Sermon for the 7th Sunday after Trinity, St Ignatius – 31st July 2022: ECCLESTIASTES 1:2-12,2:18-2, LUKE 12:13-21

Deacon Christine Saccali – St Paul’s Athens

It is the height of summer here now – August tomorrow and I hope you have had or will have a break or a staycation as the fashionable phrase goes. But the real question is, I feel, is whether we have been able to take time out of our hectic schedules to spend time with the King, as the hype for the Elvis film goes but we are talking about the king of our hearts and souls – Jesus.

But carving out time, even on holiday or on leave to be with God isn’t always as simple as that, I find. I don’t know about you but it takes me two or three days to unwind and leave all the day to day stuff behind that nags away at one. Then I have to still my soul and listen out above the tumult and clamour of life for that small voice. By the time, I am in the position to listen then it can be time to come home again.

Today we celebrate the feast of St Ignatius and into my inbox this month have been dropping daily instead of regular weekly emails from Ignatian Spirituality, a series  entitled ‘To see all things new in Christ.’  Now I didn’t always get on with this method of reflection. In fact, during my selection process when I was examined about spirituality, I had to confess that St Ignatius and his methods known as the Examen with their various stages didn’t really appeal to me.

So let’s learn about the life of St Ignatius: the youngest son of a Basque nobleman, Ignatius was born  in the sixteenth century at his family’s ancestral home in Loyola in north east Spain. He served as a page at court and then entered military service, being seriously wounded by a cannonball at the siege of Pamplona in 1521. As a result, his leg never really healed and he was left with a permanent limp. He spent his lengthy convalescence reading the Life of Christ and various saints resolving to devote himself to the spiritual life. He went on pilgrimage to Monserrat where he hung up his sword over the altar exchanged his fine clothes for those of a beggar’s. To celebrate 500 years of Ignatian Spirituality a statue has just been unveiled of a woman holding a beggar’s bowl opening the gate to Ignatio.

He worked in a hospital and lived as a hermit, not simultaneously I add.

He wrote the Spiritual Exercises, a manual of Christian Prayer and meditation which is still being used and valued to this day by Christians of many traditions and denominations. He travelled widely in Europe, at times provoking the authorities with his preaching so much so that he faced the Inquisition and had to leave Spain for France. He kept his studies up and hoped to go to Palestine with a group of others as a missionary but their hopes were dashed because of war so the group ended up in Venice under the auspices of the Pope where they were ordained and founded the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, a monastic order with an eye on reform as well as vows of obedience. He died on this day in 1556. Quite a chap and a saint in his own right. What a turnaround of his life.

 

Our readings today are not specifically linked to the saint but let us see what they have to offer on R and R rest and retreat. At first they may appear gloomy and unattainable in our daily life but I perceive them as warnings of pitfalls we can fall into. I do love this passage from Ecclesiastes, part of the books of Wisdom literature,  it brings me up short every time I read it.  It may not be your cup of tea. Take it home and take time to savour it not to beat yourself up or feel guilty but see what applies to you. One phrase that particularly leaps out at me is Vanity and the things I do in vain like staying awake worrying which I attempt to turn into a time of prayer and reflection praying for events or people on my heart and soul. Something else may stir you.

 

Moving on to look at the gospel passage and parable, this story of the Rich Fool seems to be taken to be taken from another Wisdom Book used by rabbis for instruction, with a similar title Ecclestiasticus or Sirach 11:10-12 to be found in the Apocrypha. We are going to be hearing more from Ecclesiasticus next month. Here, with a few carefully chosen words Luke gives us a vivid picture of someone who puts all their trust in work and material goods. It echoes Ecclesiasticus which says, ‘I have found rest and I shall feast on my goods, he does not know how long it will be until he leaves them to others and dies.’ A sobering thought.

Another serious thought and question for a lot of people still and for the Rich Man in Luke is that of inheritance. Only the other day a neighbour and lady who helps me out was telling me that she didn’t want her son and daughter and families arguing over the property which will be divided up. She and her husband, immigrants to Greece worked and continued to do so very hard to build and maintain the house.

The parable as told in Luke is full of I’s and egoism as if to emphasise the Rich Fool’s own self importance measured in worldly terms not God’s. I can remember having to write a modern parable based on a scriptural one for my Reader course and choosing this one based on my neighbours’ acquisition of land and building huge houses on every square metre. They had their share of tragedy in their lives too.

Unless the Lord builds the house, it will be built in vain. A quote from Psalm 127  this was my school motto. Jesus is not saying it is wrong to work hard, indeed we should not be lazy or squander but it cannot be the be end and all of everything, we must not neglect our spiritual life, our church and community life is important too but we need time alone with God. Scary stuff.

This brings me back to my extended leave this summer and the point of it. Thank you for giving me space and time to stand back and refresh myself which I hope in turn I can put back in. So, allow me to share with you some personal moments of rest and reflection from earlier this month. We spent a good week in Thassos just relaxing. I took no work with me and only answered  prayer requests by text. I managed to read two books, one an autobiography the other a novel. No cooking, a travel kettle for morning tea are my comforts or luxuries and we tried to do one cultural thing per day museum, church  or monastery one mountain village, a swim or two and meals out.

So, I was rested and restored for a pilgrimage I had promised myself to make since the centenary of the First World War and our events here in St Paul’s, remember? It is all bound up in my family history which I have found is unique. My grandfather served in France in the cavalry from the age of 16, was wounded when a bullet ricocheted off his regimental pin near his heart. He lost a lot of blood but a fellow member of the Oxfordshire Hussars encouraged him and accompanied him to the field hospital. Pa, as I called him, lived till the age of 98. My last living relative.

His brother-in-law, my grandmother’s elder brother of three sisters from a neighbouring hamlet in Oxfordshire, was not so fortunate. He lost his life in 1917 on the Macedonian front. When I was doing work for St Paul’s and the Embassy during Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall’s visit to Athens, the lady in charge of Commonwealth War Graves traced my uncle’s grave for me to Doirani, an area and lake right by the Northern Macedonian border. I vowed I would visit his grave on behalf of the family as his great niece who had settled  and made her life here. So, we sailed from Thassos to Kavala and travelled on in the footsteps or tracks of what must have been the Macedonian Front from Salonika over a hundred years ago. It was a no man’s land with a museum with an open door and no exhibits, a station that was shut and the end of the one track line and a dusty road leading to the Skopje border where trucks were lining up to go through customs. A few faded tavernas lined the road.

In contrast, the war cemetery is immaculately kept by a groundsman as are they all and open 24 hours. A huge statue and symbol of North Macedonia towers over it on the hill above. I was immensely moved to be there not only in a personal capacity but as I poured and sobbed my soul out, the poignancy was not lost that I was reading prayers during wartime in Europe yet again. Do we never learn?

Personally, like in the TV ancestry programme, Who do you think you are ?  I learnt a lot by my time away and with God and feel wounds have healed although it was painful at times. I wish you each to spend time out, dare to stop and be still for yourself just as Ignatius of Loyala did all those years ago.

So let us end by praying his prayer another school favourite which you might like to read again and again this week thinking about how you feel about it and how it applies in your life.

Let us pray: Lord, teach us to be generous to serve you as you deserve,

to give and not to count the cost;

to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest;

to labour and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do your will,

through Jesus Christ our Lord AMEN