Il Signore è risorto! Egli è rivisto davvero! Alleluia!

My little Gnudren, Buonasera!

As I continue my pilgrimage in Assisi and, God being my helper, proceed to Rome for an audience with Papa Francesco later in the week, I receive news and muttering of reunions. At first I was troubled in spirit so I was forced to abandon my schedule and retreat into the sanctuary of a Gelateria. There, under the divine influence of Straciatella and Pistachio I was able to reflect theologically on these troublous tidings that so disquieted my spirit.

In Italy there are different responses to reunions.  Some would say reunions take place here daily between 1pm and 5pm Monday to Saturday throughout the summer; so much so that they have to sleep them off on Sundays. Others would say that the only reunion they have been guilty of subscribing to in the past is the Reunification of Italy and they are determined not to go that way again. (I personally think the United Kingdom is a very good thing and I have been guilty of not doing my tiny part to protect it – culpa mea!)

But I would remind you my little Gnudren that sometimes revisiting the past calls our former sins to remembrance. For some of us it may be beneficial to confront the sins that we have not faced up to. This leads us to repentance and a true confession in order that we might put them right and thus walk in newness of life with lightness of spirit. And there are other things that cannot be mended or changed. As Pontius Pilate said: What I have written, I have written; or as it reads in the NGAV (The New Gnu Authorised Version), What I have recorded, I have recorded. Many are the occasions when there has been a flatness in our spirits and alas we have not hit the right note for the Lord; but gone astray like lost sheep. No one particularly is to blame. This is what we rightly call corporate sin, where we have been responsible for pulling each other down.

But maybe, just maybe, times of renewal and revival could break forth upon us. Perhaps this this land could yet ring with the new sounds of grinding chromatic dissonances and mighty cymbal clashes being resolved into glorious praise of the Lord; and such things that, as yet, have never been uttered! We must look forward and not back. Did not the most blest Apostle say that forgetting the things behind he presses forward towards the high calling, and that he regards the things he achieved in the past as dung (read Philippians chapter 3). There is one notable exception to this statement of the blest apostle Paul, namely our great father in God, Johann Sebastian Bach. What he left behind could in no manner be considered dung, especially as he is revered by some of us to be the fourth member of the Trinity.

In the meantime my little Gnudren I am happy that you have all been scattered abroad to the ends of the earth. I am proud that many of you have drawn the lost and despairing into new communities of hope, of which you have been creators or part creators: in schools, in financial services, in hospitals, in bookshops, scientific laboratories, and innumerable other places; and some nutters even in running church music! (God have mercy upon the souls of such!  You shall be counted among the righteous at the Last Day, for you have come out of Great Tribulation.)

Finally, I rejoice that the majority of you were not too damaged by what you endured in the deciphering of tortuous runes in the past. Truly the meaning of some of these were, like the works of the Lord, past finding out. I also rejoice greatly that there were no fatalities in the services in which we ministered together – at least none that I am aware of. Or if there were, the cause of death cannot be proven. I know that the Lord has snatched some away to his heavenly kingdom during church services, but this has frequently been due to the fact that some of us preachers who speak in the Lord’s name have not grasped what the reviewer (in the Penguin Record Guide) said of Katchaturian’s Third Symphony: The composer does not seem to understand that enough is enough. Those who fell thus were truly slain in the sermon and not the Spirit. My prayer for you all is that you do not go out and do likewise.

Buona Pasqua!

In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

Padre Gnu.

(Assisi, Domenica di Pasqua 16 Aprile 2017)