THE HOUSE in which I am writing these words was the home of my grandfather, his father and his father before him. It was probably built at the end of the 18th century.
Imagine, if when it was first built someone had stood outside the door, looked up in the sky and said they had just seen the 10.45 London-New York service pass overhead.
Of course people would express great worry about the person who would say such a thing and he or she might well be conveyed to the nearest mental hospital. Those days they called them mad houses.
During the years of Concorde every day at noon one could hear the sonic boom close to this house as it sped across the skies over the sea from London Heathrow to JFK in New York.
What would anyone have said in the early 1800s if someone told them they had heard the sonic boom in west Kerry? Back then God was taken for granted. God was in the heavens and people had no problem believing in God. Today it is a different story and for many it is anything but God.
One thing is certain; our knowledge is limited. We are all the time learning new things. Individuals are constantly in a process of learning and so too the community and society.
Imagine how difficult it is to explain to a eight-year-old child that less than 50 years ago most people in the village where this house is had no telephones. Most eight-year-olds probably don’t understand the word “landline”. I asked little Maurice what a landline was. He had no idea.
So what does one say when it comes to trying to say anything about God? Why can’t our words about God change? In tomorrow’s Gospel, those who were listening to Jesus talk about eating his body and drinking his blood said: ” This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it.” (John 6: 60). The US writer Gore Vidal, who died on July 31st, expressed the opinion that it was outrageous to believe in a God or an afterlife. The previous day Maeve Binchy died. And she too expressed her disbelief in God or an afterlife.
To say that one believes in God and the efficacy of the Sacraments is in many ways “intolerable language”. There is indeed something “preposterous” about it. And even when we say we believe in God, what exactly does that mean? Also, what does it mean to say that one believes that Jesus Christ was God? We really are using “incredible” words. It is certainly easy when one is born into a faith to accept it without ever giving it too much thought.
But we live in times where everything has to be tangible and immediate for us. If it can’t be pinned down by science we are at once sceptical and suspicious. If we can’t see it with our own eyes then we might well be tempted to dismiss it as a fairytale.
In tomorrow’s Gospel, Jesus tells his followers: “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.” (John 6: 63). Jesus recognises that there are those who do not believe in who he is or what he is doing. He tells them that it is through the power of the Father that we are called to love and see God.
The world in which we live is for all of us from time to time a valley of tears and it might well be an escape into fantasy to argue that there has to be more to it than this. And yet, the God question never goes away. There is something powerfully attractive and sublimely interesting in the life and words of Jesus as recalled in the New Testament.
All of us are children of our time, influenced by the styles, customs and mores of the here and now.
It would have been absurd to have spoken about sonic booms when this house was built. People who looked into the sky and spoke about contrails would have been a laughing stock.
Rather than say there is no God or afterlife, is it not more gentle, more possible to say that it is the spirit that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer.
Once we utter the name of God, surely we have to go gently. No doubt there are those who are certain that God exists. But we can never ever afford to be glib when we talk about God.
In faith we can say, the same words as Simon Peter, “You have the message of eternal life and we believe”. Belief can never be placed in a straitjacket. The spirit gives life. Once we try to tie down that spirit, limit it to our way of thinking, surely we are attempting to control the spirit, expecting it to act and react according to our rules.
All of us are in process, on pilgrimage to discover the wonder and love of God. As an old election slogan suggested: “We are not there yet”.