Christmas Day Mass

Christmas Day Mass 2020

Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1: 1-18

Where’s the baby in the manger then? I don’t mean in the chapel: I am not that short-sighted or bog-eyed. I mean in the Mass readings. It is interesting that, each year at the Day Mass, the Church reads from one of the two Gospels (the other being Mark) which doesn’t have an Infancy Narrative.

Or does it? Well, yes, there is a hint of one when John says “the Word became flesh”, but there is no description—no angels, shepherds, or wise men. John takes them as read. Instead, he gives us what might be described as a pre-Infancy Narrative, or even a packaged history, setting the Bethlehem event very much in the context of Salvation History, and indeed of World History.

If we had only Luke’s account to rely on, we would have recognised the Nativity as the fulfilment of God’s promises to the Jewish people, the birth of the Messiah who would reconcile them to God. Matthew would then take us a step further, pointing out, through the visit of the Wise Men, that this birth, this gift of salvation, was intended for the whole world, for Gentiles as well as Jews. John though, expands our vision through all of time and space by taking us back before Creation began, declaring that the Christmas event was the fulfilment of God’s eternal plan, the entry of God Himself into time, the entry into our world of the Word who is God from all eternity, and to all eternity, the transformation and fulfilment of reality.

Long before the science fiction writers had imagined worlds beyond worlds, and long before the scientists had explored many of the truths of time and space—millennia indeed before Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins—John the Evangelist had expounded it all in this, the prelude to the Fourth Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...and the Word became flesh.”

In this short passage is the meaning of “life, the universe, and everything” to quote Douglas Adams, and the answer is not 42, but God the Son become man, the eternal Word born before creation and taking flesh as the man Jesus, announced by John the Baptist, and born of the Virgin. This Word comes from and within eternity into the world of time, a world which, says St. John, “had its being through Him”.

Here we have the source of light and life, the origin of all that exists. In eighteen verses, John gives us a complete cosmogony and cosmology, and at the same time keeps us rooted in earth, because this same source of Creation Himself came to be a creature of earth.

John will go on to describe, with his own particular insights, the events of the life of the Word-made-flesh, culminating in His suffering, death, and resurrection, but the meaning of it all he has already expounded here in his Prologue. Interestingly, at this point, he doesn’t mention Jesus by name; the only name to be found here is that of John the witness. At this stage, he is more interested in the meaning behind the events, in the descent of eternity into time, of God into His creation, in the true identity, as the co-eternal Word, of the one whom he will go on to name as the man Jesus.

For now, we have the setting in context of the Bethlehem event, bringing us to ponder and, to the best of our ability, to understand, what is conveyed to us by Luke and Matthew in their words, and by that which the crib presents to our sight. Let us consider that, to sight, this morning’s Gospel adds insight.

Christmas Midnight Mass

Christmas Midnight Mass 2020

Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14

Isn’t this the strangest Midnight Mass ever? Over the years, I have attended and celebrated Midnight Mass in many different settings, firstly in my home parish as a lad and a young man, and then, after ordination, in locations near and far, in buildings grand or makeshift, in parishes urban and rural.

For two of the first three Christmases after ordination, I drove for miles to Overton, at the mouth of the Lune, finally crossing a cattle grid and celebrating Mass in a wooden hut, where the crib was constructed out of bales of hay from the farm next door. I have offered an early Mass at St. Thomas More’s, on the Marsh, in the shadow of the long derelict Williamson’s lino works, before returning to the splendour of Lancaster Cathedral , with the Bishop presiding over a magnificent liturgy with a choir to die for, and servers at the peak of their form.

Yet never have I, or you, welcomed the Christ child with a masked congregation, socially distanced, forbidden to sing—or even to exchange the customary greetings—before returning home for what will be, for some, a solitary day, or at least a day with fewer people gathered than usual, where some will be anxious or grieving over sick or deceased relatives.

Please God, this situation will pass before too long, and will not be repeated, but perhaps it may encourage us to think about, and to pray for, those many people throughout the world whose Christmas will be even starker and more difficult than ours.

There are the many who are persecuted, and who are rarely, if ever, able to practise their faith openly. There are others who live under tyrannical regimes, or in abusive situations closer to home. There are refugees huddled in camps or detention centres; the hungry, the homeless, the sick, the bereaved, prisoners (including many who are unjustly imprisoned), those in care homes, and those whose work keeps them from home. Let us remember too those millions to whom the birth of the Saviour conveys no meaning.

The first Christmas was a fairly bleak and lonely affair, celebrated by a husband and wife, with a newborn child, a handful of strangers, and the odd farm animal, yet it was an event which has changed history and reverberated though the millennia. May our celebration of this most unusual Christmas, which at least demonstrates our faithfulness, play its own part in the redemption and renewal of the world; and may the joy of Christmas transform your hearts and the heart of that same world.

Advent week 4

4th Sunday of Advent 2020

2 Sam 7: 1-5, 8-11, 16; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1: 26-38

“And the angel left her.” Well, he would, wouldn’t he? That’s angels for you: they are a bit like double glazing salesmen, waiting for you to sign on the dotted line, then clearing off, leaving you wondering “What was all that about? What have I just done, and why on earth did I do it?”

I do wonder how it was for Mary. Paintings often depict her as a courtly lady, standing at a writing desk or prie-dieu, discoursing sedately with the angel. There is nothing wrong with that as a representation of who she is for us, and what she has achieved for us, but it is far from being a literal depiction of what must have taken place.

Far from being a mature and stately lady, she would have been a teenager, presumably with all the mixed up emotions which the teenage years bring. She was sinless, but that doesn’t mean she was emotionless, spiritless, bloodless, lifeless, a paper doll or a plaster saint. If she had been those things, how could she have resembled us—and she was and is one of us, her Immaculate Conception and her Assumption fulfilling the destiny of human beings, not separating her from them?

How then would this person have reacted to such a visitor? “She was deeply disturbed” says St. Luke, presumably reporting what Mary herself told him: the Greek word is dietarachthe meaning deeply confused, confounded, bamboozled, thrown into confusion. “What the hang is going on?”

She is a young lass, and she is called kecharitomene--full of grace, highly favoured, totally gifted by God—and told that the Lord is with her. Did she become conscious of the presence of God at that moment? Surely she must have done, with a deep awareness, of which we can catch fleeting glimpses during our times of deep prayer. Yet God’s presence, though it may be consoling, is at the same time deeply disturbing, reminding us, as the German theologian Karl Rahner wrote, that God is more than simply one more thing among those with which we have to deal.

For Mary, God’s presence was, at that moment, all-encompassing, turning her world upside down, throwing her plans into disarray, changing her future irrevocably. Did she grasp the full implications of what was being asked of her? How could she? Yet she is aware that the whole course of her life is about to change. “How will this come about, since I do not have carnal knowledge of a man?” It seems that she realises, however faintly, that this will not involve Joseph, but...........what?

Why did she say “Yes”? Deep faith, complete trust in God, but not clarity of understanding—far more than any of us, she was going to have to journey in faith, to follow a dark road, to put her hand into the hand of God, a hand which she could not even feel. We celebrate the Annunciation as one of the Joyful Mysteries: at the time, I feel there would have been more mystery than joy for young Mary—you know the one: Joachim and Anne’s lass, to give them their traditional names.

What about them? Were they still around? Mary seems very independent, but if her mother was still alive, she would surely have confided in her. Was it St. Anne who suggested the trip to the hill country to visit Elizabeth?

“Go and see Aunty Betty, then you will know one way or the other. She will need some help if she really is pregnant, and Uncle Zach has lost his voice through some business in the Temple”—perhaps with the added thought that this would get the girl out of the way of any malicious gossip.

So Mary went, trusting, wondering, fearing, hoping; as we too travel through life, trusting, wondering, fearing, hoping.

“Mary, mother of Jesus, mother of us, OUR Lady because you are OURS, one of us, the best of us: you know better than any of us what it is to walk in faith. Please walk with us: hold us up when we stumble, encourage us when faith is weak, and lead us to an ever deeper love of your Son, the Son of the Most High, our Saviour and our Brother. Amen.”

Advent week 3

3rd Sunday of Advent 2020

Isaiah 61:1-2, 10-11; 1Thess 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

I have a friend who has a unique way of finding directions. He rules out the places he doesn’t want to go, and so, by excluding them, he is, in theory at least, left with his destination.

For instance, if he is travelling from Blackpool to Lancaster, he will see signs for Lytham and St. Anne’s and say to himself “I don’t want to go there”: consequently, he will find himself on the M55. As he approaches Preston, he will consider that he doesn’t wish to go to Preston or Birmingham, and so will head to the M6 northbound. At Junction 33, not wishing to continue to Barrow, Carlisle, or the Lakes, he will take the slip road which leads him to the A6 for Lancaster. I exaggerate to a certain extent, but he genuinely does work on the exclusion of negatives. I should perhaps add that he has a tendency to arrive late and rather breathless.

John the Baptist takes a similar approach when questioned about his identity. He establishes first that he is not the Messiah (the Christ) or Elijah or the unnamed prophet. What then are we left with? He is the fulfillment of Third Isaiah’s prophecy of the voice that cries in the wilderness, the forerunner who makes a straight highway for the Lord.

Once we have ruled out what John the Baptist is not, we can see more clearly what he is. He is, as we have already been told, a witness to speak for the light: he makes very clear what the Evangelist has already declared—that he is not the light, not the central figure in salvation history, but the one who points to that figure. He could have got away with making all sorts of exaggerated claims about himself, including Messiahship, but he is at pains to rule all of them out, to point to the one who is coming after him, and not to himself.

What about us? Clearly, we would claim to do the same, to point away from ourselves to Jesus, to direct people to Him, and yet…..Is there not in all of us a desire, sneaking or evident, for the limelight? We may hide under a cloak of modesty, but is that cloak at times a little threadbare?

I have known priests who sincerely believed that they were the right men to be bishops, and who were deeply miffed when they were passed over; or who actually became bishops, and who turned into Prince Bishops, drawing glory to themselves. Even those of us who are not that way inclined may want to be thought of as “good priests”, as the “go to” people in our particular role within the priesthood. There may be a temptation to want people to focus on us, rather than on the Lord. For the religious and the laity among you, transfer that notion as best you can to your own vocation in life, and ask whether any of that clings to you.

Perhaps the most important lesson tht John the Baptist teaches us is to remember who and what we are not. We are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet. We are not the light, but witnesses to the light, and we must never thrust our own light forward so as to obscure the true light, Jesus who is the Christ.

And yet, whilst we are not the Christ, there is a sense in which we are. “The least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than [John the Baptist]” said Jesus. Why? Because we are the Body of Christ, and what is said of Jesus the Christ by the prophet applies to us. In and through Christ, the spirit of the Lord has been given to us. We have been anointed to bring good news to the poor, and so on; to exult for joy in the Lord, to rejoice in our God.

The prophecies in the Book of Isaiah are to be fulfilled in us, because we have been baptised into Christ. They are to be fulfilled, though, not for our benefit, but for the glory of God. They are to draw people, not to us, but to the Christ who has anointed us. People may see us as signs on the way: they must never see us as the destination.

Advent week 2

2nd Sunday of Advent 2020

Isaiah 40: 1-5, 9-11; 2Peter 3: 8-14; Mark 1:1-8

Beautiful, beautiful First Reading. We could do much worse that spend time reflecting on it, and if I don’t have time to finish it, you can take it away and complete it for yourselves.

“’Console my people, console them’, says your God.” We all need consolation at times, and we need to be consolers. Sometimes we are called to console others without waiting to be consoled ourselves. God will console us in His own good time, and St. Francis de Sales urges us to “seek the God of consolations, rather than the consolations of God.”

Lord God, console us in our times of grief and darkness, but more importantly, help us to console others.

“Speak to the heart of Jerusalem.” Many people speak to our ears, some speak to our minds, but how many speak to our hearts? How many people penetrate below the surface, speak to us in the deepest part of our being, and how often do we achieve that for others? St. John Henry Newman had the motto “cor ad cor loquitur—heart speaks to heart”: Lord help us to be people of depth, who speak to the heart of others, and do you speak to our hearts, which lie open to you.

“Call to her that her time of service is ended, that her sin is atoned for.” How many people today are longing for the end of a time of suffering? Think of the people of Syria, or of Afghanistan, battered for years by long wars and brutal regimes. Think of Christians persecuted in Pakistan; North Korea; China; parts of West and East Africa and Mozambique, where terrorist gangs are active. Think of those for whom the pandemic is a long road of suffering; of people unjustly imprisoned; of the victims of abuse. Pray for them, that their time of service, of slavery, of suffering may be ended.

“A voice cries ’Prepare in the wilderness a way for the Lord.’” Where is the wilderness? Is it not everywhere that people wander and are lost, bewildered, unhappy, knowing nothing of God and of His love for them? Is it not, sometimes, our own hearts and minds, when we are in turmoil, confusion, depression?

How do we prepare a way for the Lord in these wildernesses? By opening our hearts to Him in prayer, we open a way into our own wilderness. By opening our hearts to our brothers and sisters, we prepare a way for Him to enter their lives. I saw a poster once which said “Smile at everyone you see today; it will drive them crazy”—or perhaps it will prepare a way for the Lord.

“Make a straight highway for our God across the desert.” Like the wilderness, the desert is a place of need. It is a place which needs gentle rain to fall upon it, but it is also a place where we can find God in solitude—or more accurately, we can open ourselves to His finding us. The highway which we are called to make is for God, not for ourselves. It involves clearing clutter from our lives; creating space through which God can come to us.

“Let every valley be filled in, every mountain and hill be laid low.” On this Sunday in 1986, I had to drive on a glorious autumn morning from Keswick to Windermere to celebrate Mass. As I drove, I was reflecting on this reading and thinking, “Not these hills, please Lord. They are far too beautiful.”

Yet there are other hills, the hills of our own lives, which are an obstacle to God. These are our ingrained sinful habits, our self-centredness, our impatience with others, our over-busyness, our lack of awareness of God’s presence and His call. These are the hills which we need to dynamite, the troughs and valleys which we need to fill in, so that God may reach us, and reach into us, and transform us.

That is enough for now. Read the rest, and ponder it, and let it speak to you of God, and of His love for you.

Advent week 1

1st Sunday of Advent 2020

Isaiah 63: 16-17, 64:1-8; 1 Cor 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37

“Oh, I could hide ‘neath the wings

of the bluebird as she sings,

six o’clock alarm would never ring”

But it does ring, for us no less than for Davy Jones and the rest of the Monkees more than half a century ago. Waking and rising may be an easier business now than in the days before central heating, those now departed days of frost patterns on the windows and ice cold lino underfoot, but it is still a shock to the system. I have to confess that I prefer to be awake and up before the deadly clangour of the alarm, in order to ease the shock, but a shock it remains.

It is strange that, as a child, I and probably you resented the time given to sleep, considering it a waste of the time to be spent exploring and enjoying life, yet now I grasp at it as the most welcome of friends. Today, though, and throughout these early days of Advent, the call of the Lord constantly rings in our ears, as insistently as that six o’clock alarm: “Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake!”

Did you count the occurrences of the phrase in today’s Gospel? It cropped up seven times in four and a half lines, so more than once every two lines. Something which is repeated so frequently cannot be ignored: somehow, despite the dulling allure of the short winter days, we must in some way or other stay awake.

Why? In order that our senses may remain sharp enough to recognize and respond to the Lord’s coming; that threefold coming of which St. Bernard speaks—Jesus’ first coming, born of the Virgin in our human nature; His final coming as our judge at the end of time; and, perhaps most importantly of all, His present coming in every moment and every situation of our lives.

“Oh that you might tear the heavens open and come down”, prays the prophet. The Lord has done so, and will do so, and is doing so. Are we sufficiently awake to notice?

“We could hardly fail to notice His first coming,” you may suggest, not least because, in this year of restrictions and limitations, people have begun to prepare earlier than ever. Yes, but what are they preparing for? How many Nativity scenes are there among the trees and streamers? And what of Advent calendars? No longer do they display holy pictures: behind the windows now are chocolates, courtesy of Spiderman or Peppa Pig. In any case, if we are truly awake, we will be aware that preparation to recall that first coming doesn’t begin until 17th December.

What then of His final coming? “You do not know when the master of the house is coming” says the Lord. We do not know when life on earth will end; more particularly, we cannot tell when our own earthly life will be snuffed out. Young, middle aged, elderly, can all fall victim to that sudden illness, that unforeseen accident: how well prepared will I be to see God face to face?

Fifty years ago, give or take a couple of weeks, I would have been sitting in a train as it pulled out of Euston station on my way home at the end of term, to be confronted in a moment or two by a gable end to the right of the tracks—whether it is still there I have no idea—proclaiming in huge letters “Prepare to meet thy God”, not the most encouraging message at the beginning of a rail journey, but nonetheless conveying an important message. If indeed the Lord did make His final visit today, how prepared would I be?

Finally, how awake am I to the coming of the Lord, to His Advent, in every moment? To His presence, as we were reminded by last week’s Gospel, in our neighbour? To His coming in the events, and even the non-events, of our daily round? In the challenges and opportunities of this time of pandemic? In the Eucharist, the ultimate sign of Jesus’ presence, though not yet in glory? That Eucharist to which so many now have access only remotely, via the streaming of Mass and Eucharistic adoration? We awoke and rose this morning. How awake are we now?

Christ the King

Christ the King 2020

Ezekiel 34: 11-12, 15-17; 1Cor 15: 20-26, 28; Matthew 25:31-46

If we are honest, I think we have to admit that today’s feast is a liturgical sore thumb, an anachronism. Kings have no real standing in today’s world. Our own Queen is probably the wisest and most astute diplomat on the world stage, and is certainly the only public figure in this country who will openly and unashamedly refer to Our Lord in her national broadcasts, but she is the exception which proves the rule: in most of the world, monarchy is regarded as an outmoded concept.

The way in which the feast was celebrated in the younger days of many of us would also be questioned now. It was a triumphalist feast, with an afternoon procession of the Blessed Sacrament; the monstrance, in my home parish, carried beneath a canopy borne by four stalwarts, the bells at the four corners tinkling away until they inevitably fell off, one by one, with a series of resounding crashes. After we had completed a lengthy circuit of the church grounds, we would return to the church building to enthrone the Eucharistic Christ for solemn Benediction.

I have no objection to processions of the Blessed Sacrament, or to solemn Benediction, both of which have their place in deepening devotion to Christ present in the Eucharist, but at least as far as the readings of the current Lectionary are concerned, they do not fit the mood of the feast as the Church now wishes us to understand it, in an attempt to re-imagine the concept as an alternative to what might have been the better option, namely to abandon the feast altogether.

Next year, Year B of the liturgical cycle, we shall encounter the captive Christ, explaining the nature of His kingship to the cynical and unheeding Pontius Pilate. In Year C, it will be Christ the crucified king, the proclamation of His authority a calculated insult by Pilate both to Jesus Himself and to the Jewish people.

Today, admittedly, the risen and ascended Jesus is shown in majesty as the shepherd king who will return as judge, but note that He has attained this authority only by His identification with the lowest of the low; the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, the stranger. Had He not first lowered Himself to be present in the suffering people and the outcasts of the world, He would not have been in a position to judge those who fail to serve Him. Perhaps, rather than celebrate with processions and Benediction, it would have been more appropriate if we had headed into town to seek out the poor and the suffering; Christ the outcast who stood in need of Christ the healer.

What then can we do if we are to make something of this feast? We must indeed encounter the Eucharistic Christ, as far as is possible under present social restrictions, but we must then look for Him, not only in the flesh and blood of His Eucharistic presence, but in the flesh and blood of His human presence.

Admittedly, our options may be limited, not only by the conditions created by the present pandemic, but by the general difficulties of ordinary life. Even in optimum conditions, we cannot simply wander into prison to start visiting the inmates, and even hospital visiting is less straightforward than in former days. (Bear in mind too that insensitive visitors are a menace, rather than a comfort to hospital patients, as I remember from my own experience in a hospital bed.)

None of this though, excuses us from involvement and concern. We can use the telephone and social media to keep an eye on neighbours who may be suffering behind closed doors; we can ally ourselves with campaigns for justice; we can give financial support to organisations which seek to alleviate suffering, and to the likes of Aid to the Church in Need, working for persecuted Christians; and we can pray. Christ can always be found in the neighbour of all circumstances, a king whose royal identity is always hidden.

33rd Week

a33rd Sunday 2020

Proverbs 31: 10-13, 19-20, 30-31; 1Thess 5:1-6; Matthew 25: 14-30

What is today’s Gospel about? Is it about making the best use of our talents? If not, what is it about?

As Our Lord recounted the parable, it wouldn’t have been about using talents in the sense that we understand the word. In biblical times, a talent was not a natural gift, but a piece of metal, the highest form of currency in the Graeco-Roman world. Consequently, the New English Bible translates the word as “bags of gold”.

What message then did Jesus seek to convey? Did He wish His followers to be financial speculators? Surely not: the desire for money-making would be at odds with the rest of His teaching. What did He have in mind?

This parable has to be understood in the setting in which we find it. It is set among a whole list of prophecies and parables of the return of the Son of Man, and of judgement. It follows immediately last week’s parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, and is followed in its turn by that great parable of judgement, the sheep and the goats, which we shall hear next Sunday, the Feast of Christ the King.

So it is a parable of judgement, and a call to be alert, alert to the presence and challenge of Christ, the Son of Man, and of His forthcoming return as judge, when judgement will be based on our response in life to the responsibilities and the call which He has given us.

It is not so much our talents, in the sense of outstanding abilities, which we are required to use to the full, but our opportunities, the situations in which we find ourselves, and which speak to us of the presence and the demands of God. This may entail putting any special gifts at God’s service, as St. Paul urges us to do: more importantly, though, as St. Paul also says, it involves making our every action an item in God’s service, performed as if at God’s orders.

What does this mean in practice? It seems to be rooted in what Jean Pierre de Caussade, the 17/18th centuries French Jesuit, and other writers have called “the grace of the present moment”. God is among us: we live, as Karl Rahner wrote in the twentieth century, in a permanent Advent, because God is always a God who comes.

Every moment, therefore, is a moment for serving God, for using His gifts to build His Kingdom. This may involve something very small, such as biting back the angry retort or the wounding criticism. It means showing compassion, putting ourselves in the shoes of the other person, recognizing as far as we can, and as next week’s Gospel will remind us, that this other person is Christ, even if his/her behaviour may not seem very Christ-like.

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote: “Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not His”. Yet Christ plays also in the less lovely limbs, and the less lovely eyes, inviting us by our response to that apparently less lovely person to draw out the Christ who dwells in him/her, so that the same Christ may transform ugliness into beauty.

You and I may feel, rightly or wrongly, that we haven’t been endowed with outstanding talents, though some may well have been so. What every single one of us has been given, and is being given, is the indwelling Christ, who invites us to be a presence of Him in our everyday circumstances, thus ensuring that His investment in us has not been, and will not be, wasted.

32nd Week

32nd Sunday 2020

Wisdom 6:12-16; 1Thess 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.”

Many of you will recognise the opening words of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”; and, if you think about it, you may also recognise the situation today—which was exactly Dickens’ point: that every age, when it comes down to hey lads hey, is very similar to, if not identical with, every other.

Our present age is a very puzzling one, admittedly. Few people, I suspect, would describe it as the best of times, even if, in the West, we enjoy a level of comfort previously undreamed of. Can we claim that it is the worst of times? Surely not: there is a great deal of suffering, and even more of inconvenience, but we can at least retire to bed without the fear of air raid sirens heralding the fall of bombs, and whilst many people are anxious for the well-being of their loved ones, at least we are not in a situation where, for the majority of families, the man of the house is overseas, confronting death on a daily basis.

Yet these times may remind us of our own mortality, as death rates rise again, and movements are restricted with a view to saving lives, as other lives are lost through suicide or missed opportunities for early diagnosis of illness, as a result of these same restrictions. In addition to “A Tale of Two Cities” we may detect elements of a more recent novel, Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22”.

If there is one word which describes what is required of us in these moments, that word may be “alertness”. We have to be alert to the needs of our neighbour, whether that involves taking precautions against infection, or being conscious that s/he may be facing mental health problems or financial difficulties in the current situation—or may simply require help with shopping.

Looking at the broader picture, however, we may realise that we are called to a wider alertness, one to which the Church’s liturgy invariably summons us at this time of year. November is the month when we recall all those who have gone before us in the pilgrimage of life, but to whom we are still inextricably linked as members of the Church. It is a time for reuniting ourselves with them through mutual prayer—prayer which should indeed continue throughout the year, but which is particularly urged on us in this month.

We are also at the end of the Church’s year, and shortly after, of the calendar year. In this part of the world, the season chimes in with the sense of ending, of mortality. The days are growing shorter, the leaves are falling, the trees are assuming their winter starkness. Nature itself, in the Northern hemisphere, joins in the call to be conscious that, in this life, all things must pass.

The foolish bridesmaids of today’s Gospel are content to ignore the signs, to blot out awareness in sleep. The consequences for them are disastrous and sound a warning to us. The bridegroom will come, is coming. When, we do not know, but his coming is certain as the dawn, a dawn which, one day, will not arrive for us on earth.

Many years ago, I attended the Diamond Jubilee celebration of my first teacher, Mother Mary Bernadette, SHCJ. After Mass, Mother Bernadette commented to me: “If anyone asked me about life, I wouldn’t say that life is hard, though I know that it is for many people: I would say that life is short.”

It grows shorter with every day that passes; the bridegroom comes daily closer. Are we alert to recognise His coming, indeed His presence among us already, not least among those who need our support, care, and concern? “The bridegroom is here.” Are we ready to meet Him?

All Saints

All Saints 2014

November has been called the kindest month, because it is the month in which we remember. All Saints is followed by All Souls, by Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day, and we can even throw in Bonfire Night for good measure: Remember, remember, the fifth of November... Indeed the whole month is given up to remembering, and to praying for, those who have gone before us.

Is this simply an exercise in nostalgia or, to put it more kindly, in entertaining good thoughts, or is there something here of greater importance? To remember is, literally, to re-member, to put the members, or limbs, back together, and that is what the Church invites us to do, at all times of the year, but especially in this, the year’s penultimate month.

We are,  as St. Paul impressed upon us, members, or limbs, of Christ’s body, the Church; and not only we, but all those who have gone before us, throughout the ages and throughout the world, members of Christ and of one another, joined in a unity which cannot be severed even by death. When we remember, we consciously reunite ourselves with one another, and especially with the dead, who are alive to God and to us, and that reuniting has its positive, practical effect in prayer, as we seek the prayers of our departed fellow-members, and we offer effective prayer for them, that their unity with God, their perfection as members of Christ, may be complete.

And so our prayer is the active, vital, positive part of our re-membering, strengthening us as the body of Christ, building more firmly our unity with the world-wide, time-wide, eternity-wide Church, reinforcing our mutual support.

By holding two separate feasts of All Saints and All Souls, we distinguish those whose need for perfection to bring them into complete unity with God is complete—the saints—from those whom we call the Holy Souls, for whom that perfection is still a work in progress; yet in reality, the two feasts are part of one whole. Whilst there are some whom the Church has officially named as saints, for the vast majority of the dead we cannot know exactly how they stand before God. In any case, the question is an artificial one, brought on by our tendency always to think in terms of time, and to view eternity as a long, long, ever-so-long time, whereas it is a different dimension altogether.

What is clear, both from the scriptures, and from our own experience, reason, and logic, is that everyone who has ever lived, with the exception of Jesus Our Lord, and of His Blessed Mother, who was preserved by His merits from every stain of sin—everyone else has needed/needs/will need that cleansing, perfecting, purifying which we call purgatory, and therefore both needs and offers to us that beautiful gift of mutual support which is prayer.

If we were in any doubt about that, today’s Second Reading should banish those doubts. “What we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed” says St. John. “All we know is that, when it is revealed, we shall be like God, because we shall see Him as He really is.”

To see God as He really is: what an awesome experience that will be, at once both glorious and terrifying. What effect will that have on us? It will make us like God, says St. John. Are you like God? Are you heck as like, any more than I am. Well, perhaps a bit more than I am, but still not like God.  How will we become like God? By a change so drastic, so dramatic, so mind-boggling, that we cannot even begin to imagine it. What is the one thing which we know about change? That it is painful. Birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, midlife, old age, death: none of these changes takes place without pain—we even have a saying “No pain, no gain”—so the change to become like God will inevitably bring the sharpest pain of all, and that pain will be purgatory, our purging, our purifying, our perfecting, a pain which will nonetheless be welcome, because we shall already have seen our glorious goal. As the late Fr. Vincent Smith put it: “Purgatory will be seeing God, and realising that we are not fit to be seen”.

What form that purgatory will take, nobody knows, as St. John points out. The lurid pictures conjured up in the Middle Ages, which caused some of the more extreme Reformers to throw out the baby of Purgatory with the bath water of the imagery, were simply an attempt to picture the unpictureable, to give the mind something to hold onto. Nor does it matter. What truly matters is our unity in the one body with all those who have gone before us, and our concern for mutual support, as we seek the helping prayers of the saints and Holy Souls, without worrying too much about who falls into which category, and offer the help of our prayers. Thus our remembering becomes truly a re-membering, and November is genuinely the kindest month.

30th Week

30th Sunday 2020

Exodus 22: 20-26; 1 Thess 1:5-10; Matthew 22:34-40

Jesus said “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second resembles it: you must love your neighbour as yourself.”

All three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew Mark and Luke) record this incident, though the setting varies from Gospel to Gospel. In Mark, Our Lord makes His pronouncement in answer to the “good scribe” who heartily endorses His words, and the two establish a rapport. Luke, on the other hand, describes Our Lord as drawing the answer from the lawyer who wanted to disconcert Him (ekpeirazon), which provides the cue for the parable of the Good Samaritan. Finally, Matthew has the Pharisees, like the lawyer, trying to “disconcert” Jesus—the same word which we find in Luke, though slightly less emphatic (peirazon).

Why do they question Him in this way? They must know that, as a practising Jew, He knows the commandments by heart. Do they perhaps think that He rejects the commandments because of His conduct, especially His healings on the Sabbath, and His forgiveness of the woman taken in adultery?

Jesus does not reject the commandments. Instead He draws out their full meaning and purpose, pointing out that they are all intended to build on and to further the basic demands that we love God and our neighbour. It is interesting that the command to love our neighbour as ourselves is not one of the Ten Commandments; it is taken from the Book of Leviticus. Yet none of Jesus’ interlocutors question His assertion that this, rather than any of the Ten, is to be regarded as the second great commandment, resembling the first.

This makes me wonder why we give such attention to the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. I remember learning them by heart at primary school but not learning what Our Lord said about the two greatest commandments. I must confess that, to this day, I have never coveted my neighbour’s ox: perhaps it is a temptation which still lies in store. Likewise, in older Anglican churches, you will sometimes find the Ten Commandments listed on a board near the altar, again without reference to Our Lord’s interjection.

Both the Pharisees and we, it seems, accept in theory Our Lord’s summary, but how does this work out in practice? Is it not the case that we sometimes find it more convenient to harden our hearts like the Pharisees, taking refuge in rules and regulations, rather than embarking on the more difficult road of love of neighbour?

St. Therese of Lisieux, towards the end of the nineteenth century, commented that she understood why Our Lord spent so much time arguing with the Pharisees, because, she said, “There are still many Pharisees today”. Well over a century later, we would have to admit that very little has changed. The attacks upon the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and, more recently, upon Pope Francis, spring from a desire to hide under a comfort blanket of familiarity, rules and regulations; rather than, as Pope St. John Paul II expressed it, to “put out into the deep”, trusting to the searing wind of the Holy Spirit, whom Pope St. John XXIII invited to blow through the Church when he convened the Council, and to engage with the person of Jesus, and with all those for whom He shed His blood, in love, rather than simply in obedience.

Sadly, even in the higher echelons of the Church, we see people behaving, not even like the Pharisees, but more like Pontius Pilate or Caiaphas, as bishops and other religious superiors refuse to lift a finger in support of priests who have clearly been falsely accused—I felt obliged to suggest to one bishop, not of this Diocese, that it will be very sad if the only person to speak for him on Judgement Day is Pontius Pilate—but before we distribute blame to others, each one of us needs to examine our own conscience, to ask ourselves: how fully am I living out those two basic commandments? How deeply do I, in practice, love God and my neighbour, that neighbour who is Everyman and Everywoman?

29th Sunday

29th Sunday 2020

Isaiah 45:1,4-6; I Thess 1:1-5; Matthew 22:15-21

If, like last Sunday, today’s readings are a jigsaw, they are a jigsaw whose pieces are well and truly scattered. It will be quite a task to fit them together.

Let’s begin with the prophet whom we call Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah, who was active during and after the return of the Jewish people from exile in Babylon.

Many many moons ago, when I was a bright and shiny new priest, I had the task of teaching Ancient History to gangs of hulking Sixth Formers. The Greek History component of the course was entitled “Herodotus and the conflict of Greece and Persia”, and there was often a question on the A Level paper along the lines of “What evidence is there, apart from Herodotus, for the events of this period?”

One important piece of evidence, as I used to remind the lads, was this passage from Deutero-Isaiah. Cyrus was a king of Persia (so a baddie in the eyes of the Greeks) who conquered Babylon in 538 BC, and allowed the Jewish exiles to return to their homeland. So this earthy ruler, a villain to the Greeks, was a hero to the Jews, who saw him as an instrument in God’s hands, carrying out God’s purposes even though he wasn’t aware of it. Indeed, the prophet goes so far as to call him the Lord’s anointed—in other words, His Messiah or Christ.

This is a remarkable title to apply to a pagan king, but it underlines God’s control over the whole universe. Even a powerful ruler, who has no knowledge of the one true God, may be fulfilling God’s purposes.

Here we have a link, albeit somewhat tenuous, a piece of the jigsaw which has to be forced into place, with the Gospel. There the Pharisees, and the adherents of Herod Agrippa (son of Herod the Great) are attempting to catch Our Lord out.

They do this via a question about paying taxes to the occupying Romans. It was an attempted Catch 22. If Jesus agreed that the tax was lawful, He could be denounced as a traitor to His own people, not least because the coinage in which the tax was paid, carried a reference to the Roman Emperor as a god. If, on the other hand, He rejected the lawfulness of the tax, He could be reported to the Romans as a rebel.

Our Lord’s solution to this dilemma is, I think, sometimes misinterpreted. He throws the question back at His interlocutors by asking them, effectively, to whom the coin belongs. As it bears the Emperor’s inscription, it presumably belongs to the Emperor, and may, and should, be returned to him. The response which Jesus gives—“Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s”—have sometimes been taken to mean that there are some things which are reserved to earthly powers, and are no business of the Church, but this is to ignore His conclusion “and to God what belongs to God”.

In fact, everything belongs to God, as our reading from Deutero-Isaiah indicated. Cyrus was doing God’s will, even though he was unaware of it, because God is the Lord of all., Similarly, the Roman Emperor belongs to God and is ultimately answerable to God, as are today’s rulers, whether they recognise God or deny Him or, like some, attempt to use Him for their own ends.

Consequently, the behaviour of rulers and governments is a legitimate concern of the Church, which must always advocate justice, as successive Popes have done, through Catholic social teaching, and as the present Holy Father is doing through prophetic documents such as Laudato Si and Fratelli Tutti.

It must beware however of being sucked into partisan politics, about which I will say no more.

Finally, there are two sets of three phrases each from St. Paul which we would do well to take away and ponder: “shown your faith in action, worked for love, and persevered in hope” and “the Good News came to you....as power, and as the Holy Spirit, and as utter conviction”.

28th Sunday

28th Sunday 2020

Isaiah 25:6-10; Philippians 4: 12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

Are you any good at jigsaw puzzles? I have to confess that I don’t have the patience. However, we have something of a jigsaw presented by our readings today. Let’s see if we can put the pieces together.

The prophet Isaiah speaks of the Messianic banquet, the feast to be enjoyed in the Kingdom of Heaven by God’s people gathered around the Messiah, the Christ. He talks of a banquet of rich foods, of fine wines. If I get there, I am going to ask for an alternative of real ale, which strikes me as more heavenly than wine. If St. Bridget of Ireland is around, I should be fine, as she allegedly envisaged heaven as a lake of beer—an extremely sensible saint.

Whenever we celebrate Mass we are already sharing in the Messianic banquet, at least in embryo. We are called by the Messiah to His table and are given the most sumptuous food of all, His very self, hidden under the forms of bread and wine.

There is more, though: another piece of the jigsaw to be slotted in. Immediately before communion, before we share in the foretaste of the Messianic banquet, the priest proclaims “Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb”.

What does that mean? “That’s easy,” I hear you cry. “It means that we are about to receive Jesus, who gave Himself to us as food and drink at the Last Supper, AND we are about to take part in the Messianic banquet.”

That is true, but there is even more to it than that. We find the next piece of the jigsaw outside today’s readings in the last book of the Bible, the Apocalypse or Book of Revelation. There St. John, assuming him to be the author, is told by an angel to write “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb”. (Rev 19:9)

So we are being called, invited, to something which is the fulfilment of the Last Supper and of the Messianic banquet. We are being summoned to the completion of all that is holy, when the glorified Christ, the Lamb of God, is united completely to His bride, the Church. This is far too deep, far too complex, for our limited minds to grasp fully, but it does mean that, in receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion, we are entering into heaven itself, into total union with the Lamb of God. That union will become permanent in eternity, but our earthly communion is a genuine sharing in it, which underlines the tragedy of so many people’s having been deprived, by the pandemic, of that which fulfils us.

All of which brings us to what may be the final piece of our jigsaw, as Our Lord, in the Gospel, tells us the parable of the wedding banquet of the King’s Son. This, He says, is an allegory of the Kingdom of Heaven: we are indeed being invited to that banquet, of which our communion is a foretaste.

As last week, with the parable of the tenants of the vineyard, we have the originally chosen people proving unworthy, with the result that the invitation is now extended to outsiders, to the Gentiles. We are now among those who are invited to that heavenly banquet, in all its stages, in all its manifestations.

That is wonderful news, but it comes with a warning in that postscript of the new guest who is thrown out because he isn’t wearing a wedding garment. Who is he? He is a Gentile, a member of the Church, indeed, who can’t be bothered. He doesn’t appreciate the invitation. He hasn’t taken the trouble to make himself presentable. He represents the person who makes no attempt to live as God would want, who sees the Kingdom as an entitlement rather than as a gift, who fails to respond at any deep level to God’s call. God forbid that you or I should be that person.

Have we completed our jigsaw? Not quite. We will fit the last piece into place only when we make all this a reality, receiving Holy Communion with deep fervour and faith, and responding to God’s invitation in every moment.

27th Sunday

27th Sunday 2020

Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 79; Philippians 4:6-9; Matthew 21:33-43

Unless it was bearing grapes at the time, I wouldn’t recognise a vine if I fell over it. I recall a previous parish which possessed a very attractive modern set of tabernacle veils. The green one was embroidered with a leafy plant which looked to me like ivy but which, I was assured, was a vine.

To the people of Palestine in Our Lord’s day, a vine would have been immediately recognisable, as viticulture (the care of vines) was an important local industry. To Christians throughout the centuries the vine has had particular significance as the bearer of grapes, the source of wine, which Jesus changed into His blood. We recall too one of His great “I am” (ego eimi) sayings from St. John’s Gospel, “I am the vine” which would have immediately struck a chord with His audience.

Hence, it is not surprising that the vine occupies such a prominent place in the scriptures. Isaiah, writing in the eighth century BC uses the vineyard, and the vines enclosed there, as a symbol of Israel. This is a beautiful passage in which the prophet expresses God’s love for His people, in terms of the tender and skilful care with which Isaiah’s friend prepared a vineyard from scratch, clearing the ground, adding all the buildings which might be needed, and planting the best quality vines.

This is an allegory of God’s care for His chosen people, preparing for them the land of promise, tending them by the work of the judges and prophets, giving them every opportunity to grow and flourish in the love and knowledge of Him.

Yet, says Isaiah, all this love, all this careful attention, have been in vain. The people have let God down. In terms of the allegory, the vineyard has produced sour grapes: this represents the people’s abandonment of God, their worship of false gods, their neglect of justice. In response, the owner will allow the vineyard to go to rack and ruin: in practice, God’s people endured a succession of attacks and invasions, culminating in the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel, and the deportation of the inhabitants of the southern kingdom of Judah to Babylon, the latter event occurring more than a century after the time of Isaiah.

Today’s psalm pursues a similar theme. Once again, Israel is a vine, brought out of Egypt, and planted in a well prepared vineyard. For the psalmist, the destruction envisaged by Isaiah has already taken place. At first, the psalmist claims to be shocked and puzzled: “Then why have you broken down its walls?” Then he implicitly accepts that it is Israel’s own fault, by promising that, if God rescues them from present distress, “we will never forsake you again”.

Our Lord, in the Gospel, produces a parable which has explicit echoes of Isaiah’s allegory. Now however, the villains are not unfruitful vines but murderous tenants, who want to claim the vineyard for themselves. The vineyard is now not Israel but the Kingdom of Heaven, yet it is still the chosen people who are at fault, attacking and murdering the owner’s servants, who represent the prophets, and preparing to murder Jesus, the owner’s Son.

What is threatened is not the destruction of the vineyard, but its transfer to other tenants, the Gentiles, the new people of God. All is fine for us: the vineyard, the Kingdom, is given to us, and all we have to do is to produce its fruits.

Oh dear! Can we honestly say that we have done so or are doing so? Over the centuries have we, the Gentiles, the new people of God, behaved any better than the original chosen people? They, as a people, have suffered persecution at our hands: was that bearing fruit for God? Admittedly, the Church has done many good things, has produced many holy men and women, but it has also been guilty of many grave offences, not the least of which is the clerical abuse crisis. We still have a very long way to go, a massive amount of work to do, if we in our turn are not to deserve the strictures of Isaiah, of the psalmist, and indeed of Our Lord Himself.

26th Sunday

26th Sunday 2020

Ezekiel 18:25-28; Philippians 2:1-11; Matthew 21:28-32

That Gospel always makes me think of Jim. Jim, who will now be in his mid-fifties, was one of the eleven year olds entrusted to my tender care when I was a bright and shiny new priest, starting out as a member of the staff of Upholland College.

One morning, Fr. O’Neill, the Headmaster, was principal celebrant at Mass with the lower forms. The Gospel was the one you have just heard, and after it, Fr. O’Neill, in good headmasterly fashion, posed a question. “You have heard that parable about the two boys, the one who said ‘No’ and went, and the one who said ‘Yes’ and didn’t go. Now, there could have been a third lad. What might he have done?”

Immediately, some smart aleck stuck his hand in the air and replied “He could have said ‘Yes’ and gone.

“Very good” said Fr. O’Neill and launched into a good, sound headmasterly discourse on saying ‘Yes” to the Lord’s will—and by extension to the commands of the staff—and carrying it through.

While this was going on, Jim was looking, first thoughtful, and then eager. At last he could stand it no more. Up shot his hand.

“Father, there’s a fourth one. He could have said ‘No’ and not gone.”

Fr. O’Neill withered him with a glare. “Yes, well, I don’t think we need to consider that” he replied dismissively, while I was thinking “Oh. That’s the only one that occurred to me. I never thought of the third option.”

Of course it would be better if we were always eager to fulfil God’s will, to leap into action at the first hint of duty. “Let me be slow to do MY will, prompt to obey”, as we used to sing in the hymn “Lord for tomorrow and its needs”.

Or would it? Many of us, I suspect, have a sneaking distrust of those saints who used to be held up to us as paragons of virtue: Blessed Dominic Savio, the schoolboy saint, St. Aloysius the model novice, and others, who seem by and large to have died of a surfeit of piety at a ridiculously young age. What good is a model novice? Would we not be better off with a flesh and blood one? Most of us can probably identify more readily with the backsliding, blundering St. Peter, or with Mary Magdalene, from whom seven devils had gone out. It is difficult not to feel that they would have had more sympathy with the weaknesses of others.

I have spoken before of the late Fr. Tony Pearson, and of the advice given to him by his parish priest—who was, incidentally, Chesterton’s model for Fr. Brown—at the outset of his seminary career. The young Tony was informed that, if he kept all the rules on his passage through seminary, “then they will make you a bishop”: this however came with a postscript—“and Tony, you’ll be no bloody good”. I am reliably informed by his former fellow students that there is one member of the present hierarchy who, in his seminary days, was precisely as described, and I have strong suspicions about another: it goes without saying that they are currently demonstrating the truth of that parish priest’s words long ago.

So am I encouraging people to be disobedient, wayward, sinful? No, I am suggesting that anyone who doesn’t feel the tug of sinful Adam, who invariably responds to the whispering of the Lord and the stirrings of conscience with alacrity and enthusiasm, is almost certainly lacking a roundness of character, an element of humanity, and a capacity for genuine sympathy with the struggles of lesser mortals. There is a danger that the compassion (cum passio, suffering with) which Jesus demands of His disciples as being an attribute of God Himself, will be lacking.

Do not be discouraged then if your own response to the promptings of the Lord strikes you sometimes as somewhat sluggish, provided you get there in the end. After all, Our Lord didn’t mention Fr. O’Neill’s imaginary third boy, and we are not called to be more Christlike than Christ Himself.

25th Sunday

25th Sunday 2020

Isaiah 55:6-9; Philippians 1:20-24,27; Matthew 20:1-16

What time is it? I mean, what hour is it in terms of working for the Lord? Is it early, or late, or the middle of the day?

Looking around the Deanery, I would be inclined to say that, in terms of the clergy, at least, it is getting on a bit. I think that I am right in saying that you could fit those under 60 into a phone box, assuming you could find one. And raising our sights to the whole Diocese, the picture is very similar.

Most of the clergy, and indeed of the consecrated religious and active laity, have far less time ahead for service of the Lord than has been available to us in our past.

Does that mean that we can pat ourselves on the back, and congratulate ourselves on work well done? Does it heck as like! We may have had plenty of opportunity to labour in the Lord’s vineyard, but have we made the best use of it, whether as priests, deacons, religious or lay people?

Those of us who are priests emerged from the seminary, most of us decades ago, confident that we were just what the Church had been waiting for. Full of zeal and enthusiasm, we were the people who would build the Kingdom of God, who would set the Diocese on fire. Many lay people too had a great vision of service of God and of His people, and have been and are faithful to that vision.

Yet the picture is one of retrenchment and apparent decline which would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. So, have we not been working hard enough? Have we been working in the wrong way?

I suspect that only God Himself can answer those questions: no one is ever the best judge of his or her own case. My own feeling is that people have been and are doing their best: that clergy, laity and religious alike are working as hard as, and in some cases harder than their predecessors, despite the sneers of a few cynics who hanker after an imaginary lost Golden Age. Like the recent Golden Generation of English footballers, the Golden Age of the Church in England comprised more myth than substance, and it contained a fair amount of cruelty and abuse, alongside much that was good.

The principal issue that we face is that society has changed beyond recognition in the last half century or so, and these changes, especially in the area of sexual behaviour but also in the growth of a sort of superstitious scientism and pseudo-rationalism which push God to the margins, have dealt hammer blows, not only to the Church, but to the whole concept of the place of religion in the world.

I have mentioned before my conversation with the Methodist chaplain to Beaumont Hospital, where I had my tonsils and adenoids removed shortly before my eleventh birthday in 1961:

“Whereabouts are you from?”

“Scotforth.”

“Oh, I often go there to preach at Greaves Methodist Church. Do you go there, or do you go to St. Paul’s?”

“No. I go to St. Bernadette’s.”

This gentleman’s assumption that a ten year old would be going to church somewhere, perfectly natural sixty years ago, would be inconceivable today.

So what do we do? We keep on working, and we keep on trusting, not in ourselves, our own efforts, our own plan, our own vision, but in the God who has called us, and who continues to call us, to labour in his vineyard. Whether we have joined the workforce early or late does not matter. What wages we shall receive is a matter for God. All that matters is that we, at least, remain faithful to our calling: that, until the day ends, we continue to work faithfully in whatever situation we find ourselves, and that we remain alert, even to the very last minute, to the guiding call of God.

24th Sunday

24th Sunday 2020

Sirach 27:30-28:7; Romans 14:7-9; Matthew 18:21-35

“Resentment and anger, these are foul things, and both are found with the sinner.”

“Tell me about it”, to use the modern idiom. If you want resentment, I can show you resentment: if you want anger, I can give you anger.

Let me see the news headlines, and I will give you enough anger to sink the proverbial battleship. Is there something there about politics? I will reach a red hot pitch of anger in two seconds flat. Is there something about AMERICAN politics? Dive for cover before I explode, even though it isn’t strictly my business. Does the Church appear in those headlines? You can guarantee that there will be something to make me blow off steam enough to power a large sized boiler.

Then there are the sports headlines: once again there will be enough to inspire rage and fury, and if you actually take me to a match, then on your own head be it. Better turn then to something less controversial: this Facebook page “Lancaster Past and Present” will be nice and soothing. WHAT? How can anyone be so STUPID as to say that about that building? What does that idiot know about what went on down that road in that decade? I knew about that before this clown was born!

Right: that’s enough about anger. What about resentment? You can have that in bucketsful, and I can tell you exactly when and what it springs from. Picture the twelve year old me, sobbing over my Greek homework, unable for the present to make head or tail of it. My father comes through from the shop, where he is still working, even though it is seven o’clock at night, and he has been at it since seven this morning, as he will be every other day of the week, every other week of the year, apart from Wednesdays, when he will close at dinner time (12.30) and Sundays, when he won’t begin until after early Mass, and will close at 5.30 in time to go to Benediction. Oh yes, and he will also be closed on Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and Good Friday, though Boxing morning will be devoted to stocking up ready for next day, and Good Friday afternoon will be spent in church.

Anyway, he comes through, and says, very gently, “Just do your best. I don’t want you to end up like me.”

WHAT???!!! The best man in the world, yet society regards him as of no account, yet that little minority gaggle of thugs on the school staff, of whom I think that every boys’ school of that era had its share, is highly respected by that same society. So there was born my resentment of the way society operates, and my inverted snobbery with which I have struggled ever since.

So there it is, and there am I, and there are you, each with our own quota of anger, and resentment, and bitterness. Or perhaps you are one of those blessed few who are exempt from such feelings. If so, thank God for it, and pray for those of us who are less gifted in that area.

What do the rest of us do about it? Do we continue to NURSE anger, to CHERISH resentment, as Sirach puts it, two powerful words which indicate an enjoyment of these evil feelings. We mustn’t. We need to be honest about their existence, and we must bring them before God, opening them up to His healing and forgiving mercy. We need to recognise how destructive they are of our own peace of mind, and how they insult the God who bore insults, humiliation, suffering, and an agonising death for our sakes, an agony deepened by that very bitterness of yours and mine.

Perhaps too we need to move from abstractions such as “society” and think rather in terms of individual human beings of flesh and blood with their own problems, their own hurts, their own share in our nature as children of God, brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, redeemed by His precious blood.

I am working on it. Please work on it with me, asking the Lord to transform us, to give us His Spirit of forgiveness, to remove from us these foul things.

23rd Sunday

23 rd Sunday 2020

Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20

Many many moons ago, a few years after I had left the Diocesan Youth Centre at Castlerigg, I returned as a chaplain accompanying a school group. The school in question shall be nameless: it WASN’T Our Lady’s, Lancaster.

With the group was a youth worker, who made something of a clot of himself at one stage, in a way which was not helpful to the young people. The priest director of the centre and I discussed the matter, and agreed that it needed to be addressed at the end-of-course evaluation. It was also agreed that it should be I who raised the point, so that the criticism came from within the school, rather than from Castlerigg, the outside agency.

Come the Friday morning, came the evaluation, and I delivered what I considered to be an honest, fair, and firm critique of what had occurred. No one was left in any doubt that the event had been unacceptable.

Afterwards, the director said to me, “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” To my shame, I had to confess that I had. To rip someone apart, calmly but thoroughly, had been strangely satisfying, especially for someone like me, who am normally hopeless at delivering criticism.

At one level, it was a job well done: at another level, it was not good at all. Something needed to be said, but it should probably have been said to the individual first. I now feel too that the saying of it should have cost me something in the way of painful sympathy, rather than be a source of satisfaction. There was something amiss in what might be described as my fraternal correction.

There are times, as both Ezekiel and Our Lord make clear, when correction and criticism are needed. This, however, should be done to benefit the person being corrected, not to vent the spleen or satisfy the anger of the one doing the correcting. Those of us of a certain vintage will be familiar with the figure of the bullying schoolmaster, a figure which needs to be consigned to history, not imitated.

St. Paul sets out the criterion for fraternal or sororial (brotherly or sisterly) correction by effectively summarising Jesus’ own analysis of the commandments. Paul, in the footsteps of his Master, states in today’s extract from the Letter to the Romans that “love...is the answer to every one of the commandments.” Unfortunately, Paul, like most of us, did not always live up to his ideals: in his Letter to the Galatians, he brags of having humiliated Peter in front of everyone, in direct contradiction of the approach which Our Lord establishes in the Gospel.

Bizarrely, we can persuade ourselves that our very cruelty is based on love, something of which the Church has at times been guilty. The Inquisitors, who tortured and burned heretics, claimed to be acting out of love and a desire to save their victims’ souls; and many religious sisters and diocesan priests can recount horror stories of their treatment at the hands of sadistic superiors and tyrannical parish priests, who considered it their duty to break the spirit of those over whom they were given authority. This took place during what is sometimes viewed, through rose-tinted glasses, as a golden age of the Church when seminaries and religious houses were bursting at the seams.

All of us, at times, need to offer and accept correction. To do so in the spirit of Christ, the spirit of brotherly and sisterly love, is paramount, but it is not always easy to achieve. Too readily, our baser nature takes over, something which we must guard against by growing daily deeper in a genuine, self-surrendering love of God.

22nd Sunday

22nd Sunday 2020

Jeremiah 20:7-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16: 21-27

OUCH! Where did that come from? Talk about thunder in a blue sky! Poor Peter—we know that he normally puts his foot in things, gets them wrong, but for once he has got it right. He has made a profession of faith on behalf of the whole Church—“you are the Christ, the Son of the living God”—and has been pronounced blessed for doing so. Even more than that, he has been named Peter, the rock on which the Church is to be built, and has been entrusted with the keys of the Kingdom, and the power of binding and loosing. Peter is riding high.

Then suddenly he is brought back down to earth, not so much with a bump as with a resounding crash—and all because he was doing his best, trying to live up to the responsibilities he had been given. Life can be cruel at times, not least when one is trying to follow the Master.

It is easy to imagine Peter’s pride in his work, and his bafflement when, instead of being commended, he is given the sharpest of reprimands. He has been appointed leader of the Church, and he seizes the first opportunity to exercise that leadership. The Lord whom he loves, and who has given him this responsibility, starts to talk about suffering, and about being put to death.

This is Peter’s chance to show what an excellent leader he will be. He goes about it exactly the right way. He doesn’t raise the issue in public, but takes the Lord aside and speaks to Him confidentially. “Don’t worry about that Lord. You’ve got ME now. I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Have you ever been commended for something, and set out straight away to prove how merited it was, only to discover that you have fallen flat on your face? that your initiative, which you genuinely thought would bring you plaudits, lands you instead with a kick up the backside? That is how Peter must have felt.

Instead of being grateful, Jesus snaps at Peter “Get behind me, Satan.” What a shattering blow that must have been to his self-esteem.

Why does Our Lord respond so vehemently, and what does His reprimand mean? Remember that Satan was, first of all, the Tempter. So he appears as the serpent in Eden, so he is in the Book of Job, tempting Job to curse God. Thus had Jesus encountered him in the wilderness as He prepared for His public ministry, and thus He encounters him now as Satan uses the voice and the good will of Peter to tempt Our Lord again.

If you have ever faced an unpleasant task, something which you know that you have to do but would prefer to avoid, how do you react if someone close to you says “No, you really don’t have to do it”? Isn’t there a massive temptation to grasp at that advice, to adopt it, even though, deep down, you know it to be wrong?

So it was for Jesus when his good friend and trusted lieutenant offered Him a route away from the suffering that lay ahead. In Mark’s account of the incident, Jesus is described as “turning, and seeing His disciples”. It is almost as if He is turning at bay, almost overwhelmed by the temptation, His resolution renewed and restored only by the sight of His other followers. Thus He was enabled to recognise the cunning of the Tempter in using the good will of His friend, and to call the Tempter by name in what was actually a repudiation of Satan rather than a rebuke to Peter, whom Satan was using.

We are, though, faced with a question: what price papal infallibility? To answer that question we have to consider the meaning and limits of infallibility. The First Vatican Council decreed in 1870 that the Pope teaches infallibly when, in consultation with the bishops, he makes an ex cathedra pronouncement on faith or morals. In the one hundred and fifty years since the decree was promulgated, it has been invoked only once, in the definition of the Assumption of Our Lady. Allegedly, Pope St. John Paul II wished to have Pope St. Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae retrospectively declared infallible, only for his doctrinal watchdog, the future Pope Benedict XVI, to inform him that he did not have the authority to do so.

In Peter’s case, we can say that he spoke infallibly when it was “not flesh and blood which revealed [the truth] to him, but the Father in heaven.” When he spoke on his own initiative, he was not infallible, a truth which all his successors must remember.

21st Sunday

21st  Sunday 2020

Isaiah 22:19-23; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20

I suppose that the day may come when keys are obsolete, when a refined version of the plastic card with which you now struggle to open a hotel (or, perhaps more probably, a Travelodge) door will replace them entirely. Even today, keys may perform a ceremonial, rather than a practical, purpose.

When the Duke of Lancaster, better known as Queen Elizabeth II, visits her castle in the city, she is presented with a huge (I think, silver) key, with which she doesn’t open the door. The same key is proffered to the Constable of the castle when he or she takes office. I doubt if it has ever been used for the purpose for which it is ostensibly intended. The Queen is the owner of the castle, the Constable is its steward: for both, the key symbolises their role.

The symbolic nature of keys has long been recognised. Thus, in the time of the Prophet Isaiah, the new “master of the palace”, the major domo as we might call him, or even the constable of the castle, is invested with the robe and sash of office, and also presented with a key, which is placed on his shoulder, just as a new knight of the realm is tapped on his shoulder with a sword today.

Furthermore, this is the Key of the House of David, a title which gives even greater authority as it allows the new steward a role in the guidance of the ruler of the land. Hence, “Key of David” is one of the titles applied to Jesus, signifying His supreme authority over the House of Judah, but ultimately over the world.

Thus, when that same Jesus gives to Simon Bar-jonah not only the new name of Peter, but also the metaphorical “keys of the Kingdom”, those present would have recognised the symbolism. Peter is given authority as Jesus’ representative to be “master of the palace”, steward or doorkeeper of the Kingdom of Heaven.

That this authority is to be exercised on earth, with effects in heaven, has at times over the centuries led to an exaggeration of the pope’s role. Although Jesus states that the keys are of “the Kingdom of Heaven” and their number is not specified, there have been times in the Church’s history when the symbol of the cross keys has been taken literally as meaning that there are two keys, one conferring spiritual and the other temporal authority.

This has led to many popes acting as earthly monarchs, and culminated in the establishment of the Papal States. When these were lost in the struggle for the unification of Italy, Pope Pius IX effectively went into a sulk, living thereafter as “the prisoner of the Vatican”. It was not until almost a century later that Pope St. John XXIII ventured into the rest of Italy, making a pilgrimage to Loreto, a process taken much further by his successor Pope St. Paul VI, who travelled not only beyond Rome, but also beyond Europe, establishing a precedent for papal journeys which are now seen as an integral part of the Pontiff’s role.

Peter’s successors now take for granted that their power is spiritual. By exercising that power wisely and humbly, they do influence worldly affairs. “How many divisions has the Pope?” Stalin is alleged to have asked scornfully. The system which he enforced is now in ruins, whilst the Church continues. Papal documents such as John XXIII’s “Pacem in Terris”, Paul VI’s “Populorum Progressio” , and Francis’s “Laudato Si” have weighed heavily with governments, whilst St. John Paul II’s role in the fall of communism cannot be overstated.

There will always be dissenters. In Paul VI’s time, Archbishop Lefebvre led his followers into schism: at present, it seems not impossible that Cardinal Burke will do the same. Horror stories are emerging from the USA, rumours of seminaries declaring themselves “Francis-free zones”, and of parish priests preaching in support of the dubiously sane Archbishop Vigano. Yet if the gates of Hell cannot hold out against the Church, founded on the rock of Peter’s confession of faith, we can be sure that a loud but small minority of American fanatics and their poisonous publications will not do so.