Is it true that human beings, today, are lonelier than in the past? Igino Giordani (1994-1980), now on the road to beatification and sanctity, was a prodigious Italian Catholic author / writer, a man I was privileged to meet on more than one occasion and whose thought and culture, for me, was and still is fascinating: he still reminds me so very much of my father, Henry Cotton, though Igino was a man of far wider experience and culture than my Dad. The similarities arise from his simple, yet profound, love of God and neighbour, together with his fatherliness!

In his diary for the 23rd January 1948, when he was then an MP in the Italian parliament, Igino wrote:

"The loneliness of fear is not that of the hermit, but that of the people of the streets and of the (political) assembly ....when you are misrepresented, misunderstood and oppressed, as though you are not really fit to live in the space you occupy".

This phrase "loneliness of fear" gives a ‘bump-start’ to a train of thought … .. when we simply do not communicate with our fellow ‘men’ – when we are so preoccupied with our own affairs – when through our lack of neighbourliness we often ignore others and don’t even see them, then at times, seeds of the "loneliness of fear" can spread in oneself and on to others.  This feeling can be all the more pronounced in times of trouble, when our isolation takes over – when, say, the computer breaks down – what a disaster, in itself – when we are alone in our motor car and a break-down occurs – and real fear creeps in … … I could go on, but you will know what I mean.

People say that the ‘quality’ of neighbourliness is growing less: Lancashire folk were well known for their neighbourliness and friendliness, (nothing to do with being a ‘nosy parker’) yet today in Lancashire there are people who do not know, nor particularly want to know, their neighbours. To be fair, there are others who enjoy neighbourliness; they are themselves – and have – great neighbours … .. often amongst the older folk, mark you! But, social structures are constantly changing, and evidence from our worries, i.e. some events such as the break up of families, family tragedies – even concerning the children, the difficulties of staff at school faced with the bad behaviour of pupils, today’s much publicised anti-social behaviour – and probably, many other things that readers may be able to add – all suggest family life and social structures are fragile. Let’s face it – the Church is fragile; human beings – like us – are fragile!

‘Hope’, for me, is the same as that provided by Pope John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter, known best by the first three words of its Latin title: "Novo Millennio Ineunte - At the beginning of the New Millennium". The whole letter is well worth reading, but let us pause on Section IV, "Witnesses to Love". Pope John Paul II put all his thoughts into the context of the ‘amazing experience’ of the Jubilee Year, the year, 2000, manifest in Rome, as he considered renewal of the Church. One of the best experiences were the days in Rome covering ‘World Youth Day’ with 3 to 4 million young people in the city, and no riots, no bad behaviour, but rather joy, hope, singing and happiness, as young people from all over the world, flocked together. His words are inspired by the Gospels and he points out that pastoral planning –  for any kind of renewal – must be inspired by the New Commandment.

Now this corresponds exactly with experience – my experience. At a meeting in Middleton, Manchester in 1972, 500 or so quite ordinary people demonstrated something quite extraordinary – and all because their focus was the living of the New Commandment – a life-changing experience for me. Above all, I saw that to live the New Commandment was not a dream, but a possibility: it is a fact that many people desperately wish to live their lives focussing on this Word of the Gospel always, and ever since then, I have counted myself one of them. And the occasion? That was my first ‘Mariapolis’.

The words of the Pope fell on "rich soil" when I read them. He, himself, did not pluck the ideas out of thin air: they come from his experience. He quotes St. Therese of Lisieux, proclaimed a Doctor of the Church, because she was an expert in "the knowledge of love":

"I understood that the Church had a Heart and that this Heart was aflame with Love. I understood that Love alone stirred the members of the Church to act…I understood that Love encompassed all vocations, that Love was everything" (St. Therese).

Section 43, of Novo Millennio Ineunte, is headed: ‘A Spirituality of Communion’. The Pope begins:

"To make the Church the home and the school of communion: that is the great challenge facing us in the millennium which is beginning".

He goes on to write about the practical meaning of this. He says it must be promoted by teaching people about it. But note the word "home". Do we not all long to feel at home with ourselves and others? Herein lies a clue to our understanding and to our learning.

I, too, have spent time specifically learning about this; in fact for two months – December 1982 to January 1983 – I had permission to attend a ‘school’ for men in religious life, to learn about communion or unity. In total, we were a group of about 12 men at ‘Castelgandolfo’, situated in the Alban Hills, just outside Rome, with a ‘Cappuchin’ as our ‘centre of communion’, and with Spaniards, Columbians, Ugandans, French, Italian, and English among the group. It came as a ‘cultural shock’ to live closely with people of other countries, but with a ‘built-in’ greater shock to discover that one of the Spaniards resented all British people, because of our occupation of Gibraltar! The dispute concerning Gibraltar had never crossed my mind as being of any great importance! In the end, we became the best of friends, after he told me he had never ‘loved’ an Englishman more than me because, having offered, he did in fact, darn a big hole in one of my socks. After that we laughed a lot! At the end of the two months or so, I asked my Ugandan companion what he thought of the Cappuchin, Fr. Bonaventura, who was so wise, so good at gathering us all together, so good at affirming each one personally and so understanding. He replied, "Fr. Bonaventura is not just a father to me, he is also a kind of mother", and I could not help but agree. The learning process for me goes on with the living experience of life, right up to today!

The fact is that we have all been brought up – in the Church, and in society – not to be men and women of ‘communion’ but rather ‘fulfilled individuals’ who achieve fulfilment by promoting our own talents together with the attitude, ‘the devil take the hindmost’. But, this way of life is diametrically opposed to the way of ‘communion’. In fact, the great challenge all of us face is to discover how we can live as unique persons – responsible for our own decisions – but in the knowledge that, at the same time, we will only discover the person we are, by taking into account our relationships with others. A fine priest, responsible for all the diocesan priests who wished to live this life of communion and now deceased and who was known to me, put it like this:

"I am fully a person when freely and consciously I affirm the other, even if it costs my life: this approach, Jesus explains in these words: ‘No one has a greater love that the one who gives their life’ for the other. In other words: nobody is more themselves, more a person than the one who safeguards the transcendence of the other by transcending themselves in denying themselves. This is the law of divine society as it was revealed and lived by Jesus; and it could not but be also the law of human society and of every kind of human living. Jesus himself helps us to understand it. The grain of wheat is not itself unless it becomes a shoot; but it becomes a shoot only by passing through a kind of dying. He also said: ‘the one who wishes to save his own life will lose it while the one who loses it, who is ready to sacrifice it, will find it’. (Fr. Silvano Cola)

Yes, there is a lot to learn – something closely connected with humility – that helps a person to realise that they cannot hope to face the challenges of life, on their own – without the help of others. It is not an easy lesson to learn, especially when we are invited by the world, and even by the Church sometimes, to be independent, self assertive, develop our talents, to be self-motivated and to be proud of ourselves. In business, in politics – even in our own neighbourhoods and possibly in the Church – this can mean putting the other person ‘down’ who thinks differently, or who has a different culture, or is just ‘in the way’. Of course, we need our self-esteem; we need to have a legitimate pride in self, but – careful now – a pride that comes from the knowledge that any gifts and talents we have are from God, and that without God, we can so easily turn in, on self, and apply the glory to self. This, in the end, leads to disaster. Furthermore, these gifts and talents should be used to affirm and not suppress others, for if we suppress others, we will only create enemies, and become people who failed to give, of self, for the sake of the other.  Ultimately, we would become self-centred, rather ‘twisted’ individuals, failing to develop into the person that God intends us to be – a person ‘in communion’ with others.

A word of caution! There is so much more to this whole question of ‘Spirituality of Communion’ –  much more than can be found written here, but the most important conclusion is that, in any event, it is not so much something to write, as something to experience. It does bring hope to those who think and live in this way – hope that will help to overcome that ‘loneliness of fear’ identified by Igino Giordani in his writings of 1948, now well over sixty years ago. His words were meaningful then!  I believe they still are!

"If you’re doing God’s work, how is it that you feel discouraged? The more difficult things become, the happier you should be, just as Peter and John, after they had been flogged: ‘As they left the council, they rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonour for the sake of the name’. (Acts 5: 41) When you are successful, give thanks to God. When you fail, likewise give thanks to God, for it is when you fail that he tests you to see if you are working for him or for your own glory.  In fact to be joyful and courageous during times of failure is much more difficult than being joyful in times of good fortune: you can count the number of heroes of the first kind on the fingers of one hand." (Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan "The Roots of Hope" published New City 1996 536 & 537.)

In the little book of daily sayings about the ordained priesthood, one can identify a period of three or four days, around Saturday 27th February, when the theme has been the presence of God’s Love manifested more prominently in failures or mistakes, than in success, and in all this, I was once again struck by the Vietnamese Cardinal, who wrote his little sayings in his prison cell – you may remember him from a previous blog, dated 27th November 2009. In the opening quoation, he throws out a challenge: that those who are joyful and courageous in times of failure, can be counted on the fingers of one hand; they are so few. A challenge is a challenge, and although it is probably impossible for me, I like a challenge! Why should some people not ‘buck the trend’ and actually learn how to be joyful when they have failed? In our attempts to ‘rise to the challenge’ – to be joyous and courageous in times of failure – we may find encouragement in the text of ‘The Word of Life’ (March 2010) where it is written:

"For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you" (Mt. 17:20).

The last phrase is not put there for nothing – it must have meaning! But, to understand its full meaning may be difficult.  However, on the website you can find the whole ‘Word of Life’ text for this month, commenting on this short phrase, and the commentary is very helpful, with a short story at the end.

Our times of failure are actually much more helpful in bringing us to the knowledge of God, than our times of success. Without God’s help, we cannot reverse our natural tendency to attribute our successes to ourselves – instead of to God, alone. When we forget the divine dimension, we damage ourselves; God teaches us, continually, to love Him, and sooner or later, there will be a ‘fall’ into something that makes us feel distressed or sad; often our own behaviour is the cause – the thing that saddens us most. Here, it is God who is gently talking to us – teaching us – and taking us by the hand and leading us back to him. Consider those feelings of sadness and distress that we experience: underneath they describe Jesus, who felt sad and distressed, himself, when alive on this earth – nowhere more so than when nailed to the Cross. Now, in our lives, he is feeling sad and distressed in you and me. Our problem is that we often do not, or cannot, see him in this distress and we fail to welcome him. A priest recently told a group of us that when he was working as a painter and decorator, before he was ordained, he fell from a ladder and seriously damaged his back. It meant having major surgery, with ‘plates’ put in to ‘steady up’ and strengthen everything. At first, he complained to God for allowing this to happen.  Only later did he come to realise that it was the very best thing that had ever happened to him. It made him stop and think – about where he was and where he was going. St. Paul said something that throws some light on this:

 "When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words of wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified". (2 Cor. 2: 1-2).

I wonder what Paul meant? What practical examples of Jesus Christ – ‘Crucified’ – did he make the centre of his conversation? We don’t know. But, there is an invitation, one that is hard to follow up – to be courageous and joyful in whatever the trial is: our mistake, our sin, our accident or our misfortune. What Paul, Jesus and Cardinal Francis Xavier are teaching us is that we must not get ‘bogged down’ in the suffering, but by ‘embracing Jesus’ in that suffering, we can climb out of any self-pity, false pride or self-condemnation-without-hope, and live to the full whatever God is asking of us in that present moment. It may mean living a ‘divine comedy’ when you are feeling ‘rotten’ but nonetheless, continue to act well. The power of God will take over within you, sooner or later, and you will be taken up by Him into another way of living – another way of being – a life filled with His grace. There is nothing like a challenge and perhaps, by learning from these examples, more than a few can be among those who are joyful and courageous in times of failure.

One very good friend is a priest, who was ordained priest later on in life, after a good career in teaching – he had been the head-teacher of a Catholic primary school. We agree on almost everything, and I enjoy his common sense, good humour, ability to tell jokes ‘till the cows come home’, and his love of life and of the post Vatican II Church. On one thing we disagree: the value of our English Catholic Education System. He does not rate Catholic schools very highly, while in my case, I do. Even to this day it is not clear to me whether, or not, he is in the right on this subject.

My view is that the English Catholic School System gives youngsters and their families the chance to be involved with the life of the Catholic Church throughout their education. My friend’s point, basically, is that, if the resources given to Catholic schools were to be used within the parishes, there could be excellent extra-curricular sharing of faith that would be of greater benefit to young people, than their use in the schools’ scenario.  

Be that as it may, on Wednesday 24th February, a week after Ash Wednesday, we distributed ashes to everyone who wanted them in our High School – a total of more than 800 people, counting staff and pupils. Ash Wednesday, itself, fell within the half-term holiday and consequently, most of the pupils and staff had not received ashes on the actual day. It was quite striking to see pupils and adults – Catholics and those of other Christian Churches alike – receiving the ashes, and in such an obviously good spirit. It manifested a clear sign that all in the school – teacher, dinner lady, site supervisor, pupil or chaplain – were on the same journey to God; the annual distribution and reception of ashes teaches us that each one of us is a sinful human being, and all need God’s saving grace. In one sense, all of us are brothers and sisters, even though the role of the adults is to be "in loco parentis" – acting as parents – in a special relationship with the pupils.

Distributing the ashes was a speedy and efficient operation; it was also prayerful and meaningful… "Turn away from sin and believe in the Gospel"…. were the words we used – and, certainly, the ‘smudge’ on my forehead lasted ‘till tea-time. This ‘operation’, I suspect, could only happen in a Catholic school. It provides the ideal opportunity, right at the start of Lent, to explain what is a central Christian principal – that whatever mistake, or wrong path, we have taken in life, it is always possible to start again, in our relationship with the Lord, and also to do our best to mend our ‘broken’ relationships with others – the latter, sometimes, being more difficult than the former.

That same evening, we celebrated the 150th Anniversary of a local Catholic school in our Pastoral Area (Deanery). The School of SS. Peter and Paul, in the village of Mawdesley, was inaugurated, 30th January 1860. Situated in a rural area, the school has never had more than 129 pupils; at present they total around 70. Those who originally contributed to its building and maintenance, in the mid 19th century, had family descendants among the ‘packed’ congregation – Wednesday night – in SS. Peter and Paul Church, where we celebrated Mass, joyfully, for the occasion.  But, in describing this happy event, an important question is raised in my mind.  Why was it that people gave money to build, and open, and maintain a Catholic school all those (150) years ago?  It seems they must have wanted their children to benefit from a Catholic education, and, taking the argument a step further, were prepared to give their money to make all this possible.  We must remember, in those days, there was no state provision!

There has been a basic instinct within the Catholic community ever since the beginning of the Church, to devote a massive amount of time, money and energy to the education of the young. In fact, the vocation to teach has been considered the highest vocation of all, within the Church, because, fundamentally, it is assisting, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the formation of the person of Christ in the student. Teachers, and all those involved in the school environment, provide the context in which human talents are developed, and so Christ is formed in each person, according to each individual personality and character. Teaching …  education … are processes by which the mind is ‘broadened’ and ‘stretched’, new things are learned and the person then develops in art, music, sport and so on.

But, there is more to it than that!  I speak of the term ‘ethos’ – something that is hard to explain in terms of its true meaning.  It may be that we are unable, or too ‘shy’, to state where the ‘ethos’ or ‘special atmosphere’,  found in many Catholic schools, comes from.  Or, it may be that those involved in education do not realise it, themselves, because they do not live their Christianity as it should be lived.  Essentially, it concerns the presence of the Risen Christ in the school. The Risen Christ, in the Acts of the Apostles, was not accepted by all, just as Jesus, himself, was not accepted when he was alive on earth. There will, I am sure, be those who will reject the Lord within our Christian Catholic schools, but if you really want to be more precise about the ‘ethos’ within the Catholic School, it is good to be ‘up front’ and say: "It is Christ, raised from the dead, who is among us, who is our inspiration, our guide and our leader".

To be absolutely clear, this presence of Christ does depend on the fulfilment of conditions – for Jesus to be really there – it does not happen without the Gospel conditions: "Where two or more are gathered in the name of Jesus, there he will be among them" (Mt. 18: 20).  What on earth does that mean?  In a ‘nutshell’, it means that there are those, in the school, who are really and truly living the New Commandment of Jesus (John 13: 34). Love that is lived, and lived with each other, is the challenge, and it is a big one, for we are human and often we fail. It means living the art of loving.  Chiara Lubich (died March 14th 2008) – the founder of the Focolare Movement (and its Charism is Unity) – put it like this:

• Christian love means seeing Christ in every person we meet.
• Christian love means loving everyone without exception.
• Christian love means being the first to love. We cannot expect to be loved before we start loving.
• Christian love means loving others as ourselves.
• Christian love means making oneself one with others. This means loving in a practical way.
• Christian love means loving our enemies, doing good to them and praying for them.
• Jesus want the love he brought on earth to become reciprocal. He wants us to love one another.
• Love led Jesus to die on the cross for us. Genuine love for others requires self-denial and sacrifice; almost always love demands suffering.

With some temerity, I would also add that genuine love never seeks for an immediate response, but is just given – something that could go on for years and years before it is recognised –  indeed, it may never obtain response or even recognition.   It is given without thought of return. All this provides us with a programme for a good and ‘well-lived’ life-time.

To return to school: the ‘ethos’ of a truly Christian Catholic school, or ‘Christ Present in the School’, affects the subjects that are taught, the way they are taught, the way the school is managed, the priorities that are given day by day, even those who are invited in to be guest-speakers for the students. The ‘ethos’ affects those who visit the school, the school dinners, the refereeing on the football pitch. Then, there is the relationship that the teacher has with the individual student: a unique forum where the young person is led to discover the truth behind the bare facts of the subject, until he, or she, learns to know ‘Truth’ itself.  Make no mistake, this is an awesome responsibility, requiring the teacher to ‘be’ in the Truth, and to ‘live’ the Truth – a major challenge –  but, not just for teachers: the challenge is there for all those who work in the school; those involved in school dinners; those involved in cleaning and maintenance, and so on.  All these people share the one vision. Overall, the School Governors must have these values at heart, for the pupils, their families and the multitude of school staff.

And, the aim? This must be to lead the students – together with all who are involved in this community enterprise – to a fulfilment beyond our imagining. Thus teaching, or being howsoever involved in the whole enterprise of education, means being a partner with God, in his plan for a better world, where, in the end, God will be all in all.

I must ask my priest friend, with whom I agree about most things, what would he think of all this?