Trinity

aTrinity Sunday 2021

Deut 4:32-34, 39-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28: 16-20

If I were to ask you “Have you read Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lamda?” you would no doubt reply “Of course I have. I dip into it every day, but it has nothing to do with the Trinity: you might as well ask about Plato’s Demiurge, or his Theory of Forms.” In replying thus, you would, of course, be quite right.

The speculations of the great ancient philosophers have no direct bearing on our understanding of God. Nevertheless, they do show us how people have always struggled to form some concept of God, while at the same time demonstrating how difficult this is.

Those of you who were spared in your youth from grappling with the complexities of Plato and Aristotle may feel that you have much for which to be grateful. To fathom the mysterious analogies of Plato’s sun, divided line, and cave, is difficult enough in English: to have to face it in the original Greek is enough to bring you out in a cold sweat.

This week, it will be half a century since I sat my Finals paper on the theology of Plato and Aristotle, and a year more since I attempted to deconstruct the Theory of Forms, translating gobbets (where on earth does that term come from, I wonder?) and struggling to distinguish the deuteros plous from the protos plous, yet the very mention of such things still has the power to reduce me to a gibbering wreck.

Giants of the ancient world, these two philosophers were attempting to guide their contemporaries to a less crude understanding of reality than was provided by the pantheon of Olympian gods, constantly quarrelling among themselves, and frequently interfering in human affairs to suit their own ends. The result of their efforts was to discredit the notion of a multiplicity of personalised gods in favour of philosophical concepts lacking all human characteristics. (Plato’s Demiurge does have some elements of personality, but it is questionable how seriously the author took him.)

Thus, in Plato we are led to a more or less abstract concept of ideal goodness, whilst Aristotle gives us the Unmoved Mover, whose “thinking is a thinking of thinking”, a being represented by a perfect circle, totally self-absorbed, whose thoughts nonetheless move the universe.

Does any of this have anything to do with today’s feast? Well, both Plato and Aristotle have exercised a powerful influence on Christian thinkers through the ages. Both Platonists and Aristotelians have contributed to our understanding of God.

Like Plato, we see God as ideal goodness and infinite perfection: with Aristotle, we recognise that God is self-sufficient, needing nothing beyond Himself, not moved by, or dependent on, anything.

Where these mighty Greeks fall short is in failing to recognise relationship as an essential element in God’s nature. Plato’s Form of the Good is, to all intents and purposes, abstract: Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover is a totally solitary being.

Christianity alone sees God as thoroughly involved in relationship, both in and beyond Himself. There is one God, but God’s very being is expressed in relationship, the Father eternally loving and begetting the Son, who eternally loves the Father, their love being so intense as to be a person, the Holy Spirit. Likewise, that love is so deep that it spills over into Creation, and into human beings as the pinnacle of that Creation.

There is a Christian symbol which carries echoes of Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover. God is sometimes represented by a circle with spokes and a hub. The hub is inscribed “Deus” (God) whilst at points on the perimeter are “Pater” (Father) “Filius” (Son) and “Spiritus Sanctus” (Holy Spirit). On the sections of the rim joining these three points is written three times “non est”. The Father is not the Son, and neither of them is the Holy Spirit, but from each of them is a spoke joining them to the hub (God) and inscribed “est”. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God.

Relationship, community is the essence of God. As children of God, we must have it as our essence too: relationship, community, with God, and with one another.

Pentecost

Pentecost 2021

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

I think that you need the gift of tongues to be able to pronounce the various nations who heard the Pentecost proclamation: Medes, Elamites, Phrygians, Cappadocians, Cretans, and so on. I remember at the Diocesan Youth Centre a young man wading valiantly through all the names and being rewarded with a round of applause.

What is the gift of tongues? At Pentecost it was, it seems, a miraculous gift of spontaneous translation, by which the various language groups all heard the preaching of the apostles in their own native tongue. Elsewhere in the New Testament it appears to have a different meaning which I have never been able to fathom, but which has influenced the Charismatic Renewal.

The Charismatic movement has exerted considerable influence within the Church during the last half century or so, though I have to confess that it has never appealed to me. Exuberance is not generally part of my make up unless I am watching football or cricket, and my approach to worship is rather more staid. If I am expected to clap along to a hymn, my response tends to be to thrust my hands into the sleeves of my alb.

Consequently, I am relieved that the Pentecost liturgy always includes the Gospel of Easter Sunday evening, despite the confusion which this sometimes causes. I am more comfortable personally with the gentle Easter Sunday bestowal of the Holy Spirit than with its more spectacular Pentecost manifestation.

What happened on Easter Sunday evening? The risen Christ appeared to the frightened apostles in the Upper Room and breathed the Holy Spirit into them, giving them the power to forgive sins, and preparing them for their mission. Thus their fears were banished; they were made ready for more encounters with the risen Lord; and they were enabled to enter that period of intense prayer, in company with Our Lady, which had its fulfilment in the Pentecost event.

There is more than one way in which the Holy Spirit comes upon us and into us. The apostles encountered the Holy Spirit in these two profoundly different manifestations--in the gentle breathing of Easter, and in the powerful wind and flame of Pentecost—for two different purposes.

We too will receive the Spirit in different ways at different times. Indeed, we have already done so, or we would not be reading the Scriptures and attempting to explore their meaning. As St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “There is a variety of gifts, but always the same Spirit...The particular way in which the Spirit is given to each person is for a good purpose”.

It has sometimes been claimed, often with a degree of cynicism, that the Holy Spirit has been the forgotten member of the Holy Trinity. If there is truth in that statement it is largely because the Holy Spirit is difficult to envisage. We have pictorial minds, with which we can form a limited image of the Father (we know what a father looks like) and of the Son (we know what a son looks like, and we probably have a definite mental picture of THE SON) but the only physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit have been as a dove, a rushing wind, and tongues of flame: it is difficult to relate to a blast of wind.

I believe though that there is more fiction than reality in our alleged neglect of the Holy Spirit. We have always made the Sign of the Cross, invoking all three persons of the Trinity, and we have done the same in the “Glory be...”  Meetings and gatherings have always begun with the prayer to the Holy Spirit (“Come Holy Spirit...”) and in the Infants I learned to belt out all the verses of “Come Holy Ghost”, admittedly not always accurately:  “Thy sacred wing” became “thy Saint Credwing” and I heard “ne’er decays” as “Mary’s case” fixing in my mind a picture of Our Lady sitting on her suitcase, awaiting the arrival of the taxi which would take her to the station at the beginning of her holiday.

So the Holy Spirit has always been part of our life in Christ. Had that not been so, as St. Paul points out, we would have no such life. Whether spectacularly as at Pentecost, or gently as on Easter Sunday, the Spirit has come and does come to us. Let us pray today for a deeper awareness of the Spirit’s presence.

7th Sunday of Easter

7th Sunday of Easter 2021

Acts: 1:15-17, 20-26; 1John 4:11-16; John 17:11-19

As you are probably aware, for the past fifteen years, the English bishops have been doing the hokey cokey with Holy Days.

You put the Ascension in

You take Epiphany out

In, out, you shake them all about.

(Yes, I know that the hokey cokey was originally a blasphemy against the Mass, but it fits perfectly the shenanigans over Holy Days during the past decade and a half, so I think we are entitled to “spoil the Egyptians” and use it where it is helpful.)

Currently, in England and Wales, the Ascension is back on the Thursday, forty days after Easter, and so today we have the readings for the 7th Sunday of Easter, which went missing for a few years.

These readings today should help us prepare our hearts and minds to be more receptive of the Holy Spirit. Of course the Holy Spirit is not limited to Pentecost, or to the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. The Spirit is poured out on us every day, and is the driving force of all the sacraments, but it is a wise custom to pray more fervently for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit as we approach the Feast which saw such powerful manifestations of the Spirit.

At the same time, we must not forget that Pentecost was not the first occasion on which the Holy Spirit was given to the apostles. When the risen Christ appeared in the Upper Room on Easter Sunday evening, He breathed on the apostles and said “Receive the Holy Spirit”, giving them the power to forgive sins. That is why that Gospel is used at Pentecost, which can have the unfortunate effect of causing dozy preachers, who haven’t noticed that it refers to Easter Sunday, to claim that the apostles were still cowering in fear at Pentecost.

You and I know that such a notion is baloney. Luke makes clear, in his Ascension Day Gospel, that, after the Ascension, “they went back to Jerusalem full of joy, and were continually in the Temple praising God”. When they did meet in the Upper Room, it was to pray, in company with Our Lady, the Spirit filled woman, for a fresh gift of the Spirit.

Furthermore, today’s episode of the election of Matthias is set between the Ascension and Pentecost, and involves a positive, not a fear filled group. You may have noticed that there were “about a hundred and twenty persons in the congregation”: I very much doubt that these were all crammed into the Upper Room—had they been, I suspect that the floor would have given way.

The apostles at the time were in a fairly similar situation to that in which we find ourselves today, having already received the Holy Spirit, but awaiting a fresh outpouring, which would renew both them and us to proclaim the Gospel. As we continue to pray for a fuller gift of the Spirit, the First Letter of St. John reminds us of the command of mutual love, made possible by the Spirit and by God’s presence within us. As always, that letter is prompting us to examine our consciences: how fully am I living out that commandment of love?

Meanwhile, today’s Gospel is an extract from the High Priestly prayer of Jesus, part of the Farewell Discourses which St. John sets in the context of the Last Supper. In this prayer, Our Lord consecrates us to the Father, and prays especially that we may live in the truth: the words “true” or “truth” occur five times in today’s Gospel.

What does it mean, to be consecrated in the truth? Bear in mind that Jesus said ”I am the truth”, so to be consecrated in the truth is to live in Him. In other words, the truth is something alive, brought to life by the Spirit breathing into us. We find truth set out in the words of Scripture, and in the teachings of the Church, but words on a page can remain dead. They must be brought to life in us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and by our communion with Him who is the truth.

6th Sunday of Easter

6th Sunday of Easter 2021

Acts 10: 25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17

You may be familiar with the saying “If you remember the 60s, you weren’t there”. I do, and I wasn’t, at least in the sense implied by that adage: namely, that if you were part of the 60s “scene”, you would have been too far gone on dope and acid to recall it.

I have to confess that the swinging 60s didn’t swing for me. It was the decade of Saturday morning school, O-levels, A-levels, Scholarship exams, and finally adjustment to the mysterious world of university in 1968, the year not only of student revolution, but also of Humanae Vitae and its tumultuous aftermath. I shall always be grateful that I had football refereeing to keep me relatively sane.

In the “Summer of Love” I didn’t go to San Francisco with flowers in my hair—though some of you may well have done so. I went to the Co-op Furnishing Dept. to earn some money. Nor, two years later, did I join the allegedly half a million souls who trekked to Woodstock to try to set their souls free, as Joni Mitchell expressed it in her song which one-hit-wonders Matthews Southern Comfort took to the top of the UK charts the following summer. I was back at the Co-op.

Some years later, probably in 1994, the twenty fifth anniversary, I watched a TV documentary about Woodstock, which featured interviews with some of the “beautiful people” who had been there. They were unanimous in their verdict: “we talked a lot about free love, but we have realised that there is no such thing: love is always costly”.

That puts me in mind of the two elderly Jewish ladies who, for some reason, were on the visiting list of the now defunct parish of St. Augustine, Preston, where I did my diaconate placement in the summer of 1975. (It beat working at the Co-op.) One of these ladies commented “Religion is the Lord, and religion is love, and love means sacrifice”.

This old lady had reached the same conclusion, though I suspect by a very different route, as the Woodstock veterans: namely that love is always costly. We can, I feel, leave to one side the theoretically correct, but experientially questionable claim that God’s love is free. It is freely given, but accepting it will inevitably entail sacrifice, and a sharing in the Cross.

If we doubted that, we have it spelt out by Our Lord in His call to mutual love which we have just heard. “No one can show greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” St. John sets this call in the context of the Last Supper, where Jesus has already summoned His friends to mutual service by washing their feet, and from which He will depart to provide the supreme example of sacrificial love by undergoing His passion and death.

Jesus’ great commandment is a commandment of love, a love made possible by the sacrificial love of Father and Son through the agency of the Holy Spirit; a love which will always demand sacrifice on our part.

That self-sacrificing love which entails the laying down of our lives must be seen in small things, otherwise we shall not be capable of the greater sacrifice. One thing which I gained from my summers at the Co-op was the memory of a cartoon, one of a number drawn on the wall of the Carpet Sewing Room, all the work of an artistic employee, and all featuring the Peanuts characters of Charles Schultz.

The one which lodged in my mind was a night-time scene, with a crescent moon in the sky, and Snoopy lying on top of his kennel. On the back doorstep of his house stood Charlie Brown, clad in his pyjamas, and holding a glass of water. Underneath was the caption: “Love is bringing someone a glass of water in the middle of the night”.

An anti-climax, isn’t it—bathos? Yet it expresses a profound truth. I have often quoted it in wedding homilies. If we are not prepared to make the small sacrifices of love, we shall never be capable of the greater. And to give a nod to the First Reading: the Holy Spirit has been poured out on us to make us able. 

5th Sunday Easter

5th Sunday of Easter 2021

Acts 9:26-31; 1John 3:18-24; John 15: 1-8

What do I know about horticulture? Nothing. What do I know about viticulture (the care of vines)? Less than nothing. Where are we going with today’s Gospel? Let’s dive in and find out.

I have to confess that, unless it had bunches of grapes hanging from it, I wouldn’t recognise a vine if it poked me in the eye. In one of my previous parishes, one of the tabernacle covers carried a depiction of vine leaves. To be honest, I thought they were ivy. On the other hand, I am just about capable of recognising a rose bush, so I will start from there.

The first question which strikes me is “What is the difference between cutting away and pruning?” Would it be fair to say that they are the two sides of the same coin? The dead branches, and those which are not going to flourish further, are cut away, which amounts to a pruning of the whole bush.

When this pruning has been done, what is left? Precious little, it seems to me: not much more than a stump. Yet apparently this has to be done if the bush is to retain its value, to continue to fulfil its purpose. As long as there is something arising from the main stem, there is hope of life: yet it seems to be a fairly brutal business.

Our Lord’s description of viticulture is equally brutal. The unfruitful branches are lopped off, whereupon they wither, after which they go on the bonfire. Seemingly, they don’t even have a future as compost.

How does this apply to us—to us as individuals, and to us as the Church? The message seems, at one level, very straightforward. If we remain rooted in Christ, we will bear fruit, and all will be well. If, on the other hand, we do not allow Christ to bear fruit through us, to run through us like sap through the branches, we have no future.

So far, so good: but where does the pruning come in? Is there any one of you who has not been through pain and loss? Is there anyone who has not had to give up something precious, something without which you felt, at the time, that you could not survive? Bereavement is the most obvious example, but there are other things such as the breakdown of a relationship, the loss of a job, the failure of a project, or a collapse in health.

Have these losses destroyed you, as you felt they were doing at the time, or have you come through them leaner, fitter, more positive, more determined, perhaps with an enhanced gift of compassion, and a renewed sense of your need of God, and of union with Jesus Christ, that same God who, you initially thought, had abandoned you? I cannot answer that question for you, but it is worth pondering: have the prunings which you have undergone made you stronger or weaker, better or worse?

And what about the Church? She is going through a very drastic process of pruning at present. So much rottenness has been found among the branches in terms of abuse by clergy, and the cutting away of branches still has a way to go. You won’t be surprised to find me adding the rottenness of cowardly bishops and religious superiors, who are happy to sacrifice innocent priests and monks in order to cover their own backs, a rottenness which the institution is still unwilling to admit.

There is still more. The sin of clericalism, to which Pope Francis repeatedly draws attention—the sense of superiority and of entitlement to lord it over others—is still rampant. The present Holy Father is a gift from God to the Church, initiating a process of root and branch reform, but he is meeting bitter, and literally diabolic opposition, principally in the United States, where the majority of Catholics remain faithful, but where a minority, including some bishops and priests, appear to believe that their allegiance is to be given to Donald Trump, rather than to Jesus Christ.

There is an ancient adage, ecclesia semper reformanda , “the Church always in need of reform”, and what is true of the Church is equally true of us as individuals. We constantly need the vinedresser to be at work, pruning us, cutting us back, enabling us to bear more fruit for Christ.

4th Sunday Easter

4th  Sunday of Easter 2021

Acts 4:8-12; 1 John 3:1-2;  John 10:11-18

I am not cut out to be a shepherd in the usual sense of the word. If I had ever doubted that, my doubts would have been laid to rest on my first Easter Sunday in the wonderful and historic parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, Claughton-on-Brock, a truly rural parish, home to more sheep (and cows) than you can shake the proverbial stick at.

Directly opposite the church is a field, and after Mass on Easter Sunday I noticed that a lamb had emerged from that same field through a gap in the fence and was now wandering disconsolately along the grass verge, to the evident distress of its mother.

Enlisting the help of a parishioner, I decided to apply science to the problem. The parishioner and I took up positions several yards apart, with the lamb, and the gap in the fence, between us. The plan was to advance slowly on the lamb from both directions, and so to shepherd it (there’s the word) towards and through the gap, to rejoin the plaintively bleating ewe.

We had reckoned without the ingenuity, perversity, and dexterity of lambs. Sensing a plot, the creature set off at a rate of knots, darted between my legs, and hurtled along the grass verge, before making its way through another gap, and trotting serenely back to its mother. Did it wink at us? I can’t be sure.

So who said that sheep are stupid? Not I, not after that episode, nor indeed after watching sheep at work among the picnickers on the fells of the Lake District or Peak District. More than once, I have seen sheep trample over relaxing fell walkers, as they make a bee line for the backpacks and rucksacks where they know that food will be concealed. In go their heads, and out come the sandwiches, to be held against all comers, and munched enthusiastically, while all the time the raider keeps a wary eye open for counter attacks. Stupid? No! Docile? Not on your life! Crafty? Yes! Thuggish? Not half!

In speaking of Himself as the Good Shepherd, Our Lord never makes the claim that sheep are stupid. They need protection, they need to be known and loved, but they are not fools. Far from being foolish, they have the wisdom to know the Good Shepherd, to recognise His love for them, and to respond.

“I know my own, and my own know me” says Jesus: it is a two way process. He then goes further: “Just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father”. Ponder those words: they are actually breathtaking. The relationship of knowing love, or of loving knowledge, between the sheep and the Good Shepherd, between us and the Son of God, is as close and intimate as the relationship between that same Son and the Father.

That is a remarkable statement. Do we work at our relationship with Jesus the Good Shepherd to make it a statement of the truth?

This moves us on to another question: what about the relationship between priests and people? (Technically, we should begin with bishops and people, but we will settle for something more manageable.) In these days, where a priest will probably be responsible for three parishes, it may seem impossible for that mutual love and knowledge to exist. Certainly the days are long gone when the parish priest and his curates would set out, census books in hand, to knock on the door of every  Catholic, whose personal history was well known and documented.

So what can be done? Being no longer in a parish, I have no intention of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, to pontificate to my brother priests about what they should be doing. All I can envisage is an adaptation of the old principles to a changed situation: openness; availability; visibility; genuine love, concern, and interest, especially for the less attractive—but above all that knowledge of the Good Shepherd which is rooted in deep prayer.

3rd Sunday of Easter

3rd Sunday of Easter 2021

Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; 1 John 2:1-5; Luke 24:35-48

Many many moons ago, speaking to a gaggle of urchins in the now long defunct Junior Seminary, I asked “Which is the longest season in the Church’s year?” One smart youth raised his hand and replied “Ordinary Time”. Clever so-and –so! No wonder he is now Vicar General of the Diocese.

At one level, he was correct. The greater part of the year is indeed what we term “Ordinary Time”, when vestments are common or garden green, and we are not focusing on any particular event in the life, death, and resurrection of Our Lord. Ordinary Time, though, is not usually reckoned as a season, and it was not what I had in mind.

The answer for which I was searching was Easter, which is, to some people’s surprise, longer than Lent, the latter appearing to be endless because of the penances we undertake. The season of resurrection, the season of joy, is longer than the season of penitence and mourning.

Indeed, there is a sense in which it is always Easter because Christ is risen. Notice that we say “Christ IS risen” rather than “Christ HAS risen, because the resurrection is a present state, and not only a past event.

Every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection: every Mass is a celebration of the resurrection. Yet there is a note of caution to be sounded: every Mass makes present, not only the resurrection of the Lord, but also His Passion and death. Those events of Passion, death, and resurrection are interwoven, inseparable: we cannot have one without the others.

We live in the light of the risen Christ, but we live also in the mystery of His suffering and death. We are the Easter People, as Pope St. John Paul II was fond of reminding us, but we are also the Ash Wednesday People, the Holy Thursday night People, the Good Friday People.

These are not simply truths which we profess: they also play out in our lives. We too have our seasons of wilderness wandering, of Gethsemane anguish, of Calvary darkness, as well as our seasons of Easter joy. They may coincide with the Church’s seasons, or they may not. Often they are woven together, suffering shot through with joy: celebration tempered by sorrow.

It is important that we recognise them for what they are—sharings in the suffering, in the death, and  in the resurrection of the Lord. All of these Christ-events are present realities, and all of them find a place in the pilgrim journey of His people.

There is another event too which we must not neglect. The season of Easter leads us to Pentecost, the feast of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We are also the Pentecost People, filled, guided, and moved by the Holy Spirit; though we should never forget that the Spirit came not only in the wind and flame of Pentecost, but also in the gentle breathing of the Lord on Easter Sunday evening, when he breathed on the disciples and declared “Receive the Holy Spirit”.

So we are at one and the same time the Lent People, the Passiontide People, the Easter People and the Pentecost People. I might add that we are also the Advent People, constantly looking forward to the return of Christ in glory, but also seeking to recognise His present coming in the people and events of everyday. And in deference to that canny youth of yesteryear, perhaps it should also be said that we are the Ordinary Time People, living in the presence of, and sharing the life of, the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the mundane apparent non-events of everyday life.

Sunday of Easter Octave

2nd Sunday of Easter 2021

Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20: 19-31

Has it ever struck you that Easter Sunday morning’s Gospel is truncated, cut short? The Beloved Disciple enters the tomb, “he saw, and he believed”, and that is more or less it, apart from a comment about previous lack of belief. We are left with a cliff hanger: you can imagine “to be continued” appearing across the TV screen.

Why should this be? Why was it decided to leave the Gospel at that point when, only a few verses later, we have the encounter between the Magdalene and the risen Christ?

It was to emphasise the emptiness of the tomb; to focus our attention on the absence of Our Lord’s body. This in its turn was done to underline the physical reality of the resurrection. What the women and, subsequently, the apostles, met was not a wraith or a phantom; it was truly Jesus the Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity, to borrow a phrase from another context.

This physicality is stressed in today’s Gospel. The risen Christ is able to pass through closed and locked doors: nevertheless, His body is substantial, as He demonstrates when He shows the frightened disciples the wounds of His hands and side.

As a matter of interest, why were they frightened? They had been told by the women that Jesus was risen and that they had met Him. Among them was John who, we were told last week, had seen the empty tomb and the grave clothes, “and believed”. Furthermore, they had been told over and over again by Jesus that He would rise from the dead: so why were they still cowering in fear?

It comes down to human nature, doesn’t it? Despite all the talk about “glass half full” and “glass half empty” people, we are by birth, upbringing, and experience, natural pessimists. The promise of resurrection, and even the women’s testimony to the resurrection, was simply too good to be true.

Has it ever struck you that we never say “It’s too bad to be true”? We are always willing to believe the worst: to believe the best is so much more difficult. Partly, this is the result of experience: many people seem to undergo more bad times than good. Partly, though, it is also an attitude of mind: we are innately suspicious of good news.

Yet the risen Jesus stands among the ten—as they were at that moment, with Judas gone and Thomas absent—to prove that Good News, which we can write with capital letters, is true, is real: in fact, is the only enduring reality. It is bad news which, ultimately, is the myth. Or perhaps we should say, not the myth—for the wounds of Christ are real enough and are not removed by the resurrection—but ephemeral, passing, temporary. It is the Good News which is lasting, substantial, permanent.

And if that Easter Sunday evening appearance isn’t enough to convince us of this, there is more. Along comes Thomas, whom we can identify with Everyman (or Everyone, as we should probably say) the man on the Clapham omnibus, so beloved of early twentieth century writers; the woman on the No. 51 into Carnforth. He speaks for today’s society when he says “Prove it”. Scepticism rules the roost today: unless we have been there and brought back the T-shirt, we refuse to believe in anything.

Thomas demands physical evidence, so Jesus returns and says “Right! Give me your finger. There! I have put it into the nail hole. Give me your hand. Can you feel that gaping wound? Is that physical enough for you?”

It is. Thomas accepts the reality which he can see and feel, and then has the courage and the wisdom to go further; to accept the reality which he cannot see and feel, but can now infer, namely that the Risen Lord is God. Thus we have the first affirmation of the divinity of Christ, as Thomas declares “My Lord and my God”.

What about us? as a popular song asked a few years ago. Like me, you may have been brought up to pray Thomas’ words “My Lord and my God” silently at the elevation of Our Lord’s Body and Blood during the Mass. Like Thomas, we can see a physical reality: do we still, like Thomas, have the faith to go further and to proclaim our faith in the divinity and its present reality? Why would we not, as we learn that there is nothing which God gives us which is too good to be true?

Easter Sunday

THE EASTER VIGIL 2021

It’s a shambles! The Easter Vigil, I mean, and not just this Easter Vigil, with its regulations and restrictions, but the Easter Vigil per se. It was clearly designed by a committee: bits stick out at all angles.

You are probably aware of the definition of a camel as “a horse designed by a committee”. Well, the Vigil is a liturgical camel.

Notice how many times the ceremonies reach a high point, only to dive down again, before there is another leap up. We are riding a prayerful Big Dipper. The first summit comes with the third Lumen Christi, when the paschal candle is held aloft, the church lights all flash on, and the candle is placed in the stand and incensed, before a heavenly voice intones the Exsultet—“Rejoice heavenly powers…” and we ascend to heights of sublimity.

Then, in an instant, we are back down to earth, as we return to the very beginning of things, and read from the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament). Often, as this year, we are taken right back to our origins, as we hear that beautifully poetic creation narrative, of a world which God pronounced to be “very good”; always we hear of the crossing of the Red Sea, when the Jewish people were saved by water, as we are saved by the water of baptism, the Easter sacrament.

In my younger and more radical days I used to change the order, having the Old Testament readings first, before heading out to bless the fire and the candle, giving a steady rise to the high point of the Exsultet. With the passing of the years, one becomes more conformist, more “oh blow it!” in attitude, more willing to go with the flow.

So I climbed back onto the Big Dipper, which, after the final Old Testament reading, ascends to a new summit with the Gloria. Never will I forget my first Easter Vigil in the seminary when, at this point, the organ thundered out, the kettle drums and tubular bells joined in, and, as someone pulled a string, the purple hangings covering the frescoes behind the altar all fell down at once. Glorious liturgical kitsch: I felt that I was in heaven.

Inevitably, we are back to the ground with our reading from St. Paul, drawing our attention to the link between the Resurrection and baptism, before we hit the heights again with the triple Alleluia. After this, the Mass continues as usual until the final joy of the sung dismissal, followed by a rousing Easter hymn, at Ushaw always “Thine be the glory”.

So a wonderful, wonderful, awesome celebration; a worthy high point of the year, a glorious sharing in the joy of the risen Christ—but a shambles all the same.

And perhaps it is right that our greatest celebration should be a shambles, because life is a shambles, and the world is a shambles, and the Church is a shambles, and you and I are a shambles. Yet it doesn’t matter, because into the shambles comes a dead man walking, a man with pierced hands and feet, and a pierced side, who says to us “Don’t worry. Don’t worry about the shambles, because I have seen it, and I have plunged into the heart of it, and it has killed me.

“Don’t worry about that either, because I have overcome death, and the shambles, and the wounds, and I am alive again. Look at my wounds. Put your hands into them , and recognize in them the sanctification of the shambles, and of death, and of you.

“Embrace the shambles of the world, and of the Church, and of yourself; live it to the full. And enjoy the shambles of the Vigil, because it proclaims that in the midst of every shambles, glorious like this, or dark and painful, I AM, conquering and healing. It is a shambles, but it is a superb, divine shambles. Enjoy it to the full, for I am risen.”

Holy Thursday

Holy  Thursday 2021

Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1Cor 11: 23-26; John 13: 1-15

You may remember that around thirty to forty years ago, the custom grew in many parishes and other settings of celebrating something resembling a Passover meal, on or around Holy Thursday.

There would be a seder dish, with the symbolic foods used at Passover, and an explanation would be provided of each of them. There was the question and answer which takes place between father and eldest son in a Jewish household, beginning “Why is this night different from all other nights?” The prayers of Passover would be offered, and it would be pointed out at what point in the meal Jesus would have blessed the bread which became His Body, and which of the ritual cups would have been transformed into His Blood.

As a teaching aid, it was extremely valuable, setting the Last Supper, and hence the Mass, in its original context, taking us back to the roots of our celebration, guarding against the opposite dangers of over-simplification—the idea that Jesus and His disciples “simply had a meal”, which ignores the highly ritualised nature of this particular meal—and over-elaboration, turning the Eucharist into a performance.

Eventually, however, it was banned by the hierarchy on the perfectly reasonable grounds that it could offend the Jewish people, and could be interpreted by them as a form of mimickry, though I could mention that one such celebration which I attended was presided over by a Rabbi.

Yet whilst we are no longer permitted to demonstrate in this way the link between the Passover and the Eucharist, it is important that we should be conscious of that link. Hence, we always have as our First Reading on this night the account of the original Passover, followed immediately by St. Paul’s account of the institution of the Eucharist, which was put into writing before any of the Gospels were written down.

Thus we hear of the Paschal Lamb which was slain, its blood smeared on the doorposts to save the people of Israel from slavery, and can make the connection with Jesus, the true Paschal Lamb, whose blood was shed on the Cross to redeem the world from sin, and is now smeared on the lips of the faithful (as one of the early Church Fathers expresses it) as we share in the Passover from death into life.

We are also introduced to the concept of “memorial”, handed down to us by the Jewish people. When the Jews celebrate Passover, they are not merely remembering a past event, they are making the past present: they are with their ancestors escaping from slavery.

Similarly, when we celebrate Mass, we are not remembering something which happened two thousand years ago; we are participating in those events, made present for us now. This is the meaning of “memorial”. The transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of the Lord, and the offering of that Body and Blood in sacrifice to the Father in the crucifixion and resurrection, are a present reality. Hence the widespread annoyance that the most recent changes in the translation of the Mass left untouched the unfortunate expression “in memory of me”, when “as a memorial of me” would have been more appropriate, as conveying more accurately that sense of the past made present.

In using St. John’s account of the Last Supper on this night, the Church is reminding us of another important truth. John doesn’t describe the institution of the Eucharist: he has already given us his Eucharistic discourse in chapter six. Instead, he recounts Jesus’ action in washing His disciples’ feet, a reminder that Eucharist and service are inseparable. If our Eucharistic celebration, our Mass, is to be complete, we must be people of loving service, people who literally or metaphorically wash the feet of others. From the Mass, we must go out to love and serve, for if we fail to do that, our making present of the Lord’s sacrifice, and our receiving of His Body and Blood, will be a contradiction. The love of God, shown to us and celebrated by us in the Mass, must be a reality in our daily lives.

Lent week 5 Year B

5th Sunday of Lent 2021 

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33

I am not going to insult you by asking what were Jesus’ final words from the Cross as reported by St. John, whose account of the Passion we always read on Good Friday. You know as well as I do that those words were, according to the Fourth Gospel “It is accomplished”.

It is fascinating—at least I think it is, and I am the one holding the conch shell (cf.Wm Goulding: “Lord of the Flies”) so I can express my opinion—it is fascinating that the Greek word here translated “accomplished” is, at root, the same word which the Letter to the Hebrews uses, and which is there translated “having been made perfect” and which Our Lord Himself uses, according to Matthew 5:48, when saying “You must be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect”.

Now before your eyes glaze over completely, and you become totally catatonic, let me explain. Today’s Mass readings are all pointing towards the concept of completion, fulfillment, perfection; and the fulfillment of everything will occur when Jesus surrenders Himself completely in death into the hands of the Father. Not only will the scriptures be fulfilled, but the whole of human history, for this self-surrender will make possible the Resurrection, and complete the salvation of the world, and the purpose of creation.

Teilhard de Chardin, the twentieth century Jesuit philosopher and theologian, spoke of Christ as the Omega point of history, the focal point around which everything revolves. In the suffering, death, and Resurrection of Jesus, not only His own life but the whole of creation is accomplished, fulfilled, and perfected, and that includes our own perfection. Don’t worry that you feel far from perfect; your perfection will be achieved when, in and with Jesus, you pass through death and into new life.

That will be a glorious accomplishment, and glory is the key element for John when he speaks of the Passion of Our Lord. For John, glory is found, not only in the Resurrection, but already in Jesus’ surrender to death. Thus, John doesn’t dwell on Our Lord’s sufferings—he happily leaves that to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, from whom we hear in a three year cycle on Palm Sunday. Instead, he depicts a Jesus who is completely in control, directing the events of the Passion to the glory of God.

“Now the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified,” says Jesus, before praying “Father, glorify your name”, a prayer which receives the answer “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again”. Never mind, implies John, that this glorification will entail terrible suffering: God’s Son is fulfilling the Father’s will, and this is glory, this is fulfillment, this is accomplishment, this is perfection.

Both the writer to the Hebrews and St. John make passing reference to the Agony in the Garden. The Letter to the Hebrews comments that “During His life on earth, Jesus offered up prayer and entreaty, aloud and in silent tears to the One who had the power to save Him out of death”—that is an interesting expression, by the way, not “from death” but “out of death”, implying that first He must go into death—and in reading that, we are inevitably reminded of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, and of His sweat which fell like drops of blood.

John, on the other hand, summarises the Gethsemane prayer almost in passing: “Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say: Father save me from this hour? But it is for this very reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Thus, we have the elements of the prayer which the other evangelists record. It is perfectly reasonable that, in the light of those three (synoptic) Gospels, we should meditate deeply on the Agony in the Garden, that we should unite our sufferings with those of Jesus, that we should recognise our own Gethsemane moments as a sharing in the Agony of Jesus, but we should also, with John, accept that they are moments of fulfillment, moments of glory, however painful and inglorious they may seem.

The Passion of the Christ is the fulfillment of the prophets, but also the fulfillment of history. As we mourn for, and share in, His sufferings, we must also remember that, in them, are His perfection and ours, His fulfillment and ours, His glory and ours; in them, the whole purpose of creation is accomplished.

Lent week 4 Year B

4th Sunday of Lent 2021

2 Chronicles 36: 14-16, 19-23; Psalm 136 (137); Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21

Believe it or not, in the late spring/early summer of this year, it will be forty three years since Boney M topped the popular music charts with their version of today’s psalm, “By the rivers of Babylon”. So if you remember that, I am afraid that you can no longer claim to be in the first flush of youth.

This psalm is Israel’s lament during the Babylonian exile, which is described in the passage from the Second Book of Chronicles. Jerusalem was destroyed, the country was laid waste, and in a series of expulsions, the population was taken to exile by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, an exile which lasted for seventy years. Finally, in 538BC, Babylon was itself conquered by the Persians, and Cyrus the Persian king allowed the people of Israel/Judah to return home and to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple.

For the Jewish people, this was an overwhelmingly powerful illustration of God’s love for them, a new Exodus, almost equal in scope to the original Exodus from Egypt. Later, Christians would see it as a foretaste and promise of the even greater liberation of the human race from sin and death by the grace of God who “loved the world so much that He gave His only Son”.

These are words which we need to ponder: “God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son”. Take those words away with you, and let them soak into you. Then add to them the words which come later in today’s Gospel “For God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but so that, through Him, the world might be saved”.

How often do you or I reflect on those words, or on those which we have heard from the Letter to the Ephesians: “God loved us with so much love”? Throughout history, Gold has repeatedly shown His love, forming a people, rescuing them from slavery, settling them in the Land of Promise, bringing them home from exile, and finally sending His Son to redeem the whole world.

Notice that in particular: “God so loved THE WORLD”—not certain people or groups of people, but “THE WORLD”. Certainly, He has chosen and formed a people to be His Body on earth, but His love encompasses all people, who are linked to His Body in various ways, as the Second Vatican Council reminded us. Hence, Pope Francis in Iraq, like his predecessors Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI at Assisi, prayed with Jews, Muslims, and even non-Abrahamic people, inhabitants of a world which God “loved (and loves) so much”.

So, I ask again, do we take those words seriously, do we use them as a guiding star in our lives, or do we forget that Christ came “not to condemn the world”? Do we sometimes view life as an obstacle race, bobbing and weaving to avoid enough sins to save ourselves from condemnation, forgetting that we have been saved by Christ?

Another question strikes me. Jesus the Son of God redeemed the world by being lifted up on the Cross, and He tells us today that He “must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert”. This, as you may be aware, is a reference to an incident during the Exodus, when the people, not for the only time, grumbled against Moses and against God. We are told that, as a punishment, God sent fiery serpents among the people, and their bite was fatal, but He also gave a remedy. Moses was to make a bronze serpent and hold it up on a pole: whoever looked at the bronze serpent would live.

My question therefore is this: have you been bitten by a serpent recently? There are many serpents about: the serpent of rage, the serpent of malice, the serpent of bitter words, the serpent of greed, the serpent of self-centredness, and that serpent which is said to be the most deadly of all, the serpent of discouragement.

Have any of those serpents bitten you? And, more importantly, have you looked for healing to Him whom Moses’ bronze serpent foreshadowed, Jesus lifted up on the Cross? Remember: He was sent to us because God loved the world so much.

Lent Week 3 Year B

Exodus 20:1-17; 1 Cor 1:22-25; John 2:13-25

Gentle Jesus, eh? “Making a whip out of some cord, He drove all of them out of the Temple, cattle and sheep as well, scattered the money changers’ coins, knocked their tables over, and said to the pigeon-sellers “Take all this out of here, and stop turning my Father’s house into a market”.

Clearly, the Prince of Peace and advocate of non-violence was prepared to allow righteous anger to lead Him into conduct which, in our more squeamish age, would lead to criminal proceedings. I am reminded of the early days of Pope Francis, when he proceeded to withdraw power and influence from Cardinal Burke, who had long been striving to turn us into a Church of the scribes and Pharisees. The American far right, who loathe the Holy Father because he constantly challenges us to become more Christ-like, set up a cry of “Where’s your mercy now?” It is easy to imagine the original Pharisees asking Our Lord ”Where’s your non-violence now?”

What made Jesus so angry? Interestingly, it wasn’t sexual sin, with which the Church seems at times to have been pre-occupied to the exclusion of practically everything else, but two aspects of failure to observe the Commandments which He stated to be fundamental, love of God and love of neighbour. The Pharisees incurred His wrath for their hypocrisy in rejecting love of neighbour in pursuit of an adherence to petty rules: in the present instance, His ire was aroused by lack of true respect for the Temple as the dwelling place of God.

Yet the buyers and sellers in the Temple believed that they were performing a service to God. The coinage issued by the Roman state, and blasphemously bearing the head of the “deified” Emperor, had to be exchanged for the Jewish coins which alone were acceptable in the Temple, and the people needed cattle and sheep, or pigeons, to offer in sacrifice.

Thus there are two elements in Our Lord’s attack on these aspects of Temple life, one obvious and the other less so. It probably seems clear to us that all this trading in the Temple displayed a lack of the reverence due to a holy place. Business which had begun in the interests of worship in the Temple had “growed” like Topsy and far outstripped its original purpose.

Here we might pause and ask ourselves whether there are similar instances in the Church. There are times when money-raising, which is necessary, can seem like the chief aim of a parish or diocese: far more serious are the financial scandals in which the Vatican has been embroiled in recent years. Yet far more dreadful than any of these is the clerical abuse scandal, of which the Church needs to be thoroughly cleansed and purified, to say nothing of the lesser, but still serious scandal of Pontius Pilate-like bishops and leaders of religious congregations who refuse to become involved in supporting falsely accused members.

Yet there is a second implication of Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple, which is less obvious but, in its way, more far-reaching. In driving out those who provided the animals or fowl for sacrifice, Jesus was implicitly indicating the end of Temple worship. He had come as the fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy of the Messiah entering His Temple, and had been rejected. Now He declares His own body to be the true Temple, which is to be destroyed and built up again, unlike the stone-built Temple, which will be destroyed and never rebuilt. This was St. John’s understanding of Jesus’ actions: the Temple has had its day, and now the new Temple is here in the form of Jesus’ body, of which you and I are members.

This entails the encompassing of the Jewish Law within the person of Christ, the fulfillment of the Ten Commandments within the two Commandments of love promulgated by the Christ. Those who, for instance, at various times over the centuries have found their nether garments in a twist over what they have regarded as graven images have missed the point: in reverencing statues of their favourite saints, devout people, far from indulging in idol worship, have been and are engaged in celebrating the Communion of Saints, their and our unity in the one Body of Christ, the true Temple, with those who have gone before. Paradoxically, by a violent act, Jesus has proclaimed the triumph of love, as the two great commandments of love are to be fulfilled in membership of the Temple which is His Body.

Lent Week 2 Year B

2nd Sunday of Lent 2021

Genesis 22:1-2, 9-13, 15-18; Romans 8: 31-34; Mark 9:2-10.

“It is wonderful for us to be here.” Is it? What do you think? Is it wonderful to be in whatever place you are, on this planet, on this day of this year? Is it wonderful to be here, in a world ravaged by pandemic, by hunger, by war, by injustice, by threats to its very existence?

Well, yes, actually it is, because God has put us here, and God is here with us. In the chaplain’s room at Our Lady’s HS Lancaster, there used to be a poster which read “Blossom where you are planted”. There was deep wisdom in that apparently trivial adage.

A friend of mine has recently had to go into a nursing home, and to face the reality that he will probably never walk again unaided. Both the move and the realisation have hit him hard, and he is struggling to come to terms with them. One day last week, he was pouring out his troubles to one of the carers, a lass of nineteen.

“I feel like giving up” he complained.

“No, don’t do that” came the reply. “You have a lot to give, you can achieve a lot, just as you are. Go for it.”

I suggested last week that God sends us angels, both spiritual and human, in our wilderness times. Here was an angel aged 19, imparting heavenly wisdom in an earthly way.

But life isn’t all struggle and misery, even for those who bear the heaviest crosses. There are transfiguration moments, times when light and joy break through, when God reveals His face to us, and we can say without hesitation “It is wonderful for us to be here”.

Perhaps we don’t always recognise those moments at the time. Sometimes it is only in retrospect that we can say, with Jacob, “Truly God is in this place and I never knew it,” when we realise that we have been given a glimpse of the transfigured Christ, and an insight into the promise which awaits us.

Take a few minutes to recall some of your transfiguration moments. You may feel at first that you have none to recall, but if you allow your mind to wander back over your life, you may surprise yourself.

I remember glorious Wednesday afternoons during childhood summers, when the shop closed at dinner time and my mother, father and I would head off on long local walks along the river or canal, before catching the bus home. I remember kneeling in Lancaster Cathedral during my dinner hour from work, and knowing, rather than just believing, that Jesus was present in the tabernacle, and that I had to consider the possibility of a vocation to the priesthood. Many other transfiguration moments have followed, lighting what can sometimes be a deep darkness, and I am sure that the same is true for you.

Yet we cannot hold onto these moments of transfiguration. That is what Peter is trying to do with his suggestion of three tents, where they can stay forever. Instead, he has to endure the disappearance of Moses and Elijah, the representatives of the Law and the Prophets, who must depart because their mission is fulfilled in Jesus. He has to accept, too, the fading of the brightness and, with his companions, make his way down from the mountaintop to the valley of ordinary life, and later to the Garden of the Agony, where they would see their Lord in very different guise.

This fading of the vision reminds us that we must not attempt to cling onto God’s gifts, but must be openhanded, willing to relinquish them with faith that this is for the best, that the promise contained in the gifts will be fulfilled. This is the lesson which Abraham teaches us in his willingness to sacrifice his son. We need not concern ourselves with asking whether a loving God would have demanded human sacrifice, or whether Abraham should have concurred with such a demand. That is beside the point: what matters is that Abraham was willing to let go, and to put total trust in God. St. Paul reminds us how that trust was vindicated when God Himself made the sacrifice of His Son, that sacrifice which, in the last analysis, He did not require of Abraham.

This Lent, ponder your transfiguration moments, and thank God for them, but do not try to cling to them. Let them return to God as pledges that His promises will be fulfilled.

Lent Week 1 Year B

1st Sunday of Lent 2021  

Genesis 9:8-15; 1Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15

Mark’s Gospel is amazing in that he is able to say so much in such a short space. In two short paragraphs today, he takes us through, not only Our Lord’s time in the wilderness, but also His basic proclamation, or kerygma: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.”

Every word in this short extract is significant. It begins with a word which doesn’t appear in the English translation—one of Mark’s favourite words in the early part of his Gospel—the word euthus “at once, immediately”.

It is a pity that the translation leaves this out, because it is a significant word. It points to the urgency with which Jesus prepares for, and begins, His public ministry; an urgency which Mark constantly stresses.

The episode begins immediately after the baptism of the Lord. Jesus is given no time to reflect on His baptism, no time to bask in the descent of the Spirit, or the encouraging testimony of the Father—“You are my Son, the Beloved”. Instead, He enters the wilderness at once. No time must be lost.

Notice how He comes to enter the wilderness. He doesn’t go of His own accord: instead, the Spirit is responsible, that same Spirit which had descended upon Him at the Jordan. Now the Spirit has Him go straight into the wilderness—and the Spirit will guide us, taking us where we should go, if only we are open to Him.

How does the Spirit guide Jesus? It “drove Him out” we are told: the Greek is actually ekballei “threw Him out”. There is almost an element of force in the Spirit’s action: Jesus is going into the wilderness whether He wishes to or not.

What is the wilderness? The wilderness is the place of wandering, of bewilderment; the place without signposts, where we must give up our comfortable securities and allow ourselves to be led by God.

The wilderness is the place where the Israelites wandered for forty years on their way to the Promised Land; but, as the prophet Hosea pointed out, it is also the place where they were drawn closer to God, where they came to know Him more fully. In His forty days (shorthand for a fairly long time) in the wilderness, Our Lord became identified with His people in their forty years (shorthand for a very long time) of wandering: and we too, in our Lenten forty days’ journey, are identified, as the pilgrim people of God, both with Our Lord and with our Jewish forebears.

In the Greek of the New Testament, the word for wilderness is eremon , the empty place. Our Lenten practices of prayer, self-denial, and generous giving, are intended to empty us of attachment to unnecessary things, in order that we may be filled by God.

Yet the wilderness is not entirely empty: the Tempter is there. Matthew and Luke describe the temptations which Jesus faced, whilst Mark does not. Our own wilderness times, whether chosen by us or inflicted on us, may open us to temptation, but they also serve to clarify our vision, to enable us to recognize our temptations and to resist them.

Mark is alone in using a peculiar expression: “He was with the wild beasts.” What is their significance? Were they a source of danger and of fear? Probably. We all face wild beasts of some description—people who are hostile; people who do not share our values, and who  may tempt us to abandon those values; threats to our mental or physical well-being. Yet in saying “He was with the wild beasts,” is Mark implying that Our Lord tamed them, made them His companions? Can we tame and befriend the wild beasts of our nature, whether these be rage, lust, selfishness, unkindness, or whatever?

“And the angels looked after Him.” Let us not forget that God sends His angels, both spiritual and human, to look after us in our wilderness times.

We looked at the kerygma, the basic proclamation, a few weeks ago. It is worth mentioning though, that the Second Reading interprets the story of Noah’s Ark, in which people and animals were saved by passing through water, as looking forward to baptism, the Easter sacrament, by which we have been saved through water. We seek to live out our baptism daily, and especially during this season of Lent.

6th Sunday Year B

6th Sunday in OT 2021

Leviticus 13:1-2; 45-46; 1Cor 10: 31-11:1; Mark 1: 40-45

Is it just me, or does the beginning of that Second Reading remind anyone else of the old Status Quo hit “Whatever you want”? “Whatever you eat, whatever you drink, whatever you do...” Whether it evokes musical nostalgia or not, the whole of that reading effectively encourages us to live the two great Commandments of love of God and love of neighbour.

First, St. Paul calls us to do everything for the glory of God. Straightaway, then, we have a challenge: am I conscious of the presence of God always in my life, and do I try to do His will in everything? Paul then continues his theme from last week’s reading, of seeking to be of service to all—for their advantage indeed, but also to draw them closer to Christ, to cause them to say “These Catholics/Christians are good eggs: they have something going for them.”

Moving from there to the First Reading and Gospel, I find nostalgia breaking out again. In the late fifties, Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Black Arrow” appeared as a serial on children’s television, and I can still recall the sheer terror evoked by one scene in which a leper, hooded and cloaked, and ringing a bell to warn people away, turns and pursues the young hero and heroine. It turns out that he is not a leper at all, but the rather sinister Sir Daniel Brackley, but that episode captured the horror which lepers provoked, suffering from a highly contagious disease for which there was no cure.

Nor was it only the physical ravages of the disease which aroused such fear. There was also the knowledge that, once infected, you were literally an outcast, forced to live apart from society and, in the case of Jews, banned from playing any part in worship, and in any of the religious activities which formed the basis of community life. Hence, lepers were shunned, and for their part were desperate to find healing if Jesus could offer it.

This gives rise to an incidental question that you might wish to ponder. Is there anyone, or any group of people, whom I shun, from whom I shy away? You are probably familiar with some of the stories of St. Francis of Assisi and his encounters with lepers whom, as a particularly fastidious young man, he used to avoid, literally like the plague. One of the major stages in his conversion occurred when he saw a leper coming towards him. Overcoming by a huge effort his initial impulse to head off in the opposite direction, Francis leapt down from his horse, embraced the leper, and changed clothes with him.

We are probably not called to such dramatic gestures, but we are called to recognise the human being behind anything which we may find offputting, and to embrace that human being metaphorically, if not literally, though, in this context, I must recall another story of a literal embrace.

In Scorton, as some of you will be aware, there is no Catholic primary school, so I was always concerned to maintain an involvement with the Church of England school, and I would sometimes be invited to assembly. On one such occasion, the Headteacher devoted the whole assembly to an incident, considered newsworthy at the time, when Pope Francis embraced a man with a dreadfully disfigured face, the Head’s point being that this was an outstanding example of Christianity in action, and a lesson which the children should ponder—so we are actually brought back to St. Paul.

With all these considerations in mind, it is no surprise that the leper of today’s Gospel was so anxious to be cured by Our Lord. Along with that anxiety, he also had deep faith: “If you want to, you can cure me.” There may be a slight point of danger for us there. Some people will claim that, if we have faith, God will cure us of anything—therefore, if we are not cured, we don’t have enough faith. I can’t help feeling that this attitude confuses faith with magic: it also overlooks the leper’s opening words “If you want to”. It may not be God’s will that a particular prayer should be answered in a particular way at a particular time: God is not a slot-machine.

There is something else worth pondering, namely the difference between being cured and being healed. Diseases are cured: people are healed. Someone may be cured of a particular disease, but remain unhealed: they may be angry, selfish, unpleasant people, on whom the cure’s effect is purely physical. On the other hand, a person’s disease may not be cured, but s/he may still be healed—of inner hurts, of resentment, of anger, of dis-ease rather than disease. So there we have a final question: do I need to be cured, or do I need to be healed?

4th Sunday Year B

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021

Deuteronomy 18:15-20; 1 Cor 7: 32-35; Mark 1: 21-28

I think that I have spoken before about the two Latin words for “authority”. There is imperium which is authority in the sense of “power” or “control”, as in “having authority” over someone, or in the way that we speak of “the authorities”.

Then there is auctoritas, from which the English word “authority” is derived. This is “moral” authority, when someone knows what s/he is talking about, is “an authority” on a subject, and so has the ability, not to force, but to persuade. This word has its root in the verb augere “to cause to increase”, which implies that this form of authority is intended to help people grow.

Which sense of the word is being employed here, on the two occasions on which it is used? “Unlike the scribes” we are told, “Jesus taught them with authority”. It seems fairly clear that this is auctoritas: Jesus knew what He was talking about, and it is rather disturbing that the scribes, the people with imperium, apparently didn’t.

Later, the word occurs again. It is unfortunate that Greek doesn’t make the same distinction as Latin, but uses the same word exousia for both kinds of authority. This time, it is the people who are speaking: “Here is a teaching that is new,” they say, “and with authority behind it”. This would appear to be auctoritas again, but they go on to say “He gives orders even to unclean spirits and they obey Him.”

This is imperium. Our Lord has power over these spirits, and is able to drive them out. In effect, though, it is both. His imperium derives from His auctoritas. Nobody appoints Him to a position of power: His power is based on His knowledge and understanding.

That is how it should always be: temporal authority should always be based on moral authority, and should enable people to grow. Is that how it works in our world today?

In the best situations, we may say that it is. In a functioning family, for instance, parents have power over their children, but this derives from their love for their children, and their desire to help them grow. A tyrannical father, who lords it over the family, may have power, but he lacks moral authority, and will not contribute to his family’s growth.

What about the world at large? In a mature society, power should again be based on moral authority, but how often is that so in practice? If we counted up the nations of the world, I suspect that dictatorships might outnumber free societies. So often the truth of Lord Acton’s dictum is demonstrated: “All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

Even in the self-styled “land of the free” the United States, we have seen how dictatorship can arise. For four years, someone whom mental health professionals defined as “a narcissistic sociopath” exercised power on a whim, and when that power was due to be taken from him as the result of a democratic election, tried all means to cling on, and sought to destroy his compatriots’ trust in democracy. In our own country, Prime Ministers have sought to bypass Parliament, and have been thwarted only by the vigilance of the Parliamentary Speaker.

Many of us of a certain vintage will have experienced the abuse of power in schools, especially in all-boys schools, where the bullying schoolmaster of legend was frequently a flesh and blood reality. And what about the Church? The horrors of clerical sex abuse are as dreadful an example as one could find of the abuse of power, and whilst the age of curate-breaker parish priests may largely have passed, there are still plenty of prince bishops and hectoring priests, keen to lecture people on their supposed failings, teaching without auctoritas, imposing rules at will, and refusing to surrender what they regard as their just imperium.

So where do we stand? If we have power of any sort, we must strive to ensure that it is rooted in moral authority. The more firmly we are fixed in Christ, bringing our plans and decisions before Him in prayer, and in the light of His word, the more likely is this to be the case. Also we must be vigilant, questioning abuses of power where we see them, whether in society or in the Church. But let us always ensure that we allow others, and especially Christ who speaks in our inmost heart, to question us.

3rd Sunday Year B

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021

Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1Cor 7: 29-31; Mark 1:14-20

What’s going on? This is the second time since Christmas that we have had St. John’s account of the calling of the first four disciples, followed a few days later, in this case a week, by the very different version in one of the Synoptic Gospels. The two accounts differ markedly. Does this make them incompatible, and present us with a problem?

Far from it, I would say. It strikes me that John and the Synoptics are interdependent; that, without John, today’s episode would make little sense. Imagine these four fishermen working away, along with their colleagues, when some random bloke comes along and says “follow me”. Would they have done so? Would they heck as like! They would have given him a mouthful and carried on with the task of earning a living.

They would have followed, only if they knew Him already, only if there was a relationship in existence, the sort of relationship described by John, who tells us that they were pointed towards Jesus by John the Baptist, and that they spent time with Him, being drawn into closeness with Him. Hence they would have been waiting for His call, and would have followed with alacrity.

There are lessons for us there. We too are called into relationship with Jesus the Christ, which means that we too have to spend time with Him; time given to prayer, time of stillness in His presence, time to reflect on His word, time to recognize Him in other people and in the events of life, time especially to recognize Him in the Eucharist. Then we will be ready to respond “at once” as did the fishermen, when Jesus has a special call for us, that expression “at once” (euthus) appearing in the call of each pair of brothers.

So they follow. Who (or “whom” if you wish to be grammatically precise) or what are they following? It is definitely “who”: it is a person, not a programme, or an ideal, or a slogan. That is something which we must always bear in mind: we are following the Person, Jesus Christ, God-the-Son-made-man, called into relationship with Him, and nothing and no one else.

This is something which is forgotten by the critics and opponents of Pope Francis. His whole aim is to focus us on Jesus, to make the Church more Christ-like, to steer her away from the temptation to become a Church of the Scribes and Pharisees, obsessed with rules and prohibitions. Hence he is accused (usually, it seems, by people involved in far right American politics) of being ambiguous, “liberal” (whatever that is supposed to mean) lax, or even a heretic. Such people would doubtless have regarded Jesus as a heretic, with His lightness of touch where rules and regulations were concerned.

That, then is the next question for us: am I focused on the person of Jesus, within the context of the Church, but not making an idol of the Church or of our own particular understanding or version of it?

I have said that we are following a person, not a programme, yet Jesus does set out a programme, a programme which our following of Him will entail. “The time has come” He says “and the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News.”

Scripture scholars call this the kerygma, the basic proclamation, from the Greek word keryx  meaning “a herald”. What is its essence? It begins “the time has come”. The word used for time is kairos which means a special time, the time for which we have been waiting, as distinct from the general word for time, which is chronos.

This is THE time, the time which matters, and it refers both to the time of Jesus’ proclamation and to our time, the here and now in which He is calling us. This is ho kairos for us; the time when we must follow.

Why? Because the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Because the Son of God has come into the world, therefore the Kingdom is here. Jesus Himself tells us that “the Kingdom of God is entos humon”, meaning either “within you” or “among you”: the Greek word will bear either interpretation. The Kingdom of God is already here: the reign of God has begun. It is our task to make it ever more fully present.

How are we to do this? “Repent” says Jesus, a word which means in essence not “be sorry”, as the reading today from the Book of Jonah might suggest, but have a change of heart, a change of focus. Make sure that your gaze is fixed on God, on Jesus, on His will and His Kingdom—“and believe the Good News”.

What is the Good News? It is the same word evangelion which we use for “Gospel”, not just the written Gospels, because they didn’t yet exist at the time that Our Lord was speaking—effectively He was Himself writing them by His words and his actions—but the whole Good News of His abiding presence among us by His suffering, death, and resurrection, and by His sending of the Holy Spirit.

Our repentance, our believing the Good News, is essentially a matter of focusing on Him, and of learning to recognize His presence, and the presence of His Kingdom.

2nd Sunday Year B

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021

1Sam 3:3-10, 19; 1Cor 6:13-15, 17-20; John 1:35-42

One of the first Latin verbs which I learnt at the Boys’ Grammar many moons ago was voco-are, meaning “call”. That is quite appropriate when you think about it, because “calling, being called” forms a major part of Christian life, and voco is the root of the word “vocation”.

Today’s readings are full of God’s call, indicating that this is something which we must take seriously in our daily lives. We hear of Samuel, called persistently during the night; the Psalm is a response to God’s call—“You do not ask for sacrifice and offerings, but an open ear. You do not ask for holocaust and victim: instead, here am I”—while the Gospel relates how the first disciples were directed to the Lord.

I always feel sorry for Eli when I hear about the call of Samuel. There is Eli, an old man trying to get a decent night’s sleep, and here is this dratted kid, who wakes him up not once, but three times. What is interesting though is that Eli is needed to point Samuel to God: “Samuel had as yet no knowledge of God,” we are told, and so it falls to Eli to teach him how to respond.

There’s a thought for your life and mine: who pointed you towards God, and taught you how to respond? For most of us it was probably our parents in the first place, but their work has continually been reinforced by others, whether by teachers, a parish priest, a spouse, friends, work colleagues or whoever; and it is a work which continues. I received fresh pointers to God from my university chaplaincy, and still others from the seminary, and the various situations in which, and the people with whom, I have worked as a priest.

For Andrew and the other disciple (John?) it is John the Baptist who fulfils Eli’s role of pointing them towards God in the person of Jesus the Christ. “Look, there is the Lamb of God”, he says, using the words by which we are directed to Jesus in Holy Communion. The disciples follow John’s direction, and spend time in Our Lord’s company. The tenth hour is four o’clock in the afternoon, so they probably went for their tea, and stayed for the evening.

There is a process in the calling of these disciples which is relevant to our lives. Someone, in this case, the Baptist, points them to Jesus; they spend time getting to know Him; then they bring others to Him: Simon Peter in Andrew’s case, and probably his own brother in the case of the other disciple.

How does that play out for us? Having been pointed in Jesus’ direction, we need to spend time with Him. We need to listen and to speak to Him in prayer; we need to encounter Him in the Scriptures, reading and reflecting; we must meet Him (when it becomes possible again) in the sacraments and in the gathering of His people; we find Him in the events of daily life. Prayer and reflection are so important here, because we are called into relationship with Him, and as with all relationships, this requires time, listening, and presence to the other person.

Then, at least in theory, we bring others to Him. How do we do that? For a parent, priest or teacher, it may be reasonably obvious. For others, it will be largely a matter of example. If people know that you are a Catholic, they will want to see what effect this has on your life, and in your interactions with others. Does your relationship with Jesus affect your behaviour, your attitudes, your response to other people and to different situations—and if not, why not?

Today’ readings call—there’s that word again—us to reflect. From them, I would pick out three prayers which you might usefully make your own. “Here I am: I come to do your will.” “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” “Rabbi, where do you live?”

Baptism

Baptism of the Lord 2021

Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7; Acts 10:34-38; Mark 1:7-11.

I am going to make you a promise. I am not going to talk about the three parts of Epiphany, of which the Lord’s Baptism is the most important, nor am I going to complain that the Church’s understanding of this has become mangled over the centuries. I am not even going to mention that what is said by the Father to Jesus at His baptism is said also to us because we are baptized into Christ. I say these things every year, and so I am going to take them as read, and to focus instead on that First Reading from the prophet whom we call Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah.

This is one of the prophet’s Songs of the Suffering Servant. We do not know who exactly the prophet had in mind (always assuming, as we cannot necessarily do, that he knew himself) but we can see how these prophecies fit the Messiah, whom we recognize as Jesus, into whom we have been baptised. Consequently, we can reflect on how they apply to us.

The Song which we are considering begins “Thus says the Lord”. It is God who is speaking to us, who loves us with a parent’s love, who has given His Son out of love for us. It continues “Here is my servant whom I uphold”. We are called to serve God, and we are upheld by Him, supported by Him in our difficulties.

“My chosen one, in whom my soul delights.” These words are repeated to Jesus at His baptism, and therefore to us. God’s soul, His very being, delights in us. You and I are objects of delight to God: we make His soul happy: we give Him joy.

“I have endowed him with my spirit.” The Holy Spirit has come down on us, as it hovered over the waters at creation, as it overshadowed Our Lady at the Annunciation, as it descended upon Jesus at His baptism. God the Holy Spirit lives in us.

“That he may bring true justice to the nations.” Repeatedly, the Servant of the Lord is called to be the bringer of justice: “faithfully he brings true justice...until true justice is established on earth.....I, the Lord have called you to serve the cause of right.”

How eager are you and I for justice? Do we think and speak justly about other people? Do we behave justly? Are we concerned about justice in the wider world? Do we pray for justice? Do we support campaigns for justice, for the liberation of those who are persecuted, especially for their faith, the freeing of those who are unjustly imprisoned, the relief of debt for developing countries? What part does justice play in our mindset?

“He does not cry out or shout aloud, or make his voice heard in the streets.” Aggressive behaviour in support of justice tends to be counter-productive: yelling at people rarely convinces them. The marshalling and presentation of facts, courtesy, quiet but determined nudging carry more weight.

“He does not break the crushed reed, nor quench the wavering flame.” Encouragement, which literally means “putting heart into” is always better than discouragement. Those who are struggling, whether with their faith or their particular situation, need our support, not our censure or disapproval; they need us to be Christ for them, Christ who redeems sinners rather than condemns them. If we are truly to embody the Servant of the Lord, our attitude must always be positive, not negative; constructive rather than destructive.

“I have appointed you.... to open the eyes of the blind, to free captives from prison, and those who live in darkness from the dungeon.” There are more ways than one of being blind, prisons which have no bars or locks, darkness of the soul and mind no less than of the eyes. How do we support those who cannot see the right way forward? those who are trapped in addiction, or in abusive or otherwise destructive situations? those who live in the blackness of depression or despair?

God has indeed said to us, as to Jesus at His baptism, “You are the Beloved; my favour rests on you”. The Holy Spirit has descended on us. How are we responding?