Trinity Sunday

Trinity Sunday 2020

Exodus 34: 4-6, 8-9; 2Cor 13: 11-13; John 3:16-18

I suspect that I am correct in saying that every priest dreads having to preach on Trinity Sunday. The thought of having to find something new and inspiring to say about something which is, by definition, beyond our comprehension, fills most, if not all, of us with deep foreboding.

Perhaps, rather than attempting to explain the inexplicable, to analyse the deepest of all mysteries, we should simply sit or kneel in awe before the God who is three in one, opening our hearts and minds so that the Father and Son may pour into us their own personalized love which is the Holy Spirit.

At its heart, the Trinity is not a numbers game, a sort of celestial one two three O’Leary, but a relationship; the Father eternally generating the Son with a love which is itself a person—the Holy Spirit—and the Son returning that love in the same personalised manner. Having said that, I am aware of having said nothing, and I am becoming increasingly conscious that this is the point. What can we honestly say about the nature of God? We have our doctrinal definitions, but they, while true, are liable to strike us as dry and meaningless—what Rudyard Kipling makes one of his characters call “your cold Christs and tangled Trinities”.

All that we can do, in reality, is to allow the Trinity to live in us, and to inspire in us that same interpersonal love which is God’s nature. “God loved the world so much,” says Jesus to Nicodemus, “that He gave His only Son”, a giving accomplished by the Holy Spirit. We enter into that love in the Eucharist, where the elements are transformed by the Spirit into the person of the Son, who offers Himself to the Father, drawing us into His self-offering.

That Eucharistic self-offering, brought about by the love which is the life of the Trinity, should epitomise the way we live from day to day and from moment to moment. I think that it is time to stop woffling, and to do it.

Pentecost

Pentecost 2020

Acts 2: 1-11; 1Cor 12:3-7, 12-13; John 20: 19-23

How did you receive the Spirit? Indeed, how do you receive the Spirit? Did/does the Holy Spirit come to you as the Pentecost Spirit, in wind and flame and spectacular gifts, or does that same Holy Spirit come as the Easter Sunday evening Spirit, in a gentle inbreathing?

Either way, make no mistake about it: you have received the Spirit, and you do receive the Spirit. You received the Holy Spirit when you were baptised, you received the Holy Spirit when you were confirmed; and be very clear that these two sacraments (if indeed they are two separate sacraments rather than two parts of the same sacrament) are manifestations of God’s love for you and of God’s gifts to you.

The sort of catechesis which sees confirmation as the action of the candidate, making some sort of commitment to God as if it were some sort of Christian bar mitzvah is downright heretical, for sacraments are always a gift from God, and the coming of the Holy Spirit is a gift OF God, for the one who comes is indeed God.

Are these though the only occasions on which you have received the Holy Spirit? Surely not. As St. Paul states, there is nothing good or godly which we can do without the intervention of the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, the Lectionary omits verses 8-11 from that passage in 1 Corinthians, verses in which Paul lists some of the gifts which the Spirit gives, and the verbs of giving are all in the present tense. In other words, the Holy Spirit is still giving us gifts here and now. The Spirit came to dwell in us at our baptism/confirmation, but that Spirit is still active in enabling us through His/Her/Its gifts.

“No one” declares St. Paul, “can say Jesus is Lord unless under the influence of the Holy Spirit.” So every time we proclaim our faith in Jesus, every time we perform a work of service, the Holy Spirit is, at that moment, active in us.

Which brings me back to my original question: how did, and how do you receive the Holy Spirit? There may be people who are conscious of the action of the Holy Spirit, who are driven by a wind of change, moved by fire in their bellies: perhaps more of us than we may have thought enjoy that experience from time to time. I distinctly remember one afternoon in my teens being struck by the thought, completely out of the blue, “You must become much more aware of the needs of other people, and especially much more grateful to your Mum and Dad.” There was no spectacular appearance or sound of wind or fire, but it was a very clear moment of inspiration to which I knew I had to respond, and which remains with me to this day.

Similarly, I can point to the exact spot in St. Peter’s Cathedral, Lancaster, where I was kneeling during my dinner hour from work at Whiteside’s Laundry when I knew that I must consider seriously the possibility of a vocation to the priesthood, and I have read the account by Lancaster lass Edwina Gateley, founder of the Volunteer Missionary Movement and social justice prophet, of her similar experience, likewise in the Cathedral.

Such moments tend to be few and far between. They are the Pentecost moments of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Much more frequent are the Easter Sunday evening moments, as described in today’s Gospel, when the risen Christ breathes the Spirit into us, and thus empowers us to be agents of forgiveness and healing. Whenever we perform some positive action, we are being guided by the Holy Spirit to help build the Kingdom of God. Every such moment is, in reality, a Pentecost moment, though the Spirit’s action may be closer to that of Easter Sunday evening.

7th Sunday of Easter

7th Sunday of Easter 2020

Acts 1:12-14; 1Peter 4:13-16; John 17:1-11.

After the Ascension, the apostles return to Jerusalem and establish themselves once more in the Upper Room. To do what? To cower in fear? No no no no no no no......NO! To do what they were told by Jesus, which was to await the coming of the Holy Spirit. While they are waiting, they pray proskarterountes homothumadon, says St. Luke, literally “persevering unanimously”: in other words, they stick at it—all of them.

Who are they? Luke tells us that they were the eleven apostles, whom he lists by name, women, Mary the mother of Jesus, and His relations (“brothers” in the extended sense in which the word is still used in many parts of the world today).

That is an interesting combination. Tell me, when you have seen representations of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, who has been shown? I will lay you threepence (well, twopence halfpenny) that you will have seen the apostles, Our Lady, and no one else. That is naughty: it implies that these were the only people to receive the Spirit.

“Ah,” you will say, “but next Sunday, for the Feast of Pentecost, my missal says that the APOSTLES had all met in one room.” Your missal may say that, but St. Luke doesn’t. He simply says “they all”. Doesn’t it make more sense to assume that this means all those who had been there already? After the miracle of tongues, he tells us that “Peter stood up with the Eleven” which seems to imply that this was the first time that the apostles had acted on their own: prior to this, the women and the “brothers” had been with them, along with Our Lady.

So it seems to me that those who prayed for the coming of the Spirit, “persevering unanimously”, as we have been told, AND WHO RECEIVED THE SPIRIT, were a cross section of the Church—the apostles as the leaders, as what we would now call the magisterium, but also the women and the relations, representing the laity.

In other words, the whole Church, men and women, clergy and laity (insofar as it is reasonable to use such terminology at this stage) received the Holy Spirit, something which the hierarchy has sometimes forgotten. It is interesting that Our Lord’s relations are included, as they had tended to be somewhat reluctant followers. Is this implying that the Spirit is given to everyone, those on the margins as well as the fervent, provided they are willing to pray and to ask?

Where does Our Lady fit in? Again we are faced with a mistranslation. The Lectionary states that the apostles were all “persevering unanimously in prayer”, though it actually translates it as “joined in continuous prayer” which is not quite the same thing, “together with several women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.”

So the Lectionary includes Mary among the women, which is not accurate. St. Luke actually puts Mary in a category of her own, saying “with women AND Mary the mother of Jesus AND with His relations”. Mary is NOT included by Luke among the women, but is separated from them by kai (“and”), with the relations separated again by kai sun (“and with”).

This may appear to be playing with words, but it isn’t. Mary had already received the Holy Spirit. As Catholics, we believe that she was filled with the Holy Spirit from the moment she was conceived, thus preserving her from sin: our separated brethren would agree that she was filled with the Holy Spirit when her Son was conceived. Thus she is in a category of her own—she, the woman filled with the Spirit praying with the Church that it may become the woman filled with the Spirit, the Bride of Christ. As we pray for a new outpouring of the Spirit, may we ask her, the mother and model of the Church, to continue to pray with us—and to guide the compilers of the new Lectionary to be more accurate with their translations.

Sixth Sunday of Easter

6th Sunday of Easter 2020

Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; 1Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21

I don’t think that the late Bishop Brewer of this diocese would have objected too strongly if he had been described as a Jack-in-a-box, bouncing from one enthusiasm to another. Some of his ideas caught hold, but the majority were abandoned almost as soon as they had been seized, as another notion caught his attention.

One idea which he floated, but which sank immediately, deserved, I believe, much fuller consideration. At Christmas dinner one year in Cathedral House, he expounded his plan for combining the sacraments of baptism and confirmation for infants, as is already done for adults, and as has always been the practice in the Orthodox Church.

Present at the table was Bishop Emeritus Bernard Foley who, with that touch of mischief of which most people were probably unaware, interjected “Ah, shouldn’t the laity be consulted about that?”, which caused his successor to subside, rather like a punctured balloon. 

Of course, Bishop Foley was correct, and more aware of the mind of the Church than most bishops before or since, but I can’t help feeling that Bishop Brewer too was on the right lines. What a pity it was that he didn’t flesh out his idea more fully, and press ahead with consulting the laity about it.

In so doing, he would have closed the artificial gap between baptism and confirmation which was brought into being many centuries ago by historical accident, he would have emphasised more fully the centrality of the Holy Spirit, and he would have struck a blow at the heretical theology which drives some current interpretations of confirmation, which see the sacrament, not as God’s gift to us in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but as the young person’s act of commitment, something which they do for God, an interpretation which reeks of the Pelagian heresy.

(Actually, Bishop Brewer himself could have been accused of Pelagianism, when he explained the sacrament as the young person saying for him/herself the “Amen” which was said on their behalf at baptism—dodgy ground, Fiery Jack!)

The intimate relationship between baptism and confirmation is underlined by today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles. As soon as the Jerusalem Church hears that the Samaritans have been baptised in the name of Jesus, they send Peter and John hotfoot to complete the process of initiation by calling down the Holy Spirit on the new converts. There is no “act of commitment”  here: it is pure gift from God, and it is delayed for as short a time as possible.

In today’s Church, baptism is administered in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, rather than in the name of Jesus alone, so that the baptised person, whether infant, child, or adult, receives the Holy Spirit. It is difficult to avoid the feeling that confirmation is retained as a separate sacrament purely to retain the link between the bishop and the rite of initiation which existed in the early Church.

From now until Pentecost, the Holy Spirit will feature prominently in the Mass readings. The Spirit has been described as the “forgotten member of the Holy Trinity” and the charismatic movement arose in the Church partly in response to the perceived imbalance. (The story is told of a disgruntled organist in a parish which had made her redundant in favour of a more charismatic mode of singing, and who complained “Them there charismatics seem to think the Holy Spirit is God Almighty!” Er.....) In today’s passage from St. John, Jesus underlines the centrality of the Spirit who is with and in the Christian, and whose presence and role are inextricably bound up with those of the Father and the Son.

Let us be ever more conscious of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, of the Spirit’s self-gift in baptism and confirmation, and of the Spirit’s role, together with Father and Son, in all that the Church is and does.

Fifth Sunday of Easter

5th Sunday of Easter 2020

Acts 6:1-7; 1 Peter 2:4-9; John 14:1-12

Over the years, I must have driven the people of Claughton daft by the number of times I reminded them of the prayer said over them when they were anointed with chrism during the rite of baptism. In the previous translation, the one which I (and by now, probably they) know by heart it runs: “As Christ was anointed priest, prophet, and king, so may you live always as a member of His body, sharing in everlasting life.” The current translation has altered the wording slightly, but the essence is the same.

That prayer is rooted largely in the words from the First Letter of St. Peter, which appear in today’s Second Reading: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart.”In his turn, the author of that letter, whether it be St. Peter himself, or one of his disciples invoking his authority, is drawing on words applied by God through Moses to the people of Israel in the Book of Exodus, and on certain sayings in the prophecies of Isaiah.

So both St. Peter and the Church’s present day liturgy tell you that, through Christ and in Christ, you are priests, prophets and kings. What does that mean? A priest is someone who offers sacrifice, and you and I, as the Church, are a priestly people, a people who offer sacrifice. Both you and I offer the sacrifice of our lives to God—and bear in mind that the root of “sacrifice” is sacra facere , “to make holy”. Potentially, because you are a priestly people, everything that you do is holy, everything is done in Christ and through Christ.

Then, you bring your holy lives to the altar, and I, the ordained priest, chosen from among this priestly people, present those lives, along with the Body and Blood of Jesus, as He makes His once-and-for-all-sacrifice present for us, uniting our sacrifice with His in His self-offering to the Father.

In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the ordained priest pronounces the words of absolution on behalf of the priestly people: in the Sacrament of the Sick, he brings healing and forgiveness on behalf of that same priestly people. These sacraments will have their full effect, will be lived out in the world, if the people of God are a forgiving and healing people. The priest’s words and actions bring about the effects of the sacraments, but something of the sign will be lost if the healed and forgiven person doesn’t experience that same healing and forgiveness among the whole people of God.

Furthermore, says St. Peter, you are a ROYAL priesthood—you are both priests and kings, as Jesus is both priest and king, “like Melchizedek of old” as Psalm 109 (110) expresses it. How did Jesus exercise His kingship? He did it by serving, and by giving His life “as a ransom for many”. As kings in Christ, as a royal priesthood, we too must be people who serve, who are prepared to suffer, who are willing to give our lives in love for Him and for the world.

As a prophetic people, our words, and more particularly, our actions, should be signs of the presence of Christ. It is the presence of Christ, dwelling in us through our baptism, which is all important.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life” He said to Thomas. “No one can come to the Father except through me.” Only by uniting our lives to Christ can we live out our calling to be “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation.” Only by uniting his life to Christ can the ordained priest live out his particular vocation in and for the people of God.

Where does that union with Christ lead us? It leads us to the vision of, and union with, the Father, who is in Jesus, as Jesus is in Him. Thus is the purpose of our lives fulfilled. “The glory of God is human beings fully alive,” wrote St. Irenaeus in the second century, “and full life for human beings is the vision of God.” Through prayer rooted in God’s word, through the sacraments, and through service, we are led to that union with Christ and vision of God which makes us fully alive.

5th Sunday of Easter 2020

Acts 6:1-7; 1 Peter 2:4-9; John 14:1-12

Over the years, I must have driven the people of Claughton daft by the number of times I reminded them of the prayer said over them when they were anointed with chrism during the rite of baptism. In the previous translation, the one which I (and by now, probably they) know by heart it runs: “As Christ was anointed priest, prophet, and king, so may you live always as a member of His body, sharing in everlasting life.” The current translation has altered the wording slightly, but the essence is the same.

That prayer is rooted largely in the words from the First Letter of St. Peter, which appear in today’s Second Reading: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart.”In his turn, the author of that letter, whether it be St. Peter himself, or one of his disciples invoking his authority, is drawing on words applied by God through Moses to the people of Israel in the Book of Exodus, and on certain sayings in the prophecies of Isaiah.

So both St. Peter and the Church’s present day liturgy tell you that, through Christ and in Christ, you are priests, prophets and kings. What does that mean? A priest is someone who offers sacrifice, and you and I, as the Church, are a priestly people, a people who offer sacrifice. Both you and I offer the sacrifice of our lives to God—and bear in mind that the root of “sacrifice” is sacra facere , “to make holy”. Potentially, because you are a priestly people, everything that you do is holy, everything is done in Christ and through Christ.

Then, you bring your holy lives to the altar, and I, the ordained priest, chosen from among this priestly people, present those lives, along with the Body and Blood of Jesus, as He makes His once-and-for-all-sacrifice present for us, uniting our sacrifice with His in His self-offering to the Father.

In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the ordained priest pronounces the words of absolution on behalf of the priestly people: in the Sacrament of the Sick, he brings healing and forgiveness on behalf of that same priestly people. These sacraments will have their full effect, will be lived out in the world, if the people of God are a forgiving and healing people. The priest’s words and actions bring about the effects of the sacraments, but something of the sign will be lost if the healed and forgiven person doesn’t experience that same healing and forgiveness among the whole people of God.

Furthermore, says St. Peter, you are a ROYAL priesthood—you are both priests and kings, as Jesus is both priest and king, “like Melchizedek of old” as Psalm 109 (110) expresses it. How did Jesus exercise His kingship? He did it by serving, and by giving His life “as a ransom for many”. As kings in Christ, as a royal priesthood, we too must be people who serve, who are prepared to suffer, who are willing to give our lives in love for Him and for the world.

As a prophetic people, our words, and more particularly, our actions, should be signs of the presence of Christ. It is the presence of Christ, dwelling in us through our baptism, which is all important.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life” He said to Thomas. “No one can come to the Father except through me.” Only by uniting our lives to Christ can we live out our calling to be “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation.” Only by uniting his life to Christ can the ordained priest live out his particular vocation in and for the people of God.

Where does that union with Christ lead us? It leads us to the vision of, and union with, the Father, who is in Jesus, as Jesus is in Him. Thus is the purpose of our lives fulfilled. “The glory of God is human beings fully alive,” wrote St. Irenaeus in the second century, “and full life for human beings is the vision of God.” Through prayer rooted in God’s word, through the sacraments, and through service, we are led to that union with Christ and vision of God which makes us fully alive.

Fourth Sunday Of Easter

4th Sunday of Easter 2020

Acts 2:14, 36-41; 1 Peter 2:20-25; John 10:1-10

It is generally considered that sheep are daft. “Talking is cheap, people follow like sheep” sang the Tremeloes, turning a Four Seasons’ B side into a massive hit. The stupidity of sheep is legendary.

But is this justified? In both the Lake and Peak districts I have seen sheep trampling over picnickers in order to rummage in open bags where they suspected, usually correctly, that food was concealed. Bad mannered they may be, but stupid? I am not so sure.

Indeed, if Our Lord’s claim about sheep is correct—and He knew far more about them than a townie like me—His claim that “they never follow a stranger but run away from him; they do not recognise the voice of strangers”, then sheep are considerably less stupid than human beings.

Abraham Lincoln may have been correct when he claimed that “you can’t fool all of the people all of the time”, but remember that he prefaced that conclusion with the build up: “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time...”. How applicable his words may be to the present situation in his own country, I leave you to decide.

To move from politics to the less contentious world of advertising, it is worth mentioning that I grew up behind, and over, my parents’ sweets and tobacco shop. My father used to dread a new bar of chocolate or a new brand of cigarette being advertised on TV, because he could guarantee that, next day, he would be swamped by requests for the novelty in question, from people who had been persuaded by the slick marketing techniques of the advertisers that this was a “must have”; that their lives would be unbearably impoverished without it. As often as not, within a fortnight they would have returned to their old brand, and the newcomer would languish unsold on the shelf.

Not so with sheep, says Jesus. Why not? Because they know their shepherd, and the shepherd knows them. They are not fooled by outsiders, no matter what is on offer. Transfer that assertion to the human context: how well do you and I know Jesus? How well do the people of God in general know Him? Do you and I spend time with Jesus, learning to recognise His voice in our inmost being, in the scriptures, in the sacraments, in the events of our lives? Do the priests among us encourage God’s people to do the same?

Do the people, the sheep of God’s flock, hear the voice of Jesus in our words, recognise His presence in our attitude towards them? These questions are addressed not only to priests, but to all God’s people, because each of you, in your own sphere of influence, has a shepherding role.

To what extent do we know the flock of the Lord? Leaving aside the present problem of social distancing, that question is becoming more problematic for priests because of numbers, and because of changing social patterns. It is no longer feasible to trot around the parish, armed with our census book, expecting doors to be opened to us. Increasingly, though, the question must be asked of the laity: do you know the other members of God’s people, and how many of them meet Christ in you? Do people recognise Christ in us, both priests and laity, sufficiently clearly to discourage them from chasing off after every daft idea, whether religious or anti-religious, which comes along?

Jesus takes the analogy still further. The Palestinian shepherd does not only know His sheep: he loves them enough to sacrifice his life for them. At night, he lies down across the entrance to the pen, so as to form a gate, which will deter wild animals or, at worst, will provide a possible victim for them, so that they may leave the sheep unmolested.

Furthermore, the sheep are so familiar with the shepherd that, like their rummaging brethren with the picnickers, they will hop over his body, wandering in and out, knowing that, even if they stray along devious paths, they will be sure of a welcome on their return. Are our people, our fellow Catholics, our fellow Christians, at ease to that extent with us? Do they know, do we know, that we would make any sacrifice for them?

Sometimes, God’s people, including us, may be considerably dafter than sheep, but can they nonetheless rely on us for love and care, and are they, and we, being constantly drawn to a deeper knowledge of, and a stronger love for, Jesus the Good Shepherd?

Third Sunday of Easter

3rd Sunday of Easter 2020

Acts 2:14: 22-28; 1 Peter 1: 17-21; Luke 24: 13-35

I loved the previous missal’s translation of the opening prayer of today’s Mass. It ran “God our Father, may we look forward with hope to our resurrection, for you have made us your sons and daughters and restored the joy of our youth”.

“You have restored the joy of our youth.” In other words, you have made us young again. It reminds me of a verse in the Latin translation of Psalm 42, the psalm which used to open the Tridentine rite of Mass: “Introibo ad altare Dei. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.” “I will go in to the altar of God. To God who gives joy to my youth.”

The resurrection makes us young again, and gives us joy. Indeed, it makes us neonates, as Our Lord told Nicodemus in last Monday’s Gospel, informing him of the need to be born again, whilst the 1st Letter of St. Peter tells us that we are, indeed, new born.

We are new born, we are infants, we are young lads and lasses, with the world as our oyster, able to run and jump and, especially, laugh again, at least mentally and spiritually. I find that concept especially attractive, having just celebrated one of those birthdays with a nought in it. I really fancy having the joy of my youth restored.

And remember, that youth isn’t a matter of years: it is a matter of attitude. I have met youngsters in their 80s and 90s, still young because still interested, still enthusiastic. On the other hand I have met little old men and little old women in their teens, grown old before their time, because they knew everything, or because they found everything BORING! Please God they may have grown younger as they grew older; which brings to mind an old advertisement for a Scottish brewery, which featured an old man with a long beard and a twinkling eye, supping his pint under the slogan “Get YOUNGER every day”.

One youngster whom I particularly recall was Kate, who, I would estimate, was in her late 70s or early 80s when I was at St. Mary’s, Morecambe. Every day, Kate would bounce into church for 12-15pm Mass. She would genuflect to the Blessed Sacrament, bow to the altar, and then turn and stick her tongue out at her fellow worshippers.

At one stage, Kate went into Nazareth House for respite care. “How are you Kate?” I asked. “Well, compared to some of these in here I feel like Zola Budd,” was the reply, referring to the current teenaged prodigy of the athletics world. Kate also recounted two conversations she’d had with a girl on the staff.

Learning that this lass was a Catholic, Kate had asked her if she went to Mass. “No,” had been the reply, “but I believe in God.”

“That’s all very well” rejoined Kate. “You believe in your granny, but if she lived in the next street, you would go to visit her, not just believe in her.”

A week or so later, Kate encountered this same staff member again. “Have you been to Mass yet?” “No,” was the quick response, “but I’ve been to see my granny.”  Kate felt that this was a reasonable start.

Kate’s greatest joy was to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion, and one of her happiest moments came when the Church permitted the laity to receive  communion at every Mass they attended, instead of limiting them to once per day. This meant for Kate that, on her regular visits to Boarbank, she could receive Jesus three times a day: she would say to Him “I’ve got you now!” and indulge in deep conversation with Him.

Which brings us to today’s Gospel, and the encounter between the Risen Christ and the Emmaus disciples. What does Jesus do? He celebrates Mass with them. The first part of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Word, takes place on the journey, as He explains the scriptures to them, “breaking the word” as we say: the second part, the Liturgy of the Eucharist, in the house, where He breaks the bread which has become His Body, before disappearing, since He is now present in the broken bread.

Thus, from its very beginnings, the Church has been rooted in the Eucharist, “the source and summit of the Christian life” as the Second Vatican Council expressed it. That is why Catholics are grieving their current inability to attend Mass, but rejoicing that they can follow Mass online, and so make a spiritual communion. Without the sacramental encounter with Christ, part of ourselves is lacking: without the Eucharistic Christ, we struggle to stay young.

Second Sunday of Easter

2nd Sunday of Easter 2020

Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

Something to note today, and to remember right through to Pentecost: on what day are the events of the first part of today’s Gospel taking place?

“Don’t be daft!” you will say. “That’s obvious. It’s Easter Sunday evening.”

Exactly! So when you hear this Gospel again at Pentecost, remember what you have just said; don’t go thinking tht it refers to Pentecost, or making it the basis for re-hashing that old nonsense about the disciples being scared until Pentecost. They weren’t. Between the Ascension and Pentecost, they were doing what the Risen Lord told them to do, which was to wait prayerfully for the gift of the Holy Spirit; and if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, knock them down and sit on their heads.

To be honest, it doesn’t say a great deal for the disciples that they were so scared on Easter Sunday. They already had the evidence of the empty tomb, and John, assuming that he is the Beloved Disciple, had told us earlier that he had seen and had believed. There was also the evidence of the women: Mary Magdalene had seen the Risen Lord, and so, according to Matthew, had the other women. Meanwhile, we have the testimony of St. Luke, who tells us that the Lord had appeared to Peter, so what business had they really to be afraid?

That is an easy question to ask, isn’t it? Fear is a strange emotion, which isn’t always susceptible to logic. Think for a moment of your own fears: how many of them are really justified? And what about your fears in relation to faith, to the presence of God, to salvation? Admittedly, neither you nor I have physically seen the Lord, but I suspect that all of us have experienced his presence in many ways; through being led into and through darkness, through our own experience of Gethsemane and Calvary—and of the Resurrection, through otherwise inexplicable events in life, through encounters with people, through the emptiness and the fullness of our times of prayer.

As the Eleven had the witness of the women, we have the witness of saints who have gone before us through two thousand years: of visionaries and of martyrs, and of ordinary common or garden folk who have radiated the presence of Christ, many of them again being women.

We have too those words from the First Letter of St. Peter, about our being plagued by trials which test, refine , and purify our faith, and about the joy which fills us and sustains us through dark times, and which is the product of loving the Lord even without seeing Him.

Those words from this letter echo those of the Risen Christ to Thomas: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe”. Thomas is a belting reinforcer of our faith, because here and elsewhere he asks the questions which we ourselves would like to ask, raises the objections which we would like to raise, and demands the demonstrations which we would like to demand.

Thomas is the down to earth, no nonsense realist. “You have seen the Lord? Prove it!” And the Risen Christ does exactly that. But then Thomas is prepared to make a leap of faith, being the first to proclaim explicitly the divinity of Christ. Seeing and touching demonstrate the Resurrection: faith takes Him further, to recognise that this Risen Lord is actually God.

In our case too, faith enables us to take the ultimate step. The witness of others, our own experiences, lead us so far, enabling us to go further, accepting for ourselves the divinity of the Risen Christ, and His Eucharistic presence. Perhaps like me you were taught in childhood to pray silently Thomas’s words “My Lord and my God” at the elevation of the consecrated host and the chalice. If not, why not begin the practice now? If so, continue it. If you learnt it but lost it, resume it. And every now and then thank St. Thomas for it.

Holy Thursday - old sermon

HOLY THURSDAY 2015

The biggest mistake of the new Mass translation wasn’t something which the translators did, but something which they failed to do. They failed to clarify, in the words of consecration, the meaning of eis ten emen anamnesin.

Now you and I know, do we not, that this means “as a memorial of me” or “as my recalling to the present”. Unfortunately, the translators decided to stick with “in memory of me” which doesn’t make the meaning anything like as clear.

It wasn’t our fault, was it? I wrote to Bishop O’Donoghue before the translation was approved, and he passed my letter on to the powers-that-be. They sent me a very nice letter back, patting me on the head, and saying “There, there. That’s very nice. Now go out and play.” Dozy puddings!

“In memory of me” suggests simply an act of thought—something happened in the past, and we bring it to mind. That is not what Our Lord meant: it is not what He said and did: it is not consistent with the Jewish concept of “memorial”. When the Jews keep Passover, as they still do year after year, they are not simply calling to mind something which happened centuries and indeed millennia ago. They are making the past present. They are travelling with their ancestors from slavery into freedom. They are keeping the same feast which their ancestors kept, and with the same purpose: that the blood of the slain lamb may liberate them as it liberated the Israelites of Moses’ day through the power of God.

As with the Jewish people, so with us. Jesus was a Jew, as we cannot state often enough, thoroughly steeped in the faith of His people. When He spoke those words, recalled for us tonight by St. Paul, “Do this as a memorial of me” He knew the significance of them. He was saying to the disciples “Make this event present. Do over and over again in the present what I am doing now.”

What was He doing? He was inserting Himself into the Passover narrative. He was stating, though the disciples wouldn’t have known this at the time, that He was the true Paschal Lamb who would be slain, and whose blood would liberate believers every time they celebrated the true Passover, which is the Eucharist, or Mass, eating His Body and drinking His Blood as His memorial, as the making present of the whole sequence of Supper—Death—Resurrection.

So that is what we do, year in, year out; week in, week out; day in, day out; as the Risen Christ makes the past into the present. But tonight we do something else as well. We recall the action of loving service which the Lord attached to His sacrifice, and about which John has told us.

To wash the feet of guests, those sandalled but otherwise bare feet which would have been coated with the dust of the roads, was the duty of the slave. Jesus whilst claiming the title of Lord and Master, takes on the slave’s role and insists that we must do the same; and He does it in the context of the Supper, of the Eucharist, as a sign that our Eucharist is complete only when we too humble ourselves in loving service.

Pope Francis underlined the starkness of this demand when he took this loving service out of the Vatican into a Young Offenders’ Institution where, instead of the traditional washing of the feet of priests, he instead washed the feet of a group of prisoners, including a young Muslim woman. In doing so, he ruffled some feathers among the liturgical purists who pointed out that the rubrics speak about “men” having their feet washed, but as the Son of Man is Master of the Sabbath, I daresay the Holy Father can claim to be master of the mandatum, as we call the foot-washing, particularly as he was bringing out, perhaps more clearly than ever before, the breadth of the implications of Jesus’ actions.

So tonight, as you watch me washing (presumably) clean feet, bear in mind what it means. If we are to enter fully into the saving sacrifice of Christ, instituted on this night by His remaking of Passover, we must take with us, at the end of every Mass, the willingness of the Saviour to assume the condition, and perform in  love the service, of a slave. If we are truly to proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes, we must take, eat, drink, and SERVE.

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday 2020

Acts 10:34, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9

Unless the old brain cells let me down, I will remember to my dying day my first Easter in the seminary. The Vigil was spectacular, all bells and whistles—well, maybe not whistles, but tubular bells, kettledrums, lights flashing on, purple drapes falling, music to die for, and a brief and succinct homily from the legendary Mgr. Laurence McReavy.

Easter Sunday morning Mass was memorable in a different way. The principal celebrant was Mgr. Philip Loftus, another iconic figure, who laboured under two handicaps, his voice and his face. The latter was that of a lugubrious bloodhound, whilst the former was the source of his nickname, Clank. With mournful face and beautifully imitable voice, he began his homily with the words “TO-DAY—IS A DAY—OF UNRESTRAIN-ED JOY.”

Despite the delivery, I agreed at the time with the sentiment. There was, and is, no doubt that Christ is risen, that He has conquered sin and death, that ultimately we have no more evil to fear. That was true then, and it is true today.

As the years have passed, however, I have become less sure about the exact terms which Mgr. Loftus used. Certainly it is a day of joy; indeed it marks a lifetime of joy, because the Resurrection has changed the world irrevocably and for ever.

Can, and should, however, our joy be unrestrained? Suffering, death, and evil still exist. Can our joy be unrestrained when millions of people lack basic necessities? when bombs are still falling in Syria? when Iraq still teeters on the brink? when the Holy Land continues to be a powder keg, with much of its population deprived of land and freedom? when refugees are pouring across the Mediterranean, facing misery and death, and causing grave difficulties for the countries in which the survivors land? when churches are being bombed and worshippers blown to pieces as happened last Easter in Sri Lanka? Can our joy be unrestrained when a pandemic is ravaging the world, killing people in their hundreds of thousands and bringing associated problems of financial hardship, and mental and social stress?

Even for the Easter disciples, joy was not unrestrained. The reaction of the first women at the tomb, as described by St. Mark, was terror: for Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John, as it appears from today’s Gospel, there was initial bewilderment.

The penny may have dropped for the Beloved Disciple, but that did not prevent the Eleven, later that day, from cowering in fear, or the Emmaus disciples from being whelmed in misery. Even when the risen Lord had appeared, there was still a degree of ambivalence, as we notice in the episode on the shore, around the charcoal fire of Peter’s denials and repentance.

So joy—yes: immense joy which cannot be destroyed even by suffering, and which will sustain us through our most difficult times, those times when we are called to return to the Garden of the Agony or the road to Calvary; joy which will remind us, in the darkest of days, that Gethsemane and Calvary are stages on the route to resurrection.

But unrestrained joy—I suspect not. That would be an insult to our own suffering, and to the suffering of the world. Let us indeed rejoice today, and let that joy take deep root within us, so that nothing can destroy it, but let it be inextricably linked with compassion. The Lord is risen indeed but, as we shall be reminded next week, He still bears the marks of His wounds.

Palm Sunday

The Longest Lent: some thoughts for Palm Sunday 2020

“The Longest Day” was the title given by Cornelius Ryan to his documentary book on the Normandy Landings of 1944. It was later used for a film based on the same events. In the early eighties, Bob Hoskins starred in a gangster film entitled “The Long Good Friday”. I would suggest that the present situation deserves the title of “The Longest Lent”.

At the beginning of Lent, pondering on Our Lord’s call to take up the Cross, I suggested that, whatever penances we undertake as our way of sharing in the Cross, we will find that we have to carry a Cross not of our choosing, and that it is in the bearing of this Cross that we shall come closest to Jesus the Christ. Neither I nor, I suspect, anyone else, had any inkling at the time that this Lent would bring a Cross for the whole world; one which will almost certainly outlast the current Lenten season.

In terms of the liturgy, Lent will soon draw to a close. Easter will come, perhaps the strangest Easter in history. All over the world, priests will carry out some form of the Holy Week ceremonies without the presence of a congregation. Even the Pope will celebrate in an empty St. Peter’s Basilica and Square. This situation is unprecedented. Even in wartime, public worship continued: it is as if the entire world finds itself in the position of an underground Church.

Easter will arrive, but it will not interrupt the Lent, indeed the Passiontide, which the world is suffering. Or will it? Perhaps that is up to us. Even in this time of pain and darkness, we need to recall that Christ is risen, that suffering is temporary, that life has conquered, and will conquer, death. Our celebration of Easter will be more sombre than usual, but it will be genuine nonetheless as we are reminded once more that Christ has overcome all that is evil; that, whilst it is true that, “in the midst of life, we are in death”, it is even more true that, “in the midst of death, we are in life”. The Paschal Candle may be a solitary light this year, but it will burn, piercing the darkness, signalling to the world that the last word is not “death” but “victory”.

As the world continues its longest Lent, the light of Easter will burn in the hearts and lives of Christians, shining out for that world, and for all who suffer. Yet we must not be blasé: we must be conscious of the deep suffering all around us. It is all very well to speak of the opportunities for reflection and spiritual renewal, provided we do not forget the plight of families cooped up with children, wondering how they are to put food on the table. It is fine to consider the healing of the planet, less troubled for a time by the ravages of human industry and travel, but it would be unbearably smug to ignore the plight of those for whom this fallow time brings unemployment and loss of livelihood. Whilst the north of Italy is ravaged by the virus, in the south of that country the greater fear is of starvation, as money can neither be earned nor withdrawn from the closed banks, and the purchase of food becomes increasingly difficult.

All of us must take our share by prayer, by giving, by compassion, and by any practical means available, in the Passiontide of the world, but we must do so in the context of the suffering and death of the Lord—and of His resurrection!

5th Sunday Lent

5th Sunday of Lent 2020

Ezekiel 37:12-14; Romans 8:8-11; John 11:1-45

I recall being summoned some years ago to a death bed. Shortly after my arrival and my administering of the Sacrament of the Sick, the lady died peacefully, surrounded by her family, and I began the prayers for the dead, which included part of today’s Gospel. When I read Jesus’ words to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. If anyone believes in me, even though they die, they shall live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die—do you believe this?”, the whole family shouted “YES!”

Faith in the resurrection, faith in Jesus as the resurrection; this is the heart of today’s readings. During the exile of the Jewish people to Babylon, God’s promise to Ezekiel entailed a metaphorical raising of the dead from their graves. The exile was a form of living death: it was from this that the Lord promised to raise them, restoring them to the land of Israel. In and through Jesus, the metaphor became reality as He literally raised Lazarus from the dead, as the foretaste, sign, and promise of His own resurrection, in which we shall share in the fullness of time.

For the author of the Fourth Gospel, all the miracles are signs, and the raising of Lazarus is no exception. It was not the equivalent of Jesus’ resurrection—Lazarus would die again—but it was a sign that Our Lord’s resurrection would happen, not for Himself only, but for us.

Notice who it is who provokes Jesus’s words about resurrection. It is Martha, the bustling, hustling sister who, along with her sister Mary, displays the same characteristics as on the occasion of Our Lord’s visit to their house, as described by St. Luke. On that occasion, Martha was gently rebuked for her excessive busyness: it is Mary who has chosen the better part by listening to the Lord. This time it seems fair to say that the more active sister has chosen the better part. She is the one who engages with Jesus, who draws out His prophetic words about resurrection, and who professes her faith: both reflection and action have their appropriate time and place.

Something else emerges from this account: namely, the humanity of Jesus. Edakrusen ho Iesous—Jesus wept—is said to be the shortest sentence in the New Testament. I do not know whether that is so, but certainly those words, and those which surround them and which speak of His distress and heartfelt sighs, demonstrate the depth of His compassion and His capacity for grief.

Why was He so distressed? He has already indicated what He plans to do. If He knows that He is about to raise Lazarus to life, why is He now so moved by the grief of the sisters?

As Pascal wrote, “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know” and he goes on to say “God felt by the heart, not by the reason.” Again, it is the deep humanity of Jesus which is displayed here: even the Son of God could be overwhelmed by emotions which defied strict logic.

Once He has spoken to both sisters, Jesus proceeds to the tomb, and after a prayer to His Father he calls to the dead man: “Lazarus, come out!” It is striking that when Lazarus emerges from the tomb, he is still bound by the grave cloths; he still needs to hear Jesus’ command “Unbind him. Let him go free.” He needs the help of others to liberate him completely.

This is in sharp contrast to Jesus’ own resurrection, when Jesus freed Himself from both grave cloths and tomb, something which Lazarus was unable to accomplish. (Incidentally, Our Lord even left the grave cloths folded—clearly His mother had brought Him up well.) As an exercise in imaginative prayer, you might like to put yourself in the place of Lazarus, entombed in the dark, hearing the Lord’s voice calling you “-------- come out!”

As you emerge, you hear His second command “Unbind him/her. Let him/her go free” and as you feel helping hands stripping away those things which still hold you captive, you might reflect on what those things may be. Let them be taken from you, as you progress further along the road to sharing in the resurrection and the life which is Jesus, the risen Lord.

Laetare Sunday

4th Sunday of Lent 2020

1 Sam 16:1, 6-7, 10-13; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

“There are none so blind as those who will not see.” I am sure that you are familiar with that saying. You may even have used it about those who seem to be wilfully blind. But have you ever applied it to yourself?

Are there things that you or I are unwilling to see? When you or I are criticising other people, do we ever ask ourselves whether we have the same faults? And if we do ask ourselves, do we truly look into our hearts to see if those faults are there? And if we don’t see them, is that because they are genuinely not there, or because we are blind to them?

Even if we really don’t have those faults, shouldn’t we see that we are breaking Our Lord’s command “Do not judge”? If we saw clearly the meaning of that commandment, would it not rule out all but the most constructive criticism? And, hand on heart, how much of our criticism can we honestly say is constructive?

There is another issue. We claim to be clear-sighted about all that is wrong with the world, with the Church, and with other people. Does that blind us to what is good? If you are familiar with the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis, you may remember the dwarves. They are constantly negative in their outlook, criticising everything, until they literally create Hell for themselves, because they make themselves incapable of seeing anything good.

Thus, they are treated to a lavish banquet, but so negative have they become that all they can taste is straw. They are standing on a sunlit expanse of grass and trees, yet they are convinced that they are trapped in a gloomy prison. If we constantly see the bad in everything, then eventually we shall lose the ability to see the good, and everything will indeed become bad for us.

Do we see the presence of God in our lives, or are we blind to it? Do we recognise the generosity of God in the daily sunrise? Do we see His presence in the people whom we encounter in the daily round? Do we understand that our difficult times are a sharing in the redemptive sufferings of His Son? that our moments of joy are a foretaste of the resurrection? Does it occur to us that , when we set aside times for prayer, God is there before us, already present in the moment, however much we may become distracted, however difficult we may consider prayer to be?

Our First Reading tells us that “the Spirit of the Lord seized upon David and stayed with him from that day on.” Can we see, do we consider, that the Spirit of the Lord has seized on us through our baptism and confirmation? that this Spirit stays constantly with us? Like David, we may act in a way contrary to the Spirit, as he did when he committed adultery with Bathsheba and caused the death of Uriah: even then, the Spirit did not abandon him, but gave him the means and the gift of contrition and repentance. We too need, in every circumstance, to be alert, with the eyes of our mind open to the presence of the Holy Spirit, calling us to repentance.

The blind man of the Gospel not only recovers his physical sight: by degrees he also develops an increasing understanding of Jesus, the source and giver of life and light. Hence he is able to give his gloriously cheeky responses to the Pharisees: “Why do you want to hear it all again? Do you want to become His disciples too?” and “Now here is an astonishing thing! He has opened my eyes and you do not know where He comes from” after which he proceeds to give them a lecture in theology. Finally, he comes to worship Jesus.

What about us? Do we ask and allow Jesus to reveal to us our blindness and to cure it? Do we open ourselves to recognise His goodness, His presence, and the beauty of all His gifts? Do we open our eyes, so that He can bring us to an ever deeper, ever fuller understanding of Him, and of His call to us?

3rd Sunday Lent

3rd Sunday of Lent 2020

Exodus 17:3-7; Romans 5:1-2, 5-8; John 4:5-42.

Living water, light and vision, resurrection; these are the themes of the next three Sundays. It isn’t easy for us in the Western world to grasp the literally vital significance of water. Indeed, at the moment, we are likely to be slightly cynical about water. We have seen too much of it in recent weeks. It has inundated the fields, made the roads impassable and, in some parts of the country, flooded people’s houses. Consequently, we may struggle to enter the mindset of people for whom, even today, water is a rare and precious commodity sometimes obtained only through a back-breaking trek to and from a well perhaps miles away.

The Israelites in the wilderness were, we are told, “tormented by thirst”. You and I will have been thirsty at times, but can we honestly claim to have been tormented by thirst? To such people as the tongue-cracked, gaspingly thirsty, the promise which Jesus makes, of springs of living water, must have seemed like paradise.

Notice to whom He makes this promise. It is to a woman, a Samaritan woman, a Samaritan woman of ill-repute. There are three grounds there for excluding Jesus from speaking to this person at all, let alone entrusting her with one of His most significant promises.

Firstly, she was a woman. In first century Palestine, as in the Muslim world today, men did not speak to unknown women. Secondly, she was a Samaritan, a heretic, someone who had broken away from the true faith, who actively repudiated aspects of it. It is as if the Lord was speaking to one of the followers of Archbishop Lefebvre, who, you may recall, rejected many of the Church’s teachings embodied in the Second Vatican Council, and effectively set up a rival Church whilst claiming it to be the true Church.

Thirdly, the woman was a public sinner. It is conceivable, I suppose, that she was particularly unfortunate in her choice of husbands, and that all five of them died, leaving her free to marry again; in fact, though, she hasn’t married again, but is living with someone who is not her husband. Presumably that is why she is compelled to come to the well alone, at the hottest time of the day, the sixth hour being noon: the other women have ostracised her, probably suspicious of someone who may have designs on THEIR husbands.

So there is every reason, social, religious, and moral, why Jesus should steer clear of this woman, a  sort of schismatic Christine Keeler or Mandy Rice-Davies, God rest both of them. Yet not only does He engage her in slightly racy conversation, He reveals to her His identity, with one of the “I am” sayings which express His self-identification with the God of the burning bush, as He declares Himself to be the Messiah; and He expounds to her one of the most important themes of His teaching, namely the presence of the Holy Spirit as a spring of living and life-giving water, welling up in the heart of the believer.

Why does Jesus do this? Is He expressing His frustration at the hard-heartedness or, at best, indifference of the chosen, Jewish people? Is He reminding us, in a very practical way, not only of His concern for outsiders and sinners, but of the startling truth that such people may be closer to the Kingdom of God than we are, though we are members of the new chosen people? There is much to ponder there, along with the richness of the promise of living water, the Holy Spirit who has come to dwell within us and who, if we are responsive, will quench our spiritual thirst as we make our own way through the desert of Lent and of life.

2nd Sunday Lent

2nd Sunday of Lent 2020

Genesis 12:1-4a; 2Tim 1:8-10; Matt 17:1-9

Have you ever experienced a moment of sheer joy, a moment which you wanted to last for ever? Have you felt in that moment that it was good to be alive, that you were truly happy, that you could accomplish anything, that everything had been transformed? I hope that you have. Indeed I hope that you have experienced many such moments.

They do not happen every day. They may not occur every month, or even every year. There is no way of predicting them: indeed, their unexpectedness, their suddenness, is part of the joy. I can remember such days from childhood, usually on a Wednesday afternoon or early evening, when our shop was shut, and we would go for a long walk along the riverbank or the canal, before returning home by bus. I can remember them from student days and from adult life. Take a moment now to remember some of your own such days, to wallow in the memory, to thank God for them.

You know the problem with such moments, don’t you? They don’t last. However much we may wish to cling onto them, to pitch our tent in them, they will fade. Please God they will leave an afterglow which will sustain us during the times when life feels less rosy, when we experience the wilderness, rather than the mountain of Transfiguration.

Because that is what we are really thinking of, isn’t it? We are experiencing God-given Transfiguration moments, sharing some of the joy, and the ecstasy, and the awe of Peter, James, and John, as they saw Jesus transformed before their eyes, and realised, however dimly, that they were receiving a precious gift from God; that God was indeed very close to them.

They too want to seize the moment, to “pluck the day” as the Roman poet Horace expressed it with his famous aphorism carpe diem. They wish to fix that moment forever, to make their present experience permanent.

“It is wonderful for us to be here,” exclaims Peter, before volunteering to make three tents, the underlying thought being “so that we can stay here forever”. The moment was to become more wonderful yet. Not only were they to be in the presence of their transfigured Lord, and of Moses and Elijah, the representatives of the Law and the Prophets, but they were to be enveloped by the cloud, the shekinah , in which God made Himself present to the Israelites in the wilderness, and to hear the voice of the Father witnessing to the Son. Even our most awesome moments cannot match that. No wonder they wanted to stay.

Yet even for them the moment had to pass. Like us, the three disciples had to leave the mountaintop and head back to the valley of everyday life. Their closeness to Jesus was soon to take them to a much darker place, for they were the three chosen to accompany Our Lord into the Garden of Gethsemane, where the Transfiguration was replaced by the Agony, and they were to hear, not the Father commending the Son, but the Son praying in anguish to the Father.

Did they then recall their time on Mount Tabor, which, we can say, was given to them to prepare them for this starkly different event? If they did, the contrast seems to have unnerved rather than strengthened them, for they took refuge in sleep.

What about us? We too have to leave those moments of joy, which we can regard as our Mt. Tabor moments, and return to the valley of everyday. Sometimes, we will find ourselves in the wilderness; at times, we will enter the Garden of the Agony. Will the recollection of the joyful experiences sustain us then?

We have one advantage over Peter, James, and John. We know, as they couldn’t, that the Passion of Our Lord was the prelude to His Resurrection, of which the Transfiguration was a foretaste. That realisation will not banish the confusion of the wilderness, or the anguish of Gethsemane, but it should enable us to bear them better, knowing that our own Transfiguration times are a tiny reflection of the fullness of joy to come.

1st Sunday of Lent

1st Sunday of Lent 2020

Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matt 4: 1-11

Where are you? Are you in the wilderness? It is not a pleasant place to be. I suspect that everybody spends some time in the wilderness at least once in their lives. That is the time when you lose your sense of direction, when things go wrong, when fixed points no longer seem stable, when perhaps the black dog of depression is prowling, barking, biting.

That is a wilderness which we do not enter voluntarily. We are driven there, and we long for rescue. Yet sometimes it is the case that, rather than being driven there by the forces of darkness, we are actually, like Jesus, led by the Holy Spirit. If we cling on, however feebly, in faith and hope, perhaps we will realise that we are not alone; that the Spirit of Jesus is in the wilderness with us; that the times of loss and emptiness will prove to be times of growth and renewal; that, as Isaiah prophesied, the wilderness will bloom.

Lent is a slightly different aspect of the same experience. In Lent we do enter the wilderness voluntarily, as we ask the Holy Spirit to lead us in the footsteps of Jesus. We undertake penance to loosen our dependence, at least for a time, on some of the elements of everyday; to sharpen our awareness of the presence of the Holy Spirit, and of the call of the Son of God.  We pray, we practise self-denial, we give of what we have, to remind ourselves that we do not live on bread alone, but that the true giver of life is very close to us in our apparent emptiness.

Sometimes the voluntary and the involuntary wilderness times coincide. My most difficult Lent came 25 years ago, when a heavy bout of clinical depression compelled me, under medical direction, to leave my parish on the Wednesday of the second week of Lent and to spend time in a nursing home. To add to my sense of wilderness disorientation, the principal celebrant at Mass the following Sunday focused his homily on one sentence from the Gospel: “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.” Yippee! Just what I needed to help me feel better—or perhaps not.

That wilderness time passed, and I recall another Lent, ten years earlier, when the wilderness did indeed blossom for me. I was based at St. Mary’s Morecambe at the time, as well as being chaplain at Our Lady’s. That Lent, everything came together at once to provide a deep experience of joy in the Lord.

There was an excellent Castlerigg course with the Lower Sixth, a Caring Church Week which brought four hundred pupils voluntarily to Mass every day, and a fund raising effort for charity which raised huge sums, not least through a sponsored run along the riverside to Halton. I remember, a few days after the latter, acting as marker for the school cross country, and as I stood near Greyhound Bridge, I recall thinking how good it was to be alive.

Good times and bad come and go throughout our lives, but through them all the Lord is with us. When we make our Lenten journey with the Lord, He may share with us His suffering, or His joys, or both, but we can guarantee that, if we are faithful, He will make us better for the experience.

As we share His journey, will we also share His temptations? I shall be surprised if we don’t. The tempter who was in the garden for the first Adam, was also in the wilderness for the Second Adam, Jesus the second founder of the human race. We can be almost certain that the tempter will lie in wait in our wilderness. We too may be tempted to turn stones into bread, by giving up the journey with Christ in order to satisfy our own wishes, our own way, even our own compulsions. We may be tempted to leap from the Temple pinnacle, not so much to put God to the test, but in despair, unable to accept and to realise that God is with us and that He will bring us out of the wilderness. We may be tempted to rule the kingdoms of the world, or at least to lord it over people in our own petty kingdom, the circles in which we move.

Temptations there will be, difficulties there may be, but if we are faithful we will emerge from the wilderness ready to enter with the Lord into Holy Week and to find deep joy in the Resurrection.

7th Sunday

7th Sunday in OT 2020

Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18; 1Cor 3:16-23; Matt 5:38-48.

Are you holy?

 “No!” I hear you cry. “Am I heck!” I beg your pardon, but you are. Weren’t you listening to St. Paul when he said “Didn’t you realise that you were God’s Temple, and that the Spirit of God was living...” well, where exactly?

The Jerusalem Bible says “among you”. That is a possible translation, but a more obvious one would be “in you”. The original Greek is en humin which can be translated “among you” but “in you” would be the more usual way of expressing it.

Either way, St. Paul is stating very clearly that you and I are holy. He goes on to emphasise the point: “The Temple of God is hagios”—the Jerusalem Bible says “sacred” but we could equally well say “holy”—“and you are that Temple”.

So Paul leaves us in no doubt. He tells us twice that we are God’s Temple. How can that be? Remember that Jesus is the true Temple, replacing the Jerusalem Temple: we are the Body of Jesus, as the Church. Therefore, we are the Temple. So by definition, we are holy.

What is it in particular which makes the Temple holy? It is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So as the Body of Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we couldn’t be much holier, not because of anything that we have done, but simply by the actions of the Holy Trinity.

Perhaps when you go home today, or to your room, you should look in the mirror, and say to yourself “That person at whom I am looking, who is looking at me, who is me, is holy: that person is the Temple of God, and the Holy Spirit lives in him/her”. Convince yourself that it is true, and then look at the people around you, and realise that they too are holy, because they are your neighbour and you are commanded to love them “as yourself”—in other words, as being you.

Right then, we have established that you are holy, but are you perfect? “No!” you say again, All right, I will grant you that one. Why are you not perfect? Because “perfect” comes from the Latin “perfectus” meaning “thoroughly made”, “complete”, and none of us will be complete this side of eternity. We are working our way towards it: in this life, perfection is a process, not a state. Remember that the Letter to the Hebrews states that Jesus was made perfect through suffering. Even the Son of God was incomplete until He had shared and surpassed human suffering.

Yet that same Son of God tells us to be perfect, so we have to work at the process of becoming complete. How do we do that? Two messages seem to stand out from the Gospel: to love our enemies, and to be constantly willing to give.

“That’s all right” you may say. “I don’t have any enemies”—or you may have. But is there anyone who really winds you up, makes you angry, so that you find yourself shouting at the telly, for instance? I tend to become furiously angry when people attack the Church, either from without, or from within. Are these the people whom I must make a special effort to love? As a first step, I make myself pray for anybody with whom I have become especially cross; but I have still a long way to go.

As for the giving and the non-resistance, I think of how priests in parishes are driven up the wall by the stream of people who come to the door with endless cock-and-bull stories as an attempt to obtain money. When I was in Morecambe, I called at the vicarage of the local Anglican church, which was about half a mile further into the notorious West End than was my own church, and the vicar’s wife burst into tears as she described how such people were driving her to the edge.

How do we respond to the habitual doorbell ringers and tale spinners? We have to muster as much patience as we can, whilst recognising our own needs and limitations. The story is told of a holy and generous parish priest who, during the Toxteth riots of 1981, was constantly on the front line, counselling people, mediating between opposing parties. One night, some rioters broke into his home and threatened him, and he was subsequently seen chasing them down the street, belabouring them with his walking stick, and shouting “Get out of here, you people of questionable parentage!” Even saints have their limits.

6th Sunday

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2020

Ecclesiasticus 15:15-20; 1Cor 2:6-10; Matt 5: 17-37

Jesus came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets—in other words, the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament—but to fulfil them. The Law, the Scriptures, were now embodied in Him. The Law was no longer a written code, but a human being, a human being who was also God, with all the authority of God, the giver of the Law, and all the humanity of those to whom the Law was given.

In Jesus, the Law took flesh, in a man who could weep, who was moved in His guts with compassion in the face of human suffering, who could say that “the Sabbath was made for human beings, not human beings for the Sabbath” but who had the divine authority to declare that “the Son of Man is master of the Sabbath”.

He could make the point, with all the authority of the Lawgiver, that the Law, like all God’s gifts, is a means to an end, not an end in itself. This was the mistake made by the Scribes and Pharisees, who saw the written word of the Law as the be-all-and-end-all, and who would tolerate no deviation from that word, even in the interests of human well-being.

That is why they were horrified by works of healing done on the Sabbath, by compassion shown to outsiders, by Jesus’ demonstration by word and action that the Law existed to bring human beings closer to God, not to shut them out from God’s presence.

There are many Scribes and Pharisees today, who see the rules as all important. We find them among the extreme Sabbatarians, who would padlock playgrounds on a Sunday, forbidding anything which savoured of frivolity or enjoyment. We find them too within the Church, in the likes of Cardinal Burke and his followers, chiefly in the United States, but also in smaller numbers and generally less extreme form in this country, who bitterly oppose all the present Pope’s attempts to make the Church more Christ-like, and who insist instead on a rigid adherence to rules and regulations.

Rules are important—without them we have anarchy and chaos—but they must always be directed towards the love and service of God, to freeing people rather than imprisoning them.

Strangely, as Our Lord goes on to point out, the approach to Law which He embodies, actually makes greater demands on us than mere adherence to the letter. Love is actually more exacting than the Law. Thus, as Jesus goes on to state, it is not enough to comply with the rules against murder, adultery, or oath-breaking; love impels us to go much further by avoiding anger, contempt, lust, misogyny, and frivolous swearing, being by contrast loving and respectful in all our dealings with others. Instead of asking ourselves “What must I avoid doing?” which implies the subtext “How far can I go?” or “What can I get away with?” we should be asking “What is the Christ-like thing which I should do?”

One example may illustrate how mere rule-keeping can defeat its object. It used to be laid down that, in order to fulfil the obligation to attend Mass, people had to be present for the offertory, the consecration, and the priest’s communion. This was intended to indicate the bare minimum, yet a considerable number of people took it as a yardstick, arriving just before what we now call the Preparation of the Gifts, and walking straight out of the church after receiving communion.

Thirty years ago, in my then parish, the other priest of the parish was celebrating Sunday evening Mass. I had to run an errand, but timed my return to be able to greet the people as they left at the end of Mass. As I approached the church, I saw people pouring out. I was shocked, assuming that I had mistimed things, and that Mass was over. In fact, it was communion time, and people were leaving because they had “fulfilled the obligation”. I struggled to see where the love of God was in that.

Jesus embodies the Law. He is a loving and generous God, and He reminds us by His words and by His life that our attitude to Law and to rules in general must be motivated by love of God, and must lead us to Him.

5th Sunday

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2020

Isaiah 58:7-10; 1Cor 2:1-5; Matt 5:13-16

This week’s readings follow neatly from last Sunday’s feast of the Presentation of the Lord, of Candlemas. Then, if you recall, the infant Jesus was proclaimed by Simeon to be “a light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of [God’s] people Israel”: effectively, as the light of the world. Today, the adult Jesus tells His disciples, who include us, that they are the light of the world.

Notice that Jesus doesn’t say “You ARE TO BE the light of the world,” He says “You ARE the light of the world”. Whether we like it or not, the world sees us here and now, looks at us, and expects something from us, both as individuals and as the Church. And, let us add, as often as not it is looking for us to mess up, to get things wrong, to say or do things on which it can pounce.

We are, as the Church, the city built on a hilltop. Nothing that we do goes unnoticed. And to be fair to ourselves, the Church has always striven to be a light to the world, to cause the world to give glory to God; though, of course, it hasn’t always succeeded.

Isaiah spells out how we are to be the light. “Share your bread with the hungry and shelter the homeless poor. Clothe the man you see to be naked, and do not turn from your own kin. Then will your light shine like the dawn, and your wound be quickly healed over.”

These words of the prophet were echoed by Our Lord, and made strictly personal in His parable of the Last Judgement: “I was hungry, and you gave me food.....”. Let’s abandon the cynicism to which our age is prone, and state clearly that, for centuries, the Church was the main, if not the only, provider of practical care for the needy, of healthcare, of education, of provision for orphans and for unmarried mothers. Of course it made mistakes, sometimes treating these mothers harshly by today’s standards, sometimes compelling them to have their children adopted, in the belief that this was in the best interests of the child—but who else was doing anything to [FK1] help?

And if the state has now taken over many of the Church’s functions in these areas, it has built upon foundations laid by the Church. That is illustrated vividly in the health service, where the nurse in charge of a ward is still known as a sister, as a reminder tht her predecessors were nuns.

Yet we cannot and must not rest on our laurels, otherwise we will become that tasteless salt which can only be discarded and disregarded. There are, perhaps, more people than ever in need of care of one kind or another—or perhaps it is simply that we are more aware of them. There are hungry people, homeless people, people who are stressed and distressed in this country and throughout the world; people who need our light, both as individuals and as the Church; people who need us to bring them the light of Christ in many different ways.

To our other responsibilities in this area has been added one of which the prophets were blissfully unaware. I remember studying science as a subsidiary subject in Sixth Form in the mid-60s, and being introduced to two words which none of us had heard before, and which had to be carefully explained. These words were “environment” and “ecology”. Who would have thought, fifty years ago, that the contents of our dustbins might be a moral issue, might relate to our life in Christ? Yet as Benedict XVI declared, and as Francis has reiterated, particularly in his encyclical Laudato si, care for the environment relates very firmly to the Gospel.

There can, of course, be overkill. Twice, in the current series of Dr. Who, I have been irritated by preachy environmental messages. I watch Dr. Who for good escapist hokum, not for sermons, but the prevalence of the latter does at least remind us of the urgency of the problem.

We are the light of the world: we are the city built on a hilltop. Today, no less than in the past, we must lead the world in serving Christ in our neighbour, and now in protecting the world in which we and that neighbour live.

Presentation 2nd February

Presentation of the Lord 2020

Malachi 3:1-4; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40

What is happening here? What are we celebrating today? At one level, we are observing the activity of a pious Jewish couple, observing the Law by presenting and offering their new born, first born son to the Lord. That in itself is significant. This child has come to fulfil the Law, to become in His own person the new Law, so it is appropriate that He should begin His earthly life in conformity to the Law.

There is another factor. Jesus, who is God the Son from all eternity, is having His humanity dedicated to the Father. Both as God and as man He is totally committed to the Father’s will.

Yet Jesus, Son of God and Son of man, is not only a child. He is also the Lord and in being brought to the Temple He is fulfilling Malachi’s prophecy: “the Lord whom you are seeking will suddenly enter His Temple, and the angel of the covenant for whom you are longing, yes, He is coming, says the Lord of hosts.”

Jesus is the Lord whom the people are seeking: He is the angel, the messenger, of the covenant—of the new covenant which was to be sealed in His blood. This is not simply a child being presented to God: it is the Lord taking possession of His Temple, as He was to take possession of it again at the end of His life, when He cleansed it, preached in it, and announced by word and action that the time of the Temple had passed; that from then onwards He Himself IS the Temple, and that the Temple sacrifices are now fulfilled by the offering once and for all of His body; an offering made present for us every time the Mass is celebrated.

So this is an important feast for us, as it indicates that the time of true worship is to be inaugurated, as the Temple is changed from a building of stone to the living body of Jesus, a body which we worship, and receive, and are.

The Letter to the Hebrews pushes our understanding further. Jesus is not only the Temple, not only the sacrifice; He is also the priest who, as the writer of this letter says elsewhere, has entered the Holy of Holies, taking His own blood. Thus when we celebrate the Mass, it is Jesus the High Priest who makes for us and in us the sacrifice of Himself.

Lest we should be in any doubt that all of this involves us, Simeon’s prayer, the Nunc Dimittis, underlines it when he speaks of the infant whom he is holding as “a light to enlighten the pagans and the glory of your people Israel.” We are the pagans, the Gentiles, the non-Jews. Jesus has come both to be a light for us, and to complete God’s self-gift to the Jews. Hence, as St. Paul writes to the Romans, as the Second Vatican Council teaches, and as Pope Benedict XVI underlined in Volume 2 of his seminal work Jesus of Nazareth, God will bring the Jewish people into the Kingdom in His own way and His own time: meanwhile, we too are brought into that Kingdom.

Simeon is spelling out what was shown in action by the visit of the wise men to the stable: that the coming of Jesus as it were extends the franchise, opening salvation to the nations of the world. To these nations Jesus is a light, which explains our blessing of candles on this day; but we should remember that, as an adult, this same Jesus told His disciples, who again include us: “YOU are the light of the world.” Jesus is the light of the world to make us also the light of the world. These candles which we bless today impress upon us our responsibility to, as the Lord expressed it, “so let [our] light shine before men and women that, seeing [our] good works, they may give the glory to the Father in heaven.”

This then is an important feast, not only in itself, but also for us. It marks the fulfilment of prophecy, the entry of the Lord into His Temple, foreshadowing the replacement of that Temple by His body, the body which we are and which He, the eternal High Priest, offers to His Father in the Mass; whilst reminding us also of our responsibility to be, in Jesus, a light to the world, drawing others to Him by the light cast by our lives.