other people with decent standards are appalled at the consequences.
    Take for instance the men and women in Ireland who value dreams of Irish Nationality more than life, and others who value their British identity beyond reason, and have killed, between them, during the past thirty years,  more than 3,000 of their fellow human beings, their neighbours in the Northern part if Ireland.
    They made excuses - that they were seeking a Free Ireland, or that they had to defend their British Way of Life.  
    Gobbledygook! Exaggerations created in minds of people who could not and still cannot think straight, have lost their sense of proportion, their perception of right and wrong - people who refused to listen to the plea of the present pope when he proclaimed that murder by any other name is still murder
    Why?  Why did these men do things that are so abhorrent?
    Why do others sexually abuse and murder children?
    Why do national and world leaders emerge and lead people to destruction and despair - people such as Nero, Caligula, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mugabe, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam?
    Partly because, in my view, they have allowed themselves to become obsessed, grievously unbalanced, and refuse to face the truth of the world in which they live. They have no faith in anything other than themselves and the distorted image that they have of the world they inhabit, probably unaware that they perpetuate and share in Adam's original sin of consuming 'the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil', making themselves the final judge of what is right and wrong, replacing the reality of God with a distorted, pride-filled awareness. 
    They seek to remake the world in their own likeness. According to a phantasy image of reality that they seek to impose: a Free Ireland or an imaginary British identity, regardless of the cost; obliteration of the Jews out of an insane desire for racial purity; sexual gratification because they live for nothing other than physical pleasure.
    But lack of joyful faith in the beauty and value of the created world, supplanted by pride in self-judgment, lust for power in pursuit of distorted ends is not the full explanation.  
    They do not believe that Jesus is God incarnate, that He brings truth into the world, and they do not believe him when he warns that there are evil spiritual powers abroad, 'going like roaring lions throughout the world, seeking whom they may devour'.
    Not accepting this they are unprotected, devoured by malicious forces that twist and pervert ordinary, good things, such as freedom, purity and loving sexual union. They are persuaded that they are 'right' when they kill in the name of freedom, purity of race, and abuse sexually for the thrill and the pleasure.
    Unwittingly, perhaps, in some cases, they become enthralled by the Devil - a real force, Our Lord warns - and the poison of active, insidious evil perverts their lives and seeks to destroy the faith and goodness of others.
    It was thus, to defeat the power of evil embodied in a weak-minded Provincial Roman Governor, jealous Jewish priests and a greedy disciple lusting for money, that Jesus, god-incarnate, suffered a murderous, cruel death, allowing himself to participate in the suffering and death that afflicts all of us, people whom he regards as his brothers and sisters.
    His death seemed a disaster.  But it was not - IS not - for three days later he arose from the dead and 'appeared to many' - and it became clear that his real mission is to give a greater life than the natural to those who discipline themselves and seek truth.
    "I AM the way, the truth and the life," he says, inviting us to follow him, to share in his divine life as he shares in our human life.
    Through and in Jesus we are offered faith and love that goes above and beyond the merely human - good though this is - and all that is required is that we love in return: rationally, reasonably, joyfully and fully - no matter what it takes.

A happy and glorious Easter to all.

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