2nd April, 2006

ON BEING A ‘CHANCER’

It’s been a kind of mixum-gatherum week, with all kinds of unrelated events happening. The week began with a meeting with some of my confreres from Ireland and Scotland – one of whom, Fr. Paul Francis, will be known to many of you. We were discussing issues around our Passionist charism, and how we can relate it to the world of today. Our founder, St. Paul of the Cross, was firmly of the belief that if people only understood the depth of God’s love that is expressed through His passion, death and resurrection, they couldn’t but respond in a profoundly life-altering way.

Fr. Frank, who is the Parish Priest in Mount Argus, our parish in Dublin, was booked to return to Ireland on Tuesday afternoon, and of course was worried about possible disruption of his flight time on account of the general strike. Somewhat hopefully I suggested to him that he need have no undue worries, as ‘general strike’ in France doesn’t mean the same as anywhere else in the real world. He was greatly relieved to learn that most of the buses and metro were running.

Enter complication number two. Of all mornings the King of Spain chooses the same Tuesday to attend a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe, with the result that all the streets off the Etoile were closed off for a lengthy period of the morning. And, of course, when we walked up to Av. Carnot, to catch the airport coach, lots of lovely military music, but no coach. I, perhaps rashly, offered to drive him to the airport, having noticed as we crossed Av. de Wagram that Place des Ternes was gridlocked. I had no idea what I was leaving myself in for!

As it happens I drove up to the top of Av. Hoche, went round the chicken-run to Grande Armée, where I was practically the only vehicle on the street, and drove to and from the airport in forty-five minutes. It just goes to show that there are times when seeming risks turn out to be nothing of the sort; times, in other words, when it’s worth taking the chance of entering into the unknown.

That’s the kind of chance that Christ is putting before us in today’s gospel when he talks about the wheat grain falling on the ground. There’s a challenging ambiguity in that word ‘chance’ – do we seek it as meaning ‘risk’, or as meaning ‘opportunity’? Christ combines the two, and invites us to take the risk of availing of the opportunities he puts before us.

And isn’t that the reality for us so often – we fail to avail of opportunities to do good for others because we’re afraid of the risk that our efforts may be misunder-stood? So often fear gets in the way – fear of failing, fear of being rejected, fear of being caught in a traffic jam.