THE GADFLY

Nobody likes irritation, not even myself. Imagine yourself walking in the wilderness when it's hot. You are sweating and tired and your destination is out of sight, you only walk fueled by hope that you will make it home, because home is always ahead. Then in the midst of that fatigue and silence of a loner comes a fly or a mosquito and begins to chant those irritating endless hymns on your ears. You will clap with all your might, did I guess that right? Of course I did! If you don't make it to crush it, the song goes on. This is the imagery our beloved Socrates of the ancient Greece posed to the world so thirsty for, yet so rebellious against, the truth. The world is a huge wilderness, where we walk uncomfortable, yet accustomed to the woes it, so that anyone who troubles us with a fragment of truth becomes an irritating gadfly. Socrates was the gadfly of Athens, Jesus Christ was the real Gadfly. He has called us to be witnesses of the truth, yet he warns us that the world has already rejected him, and therefore we are not going to expect anything much better. Truth confronts us in our lie, and sounds different. The immediate reaction is always to crush it, to silence the irritating nag which demands us to man up, to take responsibility for our choices, to be answerable to God , to nature and to our very selves. I am sorry if this doesn't sit well with you. I am a gadfly. A Christian, Catholic gadfly. I seek to irritate the Catholic pilgrims who walk this wilderness of faith. There are so many positive remarks about us believers, and I wouldn't like to dwell much on that. Not that I overlook them, but many others keep talking about them. I on the other hand pledge to embark on a mission of a gadfly in the wilderness, who stings the traveller out of his silence, out of his conventional Church going, out of his unreflected comfort, to a more conscious faith and a committed effort to stretch towards that which is more whole and true. Bear with my irritation as we seek to enthrone God in a world so noisy yet a wilderness, a place where God's voice has become rare as in the days of the little boy Samuel.

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