The Thinking Anew column in The Irish Times today.
Michael Commane
On Easter Wednesday I had a medical appointment in a large Dublin teaching hospital. It’s a hospital with which I am not familiar, and I had difficulty finding my way around it. The floor and department I was to attend was clearly stated on the appointment letter. But the hospital signage spoke of levels not of floors. And also inside the main entrance there was too much unrelated information. My anxiety about my health was compounded by the confusion of the signage that greeted me.
People were coming and going in every direction, staff, patients, couriers, visitors, maintenance personnel. It was a sea of the unknown for me. With the help of someone, I eventually got to my destination and on time too.
Looking back on it, it was only a tiny blip of irritation and confusion on one day in my life. No more than that. But it reminded me that taken out of my normal environment, I behaved in some sort of chaotic fashion.
Later in a calmer mood, walking about in the hospital observing the throngs of people, I began asking myself if the God question has any relevance for the people about me. If my life experience is any guide, most of the people I saw are now alienated from the church into which they were born.
In the case of the Christian faith and specifically the Catholic Church, into which I was born, I suspect most of the people I saw that morning have little or no connection with or understanding of their church. That such a great and unfortunate breakdown of communication has happened is a sad reflection on those of us who try to speak about God’s word.
I found my mind wandering and wondering what it must be like when people are removed from their own comfortable environment. And in some ways, that’s akin to what has happened in many Christian faiths in the western world since the end of the Second World War.
The language that we use in church does not seem to have much meaning for people, who once felt they understood what was being said, as my parents’ generation did.
Pick up a religious newspaper, scroll through the website of any diocese or religious congregation and you are in alien territory, using language, which does not chime with the world in which most of us live.
Not just hospitals but churches need simpler more direct signage.
In tomorrow’s Gospel (Luke 24: 13 - 35) two disciples did not at first recognise Jesus. It was only at the breaking of bread that they realised who he was.
Naturally, after all that had happened in the previous days his disciples were confused, in many ways lost, indeed, so lost that even they did not recognise him.
Reading tomorrow’s Gospel, looking at all the accounts of what happened after Easter Day, I can’t but think of the times in which we live. When we break bread with one another, honestly are we doing it in a manner, that allows us or even tempts us to think of what happened at Easter, to think about the mystery of God?
Do all the words, instructions, the vocabulary of church leadership inspire us?
But right across society the tools of navigation can be difficult to follow. It’s easy to be swamped in a plethora of confusing signs. How do we decipher the Word of God? However it is transmitted and by whom, surely it must always be couched in kindness and respect.
The hospital signs on Easter Wednesday did nothing to help me in my confusion, rather it was the gentle and reassuring voice of a kind woman, who helped me on my way.
Signs, to be helpful, always need to be updated. And of course the sign is not yet the destination to which it points us. The Sacraments are also signs, but signs which we believe include the destination to which they point. They are signs that contain the reality they signify.
The Catholic Church is attempting in the current synod to offer a glimmer of hope. For it to be a success there has to be a truthful attempt to listen to the people of God. Is the church capable of doing that? Pope Francis believes it is. I hope and pray that he is correct.
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