The little flower

Posted on October 1, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

A homily on the commemoration of Therese de Lisieux

Therese de Lisieux did not live a long life. Perhaps that’s why the impression I get of her spirituality is one of lightness; despite her knowledge of pain and grief, a joyful wisdom, a certain pureness of prayer. 

I find it curious that the lection chosen to pair with Therese, the little flower, comes from the curious book of Judith. A part neither of the Jewish nor any more of the Christian canon, Judith is likely a novel, according to my commentary,[i] written about 100 years before Jesus was born, and now contained in our apocryphal, or deuterocanonical writings: useful for the broadening of our understanding of God and our relationship to God, but not used in our Church for the development of doctrine. This is important, for reasons I’ll come back to.

Judith, so the story goes, is a widow. Her husband has died of heatstroke while working in the fields. Judith is a model biblical widow. Beautiful, wealthy, and devout, she devotes herself to fasting and secludes herself on her roof, not in the community of a convent, but at least in the company of her maid (not to speak of the slaves left her by her husband). Hearing that her city was under siege from the evil empire, she summoned the leaders and they obeyed and came before her. Judith asked them,

“Who are you to set yourselves up in the place of God in human affairs? … You cannot plumb the depths of the human heart or understand the workings of the human mind; how do you expect to search out God, who made all these things, and find out the mind of God or comprehend the thought of God?” (Judith 8:12-14, paraphrased)

The rest of her story is written for you to discover in the books between the Testaments, if you don’t already know it. Remember, though, that we do not base doctrine nor direction nor direct action on the words of the apocrypha, and that this book was written as a novel, not an instruction manual; Judith’s story is violent, and we have had quite enough of violence. Enough of that. 

You understand what I’m saying: we have some distressing and frankly dangerous texts in our Bible, but we have, too, the words of Jesus: the commandment to love our enemies; and the actions of Jesus, disarming his disciples in the Garden, saying, “Nor more of this!” Enough of that. (Luke 22:51) Let’s be really clear about that: about Jesus, for us the Word of God, as the context of our Evening Prayer.

Therese did not aspire to as dramatic a life as Judith’s. But Therese wrote that while her heart occasionally aspired to the flight of an eagle, that heart was contained within a little bird, never destined to fly so high, yet sheltering under the same sky, the same Divine Sun, the Star of Love, so that it should never be afraid. She knew that she would not live a long life. But she knew, too, that she could live a deep life, and a full life, if she stayed close to Jesus. She wrote, as if for us,

I understood it was Love alone that made the Church’s members act, that if Love ever became extinct, apostles would not preach the Gospel and martyrs would not shed their blood. I understood that LOVE COMPRISED ALL VOCATIONS, THAT LOVE WAS EVERYTHING, THAT IT EMBRACED ALL TIMES AND PLACES…. IN A WORD, THAT IT WAS ETERNAL![ii]

Therese did aspire to find out the mind of God, to plumb not only the depths of the human heart, contained in her convent sisters, but the heart and mind of Jesus, her love. 

Over and again, in so many words, Therese describes herself as a very little soul [who can] offer God only very little things. Yet neither does she underestimate the value of a life – her life – devoted to the love of God and prayer for God’s world.

Here perhaps is where Therese and Judith coincide after all: Judith in fasting, ashes and sackcloth on her rooftop, and Therese in the cloister. 

Therese wrote, 

For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart, it is a simple glance directed to heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trial as well as joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus.[iii]

Both women, through prayer, aspired to expand their souls to unite themselves to God.

We live, my friends, in troubled and troublesome times. Perhaps we feel besieged. Perhaps we feel breathless, as Therese in the convent infirmary. Perhaps we aspire to the eagle’s flight, yet find ourselves earthbound. 

Perhaps the message of these two women, and their sister, the widow at the Temple gates; perhaps their message tonight is to remain in prayer, to be steadfast in faith, to remember that the faithfulness of God will not leave us bereft, despite the sufferings of the world and ourselves within it. Our vocation is to strengthen community wherever we find it, to direct love wherever it is most needed. If we are faithful to that call, we will please Jesus.

And, the salvation of the world is not in our hands, but the promise of prayer is. And while the peace of God passes our understanding, it is at hand. It is found in the smallest act of love, a little flower growing between the cracks of a fractured and fractious world, persistent in its beauty, brave in its striving, and unstoppable in its reach toward the sun.

[i] The New Interpreter’s Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, Volume III (Abingdon Press, 1999), 1075

[ii] Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux (the Little Flower), by St. Therese of Lisieux [The Authorized English Translation of Therese’s Original Unaltered Manuscripts], Kindle Edition, 213.

[iii] Ibid., 260  

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Prayer for a BANI world

Posted on September 19, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

Jamais Cascio introduced the framework of BANI in 2018; I’ve been learning about it in the past couple of years, but he writes that

I first developed BANI in mid 2018. Before the pandemic. Before the attempted insurrection in the United States, and just before the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil. Well before the invasion of Ukraine. Before you could make deepfake videos on your phone. Before world leaders finally admitted that massive wildfires and heatwaves and floods and storms that had become commonplace were driven by global warming. Before all of that, yet we could still see chaos everywhere.

BANI, if you haven’t come across it, stands for Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible. It addresses the unpredictability of our current historical climate. Ironically, as a framework, it appears to predict the increasing (galloping?) elements of BANI that we recognize all too well.

How does BANI translate into prayer? I have no idea of Cascio’s spirituality. But he does say this:

BANI is not a magic wand to reveal solutions. Arguably, most of the kinds of system breaks that BANI encompasses don’t actually have solutions, at least not in the conventional sense. We can look for responses and, better yet, adaptations.

So when I’m asked about what can be done to withstand the chaos of a BANI world, I go to human elements and behaviors like resilience, empathy, improvisation, and intuition. The chaos of BANI doesn’t come from changes in a geophysical system or some such, it comes from a human inability to fully understand what to do when pattern-seeking and familiar explanations no longer work.

For people of faith, there is one reliable place to turn when human understanding no longer works. Hence this prayer:

Dear God,

This world is anxious. Your church is anxious. We are worried and distracted by many things.[1] But let us cast all of our anxiety on you, because you care for us.[2] May we be anxious only for the coming of your reign, for your will to be done on earth as in heaven.

This world is nonlinear, as are you: omnipresent, omni-chronological, without beginning or end. Help us to remember that as labyrinthine as this life gets, we cannot be lost as our origin and end are in you.

This world is brittle, and so are we. When we are shattered, let us dedicate each and every fragment to you, for in you is our hope of resurrection.

This world is incomprehensible, but then so is your peace, passing our understanding.[3] May we find our rest, our wisdom, our peace in you.

Amen.

 

[1] Luke 10:41

[2] 1 Peter 5:7

[3] Philippians 4:7

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Jealousy vs joy

Posted on September 14, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

Now, I don’t want to give away too much in spoilers, but these two parables are not, as it were, the end of the story. There is more to come – a truly revealing third parable. But we don’t hear that one today, and by next Sunday, strangely, we’ll have moved on to another.

In the meantime, in the shepherd’s hut and the woman’s home, all is celebration. One of the beautiful things about this pair of parables is the way in which neither person can contain their joy – they won’t even try to keep it to themselves. Instead, they throw open their homes, and their hearts, and they invite their friends and neighbours to rejoice with them. So is the joy in heaven in the presence of the angels, when one who was lost returns, is found by the grace of God.

Spoiler alert: back here in our world, this perfect picture will not last beyond the next parable. The reason Jesus started this set of stories was because of the grumbling of certain jealous and joyless people who resented the relationship Jesus had with those of whom they did not approve. Jealousy is perhaps the quickest and surest way to puncture joy, let out its air, so that it droops and flops. Not so in heaven, in the presence of the angels of God. But we are a little earthier than angels, aren’t we?

I notice that the woman and the shepherd are not afraid that someone will say, “Well, what’s the big deal?” or, “She should have kept a closer eye on it in the first place,” or, “Nice for some to have a hundred sheep.” They are not afraid of envy, jealousy, ridicule, or worse. They are all innocence as they share the good news that they have.

This zero-sum game that we play with one another, its maths doesn’t add up in the divine economy. There is no hint in these parables that the shepherd doesn’t love the ninety-nine other sheep, or that the woman sees no value in the other nine coins – what sense would that make? Instead of rejecting anyone, these stories tell us that for God, ninety percent is not enough. God loves everyone whom God has made, no exceptions, as we so often tell one another. Meatloaf may have sung, “Two out of three ain’t bad,” but for God, even ninety-nine percent is not a good enough grade. For the joy of the community – sheep, shepherd, friends, neighbours, tax collectors, sinners, scribes, Pharisees to be complete, there can be no exceptions.

One of the characteristics of a parable is that its meaning of the parable is determined by the experience of the hearer as well as the intentions of the teller. It is mutable. So I imagine that this particular pair of parables hits a little differently, somewhat tenderly, today, when the community is missing some of its members, has lost some of its sheep, misplaced some of its valued and invaluable assets.

So let’s also recognize this: There wasn’t much the ninety-nine sheep could do to bring back their friend, still less the silver coins to find their complete set. Instead, it is the shepherd, the Good Shepherd who seeks and finds. It is the woman – creative, resourceful, persistent, and divine, who sweeps and finds. It is the grace of God, the transformative love of Jesus, that makes the difference. The work of the community – sheep, coins, friends, neighbours, scribes, sinners, Pharisees, and all, is to be ready to celebrate, to share in the joy of heaven over the repentance and return of one miserable sinner, when and whenever it happens.

This might be a good time to mention that the third parable, the pinnacle of this set that Jesus tells those grumbling and jealous people, is the parable of the prodigal son. He tells it not only to describe the warm and eager and expansive embrace of the father welcoming his lost child home. He tells it to the elder brothers, the ones who refuse to celebrate, who shut themselves out of the feast, out of jealousy, and to their own loss.

Jealousy, as I said, is the thief of joy. It keeps the elder brother from the family reunion. It prevents the citizen from celebrating the rescue of the refugee, the wealthy from celebrating Jesus’ announcement of good news for the poor and the meek. It resents the love of God for its rival, and leads to the casting of golden calves to spite them all. It clouds the vision of the scribes so that they do not even recognize the Word of God when he is standing right in front of them, telling stories from heaven.

I heard, during the tumult and terror of this past week, someone speaking from the highest office in the land, saying that he “couldn’t care less” about bringing people back together. It sounded, I hope, as though what I heard was grief lashing out, as grief will. But these parables remind us that God, God literally could not care less than one hundred percent. It is who God is, to love without end, without giving up on any of us.

Love. It is love that turns away the wrath of God and the violence of humanity. Love converts sinners into saints, Saul into Paul, persecutors into preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the love of God for this world made manifest. It must have seemed impossible, but with God, nothing is impossible. Love celebrates each and every step towards the joy of heaven, the reign of God, the community of the beloved made whole; each sheep, each coin, each brother, each sleepless night spent searching for the way back home.

Jesus tells these parables to the scribes and the Pharisees, the tax collectors and sinners, the disciples, the curious, and the concerned. He invites them to leave their grumbling and their jealousy, to drop their superiority and their self-righteousness, their self-loathing and their doubt, and just come, come join the party.

“Rejoice with me,” he tells them, for such is the joy in heaven, in the presence of the angels, when you, when I, when the last, lost sheep, shows up at the feast that God has laid out, laid on for us. 

Readings for Year C Proper 19 include Exodus 32:7-14, Psalm 51:1-11, 1 Timothy 1:12-17, Luke 15:1-10

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Foundering

Posted on September 13, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

As though created in mid-air
and surprised, the lamb fell
without foothold down the cliff
and into the stream where we,
speechless, sandwiches halfway
to open mouths watched it
pick up and shake itself back
to life , quiet waters clinging to wool,
green pastures calling, it ran on
as though pursued
by all the hounds of heaven.

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Truisms

Posted on September 10, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

Hatred shared is never hatred halved.

The blood of an enemy will not cure

anaemia of conscience.

Suffer the little children never meant

to  sacrifice them.

The mortality of another will never lessen our own.

The immortality of another will never lessen our own.

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To count them

Posted on September 5, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

A meditation on verses from Psalm 139

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Labour

Posted on August 31, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

In which we breathe in solidarity with the breathless.

In which we groan in harmonic relationship with the suffering.

In which we dream in creative union with the author

of life’s manifesto:

decrying death,

deploring despotism,

denouncing the cynicism of despair,

and all of its minions and weapons.

In which we listen as though our survival depended upon it

for the cry of the most vulnerable,

the squeezed and the pushed, coerced and contained,

that they may deliver us from our contracted conscience. 

Because this Labor Day, it will not do to put profit ahead of the prophets’ concern for the will of God, which to do justice, to love mercy, to prefer the lives of children to the capital that is generated by weapons of massive destruction, and the families of the children of God to the false narrative that we are born with unequal rights to dignity, respect, and the compassion of our neighbours …

We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:22)

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Sabbath rest

Posted on August 24, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year C Proper 16, 24 August 2025

Do you remember when, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry according to Luke, he stood up in the synagogue to read from the prophet Isaiah? He read:

            The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
            He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
            to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

Then he sat down and said to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:18-19, 21)

 

Here we are in today’s gospel reading (Luke 13:10-17), on another sabbath, in another synagogue, and Jesus, true to his word, is continuing the work of healing, of liberating, of loving that he had first begun.

It is Jesus who initiates the interaction with the weighed-down woman. It is he who chooses her healing, her liberation, before she has even a chance to ask for it. He is continuing his call, living into and living out the promises of our life-giving, liberating, loving God, whose first gift was life and all that sustains it, and perhaps whose second was sabbath: rest, relief, jubilee joy.

So what is it with the leader of the synagogue? He knows as well as Jesus does those promises. He knows the law’s preference for life. His congregation know it; he has taught them well enough in the past – they are all celebrating!

Is he jealous of Jesus, who is able to do what he wishes he could, for his people, his poor, occupied, weighed-down people? “Come on Monday, come on Tuesday, “ he urges them – but if Jesus has moved on to the next village, the next town, across the Galilean sea, how will this local leader heal them without him?

No, there was only the one dissenting voice, and that was the voice of fear, of envy, of a leader so insecure in their authority that he struggled to give himself over to the authoritative mercy of God manifest in Jesus. He was weighed down by his own burdens of worry, of helplessness – what is a leader under occupation? – of hopelessness – what use a prophet who cannot handle, hand out the promises of God? This woman, his congregant, had suffered eighteen years while he watched. This leader was weighed down, too.

He is our cautionary tale: we share in, we share out, we revel in the promises of God; the love, liberation, life that we have in Jesus, but they are not ours to control or restrict or dole out on our preferred days, to our preferred people, those in our network, as it were, at our convenience, according to our prejudices about who deserves freedom, life, love. …

Jesus saw the woman before she asked him to look in her direction. He healed her without hesitation. He lifted the burden from her back and lifted her eyes and voice to what could be, if the promises of God are true, if the love of God leads us.

And the people rejoiced with her – we do, by the way, need to take care that stories like this don’t reinforce our pride and prejudice that these were legalistic and hidebound times and cultures, that we know better – because these people recognized as eagerly and excited as we do – maybe more so – the miracle that is God’s life walking among us.

So I don’t know what’s weighing on you all today. I’ve got a few things on my list. I know I am limited in my power to lift them for myself or for others. And I also know, I believe, that the promises of God are true, that the call of Jesus is clear. I am comforted that he saw the woman’s need before she brought it to him, and that seeing it. he would do nothing less than serve it.

I am comforted by her straightening up, lifting her eyes and her voice and praising God. I am comforted by the near-unanimous response of the crowded congregation, which was to celebrate with her, worship with her, know in their hearts the glorious love of God, and be grateful for their share in it. I hope that in that, they were able to lead their leader back to joy, even if in the moment he was put out, put off by Jesus.

Jesus honoured the sabbath day, kept it holy. By his holiness, by his healing, by his love he taught, he reminded people that the promises of the sabbath are not a set of rules to get right. They are the gift of God to the people of God, weary and weighed down and in need of rest. They are a foreshadowing of the life and liberty that is yet to be realized among us, the reign of God made manifest. The joy of our worship is not a duty, but a response to the one who sees us first, who sees us clearly, who reaches out to heal us with a word, with a weightless word.

As the writer to the Hebrews says, then “See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking” (Hebrews 12:25), for in his presence is life abundant, good news for the poor, release for those bound and bowed down by oppression and sin, recovery of sight to the blind, the grace and favour of God: Amazing grace. Amazing grace.

Amen.

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Division

Posted on August 17, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

A sermon for the tenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 17, 2025

You have heard it said (perhaps you have said it yourself) that we are living in the most divided era of our common and shared country, world, creation, since — well, you name it. What I hear from both Jeremiah and Jesus this morning is that division amongst ourselves does not mean that God is far from us; far from it.

No, Jesus says it is he who brings division, and Jeremiah describes the word of God as a hammer that breaks rocks into pieces, as a fire. “I came to bring fire to the earth,” agrees Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, “and how I wish that it were already kindled.”

We, here at home, are divided along political lines, social fault-lines, shifting like strata in the rock, creating earthquakes and eruptions. We rage like wildfire, burn out with exhaustion. Where, we wonder, is God in all this … mess?

Sometimes it is good to have to wonder. Sometimes that is the thing that draws us back somewhere close to the truth, breaks us open to inspiration. So many of our divisions come from our deep and abiding certainty that we are right, or from our secret fear of being wrong. But you have heard it said (perhaps you yourself have said it on occasion) that Jesus is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). We do not own nor contain nor define the Truth; it is beyond us. But it is not far from us, and we live in relationship with it, with him: Jesus.

The Word of God is a hammer that breaks open our obstinate hearts of stone so that we may receive it. The Word of God brings fire to purify and parse out the Truth from our preconceived positions.

Perhaps; I can always be wrong.

This, mind you, is not to say that we should accept our divided situation, nor any injustices that have created it, or that it creates; God forbid, far from it. This is not to excuse the damage that our divisions have done to our selves, to our relationships, to the fabric of our society. The injury to our shared humanity that is occasioned by war is unconscionable. No, we know that we are made for peace, created for one another out of love, the very love of God.

We can’t accept this state of division, but we can look for and expect God to be active within it, going about God’s purposes of mercy, of justice, of love. We can try, with God’s help, to align ourselves with Truth and reconciliation.

Sometimes when I am looking for wisdom I turn to the Desert Fathers and Mothers for help in praying to be aligned with God. After all, they lived for years in the wilderness without anything to sustain them except prayer and their closeness to Christ. What, I asked them, would you do with all of this?

I read Certain men once asked the abbot Silvanus, saying, “Under what discipline of life has thou laboured to have come to this wisdom of thine?” And he answering, said, “Never have I suffered to remain in my heart a thought that angered me.”[1]  

Which sounds great, but let’s be real, my heart harbours angry thoughts almost as often as I open my iPad. I’ve really cut back on social media; that’s helped some. Still, I had to ask, what did the Desert Fathers know of living with the kinds of provocations that we see on the news daily – and whichever side of the headlines you sit, it is provoking, isn’t it?

I read, The abbot Macarius said, “If we dwell upon the harms that have been wrought on us by men, we amputate from our mind the power of dwelling upon God.”[2]

But what about righteous indignation, I asked them? Wanting to justify myself, I tried one more time: after all, didn’t Jesus himself say he wanted to bring down fire, to burn it all down?

I read, The abbot Agatho said, “If an angry man were to raise the dead, because of his anger he would not please God.”[3]

So much and more from the Desert Fathers.

It is true that the prophet Micah has called us to love mercy, to do justice; he also counsels humility in our walk with God (Micah 6:8). The letter-writer James exhorts us to do the works of our faith; even he counsels that human anger will not bring about the righteousness of God (James 2:14-17; 1:20). Jesus tells us that when we care for the hungry, visit the imprisoned, heal the sick we do it as though to him, and that when we neglect to do so we neglect him (Matthew 25:31-46). He also tells us to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44).

I read, Certain brothers were sitting near the abbot Poemen, and one brother began praising another, saying, “That brother is a good man, for he hates evil.” The old man spoke and said, “And what is it to hate evil?” He knew not how to answer: and himself asked, saying, “Tell me, Father, what is it to hate evil?” And the old man said, “He hates evil, who hates his own sins, and who blesseth and loveth every one of his brethren.”[4]

We live in difficult and divided times, but that doesn’t mean that God is far from us; far from it. The word of the Lord is like a hammer that breaks rocks, hearts of stone, and like a fire that melts them.

I’ve been working lately on incorporating beach glass into the things I make with my blacksmithing forge. There’s a whole other story about where the metal comes from and why I feel called to transform it into garden tools and crosses, but that’s for another time. The thing about the beach glass is that it has been shattered and scattered, rolled around, scoured and scrubbed, thrown up finally by the waves to settle among the rest of the silica sand.

Mostly, the elements have done the work to break it down; sometimes I help the process along a little further with a light tap of the hammer to help the pieces fit the mould I have in mind for them.

Then, the whole thing goes into the fire. Under the heat of the forge, the broken and disparate, divided fragments of glass melt and fuse and become one with one another, one body, as it were, of art and beauty — if everything goes right.

I came to bring fire to the earth, said Jesus, and how I wish it were already kindled.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Jeremiah 23:23-29, Luke 12:49-56

[1] Each of these sayings comes from one of a few original sources; the quotations in this homily are all gleaned from the collection contained in The Desert Fathers, by Helen Waddell (Vintage, 1998); this from page 115

[2] The Desert Fathers, 107

[3] The Desert Fathers,103

[4] The Desert Fathers, 149

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Fire

Posted on August 14, 2025 by Rosalind C Hughes

Storm that breaks the seal
on the dome that holds the waters
of the heavens apart from waters
that brooded life into creation

Storm that breaks the heat
even as fire is splitting the sky,
falling to the ground wrapped
in quenching rain

Mirrored against the glory of God,
the bow formed by the prism of love
arced across the quivering earth —
how I wish it were already kindled!

 

 

 Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! (Luke 12:49)

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