9th May, 2021

​My dear friends,

A walk of about half an hour from the centre of Jerusalem takes the pilgrim to the Church of the Ascension on the Mount of Olives. This church marks the site from whence Jesus is said to have returned to Heaven in the Ascension forty days after his Resurrection. Christians in Jerusalem started coming here to pray after the Ascension and the spot entered local folk memory. A small church was built here in the fourth century and rebuilt in the seventh century. The Church of the Ascension would have been well known to the original hospitallers of the Order of St John, and one can imagine them walking there to pray, perhaps accompanying some of the sick pilgrims from their hospital in Jerusalem who were on the mend.

By the time of the Crusades, the Church of the Ascension had become ruinous and so was rebuilt in the form we know today. I have no doubts that the medieval hospitallers of St John knew all about this and some were doubtless present when the new church was consecrated in the twelfth century.

The Ascension of Christ, which we celebrate on Thursday, really has two main meanings for Christians today. During his lifetime, if someone wanted Jesus, they had to walk in search of him. If they made their way to Galilee, only to find he had set off for Jerusalem, they had to turn around and head south again. Following the Ascension, Jesus is to be found everywhere. All we have to do is to pray.
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Secondly, when Jesus returned to Heaven, he took with him all his experiences from his 33 years on earth. When we pray, we address a God who knows from the inside what it is like to be a human: to feel the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter, to be happy, to be sad, to suffer at the hands of others. The Creator knows what we, the created, go through day by day.
When we pray, we address a God who knows us better than we know ourselves, and who wants a loving, personal relationship with each and all of His children.
With my continued prayers and all good wishes,

​                                             The Rev. Dr  ROBERT BEAKEN, County Chaplain
EASTER 6 – 9th MAY 2021
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Gospel: St John, chapter 15, verses 9-1
Some words from today’s Gospel:
 
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.
 
As I read those words, my mind went to one of the great saints of the twentieth century, a man called Maximilian Kolbe. Maximilian was born in western Russia in 1894. In 1907 he and his elder brother decided to join the Franciscan friars in Austria. He entered the noviciate in 1910 and was professed in 1914. Maximilian was a bright boy; the Franciscans sent him to Rome to study at the Gregorian University. After the First World War, he was sent to Japan as a missionary priest and teacher.

The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 found Maximilian back in central Europe. During the Holocaust, he secretly sheltered many Jews from the Nazis; according to one estimate, he helped hide up to 2,000 of them. In the end, Maximilian was caught and sent to a concentration camp. He was later transferred to Auschwitz.

One day, a prisoner disappeared in Auschwitz. It was later discovered that he had drowned; but the cruel camp commandant thought he had escaped, and so he ordered that three Jews should be locked up and starved to death to deter other escape attempts. Three men were grabbed by the guards, and one cried out for mercy, saying that he had a wife and children to support. Maximilian Kolbe stepped forward and asked to be starved to death in place of the Jewish husband and father. He was imprisoned in a locked hut with the other two.

Their death was particularly gruesome and took longer than anyone expected. After the war, the guards testified that whenever they looked through the peephole, the saw Maximilian either standing or kneeling, and that he spent his time either comforting the other two men, or praying. The two men died, and Maximilian stubbornly continued to live. In the end, he was finished off by an injection of carbolic acid. As the Nazi doctor stepped forward, Maximilian raised his left arm ready for the injection.
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            This brave man was never forgotten; and in 1982 he was declared a saint.

Maximilian’s action goes against pretty much all the values of contemporary society. Most people today would have skulked around, trying to avoid the eye of the guards and certainly wouldn’t have volunteered to take someone’s place. Nor did Maximilian volunteer for a quick death, over in seconds, but for a long, lingering end; and in what time he had left, his concern was prayer and the care of others.

It is hard not to see here a reflection of Jesus Christ, and his death upon the Cross on Good Friday to take away our sins. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus reflects on what really matters in life, and tells us what to do. A few minutes earlier he had spoken of Christians being part of a vine, the stem of which was God. He urged us to open our hearts, to let the life of God flow into our hearts and lives, to mould and shape us. Now, he reflects a little further on this. He tells us that in the end, what really matters is love. Yet, this is no soft, sentimental, Barbara Cartland love.

I once said to a couple before their wedding that when you love someone, you give them a blank cheque to fill in, drawn upon the bank of your life. Jesus Christ gave everything for us; and he wants us to give all for him. Now, that is not something we manage to do all at once, but is a journey of discovery that stretches across a lifetime. Yet, if we love Jesus, we must also love him in our brothers and sisters, even the awkward and troublesome ones. We don’t know whether the Jewish husband and father whom Maximilian saved was necessarily a very nice person; but that is not the point. He was still a child of God, with his own God-given dignity and value.

Few of us can be like Maximilian Kolbe. Most of us lead less dramatic lives – thank God. But Christians are still called to spend our lives in the care and service of others. How we do it will vary from individual to individual, according to our circumstances. One idea occurs to me. God has been generous with us, in so many ways. Likewise, we recall that the people who have shaped and influenced our lives for the good have usually been the generous ones, rather than mean, self-centred people. If we are to listen to Jesus and do his will, then we too must try to be generous men and women.

Now, I don’t simply mean generous with money. Generosity is about spirit and attitude. We are called to be generous with our love towards others. Generous in our attitudes – forebearing, tolerant, kind and understanding. We are all a great mixture of sin and goodness; treasure, contained in earthenware vessels. So, we must be generous with our time, our words, our actions, our forgiveness.

And you never know; we might discover unexpected treasures or insights in the lives and conversation of other people. You can usually learn something from everyone. And most certainly, in being generous towards others, we shall (1) be a blessing to them, and (2) be blessed ourselves by God.

How did our Gospel end? Jesus said:
 
You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands, so that you may love one another.