AN OPEN LETTER TO ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS ABOUT THE CHARISMATIC RENEWAL

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Maronite icon of Pentecost

In any popular movement, however much it is blessed by the Lord, you are going to find plenty to criticise.   Left to develop freely, all kinds of eccentrics, nutcases and other unsuitable people rush to join.   Besides the saints and the not so saintly who filled the deserts in the early days of monasticism, there were cranks and show-offs, the unbalanced and the merely imprudent.  Yet no movement has been so blessed by God, so full of saints, or has so left its mark on the Church, as the monastic movement.   The same can be said for the charismatic movement, although it is early days and saints are not so obviously present.   Yet, if you look closely, you will find charismatics who show signs of being very close to God.

No movement attracted more criticism in the early days than the monastic movement, and much of the criticism was well deserved.   The same can be said for the charismatic renewal.  All the more, because it began among Afro-American descendants of slaves: Protestant heretics, say some; human beings in great need, say others.

Interview of witnesses of the Azusa street revival

The Pentecostal/Charismatic movement shows its origins in African culture.  Here is an Orthodox (obviously non-Pentecostal) celebration of Easter in Africa:

Orthodox Christians celebrating 

Christ's resurrection in Ghana, Africa

Pentecostal or charismatic style of worship has its origin in the tradition of the African slaves and their descendants in the United States.   The slaves continued in their own style of worship according to the "do-it-yourself", Protestant tradition of those who evangelised them.   This was easy to do because there were no rules.   Without knowing it, they adopted the liturgical attitudes of early African Christian liturgical tradition while putting their emphasis on Christian themes beloved in evangelical Protestantism.   Here is the ancient Ethiopian Church at work: a song and dance after communion:

Here is another song.  I am sure the Athonite fathers would hate it, but they are not Africans.  Nevertheless, they would have to enter into the spirit of the action in order to understand either Ethiopian or charismatic worship:

The following video is Orthodox propaganda rather than a serious argument. It is evidently composed by a non-informed outsider because everyone is lumped together.  It combines scenes from a rather extreme Protestant Pentecostalism together with scenes from the Catholic Charismatic Renewal; and although they admit that the Protestant scenes are not normal in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, they condemn the Catholic movement by association.   Nevertheless, the film contains a serious theological argument beneath the false implications which we will need to answer.

I have never seen priests dancing in a line like chorus girls before, especially in front of the altar.    It seems to me that they are new to the charismatic renewal and are indulging in behaviour that they will, one day, regret.  I did things after Vatican II that I later regretted.   We must be patient.  After all, God is patient with us!!

Uniates and Roman Catholics bring

liturgical abuse to Ukraine

The Catholic Charismatic Renewal

The "charismatic renewal" entered the Catholic Church through a book by David Wilkerson a Protestant, Assembly of God minister, a book that has the freshness of the Acts of the Apostles and which I have read many times, called "The Cross and the Switchblade". That he was ferociously anti-Catholic and could never accept that there can be such a person as a Catholic charismatic shows that God has a sense of humour.

The Cross and the Switchblade

He couldn't stand Catholicism, but he certainly knew how to preach the Gospel.   

Here are some videos that are very valuable for understanding the Charismatic Renewal.

I came in contact with the Charismatic Renewal in the early seventies when two Belmont monks who were studying in Rome returned for the summer holidays and told us about it.  They had become members of a Pentecostal prayer group in the Gregorianum.  We formed a prayer group in the monastery and also joined an ecumenical prayer group in Hereford.  We were prayed over by Fr Simon Tugwell O.P. who had written a book about it.  We also attended national congresses and met Kevin Ranaghan and other American leaders. 

I was a theologian and, like many others, filtered the charismatic claims through Catholic teaching.  In the very recently published New Mass, we had three new eucharistic prayers with the epiclesis typical of the Eastern rites.  It seemed to me that charismatic spirituality and practice which involved calling down the Holy Spirit on people was only an extension of that: charismatics were people of the epiclesis.  Obviously, "baptism in the Holy Spirit" is not another sacrament, but simply the subjective experience of receiving the Holy Spirit which begins at our baptism, which is repeated at every Mass and becomes a permanent dimension of out Christian life.

I must admit that, although I shared in charismatic activities, was in theological agreement with the Charismatic Renewal, and could actually see people grow in holiness through it, I never felt at home with their way of prayer.  I found that silently praying in tongues was a good way to concentrate on the Lord after communion at Mass, but their communal prayer services were not for me.  As a monk with the monastic tradition of prayer - praying the liturgy, practising the 'Jesus Prayer' and lectio divina, for example - I just couldn't settle down to their way of doing things.

For almost seven years, I was parish priest of a Peruvian parish that was really charismatic.  I always sang the Mass, even when there were only a few people, singing even the consecration, not a liturgy you normally associate with a charismatic parish, but the people loved it once they were used to it; and they asked my successor if he could do the same, but he said he didn't know how.  When I spoke of the Holy Spirit to them, I took my material from the Fathers of the Church, and it fitted in very well.   Some years later, I became "formador" in a seminary for charismatic students.  One of them used an image of St Seraphim of Sarov for his ordination card.

In both parish and seminary, I saw genuine spiritual growth.  That is why I cannot disagree or attack their way of prayer, even though it isn't for me.  I believe that it is necessary to love people in order to understand them in spiritual things, which is why, in the Byzantine Rite, they put the kiss of peace before the Creed.  That is why one of the Fathers said that Orthodoxy without love is the religion of the devil.  It is our love, the love that must be continually purified to reflect more and more the presence and our share in the activity of the Holy Spirit, that unites us to one another.  When we do not love, we offer space for the devil to divide us from one another.

Charismatic Renewal and Orthodoxy

Just an example of a Charismatic who became Orthodox without rejecting his charismatic past.

Father Michael Harper (1931-2010)

An appreciation by Charles Whitehead of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal

Father Michael Harper

One of the greatest pioneers and servants of the Charismatic Renewal died in Cambridge on January 6th 2010 after a short illness.

Michael Harper was ordained a priest of the Church of England in 1956, and experienced the baptism in the Holy Spirit in 1962, speaking in tongues the following year. In 1964 he established The Fountain Trust to further renewal in the power of the Holy Spirit for Christians throughout the body of Christ. He started Renewal Magazine and was a prolific author, as he travelled the world serving renewal within the Anglican Communion and promoting ecumenical relations. 

I first met Michael Harper in 1983. We became friends, and from that time on I worked with him in a number of committees and in the organisation of a variety of international ecumenical events. In 1999 he invited me to succeed him as the chairman of ICCOWE, the International Charismatic Consultation on World Evangelisation, today abbreviated to ICC. We remained in regular contact over succeeding years, and at the time of his death he was still a Trustee of ICC and planning to attend our February Executive meeting, where his wisdom and advice would have been as much appreciated as ever. His experience of the worldwide Charismatic renewal was second to none, and he will be hugely missed by many, many people. He was prophetic, visionary, dynamic, challenging, and entertaining, but he always had time for the individual who wanted to seek his advice or receive ministry from him. Underneath the determined exterior and the incisive mind, beat a loving and caring pastoral heart. He never tired of proclaiming the good news of the Gospel wherever he was, and his books on renewal, healing, and growth have affected the lives of countless readers. It is difficult to realise the impact he had without seeing how many remarkable organisations and events he had the vision and courage to start up.

After leaving The Fountain Trust in 1975, Michael Harper became a key leader in the worldwide Charismatic Renewal. He initiated a charismatic conference for Anglicans alongside the Lambeth Conference of July 1978, and in 1981 formed SOMA (Sharing of Ministries Abroad) to share the grace of renewal with the Anglican Church all over the world. His ecumenical work was no less significant, and in the early 1970s he founded the UK Charismatic Leaders’ Conference which brought together leaders from many church traditions and backgrounds, including the new charismatic independent churches. His ecumenical sympathies found further expression through both the European Charismatic Consultation and ICCOWE (later becoming ICC) which he founded with Fr. Tom Forrest and Rev. Larry Christenson in 1989. He had initiated and chaired ACTS 86, the European charismatic conference held in Birmingham, and similar international ecumenical charismatic gatherings in Berne (1990), Brighton (1991), Malaysia (1994 and 2000), and Prague (1997 and 2000).

In March 1995, deeply upset by the ordination of women in the Church of England, he joined the Orthodox Church, and was soon ordained a priest, becoming Dean of the new Antiochian Orthodox Deanery for the United Kingdom and Ireland, which under his loving and dynamic leadership now numbers more than twenty parishes. In all his work he was wonderfully encouraged and supported by his wife Jeanne, who joined him in his pilgrimage to the Orthodox Church.


In a recent interview, Michael stated “I’m as charismatic as ever”, and as we sat in his funeral service at St. George’s Orthodox Cathedral, London, I felt privileged to have been his friend for 27 years, and to have been blessed by his wisdom, insights, and challenges on so many occasions. Certainly Fr. Michael Harper was a giant of the worldwide Charismatic Renewal, and whilst we rejoice in all that he was and did, we are just beginning to realise how much we are going to miss him.

ONE SMALL STEP AT A TIME: POPE FRANCIS AND CONTINUING THE WORK OF VATICAN II

*Bergoglio's Revolution. In Little Doses, But Irreversible

On the world stage, Pope Francis’s star is burning brighter than ever, now even as nuclear peacemaker between the United States and North Korea. But even within the Church, he finds himself at grips with a piecemeal world war, a strange war that he himself has contributed to unleashing, absolutely convinced that it will come to a good end.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio is unquestionably an innovator. But in method, before it can be seen in results.

He always introduces the innovations in little doses, on the sly, perhaps in an allusive footnote, as he did with the now-famous footnote 351 of the post-synodal exhortation “Amoris Laetitia,” only to say later with candor, when questioned on one of his equally famous airborne press conferences, that he doesn’t even remember that footnote.

And yet those few cryptic lines were enough to ignite within the Church an unprecedented conflict, with entire episcopates squaring off (1), in Germany in favor of the innovations and in Poland against, and so all over the world between diocese and diocese, between parish and parish, where what is at stake is not only the yes or no to communion for the divorced and remarried, but the end of the indissolubility of marriage and the admission of divorce (2) within the Catholic Church too, as is already taking place among Protestants and Orthodox.

There are those who are becoming alarmed over this confusion that pervades the Church. But Francis is doing nothing to put the house back into order. He is moving right along with confidence. No point in even waving to the cardinals who submit their own “doubts” and those of many to him, on capital questions of doctrine that they see under threat, and ask him to bring clarity. He lets run free the most disparate interpretations, whether conservative or progressive in the extreme, without ever explicitly condemning any of them.

The important thing for him is “to cast the seed so that the power may be unleashed,” it is “to mix the leaven so that the power may bring growth,” words from a homily of his a few days ago at Santa Marta. And “if I get my hands dirty, thanks be to God! Because woe to those who preach under the illusion of not getting their hands dirty. These are museum curators.”

Pascal, the philosopher, and man of faith whom Francis says he wants to beatify, wrote fiery words against the Jesuits of his time, who threw into the fray their most daring ideas so that over time they would ripen little by little and become the common opinion.

But this is precisely what the first Jesuit pope in history is doing today: setting into motion “processes” within which he is sowing the innovations that he wants to win out sooner or later, in the most diverse fields, as for example in the judgment on Protestantism.

In Argentina, Bergoglio unleashed terrible invectives against Luther and Calvin. But as pope he is doing the complete opposite, he does nothing but sing Luther’s praises. On a visit to the Lutheran church in Rome, when asked to say whether Catholics and Protestants may receive communion together in spite of the fact that the former believe that the bread and wine “really” become the body and blood of Christ while the latter do not, he answered yes, and then no, and then I don’t know, and then figure it out yourselves, in an ecstasy of contradictions, but in practice giving the go-ahead.

It is the fluidity of his magisterium that is the true novelty of Francis’s pontificate. What he does not tolerate is that anyone should dare to tie it down in clear and distinct ideas, purging it of its innovative contents.

Cardinal Gerhard L. Müller, who as prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith insisted on saying that in “Amoris Laetitia” there was nothing new with respect to tradition, he summarily removed from office.

And Cardinal Robert Sarah, who as prefect of the congregation for divine worship would like to reserve for himself full control of the translations of the Latin missal in the various languages, he publicly humiliated, requiring him to tell all the bishops himself that the pope instead is giving every national Church the freedom to translate as it likes, the embryo of a future Catholic Church no longer monolithic but federated (4), another of the objectives of Bergoglio, the unrelenting schemer.

(English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.)

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This commentary was published in "L'Espresso" no. 46 of 2017 on newsstands November 12, on the opinion page entitled "Settimo Cielo" entrusted to Sandro Magister.

MY NOTES ON THE ABOVE ARTICLE

 1 & 2)  It must be remembered that there were differences in teaching and practice on marriage and divorce in the first thousand years of the Church's history. For example, the central Roman teaching on marriage is that it is a legal contract which can only be cancelled by the death of one of the partners.  

You will have trouble finding any kind of contract between husband and wife in the traditional Orthodox marriage service.   For the Orthodox, the marriage rite is not a contract which is merely witnessed by the Church as with the Latins: it is the  recognition by the Church of a relationship between a man and a woman already begun in their lives by God in which they reflect the Holy Trinity.   

  

This a short statement from an Orthodox source:

Man is made in the image and likeness of God. Marriage is intended by God to be an image of the Trinity. It is the union of three persons, not two. Man and woman are one with each other and one with the person of Jesus Christ.

 Legal contracts, for the Orthodox, are a matter for the State, not the Church.

Thus, in the Latin West, Christian marriage is a contract, while in the Orthodox East, it is a relationship.  Little wonder that there is a difference of pastoral practice going right back to the early Church about what happens when a relationship ceases to exist in any meaningful sense.

If we are sister churches in which Tradition springs from the synergy between the Holy Spirit and the Church as takes place in the Liturgy, then we must acknowledge the authenticity of each other's traditions.  For too long we have treated our own tradition as the only one while acknowledging their Eucharists.  They too have made the same mistake.

It is a principal of ressourcement theology to look at Tradition in all its manifestations for the right answer to difficult theological, liturgical and pastoral problems.  The Church has done this in liturgy with the formula for Confirmation and with the choice of three new Eucharistic prayers after the Council.  Pope Francis is continuing the good work when dealing with difficult problems of marriage and the family.

Another principle pf ressourcement theology is that, if the Church has permitted and regarded something as good and Catholic for a long time, it cannot be suddenly disallowed - Pope Benedict permitted the Tridentine Mass on this principal - and if real differences in teaching and practice were not considered reason to break communion over the centuries, they can't suddenly become reasons for keeping us apart.  Hence, the admission by Catholic theologians that the Pope rules the Church as successors of St Peter was not universally believed in the first thousand years is important in deciding whether belief or disbelief in the Vatican I dogmas should keep us apart.

The same can be said for differences between the bishops of Poland and Germany over giving communion to divorced and re-married.

3)On a visit to the Lutheran church in Rome, when asked to say whether Catholics and Protestants may receive communion together in spite of the fact that the former believe that the bread and wine “really” become the body and blood of Christ while the latter do not, he answered yes, and then no, and then I don’t know, and then figure it out yourselves, in an ecstasy of contradictions, but in practice giving the go-ahead.

It must be remembered that official Lutheran teaching is that Christ is really present in the Eucharist; hence, the question of what happens about people who do not believe in the real presence does not arise in a Lutheran-Catholic context.

4) [Pope Francis ordered Cardinal Sarah]  to tell all the bishops himself that the pope instead is giving every national Church the freedom to translate as it likes, the embryo of a future Catholic Church no longer monolithic but federated

And about time too! English is a beautiful language and, when translating Latin into English, using Latin constructions and ignoring the rhythm of English can be forgiven in a school kid, but Vatican translators have no excuse.

 One consistent theme marking Francis’s pontificate has been his desire to decentralize authority in the Church. His 2013 Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium spoke of establishing a juridical status for “episcopal conferences which would see them as subjects of specific attributions, including genuine doctrinal authority.” In October 2015, Francis referenced episcopal conferences as one way to realize “intermediary instances of collegiality.” More recently, the pope told Polish bishops that one way forward with vexed pastoral issues might be to allow episcopal conferences decide how to proceed. (Catholic World Report)

GOD'S PROVIDENCE AND ME

, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet,

 for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

Exodus 3. 5

God's Grandeur 
BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. 
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; 
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil 
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod? 
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; 
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil; 
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil 
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod. 

And for all this, nature is never spent; 
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 
And though the last lights off the black West went 
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs — 
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent 

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Every so often in our lives, there are moments when we are challenged to trust in God and move outside our comfortable present circumstances and move into an unknown and possibly bleak future.  We are asked to say  ‘No’ to what we are presently enjoying and ‘Yes’ to something that could be cold and empty: we are invited to walk on water.   After thirty six wonderful years in Peru, the inevitable is about to happen and, at the age of eighty, I shall be moving back to my own monastery at Belmont: for the first time, a move without a job to look forward to.  The worst thing that could happen, it seems to me, is a life among the older members, dreaming nostalgically of Peru, living in the past instead of the present where God is. At such moments, it pays to renew our confidence in and our dedication to Divine Providence. This does not remove the uncertainties of life, nor does it invite us to take refuge in irresponsibility: rather it places our uncertainties into the context of faith and challenges us to look beyond appearances into the divine presence underlying them. A person of faith sees and believes, said St Francis, a person without faith just sees. 

Let us begin our examination of Divine Providence with a look at the present moment. Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade wrote of what he called the 'sacrament of the present moment':

All creatures are living in the hand of God; the senses perceive only the action of the creature, but faith sees the action of God in everything - faith believes that Jesus Christ is alive in everything and operates throughout the whole course of the centuries; faith believes that the briefest moment and the tiniest atom contain a portion of Christ's hidden life and his mysterious action.  The action of creatures is a veil concealing the profound mysteries of the divine action.   Jesus Christ after his resurrection took his disciples by surprise in his apparitions, he presented himself to them under appearances which disguised him; and as soon as he had revealed himself, he disappeared.  This very same Jesus, always living and active, still takes by surprise souls whose faith is not sufficiently pure and penetrating.
There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action.”   “The duties of each moment are the shadows beneath which hides the divine operation."  “(5) If we wish to be united to God we should value all the operations of his grace, but we should cling only to the duties of the present moment.”

...The present moment is always full of infinite treasure, it contains far more than you have the capacity to hold.   Faith is the measure; what you find in the present moment will be according to the measure of your faith.   Love is also the measure: the more your heart loves, the more it desires, and the more it desires the more it finds.  The will of God presents itself at each instant like an immense ocean which the desire of your heart cannot empty, although it will receive of that ocean the measure to which it can expand itself by faith, confidence and love.   The whole of the created universe cannot fill your heart which has a greater capacity than everything else that is not God.  The mountains that afright your eyes are tiny as atoms to the heart.   The divine will is an abyss, the opening of which is the present moment.

“If the work of our sanctification presents, apparently, the most insurmountable difficulties, it is because we do not know how to form a just idea of it. In reality, sanctity can be reduced to one single practice, fidelity to the duties appointed by God. Now, this fidelity is equally within each one's power whether in its active practice, or passive exercise. The active practice of fidelity consists in accomplishing the duties which devolve upon us whether imposed by the general laws of God and of the Church, or by the particular state that we may have embraced. Its passive exercise consists in the loving acceptance of all that God sends us at each moment.” “O my God! how much I long to be the missionary of Your holy will, and to teach all men that there is nothing easier, more attainable, more within reach, and in the power of everyone, than sanctity. How I wish that I could make them understand that just as the good and the bad thief had the same things to do and to suffer; so also two persons, one of whom is worldly and the other leading an interior and wholly spiritual life have, neither of them, anything different to do or to suffer; but that one is sanctified and attains eternal happiness by submission to Your holy will in those very things by which the other is damned because he does them to please himself, or endures them with reluctance and rebellion. This proves that it is only the heart that is different. Oh! all you that read this, it will cost you no more than to do what you are doing, to suffer what you are suffering, only act and suffer in a holy manner. It is the heart that must be changed. When I say heart, I mean will. Sanctity, then, consists in willing all that God wills for us. Yes! sanctity of heart is a simple “fiat,” a conformity of will with the will of God. What could be easier, and who could refuse to love a will so kind and so good? Let us love it then, and this love alone will make everything in us divine.”   "
“It is certain that God always gives what is necessary to those souls who fear Him. The gifts He bestows on them are not always the most apparent to the senses, nor the most agreeable, nor the most sought after, but the most necessary and solid; all the more so, usually, in being less felt and more mortifying to self-love; for that which helps us most powerfully to live to God is what best enables us to die to self.” “The high road to all perfection is pointed out in the "Our Father." "Fiat voluntas tua." Say this with your lips as well as you can; and still more perfectly in your heart, and be assured that, with this interior disposition nothing is wanting to you, nor ever will be. Learn by this to find repose in no matter what difficulties and troubles, because all will come right when God pleases, and according to our desires, if He should will it so, or permit it.” 

“To achieve the height of holiness, people must realize that all they count as trivial and worthless is what can make them holy.”   “If we have abandoned ourselves to God, there is only one rule for us: the duty of the present moment.”   “There is not a single person who cannot easily reach the highest degree of perfection by performing every duty, no matter how commonplace, with eager love.” 

“We must be active in all that the present moment demands of us, but in everything else remain passive and abandoned and do nothing but peacefully wait for the promptings of God.”

“We should run too great a risk of losing everything by our vain imaginations if God were to give us, at once, all the perfection we desired. The inordinate love of our own excellence would carry us to as high a flight as Lucifer, but only like him, to fall into the abyss of pride. God, who knows our weakness in this respect, allows us to grovel like worms in the mud of our imperfections, until He finds us capable of being raised without feeling any foolish self-satisfaction, or any contempt of others.” 

If all this is true, then the secular world which functions entirely independently of God its Creator, is a myth.   Those who accept it as a fact can be atheists who believe science and religion are opposed, or they can be those who believe that the world and God are so mutually exclusive that the only way that God can act in the world is by suspending the world's physical laws by working a miracle.

G.K.Chesterton on miracles

While miracles are of the utmost importance in any debate between these two groups, atheists and a certain type of charismatic because their belief systems depend on the existence or non-existence of miracles, we can be relaxed before any report of miracles because, while we know they happen, really and basically, God is just as much involved in ordinary, everyday events as he is in miracles. Those who believe that God only communicates to us through apparitions and miracles rather than through the ordinary "common or garden" present moment are spiritually blind and deaf.  Most of us have these disabilities at least some of the time.

In the Gospels, Jesus tells us to keep alert with our lamps lit, ready for the coming of the bridegroom; that we should be awake like someone waiting for a thief to enter our house, as ready to serve God like an unjust steward looking for ways to serve his own interests.   How many present moments we miss because our faith is asleep and we look around with the eyes of an unbeliever, oblivious to God's presence warning, inviting or challenging us, or letting us see his reflection in the beauty of things.

The more we put ourselves into the hands of God, the more we shall experience his help.  Let me tell you a small story.  By itself to could be a mere coincidence, but it is one of many, many such stories.  At my age, they tend to accumulate.

I had been a parish priest for a wonderful seven years in a sea-side parish on the Pacific Ocean and had come back to Belmont for a sabbatical before taking up a new appointment.  However, man proposes and God disposes, and I found myself parish priest of Harrington in Cumbria because the vacancy appeared out of nowhere and I was the only monk without a job.  A couple of months into the new work, I received a call from the abbot of Belmont and went immediately to see him.  The archbishop of my diocese in Peru had written to tell the abbot that he no longer needed my services.  The abbot gave me leave to seek out a new bishop, but I became very sad.

At Belmont there was an old monk, Father Luke, who had been our first superior in Peru and was now in retirement - it comes to us all in time - a monk of great holiness whose spiritual advice I had always sought.  I told him what had happened and that the abbot had given me permission to look for a new bishop.   

"If I were you, I wouldn't do that," he said.

"Why?" I answered,"I have permission."   

"What are we monks for?" he asked, "To seek God's will rather than our own.  If God wants you back in Peru, he will make it abundantly clear.  If he doesn't, then why do you want to go?"

I agreed with his logic, decided not to look for a bishop, and returned to Harrington, pretty convinced that I would be there for a long time.

Three weeks later, I received a visit from Jean Cornfoot, a nurse who had been working with me in my last Peruvian parish, and she came to see me in Harrington.  We had a wonderful day together.  As she was leaving, she said, "I almost forgot.   Here is a Peruvian telephone address - I don't know who it is from, the person didn't say, but someone sent it to me and told me to get it to you."
The number didn't tell me anything, but I phoned the next day.  It was the Bishop of Cajamarca in Peru.
"I heard what happened.  Don't bother about what the archbishop said.  Would you come and work in my diocese?"
I phoned Father Luke who said, "That is the sign.  Go for it!" 

 Three years in Cajamarca, followed by being called back to our monastic foundation in Peru, and I have been in that community ever since, nine years as superior until a year and a half ago.

Perhaps the event most full of "coincidences" was back in the early nineties.  I was parish priest in my parish on the Pacific coast but went every month for a couple of days to our monastery.  I had arrived in time for Vespers because I had been delayed looking for my car papers - you are not allowed to drive without papers - but couldn't find them and decided to risk it.  Anyway, we were singing the psalms when five men entered the chapel waving their guns, four pistols, and an assault rifle, and yelling, "We are police and you are terrorists.  Lie face down on the floor.  The first one to move we will shoot!"

We did as we were told.  Then their leader asked who was our leader, and Father Paul stood up.  The leader beckoned him outside and, as he was walking out, our dog, a beautiful specimen, half German shepherd, half Collie, got up and followed them out.  The leader told Fr Paul to put the dog in a room and he put it through the nearest door.   The leader asked for our car's papers, but Fr Paul couldn't remember where the papers were, "In my office, I suppose."  Two of the thieves - they were not policemen - ransacked his office to no avail.  Meanwhile, others were going from room to room, putting anything of value in a sack.  They stole the money I had brought to buy paint for my church, my radio, and the money that Fr Paul was going to pay some workers.  In fact, it came to very little.

It gets dark very quickly in northern Peru, and, at 7.00pm it is pitch black.  Two of the thieves went out to their car to tell their driver why there was a delay: they couldn't find the car's papers.  It was a brand new four by four.  To their consternation, the whole village was outside men, women, and children, with stones and sticks.  A thief fired into the air to disperse the crowds and to warn the thieves within that there was trouble.

Within minutes, the rest of the thieves who were guarding us or robbing the monastery vanished, moving towards the cars.  The first thing that Fr Paul did was to rescue his dog.  Lying on top of the desk in the room where the dog had been placed were the car papers.  The thieves had searched all the rooms except that one.

Two thieves went into Father Paul's car, together with the sack of stolen goods and another sack half full of ammunition for their guns.  To understand what happened next, you will have to know how the people of the village came to learn that thieves had entered the monastery.

A little ten-year-old boy was playing near the monastery when he saw the men enter with their guns.  He ran to tell his mother, and soon little boys were running from house to house with the news.   As it happened, the men of the village were holding a meeting about half a mile away about organizing a peasant police force to catch poachers and other rural villains.   A little boy came panting into the meeting.  The message had changed in the telling, "Armed men have entered the monastery and the fathers have asked for your help!"

Much encouraged by the fact that, at their very first meeting they had a job to do, they walked toward the monastery, gathering sticks and stones as weapons and telling each other what they were going to do with the thieves.  Two of them dragged a tree trunk across the path so that the criminals would not escape.  When the two thieves came out to talk to their driver, the villagers were ready for them.

The two thieves in Father Paul's car made off at speed but came across a tree trunk that the villagers had placed there.  They tried to drive around it, but a tree root in the ground wrapped itself around something underneath the car and held it fast: they could not move in any direction.  Scared stiff, they left the two sacks in the car, put a bullet into one of the tires, and walked back towards the monastery.

Two got into the thieves' car; but, as soon as they did this, the villagers let fly with their stones, breaking the windows and stopping the engine.  In their haste, one of the thieves shot himself in the foot.  They all got into my car, one bleeding badly, and made off, collecting the two who were walking back.   They got over the tree trunk by rushing it at speed.  As I could not find my car papers when I set out, they could not sell it and left it in the street. 

Just count the coincidences!   My not being able to find my papers, Fr Paul not remembering where he had put his papers, the monastery dog being placed in the room where the car papers were, the little boy with nous, the meeting of the men of the village to form a peasant police force, the root that captured Fr Paul's car even though nothing like that has ever happened before or since: the thieves did not stand a chance!!

Ten or more years later, the little boy had become a man.  He and his partner wanted a child but none came.  They tried all sorts of treatment without success. Father Paul was going to a meeting of monastic superiors in Mexico City and promised the couple that he would pray for them at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.   Because of the meeting, he could not go to the shrine until late in the week; but, when he went, he prayed for the couple to have a child.  On the very night,  back in Peru, the woman conceived for the first and last time.  She did not know that was the evening he prayed for her.  In none of these stories was there a miracle, yet God was as present and as active as in any miracle.

In the Catholic understanding of things, 
"the world is charged with the glory of God," and, as St Thomas Aquinas said, God is closer to us than we are to ourselves because all being flows from his creative Love.  Thus, as G.K.C. wrote, “The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.”  The ordinary, every day, the downright small and unimportant is drenched in God and can become a source of great things without losing its everyday characteristics.  Any ground can become holy ground: all ground is made for that very purpose.  Miracles can happen anywhere; but, when they don't happen, God is just as active in ordinary circumstances.

Moreover, heaven and earth are united in the Incarnation of Christ, Our Lady, the angels, and saints are only a prayer away, and we sing "Holy, holy, holy," with them every time we go to Mass.  Do we believe in God?   Well, we eat his body and drink his blood, and we live in him and he in us.  We are his body and he uses our ordinary lives as we put ourselves at his disposition.  As  St Teresa of Avila wrote:

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”  

On receiving Communion, that is what we become without any need, in normal circumstances, for the suspension of any laws of nature in a miracle.  However, if a miracle should happen, we should not be surprised.