Ostern

Thoughts from Stoney Road, Coventry

On November 14th, 1990 it will have been 50 years since the burning of the Cathedral and the city centre of Coventry. More specifically it will be 50 years since Provost Richard Howard inscribed "Father Forgive" in the wall of the apse of the ruins of the Cathedral.
Howard's immediate response in November 1940 remains in Christian History as a model of the answer to hatred. It is easy to remember the two crosses. They can be handled and given as symbolic ikons. They can be photographed. They can be reproduced to hang around one's neck. But they are only and exclusively tokens, sacraments of those two words "Father Forgive."
To remember in 1990 that event in 1940 is to be recalled to the central truth of our Christian faith:
It is that Crucifixion is transformed into Resurrection by Forgiveness; that there is no hurt that cannot be redeemed if we take seriously the consistant preaching and practice of Jesus. He taught the unconditional grace of forgiveness, and, as if in a last desperate effort to prove that he was prepared to practise what he preached, he prayed for the forgiveness of his tormentors as the nails were driven into his hands and feet...
When Jesus uttered those words it was not merely a taking away of sin, but a positive release to start again, and again, and again, until seventy times seven, and never giving up trying.