To Pope John Paul II,
after the excommunication of Fr. Tissa Balasuriya.
If you were Peter
I could call you “Brother”
and turn to you
in any kind of need,
my own and others.
But “Your Holiness”
makes barriers rise between us
that our Master,
yours and mine,
did not intend to be.
And so I stand from far away
and wonder -
do you remember still
that time in
when Peter sank?
Did Jesus push him down into the waves?
Or did he punish him
for taking risks,
leaving security behind
to meet his Lord on troubled waters?
Which he would not have dared,
had Christ not called him: “Come!”
When Jesus built his Church on rock,
it was not for the rock
to crush life, love and freedom
in the defence of truth,
but to support the stumbling.
I want to plead with you:
Let Truth defend herself!
Let wheat and wild herbs grow together
until the time of harvest.
Only the sower
can see the difference
in the depths of time.
How easily good seed can be mistaken
for weeds and thrown upon the fire
to be burnt.
“So let both grow together
until the end,” Christ said.
But who am I
to tell you this?
And yet, kings, too
have listened to their fools.
Why shouldn’t you?
Maureen More
CCFMC, Lesson Unit 25
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