top of page

FR  JULIAN'S  WEEKLY  BLOG

09/02/25

Another retail opportunity is being presented to us shoppers for later this week!  It is, of course, Valentine’s Day, when we are encouraged to think about love.  Cards are even available for pets to buy for their owners…  Everything that can be, is available in heart shapes.  Food is merchandised for this one day, and so on.  However, the ‘love’ that is being celebrated is a somewhat saccharine and sentimental expression of what is actually the most powerful force in the world.

  

We should stop to think what love actually is.  It transforms people who love or who are loved.  It makes the lover put the loved above themselves.  It is a commodity which never runs out, however much you give it away.  However, like all the good things given to us by God, love can be misused.  Love can be used as a reason to abuse or control; it can become something to fear rather then rejoice in.

  

I was told recently (thank you!) of a quote attributed to Jimi Hendrix:  ‘When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then the world will know peace.’  There can be no clearer example of this than in the love of God:  God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3. 16).​

02/02/25

This term at Holy Trinity School, in Collective Worship, I am looking at the Beatitudes.  This week was the turn of the 4th (in St Mathhew’s gospel):  Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.  Who are the meek?  Well those who are kind and gentle.  These are almost pejorative words today, not compliments.  To many they smack of weakness, softness, of being an easy target.  However, the opposites are far from attractive, perhaps expressed in one word:  arrogance.  WE can see how this attribute harms so many people and inflames so many situations.

 

It is arrogance that leads to nations invading or repressing others.  It is arrogance by those who think that they have no responsibility for environmental issues.  It is arrogance that is the cause of their being a ‘third’ world.  And we can think of how arrogance harms our own country and society, and even our own relationships.  The arrogant have no time for the meek.

 

Perhaps I might be in a minority, but I think I would choose meekness over arrogance.  I, like you, may not always be successful. For all who pursue the goal of being meek, we will inherit the earth.  We will have passed on to us, God’s precious creations; all that is beyond, above, below and on the earth, for us to pass on in turn, hopefully in as good, or even better, condition.​

bottom of page