15th January, 2006

NEW BEGINNINGS

It’s been a very different kind of week for me. First of all, Fr. Ephrem was away for a well-deserved break with his family in Ireland, which left yours truly on his own. No big deal, in a sense, except that it meant saying all five masses at the week-end. And again no big deal, except that if you think the homily was boring enough once, think what it was like for me to have to hear it five times!

A Parish Council meeting on Monday consisted largely of a review of how things had gone over Advent and Christmas, and planning for the upcoming Lent and Holy Week. It’s great support to the priests of the Parish to have such a group, who from their various different standpoints, and through their various different ministries in the Parish, can offer a much broader perspective from which to make plans.

I also took the opportunity this week to begin organising a ‘clean-out’ that I’ve been promising myself ever since I came here. I’ve always had the sense that there’s ‘stuff’ everywhere, without rhyme nor reason much of the time. Where do I get a bulb if I need to replace one? It could be in one of five different places, on four different floors. Is there a reason why if I open a press another hoover seems to fall out on me? Do we have a wrench somewhere? Does anyone ever again intend to use that typewriter, that satellite box, that carton of toner refills? Would the stuff we’re not ever going to use again be of use to somebody else?

I’m sure you’ve often gone through the same kind of experience yourselves. What is it about human nature that seems so often to say “don’t throw it out, it might come in useful some day”, when all prior experience tells us that we will eventually end up throwing it out anyway? I’m happy to say that with hopefully more than half of the job we now have a ‘walk-in’ cupboard that is no longer a ‘fall-out’ cupboard, and I now know that we wont have to buy any more envelopes until at least the beginning of the next Millenium!

There’s something about beginnings that fill us with enthusiasm. There’s the sense of “here’s a chance of a new start, a chance to do better than maybe I did before”. New Years are times for resolutions, in a sense a judgement that there are things about my life that could be better. Cleaning out cupboards and stores is all very well, but I suspect that there’s a lot more putting-in-order that could take place in our lives. Maybe the beginning of a new year is an opportunity to make a more serious effort in that regard – let’s stop putting it on the ‘long finger’.

It’s interesting that in today’s Gospel, Jesus marks the beginning of a new phase in Peter’s life be giving him a new name – Peter, which means ‘rock’. We know that in his first couple of years in following Christ he was anything but rock-like. And yet he grew into the role, as it were, and proved a solid foundation for the early Church. An interesting thought, if you were to give yourself a new name, something you would like to grow into in this coming year, what would it be?

Me? I don’t need to change – Patrick – noble one!