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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Fr Dermot Preston, part of the Jesuit Mission to St Dominic's Roman Catholic Church, Newcastle

Good morning.

Butch Cassidy’s grandma was born in my home town of Burnley.

She - Ann Hartley – married Robert Parker in 1843, having worked together in a Burnley Mill. In 1856, they emigrated to America, travelling to Salt Lake City and became farmers. Butch was born in 1866, he became an outlaw and died in a shoot-out in Bolivia in 1908. Butch is a cultural icon (Paul Newman played him in the Oscar-laden film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) but nothing would have marked-out Ann and Robert Parker in a crowd. Famous offspring, but obscure roots.

Mary and Joseph were not famous. Externally they would have blended-in with the mass of humanity in 1st Century Palestine – making their way through life, earning enough to put food on the table at the end of the day. Joseph we are told was a carpenter. He was betrothed to Mary, and their lives together probably had a trajectory into dignified obscurity.

But unlike Butch’s Burnley relatives (who, as good Mormons, likely despaired for their wayward grandchild) the Gospels tell us that, at a crucial point in their lives, Mary and Joseph became active and essential co-conspirators in the alarming plan that God had for a Messiah.

Mary’s willingness to become pregnant through the agency of the Holy Spirit, and Joseph’s quiet resistance to the social-&-religious pressure to divorce his beloved set them together on a dangerous path into the unknown. Their willingness to throw their hats in the ring, to give what little they had to the cause allowed the divine plan to unfold.

God’s best plans often don’t come about through the great-&-the-good, but because each day ordinary people are quietly willing to commit their integrity to do what is right.

Lord, help me to do what is right today.

Amen.

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