Fr Peter Harris
am into my 70s now and I find some of my memories from the past beginning to fade – others come and go. However I still have one very clear memory from when I was 17 in 1968. I was standing in a field in Kent as a helper at a summer Scout Camp. The Scout leader himself had a transistor radio and he came our of his tent in the afternoon saying that there had just been a newsflash: the Russians had invaded Czechoslovakia !
I knew a bit about politics but it was not a subject at the top of my interests at that time. But what I do remember was an overwhelming feeling that this meant war, and I spent the next hour or so allowing the realisation to come over me that I might be called upon to fight in it. As you can see, I have never forgotten those moments. My parents had fought, as youngsters also, in the Second World War and my grandparents in the First, so I knew something about the animal that is war, but here I was, faced with its reality.
All these years later I am faced with the same reality. Here is a war beginning that I might be called to play some part in, however much at second or third hand. I am no longer a young dreamer, faced with challenges involving the aspirations of youth. I am now older and more world weary, all too knowledgeable in the ways of men and women who feel thwarted and unheard, bitter and twisted often by forces over which they have no control. The events of this past week have jolted me out of the comparative simplicities of life here in semi-rural Bishop’s Stortford.
At such a time I find myself desperately trying to get back to the basics of the issue. As a Catholic I look to my shepherds, all of them of different denominations and Faiths. On Wednesday Pope Francis spoke to the world: “My heart aches greatly at the worsening situation in the Ukraine… people all over the world are feeling anguish and concern… I appeal to all those with political responsibility to examine their consciences seriously before God who is the God of peace, not of war… I would like to appeal to everyone, believers and non-believers alike. Jesus taught us that the diabolical senselessness of violence is answered with God’s weapons, with prayer and fasting.”
What can I do stuck here as I am I shall follow Pope Francis’ call, just one valuable call amongst many, and on Wednesday this week, Ash Wednesday for Christians, I shall fast for the day – an uncomfortable thing in a town full of the abundance of food shops and restaurants – and offer that hunger and discomfort for peace in Ukraine – it is a simple thing and not unique to Christians. I shall accompany it with prayer as best I can. There will be some amongst you, reading this, for whom fasting would be medically unwise, but prayer is never unwise and is the richer of the two and I commend it to you in a special private way.