Читать книгу The Little Book of Lent: Daily Reflections from the World’s Greatest Spiritual Writers - Arthur Howells - Страница 12
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John V. Taylor was Bishop of Winchester from 1975 to 1985. He was the author of The Go-Between God, which won the Collins Religious Book Award in 1973. He died in 2001.
Better Together
The Roman Catholic Archbishop Derek Worlock was a wonderful partner to the Anglican Bishop David Sheppard. They had their motto there in Liverpool: ‘We do it better together.’ That is the absolute keyword of the Christian life. It is a great mistake to present it as an individual struggle for personal salvation or holiness.
Down in the muddy sea-bed of the Lake of Galilee, they found a few years ago a boat that dates from the time of Jesus. Wonderfully preserved in the wet mud, it has now been raised and restored and is visible to visitors. They say it is typical of the larger fishing smacks that Jesus would have known. It had a square sail like an Arab dhow, but it was held together by six strong thwarts from one side to the other of the boat, with two rowers on each and a seat in the stern for the man in charge of the tiller. And that is what Jesus chose as the best device for training his followers. In Matthew’s Gospel, when the twelve are named, he puts the names in pairs, the fellow rowers, as he remembered them. For they had to learn a mutual awareness and response and absolute obedience to the whole team. We know that they had a common purse. Of course they weren’t spending all their time in fishing, but when they were doing the new work to which Jesus had called them, he sent them out two by two. There were to be no loners. Even that work must be shared. And it wasn’t all work either. When they did plan a day off, they went together. They walked together in the fields, they went up into the hills as a group, they ate together. That was most important of all. Did you know that there are ten different meals recorded in the Gospels, an extraordinary thing for a book of spiritual guidance. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and we have remembered him ever since simply doing this.
So during the six weeks of Lent, how about using these weeks of discipline to put down the natural loner in myself, to cut out the first person singular from my programme, to cultivate the plural of the kingdom of God, and to give priority to those activities that I share? So each of us may come to Passiontide and Holy Week and Easter with a clearer understanding and appreciation of the one pain and the one power.
THE EASTER GOD JOHN V. TAYLOR
Scripture Reading
ST MATTHEW 4:18–22
‘Immediately they left their nets and followed him.’
Prayer
Grant to me, O Lord, to know what is worth knowing,
to love what is worth loving,
to praise what delights you most,
to value what is precious to you,
and to reject whatever is evil in your eyes.
Give me true discernment,
so that I may judge rightly between things that differ.
Above all, may I search out and do what is pleasing to you;
through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.
THOMAS À KEMPIS (c.1380–1471)
