Is it Good News?
by Sr Ann Catherine Swailes
A sermon for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
When I was growing up in rural North Devon, members of local churches banded together to visit their neighbours who had fallen away from the practice of Christian faith, handing out free copies of the gospels, in order to encourage them to return to the fold. In a at least one case, however, this enterprise proved a little counter-productive. My own family, at that point, might best have been described as lapsed CofE, and it did nothing to persuade my mother to revisit the question of church-going, abandoned in her teens, when she encountered on the door step the organist from the Anglican church in the village, who greeted her seemingly more in sorrow than in anger and announced in lugubrious tones, “well, Mrs Swailes, I’m afraid I’ve brought you the good news…”
I truly mention this not to scoff at what was undoubtedly a worthy and courageous initiative, but, rather, to acknowledge what might, if we were honest, form at least part of our own reaction to the gospel passages which we hear read as we approach the beginning of Lent in which we hear we hear the Lord offer not, at first sight at any rate, words of reassurance, but rather words of condemnation.