Sermons 2009
Here we try to publish as many of the sermons given in St Edward's as possible. The majority of them are given by Father Dylan James, our Parochial Administrator, but visiting priests obviously preach as well. Where possible we publish their sermons too but, sadly, they do not always make them available and we do not record or transcribe them.
To read a sermon, simply click on the date that you would like to see.
If you would like to see the sermons from 2008, please click here.
25th December 2009, Christmas
20th December 2009, 4th Sunday of Advent
13th December 2009, 3rd Sunday of Advent
6th December 2009, 2nd Sunday of Advent
29th November 2009, 1st Sunday of Advent
22nd November 2009, The Feast of Christ the King - Youth Sunday 2nd November 2009, All Souls Day
1st November 2009, All Saints Day
25th October 2009, Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
18th October 2009, Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
11th October 2009, Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
4th October 2009, Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
27th September 2009, Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
20th September 2009, Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
13th September 2009, Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
6th September 2009, Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
30th August 2009, Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
23rd August 2009, Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time
16th August 2009, Feast of the Assumption
9th August 2009, Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
2nd August 2009, Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
12th July 2009, Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
28th June 2009, Feast of St Peter & St Paul
21st June 2009, Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time
14th June 2009, Feast of Corpus Christi
12th June 2009, Requiem Mass Elizabeth Jean Torrance
31st May 2009, Pentecost Sunday
24th May 2009, Ascension Sunday
17th May 2009, Sixth Sunday of Easter
10th May 2009, Fifth Sunday of Easter
3rd May 2009, Fourth Sunday of Easter
26th April 2009, Third Sunday of Easter
19th April 2009, Divine Mercy Sunday
12th April 2009, Easter Sunday
11th April 2009, Easter Vigil
10th April 2009, Good Friday
9th April 2009, Maundy Thursday
5th April 2009, Palm Sunday
22nd March 2009, Fourth Sunday of Lent
15th March 2009, Third Sunday of Lent
8th March 2009, Second Sunday of Lent
1st March 2009, First Sunday of Lent
22nd February 2009, Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
15th February 2009, Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
8th February 2009, Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
1st February 2009, Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time25th January 2009, Christian Unity Service
25th January 2009, Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
18th January 2009, Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
11th January 2009, The Baptism of the Lord
Other occasional texts - these are not published with any regularity and so are listed here in the order in which they are written, circulated or published.
An Examination of Conscience based on the Seven Deadly Sins
by Fr. Dylan James, 31-3-09
Sins of omission: “In what I have done, and in what I have failed to do”
-sins of omission may be more serious than sins of commission
e.g.Have I omitted to say my prayers?
e.g.Have I omitted to look for and respond to the needs of family?
Thought: “In thought, word, and deed”
e.g.Even if I did not gossip in word, did I judge someone in thought?
Each area of my life should be considered:
e.g. My family, my friends, my work, my prayer, those I work and live with etc.
Anagram: PLACES-G (the seven deadly sins): Pride, Lust, Anger, Covetousness, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony
Pride (ST II-II q162)
Pride is the mother of all sin. It is a craving for excellence beyond what is reasonable. It makes a person hate being equal to others, and hate being less than God.
Have I refused to admit my own weaknesses?
Have I dwelt on the failings of others?
Have I judged others, in my thoughts or words?
Have I ranked myself better than others?
Have I borne hated for another?
Have I refused to learn from others?
Have I been stubborn? Refused to admit I was wrong? Refused to accept that another person had a better idea?
Have I been arrogant?
Have I held others in contempt?
Pusillanimity –the opposite of pride:
False-humility fails to use our gifts.
Have I neglected to use the talents that God has given me?
Vanity (ST II-II q132)
Vanity is excessive concern about manifesting my glory before others
Have I been overly concerned about what others think of me? Have I allowed this to motivate my actions?
Have I lied or exaggerated to make myself look good?
Have I wasted undue time and money on clothes and appearance?
Have I been content with my lowly position, or have I resented the role that Christ asks of me?
Lust (ST II-II q.153; CCC 2351)
Lust is disordered desire for sexual pleasure, isolated from its procreative and unitive purpose (CCC 2351).
Custody of the Eyes: “Whoever looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:28)
Have I viewed other people as mere sexual objects rather than as persons to be loved?
Pornography: On internet? or TV?
Impure Thoughts:
Have I entertained impure thoughts?
Impure Acts:
Alone, or with another?
Anger/Wrath (ST II-II q158)
Anger is undue desire for vengeance -undue in cause or in amount.
Have I harboured resentment, grudges, and hatred in my thoughts?
Have I nurtured imaginary angry conversations?
Have I been slow to forgive?
Have I lost my temper?
Impatience:
How have I carried my cross?
Have I been impatient with people, family, events, sufferings, sicknesses?
Covetousness/Avarice (ST II-II q118)
Avarice is the excessive love of possessing things
Have I been overly concerned about my own comfort and well-being?
Have I been resentful of my lack of money?
Have I been generous in giving? Have I given with a cheerful heart?
Have I cheated, stolen, or failed to pay my bills on time?
Have I used people for my own ends and advantage?
Have I wasted money?
Envy (ST II-II q36)
Envy –is sadness at the happiness of another
Jealousy–is coveting what belongs to another
Have I envied or been jealous of the abilities, talents, ideas, good-looks, intelligence, clothes, possessions, money, friends, family, of another?
Gossip:
Have I judged others in my thoughts?
Have I damaged the reputation of another person by my words, attitude, or looks?
Have I repeated accusations that might not be true? Have I exaggerated?
Have I failed to defend the reputation of others?
Have I failed to keep secrets?
Do I despise others of different race, class or culture?
Lies: Have I lied or exaggerated?
Sloth/Apathy (ST II-II q35)
Laziness, especially laziness in the things of God. Sloth is a sorrow in the face of spiritual good -it makes a person lethargic and want to do nothing.
Have I sought God above all else, or have I put other priorities ahead of him? (e.g. friendships, ambition, comfort and ease)
Have I got so caught up in the things of this world that I’ve forgotten God?
Have I risked losing my faith/piety by bad company, bad reading, cowardice, or pride?
Have I trusted God, especially in times of difficulty?
Have I attended Mass each and every Sunday?
Have I neglected to say my daily prayers?
Have I entertained distractions in prayer, or failed to give God due concentration in prayer or in the Mass?
(Note: Not giving God the effort he deserves in prayer is a sin, but it is not the same thing as involuntary weakness in mental distractions.)
Have I made a prayerful preparation before Mass and a good thanksgiving after Mass?
Have I received Holy Communion while in a state of serious sin?
Have I neglected to seek Confession before Holy Communion?
Have I taken the Lord’s name in vain? Or used other foul language?
My Neighbour:
Have I been lazy in helping others?
Have I been attentive to the needs of my neighbour, the needs of my family?
Has my conversation been focussed on my own pleasure, or on others?
Has my humour been insensitive to others?
My Family:
Have I been more focussed on myself than on the needs of others?
Have I spent time with my family? How have I manifested my concern for them? Have I been forgiving and tolerant of them? Have I scandalized them by a bad or lazy example?
Punctuality and Discipline:
Have I sinned against my neighbour by being late?
Have I sinned against God and the congregation by being late for Mass?
Have I gone to sleep on time?
Have I made good use of my time, or have I wasted time needlessly? E.g. TV or internet?
Have I planned good use of relaxation and recreation, knowing that I need to rest well?
Gluttony (ST II-II q148)
Gluttony is the inordinate desire for food.
Have I eaten more than I need?
To how serious an extent?
Have I spent excessive money on food?
Have I drunk alcohol excessively?
Have driven after drinking?
Have I eaten greedily and with little consideration for the presence and needs of those at table with me?
Have I given money to help the hungry?
Have I regularly practiced fasting and self-denial, especially on Fridays?
Have I always fasted an hour before receiving Holy Communion at Mass?
The Ten Commandments:
(1) I, the Lord, am your God. You shall not have other gods besides me.
(2) You shall not take the name of the Lord God in vain.
(3) Remember to keep holy the Lord's Day.
(4) Honour your father and your mother.
(5) You shall not kill.
(6) You shall not commit adultery.
(7) You shall not steal.
(8) You shall not bear false witness.
(9) You shall not covet your neighbour's wife.
(10) You shall not covet your neighbour's goods.
The weather outside has been rather cold and bleak recently, rainy and icy, and you might think that this isn’t very nice and Christmas-like. But I want to point out a few things in our crib scene that remind us that, if you think about, the first Christmas wasn’t very Christmas-like.
Picture, if you will, the room in Bethlehem. There was no room in the inn. The stable was cold, the straw was dirty, and the wood of the manger was as hard as the wood of the cross of Calvary. It was pretty bleak, and it is only such a bleak description that does justice to the reality. But such a description is still incomplete, just as our crib scene here would be incomplete without the baby. Because such a bleak description fails to mention Christ – and that’s what we need to remember today, and why we’ve come to Mass today.
I’m sure we’re all familiar with the image on so many Christmas cards, where we see the baby Jesus in the manger with light shining out from Him and lighting up the whole stable. What would have been dark, damp and dingy, is made light and glorious by the presence of Christ. That simple pious image conveys the whole theological reality that we are celebrating today.
Christ's coming changed the whole stable, and not just the stable -but the world. That is why He came.
The scriptures describe Christ as, "a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower"(Jn 1:5). We know that darkness, the devil, did try to overpower Him. He tried at His temptation in the desert, in the agony in the garden of Gethsemane, and most conclusively on the Cross. But the light overcame the darkness by His resurrection. And all of this is shown and started in His birth. That's why we have the beautiful symbolism of starting the whole celebration in the darkness of the night, at Midnight Mass.
But we also need to remember that: when God changed the world forever, by entering His creation as a little child, it wasn't just some random or casual event; it wasn't a good thing that just happened to come along; it was what God had planned from the very beginning.
Why did God create the universe, the world, and US on it in the first place? He did it that we might share in His divine life. We were made for life with God. As the great St. Augustine puts in, "You have made us for yourself O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee." Since the creation of the first human being, when God breathed the first soul into the first human embryo, we have been waiting for Christ to come among us - to fulfil our destiny.
Our human nature was waiting for Christ. The Jewish people were waiting for Christ -because the scriptures and prophets foretold that He would come. And the darkness of our sins, the darkness of our sufferings and griefs and woes was waiting for Christ too, because we needed to be saved from them.
What we celebrate today is that the waiting is over. Our struggle against the darkness has changed forever because of what happened 2000 years ago tonight. We are never alone in darkness – God is with us, Emmanuel. And we know that in the end darkness will not triumph, over the world, or over us. The victory isn’t finished until the Last Day when he comes again in glory, but the victory is now assured.
In our own time, in all the 2000 years since Christ came, until today, the present is lit up with the presence of God among us. And that holds even in our own personal bleakness and difficulties.
The Word has become flesh. And he has remained with us. Remained with us in the action of his spirit in his Church, in his priests, in his sacraments. And most directly, he has remained with us in his definitive and real presence in the Mass - that's why the Mass is so central to the way that we should celebrate Christmas.
And He remains with us in the hearts of any of us who will receive Him. He didn't just come to the stable in Bethlehem, but as we sing in the carol, "where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in".
20th December 2009, 4th Sunday of Advent
Lk 1:39-44
Today is our final Sunday before Christmas, our final Sunday to prepare ourselves for Christmas. And on this last Sunday the Church always gives us the figure of Our Lady in the readings to help us prepare: she was the one who first welcomed Christ at the first Christmas and she can help us welcome Him now. Although there are many ways Our Lady can help us, I would like to point out two virtues we see in Our Lady that we can imitate to help us prepare: humility and faith.
Our Lady manifested her humility in action in the gospel text we heard. Even though she knew from the angel Gabriel that she had just become pregnant, she didn't think of her own needs but rushed to her cousin Elizabeth to help her in the more advanced stage of her pregnancy. That sort of putting the needs of other people before ourselves is a very simple but important way of being humble, of being ready to celebrate Christmas properly, of being able to live in peace and charity, of being ready in our hearts to welcome Christ this Christmas.
In addition, in order for Christmas to be a SPIRITUAL event, an event that isn't just loving in the way a good atheist can be loving, in order to be an event that recognises the deeper spiritual meaning and reality of what Christmas is about, in order to be that we need to have faith: we need to believe that Christ came and was born at Christmas.
Faith, the Catechism teaches us (CCC 143-144), is our response to what God has revealed. When somebody tells us something we can either believe them or doubt them. Faith, Christian faith, is to hear what God has revealed and believe it. In particular, faith means to accept a truth NOT because we have seen it ourselves, NOT because we have figured it out for ourselves, BUT to accept it on the authority of the one who tells us: divine faith is to accept all the truths that God has revealed in Jesus Christ, and to accept them because He has said to. A standard example of this is our faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist: this defies our physical senses, it is not something we could figure out for ourselves, but He said "this is my body" and we believe it because He said so.
Our Lady is often referred to as the perfect model of faith: the angel told her something that would be impossible in the natural order of events, namely, that a virgin would conceive and bear a child. She manifested her faith by believing what the angel had told her, in addition, she manifested the active dimension of faith by submitting to do what the angel asked -to be the mother of the Lord. This is what we heard Elizabeth praise Our Lady for: “blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled" (Lk 1:44).
This Sunday, an adult will be received into the Church, Tim Allhusen, and I want to make one final point about how faith is something that needs the Church. If faith is our response to what God has revealed, then the Revelation needs to be transmitted, needs to be handed on, and needs to be handed on with the guarantee of infallibility so that we can trust the accuracy of what has been handed on. As Catholics, this is something that we hold is implicit within the very nature of Revelation -there was no point in God revealing His truth unless He was also going to establish a secure and dependable means for that truth to be handed on. So the fullness of faith is something we can only have through the Catholic Church. This is what Tim will express in his profession of faith when he says, "I believe and profess all the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God".
In conclusion, thinking back to Christmas. If we want to welcome Christ at Christmas, then we need to put aside the scepticism and the scoffing of the unbelieving world, we need to ignore whatever latest pseudo-documentary claims that the BBC will make: we need to believe that the Bible tells us about Christ being born in Bethlehem was in fact true - our salvation depends upon it. And we need to express that faith in action by humble hearts and humble love as Our Lady humbly put Elizabeth's needs before her own.
13th December 2009, 3rd Sunday of Advent
Lk 3:10-18; Phil 4:4-7; Zeph 3:14-18
I normally buy my groceries here in town, but last week I went down to Waitrose, because I wanted to see how ‘the other half’ lives - pretty good it seems! There were delicious looking battered prawns, a huge selection of chocolate cakes, and quality bourbon of the kind that is simply not available in Shaftesbury. And I began to understand why they say, "This Christmas, there's only one place to be: Waitrose".
And that point is really the only point I want to make today: what is "the only place to be" this Christmas? Well, as a priest, and basically just as a Christian!, I find the Waitrose claim to be highly presumptuous! Now I know I'm preaching to the converted, because you are already here in church, but "the only place to be" this Christmas is the place where you are already today, namely, in church. The meaning of Christmas can only be properly discovered by returning to the words that Christmas comes from: “Christ” and “Mass”. Actually, if we want to be in "the only place to be" this Christmas than we actually need to be very carefully avoiding the materialism that seems implicit in the Waitrose advertising slogan.
If preparing for Christmas is not primarily about going to Waitrose, then what is it about? If we would be ready to Christmas, if we would be ready to celebrate the coming of Christ, then what must we do? This is the same question was put to St John the Baptist 2000 years ago when the people wanted to know how to prepare for the FIRST coming of Christ, as we heard them asking in today's gospel, “What must we do?”
The answers of St John the Baptist strike me as surprisingly practical and surprisingly specific. He told the tax collectors, "exact no more than your rate". He told the soldiers, "No extortion! Be content with your pay!" And he told the people in general that they must share their possessions with those who had none. There's a very simple thread uniting each of these three pieces of advice, and it is a warning against materialism. It is perhaps ironic that 2000 years later the same type of advice needs to be given to us still today. If we would be ready for the coming of Christ at Christmas then we need to also cleanse our hearts of the materialism that can prevent our hearts being ready for Christ to come
The sad reality of much of our Christmas preparations is that we think too much about the things that money can buy for Christmas, and not enough about what really matters. What’s the point in buying my sister the best gift money can buy if I haven’t been considerate and loving to her in the preparation for Christmas?
It’s like getting all the decorations for the Christmas tree, but forgetting to get the tree itself, or just getting it as an afterthought – the last and most pathetic one left in the shop.
The true antidote to materialism, the true way to prepare for Christmas, is to remember the reason that today’s readings give us to rejoice. This is Gaudete Sunday, an ancient Latin name meaning ‘rejoice’, and the reason we are always given to rejoice in this the third week of Advent, is that “the Lord is very near” (Phil 4:4). This is what Christmas is all about, this is what we are preparing for. This is what sets Christianity apart from the other world religions:
We believe that not only is God real, not only does He love us, not only does He watch over each moment of our lives, but He is very NEAR to us – and not only in some vague spiritual way. What we recall at Christmas is that God became flesh, became physical, by fully becoming a little child in the manger of Bethlehem. This is the physical and visible confirmation of all the other ways we believe He is among us and near to us.
“The only place to be this Christmas” is near Him who came near to us in Bethlehem and comes near to us as often as we turn to Him. St. Paul tells us not to worry, the Lord is very near. As we rush around in this final week before Christmas, as we make all our material preparations, let’s try not to worry. Let’s make sure we take the time to rejoice in what we are preparing for, and remember the true spiritual meaning that makes it all worth while.
6th December 2009, 2nd Sunday of Advent
All England is now preparing for Christmas: and while some people are preparing for Santa Claus, hopefully we Christians are preparing for Jesus Christ. We heard in our gospel about how St John the Baptist prepared for the first coming of Jesus Christ, prepared by crying out in the wilderness, "prepare a way that the Lord", and the way he called people to prepare the way for Him was by repenting of their sins.
One particular way we are called on to prepare for Christmas is by going to confession. I thought, today, that rather than just tell you why you need to be going to confession yourself, I would tell you why I go to confession myself.
I go to confession not just because it is a requirement, not just because I fear the fires of hell (though I do), and not just because it's something other people have told me to do. I go to confession because I know that it is good for me, good for my psychological health and for my spiritual health.
Confession is good for me because the opposite is bad for me. The opposite is to fool ourselves into thinking that we never do anything wrong. It's always somebody else's fault: that person’s stupidity is why I am impatient, that person who made the late-night phone call last night has made me tired and so he is the reason why I'm now too lazy to do what I know I should be doing, that person’s gross wealth is the reason why I am envious of him, –and so on, "it's not my fault". In every era of history it has always been easy to refuse to see our own sin, and refuse to accept our own responsibility, but in our own era of history we have, mistakenly, been repeatedly told that guilt is bad for you. But actually, usually guilt is healthy. Normally speaking, guilt and feeling guilty is the healthy reaction to realising that we have done wrong. And I go to confession because it helps me regularly see my guilt, it helps me avoid living in a fantasy world of denial.
Confession is good for me not only because it helps me see my guilt but because it helps me channel that guilt to resolution, to forgiveness. One of the reasons our modern pop psychologists avoid talking about guilt is that they lack the mechanism of knowing forgiveness. Regular confession is the healthiest way to avoid carrying the guilt of my present sins and of my past sins around with me. And there have been many times when I have seen people depressed in the carrying of their guilt that I've been grateful that I've known the forgiveness of the confessional.
When we read the Gospels we hear that the forgiveness of sins was the primary healing work that Christ came to do. When we read the Gospels we hear the joy, the gladness, and the gratitude that filled people who were forgiven by Jesus. That same forgiveness is available to us today. Now it is partly true that at one level we can seek forgiveness by praying to Jesus privately, without confession, however, this is not the FULLNESS of grace that is available to us. Jesus Christ established a mechanism, a means, a way by which He wants His forgiveness to come to us, and that is in the sacrament of Penance, of Reconciliation, of Confession. As Jesus said to the Apostles, His first priests: “Those whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them, those whose sins you shall retain they are retained” (Jn 20:23). And so the forgiveness that was once encountered 2000 years ago when Jesus physically walked in Palestine, that same forgiveness from that same Jesus is ours when we physically approach Him in His fullness as He exists in His sacraments. “What was visible in Christ’s life has passed over into His [sacraments]” (St Leo the Great, CCC 1115).
So the third reason thy confession is good for me is not only because it helps me see my guilt, not only because it helps me resolve my guilt in forgiveness, but confession is good for me because it gives me the most perfect and complete encounter with the Lord who forgives, and, with that, gives me every grace and strength He has to offer me, every grace and strength to grow in holiness and be helped not to sin again.
Lastly, perhaps you're not sure how often you should go to confession. Well, it might help if I explained the range of possibilities to you. At one end is what we call confessions of devotion, for example, Pope John Paul II used to go to confession every day. I, however, don't go to confession every day, but I do go to confession every week: this is what is recommended by St Frances de Sales in The Introduction To The Devout Life, and this is what is practised in a great many of what are called the New Ecclesial Movements, those groups of predominantly young re-invigorated Catholics who have rediscovered the value and living of our Faith in the midst of our secular world. At the other extreme from weekly confession is to only go once per year: this is the bare minimum required by the law of the Church, and if you only want to do the minimum, if you are concerned to avoid hell but don't really care about heaven, then doing the bare minimum is permissible -and the bare minimum in this context its annual confession of serious sins [peccata sua gravia, Canon 989]. Be warned, however, if you aim for the minimum and miss the minimum then you won’t be in a good place. Beyond that, our own Bishop Christopher Budd noted in one of his pastoral letters (1998) that the Lent and Advent penitential services that have been introduced in recent decades seem to have led to the BAD practice of many people thinking that they only need to go to confession on those two occasions, and he said very simply that it is not enough to just go to confession in Lent and Advent, he said we need to go regularly. And the standard regular timespan recommended to parishioners is to go to confession every month, which is between the legal minimum of once a year at Eastertide and the devout practice of going very week.
To summarise: Confession is good for me because it helps me see my guilt, because it helps me resolve my guilt in forgiveness, because it gives me grace and strength to avoid future sin, and it does all of this because it gives me the fullest possible encounter with the Christ who forgives. Now especially is the time, “prepare a way for the Lord”.
29th November 2009, 1st Sunday of Advent
Lk 21:25-28;34-36
A friend of mine told me that the world was going to end on the 20th of November –and she had it on good authority: she knew a friend who knew a friend who’d heard that a cardinal had seen a vision of this.
So I waited, went to confession, said my prayers, watched the news of the 19th for any indications, and… woke up on the 20th with nothing changed -and actually, that was 9 years ago in 2000 (in lots of Millennial angst).
It’s very easy to dismiss such prophecies, but it would have to be said that there is an increasing number of them these days. I think myself, that it may well be more likely that the End of the World will come in our lifetime, than it has been in previous centuries.
What if we compare what we see today in the world with what Scripture predicts for the end of time? In the scriptures we’re told there will be PHYSICAL signs like great floods, earthquakes, drought, maybe we could add pollution and the destruction of the environment. We’re told there will be SOCIAL signs, and we see a great breakdown in our modern society, family fragmentation, permissive sexual practices, and the toleration of things like abortion and euthanasia that would have horrified a more civilised people. Scripture also speaks of a Great APOSTASY that will precede the End, and maybe we see that around us too. As numerous Catholic and Anglican bishops have publically said, we’ve become an atheistic society, we’ve turned our backs on God.
We might also note what the great Pope John Paul II used to call the ‘acceleration’ of the pace of history, change being more and more rapid and dramatic. In viewing the whole pattern of history, it’s only reasonable to ask if this is an acceleration towards the final conclusion.
But, of course, none of these things automatically mean that the End is nigh. Many of these things have happened before, but the central point that I want to make is that just because the End of the World and the Second Coming of Christ hasn’t happened in the last 2000 years doesn’t mean that it’s not going to happen, and doesn’t mean that it won’t even happen very soon.
And regardless: for myself, if I die today, if I fall down the dangerously steep set of stairs in the presbytery, if I get hit by one of those cars or buses that recklessly speed past my front door, then for ME the End would be now. Are you ready? And what do we need to do to be ready?
We just heard Jesus tell us what to do when we see the signs of the End. He didn’t say “panic”, or “get really, really worried”. He said, “Stand erect, hold your heads high, because your liberation is near at hand”. If we’re at one with the Lord, then we need not fear, because His Coming will be for our glory too.
But we need to ensure that we ARE at one with the Lord. He said, “Watch yourselves, or your hearts will be coarsened with debauchery and drunkenness and the cares of life”. If we would be ready, then we must repent daily, live virtuous lives, obey the Commandments, go to frequent Confession, and return to the Lord’s mercy as often as we find ourselves straying into sin. If we do, then we can, as He said, “stand with confidence before the Son of Man”.
Ever since the Fall of Man people have seen suffering and problems in the world around them. What our faith in the Second and Glorious Coming of Christ tells us is that there is a greater destiny that creation is moving towards. A destiny that is not of THIS world. When Christ comes as Judge, to separate the sheep and the goats, the saved and the damned, He will also come to make all things new. He the creator will come to re-create. He will make all things new, and there will be no more problems, no more disasters or pain. Then truly, if we are ready, we will find that our liberation is indeed at hand.
22nd November 2009, The Feast of Christ the King - Youth Sunday
Jn 18:33-37; Dan 7:13-14
When people think of politicians and royalty today, they often get rather cynical. And while such cynicism isn’t always healthy, I think it is a sign that we do tend to want something quite important from our leaders. There is part of us that does want someone to look up to, someone to inspire us, someone we can depend on, someone to guide us, someone that can cure all of our own problems and all of society’s.
In the hymn that we often sing of this Sunday, we ask Christ the King to “Guide the youth”. And the reason that hymn gives for Him to be the one to guide the youth is the fact that He is “King of truth”. It is precisely because He is truth that He can be the king and leader that we hope for, that He can be the one we look to to guide us.
The claim that Jesus is not just honest and truthful, but that He is truth itself is the most complete and exclusive claim that Christians make about Christ. We do not say that He is part of the truth, or even that He is most of the truth, but that He is truth itself. Anything else in the world, any other teacher or prophet, or any other religion, can only possess truth to the extent that it measures up to what Christ Himself said, what Christ did, and what Christ is.
This claim about Jesus isn’t one we arrogantly make ourselves, it was one He made Himself. He said, “I am the way the TRUTH and the life”. We heard Him repeat this in front of Pilate in the gospel passage just read. He said, “I am a king. I was born for this, I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to MY voice”(Jn 18:37).
Jesus didn’t make this claim lightly or flippantly. He made it because it flowed out of His very being, out of the fact that He was God and He knew it. He knew He had authority over everything in this world because this world is His creation, He is the one who gives it life and direction.
It’s because of this that we can look to Jesus. Look to Him as king of the cosmos, and king of our own hearts. Because He is truth, He is therefore the truth for us, the one who gives meaning and direction to us. If we build our lives on Him then we build them on a firm and sure foundation, a way to happiness and fulfilment.
Youth is a time in life when we make many choices for our future, choices that our long-term happiness depends on. What we need to depend and build on is the truth, and that’s why there is a natural connection between today’s feast as Christ the King, and as its being Youth Sunday. The King of truth is a king fit for youth.
We know, of course, that many people today are cynical of the whole concept of truth. That was true of Pilate too, He responded to Jesus by saying, “Truth – what is that!”. We know too that many young people today are cynical – gone are the days of idealistic youth protests and demonstrations. Our secular society has failed to give young people a hopeful lead and cynicism is a unsurprising result. We who are Catholic, and our Catholic youth in particular need to show that there is a source of value and meaning and truth in life that we can depend on, and so there’s no need for the despair of cynicism.
To be a Christian is to live a lifestyle built on values and beliefs different to those around us. But it’s the only thing that can give real value to the life around us. We just heard Jesus say that His kingdom is not of this world, but it is in this world, and ranks with authority over this world. We may get cynical about some leaders, but He the king that can give us a reason to never be cynical, and always have hope.
8th November 2009, Remembrance Sunday, 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mk 12:41-44; 1 Kings 17:10-16
Today is Remembrance Sunday, when we remember all those who died in the wars, and those continuing to die. We recall those who died in bravery and those who died in tragedy, those who died as acclaimed heroes and those who lie unknown.
We often, and rightly, speak of those who made the ultimate sacrifice in defence of their country. But I want, this morning, to speak of the importance of self-sacrifice in general, and to do so in reference to the example we just heard Jesus refer to in what He taught us about sacrifice in the Widow’s Might (Mk 12:44).
The true value of the widow’s gift wasn’t known by the people around her.
If we think, in particular, of those soldiers who gave their lives in World War Two, they didn’t know the FULL effect and value of the sacrifice they made. They knew they were in a terrible war, but they didn’t know the even larger significance of it. When they died, neither they nor the Allies knew the true horror of the Nazi atrocities, of the millions killed in the gas chambers, of the millions in England who would have been killed if the Nazi had won. They didn’t know just HOW much they saved us from, and so their sacrifice had a value far beyond the one they realised.
The same must be said of any sacrifice, any good deed, and this is what the Lord Jesus was teaching about the Widow’s Might. The value of her offering wasn’t the money – after all, it was just a penny. The value of her offering was that it was her everything. And what gives this value is God, the God who watches over all our deeds, who accepts our sacrifices, our good deeds, our prayers, and indeed and our very lives –the God who uses and accepts them as prayers. He is a GOOD God, and prayer does change things.
God wants each of us to offer ourselves to him, to offer our lives as a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1; 1 Pet 2:5), a fragrant offering to the Almighty. In him our lives acquire a new supernatural value, one beyond what we can know.
Many of us can get discouraged from time to time over the effort of our lives, or over the way that there seems to be so little gain for the good works we can try to do. We can come to think that it’s not worth bothering. Why should I continue to be nice to that person when he never changes, when he’s never nice to me? Why should I be the only person at work who doesn’t use foul jokes and language, or the only person who refuses to be dishonest in business? Why should I continue to pray when nothing ever seems to change? Why should I clean up after the kids, yet again, when they’ll only mess up the place 2 seconds later?
Such discouragement is natural. But the lesson of the Widow’s Might is that there is more to life than the natural, more than we can see. If we judge ourselves only by what we see then we will grow discouraged, we’ll think that there is no point.
There is MORE to life. There is God, and the value He puts on our works. He accepts them as offerings to Him, and in the cosmic balance these offerings change the universe. In this our deeds have an effect we simply do not know. And there is heaven too, the eternal glory and merit that will be assigned to our deeds and our lives. If we forget this then we forget the true meaning of our life, and what gives true meaning to our actions.
The widow who gave her last bit of food to share it with the prophet Elijah didn’t know what lay in store for her. But she had faith to do good anyway, and God transformed her offering into more than enough food. God transforms our offerings too. He said that we will be repaid a hundredfold (Mk 10:30), and He is true to His promises.
To refer again to the sacrifice of those fighting the Nazis, we can see today that the ultimate sacrifice paid by those soldiers had a great value, but its full value will only be completely disclosed in heaven. Their sacrifice was greater than the ones that most of us encounter daily – but the same truth holds. We must never let ourselves be discouraged over what can seem like small effects of our good deeds: there’s a value and effect that transcends what we can see, and so it is worth being good.
They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
at the going down of the sun, and at the rising
we will remember them.
2nd November 2009, All Souls Day
We keep today a sadly neglected commemoration. It used to be the case that ALL churches would be heaving at the seams today. It was a sound instinct of the faithful that led them to come and pray for the souls of their dearly departed loved ones, and it’s an instinct that we’d do well to try and restore.
The doctrine and practice that we celebrate today is one that makes me proud to be Catholic, with a capital “C”, because it’s not only about solid doctrine, and the way we reach solid doctrine, it’s a doctrine that squares perfectly with the pastoral needs of our heart – a perfect model of how all truth is pastoral. And, of course, it is a definitively "Catholic" doctrine because it was the defining issue that Martin Luther rejected at the Protestant Reformation.
We reach this doctrine about purgatory and the practice of praying for the dead in a solidly Catholic way not least because we find its most direct roots in the part of the Bible that Protestants call the Apocrypha, in the Second Book of Maccabees. “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they might be loosed from their sins”. (2 Macc 16:46) We know there, as we know elsewhere, that this is thus a part of our Judeo-Christian Tradition, something familiar at the time of Jesus. And to be fully Catholic we need to be in touch with the continuity of that Tradition, or else we lose, among other things, a lot of the basis of Christian morals, which are largely Jewish morals, and we can end up saying that all Jesus believed is that you must be nice to each other.
It’s also solidly Catholic in that it’s rooted in private revelations, in the devotion of the saints. And the extent that we feel uncomfortable with these as sources of Faith, we can fear that we’ve been infected by Modernism.
But this practice, what I consider to be one of the crowning glories of Catholicism, is a glory that is, as I said, not only doctrinal and disciplinary, but is also deeply pastoral.
There are certain times in the life of everyone when we wonder what happens to people when they die. For some of us it first comes when we face the prospect of our own death. But probably, for most of us, that time comes when someone we love dies. It’s a time when we are likely to be not only concerned but distressed about the fate of our loved one. That distress can be met and faced by the doctrine of Purgatory and the practice of praying for the dead.
If we were Protestants then we would have to ABANDON our deceased loved ones to the judgement of God, unable to help them in any way. But, as Catholics, we know that the bonds that unite us to the dead are greater than the division brought about by death. In the Communion of Saints we remain united to the dead, because whether are alive or dead we all remain united to Christ. On earth, we can pray for each other while we are alive. I can pray for my friends, my family and those I do not even know. It is the same with the dead. I can pray for deceased friends, and family, and strangers. I can pray that God will have mercy on them in the Judgement. In this way we’re not left powerless and despairing when our loved ones die. We’re still able to help them, just as we could help them while they were on earth.
I often feel sorry for Protestants faced with grief, because it’s important that we have something we’re able to DO in grief. And in the economy of the Communion of Saints, God has foreseen this, and arranged for this, and so we maintain our bonds with the deceased by our prayers for them.
The doctrine of purgatory also gives us hope against the fear that we will be judged too harshly. Many of us may fear at some time or another that we’re not good enough to go to heaven. And we’re not good enough for Heaven. And Scripture itself teaches us that there is only perfection in heaven. But this doesn’t need to cause us to give up hope, because otherwise there would be no-one in heaven.
We can go to heaven even though we’re not pure, even though we have sinned. But in order to do so we must go through a time, a place of purification. And that place is Purgatory. There, through the grace that is given to us by and through Jesus Christ, we will be made perfect, and fit to live in the happiness of heaven.
And so Purgatory is a doctrine that gives us hope. Hope because we know that even sinners like you and me can make it into the perfection of heaven.
Our time in purgatory is also something that can be shortened and made easier by the prayers of the faithful. And so we pray for our loved ones. Not only that God will have mercy on them in the Judgement, but also that they will be sped through Purgatory.
So let us rejoice today in the consoling doctrine of Purgatory, and the practice of praying for the dead. It’s one of the great spiritual acts of mercy. And it keeps us mindful and thankful that death does not totally separate us from the dead, and so we remember them in our prayers.
1st November 2009, All Saints Day
Mt 5:1-12; Apoc 7:2-14; 1 Jn 3:1-3
I've been away on retreat this week, which means that I've just spent the last five days in silence, saying nothing.
Now you may wonder what I did on retreat, what I did while I was busy not speaking for five days. Well, I did some walking while I could reflect in the silence. And I did some spiritual reading to give me things to reflect on. But more than anything, and more important than anything, I prayed: I spent five or six hours a day in prayer, which even for a priest is quite a long time! You might think that spending six hours a day in prayer would get a little boring. And, I'd have to confess I did get a little bored. Somehow, the Lord God Almighty, the infinite Creator of the universe, the supreme being who holds all things in being, the one who is perfect beauty itself, and the Saviour who loves me and died for me: sometimes, I find Him boring!
This, of course, is a fault in me not at fault in Him, but it is a common fault in us human beings: If we loved Him more He would not seem boring. We find God boring because our intellect fails to fully grasp how wonderful He is, and, correspondingly, our will fails to be filled with the excitement of loving Him.
One of the reasons God might seem boring us that we easily forget is the character of God as being "personal" – we can think of Him as being just some kind of “thing”. When I went on retreat, I had gone away on retreat to be alone, but one of the things I remembered when I got there is that a Christian retreat is not primarily about going to be silent, and it is not primarily about going to be alone, it is about going to be with someone, a very particular Someone, namely, the Lord. And when we think about the fact that we are going to be with the Lord it is always important that we try to remember who He truly is. As I said, we know that He is the Lord Almighty, the Creator etc, but while we live in this world we don’t fully grasp Him as His is: we only see Him in an unclear manner, as St Paul says, “through a glass darkly” (1 Cor 13:12). In contrast, as we heard in our second reading, if we get to heaven then "we shall see Him as He really is" (1 Jn 3:3).
On today's feast of All Saints we recall the glory of all the saints in heaven. Our gospel reading today (Mt 5:1-12) on the Beatitudes is given to us today to remind us of the promise of the happiness, the Beatitude, of heaven. This is something we need to repeatedly remember when we try to think and understand what God is like, Who He is. God is the one whose very presence gives us that perfect Beatitude that our gospel text so weakly translated as "happiness", and he gives us this happiness - because He is love. At a theological level, St Thomas Aquinas teaches that “joy” within us, true joy, is only ever in us as a fruit of "charity" - the technical name for “divine love” (ST II-II q28 a1). And this is something that we all know the level of our own experience: love is what makes us happy. To be loved by other people, and to be loved by God, this makes us happy. And when we can let go of selfishness and love others and love God, this also makes us happy.
But we can only love somebody, and we can only KNOW the happiness of loving somebody and being loved by that somebody, we can only do this if we actually have knowledge of that Somebody, and if we spend time with that Somebody. And this is why it is important to pray, this is why the saints all prayed, and this is why I went on a five-day retreat: to be with the Lord, and being with Him to know Him better and love Him better.
God is only boring to us to the extent that we don’t know Him. The more we know Him, the more interesting He seems to us. And the more we love Him, the more He is not only interesting but exciting. Today's feast of All Saints reminds us of that fact by reminding us of the happiness of the saints in heaven, the saints who are happy simply because they fully know and love the Lord and are loved by Him.
25th October 2009, Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
I was going to preach a rather nice little sermon on Our Lord’s compassion on us in our spiritual blindness (c.f. Mk 10:46:52, today’s Gospel), but, over the last few days everyone who has seen me has asked, “What about this business with the Vatican's proposal on Anglicans coming into the Church, eh?”
If you’ve not heard the news, there was a major press conference this week (curiously, presented by both the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster and the Anglican Rowan Williams of Canterbury), in which it was announced that the Vatican is setting up a new organisational structure to receive Anglicans into Full Communion with the Catholic Church.
This comes in the general context of a century of ecumenism, a century of hoping, praying and working for the return of the corporate unity in the Church, in the hope that those in schism or heresy will come back to union with the See of Rome. In this task, as the Second Vatican Council reminded us, Catholics must also be willing to change, to reform and purify ourselves so that we are more perfectly what we should already be, so that what non-Catholic Christians object to in us should not be those things that should never have been there. Now, the vision of what corporate re-unification would look like has always been somewhat unclear, but Catholics have insisted, on one hand, that it must be unity in doctrine, in morality, and recognition of the authority of the See of Rome. While also, on the other hand, allowing diversity in certain traditions and rituals, for example: the Greek Catholic Rites (not the Greek Orthodox) believe in seven sacraments like we do, believe in the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady etc, believe in the Pope, but use their own rituals with piles of incense, very long liturgies, and major liturgical action happening behind an iconostasis (like a Western medieval rood screen). So it is possible to have unity, real unity, i.e. in faith and morals, while also having diversity in liturgical practice.
But, in the midst of the working for unity among the churches there have also been divisions and changes, in particular with how the churches relate to modernity: how much they reject modern thinking as the cause of the modern problems, and how much they embrace it. The most recent issue in this regard is homosexuality, with the Anglican Communion now having an American bishop who is a practicing homosexual, while the Catholic Church will always teach that deviant behaviour remains deviant and is not only bad for society but, tragically, is bad for the individuals who follow those inclinations.
For many Anglicans, this and similar issues have caused them to re-consider the claims of the Church of Rome. While others seem to be losing their nerve, the Catholic Church is keeping steady, we are not attempting to change right and wrong. In short, we are manifesting what our claim of infallibility claims: that Rome cannot help but stick to the truth, even when it might seem ‘convenient’ to do not do so.
In the last few years “over 50 Anglican Bishops” have approached Rome and asked about being received into Full Communion. More specifically, they asked not that they be received into the Catholic Church as individuals but that these Anglican bishops can be received along with their congregations, as a group, retaining some form of ‘Anglican’ identity, but in Full Communion with Rome. Something similar happened over a decade ago when 6 Anglican parishes in America became Catholic but were allowed to continue largely as they were, adhering FULLY to Catholic doctrine but using a newly modified version of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, a version purified to be made in keeping with Catholic doctrine.
The Vatican has responded to this request by issuing a new Apostolic Constitution that will create a new structure in canon law, a 'personal ordinariate'. People and priests in it will both relate to their local Catholic Bishop and to their new “Personal Ordinary” (“Thus the arrangement is different from the Uniate Churches in that the Personal Ordinariates are canonically within the Western Rite”). In addition, they will be allowed to keep certain aspects of their Anglican liturgy and traditions. We don’t know the details of the yet-to-be-issued “Code of Practice”, and we don’t know if many or any English Anglicans will join it (probably more in Africa, judging from certain reports).
What does this mean for us? Probably little change in Shaftesbury. But it is a call for us to be generous in our attitude, welcoming. A call for us to remember that we can differ in some significant liturgical practice and yet still be fully Catholic. This generosity must include a refusal to delight in the difficulties within the Anglican Communion – it is only a twisted mind that rejoices to watch a tragedy unfold. But, this is all also a reminder of the importance and joy of being ‘Roman’: for 4 centuries the Church of England has tried to be ‘catholic’ without being ‘Roman’, they have tried and failed, as the Anglican Bishop of Fulham John Broadhurst said recently, "the Anglican experiment is over". It has tragically failed because such an attempt is a contradiction – you cannot be in Communion with the worldwide Church without being in Communion with its head, without being united to the Vicar of Christ, the Successor of St Peter, the Pope, the visible head of the Church on earth – that others should seek this union should remind us of the importance of being in it.
Some web articles in descending order of being sympathetic:
http://the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/2009/10/some-background-on-new-personal.html
http://the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/2009/10/anglican-personal-ordinariates.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6885231.ece
18th October 2009, Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mk 10:35-45, Isa 53:10-11
Suffering is something that none of us like, yet, we heard in today's gospel the Lord Jesus say of Himself not only that He would die but this is why He had come into the world: He had "come... to give His life as a ransom for many" (Mk 10:45) -a reference to His approaching crucifixion. He came into the world to do this for us because He obviously felt that we needed this done for us -but I thought that today I would say a little about this word and concept of "ransom".
A "ransom" is a sum of money that is paid for something. If somebody has been taken prisoner or hostage then a ransom is the payment that is made that their release. And there are many places in the New Testament where the death of Jesus is referred to as a "payment" (e.g. 1 Cor. 6:19, 1 Pet. 1:18).
But this might seem like a curious thing because the death of Jesus is not a sum of money.
In addition, if the death of Jesus is a payment then WHO does Jesus need to pay? There are a number of answers to this question: He paid the devil, He paid Himself, we might even say that He paid us.
Scripture says many times, and we find it quite frequently on the lips of our Lord in the gospels, that Satan, the prince of all the devils, is also "the prince of THIS world" (e.g. Jn 12:31, Jn 16:11, Eph 2:2, c.f. Jn.8:34; 2 Pet. 2:19). Now, when Jesus says that Satan is "the prince of this world" he is referring to this world in as much as it exists as a place of sin: as a consequence of the Original Sin of our first parents and as a consequence of the personal sins of each one of us ever since, we live in a world that is intertwined with sin.
Scripture tells us that when Satan rebelled against God, Satan and all his fallen angels were cast out from heaven. But they have not yet been cast out from this world because WE choose to allow him to reign in this world, in our hearts.
Each time we sin we make ourselves slaves to sin and slaves to the one whom Jesus called "the Evil One"(e.g. Mt 13:19). We have given ourselves over into the captivity of the Evil One. And as slaves of the evil one we need to be bought back from him: we need someone to pay the price that will “ransom” us back from him. This is what Jesus did on the cross.
That said, God does not really NEED to pay the devil anything. The Lord God Almighty is called "Almighty" for a reason: He is Almighty over all things, even over the devil, even the devil whom He allows to continue to tempt us. So, when theologians speak of the death of Jesus being a ransom paid to the devil this cannot mean something that Jesus literally NEEDED to do. (And it was not a literal payment because it was not money.) Nonetheless, Scripture uses this language of "ransom" and "payment" because it expresses the truth that the demands of justice have been satisfied. God is not only merciful He is just as well, and in seeking to save us from our sins He did not wish to be seen to cheat the devil or even to cheat Himself: Scripture tells us that the “wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23), and by the Lord Jesus dying for us He intended that none of us should doubt that the wages have been paid, and paid for us: paid for me, and paid for you.
So, if Jesus is more Almighty and the devil and thus did not NEED to pay a ransom to the devil, if the Lord did not NEED to satisfy justice and so did not need to pay a ransom to Himself, then many have noted that it was nonetheless "fitting" that He should pay such a ransom for us. But the ransom Jesus paid, the suffering He endured, was infinitely greater than it NEEDED to be, even for this “fittingness”: as the great hymn of Saint Thomas Aquinas puts it, "one drop" of the infinite merits of God's dying on the cross was more than "ransom for a world's entire guilt". As St Alphonsus sums it up, the cross was given to us as a sign of love, a sign that we might not doubt that God loves us -the cross is more about love than about justice. It is a sign to us, and thus, I’d suggest, if we are pondering WHO the ransom was paid to we might even say it was paid to us.
As I started by saying, He did not choose to die because He liked suffering, rather, He chose to die that we might never doubt that the “price”, the "ransom", has been paid for our sins. “You are not your own, for you have been bought at a great price. [Therefore] glorify God and bear Him in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19).
11th October 2009, Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mk 10:17-27; Wis 7:7-11
We just heard Jesus give one of his many warnings against the love of money. The love of money is a curious kind of thing: it seems to me, that each and every one of us thinks that we don't have ENOUGH money.
Today’s readings offer us two tests for how we relate to money: the ‘camel’ test, and, to examine what we pray for. We’ll have collection at the end of Mass for the emergency tsunami relief, and our generosity is one test of our attitude of money.
What of the camel? This is typically taken to be a reference for our need to be inwardly DETACHED from the possessions that we outwardly use and own. The Lord Jesus said, "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God". Many scholars suggest that Jesus was referring to a night time gate into the city, a small little entryway, an entryway a man could crawl through even when the main day-time city gate was closed, in particular, an entryway that a camel could only enter when the belongings laden upon it, its riches, were first removed from it. Such an interpretation is echoed in the country western song that says, “I've never seen a hearse with a luggage rack” - you can’t take it with you when you go.
But the Lord Jesus is saying something more than just reminding us that we don't carry our riches into heaven: that my iPod, my mobile phone, and whatever is left in my wallet, will not be coming with me when St Peter is deciding whether to let me through the pearly gates. Rather, primarily, Jesus is speaking about how we RELATE to our possessions.
I may not have as much money as my friend, I may not have as much as many of you, but I am is as capable as any man of living in this world with my heart set on THIS world, at a DAILY level and a minute by minute level of valuing things and possessions more than I value God Himself. I am capable of being more ATTACHED in my heart to THINGS than I am to love of God and neighbour – I can be attached to such things even if I don’t have them, even if I am only looking at them with envy. The camel reminds me that I need to detached enough from things that I am capable of telling them go – the camel cannot get into the city unless its riches are removed from its back; I cannot get into heaven unless I am willing to leave the riches of this world behind me. And, of course, if I am going to be able to manifest that detachment when I get to the pearly gates then I have to live that detachment while on earth.
More briefly, the second of the two ‘wealth’ tests in today’s gospel concerns what we pray for:
In our first reading (Wis 7:7-11) we heard the words attributed to the great King Solomon, the great King who had many riches and yet sought and prayed more for divine Wisdom than for earthly wealth. It is Wisdom this enables us not only to know the right things but know the right things to DO, know the right way to love, to know how we should use our money, to know how to measure whether we have enough money.
If we want to test ourselves to know what we love, then one of the ways we can measure this is by looking at what we pray for: if I love just myself then I will pray for just myself; and, if I love money and possessions then I will pray asking for money and possessions; but, if I love my neighbour and I love my family and if I love my parishioners then my time in prayer will be spent praying for them.
And if, at present, my prayer IS just about me and is not about others, then if I want to start detaching myself from an excessive love of money, then making the prayer of Solomon my own is a good way to start: to pray to God for the gift of Wisdom, “ I prayed, and understanding was given me, I entreated, and the spirit of Wisdom came to me”(Wis 7:7). To pray for the Wisdom to know when we have enough, to know when to give it away, and to know how to own things without being attached to them.
[Excursus paragraph deleted from middle of sermon:
Money, of course, is something needed to live by. We didn't hear Jesus say so in today's Gospel passage, but we know that Jesus elsewhere not only tolerates but recommends that we "USE money, tainted though it is" (Lk 16:9). We know too that although Jesus called the rich young man in today's passage to "sell EVERYTHING you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven" (Mk 10:21) there were other followers of Jesus, like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, and the group of women who accompanied him, who continued to BOTH have money AND follow Jesus -while using their money to support the Lord Jesus in his work.
The Christian Tradition has always interpreted the call we just heard, the call to the rich young man to give up all his possessions, the Tradition has interpreted this as, on the one hand, a specific vocation addressed to some and not others, an invitation to follow a yet higher away, and, on the other hand, a warning to ALL of us of the danger of loving money: “how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven”.]
4th October 2009, Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mk 10:2-16; Gen 2:18-24
[This is a longer text than the actual sermon preached]
In our Gospel we heard Jesus speak on marriage, speak a hard teaching against divorce. He reminded His hearers that there is a meaning to marriage, the body, and sex, a meaning that pre-exists us, a meaning established at Creation, a meaning that we need to respect and observe if we are to be happy. For the first Christians, that meant living a sexual lifestyle radically different to that of the hedonistic pagan Romans around them. For us, today, it likewise means living a lifestyle different to non-Catholics.
As I said at the start of Mass, I’m going to preach on a matter of sexual morality, and today I want to address one very particular issue: contraception. I don’t know when you last heard a sermon on contraception – possibly never, many older priests have told me how they have had people shout and spit at them for preaching on this, and, understandably, such priests have often fallen silent on this part of the Gospel. But as St Paul said, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor 9:16-23) -I want to give a few points on the importance of this issue. If you’re going to shout or spit at me please wait until after Mass. The points I want to make are that: First, that sexual morality is a part of the gospel; second, that the Church deserves to be taken seriously about this; third, contraception is bad for you, and is in fact a sin; and finally, that, there is an alternative.
Now first, preaching the gospel involves preaching a way of life, preaching about what is sin and what is not sin. That includes preaching about sexual morality, and this has been the case since the very beginning of the Church, and the Christian way of life was preached to the pagan world that lived a debauched and promiscuous lifestyle completely opposed to Christian morality. Adultery, abortion, and contraception, were all common in the Greek world, but the early Christians preached a different way of life. People sometimes talk about contraception as it was just a modern question, but actually contraception existed in the ancient world. It was less effective and less predictable but the ancient Jews knew about it and knew that it was forbidden to them, the early Christians likewise knew that contraception was something that belonged to pagan morality and was not part of the chastity to Christ calls us to. We can note too that in the ancient world (as in the modern world) contraception and abortion are very much related. Today, the most common form of contraception, i.e. typical modern forms of ‘the pill’, are deliberately designed so that when it fails as a contraceptive it will then act as an abortifacient aborting the young embryo by making it unable to implant in the womb.
My second point, is that the Church deserves to be taken seriously. Over two generations ago, modern contraception seemed new, and those who promoted it thought it would usher in a brave new world. They said the contraception would bring happier marriages, with less family stress, less divorce, less teenage pregnancy, and less abortion, “every child a wanted child". In the midst of these expectations, in 1968 Pope Paul VI warned that contraception would introduce a barrier in the relationship between a husband and wife, would lead to more divorce, more promiscuity, less family stability, and an increase in women being seen as sexual objects. Tragically, it is the Church and not the secular world that has been proved right on this. The fact that two generations on the Church's expectations have been tragically realised and that the ‘brave new world’ has instead been a fractured society, means that the Church deserves to be heard again, and those who promote contraception, the Planned Parenthood, United Nations, or our own government, deserves to be treated with suspicion.
My third point, is that contraception is not only bad for society at a general level, this is bad for individuals, and it is bad for the marriages where it used. What is a disaster at the level of a society may not prove a catastrophe in an individual marriage, but nonetheless that marriage is weakened not strengthened. Divorce statistics show this. American studies, including people of all religions and none, show that while divorce rates among those who use artificial contraception are nearly 50%, divorce rates among those who use various methods of natural family planning between 2 and 4%. These statistics point to a further truth: the Church teaches that artificial contraception is not only bad for you but it is a sin. The higher divorce rate is not a proof in itself, but it is a sign. Divorce is the separation of a husband and wife, and contraception separates things that belong together, things that if they are separated in the marriage act tend to the separation of the whole marriage.
The marital act, namely, sex, is a gift from God, a gift destined to be shared by wife and husband committed to each other in lifelong marriage. In sex two bodies are as fully united as they can be, and this only has its proper context in a relationship where two people are not only bodily united but spiritually and legally united in marriage. The sexual act is not something that a couple invent themselves, rather, it is something they receive as a gift from God, God who planned and made all things. The meaning of sex is a meaning that God has established, and there are two things, two meanings, that God has intertwined in the marital act.
One meaning is union, so that sex both expresses the union of a husband and wife, and fosters that union. But there is another meaning in the marital act, and that meaning is procreation, i.e. that sex is naturally ordered to the creation of new life. So that new life finds its home in a loving embrace. Now, sex does not always lead to new life, but sex always has this as part of what it means, and to directly oppose this is not only to directly oppose new life, but it is to violate the integrity of the marriage act: it violates the meanings that God has written into this act.
My last point, is that there is an effective alternative. 200 years ago, condoms were made of leather - they were immoral then and they are immoral now, but they are more effective now. Half a century ago, the only known method of natural family planning, i.e. approved by the Church, was the rhythm method which assumed that a woman had a regular cycle. The science of fertility awareness has improved, and the accuracy of methods like the Billings Method have improved also. As the research you can read yourself on their website indicates, www.woomb.org, methods like the Billings Method are 99% effective, a statistic also on the NHS Direct website, which is as good a statistic or better than anything claimed by the pill or implants (though admittedly different NHS websites vary in their reports).
There is a difference between contraception and NFP. In contraception the couple have directly thwarted the procreative meaning of the act; the act they engage in is an altered act. In contrast, when a couple use Natural Family Planning they track the wife’s cycle and fertility and so decide when to abstain and when not to abstain, but when they engage in the marriage act it is a normal act that they are enjoying. The act they enjoy is as God planned and intended it to be.
What contraception does is, it violates the nature of the marital act by forcibly separating two things that the Church says inherently belong to each other in the marital act, namely, the unitive dimension and the procreative dimension. While the unitive and procreative dimensions are not always actualised at the same time for example when the wife is not fertile, forcibly separating these two meanings is different to engaging in the act when one of the two meanings will not be realised.
Returning to natural family planning, i.e. what the church promotes, how is it different to contraception? Well, the Church does indeed teach that there are times when it is right for a couple to not want to have a child, for serious reasons. So, both natural family planning and artificial contraception, both have the same intention of not wishing to have a child right now. But the Church teaches that the two acts are different because contraception changes the act itself, while natural family planning either abstains from the marital act or it engages in a normal unaltered act. A couple who use natural family planning track the wife’s cycle and fertility and so decide when to abstain and when not to abstain, but when they engage in the act it is a normal act that they are enjoying.
Natural family planning is moral because it never directly separates the two meanings the marital act, union and procreation. But not only is it moral, it can also benefit the relationship between a husband and wife. I have repeatedly had men tell me, men in marriages where they have switched from contraception to natural family planning, that it changes how they relate to their wife. It makes them communicate more with their wife, it makes them more sensitive to their wife, as well as the fact that it follows God's law and receives God's blessing. Regular abstinence can introduce discipline and self-mastery, an awareness of the woman's cycle and bodily integrity, and with this a greater consideration for the woman. I make this point because some people say that the church is imposing too great a burden by calling for the regular abstinence that is involved in natural family planning. Well, contraception is also a burden, not least in the higher divorce rates I referred to.
In conclusion, What does all this mean for you today? For many of you, this may simply be a re-affirmation of what you practiced for many years, if so, I hope you don’t object to me preaching to the converted. For others of you, it may be that in hearing what I have said, you might re-examine some of your own practice, either from years gone past, or in the present. For some of you that may mean repenting and going to confession for the past. For others of you, it may mean that now is a good time to find out more at a practical level about what natural family planning involves. We are fortunate in this parish to have a trained teacher in the Billings Method, Valeria Findley-Wilson -if you don't know who she is, then there is a photo of her on the porch notice board. And she’ll be speaking at a parish meeting on this 10th December, 7pm.
I started by noting that the early Christians in ancient Rome realised that they had to follow a sexual lifestyle different to that of the pagan world around them: sexual morality is an integral part of following Christ. There are some people who say the Church should not get involved in the bedroom, but that is like saying that Christ should be involved in one part of my life but not in other parts of my life. However, Christ is ‘Lord’, and He wants to be Lord of all my life, and if He is not Lord of all then He is not Lord at all. And that means He must be Lord of the bedroom too.
The following is a link to the newsletter insert on contraception and natural family planning: http://www.scribd.com/doc/20563258/Contraception-and-Natural-Family-Planning-Handout
27th September 2009, Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
James 5:1-6
Every year our diocese recommends a particular Sunday when we give thanks to God for the harvest, which this year is today.
When we think of what it is that we have to thank God for, I know that there are many of you here who quite understandably feel that you have less to thank God for this year than you did last year: this recession, even if we are now supposedly now coming out of it, this recession has been a tough year for a great many people. It can sometimes be easy to thank God when we are in plenty; but nonetheless, thanking God when we have less can give us a new opportunity to re-focus and purify the thanks that we give. And thanking God is a good thing for at least three reasons: its helps our own happiness, it opposes jealousy, it helps us grow in love and opens us to the needs of our neighbour.
As a basic level, when life is tough, stopping to give thanks to God for the good things we have, is one of the ways that we can remind ourselves that there ARE still some good things in our life, and this can help our general happiness. Thanking God in the midst of difficulty helps lift us out of ourselves and out of self-pity.
Thinking of jealousy, our first reading (Num 11:25-29) and Gospel (Mk 9:38-18) both referred to a specific example of jealousy: and jealousy is when we see somebody else having something good, and instead of being happy that other person, we feel SAD because they have something good, typically because we somehow imagine that their possession is the cause of our lack (as St Thomas Aquinas says in his Summa Theologica, II-II, q36, a1).
Jealousy, however, is a self-defeating vice, it just leads to anger and resentment. And thanking God for the good things that we have is a remedy for jealousy because it turns our eye towards the good things we, rather than spitefully being turned towards the good things others have.
Now, that said, if jealousy is sadness at the holding of the good enjoyed by another, there is nonetheless a RIGHTEOUS form of ANGER when we behold somebody selfishly refusing to share their goods with others, or selfishly being the direct reason that someone else does not have things they need. In our second reading, we heard St James warning the rich: He warned the rich that misery was coming to them, coming to them because they had not cared for the poor, they had lived “a life of comfort and luxury", they had stored up an EARTHLY treasure, but for the Day of judgement, "it was a burning fire that you stored as your treasure”. For the rich, giving thanks is also an important remedy for avoiding this "burning fire".
When we thank God, for whatever form of riches we have, we recall that the gifts we have are in fact gifts, they are from Him – even if we have made the most of them and developed them through our hard work. One of the things that means is that they are not just for ourselves. When my little nephews get given gifts at Christmas they need to be reminded that they need to let their other siblings play with them. We, too, as Christians, need to remember that we need to share, and remembering that our gifts ultimately come from God helps remind us that we too must be generous in our giving. We have a collection for various worthwhile agencies both at harvest time and during Lent, but these collections should be part of an ongoing giving in our lives. Having the habit of thanking God is an important way of reminding ourselves of the need to share our gifts – to use our gifts well.
So, I have said that thanking God helps our own happiness by reminding us of the good things we have, it opposes jealousy by turning our eyes away from the envious looking at other people's goods, and it helps us grow in charity by reminding us that the God who gives expects us to give too. But, at one level, these reasons are all secondary: the REAL reason that we need to give thanks to God, and to thank Him for the gifts of the harvest even when our personal form of ‘harvest’ is smaller than we would like, is because all good things come from God and giving thanks is the smallest acts of justice that we owe Him.
20th September 2009, Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mk 9:30-37
Those of you who've been paying attention to the news this week may well have noticed an illustration of the truth of our Lord's teaching and promise that, "if anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all". I'm not referring to Gordon Brown saying that there will be spending cuts, rather, I am referring to the many news reports, even in the secular media, reports of the tour of the relics of St Therese of Lisieux, known to many of us not by her French ‘Therese’ but as St Teresa of the Child Jesus, or of the little way, or “the little flower”. A good number of us went to one of the smaller places of the relic tour in Taunton, and two weeks ago I preached about venerating relics and the miracles associated with them, but I want to preach today not so much about the relics as about her own life. I want to talk about her glory now on earth, her glory in heaven, & contrast that with her hidden glory while she lived on earth.
Concerning her glory now on earth, St Teresa is quite possibly glorified more than any other saint other than the Blessed Virgin herself. Referring again to the tour of her relics, a number of the news reports noted that the non-stop high paced itinerary of her relics moving made her comparable to a rock star, and the TV images of long lines of faithful pilgrims waiting at the cathedrals for their turn to pass by the casket of her relics gave the same impression. And this phenomenon during her tour through England is typical of the adoring crowds of pilgrims that are devoted to her across the world -if you go to her town of Lisieux in France you will see a MASSIVE basilica built for this small but much loved saint.
Her glory now on earth, however, is very closely related to the glory she now possesses in heaven. One of the reasons that pilgrims flock to her now is that she has been found to be very effective in answering prayers, and this is why miracles are associated with her. While she was still living, the Lord made this known to her, so that she said to one of her sisters, "After my death, I will let fall a shower of roses. I will spend my heaven doing good on earth”. Such a display of heavenly power, even when it comes through one of the saints, such a display of heavenly power can come from only one source: it comes from the Lord. And when the Lord associates the display of heavenly power with one of His saints, then it is a sign to us of the glory that saint now enjoys in heaven.
But there is a deep irony here, because St Teresa who now enjoys glory in heaven, and has that glory reflected in her devotees on earth, that saint enjoyed precious little glory while she lived on earth. She lacked glory because of the many physical sufferings she endured, ultimately, in dying a horrible slow death of tuberculosis. She also lacked glory because of her many emotional sufferings, especially in the childhood trauma she experienced at the early death of her mother, and emotional trauma she never truly recovered from. She is admired as a saint because those who lived with her heard her to complain so rarely, and saw her loving so consistently even while she herself suffered.
Even beyond this, there is a more specific aspect to the hiddenness of her glory while she lived, and that concerns the fact that she tries to hide her good deeds. It concerns her practice of "hidden" acts of kindness. I was reading from her autobiography this week (an autobiography she only wrote because she was commanded to by her superior), and in it she says, "I endeavoured above all to practice little HIDDEN acts of virtue, such as folding the mantles which the Sisters had forgotten". And that small little act is typical of the way of life St Therese lived and calls upon us to live: to be content to do many small hidden acts, to do them because somebody needs to do those acts, and WE can be that somebody.
You and I, when we do good deeds, like to have people thank us having done them, and that means we like to have people see that WE have done this good deed -not somebody else. But when we look at ourselves closely this is easily revealed as false virtue, as vanity. Part of what it means to be, as Jesus put it, "servant of all" means to not care about taking the credit, it means being willing to be hidden.
What we see in St Teresa of Lisieux is that the hiddenness of being good does not last forever. The good God who calls us to be good gives glory in heaven to those who did not care about that glory on earth. He is faithful to his word, "the first will be last, and the last will be first”, and “the meek will inherit the earth”.
13th September 2009, Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mk 8:27-35
“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Mk 8:34). We just heard Jesus talk about suffering, the cross, being a part of what it means to follow Him. And I want to illustrate this by referring to what the Pope said about his own suffering when he broke his wrist this year.
The Pope, you may recall, fell and broke his wrist on the 17th of July this summer. And he spoke about this in public a couple weeks later [29th July], noting how God had allowed this suffering to come to him. He noted that "my Guardian Angel did not prevent my accident”, but, far from seeing this as a failing on his Guardian’s Angel’s part, he said that his Angel was “certainly following 'superior orders'”, i.e. this is what God had commanded the angel to do. And the Pope went further and speculated as to what might have been God’s reasons for ordering this, perhaps, "to teach me greater patience and humility" and maybe to give him "more time for prayer and meditation."
The Pope, of course, is no fool. And these comments are worthy of a little commentary. Because these comments hold for the suffering that comes in each of our lives too.
First, we can note that the Pope spoke to God ALLOWING suffering to come to him, of his Angel ‘not preventing’ suffering. NOTE: the Pope did NOT say that God directly caused or directly willed the suffering; he did not say that his Guardian Angel tripped him up! And this is a very important point to remember: God does not directly will any suffering, he permits it. Just as he allows us to sin because it’s the only way we can be able to FREELY love, he also allowed suffering to enter the world with Original Sin, and he similarly allows but does not directly cause the suffering that comes our own way.
That said, however, He allows suffering to come to us as part of a carefully measured and directed plan for each of us. He permits suffering to come to us to draw some greater good out of it. The Catechism gives a model for this when it says that the Heavenly Father permitted the death of His own Beloved Son on the Cross, He permitted that act of deicide that was the greatest evil in human history, He permitted it in order to draw the even greater good of the Resurrection out of it.
For ourselves, we can often wonder why God allows the particular crosses that come to each of us. We also wonder why suffering comes to those we love. As long as we live in this world our knowledge is imperfect and, though we know there is a reason, and we know this because Scripture tells us so (“all things work for the good of those who love the Lord” (Rom 8:28)), we don’t know WHAT the particular reason or reasons in our own case are. Of course, we can speculate, just as the Pope speculated as to his own suffering, with the tough benefits he saw coming to him, nonetheless, our speculation is only guesswork. We don’t know the mind of God, even though we know He does have a mind to plan, a heart to care, and the power to work what He plans.
There is a final point I want to make, and that is that the crosses we are called to carry in our following of the Lord who carried His cross, our crosses are not all big ones. A broken wrist is not that big a thing in itself, nonetheless, it is part of God’s plan. There is no detail of our lives that God is not interested in; there is no cross too small to offer it to Jesus. What counts about what we do is the LOVE with which we do it, and what counts about our crosses is how we love while we carry them: how we continue to help others even while we suffer, how we continue to pray for others while we suffer, and how we continue to offer our lives and our very crosses to Jesus while we suffer, offer them as a sacrifice.
Jesus came to this world to re-make it, to make it anew. The road to the Resurrection that He walked was the road that lead to Calvary, to the Cross. If we would be His followers, as He calls us to ‘follow’, then we must go where He went, we must go to Calvary, go with whatever small or big crosses we have. And if we go with the same love He went with then we too will achieve for ourselves and for others our share in the re-creation.
6th September 2009, Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mk 7:31-37
Two weeks from now the parish is organising a trip to venerate the relics of St Therese of Lisieux. St Therese is not only one of the holiest saints of modern times but one of the most popular; a casket of her bones, her relics, are on tour through England this month and will be in Taunton where we will go to them.
This said, I suspect that some of you here maybe a little wary, if not suspicious, of this Catholic practice of venerating relics. So, I want to say something about them.
The first thing I want to say about them is that they are very Scriptural. A relic is simply defined as something that has been in contact with a saint, and typically something associated with miracles worked through that saint. And we see this in the Bible:
In Acts 19:12 we hear of how handkerchiefs that had been in contact with St. Paul's body were carried to be used to produce miracles. Similarly, St Peter’s shadow healed by its touch. In the Old Testament we also hear of miracles associated with relics, in 2 Kgs 13 the body of a dead man was touched to the bones of Elisha and Elisha’s bones brought the man back to life.
So, miracles associated with the relics of the saints is something very Scriptural, and it is also very Scriptural that the good people of God should SEEK out the relic of the saints in order to have a miracle.
But there is another thing I want to say about relics, and that is the fact that they are very human. Of our nature, we are physical as well as spiritual, we meet God through physical signs and symbols, and it is only natural that could include physical things like relics. And we might even say of our fallen nature: we seek the sensational, wonders, miracles, etc, and it is only to be expected that God should seek to reach out to us through these things too.
Let me refer to a slightly different example: long after a friend or relative has died, it is a natural thing for us to visit the graves of those whom we love. We know that our loved ones are no longer there, we know that their souls have moved on, but, their graves and their bones remain in THIS world as our natural physical contact point with them, remain as the place where we go to sense closeness with them. And this is natural and good.
And it is no different with the saints. When people want the help of a great saint they go to the place where that saint was buried, or to a place where that saint lived, or, in relics, to things that had contact with that saint - just like people in the Bible wanted contact with the miraculous St Paul by having contact with his handkerchiefs. The point is not that the handkerchief is a particularly significant item, the point is that it had contact with a particularly significant person, a saint.
Finally, why am I saying this today? One reason is to encourage you to join the pilgrimage to venerate St Therese’s relics. More generally, I am saying this to try and remind you that miracles happen today. In today’s gospel text (Mk 7:31-37) we heard one of many many examples of how Jesus worked miracles when he walked in Palestine. And Jesus works miracles today.
We don't know why he does do this miracle and doesn't do that one -just as we don't know why He didn't cure every single person in ancient Palestine.
But we do know that He tells us to approach Him in faith, that miracles normally occur in the context of that deeper healing of the soul that is faith in Him, so that the Gospels tell us that He refused to work miracles in a certain place because of "their lack of faith" (Mt 13:58).
And we know to that He tells us to "ask and you will receive" (Mk 11:9; Mt 21:22, c.f. James 4:3).
And, to come back to the relics, we know that He chooses to associate the granting of His miracles with the places of pilgrimage and the relics of pilgrimage associated with those saints who were close to Him on earth and are now close to Him in heaven, who are close to Him now in heaven because they showed us while they were on earth how we too can be close with Him.
Roman Catholic classification and prohibitions
Saint Jerome declared, "We do not worship, we do not adore, for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the creator, but we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order the better to adore him whose martyrs they are" (Ad Riparium, i, P.L., XXII, 907).
First-Class Relics
Items directly associated with the events of Christ's life (manger, cross, etc.), or the physical remains of a saint (a bone, a hair, a limb, etc.).
Second-Class Relics
An item that the saint wore (a shirt, a glove, etc.), owned or frequently used, for example, a crucifix, book etc.
Third-Class Relics
Any object that is touched to a first- or second-class relic. Most third-class relics are small pieces of cloth.
The sale of relics is strictly forbidden by the Church.
30th August 2009, Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Deut 4:1-8, Mk 7:1-23, James 1:17-27
What would you say if someone asked you if you were wiser than the people in society around you? Or, more precisely, rather than claiming to be personally wiser: would you say that you follow a wisdom that is wiser than the secular society around us?
Obviously, this is a fairly bold claim, what many would say is an arrogant claim, but the real issue is not whether such a claim is arrogant or bold but whether it is simply true. And, our Scripture readings today very directly refer to such a claim.
In the book of Deuteronomy we heard Moses challenge the people to compare their "laws and customs", the laws and customs that had been given to them by God, to compare the wisdom of this way of life with that of the pagan cultures around them. As Moses put it, "no other people is as wise and prudent as THIS great nation”. This wisdom, of course, not being their own invention, but having been revealed to them by God. Now, as Christians, we are of the heirs of the moral life revealed by God to His Chosen People to the Jews: the Lord Jesus Christ, the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, fulfilled and completed the revealing of that way of life by superseding the regulations of the Old Temple while affirming the moral code in the 10 Commandments and others that live it out. This is the great wisdom that we Christians are called to follow.
In the gospel, we heard Jesus denounce the Pharisees. And he denounced them for a very specific offence: they were ranking "human traditions" above the commandments of God. After all, Moses had warned, “add nothing”, “take nothing”. While you and I may not sprinkle ourselves and we return from the marketplace, and may not wash our arms precisely up to the elbow before eating, we too run the risk of placing the "human traditions" of the society around us above the way of life revealed to us by God. Do we adhere to “human tradition” of comfort and gluttony of modern living or do we adhere to the self-denial fasting we seen the saints? Do we adhere to a "human tradition" where an evening without television is almost unthinkable? Do we judge the sexual impurity of what we see on our television screens according to the “human traditions” of 21st-century Britain or do we judge them according to the standard of Christ? Let us not ignore the fact that the list of vices Christ referred to as coming out of man's heart, that list started with "fornication". Do we adhere to a "human tradition" that gives excessive concern to the preservation of a certain image of a middle-class lifestyle?
To be a Christian, just like being a Jew before us, means to live according to different traditions to those in the non-Christian society around us. And it means remembering, as we heard in the letter from St James, that what we have received is not a mere "human" wisdom, but has come "from above", it has been revealed to us by God, in the person of Jesus Christ. And it is precisely because it is "from above" that we need to acknowledge that it is a greater wisdom than that of the secular society around us.
And if we use the test that Moses offered to compare the Christian way of life without the world around us, we should not hesitate to say that it is more "wise". Family stability is best aided by the sexual and personal conduct taught by Christians. Society stability is best aided by being founded on the foundation of stable families. Personal stability is best aided by acknowledging that there is a God above us, that we need to exercise self-control, and we need to put aside love of self in order to love our neighbour and to love God.
So, it is an arrogant claim to Christians to claim to follow a greater wisdom than that of the society around us? No. While it is a bold claim, if Christ is who He says He is, if he is truly God, truly the long-awaited Messiah, then his wisdom must indeed be wiser than the wisdom of this passing Age. The continual challenge to us as Christians is to endeavour to live out the wisdom that we have received, because if we do not live it out then people will not say that Christians as Moses said of the Jewish people of old, “no other people is as wise and prudent as THIS great nation”.
23rd August 2009, Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time
We just heard a Scripture passage that many people dismiss, the one from Ephesians where St Paul says that women should "submit "to their husbands. I want to point out that it's DANGEROUS to just dismiss Scripture, even when it's a scriptural passage that is not easy to interpret. It's dangerous to dismiss Scripture because when we divorce ourselves from Scripture we divorce ourselves from one of our primary contact points with God Himself.
Of course, there are many Scripture passages that are difficult to understand. That is as true for me as a priest as much as for anybody else, I need to seek help if I'm to understand them.
When we have a tough text of Scripture the first thing we need to do is admit that it IS tough. And if something is tough to understand we need to seek HELP to understand it. As Catholics, we should understand that there is a Tradition within which the Scriptures were written and within which the Scriptures are to be understood. Similarly, as Catholics, we should understand that it was the authority of the Catholic Church that composed the Bible, and that discerned which books were truly inspired and to be included in the Bible, and which books were not inspired and not to be included in the Bible. And these two factors are what we need for any proper interpretation of the Bible: we need to look to the Tradition and see how the saints have interpreted any tough text of Scripture, and how the great theologians of the Church have understood this text; and, more authoritatively, we need to look to how the teaching authority, the Magisterium, has interpreted and does interpret any particular text of Scripture.
So if we take that approach to this difficult text from Ephesians: We see first, that the original context, its location within the tradition, was as one of what are called "household codes". It was part of a collection of brief exhortations calling on each member of the household to live his or her role and to live it well. As such, these codes where imbedded within the cultural norms of their time, while purifying them of what was hostile to the Gospel.
When we look to how the saints and theologians of the Church down the centuries have interpreted this text we don't see them establishing as permanently normative the pattern of society living and husband-wife models of ancient Ephesus. To take another example from these household codes of St Paul: the saints and theologians long condemned slavery even though it was normal in St Paul’s culture are he referred to it. Similarly with the teaching Magisterium of the Church.
How then has the Church interpreted this text of Ephesians? The primary thrust of this text, in St Paul’s own time and in our own, is to show what the MOTIVATION of the Christian should be in a household – it has to be a CHRISTIAN motivation. i.e. a husband must not only love his wife but love he must love her as the Christian that he is, because he is a Christian, motivated as a Christian, i.e. in that total self-sacrificing love with which Christ loved his Church and died for her. While wives: a wife is similarly to love AS A CHRISTIAN: in that humble and obedient fashion that the Church must love Christ.
Such an interpretation gives a woman a greater dignity then she possessed in the pre-Christian society. And, historically, it is reasonable to claim that such an interpretation is behind those legitimate aspects of the greater dignity afforded to women today. That said, not every aspect of modern feminism is compatible with the Christian Gospel. In particular, those patterns of thought that treat the body as something irrelevant to what we are, those patterns of thought that suggest that all we really are is our minds -such patterns of thought are actually a reversion to pagan pre-Christian thought patterns. The Jewish and Christian revelation from God indicates that while men and women are of equal dignity they are not the same: fathers and mothers complement each other and together form a whole family, man-man “marriages” or woman-woman “marriages” lack the ability to provide a proper parenting context of children. And this truth is also part of how the Tradition and Magisterium have interpreted texts such as this one from Ephesians.
So when we have a difficult text of Scripture, we need to always remember that Scripture is the inspired "Word of God". We need to listen to it and seek to understand it within the Tradition it was written in, the Catholic Tradition, and interpreted by Catholic Magisterium that first told people that this text was inspired, and today tells us how it is to be interpreted.
16th August 2009, Feast of the Assumption
We celebrate today the great feast of the Assumption of Our Lady. Our Lady is often referred to as "our hope" and I want to point how the truth we see manifested in Our Lady’s Assumption indicates WHY Our Lady should give us hope - and in each case, to understand hope, we need to understand the opposite which is fear.
In Our Lady we see the defining example of how Our Lord deals with humanity, so what we see happen to her indicates how we can expect Our Lord will also treat us.
Now, the most simple truth we see in Our Lady's Assumption is the fact that God rewarded her for her goodness: she was not only conceived "full of grace" but she chose to continue, and each moment of her life, she chose to cooperate with that grace, to continue in grace, to continue free from sin.
And because she never allowed the corruption of sin to touch her soul, it was fitting that corruption should similarly not touch her body in death.
When we acknowledge as Catholics that “at the end of her earthly life" she was assumed "body and soul" up into heaven, we are acknowledging that God rewarded her to her faithfulness to His graces, that God rewarded her for consistently cooperating with the graces He bestowed upon her.
So although it is possible to fear that God will not reward us to our own goodness, for our own faithfulness in the midst of difficulty, for our own persevering in virtuous acts even when it is difficult to be patient, difficult to be loving, difficult to be what God calls us to be, what we see in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, what we see in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, gives us reason for us to have hope that our goodness will also be rewarded.
Particular aspects of this "rewarding" for goodness can also be traced in our three Scripture readings:
Our second reading (1 Cor 15:20-26) refers to the fact that Christ's resurrection from the dead made Him the "first-fruits of all who have fallen asleep" - the first fruits of a vast hoped-for harvest of the virtuous resurrected to eternal life. Our Lady’s Assumption gives her the place as the most VISIBLE one to have followed Christ in this resurrection - as is fitting for the one who most perfectly cooperated with His plan.
Our first reading (Apoc 12:1-6.10) referred to the "great sign” that appeared in heaven, the "woman" crowned with 12 stars. And again, this public displaying of her glory is fitting for her who sinlessly cooperated with His plan.
Lastly, our gospel text (Lk 1:39-56) included Our Lady’s great hymn the “Magnificat” – “my soul glorifies the Lord". And, in particular, she proclaimed the greatness of the Lord for the fact that He had exalted the lowly, He had lifted up her who had lowered herself in service to Him and to others. So, in as much as we fear that our lowliness just leads us to being trampled upon and ignored and taken advantage of by others, the Magnificat of Our Lady, and the Assumption of Our Lady, gives us hope.
I started by saying that Our Lady is stereotypically calls our "hope". On one hand she is our hope because we can turn to her powerful motherly intercession to rescue us in our difficulties. But my primary point to you today, is that she is our hope because in her life and Assumption we see that God is faithful to His goodness and that He rewards those who are faithful to Him. Thus none of us should despair even when being good seems tough: God gave her a grace, she cooperated with it, and she was rewarded. The Lord gives us, too, the graces we need, and if we cooperate with them we too will be rewarded.
9th August 2009, Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jn 6:41-51: "I am the living Bread which has come down from heaven"
I recently heard something I found quite disturbing. A quotation. Something that disturbed me in that it reminded me that I am not what I should be. I heard a quote from a saint talking about what made him happy, and it made me realise that it is rarely what makes me happy. The quote was from St John Vianney, the Cure D’Ars, and it was about how the Eucharist is what gives us happiness. And the quote goes like this:
“Without the Eucharist there would be no happiness in this world; life would be intolerable. When we receive Holy Communion, we receive our joy and happiness”.
At one level, that quote seems impossibly pious. Many of us might hear such a thing and wonder how it could possibly be true. Most of us grasp at happiness in mundane things like food and TV, and so the type of happiness that this saint is speaking of seems impossibly removed from us. So, one of the ways we need to understand such a saying is to see it in the context of that person’s life, to see the type of holiness and the type of happiness that he is speaking of. So let me refer to some elements of his life.
St John Mary Vianney died 150 years ago this year. He lived in France shortly after the bloody French Revolution, at a time when it was frequently dangerous to be a priest. He was assigned to the small village of Ars by his bishop who told him: “There is not much love for God in that place; you will put some there”. And St John Vianney did indeed bring love of God to that place and by his death it was a village transformed from moral laxity and indifference to fervent devotion and love of God.
He brought the love of God to that village, not least, because he knew for himself that there is no other way to happiness. As he said, “Man has a noble task: that of prayer and love. To pray and to love, that is the happiness of man on earth”. We are not like the stones, or the plants, or the beasts: we can pray, this is what we have been made for. Stones, and plants, and animals don’t pray because they can’t pray – its not in their nature. For us, however, to love and to pray are two sides of the same coin, because prayer is an act of love, time spent with the one who loved us and died for us.
When he arrived in his parish his people were indifferent to God and indifferent to him. He started his work with years of days and nights spent in long hours of prayer. When he was asked what he was doing, when he was asked how one prayed, he said, “I look at the good God, and he looks at me”. He said that to be with God was not hard, “prayer makes time pass swiftly”, and it passed swiftly because he was with Someone he loved. He would often be known to walk long hours on lonely journeys through the snow, and yet he said he felt no sorrow, because he spent the time in prayer, lost in prayer “like a fish in water, because [he] was absorbed in God”. Whereas you and I might seek out happiness in food, he would boil a pan of a few potatoes and then live on the same saucepan for ages, even as the potatoes went mouldy, eating nothing else for week and week, year after year.
There is a particular act of prayer that I want to remind you of, however, and that is prayer to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, in the Eucharist, as he is present continually in our tabernacle. As I started by saying, St John Vianney, said that there is no happiness on earth without the Eucharist. And he said this because he knew that it is in the Eucharist that God is among us, it is in the Eucharist that we can come to God and God can come to us. When he said that there is no happiness but in prayer and love, he didn’t say this meaning some prayer to a distant God, or some love to an abstract god we cannot know. Rather, he said this meaning love and prayer for the God we DO know, and who we can love personally, and who we can lovingly pray to personally as he makes Himself present to us. And it is only here that we can find true happiness.
True happiness is NOT shown in those people who possess many things, or those who have many sensual pleasures, or in those who are most successful in the ways that this passing world measures success. Rather, true happiness is shown in the saints, the saints who manifested their true happiness by the fact that they continued to be joyful even eating mouldy potatoes and trudging through the snow -when you or I would be grumbling. True happiness is seen in the saints because they lived the essence of true happiness, love and prayer, and found the Lord where He has made Himself available to be found: “Without the Eucharist there would be no happiness in this world; life would be intolerable. When we receive Holy Communion, we receive our joy and happiness”
12th July 2009, Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mk 6:7-13
We just heard a Gospel text telling us to do what seems to be impossible: carry nothing for the journey, no food, no money, no spare clothing. So, I want to say a few words about how the Church has interpreted this text.
This Saturday was the feast of St Benedict, and this week I've been on a pilgrimage to one of the great Benedictine monasteries in France, Fontgombault. It’s an abbey where the monks live poverty, chastity, and obedience, VERY strictly. They have no personal possessions, and they have no range of spare clothing to choose from, just the black habit or the black habit! There is something very inspiring about seeing people who, even in the midst of a very modern materialistic Western lifestyle, can put all that aside to live simply with Christ and for Christ. And I mention this to indicate that there are people today who do live the Gospel poverty, the Evangelical poverty, in a literal sense, even today.
But, back to our gospel text, how has the Church interpreted this text down the centuries? Basically, there is a threefold interpretation. First, this text had a meaning and relevance that was applicable directly to the people it was addressing, and thus it was of a temporary meaning: a literal interpretation that held for the 12 apostles to whom was addressed.
Second, this text refers to a way of life that is not temporary in the church but permanent in the Church, in every era of its existence, but a way of life, a vocation, that is specific to some of us and not to others. A way of life that is addressed to those who live out the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, in a literal fashion: those we call Religious brothers and sisters, and those Benedictine monks I visited one of many examples. The Gospel texts make a number of references to these three Counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience. In what we just heard, Jesus said, carry no bread, no coins, no spare tunic, and they live holy poverty possessing nothing of themselves, holding everything in a common possession of the community. Jesus "summoned" the 12, and those monks live this out in holy obedience, surrendering their will at all times to the superior of the community. And Jesus sent the 12 “out in pairs", leaving family and friends behind, and those monks live holy chastity, with no spouse or family, loving God with what Scripture calls "an undivided heart” (1 Cor 7:32ff).
In each of these three vows, vows of what are called the three Gospel or Evangelical Counsels, a Religious "consecrates" a different aspect of his self directly to God, so that with the three together his whole self ease "consecrated" to God. Consecrated "directly" and not through the medium of something else. Each of these 3 Counsels is a remedy to one of the three “causes” of sin, what Scripture calls “the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life"(1 Jn 2:16). And in choosing to love the Lord with an undivided heart, embracing these vows, they love God DIRECTLY, and they do so living the Gospel Counsels “in fact”, literally. [c.f.Basil Cole OP & Paul Conner O.P., Christian Totality: Theology of the Consecrated Life (New York, Alba House, 1997), p.27.] And they do so in what the Church thus calls the "higher state of life".
Now, I speak of the beauty and superiority of the Consecrated life as someone who does not himself live it, as you yourselves gathered here to also not live it. None of us here have taken the three vows. However, this way of life DOES have a relevance to us, and that brings me to the third and final interpretation of this gospel text, and other similar texts that speak of poverty so directly: ALL Christians are called to live the three Evangelical Counsels "in spirit", even though we are not all called to live them "in fact" in a consecrated manner. “Christ proposes the evangelical counsels, in their great variety, to every disciple” (Catechism, 915). What this means is that each of us must manifest in our own lives with the different "Counsels” that we see a monk or nun, it's a monk or nun is living well! As the nun lives chastity by having no spouse but Christ, cleaving to Him with "an undivided heart", ALL Christians are called to love of Christ more we love anything or anyone in this world - and those we love in this world, in Christ tells us that we MUST love, if our love for them is to be pure and selfless, then that love must have its source in the Christ whom we love first. Similarly, obedience, we are all called to obey the Lord with a ready spirit in all His commands and decrees. And finally, poverty: this is the one that perhaps seems most impossible to us in our materialistic age. However, the literal poverty of a monk or nun is a sign to us of how ALL of us are called to value God and the things of God more than the possessions of this world. We are called to live in this world as people who belong to another world, as people who are "citizens of heaven" (Phil 3:20). Those of us who live IN the world MUST have possessions, but we must live as if our possessions do not possess us.
In summary, this apparently impossible gospel text, would be impossible if all Christians were called to live it literally at all times. However, it is a practical text in that it had, first, a literal interpretation for the 12 people to whom it was first addressed. Second, it has a literal interpretation of those specific people in every age of the Church who are called to live it “in fact”. And third, ALL Christians are called to live this poverty, chastity, and obedience, “in spirit”.
2nd August 2009, Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ex 16:2-15; Jn 6:24-35
In our Gospel today Jesus refers to hunger, refers to our being hungry for the Bread of Life that is Himself. The hunger he is speaking of in a SPIRITUAL hunger. And its importnat to note that it is easy for us to think that we’re not really hungry in our own spirit, just no doubt as there were many people like the Pharisees in Jesus's own time who thought they didn't need this Bread of Life, thought that they were not hungry in their soul, that they were just fine. But, even if we don’t realise that we are hungry, that our soul is ‘skinny’ and unhealthy, Jesus us tells us that our souls ARE hungering for this Bread of Life.
Being hungry in our soul is not something that is necessarily self-evident. If we compare the body to the soul: When we need to feed the body, REALLY needs to feed the body, this is something that is pretty self-evident just by looking at the state of the body: we look overly thin, pale, pasty. But when we need to feed the soul how can we tell what the state of the soul is? Well, there ARE indicators of the state of our own soul, and our need for Jesus, and the way that our soul is better than being with Jesus: so I want to refer to 3 factors that we need to recall.
First, most drastically, there is the fact of sin. In as much as sin is in us then we are in dire need for being fed by Jesus – even though this means we need to get to confession and be forgiven so that we are fit for receive Jesus as the food of our souls.
Second, more subtly, there is the question of EVERLASTING life. Jesus says, "Do not work the food that CANNOT last, but work the food that endures to eternal life". Now, while the existence of a life after death may not be self-evident to those who lack faith, nonetheless, it is self-evident that food for the body does not last for an everlasting life. It is self-evident that the most material food can be is, as Jesus put it "food that cannot last". So, if there is an everlasting life, and there is, then we who recognise this fact need the type of food that only Jesus promises to give, the food that is Himself, as the Eucharist.
And that brings me to the third and last factor, which is not so much a life that is eternal, but a life that is UNSEEN. As we Catholics say in the creed at every Sunday Mass, we believe in the Creator of things "seen and unseen" - we believe that there are things that are unseen even if they are not unknown. “Holiness” is a thing that can be publicly manifest, but it is not something that can be precisely MEASURED. Similarly, the life of grace, the strength that comes from the sacraments, the ability to fight sin and grow in virtue: these are things that relate to our whole life, including our visible life, even are they an effect that cannot be measured.
To come back to the question of us being hungry in our soul even when we do not realise it, to being hungry for the Eucharist.
The vast majority of people recognise that there is more to us than just the body, and there is something that endures beyond death. The issue Jesus raises in these gospel passages, is the FOOD that relates to this life - if there is such a life, and Jesus assures us that there is, then it is only reasonable to acknowledge that this life within us needs feeding.
Jesus is the one who not only tells us that we are hungry, not only tells us that we are ‘skinny’ without Him, but also tells us how we can be fed, namely, by Him, in the Eucharist.
28th June 2009, Feast of St Peter & St Paul
Mt 16:13-19
I want to say a few words about why Catholics think we have all the answers, because today is the feast day of St Peter and St Paul, the two “Roman” saints associated with the claims of the Roman Church.
St Peter is the man that Catholics hail as the first “Pope”, the first Bishop of Rome, the Vicar of Christ on Earth. We hail him as the “Vicar of Christ” because he is the one that Jesus called the “Rock”, renaming him from “Simon” (Hebrew) to “Cephas” (in Aramaic), or “Peter” (in Latin). I could give an exegesis on the word-play in “rock”, but, the papal or ‘Petrine’ role it establishes can probably be more easily seen in some other things: For example, Did you know that the name that is mentioned more than any other name in the Gospels (apart of that of Jesus Himself) is the name of Peter? -indicating his leading role. Did you know that though 16th Century protestants denied the Pope’s claim that the Bishop of Rome is the successor of St Peter this claim wasn’t denied by any of the ancient Church Fathers? This is significant, because if the papacy was a thing ‘invited’ by the popes then we would expect some ancient historical figure to have said, “No other Bishop of Rome claimed to the successor of St Peter”. And this is because all the ancient sources recognised that the Bishop of Rome is the successor of St Peter, and carries the authority of St Peter -Rome being the place where St Peter spent the end of his life.
But, even if the Pope is the successor of St Peter, why do popes claim to teach with authority? The answer to this question is one that connects us back to the Gospel text of today, and connects us back to the importance of the person of Christ Himself.
Many people in the world today say that there is no “truth” and that there is no single “meaning of life”. They say that the truth is different for every person, that each one has to make up his own meaning to his own life. How this can be reconciled with the fact that people come up with radically opposed ‘truth’ claims, and people come up with meanings and aims that threaten and oppose each other –how this can be reconciled is never adequately answered by such people.
And it can only be answered by saying that there IS a TRUTH that we must all acknowledge, there is a meaning to life that we must all discover if we are to be happy. That meaning to life is only to found in the One who created that life, God, and that truth is only to be found in that creator who came among us saying of Himself that “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (Jn 14:6).
It is only in knowing Christ that we truly and fully know where we came from and where we are called to go. As the Second Vatican Council put it, It is Jesus Christ “who fully reveals man to himself” (Gaudium et spes 22, cited in JPII, RH 10.1). He is the one who as God has full truth, and as perfect man shows us what we, as perfected, are called to be. All answers about life are thus to be found in Him, and all other answers are only partial and fragmentary unless they are The Answer found in Him.
And, who was it that first identified the Christ? Who was it that answered the question, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
It was the first Pope: “Blessed are you Simon bar Jonah... because it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven” (Mt 16: 17).
It was because the first Pope knew Christ that he knew The Answer, that he was one that no doubt the secularists of our day would mockingly say, “Oh, he talks as if he has all the answers”. Well, in knowing THE Answer he did know all the answers.
And in knowing THE Answer, in inheriting the role of making that Answer known to the world, the successor of St Peter, the Pope in Rome, he too knows all the answers. He doesn’t know them of his own power, rather, like St Peter his infallibility is guaranteed from Above not from below, made know by the Father in heaven through the action of the Holy Spirit.
That is why and how the Pope knows all the answers, and it is why and how WE TOO can know all the answers if we listen and accept what the Pope says, trustfully accepting that his authoritative teaching is guaranteed by the Lord, so that “the gates the underworld will never prevail against it” (Mt 16:18).
21st June 2009, Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time
In our second reading (2 Cor 5:14-17) we heard St Paul say, "from now onwards, therefore, we do not judge anyone by the standards of the flesh". And he proceeded to contrast "knowing" Christ in the flesh, with a knowing Him as a Christian knows Him. And there is an application of this in each of our 3 readings.
To "know” Christ in the flesh, is to know part of Him but not know all of Him. It is to know what the flesh can know: to see His humanity, to, as the first Christians could, touch Christ's human flesh, feel the grasp of his hand. And all of this is to "know" something that is true of Christ, namely, that He was and is fully human.
However, if we ONLY know Christ in the flesh then we only PARTLY know Him. He is not only human, is also fully God.
We saw an example of this partial knowledge of Christ in our gospel (Mk 4:35-41). The disciples were in a boat with Jesus, and they were experiencing a terrible storm, and they were with Christ. They already knew Christ: they had seen Him cleanse the leper (Mk 1:42); they had seen Him heal the paralytic (Mk 2:12); they had witnessed Him cast our demons (Mk 3:11); and they had heard Him teach, and issue His call to repentance, the call addressed to sinners and the outcast. They knew many THINGS about Christ, but, it seems, they did not yet know Christ Himself.
They knew enough, however, to realise that when the boat was going down in the storm that Christ might be able to help them, and so they turned to Him, saying, “Master, do you not care? We are going down!" (Mk 4:38).
Jesus, as we know, then calmed the storm. But He did more than just calm the storm: He helped open their eyes to faith. He berated their lack of faith, “How is it that you have no faith?" But this reproof was also an invitation, an invitation to judge no longer according to the flesh but with the sight of faith. To see not just what the flesh can see, but to have that piercing discerning sight that can see truths, and The Truth, that lies beyond what can be immediately perceived.
To judge according to faith and not just according to the flesh is not always easy. We heard the disciples trying to do this but still seemingly struggling, "Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him" – they saw that He was something more, but didn’t yet fully see, didn’t yet say, “My Lord and My God” (Jn 20:28) as they would say by the end of the Gospels.
We, too, need to always be yearning and straining to judge according to faith, to see with the full light of faith, and not to see merely what the flesh can see. This is part of what it means to be the “new creation” that St Paul spoke of: to have our minds renewed.
Of course, seeing with the eyes of faith, even though it means we see more, does not mean that we are not left with some questions. In our first reading we heard about Job, the man who suffered, and wondered WHY he was suffering, the man who was offered 1000 faulty explanations by his philosopher-friends. And in the end, what he got from God was not answers but more questions: Where were you when I made the universe? Who are you are ask me why and how I do things? And even though these were questions and not answers, wiser men than me have noted that Job found the questions of God more satisfying than the answers of men.
The questions of God were more satisfying, at least in part, because they invited him to look beyond merely his own understanding, and judgements, and what he could see according to the flesh, and to look instead with the eyes of faith. Because part of what faith involves is the submission of the human intellect to what God has revealed, rather than what the human intellect alone and unaided can understand by itself. To realise this, in humility, is to open our minds to see MORE because we no longer see only according to the flesh.
14th June 2009, Feast of Corpus Christi
Today we keep the great feast of Corpus Christi: the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. By coincidence, today is also a day when we will not be administering Holy Communion in the chalice: the Bishop informed us on Friday that because the swine flu has been raised to a pandemic status, the chalice is not to be administered to the congregation for the foreseeable future. This is a precautionary measure and not a reason to panic; it is also, as the Bishop suggested, an opportunity for us to clarify our catechesis on receiving Our Lord fully in just the host.
I want to put 3 simple questions to you. When you receive Holy Communion do you think that you receive a ‘ thing’ or do you think you receive a ‘ person’? Do you think you receive a part or a whole? Do you think you are receive a gift that comes without conditions, what do you think that reception is a COMMITMENT to a covenant, a covenant with very definite conditions? The answer to all three of these questions can be seen in contrasting the Old Testament covenant with the New Covenant in Christ.
In our first reading (Ex 24:3-8) we heard how Moses established the Old Testament covenant with the chosen people; this was a covenant (which is a type of contract) between God and the people God had chosen as His own. To be a "covenant" meant that not only was God committing Himself to His chosen people but also, those chosen people were committing themselves to Him: which meant that they had to commit themselves to abide by, as we heard in that reading, "the commands of the Lord and all the ordinances". Like other covenants it was sealed with two things: a sacrifice and blood. And like any sacrifice it was completed or "consummated" by the sacrifice being eaten, consumed.
In our second reading (Heb 9:11-15) we heard how Christ is “the high priest" of the New Covenant: the sacrifice He offers is the sacrifice of Himself; and the blood He sheds is His own blood, which as we heard in our gospel text is "the blood of the covenant" (Mk 14:24), as we hear in the Eucharistic prayer: "the blood of the new and everlasting covenant". This sacrifice is consummated when we receive Holy Communion. And this blood is not sprinkled on us externally but we partake of its merits by receiving it internally in Holy Communion.
And just as the Old Testament covenant involves committing oneself to the commands of the Old Covenant, the New Testament covenant involves committing oneself to all of the ritual and moral life of the new Christian way of life: when we say "amen" to receive Holy Communion we are saying “yes” in committing ourselves to this new covenant. Committing ourselves to the ritual: to receive Holy Communion means to commit oneself to attend that sacrifice of the Mass each and every Sunday, to do otherwise is to commit the sin of sacrilege against Holy Communion. And committing ourselves to the Christian moral life means committing ourselves to those ethical imperatives, including those of sexual morality, those imperatives that separate the Christian way of life from that of our secular world around us.
In as much as we fail in these respects we should not come to Holy Communion until we change our life, repent, go to confession and receive the renewal to adhere anew to the covenant.
I want to explain, using the standard Catholic theological analysis, why it is that each host fully contains the WHOLE Jesus Christ: His Body and Blood, His Soul and Divinity. ie. why it is enough to receive Our Lord just in just the host, why we don't need to receive Him from the chalice. Explaining this involves pointing out another key difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant:
The sacrifice of the New Covenant is not a dead sacrifice, not an animal that was slain, but a living sacrifice: the living Lamb of God, who was slain, but was raised to new life, so that he can never die again. He is what the Eucharistic prayer calls the "LIVING sacrifice". In a dead sacrifice body and blood are separate by the very fact of death; each ceases to live by the separation of body from blood. But, in the living sacrifice there can be no more death, and so Body and Blood can no longer be separated.
I just said that in the living sacrifice of Christ His Body and Blood can no longer be separated. What does this mean practically? It means that in Holy Communion the Lord Jesus’s Body and Blood cannot be separated: where one is the other is fully too. We have two different signs but we do not have two different realities. What was bread, after it is consecrated, is changed into Jesus Christ, with its APPEARANCE having the sign value of ‘Body’. While, what was wine, after it is consecrated, is changed into Jesus Christ, with its APPEARANCE having the sign value of ‘Blood’. Two different signs, but the same reality in each.
So, when you receive the chalice, as is common in much of this Diocese but is not common in most of the world, you receive an added sign but you do not receive an added reality. You receive the Lord fully in just the host. You receive a ‘whole’ not a ‘part’ because you are receiving a ‘person’ not a ‘thing’.
This great gift is SO great that the gift we are offered in Holy Communion is an offer that only comes with the expectation of commitment to the life of the New Covenant. The New Covenant cost Christ the sacrifice of Calvary, and it costs us the commitment to adhere to it.
12th June 2009, Requiem Mass for Elizabeth Jane Torrance
Jn 6:41-51; Isa 25:6-9; 1 Jn 1-2
Elizabeth chose the readings and hymns that we have at Mass today, which gives us a precious insight into what she wanted to say to us today.
Often we can know someone, but we don’t always articulate what we believe. We might know that someone goes to Mass every Sunday, but not be sure why, or quite what it means to them. But in giving us these funeral readings and hymns Elizabeth has, in a very real sense, expressed what her faith was, and, in particular, what her HOPE was for this very moment.
In our opening hymn we sang “My soul proclaims the Lord my God”, repeating the words of the Blessed Virgin. And those words surely indicate to us that despite whatever difficulties she had she wanted to express gratitude to God: she had a long life, she passed peacefully with friends and family having seen her in hospital, she’d had the chance to prepare herself to go; and this hymn surely indicates that she wants us to thank God for these and other blessings. Our blessings come from somewhere, from some-ONE, and that is why we call them ‘blessings’, and this is the significance of this hymn at a funeral.
There is one theme in particular that runs very strongly through Elizabeth’s choices, and that is Christ as the Bread of Life. It is our Communion hymn, it was our Gospel, and it was in our first reading.
Our Catholic hymns speak often of “the bread of angels” and the “banquet of heaven” that we heard from the prophet Isaiah. That is what we hope for now for Elizabeth, and her choices indicate that it was the hope she had for herself.
Our hymns also speak of that Bread as the “food of travellers”, the food to sustain them on the way. Elizabeth sought that Bread faithfully and regularly. My clearest picture of her was of her needing me to come down to her on the front row to bring her the Bread of Life, of her having to be helped to walk in here for Mass every Sunday, ANY YET, her perseverance in coming for that Bread of Life even when she was frail – and this shows us that she knew it to be important. It is the “food of travellers” in a particular way to sustain us for the final journey, in “viaticum”, the journey through death to eternal life.
But as a Catholic, the KEY thing, is that this ‘Bread’ is NOT ‘bread’ in the ordinary sense. In the Gospel text Elizabeth chose Christ said, “I am the bread of life... and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world”. It is Christ for whom we were created, it is Christ who is the goal and end of our striving, the model we must pattern ourselves upon. But Christ is not only our beginning and end, He is also with us on the way. And He is with us not just in some figurative sense, but in a physical sense, in his “flesh” – He changes the bread and wine into His very self, as we Catholics hold: into His Body and Blood, His soul and divinity. He said, “This IS my body” and we hold Him to mean what He said.
And, in particular, this is what Elizabeth knew to be true. And she knew it was important to recall today because as her Gospel text indicates, the promise of Heaven, of the Heavenly Banquet, holds for those who have sought to be nourished by Christ in His earthly banquet, the Mass, in Holy Communion, “that a man may eat of it and NOT die”. This is the foundation of our hope for her today – Christ promised this.
One final thought, on Elizabeth’s second reading (1 Jn 3:1-2). That text said, “we are already children of God, but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed; all we know is, that when it is revealed we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He really is”. As long as we live in this world we have something limited in our knowledge of God. Christians hold that we DO truly know God, we know God as He really is, and we know Him because He Himself has made Himself known by becoming one of us: Jesus Christ. If we in faith accept the truth of what He did and taught then we truly know God. But our sight is still limited; the glory of God and the glory of heaven is still beyond our ability to exhaust. We see God, now, but, as St Paul puts it, “through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). However, what the text Elizabeth chose rejoices in is that, for God’s faithful ones, in Heaven, “we shall see Him as He really is”. This is the hope, the completion and fulfilment of the Christian journey, the journey we are sustained on with the Bread of Life, this is the hope that Elizabeth held for herself and that gathers us her to pray for her today, to pray that that hope will become readily fulfilled.
31st May 2009, Pentecost Sunday
I think that most of us know the feeling of having tried to do something that is beyond our ability. There are some things that are only beyond our ability at the moment, so that the first time I tried to ride a bicycle it was beyond my ability, and I fell down. But that's the kind of thing, the kind of inability, that we can overcome -we can acquire an ability we don't yet have. But there are some things that are simply beyond our power, full stop. For example, I am unable to fly, and it doesn't matter how hard I practice flapping my arms I will never be able to fly - it is simply beyond human ability.
Today, on Pentecost, we think of the Holy Spirit. And it is His role to enable us to do what we are unable to do without Him. And there are two ways we can think of this: here on earth; and in heaven.
Here on earth, there are many things that we should be able to do, but we are unable to do because of our fallen human nature - because we have inherited original sin, and are inclined to sin. So, patience should be something that comes naturally to us, to me. I should be able to have my eyes set on goal before me, and happily and lovingly and patiently endure whatever it takes to get there. But, in my fallen human nature, patience does not come easily to me, I do not happily endure things. However, this is only beyond my ability at the moment: with the Holy Spirit, I can gradually acquire this ability. The Holy Spirit is rightly called "another helper" by the Lord Jesus. And He is also called "the sanctifier” because He is the one who makes us holy. And this is how the Holy Spirit helps us here on earth.
What about in heaven? Well, it may not have occurred to you, or maybe it has occurred to you: but even if we get to heaven there is at least one thing that we will be unable to do: we will be unable to comprehend God, and thus unable to adequately love Him. Even in heaven, our intellects will be small and limited, while God is infinite, and we cannot comprehend Him. Only God can adequately comprehend God. Only God can adequately love God.
What we NEED if we are to know God as He knows Himself is to actually have God Himself dwelling IN us, and this “indwelling” is the role appropriated to the Holy Spirit: His dwelling in us causes us to exceed our natural capacities: In Heaven, the role of ‘idea’ we will have of God is the role appropriated to the Son, the “Word” of God (Jn 1:1), the “image” of the Father (Col 1:15; Heb 1:3).
But the role of loving, of ‘love’ personified, is another of the roles appropriated to the Holy Spirit.
So, even in heaven, we will need the Holy Spirit, the “Helper” to help us do what we cannot do alone.
To say that differently: Those of you who remember the old Penny Catechism will remember that you were taught as a child that the reason we were created is "to know Him and love Him". What you were almost certainly not taught as a child was that you were and are inherently unable to do the thing that you were created to do! This is what theologians mean when they talk about our "supernatural" calling -we are called to do something beyond our ability, beyond our nature, something SUPER-natural. We are called to do what we can only do with the help of the Holy Spirit. This will apply in heaven, and it applies here on Earth. And our need for the Holy Spirit in heaven is the model of our need for Him here on Earth.
In heaven, we will know God by seeing Him in what is called the Beatific Vision, but we will only become able to see this immense vision by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us. Similarly, on earth, I know God, but not by my own power: I know God through faith, faith which is a gift of the Holy Spirit. And knowing God in faith, knowing God by that response of to His self-revelation in Christ Jesus, I am now able to love Him.
All of this is worth knowing because it is a model of how we need to Holy Spirit in ALL kinds of things.
So how should I feel when I realise that I am unable to do something? How should I feel when I realise I am unable to do something that I know I need to do? If I believe in the Holy Spirit, then I should not feel despair. Rather, each time I have this realisation, I should recognise that this is just another example of the fact that I'm called to BE something that is beyond my power and had to DO something that is beyond my power. But by the gift of Him, the Holy Spirit, I am able to do what alone I cannot do.
24th May 2009, Ascension Sunday
Mk 16:15-20, with third alternative second reading: Eph 4:1-13 (shorter version)
If one of you decided that my sermons were getting too long and decided to poison me, then I would probably die. Similarly, if a snake bit me I would probably die. In addition, I have never yet knowingly healed someone or cast out a devil.
And yet, all these are things that, in our Gospel text, Jesus said would be “associated with believers”. And I want to make two points about that.
First, though Jesus did not say that ALL believers would do these things, these things have indeed been associated with believers. For example:
Being bitten by snakes: The most famous example is in Acts 28:3-6 which tells how St Paul was bitten by a viper and yet unharmed, it tells how the people gathered around waiting to see him drop down dead, and were amazed.
Drinking poison: there are numerous account of this. The great monk St Benedict, and St John the Apostle, St Julian, St Hermias, St Photini and her companions. England’s protector St George was twice poisoned by a pagan sorcerer who was so amazed at his survival that he converted to Christianity.
Healing the sick: this, is a phenomenon so common down the history of the Church that describing incidents could literally take all day –many recent one in Lourdes are well documented.
And, casting out devils: I’m not an exorcist myself, this is a task that a bishop only entrusted to one priest per diocese. But I have known those who have done such exorcisms, who have described the power of the occult, and the sign of possession. But they have described even more the power of Christ, and who the devils flees before Him.
Second, these signs are only a PART of what Christ gives to help spread the Gospel – to convince they need to be seen as part of something else.
We often think today that we Modern people are the first ones to ever be sceptical, the first to ever question whether such miracles really happened or happen – but this is a very foolish and arrogant attitude. People have always questioned.
People have always witnessed that SOMETIMES normal people get bitten by a snake and survive.
These signs, these miracles by saints, are only deemed REALLY significant because there was SOMETHING ELSE about their lives that suggested that there was something else going on: their manner of life seemed different, the message of Christ they taught was different, and so these signs fit into a context – so that people might think “something new is at work here”. So, St George’s poisoner was not converted to worship George but rather to worship the Christ whom St George lived by.
So, Jesus said, these “signs will be associated with believers”, he didn’t say these signs alone will ‘prove’ believers – they were and even today sometimes still are, part of a package.
I might go further, and say that the ‘signs’ that prove Christ are the saints of His that loved the poor, like Mother Teresa of Calcutta; that cared for the sick and set up hospitals for them, like countless Christian saints down the ages. Of course, many of us have also proved that a Christian can be a hypocrite and not live a life radically different to his fellow non-Christian, but nonetheless the greatest miracle of the Church should be charity, a love that means “they will be one, that the world may believe”(Jn 17:21) as Jesus said.
So, to conclude where I began: I would die if you poisoned me, I would convert no-one on the basis of my ability to survive poisoning.
The challenge for each of us here, is whether our lives might become such that they are recognisably different to the world around us, recognisably witnessing to the power of Christ in us. Living, as our second reading said, “a life worthy of your vocation”(Eph 4:1) so that people would see “the Lord working in them and confirming the word by the signs that accompany it”(Mk 16:10).
17th May 2009, Sixth Sunday of Easter
Jn 15:9-17; 1 Jn 4:7-10
As I observed last year, when we say goodbye to someone, especially if we're not going to see them for a while, we usually try and say something important, something that we want the other person to remember while we’re separated from them. Such words can be particularly important when someone is dying.
The words in today's gospel are such farewell words, the words Christ spoke at the Last Supper before he died.
Those words included a farewell request of Jesus, with an added strength, because it is directly connected WITH the death he was about to suffer, the REASON he was saying goodbye. He said,
“Love one another, as I have loved you.
A man can have no greater love, than to lay down his life for his friends.
You are my friends, if you do what I command you.”
Almost every religion in the world has a command to love, to treat our neighbour well. But ONLY Christianity has it rooted in the example of God himself, in dying out of love for us. It is a high standard of love, indeed, there can be no higher one. It’s not just rooted in a piece of ancient wisdom about the best way to get on in life, or seek harmony. It’s not just rooted in a law dictated by a remote godhead.
The command of love we follow is a direct PERSONAL request, from a God who has revealed and given us such love himself, who gave it to us long before we gave any love back to him. It’s a command of love, from a God who IS love itself. Scripture calls God many things, truth, strength, light. But it gives him no name as clear as the one we just heard from St. John’s first letter: “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8).
One of the reasons we keep someone’s dying request is as a memory of the person, as a way of continuing to make them present. Keeping Christ request for us love makes him present by his very nature. God is love, and love is the basis of our sharing in the life of God. As St. John says, “Love comes from God, and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God” (1 Jn 4:7). And this follows from Christ’s promise that, “If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love” (Jn 15:10).
(pause)
Love SHOULD come naturally to us. We’re made in the image and likeness of God, and he is love. Humans are made as communal and relational beings -to exist in love with others. But it often doesn’t come naturally to us. We are selfish, we quarrel, we are greedy, we complain and moan and gossip about people.
We fail to love because we sin, and at root because of Original Sin. That’s why, when he gave us this command, Christ also gave us the promise of the strength of his Holy Spirit at the same Supper.
But it’s also why he gave us the SIGN of himself on the Cross to motivate us to love. When we look at Christ on the Cross, we see his love for us. And this must surely awaken a response in us, a response to love as he loved us.
The command to love as he loved is a demanding standard. But it comes with a high reward. The reward not only of having God dwell in us in this life, making his home in us in this life, but ultimately of him taking us home to himself, to the place he went when he died and rose again.
10th May 2009, Fifth Sunday of Easter
Jn 15:1-8
I’m not much of gardener, I like plants to look nice, I like it when spring comes and the flowers are in bloom. But I don’t have the patience to work with plants the rest of the year.
And I don’t know what plants need to make them grow well.
There is one thing I do know, however, and that is that a good gardener PRUNES his bushes – he cuts away the wood. I don’t know WHEN to prune, I had to check that in Google for my sermon preparation: apparently most things get pruned in late winter, some things like climbing roses get pruned in Autumn, and some things like Raspberries in very early spring – I didn’t know that.
Fortunately, there are gardeners who do what they are doing.
And, in our Gospel today, Jesus tells us that THE Gardener is the Lord Himself, and He knows what to cut and when to cut it.
Pruning is rather violent image to associate with God, and image that suggests that He directs not only the easy things in life, like the flowers coming up, but also the tough things in life, the blows in life that we never enjoying receiving.
We can never full grasp the ways of the Lord, but the image of the Gardener can help:
Why does a gardener prune? Because he hates his plants and wants to cut them up?
No, because he loves and cares for them, and wants them to become something better than they presently are.
Because he knows what is good for them
The Divine Creator, Scripture tells us, did not create suffering. Scripture gives us the image of the Garden of Eden, but it tells us a truth that is not just a symbol:
Suffering only entered this world with sin, and radically disrupted the harmony of this world so that we can barely imagine what life was like without suffering.
But even though He didn’t create it, He now directs it, to bring all things to the good, to the Good which is He Himself.
Now, this is something to recall in every difficulty.
Because we never WANT to be pruned. I want this dead wood in my life; and I certainly don’t want the pain that comes with it being cut away.
I know that there are many pointless things I am attached to, that aren’t good for me;
And I know that there are many GOOD things I’m attached to, but attached to in a selfish way that is bad for me and bad for the people I’m attached to;
So, I know I need to be pruned, but I don’t enjoy the pruning.
But I do need it. And because the Lord, the Divine Gardener knows it, He prunes me.
Before concluding, let me point out why we have this Gospel today, in Eastertide. Easter if the time of new growth, of Resurrection; of the resurrection that could only happen because of the Death that preceded it.
And the new growth that I need in my life can only come by the thousand little deaths that pruning involves.
So, when we feel one of those thousand little deaths, let us not only remember that the Lord is with us our suffering, let us remember too what He taught us in this passage: He is the Gardener, He knows what He is about, and every bit of pruning can be for our good, CAN be if we allow it to draw us to Him:
“a branch cannot bear fruit all by itself... cut off from me you can do nothing”
But “Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty”.
3rd May 2009, Fourth Sunday of Easter
Jn 10:11-18
This was going to be a sermon about how there are people out there who behave as if they didn’t need a shepherd,
Then it was going to be a sermon about how there are people here among us who carry on as if they didn’t need a shepherd,
But then I remembered: I too carry on as if I didn’t need a shepherd.
Of course, I believe that I need a shepherd; I teach that I need a shepherd;
But in my daily living I all too often carry on as if I only had myself to rely on, and as if I didn’t really need anyone else’s help anyway. I might complain that I don’t have more help, complain that God didn’t make me more talented than did, but I nonetheless carry on as if I was OK alone.
And then things somehow don’t go quite right, in fact, if I acknowledge it, things go wrong – and they go wrong because I have done wrong: I have behaved as if God was an optional extra in my life rather than the beginning, and end, and middle of it.
Fortunately, every time this happens, God is waiting. Waiting for me, and waiting for you.
As we just heard Him say, “I am the good shepherd, I know my own”.
He knows, not only that I fail to use His shepherding, but He knows exactly HOW I fail, He knows it better than I do.
I say this to illustrate the point that it is not only YOU who need a shepherd, but I do too.
We pray today, on Good Shepherd Sunday, for vocations to the priesthood, but it’s also important to pray for your shepherd, your local priest and priests elsewhere, because otherwise we don’t have much chance of doing good for our flocks.
And I need a shepherd in the same ways that you do, and I have the same means that you do: the means that Christ established in the Church by giving us the 7 Sacraments and giving us priests to minister them to us.
I need Holy Communion – I need Jesus to come to me in His full “physical reality”(Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, n.46). Not just a bit of Jesus, not just His spirit, but He Himself. I need Him, and He comes.
I need confession – The Shepherd who knows I wander off, that I carry on as if I didn’t need Him, He’s waiting to forgive my pride, my impatience, my laziness – because a shepherd often has to goad his flock on! I need His forgiveness, and it comes.
I need shepherding in the others ways too: in being taught and being governed and cared for.
I need the pastoral governance that the Pope and Bishop offer me,
I need the teaching of Christ that can only come to me through the Church – in the Bible and official teaching.
- without these things, I think my life is OK, I think I don’t need a shepherd, but I do.
What we recall today, is not just that we NEED shepherding,
not just that we are sheep, and often errant sheep at that,
What we recall today, is that there is a GOOD Shepherd, THE Good Shepherd.
Who manifested His goodness by establishing shepherds in His Church for us,
Who manifested His goodness by giving us Himself in the Sacraments,
And most of all,
Who manifested His goodness by the fact that “the good shepherd is one who lays down His life for His sheep”.
26th April 2009, Third Sunday of Easter
Lk 24:35-48
I spent last week with my family, and saw a lot of my little nephews. The oldest is 5 years old now, and has discovered the question “why”. The sky is blue, “why?” Flowers come out in spring, “why?”
He has also grasped that I’m a priest. As he put it last week, “Priests know lots of stuff about lots of things, because they have to be able to help people”. Which I think means that the rest of the family must hear some of the tough questions and tell him, “Why don’t you save that question for your Uncle Dylan”.
So, last week, in the midst of me assembling, again, the car racing track, he stopped, and rather seriously said, “Can I ask you a question, Uncle Dylan?” And I thought, what? “Why did Jesus rise from the dead?”
Now, “how” He did this, is a big enough question! And I just about answered that by saying that God can do anything, just as big people can do things that little people can’t do.
But, “why” – that’s an even bigger question, and its the one we find in today’s Gospel.
If you recall what had happened before the event recorded in today’s Gospel, Jesus had appeared to the two men on the road to Emmaus, and He had explained to them “all the passages in the Scriptures that were about Himself”(Lk 24:27).
He now appeared again, and indicated three things:
First, that despite the fact they were seeing someone who had died they should not be afraid: “peace be with you”, He said.
Second, that He was not just a phantom or ghost: He ate food, and had them touch His hands and flesh.
Third, and this is my main point, He gave them the “why”: He explained the Scriptures to them, and said, “Thus it is written, that the Christ SHOULD SUFFER and on the third day rise from the dead, ...”(Lk 24:46-48).
Now, it seems to me, that after the Resurrection the big question facing the disciples was not so much, why did He rise, but, why did he die.
If He truly was the Messiah, if He truly had the power to RISE from the dead, surely He had the power to stop them killing Him.
So, why? Why did he have to suffer and die?
To fulfil the Scriptures, that is why.
While that is a complete answer, it is a very brief summary, and could have a much longer explanation (and we can note that the Gospel text does not offer more than the statement of it). In short, “to fulfil the Scriptures” means that everything we see in an incomplete way in the Old Testament, we see in a COMPLETE and perfect way in Christ: It was all waiting for Him to bring it to completion.
I’d like to refer to one part of the fulfilment of the Scriptures, as indicated in our second reading, namely, that the Christ was “To be the sacrifice that takes our sins away”(1 Jn 2:2) – a fulfilment that the Scriptures looked to in many different ways.
The Old Testament Scriptures taught by command that blood sacrifices must be offered for sin;
As St Paul summed it up, “without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins”(Heb 9:22 cf Ex 24:6-8)
But the Old Testament also said that the sacrifices weren’t good enough;
And there was a continual looking for something better, the promise of a NEW Covenant.
The Old Testament ritual had the blood of the Passover lamb shed, but a better more perfect lamb was needed:
Isaac’s question, “Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” (Gen 22:7) echoed at a deeper level down the centuries, until finally, John the Baptist cried, “Behold, There is the lamb” who takes away the sins of the world (Jn 1:35) [c.f. Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s exegesis]
Christ’s dying thus fulfilled the Scriptures –one example of how He made complete what was incompelte.
So, “why?” Well, my little nephew knows that most answers raise still further questions. And while the answer in today’s Gospel does that too, it is the true answer nonetheless. Why? Because “it was written”. Why? That we might be forgiven. Why? “that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in His name to all nations... You are witness to these things” (Lk 24:46-48).
19th April 2009, Divine Mercy Sunday
Today is the feast of Divine Mercy, a new-ish feast in the Church. In some ways it might be thought of as an odd feast to have in our modern world, so many people don’t think they NEED mercy any more. Well, this is precisely WHY Church has instituted this feast. As Pope John Paul II said of the modern world, “They need mercy even though they often do not realise it” (Dives in misericordia, n.2).
And, of course, we need to remember that we ourselves are part of this modern phenomenon, we ourselves can so easily live and think as if we didn’t need mercy. There is a dilemma in the heart of modern man that is the same dilemma in each of us: we pretend to ourselves that we are alright alone, that we are strong, but in reality we are not.
And the answer to the riddle of this dilemma lies in the relevance of mercy to the Resurrection, which is why the Church has this new feast in Eastertide: forgiveness is not just about the Cross, it lies in the Empty Tomb as well.
Today’s feast has its origin in a series of visions to a Polish nun in the World War Two era, and it was Pope John Paul II’s experiences during that era that produced his encyclical on mercy, Dives in misericordia [Rich in Mercy].
John Paul II noted that modern man of the Twentieth Century was both incredibly powerful and incredibly vulnerable. In industry, in technology, in war, he was MASTER of the world in a way he had never been before. But in destruction, evil, holocausts, and tyrannies, he was EVEN MORE of need of mercy than he ever was. The era when human rights were most spoken of (at the United Nations) was simultaneously the era when those rights were most oppressed.
And this mixture of power and weakness is still with us in the 21st Century. We have the internet and mobile phones, but we also fear climate change and bird flu.
And, closer to home still, I know that this mixture of power and weakness is in my own heart. I think I am strong, but time and again I find that I am weak.
Not all people accept that they are weak.
One of the most significant claims I hear from unbelievers who I stumble across as a priest is: ‘I don’t need God’, or, ‘I find the thought of an all-powerful God repulsive’.
But this is a hollow claim; as hollow and empty as man is vulnerable under his apparent power.
The emptiness that remedies the emptiness of this claim to self-sufficiency is the emptiness of the Tomb on Easter Sunday morning. That emptiness shows us what God is like, and he is revealed as a God of mercy.
Mercy is a particular gift to those who are in need. It was in the pages of the Old Testament, that God first revealed himself as a God of mercy – who in the Exodus, reached out and rescued his people out of the slavery of Egypt (n.4).
But it is in Christ himself, the very image of the Father, that God is shown as “Rich in mercy” (n.1). When Christ first declared himself to be the messiah, he did so by quoting Isaiah (Lk 4:18-19, n.3) saying that he had come to the poor, the deprived, the blind, the lame, the broken hearted, those suffering injustice, and finally sinners. He used this same way to identify himself as the messiah when John the Baptist (Lk 7:19) asked if he was the one. In his words and in his actions – his care for the sick, the unloved, those rejected - he revealed himself as mercy.
There two events above all else in which Jesus reveals God as mercy. On the Cross, the one who had gone about being merciful to others, allowed himself to be in need of mercy (n.7). By his union with our pain, Christ revealed the Father to be intimately linked with us. Further, On the Cross, his superabundant satisfaction of justice compensated for our sins, and opened up mercy to us.
But the final sign of Christ’s mission of mercy was only seen when he ROSE from the dead. In the Resurrection of the one who was weak and crucified, we see the ultimate proof of the Father’s mercy on a world that is subject to evil (n.8) –a love more powerful that death.
And so, the point is: Believing in the Resurrection is about believing in the victory of mercy (n.7). God is not just love: he is love-in-action, i.e. mercy.
In his vision to Sr. Faustina, Jesus called for this feast to be a sign of his mercy in an age that is forgetting its need of mercy. If we will turn to him to this day, this mercy is what the Risen Christ wishes to bestow on us.
Introduction to the Mass: Divine Mercy Sunday
Today, the Second Sunday of Easter, is "Divine Mercy Sunday". This new feast was promulgated by Pope John Paul II in the year 2000. Like many of the feast days of the Church it draws its inspiration from a visions given to a saint. The feast of the Sacred Heart and the feast of Corpus Christi were both based on apparations of their own era. Similarly, the feast of the Divine Mercy has its origin in a series of visions given by Our Lord to a saint in the 20th Century, a nun called St. Faustina, who had visions during the Second World War in Poland. The image of the Divine Mercy that we have in our church is a copy of the image that was given to Sr. Faustina as a way to make God’s mercy known to our generation, and it has particular relevance for our focus on the Easter mystery.
In a decree dated 23th May 2000, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Disciple of the Sacraments stated: “Throughout the world, the Second Sunday of Easter will receive the name Divine Mercy Sunday, a perennial invitation to the Christian world to face, with confidence in divine benevolence, the difficulties and trials that mankind will experience in the years to come,"
“Humanity will not find peace until it turns trustingly to divine mercy” Pope John Paul II, said quoting Jesus’s words to St. Faustina. “Above all, this consoling message is addressed to those who, afflicted by a particularly difficult trial or crushed by the weight of sins committed, have lost faith in life and are tempted to give in to despair… How many souls have been consoled by the invocation … “Jesus, I trust in You”
After Mass today leaflets of the Divine Mercy chaplet will be available: in addition to showing St. Faustina the image of Himself, He also gave her this prayer to encourage others to say in order to know His mercy.
12th April 2009, Easter Sunday
We gather here today because of an event that happened 2000 years ago: the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
As a historical event, His Resurrection is important to us because it proved everything he ever said or claimed: He said He was God, he said he had the power to lay down His life and take it up again, He would rise from the dead, and He did.
But His Resurrection is also vitally important for us because it shows us what His Resurrected body was like, and thus what our bodies will be like if we are fit to join Him in Heaven. And in order to illustrate that I want to point out what His body was like and what it was NOT like - because the events recorded in the gospels show this for us.
Now, there is a certain fashionable notion that Jesus’s resurrection was just ‘spiritual’. This was behind all the talk in the 1980s of the Anglican Bishop of Durham denying the PHYSICAL reality of Christ’s Resurrection. Such people mock the idea that He was a ‘resuscitated corpse‘. But, in fact, this has never been what Christian believed.
Let me make a comparison with Lazarus: Lazarus was raised by Jesus, from true death back to true life. But he was raised with a normal body like you or me, he grew old, and eventually he died again.
The Lord Jesus, however, when He rose from the dead, was also raised from true death to true life, but to a new BETTER body. The kind of body we’ll have in Heaven.
Think of some of the powers that Jesus’s resurrected body had: He no longer bled or suffered, so that He could show His wounds to Thomas, the holes in His hands and His feet, but He no longer bled or had pain; He could pass through walls, as when He suddenly entered the locked Upper Room where they were; He could instantaneously travel immense physical distances, as when He moved from being with the two men on the road to Emmaus to appear to Simon Peter (Lk 24:33-34). These are not things that a normal body can do.
Nonetheless, this doesn’t mean that the Resurrected body of Jesus was just a phantom, just a ghost.
One way we can say that He wasn’t just a ghost is to point out that the tomb was Empty – the ‘old’ body was gone because it had been transformed, re-made, into the new resurrected body. When people talk about what they call ‘ghosts’ appearing, no-one claims that the body is gone - such fantasies are said to be pure spirit. Whereas, the Apostles were very emphatic about the Empty Tomb, and this shows us that they didn’t think the Resurrection was just a ‘spiritual’ thing - they didn’t think Jesus was just some kind of ghost.
And, we know He wasn‘t just a ghost because He did things that ghosts are not supposed to be able to do: He ate, and drank (Lk 24:43); He told His apostles to touch Him and put their fingers in the holes in His hands, and feet, and side.
So, my point is: Jesus’s resurrected body was a material thing, BUT, it is not the same type of body you and I now have. This is important to us because it shows us that the heavenly bodies we will rise with (if we rise to glory) will also be transformed and glorified. Our bodies will be TRUE bodies, truly material, but they will also be transformed and ‘improved’, glorified, without the limitations and sufferings that we know in this life. And this is an important point for us to grasp in thinking about the Lord’s Resurrection.
It is also important, as we recall this Easter Day, because the PHYSICAL nature of Christ’s resurrection, with His new powers and yet still physical manifestations, shows us that the Resurrection of Jesus was a real DEFINITE thing, not just some vague ‘spiritual’ reality. It was definite and physical, an event in time and space, an event that left the Tomb empty, and an event worthy of putting our faith in today.
One of the distinguishing features of tonight’s liturgy is the Easter Candle.
Last year, I spoke about the symbolism of light in the midst of darkness.
This year, I want to speak about an equally important part of the symbolism, but one that happens so briefly that it is easily missed: The grains of incense inserted into the candle .
Outside, as the Paschal Candle was lit from the Easter Fire, fire grains of incense were inserted into five hole in the candle, five holes for the five wounds in Our Lord’s body (His two hands, His two feet, and His side), and these holes are arranged in the shape of a cross. All year long these five grains for the five wounds remains there, encased in gold metal studs, connecting the symbolism of the wounds to the symbolism of the candle. But most of us probably give little thought to their significance.
The symbolism starts with incense: that thing which is offered up to God, as fragrant smoke rising to Heaven. There is grain of incense for each wound to remind us that the wounds were not random events but sacrifices freely embraced to be offered on our behalf.
And the wounds are connected to candle to remind us that just as light triumphed over darkness, He triumphed over the wounds that killed Him.
But the particular point to note is that it is the WOUNDS that are highlighted.
Wounds are not normally seen as a good thing,
normally, wounds and sickness are something we keep private, even hide,
often, wounds are a thing of embarrassment.
But, what was it that Jesus proudly showed Thomas and the other Apostles after His Resurrection? His wounds.
It was as if He was saying: “This is what I have overcome”,
“This is what I am more powerful than”
Even, “This is what I have done FOR YOU, for love of you”
The light of the Easter Candle, better called the ‘Paschal’ Candle, because that name refers to the WHOLE event of his death and resurrection,
The light of that candle is not just a small light in darkness, but was we symbolism in the spreading of the light to many other lights filling the church, that light overcomes darkness.
Just as, the Victim, adorned with the sign of the 5 things He has been victorious over is signified on the side of the candle.
The wounds are no longer a thing of defeat and darkness, but a thing of light and victory.
Finally, I want to repeat the words that are said as the grains of incense are inserted: “By His holy, and glorious wounds, may Christ our Lord, guard us, and keep us. Amen.”
The wounds are called “holy” and “glorious” because of His triumph.
But they are also called things to “guard” and “keep” us. If you recall the hymn Soul of my Saviour, we sing the words, “Deep in Thy wounds Lord, hide and shelter me”.
We shelter in things that are secure and strong. Normal wounds are not this at all, they are a sign of weakness.
The wounds of Jesus, however, are strong, are the things He proudly points to after His Resurrection, are the things that in visions He points out to saints, such as in the Sacred Heart apparitions – they are strong because of His victory.
So that, in our weakness, in our own wounds, we can hide in His wounds, and draw His strength. A strength whose victory is proclaimed in the shape of a cross of five wounds on the side of this candle.
I’ve always had, from my youngest days, a strong knowledge of the compassion of our Saviour. I was raised on the Sacred Heart devotion, I knew that the sign he chose to reveal of his inner life, was to show his heart – a heart on fire with love & compassion for me.
What has taken me much longer to realise is my NEED for compassion – namely my SIN, and need to be forgiven for it.
When we look at the Cross we see something truly awful, and something must have been horrendously wrong with our world to lead God to allow this to happen to him.
And that horrendously awful thing is sin, my sin, and your sin.
At the Last Supper, the apostles sat around the table of the Last Supper wondering who it was who would betray Jesus. Jesus had said one of them would betray him, and they all denied it. We know of course that Judas betrayed him for 30 pieces of silver –but he was not the only one. As we just heard, Peter betrayed him by denying him three times. The others betrayed him by running away from him –abandoning him in the Garden.
But the points we need to remember, today, is that there is not one person here who has not betrayed him too. I have betrayed him, and you have betrayed him, by our sin. Sin is a rejection of all that God has given us – and he’s given us everything, there is nothing good that we have that does not come from him. And we re-pay him by sinning - in my thoughts, and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.
Our betrayal of him in sin leaves us standing in need of his forgiveness, and it was to bring us forgiveness that he went to the Cross. The Cross was the rejection of God, and my daily sin is a daily rejection of God. He allowed that rejection to reach its ultimate conclusion in the Cross, so that the Cross could be the means of our forgiveness. As we heard in that prophecy of Isaiah, “OURS were the sufferings he bore, OURS the sorrows he carried… on HIM lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through his wounds we are healed”(Isa 53:4-5).
When we look at the Cross and see what we have done to him, when we see that we have betrayed him, there are two choices that lie before us: the choice of Judas, or the choice of Peter.
Judas despaired, he refused to face up to what he had done, and he went out and hung himself – and we can do the same in our self-pity over our sins.
Peter took another option. He went out and wept bitterly, wept over his sins, as we too should weep over our sins. But he did not despair. He repented of his sins, and returned to the Lord – and the Lord received him back. And the Lord did more than receive him back – he placed him as head of his flock, as the prince of the apostles, as the first Pope.
The Lord died because he wants to receive each of us back. And he wants to give each of us a new redeemed glory that is better than anything we had before.
When I look at the Cross I see that God loves me – but I see more than this: I see a particular manifestation of love, and that is mercy. A mercy that forgives me. A mercy that has embraced the full horror of my rejection of him, and has overcome that rejection by his Resurrection. A triumph that offers me the grace to rise above my sins.
What I need is not the pride and despair of Judas, but the humility and repentance of Peter. A humility that accepts what I have done, but also accepts the mercy of the saviour who let me do it, and who let me do it so that he might show me the power of true forgiveness.
And there is not one person here who has not betrayed him too. I have betrayed him, and you have betrayed him, by our sin. Sin is a rejection of all that God has given us – and he’s given us everything, there is nothing good that we have that does not come from him. And we re-pay him by sinning - in my thoughts, and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do.
Our betrayal of him in sin leaves us standing in need of his forgiveness, and it was to bring us forgiveness that he went to the Cross. The Cross was the rejection of God, and my daily sin is a daily rejection of God. He allowed that rejection to reach its ultimate conclusion in the Cross, so that the Cross could be the means of our forgiveness. As we heard in that prophecy of Isaiah, “OURS were the sufferings he bore, OURS the sorrows he carried… on HIM lies a punishment that brings us peace, and through his wounds we are healed”(Isa 53:4-5).
When we look at the Cross and see what we have done to him, when we see that we have betrayed him, there are two choices that lie before us: the choice of Judas, or the choice of Peter.
Judas despaired, he refused to face up to what he had done, and he went out and hung himself – and we can do the same in our self-pity over our sins.
Peter took another option. He went out and wept bitterly, wept over his sins, as we too should weep over our sins. But he did not despair. He repented of his sins, and returned to the Lord –and the Lord received him back. And the Lord did more than receive him back –he placed him as head of his flock, as the prince of the apostles, as the first Pope.
The Lord died because he wants to receive each of us back. And he wants to give each of us a new redeemed glory that is better than anything we had before.
When I look at the Cross I see that God loves me – but I see more than this: I see a particular manifestation of love, and that is mercy. A mercy that forgives me. A mercy that has embraced the full horror of my rejection of him, and has overcome that rejection by his Resurrection. A triumph that offers me the grace to rise above my sins.
9th April 2009, Maundy Thursday
Tonight I will get down on my knees and I will wash the feet of some parishioners.
I don’t do this because I like other people’s feet,
And I think we can presume that Jesus, also, didn’t wash the 12 Apostles feet because He liked feet either.
I say this, because it’s important to remember WHY He did this, and why He did this at THIS moment.
The Lord Jesus was about to die.
He had journeyed far in His 3 years of public ministry: He, the long-awaited Messiah had come: He had cured the sick, He had forgiven sin, He had taught the truth of salvation.
Though they had repeatedly failed to grasp the depth of His teaching, and failed to grasp His meaning when he prophesied that He would die and rise,
That night, He had made His farewell speeches to His chosen few.
And, that night, He had given them the Mass: to be His abiding presence down the centuries;, and to be the means by which His Holy Sacrifice of Calvary would be made present every day in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
And, then, in the midst of that profundity, He got down on the floor and started washing feet!
And my point to you tonight, is that this sign and gesture on His part was as equally profound as everything else He was about.
Washing feet is not just as act of love, but an act of humility –humility in the sense of that self-forgetfulness that is needed in any TRUE loving. True love needs to be so focussed on the needs of the other person that it puts aside the inconvenience and injustice that is done to us, and just gets on with whatever business love demands of us that moment.
Previously, the Lord has been self-forgetting when He left His Divine glory and dignity in Heaven, to walk among us, and suffer among us, in Palestine.
The next day, he would be self-forgetting in dying for our sins on the Cross.
That night, He had been self-forgetting in giving us His Real Presence in the Mass, because, though he knew men would be cold and indifferent to His Real Presence, would abuse His Presence, would neglect to genuflect, would receive Him in Holy Communion while thinking of a TV show, nonetheless, He also knew that this was the ONLY means by which He could physically contact each one of them, offer Himself to each one of us, as he does in the Mass.
But in order that it should be clear that all of this was not random, that it was all motivated by His humble and caring love, He, as tonight’s Gospel said, “He showed the depth of love”.
So, as I kneel, with whatever lack or height of grace tonight, to face feet, let us recall that this sign shows us “the depth of His love”.
St Mark’s account, that we have just heard, is the most minimal of the 4 Gospel accounts, it gives little commentary. Yet, the meaning of the events is clear enough.
St Mark records the very dramatic words Jesus that spoke from the Cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The man who had calmly predicted His death, three times (as St Mark records), and said that His death was to be “a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45),
The man who had foreseen His death when He referred to the woman who anointed Him as having anointed Him for His burial,
This same man, who had claimed to not just be a man but to be God,
This same man, when He was not just talking about His death but was Himself about to die,
This same man uttered what might seem like words of despair: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
I know that many people have heard these words read, and thought that Jesus despaired on the Cross, but this isn’t so.
It’s true that Jesus embraced ALL our suffering on the Cross, it’s true that He who was and is God allowed Himself to enter into the depths of our darkest emotions so that He could cry out as many of us do in darkness, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”
But to understand these words, we need to hear them as a First Century Jew would have heard them, we need to imagine them uttered as a First Century Jew would utter them.
It was common practice to utter the first words of a Psalm of the Bible when referring to the whole of the Psalm, just as if a Catholic was to say “Our Father” or “Hail Mary” we would expect them to be referring to the whole prayer.
These words that Jesus spoke were not just any words, they were the first words of Psalm 22, so to understand what Jesus meant and felt saying them we need to know the rest of the psalm.
This psalm was first said as a unknown martyr’s prayer, but it alludes also to things that Jesus was witnessing in front of His very eyes:
“They divide my clothing among them,
They cast lots for my robe” (Ps 22:18-19)
Which is what Jesus saw the Roman soldiers do to his own garments.
The psalm says, “all who see me jeer at me” (22:7), the soldiers, the high priests, and even the thief on His left did.
The psalm even says that they mock Him for His trust in God: “he relied on the Lord, let the Lord save him, if he is his friend” (22:8), which is also what the crowds said.
But, most importantly, the psalm is a prayer of trust in God, and of praise of His greatness.
“in you our fathers put their trust, they trusted and you rescued them” (22:4), “I shall proclaim your name to my brethren, praise you in the full assembly” (22:22).
These words of the Lord Jesus are His final interpretative words on all that is happening to Him. He said that this would happen, it was horrible to endure, but it had a purpose, to be a “ransom for many” (Mk 10:45).
His final words declare that He knows what He is about, and He knows what His heavenly father is about. He is suffering, He is dying, but this will not be the end.
22nd March 2009, Fourth Sunday of Lent
2 Chron 36:14-23; Ps 136; Eph 2:4-10; Jn 3:14-21
Our second reading spoke of the great love of God for us, and I want to run through a few of the signs of that love, in our various readings today.
In the first reading we heard about how the people defiled the Temple, they did things even worse than chatting in church. And though God punished them for their sins by the Exile in Babylon, He did this to purify them, to that He then rescued them and saved them.
He could have left them in their sin, but no, He purified them so that they could be His own again.
Then in our psalm 136, we heard about how the Children of Israel sang sorrowfully by the waters of Babylon. But even there in the midst of their sorrow, they were neither abandoned or alone, The Lord was with them and preparing them, not least by calling them to recall the Jerusalem they had lost and yearn for the New Jerusalem and our Heavenly Home, and get them ready for it.
In our Gospel, the heard the reference to the serpent in the desert, which should remind of us of how when fiery serpents came among the people of Israel wandering in the wilderness, God gave them the miraculous image of bronze serpent, so that anyone who was bitten could look upon it and live.(Numbers 21:6-9)
And this, of course, is a sign and foreshadowing of Christ being lifted up on the Cross. We, now, even in our sin and suffering and difficulties, we can look to Him who suffers with us, and pleads for our forgiveness.
There is one particular sign of God’s love that I’d like to mention today, however, and that is mothers, because today is Mothering Sunday. It’s true that not everyone gets to be blessed with a living mother, and not everyone is blessed with a caring mother – there are some people that God blesses in other ways. But it is right today to sing the praises of mothers.
I was thinking on Thursday whether God could have made a world without mothers. And I thought about how sea turtles are born. When the little turtle pops out of its shell it’s all alone on the beach, and has to make its own may in the world.
But that’s not how God has made us. God has made humans so that we are born weak and born in need of someone to care for us.
We are inherently social beings, and our need for mothers is a sign of our need for love, and a sign of our need to love others back.
We need someone to watch over us from our beginnings, at our weakest. To know us and know our needs, to worry about us even when we don’t think to worry about ourselves. And this is what a mother is called to give us.
Today, just as I was earlier recounting the goodness of God, today we should be giving thanks to mothers and to our own mother – to not let love be a one-way street.
If our mothers have passed on from this life, to thank them beyond the grave.
If there are things we need to forgive our mothers for, to not nurse grudges.
And when there are things to ask forgiveness for ourselves, to not forget this either.
Finally, there is one particular Mother we should not forget, the Mother that EVERYONE has, our heavenly Mother, Our Lady.
So when we see the children come up later with flowers for Our Lady, let us pray in our own hearts too, to thank God for her, and to thank her for all her prayers on our behalf.
15th March 2009, Third Sunday of Lent
Today’s Gospel records what might seem an odd picture of Jesus: the ANGRY Jesus. The Lord filled with a RIGHTEOUS anger – which we don’t often see:
He is often SAD about the towns who refuse to believe in Him. He is also DISTRESSED about the Pharisees, especially when He condemns them for their imposing burdens on others without doing anything to help (Mt 23:4;13). But the ONLY time when we see Him REALLY angry is in the event of today’s Gospel: in the Temple. He makes a whip and drives the people out. We see nothing even vaguely like this anywhere else in the Gospels. And why is Jesus angry? Because people are abusing the House of God.
Jesus is not angry with a selfish anger, but with an anger for the offence to the House of His Father, the Temple consecrated to sacred worship. “Zeal for Thy house has consumed me” (Ps 69:9)
Now, this should make us think. Because this reveals a lot about the Lord’s priorities. Worship, and respect for the things of worship is top of the Lord’s list.
So in our Lenten self-examination we’d do well to think of how we score in that regard, to think how we might improve.
Let me give you a few simple issues: First, Do you pray every day? Do you value God enough to have a regular time you give Him? First thing in the morning, last thing at night, sometime in between? And when you do pray, Are you focussed on Him or still think about what you’re going to eat for supper?
Second, Sunday Mass itself. We have an obligation to “keep the Lord’s Day holy” (3rd Commandment) – and that means EACH Lord’s day, not just SOME Sundays! And to keep it holy by Holy Mass – the prayer Christ gave us to “do this in memory of me”.
Finally, when you come to Mass, How do you behave here? Do you actually focus yourself on what you’ve come here for, or you do let your mind wander? Do you let distractions become an excuse to not pray?
I’m going to make myself unpopular by making an even more specific query about your behaviour in church, and about the behaviour of this congregation in general:
There is too much talking in this church and not enough reverence for it as a sacred place set aside and consecrated for sacred use, for the worship of the almighty. Sometimes I can hear people talking and chatting in here as if this place were a coffee-shop or pub, not a place of worship! I’m not complaining about children making noise but about adults!
Let me give you three simple reasons why we need to be silent in church:
First, before Mass, so you can prepare yourself – AND to enable other people to prepare themselves for an encounter with the Almighty.
Second, after Mass, so people can thank God for the almighty gift we’ve received.
Third, because this is a consecrated place, not a social venue, and we need to treat it like what it is.
We have a Hall where we can chat; we have a church where we can pray.
I know the Hall is dual-purpose, and that has tended to blur our sense of the church as a sacred place for sacred things – but we need to recover the sense of that difference. When you see someone you want to have a nice chat with, well, chatting is nice, but go into the hall. Allow the church to become a church again.
This isn’t just my opinion, as I’ve cited in the newsletter, many instructions from the Church remind us not to talk before and after Mass.
We live in a busy, noisy world, and we need to have a place where we can come to that isn’t busy and noisy, a place of peace and tranquillity, a place to be with the Lord. If we’re not quiet before Mass, of course we’re going to be distracted and bored during Mass.
So, back to the anger of Jesus. The righteous burning anger of Jesus only ever flared up about one issue: disrespect of the place of the worship of God. This should remind us to place prayer high on our list of priorities, and place treating the House of God as the House of God as one of things we resolve to start this Lent.
8th March 2009, Second Sunday of Lent
Mk 9:2-10; Gen 22:1-18; Rom 8:31-34.
This week I feel like I’ve been continually hungry. This isn’t because I’ve gone on one of those 3 day detox fasts I referred to last week, but rather, because of the common phenomenon of yearning for the very thing that I’ve given up:
I’ve given up snacks between meals, and even though I know my food intake is the same, and even though I don’t have snacks very often anyway, the very fact that I’ve resolved NOT to have snacks makes me YEARN for them!
Enduring in the midst of even a minor difficulty is always a struggle.
Enduring in more serious difficulties is even more so.
If we are to endure, we need some vision of hope to be focussed on, something that is the goal holding us steadfast in our hardships.
On the second Sunday on Lent the Church always reminds us of the Transfiguration: it was the vision Christ put before his disciples to sustain them through the suffering of His death, and it can be the vision to sustain us through the disciplines of Lent, and through the disciplines of life.
Just before this gospel passage, Jesus had predicted his coming death. He predicted it repeatedly as he approached Jerusalem, and his disciples must have been greatly troubled by these passion predictions. So he gave them this revelation was given to them to sustain them through the coming events in Jerusalem.
Jesus Christ has also revealed Himself to us in His fullness. He suffered and died; He rose again in glory, and so we can all hope to do the same. The Transfiguration of Christ is the sign and promise of the transfiguration that will happen to all those who do the Father's will. This is the central fact that gives us the motivation to carry our crosses through this valley of tears that we live in.
But in itself this fact is of no use to us. We must BELIEVE it in order for it to give us hope. The disciples had Christ's glory revealed to them, but their faith was weak, and so when tribulation came they panicked and fled. Revelation has been offered to us, but it is only if we accept it in faith that we can benefit from it.
Abraham, in our First Reading, is the complete opposite of the faithless disciples. He obeyed God fully, but he was only able to obey because he trusted in God, and that trust is rooted in faith. Abraham believed that God's promise to him would be fulfilled, and so he gave God the obedience of faith, and God rewarded him for it.
We too must believe what God has promised us.
The secular world often talks of "blind faith" as if it was something vague and unknowing. But that kind of faith cannot sustain us in turmoil. Faith must be certain if it is to be of any use to us. A faith that is not certain is a faith that is cruel, because it will desert us when we need it most. The faith we need must have the certainty of Abraham, and the certainty that the Apostles had after the resurrection. It was that faith that enabled them to endure persecution and suffering, still confidently hoping in God.
We have many reasons to be certain of our faith, but the most basic one is the one that St Paul referred to in his letter to the Romans: God loved us so much that He gave His only Son, and He suffered and died for love of us, and He rose triumphant from the grave. What greater proof of His love could we ask for? If God has done all this for us then surely He will also give us everything that we need, and reward us in eternity – even through hardships here below. This is the sure and certain foundation for our faith.
Such faith will help us to carry our Cross cheerfully. In particular in Lent, it will help us embrace our sufferings in penance, motivate us to pray more, and to be generous in our charity.
If we have faith then we will be able to make the prayer in today's psalm:
"I trusted even when I said, 'I am sorely afflicted'".
And we trust because we have faith that God loves us and guides our lives, and that ultimately suffering will be no more, we will share his glory,
and we "WILL walk in the presence of the Lord in the land of the living."
1st March 2009, First Sunday of Lent
There are many fashions and fads that come and go, and one thing that is fashionable in some circle is detox diets: to go without food for a prolonged period of time in order to flush out all the toxins, artificial food products, e-numbers, etc that build up in our bodies. I’ve tried this many times, my longest being for 3 days on just water, and I can testify that it does indeed leave you hungry. It supposedly has many other effects, beneficial effects that we cannot see – I didn’t FEEL these effects but its only reasonable to think that there are effects that we cannot see or feel.
Now, people do all this just for the sake of the body. And, in a modern world where many people deny the existence of the soul, when the body is all you believe in then it is hardly surprising that some people should get fanatical about caring for the body.
We, however, as Catholics, know that we are more than just a body, and our health has to include consideration of the health of not just our body but of our SOUL. If there are people who are putting such effort into the health of their body –which is young and spritely today, and decays tomorrow, then we should be putting similar if not greater effort into the health of our soul – which will last for all eternity and if we die with it healthy will be healthy and glorious for all eternity.
This week, on Ash Wednesday, we started Lent. Just as Jesus went out into the desert for 40 days, to fast and pray, we too, as followers of him, spend Lent of each year by giving up something as a form of fasting. Even if what we are giving up is much less that the fasting Jesus underwent for us, it nonetheless has a purifying goal. Just as detox diets aim to purify the body, our fasting aims to purify the soul.
One of the things we need to purify our soul of is the lack of discipline and lack of self-control that features so often in our modern life. Detox diets are a dramatic over-reaction to the lack of self-control in our society – but they’re not typical! Self-control is not spoken of often in our modern world. People tend to speak of self-expression instead, self-fulfilment, self-will, leading to excessive comfort seeking and self-indulgence in food, alcohol etc.
Fasting, giving things up for Lent, is one way of re-acquiring self-control. The self-control we need to love properly, to give freely, to be the kind of people we know we would rather be.
As Catholics, we should know that we need to FORM our character, to daily repent from our sin. We should know that there is a better side to our nature but also a darker side, a side that we need to struggle against: Jesus allowed Himself to be tempted in the desert to start His victory over Satan, but also to show us that we need to resist temptation and that WITH HIM we can be victorious over what tempts us. But to do that we need to CHANGE, to repent.
Lent is 40 days of prayer and fasting and works of charity. Our giving things up for Lent in fasting has as its PRIMARY goal to be united with the suffering Christ, who suffered on the Cross for us and in the desert for us, but it has an important secondary goal too: to detox us from our appetites, and passions, and false priorities. To do that properly, our fasting must go with prayer – so that it doesn’t just leave us grumpy, but that it becomes something we offer to Christ as a sacrifice for our sins and the sins of others. And, if prayer and fasting change us, even a little, we should love more, which is why Lent is also the time of almsgiving, of works of charity especially to the poor – thus we always we have a collection for the poor.
If there are people who spend days detoxing their bodies by huge physical effort, then surely we’d do well to use Lent to detox our souls: if you’ve not yet starting giving something up for Lent, then start today - even something small can help us orient our soul to the higher realities and to Christ who went into the desert to teach us to do the same.
22nd February 2009, Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mk 2:1-12
As Christians, we acknowledge that Jesus Christ is God, and was always God. I want to say a few words about HOW Jesus claimed to be God.
It is not a normal thing to claim to be God, and if I stood here today and I claimed to you that I am God, you would rightly conclude that I am mad.
It follows, that when Jesus wanted to tell people that He was God, He had to tell people gradually, and He had to tell people in such a way that they would realise that His claim to be God made sense, and was not just a sign that He was mad Himself.
In today's gospel passage we see one of many clear examples in the Gospels of how Jesus claimed to be God.
Jesus claimed to be God as a part of what He taught and what He did. He taught what only God was allowed to teach, and He did what only God was allowed to do, and what only God was able to do.
Jesus came to earth that we might be forgiven for our sins. In order to do that, He Himself, as God, came to earth to forgive us. And in order that people might know that they can be forgiven, they needed to know that HE can forgive our sins.
As we just heard, He claimed the authority to forgive sins: “My child, your sins are forgiven you”.
Now, those who heard him understood that this was a claim to be God, because it was a claim to do what only God is allowed to do. That's why he's here is accused him of blasphemy: “Who can forgive sins but God?”, they rightly said.
The response that Jesus made to this accusation is highly significant:
He did not say that sins can be forgiven by someone other than God,
rather, He made a further claim for Himself, He claimed that He had the power to heal. And He then proved that He had the power by working the miracle.
But He only did this in order to prove His other claim, namely, that He was God, and that He thus had the authority of God Himself to forgive sin.
“ to prove to you that the Son of Man has authority on to forgive sin ...”
It is worth noting, that even at this stage, Jesus only made this claim gradually. His claim to be God only became fully believable in the context of His death and resurrection. That is why it is only AFTER the resurrection that Thomas finally knelt before Him and proclaimed, “My Lord and my God”.
Before the resurrection, we read the repeated pattern that Jesus would heal people, but then tell them to keep what He had done private: He wanted to only be fully understood in the light of what He finally displayed in the resurrection.
This week, we start Lent, and we turn our thoughts to those final events of His life, those final events where His gradual claim to be God was finally brought into focus. But as we do so, it is important to remember that His claim to have the power to save us, His claim to be God, was something He had been gradually doing and revealing in the many miracles and teachings that He worked the three public years of His life.
15th February 2009, Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Lev 13:1-46; Mk 1:40-45
I want to say few words about what has been a major media attack on the Pope these last few weeks, about that bishop who made comments denying the Jewish Holocaust.
I want to first explain the purpose of excommunication. In our first reading, from Leviticus, we heard about how it was the ancient practice for lepers to be expelled from the community for the health of the community – to prevent everyone catching leprosy. The leper could only return when he was healed.
Excommunication has a similar purpose: someone is excommunicated from the Church in order to prevent the Church being damaged: in serious matters, the cancers of heresy and disobedience need to be cut out from the Church by excommunication. Heresy opposes truth and it is truth that holds the Church to Christ; and, disobedience likewise opposes common unity. Thus excommunication is for the health of the whole Church. The person can only returned when ‘healed’ of his error.
But there is a second purpose in excommunication: in order to call someone to change and repentance, i.e. the health of their own soul, not just the health of the rest of the Church.
So, what about the particular excommunication that led to this media event?
In 1988 Archbishop Lefebvre argued that the Mass should be said according to the old pre-Vatican II rite in Latin. Disobeying the Pope he illicitly ordained four bishops, and for this act of disobedience they were all automatically excommunicated.
Now, these renegade bishops have a large following. In fact, these bishops have such a large following that in France there are more Catholics who attend these illicit Old Rite Masses in Latin than attend the New Rite Masses in French.
So, despite having excommunicated them, Pope John Paul II was keen that these bishops should be persuaded to return to full communion with the Catholic Church – healed of their separation.
The leader of these four bishops applied to Pope Benedict for them all to have the excommunication lifted. The group was investigated by the Vatican, and it seemed that the healing purpose of excommunication was in the process of being achieved. Pope Benedict thus decided to lift the excommunication incurred by the 1988 disobedience of their ordination. These renegade bishops are thus now in communion with the Church, but their canonical situation is still irregular and they have not been given appointments like diocese etc -they are still irregular bishops, in the process of being regularised.
In the midst of this situation, one of these 4 bishops made some bizarre comments about the Holocaust. Bishop Williamson claimed that only 300,000 not 6 million Jews were exterminated in the Second World War. His statement to this effect only became public very recently, and the Pope was unaware of it when it was decided to lift the excommunication. The Pope has called on him to retract this opinion; in fact, the other three of the four bishops have also asked him to retract, he was forced to resign from the seminary position he held in the Society of St Pius X, and he has been silenced by his own Society.
What then should we make of this statement that ‘only’ 300,000 Jews were exterminated? Such a statement seems odd, crazy, and probably racist. The Church does not encourage us to be odd or crazy and strongly condemns the sin of racism – the Church herself is made of many races and favours none of them. Yet, excommunication is a very serious penalty, and this racist anti-Semitic statement is not in itself grounds to be excommunicated, though it is grounds to be condemned, and the Pope has strongly condemned this statement.
I would make one final comment: I said that the Church favours no individual race. However, this is not quite true, there is in fact one race that the Pope favours: both before and after being elected Pope, he has repeatedly taught that there is a race favoured by God, and the race our German Pope refers to is not the uber-race of the Germans but is in fact the Jews, the original chosen People of God. As St Paul says in Scripture (Romans 11:28-29), that the original promise that God made to the race of Abraham and his descendants holds true even if they do not recognise Christ the Messiah –God does not withdraw His promises.
So, for the media to implicitly or explicitly accuse Pope Benedict of anti-Semitism is to manifest their ignorance of what he has taught does teach and will continue to teach.
Some references:
(1) The Pope was unaware of Bishop Williamson's comments when he lifted the excommunication: http://www.zenit.org/article-24998?l=english
(2) The Pope has called on him to retract this opinion: http://www.zenit.org/article-24998?l=english
(3) The other three of the four bishops have also asked him to retract: http://www.zenit.org/article-24929?l=english
(4) He was forced to resign from the seminary position he held in the Society of St Pius X,and he has been silenced by his own Society: http://www.zenit.org/article-25063?l=english
(5) Pope Benedict reiterates that anti-Semitism has no place in the Church: http://zenit.org/article-25083?l=english
8th February 2009, Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Job 7:1-4.6-7; Mk 1:29-39
“Is not man’s life on the earth nothing more than pressed service, his time no better than hired drudgery?
Lying in my bed I wonder, ‘When will it be day?’
Risen I think, ‘How slowly evening comes!’
My life is but a breath, And… my eyes will never again see joy.” (From Job)
This book of Job is one of my favourite books of the Bible (along with Lamentations and Ecclesiastes), and it talks about the incredible suffering that comes to the man Job. I like it, not because I’ve known the extremity of his pain, but because, like all of us, I know something of suffering, and something too of the uneasy questions suffering puts to our faith.
The suffering of Job is all the more significant, in that it is the suffering of a GOOD man, a righteous man, a man who cannot see WHY he is suffering – after all, he hasn’t done anything wrong. Job never gets an answer as to why this is happening to him. Job’s friends try to explain why he is suffering, but they fail. And at the end of it all, God appears, and he refuses to give a reason as to why suffering has come to Job. Instead he rebukes Job, for daring to demand the reasons for God’s actions, because Job is a mere creature. God’s ways are beyond Job, and he has no right to question them.
In the fullness of time, God has given us a more complete answer to the mystery of suffering. Like all truth, it is revealed in Jesus Christ.
We see part of that answer in the simple fact, that when God, the Lord Jesus, appeared on earth, he went about healing the sick, as we heard in the gospel. And that teaches us the truth we already knew from Genesis, in the Fall of Adam and Eve, that God does not DIRECTLY intend suffering. When he created the world it was free of pain, and suffering only entered the world when WE damaged it with Adam and Eve’s Original Sin.
Sin, evil and suffering all entered the world together, and Christ came to heal the world of them. He preached the moral truth against sin, he forgave the repentant, and he healed those in suffering. And just as these three entered the world together, they were vanquished together by Christ on the Cross. Christ embraced all pain, and offered himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sin, saying “Forgive them, Father”, as he hung there for us.
It is in Christ on the Cross that we see the answer to mystery of suffering. We see his desire to be united to us in our pain, to strengthen us to carry our own crosses. We see that suffering is a result of Original Sin, and that God overcame sin on the Cross. But we also see a deeper truth about how God’s Providence works through suffering.
The men who condemned Jesus, and had him put to death, did so out of their own evil motives. But we know that unknown to them God was also at work, not desiring their evil, but still working through it. God achieved an even greater good out of their evil – the salvation of mankind that we celebrate in every Mass. And the new Catechism (599-600) teaches us that this is the pattern of all of God’s working.
We may not see how, but he is at work, even in our pain, to achieve an even greater good for us. We have this as a promise in scripture: “All things work for the good of those who love the Lord” (Rom 8:28). But the even greater promise of it, is that we see it in the life, suffering, death and resurrection of his own dear Son.
The exact answer to the question, why is THIS particular thing happening to ME, we won’t know until the Lord reveals it to us on the Last Day. But we do know that he is with us on the cross, and that he is working in us to achieve even greater things for us. This is the truth we see in Jesus Christ, especially on the Cross. When, like Job, we fear that we shall “never again see joy”, then the truth of Christ on the Cross, is what we should ponder in hope.
1st February 2009, Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
1 Cor 7:32-35
As you can see, my wrist is in a caste, and will be until the end of February.
It’s not a total disaster, my other arm can still reach for a beer bottle, however, it does stop me doing all sorts of things.
I did it hiking, going down a steep muddy hill in the Donheads, slipped & fell onto my hand, and here I am!
Now, certain people have suggested to me that this is a great opportunity to “suffer for Jesus”. And indeed it is.
It is always good to be reminded of how many other people suffer, to be reminded of what it is like to be limited and in pain.
It is also good to have a chance to offer a sacrifice of prayer, to take my pain and unite it to that of Jesus on the Cross. As St Paul says, to make up in my own body for what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings for the sake of the Church (Col 1:24). To make my pain, physical and the emotional discomfort, into a prayer for others – as a priest, to pray for those entrusted to my care.
And it is good to do this passively, to have it thrust upon me, not just to voluntarily offer fasting sacrifices on Fridays etc. – it is very humbly to accept such things passively.
But one thing I have realised, in a new way, is that the suffering itself can be a distraction from remembering to offer it up.
I am right handed and it is my right hand that is gone. Until Friday I was not allowed to drive. I still cannot write properly or type – no emails please.
All this means that my life is a mess – disorganised, chaos, my mind is confused.
So, at the very time I could be taking this opportunity to mentally offer it all up, I am too confused to do so – which is why the habit of voluntary sacrifices the rest of the time is so important.
At present I feel I am in a missed opportunity!
Our second reading had St Paul refer to a very special opportunity: being single for the Lord, able to be about the Lord’s affairs continually. To be mentally free to think of the Lord continually, and to think of the things of the Lord, to pray for the needs of the world continually to the Lord, and to be busy DIRECTLY with the things of the Lord.
The greatness of this vocation has been extolled by the Lord Jesus, by St Paul, and by the Church in every age – it is rightly called the “higher” vocation that directly unites someone’s heart and life to the Beloved, Christ.
The “consecrated life” as it is called is a sign to all of us of a life lived for God and with God and fulfilled in God.
If a husband, to be a husband for the Lord, to love wife as means of loving God.
If a mother, to be a mother for the Lord, to love children as a means of loving God.
It’s a vocation we need to encourage – used to be many nuns, now, not fashionable, not glamorous, not “successful” enough – because God himself is lower on the priority list.
It is a life full of opportunity and a sign to us of our need to use our opportunities.
We might look at this vocation with a bit of jealous – “easy for them” etc. “I’d be saint if I had an opportunity as easy as that”.
But, how do we use the opportunities God has given US?
Like my broken hand! A perfect opportunity to life with Christ on the Cross, to pray and suffer for others. And yet, an opportunity so easily wasted!
St Paul refers to giving “your undivided attention to the Lord” (1 Cor 7:35).
Whether we are single, or married, Whether our wrist is broken, or not,
We need to offer God what we have with the opportunities that we have – because if we don’t use what he has given us we can hardly expect to be given more.
25th January 2009, Christian Unity Service
Introduction to the Service:
Most of today’s service uses texts produced via The Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches and The Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, drawn in particular by Christians in Korea, a country divided in two whose political disunity symbolises the disunity in the Church.
Our service has three acts of unity – a sign of peace, a creed we hold in common in our traditions, and our common prayer: the Lord’s Prayer.
Our service also has 3 hymns, all praying for unity while acknowledging our lack of unity, incidentally, all three are Anglican hymns.
And our service has 2 readings – Ezekiel, two joined as one; Acts, conversion of St Paul
Sermon:
I want to say a few words about the relevance of today’s feast of the Conversion of St Paul to Christian unity, a feast kept by the Anglican and Catholic Church today.
To convert means to change, and to achieve unity will involve change.
Conversion involves many things. It involves recognising that we need to change; it involves, recognising the destination – what we want to change into; and, it involves realising HOW to change – what we must do to get to the destination.
Now, when we think of St Paul, when he has just Saul, one of the striking things about him was that he saw no need to change. If the young Saul was to hear of a future feast of his “conversion” he would no doubt have said, “But I don’t need to convert, I’m already a faithful Jew, a Hebrew born of Hebrews (Phil 3:5)”.
And this, of course, as we all know, is the pattern true of each of us at so many moments in our lives. We do not recognise what is wrong with us, we deny our sin or deny the seriousness of it.
And often this is something we see more clearly in hindsight. That when we look back over our lives we see that where we were lacking in charity, lacking in patience, lacking in kindness; where we failed to honour our parents as they deserved to be honoured, where we stubbornly failed to forgive those who has sinned against us – so often, we can see that we failed even to see that we needed to change.
Now the Church, meaning both our individual traditions and as all of us together, the Church too failed to see its need for change with respect to this question of unity and disunity. Now, it’s easy for me standing here to stand in judgment over past generations, but it does seem true that there was a failure to realise that the hatred and bitterness and stubbornness that were a part of what separated our bodies – these things were often not recognised as things we needed to change.
We were like St Paul in thinking that we had no need to convert.
Over the past hundred years much has changed with respect to this first stage in conversion – we have, generally, acknowledged in a way that was NOT acknowledged before, that our disunity is something we need to change.
This is the first stage in any conversion, and achieving it is something to rejoice over. But acknowledging our need to change is only the first step.
The next stages are much more difficult, and they involve recognising what we must change into, and recognising how to change into it.
It is possible for us to take a step back in our ecumenical endeavours and say, well, this far and no further; this far is good enough.
And that, I’d suggest would be like St Paul realising he was blind but not then wanting to be healed.
I say this, I freely acknowledge, as a Catholic, with a Catholic view of what unity is like and a catholic view of what ecumenism should be like.
But I would say to you that where we have got to is not enough. It is not enough “to respect each other’s differences” – no, the lack of corporate unity among Christians is something that remains is visible scandal that prevents many from becoming a Christian – how can they know how to become a Christian if they cannot see amid all the different groupings of us?
It’s possible to think that we’re united already and so don’t need to really do anything, but we’re not united yet -And when others look at us from the outside it is very obvious to them that we are not united yet.
The next stage in the ecumenical conversion must involve seeing what true unity is like.
This, of course, is something where we do not agree.
Does unity mean agreement in doctrine?
Do dogmas divide “man from man” (as the hymn goes) or do they unite us to a common truth?
Does unity mean common liturgical and ecclesial law?
Does unity means a common mutually acknowledged authority?
Does authority create unity or does it create division?
Does unity mean a common agreement as to what is sin and what is virtue?
Can we be converted from sin without being told what sin is?
Or, does unity itself require diversity in these matters?
Does unity require unity at a worldwide level,
or does unity mean unity with the local group?
I think we all agree that there must be some uniformity and some diversity,
Even among Catholics we have different liturgical and canonical rites,
We have Byzantine Catholics and Roman Catholics, and others too.
- even Catholics acknowledge some diversity!
But although we all acknowledge some need for uniformity and some need for diversity
We do NOT agree as to what this means.
And until we do agree then any talk of having “achieved unity” is very premature.
On this feast of the CONVERSION of St Paul, I would return to the fact that he thought he already had it sorted, that he didn’t need to convert, and that we each to acknowledge that conversion means being open to look again at unity and the components of unity, to consider what can be sacrificed and what cannot.
Of course, we all tend to think that true unity looks like what we are and what we aim to be
But the CONVERSION of St Paul calls on us to be willing to think again, as the Lord had him think again.
After over a century of ecumenical focus in the church there is much to rejoice over, but this is still the beginning, not the end.
25th January 2009, Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
We keep today the feast of the Conversion of St Paul, which is probably a feast you’ve never heard of before because we don’t normally keep it on a Sunday. But this year has been dedicated by Pope Benedict as the Year of St Paul, and so we’re celebrating the feast today.
St Paul is the most dramatic saint we find in the New Testament, and the saint who had the most effect in spreading the Gospel. If you were to take a cruise on a boat around the Mediterranean Sea you would find place after place were the people would claim that St Paul had been there, would claim that St Paul was the one who took the Gospel to them. From Turkey to Spain, with places like Malta and Cyprus in between. When we read in our first reading from Acts 22:15 that St Paul was “chosen... to bear witness before ALL mankind” – it hardly seems an exaggeration. He was great man of great effect.
But today, on the feast of his conversion, we recall how he began. How he started out as one who persecuted the Christians, and yet, God CHOSE him, chose him with a dramatic event, a light that threw him from his horse, then spoke to him from the heavens, blinded him and later miraculously cured him. And St Paul came to believe in the one he had not believed in, and came to preach what he had opposed.
Now, there are many points I could preach on in this regard, but there is one simple one I’m going to focus on: what was it that made St Paul “great”?
Because we might think it that dramatic miraculous event, or that he was a great preacher, or clever in his use of words.
And there are many things at a worldly level that make St Paul appear great:
He had religious greatness: “a Hebrew born of the Hebrews” (Phil 3:5).
He had worldly greatness: born of a wealthy family, a Roman citizen in the Roman Empire, he had been sent as youth from Tarsus to be a student of the great Gamaliel in Jerusalem.
But everything in St Paul’s life changed after he met Christ: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil 3:7-9).
What made St Paul great was the fact that he knew Christ, and in this, there were many others who were greater than he was – even if they didn’t have as spectacular a conversion or as spectacular a life in the effects that God called forth from them.
For those of us who have known Christ for a long time, maybe known him since infancy, it is very easy to forget the importance of knowing him. We can treat him with a sort of casual indifference.
St Paul came to realise that “knowing Christ Jesus” was important because it meant knowing the key to life, knowing “a secret and hidden wisdom” (1 Cor 2:7), or rather, a wisdom that was secret and has now been made known, and that St Paul spent the rest of his life making known: the ‘secret’, the ‘mystery’ that there was a plan from the foundation of the world, a plan that called us IN CHRIST, to become sons in the Son, to be adopted as His own.
So that the value of any one of us does not lie in our education, or wealth, or accent (nice as these things might be for those who have them),
But our value lies in knowing Him who made us, who called us, and who values us simply on the basis of our fidelity to Him, a fidelity that can be measured simply by how much we love (cf. 1 Cor 13:13).
The true greatness of St Paul’s conversion lies not in the miracle of blinding light, but in the fact that he changed what he valued in life, and what he valued in himself: that he ‘counted everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord’, Christ who “shows that he loves us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:9).
18th January 2009, Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jn 1:35-42
I’ve been alive for over 38 years now and among the things that have been pretty constant in my life is that I’m never quite satisfied. I’ve had a lot of things go well in my life, a lot of things, but nonetheless, I’m never quite satisfied. My chair is never quite comfortable enough, the TV program is never quite funny enough, or if it is funny enough then its not funny for long enough, or the house isn’t warm enough, or my drink isn’t chocolately enough.
All of this is pretty much the state of human existence. That even those of us who have many of the things we’ve spent our lives aiming for, even so, we’re still looking for something more.
On one level, this is a good thing: to stop striving is to just give up and die.
But on another level, it’s a sign that this material world we live in is not enough. St Augustine, over 1700 years ago, summed this up by referring to the restlessness of the human heart and saying, “Our hearts are restless O Lord until they rest in Thee”.
We are made for more than just sitting in comfortable chairs, watching TV, and drinking nice stuff. Rather, we are made with a spiritual soul so that we might freely love and love Him who is more loveable than anything we find on the material level.
In today’s gospel we heard Jesus ask the question, “What do you want?” or, “What are you seeking?” and it mirrors a question he asked at two other times: To the guards who came to arrest him in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Whom are you seeking?” (Jn 18:4); and, To Mary Magdalene after the resurrection, “Whom do you seek?” (Jn 20:15).
Each time the question referred to Him. And, if I want the answer to what I am seeking, even in what I do not realise, even when I am looking for it in odd places, then JESUS is the one whom I am seeking.
In all that leaves me unsatisfied, my lack of satisfaction is because I am still seeking Jesus.
Now I say this as a priest, as a priest who has sought Jesus many times, and found Jesus many times, and yet who is still NOT fully satisfied.
It is certainly true that Jesus has given me much satisfaction – more than I would trade for the passing pleasures of this world or the fleeting glamours of this life.
But still, I know I am not FULLY satisfied.
The answer to my lack of satisfaction is that I never FULLY turn to Him, I always turn aside when I seem satisfied ENOUGH. When I feel satisfied but to seek Him more would involve difficulty, the Cross, and so forth.
The disciples asked Jesus, “Where do you live?” (Jn 1:38). And we know they weren’t just asking for an address. It was a more existential question.
He lives is a life of virtue – He is peaceful, patience, loving.
He lives in full perfection – He has none of my limits.
He lives in perfect joy – He is satisfaction personified, and invites me to share it.
In John’s Gospel, time and again, he records the teaching of Jesus that TRUE seeing is about faith. Seeing the RIGHT things, the DEEPER things. So when Jesus said to those enquiring disciples, “Come and see” (Jn 1:39), then this is an invitation to look AGAIN at the RIGHt things. This is why I am dissatisfied. He is the one I am made for, and I’m restless until I FULLY rest in Him, even if that involves more than the half-hearted commitment I give Him.
At 38 I am still unsatisfied because when I “Come and see” Jesus I am still wandering to other things.
If, after another 38 years, I finally rest in the Lord, it will be because I have decided WHERE I need to rest. “Our hearts are restless O Lord until they rest in Thee”.
11th January 2009, The Baptism of the Lord
I want to say a few words about what makes someone important – because today’s feast of the Baptism of the Lord reveals what was important about Him, and thus is about us.
When someone introduces you to someone new, you often expect them to say the most important thing about you, in a sense, to say WHY you are important and worth meeting.
“This is Harry, he used to be mayor here”
Or, “This is Judy, she’s our best maths teacher”
What people thing is important can sometimes me quite interesting, if not bizarre.
And, of course, we all know there are some people who are quite full of their own sense of importance. “I’m John, but I guess you’ve already heard about me”.
The question I want to focus on, is what is REALLY the important thing about any of us that is worth saying of us?
This is relevant on today’s feast because it was at the Baptism of the Lord Jesus that voice from Heaven first spoke of Him publicly, spoke of Him and introduced Him to the world. And what did that voice of God say about Him and was the important thing to know about Him? “This is my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on you”
Now, sometimes, people can be sceptical of someone you thinks they are important just because their father is important.
However, that does depend on WHOSE son you are. If you are the son of GOD, REALLY the Son of God, that that’s pretty important, and, quite simply, it’s the only important thing to say about Him.
If there really is a Lord God almighty who made everything and directs everything,
Then whoever his son is, is pretty important just in virtue of that!
So, it’s not surprising that this is exactly what was said of Jesus.
Now, for ourselves, this is important too. Because this thing that is what was important about Jesus is also what is important about all of those who belong to Jesus – we too have God as our Father.
Not everyone in the world has God as their Father.
Everyone in the world has God as their Lord, as master.
But the family relationship of father-child, only comes to those who choose to be ADOPTED, in Christ, in the ONE Son of the Father.
This is what we see in Scripture - this privileged title ’Father’ only belongs to Christians.
Why am I important? Is it because I’m better looking than Brad Pit, or because I have the dignity of being a son of God?
Many of us have times when we feel we’re not important because we lack one of the things we mistakenly think real important lies in: we lack the better job we aspire to, or the better house, or car, or more beautiful wife.
We feel unimportant because we judge ourselves by something ephemeral, not the one solid thing that really counts – my relationship with God.
If I want to remember why I am important, it’s because God has freely chosen to adopt me as His son. He didn’t have to, but he chose to.
And if I’m introduced to someone, others may not mention it, it is actually the one truly important thing worth saying about me.
And if GOD was to introduce me, what he’d say is, “You are my son, the beloved”.
If this page does not contain a sermon that you are looking for, please click here to go to Father Dylan's blog where you may find it.