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18th January 2022
Dear Friends,
A priest friend said years ago something which I have never forgotten, we are all ticking timebombs, which I suppose is both obvious and quite shocking. Whilst home on post-Christmas leave my son’s partner young and pregnant suffered from pains in her chest. They contacted the mid-wife – not a lot of response as it was the weekend and all to be expected, eventually sending some excellent paramedics, who thought maybe its Covid, so we all had to go for a test. It wasn’t Covid as the results showed we were all negative, yet she became even more unwell. Next day she was admitted to hospital, and he discovered that the poor girl had an aneurism on the lung, a life-threatening condition to baby and mother. I must say the NHS care was swift and excellent with special scanners which do not harm the baby she was sent home clot dispersed, frail but on the road to recovery.
Ticking timebombs, we are all frail and live on the edge of now and tomorrow. After my trip was delayed by a week through supporting my Son I am now back in Tenerife. What does this teach each and every one of us? For me it reminds me that we are indeed fragile, complex, and deeply mysterious creations. Certainly, I saw the image of my unborn grandchild in the womb and heard its heartbeat beating quite fast and sure. We, as people of the creation on this vastly intricate earth, can look to ourselves for so many wonderful medical advances, but the depths of the universe are held in our souls and their ultimate destiny is not a dusty planet far out in space but Christ reminds us is at the banquet of life in the heavenly places with our Lord as the host and ourselves as the welcomed family.
The season of Epiphany reminds us of the child who came from the womb and in a revelation to the world became the most remarkable incarnate human being that ever lived. A man who has inspired so many to live a life of love and forgiveness and caring, and who walks with his people daily and feeds us with the bread of heaven.
“And God the Word was truly born of the Virgin, having clothed Himself with a body of like passions with our own. He who forms all men in the womb, was Himself really in the womb, and made for Himself a body of the seed of the Virgin, but without any intercourse of man.”
The Epistle of Ignatius to the Trallians Chapter X.—The reality of Christ’s passion.
Blessings,
Fr Ron Corne
Chaplain