大象传媒

Good morning!

A sense of humour and the ability to laugh are not traits we normally associate with faith. The religious personality is more likely to be linked in our mind with images of austere puritans than with storytellers who have a twinkle in their eye. But from the earliest days, humour has been part of religion, as the book of Ecclesiastes states: there is 鈥渁 time to weep and a time to laugh鈥�.

What we can laugh at, we can rise above. Perhaps that is why peoples who have suffered much have developed a sense of humour as a defense against despair. Humour has something to do with hope. Listen to this:

In the 1930s a Jew is travelling on a bus in London, reading 鈥楾he Jewish Chronicle鈥�.聽 Suddenly, to his shock, he spots a friend of his reading a Nazi newspaper.聽 He glares at his friend in anger鈥� 鈥淗ow can you read that Nazi filth?鈥� he asks.聽 Unabashed, his friend looks at him.鈥� So what are you reading, 鈥楾he Jewish Chronicle鈥�? And what do you read there?聽 In Britain there is an economic depression and Jews are assimilating.聽 In Palestine, Arabs are rioting and Jews are being killed.聽 In Germany they have taken away all our legal rights. You sit there and read all about it, and get more and more depressed.聽 But I read the Nazi newspaper and lo and behold, we own all the banks and control all the governments!鈥�

The time to weep and the time to laugh are closely connected. Laughter - our ability not to take ourselves too seriously - is related to our ability to take other things very seriously indeed. A trait of religious humour is a self-assurance about who we are.聽聽

Let me end this prayer by adapting the words of my favourite Irish Catholic commedian, Dave Allen 鈥� good morning and may your God go with you.

Amen.