“Where are you from?” we often ask someone when we first meet them. “I think I recognise your accent but I’m not sure”

 We locate people by their regional voice, feel kinship with them when we share a common quarter of land and develop our conversation by asking if they know a road or place or building that is familiar to us. A connection is made and a certain confidence occurs. The stranger, after all, is one of us.

 There was an inference of that in Peter’s exchange with the servant, for when asked if he was a disciple too, was told that “Even his speech betrays him”

 Our identity is important to us, where we come from, our relatives, friends and circumstances, all contributed to the nest that was our first home, our starting point. It can be a story of great joy, love and of security, or a time that is cold and painful in our memory. But whatever the circumstance, it cannot be avoided for it has contributed to who we are and where we are going. Every one of us has been a child and the care, or lack of it, we experienced then remains with us.

 Trees, tall against the open sky cannot stand in the winds of winter without roots that clutch the earth, sinking deep within it. That root gave life to the first sprig in the ground, continues to strengthen and deepen as the tree blossoms and grows in the field. We see its leaves unfurl each spring, watch it blossom and in some instances, value its fruit for nourishment. Yet all the while the unseen part spreads in the damp, stoned earth, experiencing no light, no leaves or blossom, hidden from all that, yet essential for the survival of the tree, the beauty of which we can appreciate. We need to care for those roots.

 The Christian Church does not exist in our time without a reliance on its roots in previous years. That life source goes back through many centuries, back to the Judaic years that were to be the formative experience of Jesus the Nazarene, the Palestinian Jew whose name we bear. If that connection is ignored- broken -then much is at risk.

 Some have argued that the Second Council of the Vatican in the 60s represented such a discontinuity and they have rejected its decrees, a small though vociferous minority. Others have tried in various ways to hinder progress, not seeing the quality of tree that is now growing from the deep roots of tradition, the new growth that is blooming from those self-same roots.

 Growth is not a narrowing experience, testing continuity not a tool of rejection but a life-affirming process. The DNA that each of us possess is a link with those who preceded us, tells our story, maps our progress.

 But it is a one way line. We cannot change that history, we can only move on.

 The significance of the recently issued document drawn from the Synod discussions, Amoris Laetitia, is the need for compassion in our judgement of others and the over-riding value of our conscience in the difficulties that can face us. There Pope Francis states that priests must consider each case of divorce and any subsequent marriage on its own merits when one of the parties seeks closer union with the Church. In a footnote, he further adds that such help could include recourse to the sacraments of confession and also the Eucharist, which he describes as “not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak”.

 A damaged relationship is not cared for by cold condemnation but through pastoral understanding of the circumstances that created it. We are not machines that exist with clear on-off switches in every experience. There must be modulation and understanding in our response to each other. Hard to handle, untidy in its presentation, a road full of twists and turns, but nonetheless necessary if we are exercise compassion in the name of the Lord. That is the central tenet of the Gospel – ‘Go and sin no more’. It is not a command that is static, for going is about moving on. It does demand that conversion of heart that rejects a broken relationship with the Lord, it is about forgiveness and mercy.

 The cold construct of legalism that has edges so sharp that they cut if you brush against them, has no place in a Christian faith whose roots are deep and secure in well-watered ground. Our understanding of each other is dependent on respect for new shoots that draw their sustenance from a deeper, hidden history of life, and are allowed to flourish.

 END

------