Corpus Christi

Body and Blood of Christ 2022

Genesis 14:18-20; Psalm 109 (110); 1 Cor 11:23-26; Luke 9:11-17

If you mention that you are from Lancaster, the likelihood is that you will be asked “What is that dome that you can see from the M6?” To this, you can give a variety of answers.

Nikolaus Pevsner, who compiled a compendium of English architecture region by region, described it as “England’s grandest folly”. Being more precise, you might say that it is the “Park Structure”, though that is a particularly local term, deriving from the period of its construction, before it had achieved a formal title. You might also call it “Williamson’s Memorial” or even give it its official title of “the Ashton Memorial (in Williamson Park)”.

Warming to your theme, you might add that James Williamson the Younger, expanding the business established by his father for the manufacture of table baize and floor coverings, became known as the “Lino King”, as he made Lune Mills, of which nothing now remains apart from the derelict power station, into the largest factory in Europe; that he built the “new” Town Hall, had Queen Victoria’s statue set up in the newly laid out Dalton Square, and constructed Williamson Park from a former quarry with, as its centrepiece, the Ashton Memorial (he having been ennobled as the first Baron Ashton) in tribute to one of his first two wives, both deceased. Incidentally, in my school days, Earl Peel, father-in-law of the Lady Peel who sold Hyning to the Bernardines, was what would now be called the CEO of Jas. Williamson and Son Ltd.

Your interlocutor, being by now thoroughly enthralled, might then ask “What is in the Ashton Memorial?”, to which you would reply “Nothing”. There may be the odd display, promenade plays are now performed in its vicinity, and weddings are conducted within it, but in effect, it is a glorious emptiness, a reminder of Lile Jimmy Williamson’s lost love.

That is how we normally think of a memorial, a reminder of someone or something past. That, however, is not how the Jewish people use the term. For them, a memorial (Greek anamnesis) is the making present, here and now, of something past. That is how Jesus used the term at the Last Supper, as recorded by St. Paul, in this, the first account of the institution of the Eucharist to be put into writing.

When Our Lord said, over the bread which had become His Body and the wine which had become His Blood, “Do this as a memorial of me”, He was not thinking of a mere reminder: He was instructing His disciples to continue to make His action a present reality. The Church has maintained that teaching, and followed that instruction, through the ages: thus, every celebration of Mass makes present not only the Lord’s action at the Last Supper in transforming the bread and wine into His Body and Blood, but also all that this entailed in the breaking of that Body and the pouring out of that Blood on Calvary, and the completion of the sacrifice in the raising of that Body and that Blood from the dead.

In carrying out this memorial, we are not only eating and drinking the Lord Himself: we are entering into the totality of His self-offering to the Father. Hence it is profoundly irritating that the Missal renders “do this as a memorial of me” as “do this in memory of me” which lacks the force of the original. Whoever was responsible for this translation deserves to have his bottom very firmly kicked.

What though of the other readings? The author of the Letter to the Hebrews sees Melchizedek, mentioned in the Genesis reading and the psalm, as the forerunner of Jesus, whom he describes as a second Melchizedek, a priest forever, constantly making present His once-for-all sacrifice. Hence the Mass is not a new or a different sacrifice, but the one sacrifice of the supper room, Calvary, and the empty tomb made present for us. Meanwhile, the feeding of the five thousand is a prelude to the still more miraculous feeding of the world with the Body and Blood of Christ.

The Ashton Memorial may indeed be England’s grandest folly: the memorial which is the Mass is the world’s greatest act of wisdom.

Trinity Sunday

Trinity Sunday 2022

Proverbs 8:22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

What is the fundamental Christian doctrine? Is it the divinity of Christ? To an extent. Is it the Resurrection? That is crucial, if you will pardon the pun, an essential Christian belief. But the bedrock of Christian faith, the truth on which all else is built, is the doctrine of the Trinity, the recognition that God is three in one: that there is one God in three persons; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This is what sets Christianity apart from all other religious systems, including the other monotheistic religions—those which believe in the one God—namely Judaism and Islam. An orthodox Jew may or may not respect Jesus as a reputable Jewish teacher: s/he will not, cannot, accept that He is God, one of three persons in the Godhead.

A devout Muslim may honour Jesus as a prophet, and may have great respect for the Virgin Mother, whom s/he will know as Miriam. I have known a Muslim speak of Christ as a “divine man”, just as I have heard a Hindu refer to Lord Christ, but no Muslim can accept Jesus as God.

So whilst we share with Jews and Muslims the belief that God is one, it is Christians alone who declare that this one God is present from all eternity and to all eternity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father eternally begets the Son through the eternal working of the Spirit, and God manifests Himself to us as the Creator who is Father; the Redeemer who joined His eternal divinity as Son to a human nature in the person of Jesus the Christ; and the Paraclete—the Encourager, Advocate, however you wish to translate it—the Holy Spirit who dwells in us and literally “inspires”, breathes into us.

Whatever differences there may be among Christians, we are united in our belief in the Trinity. The Jehovah’s Witnesses therefore, are not considered to be Christians as they believe, like the Muslim whom I mentioned earlier, that Jesus is somehow “divine”, but deny that He is God. I have to confess that I am not clear about the beliefs of Mormons.

Does it matter? Some of the details may be baffling—for instance, the principal doctrinal difference between Catholic (and western generally) Christians and the Eastern Orthodox concerns the “filioque” clause in the Creed: does the Spirit proceed from the Father and the Son as we profess, or only from the Father as the Orthodox believe?—but essential doctrines are important.

How decisive they will be in our salvation is another question entirely. We recognise two principles, orthodoxy and orthopraxis, which may be defined as “right belief” and “right behaviour”. Jesus’ own teachings and actions imply that orthopraxis is the more important: we may have impeccable beliefs, but fall short in terms of conduct, as St. Paul also points out in his hymn to love in chapter 13 of his First Letter to the Corinthians.

In the creed, we profess our belief in the Trinity. In terms of the Trinity’s role in our lives, we can look, as always, at the Third Eucharistic Prayer, which relates how all holiness comes from the Father, through the Son, by the working of the Holy Spirit, and which goes on to ask the Father to make our offering of bread and wine, through the power of the Holy Spirit, into the Body and Blood of the Son, who offers Himself to the Father.

Having this as a background, we perhaps shouldn’t agonise too much over details, but ensure that, in our conduct, we seek always to give glory to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Then will our lives be living witnesses to the Trinity.

Pentecost Year C

Pentecost 2022

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

Last Monday, if you happened to be at Mass, you would have heard how St. Paul asked the Ephesian converts whether they received the Holy Spirit when they were baptised, and how they replied, in effect, “Eh? You what? Never heard of a Holy Spirit.”

It would not be a huge exaggeration to say that, today, many Christians are in a similar situation. Everyone has heard of the Holy Spirit, but how many are conscious of having received the Holy Spirit? Yet each one of us who has been baptised received the Holy Spirit at our Baptism, and most of us again at our Confirmation, a reality which can be obscured by the semi-heretical practice of delaying Confirmation until the teenage years, and treating it as a sort of Catholic bar-mitzvah, or even a passing out parade. It cannot be emphasised enough that Confirmation is NOT something that we do for God—re-affirming our faith—but something which God does for us, renewing His gift of the Holy Spirit.

In fact, the Holy Spirit is constantly coming upon us. If that were not the case then, as St. Paul points out to the Christians of Corinth, we wouldn’t even be able to say “Jesus is Lord”. The Holy Spirit is the driving force of our Christian lives, without whom those lives would not exist. The Spirit is literally our inspiration, our inbreathing of God. All our faith, our prayer, our good works are the work of the Holy Spirit, and it is important that we be aware of that.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was accompanied by spectacular signs, the wind and the flame, and followed by spectacular results, as the preaching of the Gospel was understood by people of every language. This was the kick-start given to the Church by the Holy Spirit, and it would be wrong to expect similar signs, similar results today; though I can’t help feeling tht anyone who can read that list of nations without stumbling must have the gift of tongues.

And yet in one way, those spectacular results do continue to arise, for the Gospel has indeed been preached in every language and to very nation under heaven. Not every nation has accepted it, and we may feel that the West, having once accepted it, is now busily engaged in throwing it off. Nonetheless, it would be true to say that, in every nation, there are some who, having heard the Gospel, have been so filled by the Holy Spirit as to live by it. Enver Hoxha, for instance, the Albanian dictator, once claimed that he would make his country the first fully atheistic nation. Hoxha is long dead, the Church survives, and the most famous and honoured Albanian is not Enver Hoxha but St. Mother Teresa.

Futhermore, the faith survives often in the face of bitter persecution. I correspond with a young man in Pakistan, who often confirms (if you will pardon the pun) the suffering of Christians there, and particularly of Christian girls, who are regularly kidnapped and forced into conversion to Islam and into marriage to elderly men. In recent weeks, the media have reported the arrest of the 90 year old Cardinal Zen for his support of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, whilst a bishop in mainland China has disappeared, presumably into detention.

It is the Holy Spirit, poured out upon the apostles at Pentecost, and upon us at Baptism and Confirmation, who enables people of every tongue to hold firm under imprisonment and torture. It is the same Holy Spirit who inspires tiny groups of Christians to remain faithful in the midst of unpromising surroundings. The Pope has recently welcomed a delegation from Mongolia, where Christians are numbered only in thousands, and has named their bishop as a cardinal.

Finally, let us not forget that, even at the birth of the Church, the outpouring of the Spirit was not always spectacular. Today’s Gospel records an earlier, much gentler giving of the Holy Spirit, as the risen Christ literally breathes the Spirit into the apostles on Easter Sunday evening. What matters to us, as to the apostles, is not signs and wonders but the presence and bestowal of the Spirit, whose presence we celebrate and desire today, but also every day of our lives.

7th Sunday Easter

7th Sunday of Easter 2022

Acts 7:55-60; Apocalypse 22:12-14, 16-17, 20; John 17:20-26

The Seventh Sunday of Easter, which has been restored over the last few years by the return of the Solemnity of Ascension to its rightful place on a Thursday, may seem like an opportunity to mark time between Ascension and Pentecost. It shouldn’t.

Rather, it is an important opportunity for us to do what the original disciples were doing at this time. What were they doing? If anyone tries to tell you that they were cowering in fear, knock them down, pummel them, and sit on their heads. That comes, as I have said before, of misinterpreting next Sunday’s Gospel as if it referred to an event of Pentecost, whereas it clearly speaks of Easter Sunday evening, when the Risen Christ appeared in the Upper Room.

So I ask again: what were the disciples doing? We discover that from the Gospel of Ascension Thursday and the First Reading of Pentecost Sunday. They were doing what the Lord told them at His Ascension, which was to await, and prepare for, the descent of the Holy Spirit.

In his Gospel, Luke tells us that, from the mountain of the Ascension, the disciples “went back to Jerusalem full of joy, and they were continually in the Temple praising God”. In his Acts of the Apostles, the same writer informs us that, when not in the Temple, they were gathered in the Upper Room with Our Lady, with other women, and with Jesus’ relatives, praying earnestly for the gift of the Holy Spirit.

That is exactly what we should be doing during these days. We should be full of joy, we should be praising God, and we should be praying with Our Lady and with the whole Church, on earth, in purgatory, and in heaven, for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We are still in Mary’s month of May, and even if we were not, we would still be able to count on her prayers, as she is the mother and model of the Church, with which she prays today as she prayed with the infant Church.

To help us in our time of waiting and preparation, the Church gives us today a mixed bag of readings. From the Acts of the Apostles, we hear of the martyrdom of Stephen, a post-Pentecost event. Notice how his persecutors “stopped their ears with their hands”: they were not willing to listen to the words which the Spirit offered them through Stephen. We, on the other hand, must have listening ears and listening hearts, eager to receive what the Spirit is saying to us.

St. Luke is keen to draw parallels between the martyrdom of Stephen and the death of his Lord. Stephen speaks of Jesus as the Son of Man, a title which Jesus had used of Himself. As did the dying Jesus, so the dying Stephen prays the psalm “Into your hands I commend my spirit”, with one immensely significant difference: Stephen addresses the prayer to Jesus, thus identifying Him with God. Finally, he paraphrases Jesus’ prayer for the forgiveness of His murderers. We too are invited to align our lives ever more closely with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

Next, we hear the conclusion of the Apocalypse, as “the Spirit and the Bride (ie the Church)” unite to pray for the return of Christ in glory, while at the same time inviting all people to come to Him. The Bible ends, apart from a final blessing, with the prayer “Come, Lord Jesus” a prayer which we should make our own.

Finally, our Gospel passage is drawn from the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, as it is known, which John sets in the context of the Last Supper. We have here an intense prayer for the unity of believers with and in one another, and with and in Jesus and His Father, a unity which is the gift and the life of the Holy Spirit.

So far from being a period of marking time, this is a call to intense prayer. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

6th Sunday of Easter Year C

6th Sunday of Easter 2022

Acts 15:1-2, 22-29; Apocalypse 21:10-14, 22-23; John 14: 23 -29

It struck me the other day that no one below their mid 60s will have any memory of the Second Vatican Council, which ended in 1965. Consequently, there will be little recollection of the seismic shock which the Council delivered to the man woman and teenager in the pew at the time. (Yes, there were teenagers in the pew in the 60s, though this particular teenager was more usually to be found in the sanctuary, as an altar server.)

In calling the Council, Pope John XXIII, now canonised, declared his wish to throw open the windows of the Church to allow the Holy Spirit free rein to blow through its halls and corridors, and what a searing wind the Spirit proved to be. It is probably fair to say that no aspect of Catholic life was untouched; and for many people, for much of the time, it was a disturbing experience which, when you think about it, is exactly as it should have been, because the Holy Spirit is no respecter of customs or conventions.

For many, if not for most people, the problem was that much which had appeared immovable throughout their lifetime was suddenly moving, with little or nothing in the way of explanation. Behind that lay a deeper problem: the clergy, who might have been expected to provide explanations, had little understanding themselves of what was happening, or why.

Indeed, Cardinal Heenan, the Archbishop of Westminster, is reputed to have claimed that “people have said that things are going to change. That won’t be the case in England”, a breathtaking piece of imperial smugness, a hangover from the days when two thirds of the globe was coloured pink. The implication was that we were getting it right already, and that the rest of the world would have to catch up with us.

There were casualties, as there have been after every Council. For instance, after the First Vatican Council in 1870, a group commonly known as the Old Catholics left the Church; whilst the Council of Trent, in the sixteenth century, was far more dramatic than Vatican II. Trent was the nineteenth Ecumenical Council of the Church, thus making Vatican II the twenty first. The events described today in the Reading from the Acts of the Apostles constitute what is generally regarded as the first.

It is known as the Council of Jerusalem, and it revolved around something which was to affect fundamentally the nature and direction of the Church, namely the extent to which Christians were to be bound by Jewish Law, and especially by the practice of circumcision.

As we have heard, this Council, which also invoked the guidance of the Holy Spirit, decided against the imposition of circumcision, and various other aspects of the Law; but like subsequent Councils it was met with a degree of opposition and rejection. Perhaps more seriously, in weakening the Church’s links with Judaism, the Council of Jerusalem may inadvertently have contributed to Christianity’s history of anti-Semitism, something which the Church was to tackle head-on only at the Second Vatican Council, when the document Nostra aetate was to declare unequivocally that the Jewish people are particularly beloved of God, with their own way towards Him, and a unique role as our elder brothers and sisters in faith.

Turning to the Gospel, we see that the Holy Spirit, whom the Fathers of the various Councils have invoked, is promised to all of us. Not only the Holy Spirit, but the other two persons of the Trinity, the Father and the Son, will come to dwell in the Church as a whole, but also in each of us individually. We can rely on the Holy Spirit to guide the Church; but if we truly love Jesus the Lord, and are faithful to His word, we are promised the awesome loving presence of God, the Father Son and Holy Spirit in the life of each one of us.

3rd Sunday of Easter Year C

3rd Sunday of Easter 2022

Acts 5: 27-32, 40f; Apocalypse 5:11-14; John 21:1-19

I wish they hadn’t changed the translation of today’s Opening Prayer. It used to read, “You have made us your sons and daughters, and restored the joy of our youth”. In other words, you have made us young again, given us sparkling eyes, enthusiasm and joie de vivre.

It is in that spirit of youthful enthusiasm and joie de vivre that we read today’s Gospel. Let us begin with a seemingly unimportant statement “It was light by now”. In John’s Gospel, light and darkness are crucial concepts. When Judas leaves the supper room to betray Jesus, John comments “Night had fallen”. It was the hour of darkness--a term which John attributes to Jesus Himself--a time when evil was in the ascendancy. When the risen Christ appears on the shore, by contrast, “It was light by now”, because the darkness has passed: evil has been defeated. Do we recognise that light in our own lives?

When the disciples have caught the miraculous draught of fish, the Beloved Disciple says to Peter “It is the Lord”, and Peter takes the lead in heading towards the risen Christ. This repeats the pattern of the empty tomb. There, if you recall, John deferred to Peter, the leader, allowing him to enter the tomb first, but it was the contemplative John who “saw and believed”. The Church needs Peter, but it also needs John to pass on his insights to Peter who, we hope, is also contemplative, in order that the latter may respond. Similarly, we need both a contemplative and an active dimension in our own lives.

As the disciples come ashore, they see a charcoal fire, which recalls another charcoal fire in the High Priest’s courtyard, where Peter three times denied his Lord. This new fire, like the fire blessed at the Easter Vigil, is to be the setting for a threefold declaration of love by Peter, which is to wipe out his triple failure. The late Bishop Brewer was of the opinion that the use of a different word (phileo) for “love” by Peter from that used by Jesus (agapao) implied a holding back on his part, but most scripture scholars reject that interpretation. (Sorry, Bishop Brewer, but at least you will know now whether you were right or not.) Similarly, scholars don’t read a great deal into Our Lord’s differentiation between “lambs” and “sheep”.

After receiving Peter’s triple affirmation, the Risen Lord gives him a solemn warning: “When you grow old, someone else will put a belt round you, and take you where you would rather not go”. Does that chime with your own experience at all? Once you and I have passed our peak, we experience a decline in our powers both physical and mental—what did you say your name was?—and we have all seen once vigorous people become increasingly dependent on others. If and when that happens, we need to recall that prayer which I mentioned earlier, and to remain young in attitude and outlook.

Of course there is more than that at the heart of those words. How often in life have you found yourself in a situation not of your choosing, in circumstances where you would prefer not to be (perhaps, even, “not to be” in the sense of “not to exist”)? You have been led there like Peter, and like him you must find God in that situation; to the utmost of your ability you must trust God to turn it to good, and to lead you through it to a fuller life in Him.

John adds a footnote to the effect that Jesus’ words indicated the manner of Peter’s death. Apparently, to stretch out your hands and to be secured with a belt was a common expression indicating crucifixion, and you are probably familiar with the ancient tradition that Peter chose to be crucified upside down. Whether or not that was the case, it is significant that Our Lord ends with the instruction “Follow me”.  Whatever the situation of our own life, and indeed of our own death, what matters is to follow the Lord.

How are you and I to follow the Lord? We are to do it by remaining young, by keeping our enthusiasm and our positivity, by refusing to succumb to weariness and cynicism. We are to remember that God has made us His sons and daughters, and restored the joy of our youth.

Low Sunday

2nd Sunday of Easter 2022

Acts 5:12-16; Apocalypse 1: 9-13, 17-19; John 20:19-31

I sometimes think that the compilers of the Lectionary (the book containing the Mass readings) like to confuse us. They give us, on the Second Sunday of Easter, a First Reading which relates to the aftermath of Pentecost, and a Gospel, relating to today, which will be partly repeated at Pentecost.

It is the latter which causes mayhem, because, when it comes to Pentecost, people fail to realise that the Gospel is speaking about last Sunday (and today) and they fall into the trap of claiming that the disciples were cowering in fear at Pentecost, whereas, they were waiting in prayer, as they had been told, for the coming of the Holy Spirit. So when you hear the first part of this Gospel passage at Pentecost, PLEASE remember that you first heard it TODAY.

Right then, let’s see what the implications are. On Easter Sunday evening, the disciples ARE in fear behind locked doors. Can you blame them? Admittedly, Our Lord had told them that He would suffer, die, and rise, but they had no experience of the third part of the equation. They understood suffering, they understood death, but resurrection was beyond their comprehension. They assumed that, having killed Jesus, the authorities would now proceed to round up His followers. No wonder they hid.

Today, so many people are living in fear. People in Ukraine fear the rockets and bombs which may rain down upon them, or the invading troops who will break down their doors, beat up the men, rape the women, then probably shoot them. Lawyers and journalists in Hong Kong fear the knock on the door which will herald their “detention”. Families in Northern Nigeria fear a raid from Boko Haram, to kill the adults and kidnap the children. Women in this country fear the return home of an abusive husband or partner; while whole families, devastated by the escalating cost of living crisis, await anxiously the arrival of the bailiff to take away what little they have.

Lord, change the hearts of the violent and the cruel. Give to those in authority a spirit of compassion. Banish fear through your power as the Risen Christ by taking away the causes of fear.

The risen Christ stands among those fear-filled disciples. He wishes them peace, and He shows them His wounds. He gives them a mission and the power to forgive sins, and He breathes the Holy Spirit into them (which is why this passage is read at Pentecost).

If they had been firm in their belief that Jesus would rise from the dead, would they also have expected Him still to bear His wounds? I am inclined to think that they would have expected the scars to vanish. That they do not vanish is hugely important. The risen Christ is the wounded Christ. He has come to His resurrection by way of His wounds, and He calls us to resurrection by the same route.

Not only Christ’s wounds, but also our wounds are important. Christ’s wounds redeem us: our wounds, insofar as they are united with His, remake us, give us compassion, enable us to extend the healing of Christ to others. Wounds may damage us, but they may also strengthen us, give us new insight and new life, as the wounds of Jesus were the basis of His new life as the risen Christ.

Finally, what do we make of Thomas? We call him “doubting Thomas”: perhaps we should rather call him “inquiring Thomas”. He reminds us, as did his later namesake labelled Aquinas, that faith and reason work together. We are every bit as rational as any of today’s self-styled rationalists. We do not believe in fairy tales: we demand validation of our beliefs. In fact, we are more rational than the “rationalists”, because, like Thomas, we have the gumption to realise that reason can take us only so far, that there are things beyond our reasoning and our comprehension.

Consequently, we can reasonably go beyond reason to faith, and to say, with Thomas, “My Lord and my God”. Touch reveals the wounds to Thomas: reason and faith take him behind the wounds to recognise God. May it always be so for us.

5th Sunday of Lent Year C

5th Sunday of Lent 2022

Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:8-14; John 8:1-11

What do you think? Is today’s society tolerant or intolerant? I could add another question—which condition would be preferable?—but I will leave that to one side.

My own view is that it is very much a mixed bag. In many ways, Britain is a far more tolerant country, both for better and for worse, than it was a generation ago; yet it is also, in subtle and sometimes hidden ways, deeply intolerant.

I think that there is a deeper tolerance between the generations. Those of you who grew up in the 50s and 60s may recall the bitter loathing—the only word I can use—with which adults tended to view the musical taste of the rising generation. I suspect that this was rooted in a fear of the rebelliousness or even anarchy which sometimes appeared to accompany rock or pop music, but it could be quite visceral. There were comedians who based their acts in expressions of contempt for the whole culture of popular music, and I recall tabloid headlines when it was revealed that one rising young group didn’t play its own instruments, but made use of session musicians. This was seen as a dreadful scandal, a proof that everything about 60s youth was corrupt and dishonest.

Now, the teenagers of the 60s are the oldies of today; their music is mainstream, and their view of their successors is tempered by their own experience of being demonised. There is an element of crossover between classical and popular music, with orchestras providing background for rock groups, an indication of a lessening of inter-generational intolerance.

Racial intolerance is less obvious than it was fifty years ago, at least in part because of changes in the law—the inflammatory rhetoric of an Enoch Powell, or the “no blacks or Irish” posters in boarding house windows, would now fall foul of the law—but there is no doubt that racism still exists. I wonder whether Ms. Zighari-Radcliffe would have encountered the same torrent of vitriol for daring to criticise successive Home Secretaries, at least two of whom have publicly accepted the validity of her complaints, had her skin been a few shades lighter.

In sexual matters, there is a tolerance which could not have been imagined in the allegedly swinging 60s, yet it is accompanied by a total intolerance of anything which deviates from the prevailing fashion. I haven’t followed closely the issue of JK Rowling’s comments, but I find the venom with which she has been attacked deeply disturbing, and the enthusiasm with which “celebrities” leap onto the bandwagon to snipe at her, downright cowardly.

So was Jesus tolerant or intolerant? Today’s Gospel shows a response to the woman taken in adultery which goes far deeper than either tolerance or intolerance: it is rooted in compassion.

His opponents saw an opportunity to bind Him in a Catch 22 situation. If He approved the stoning of the woman, they could accuse Him of brutality: if He opposed it, He would be rejecting the teaching of Moses. Effectively they are asking “Are you tolerant or intolerant?” Either answer would condemn Him.

Jesus’ response amounts to sheer genius, as He both upholds the moral law, and deals compassionately with the individual, while at the same time revealing to His interlocutors the extent of their own hypocrisy. His silent absorption in His writing—what WAS He writing?—avoids a rush into conflict, something from which we might learn.

Then, He turns the accusers’ questions back on themselves, inviting—indeed, forcing—them to examine their own hearts and their own motivation, something which we ourselves should do before rushing to express ourselves in terms of tolerance or intolerance.

Finally, with His opponents routed, Jesus focuses His attention wholly on the woman, seeing her as a human being, not as a case to be judged. “Has no one condemned you? Neither do I.” These are words which should stagger us by their compassion, but we must not ignore Our Lord’s final command: “Do not sin any more”.

Neither tolerance nor intolerance is really the issue. There is a moral law to be upheld, but transgressors are to be led to repentance, not by pointed fingers and hurled brickbats, but by love, compassion, and a recognition of our own fallibility.

4th Sunday Lent Year C

4th Sunday of Lent 2022

Joshua 5:9-12; 2Cor 5:17-21; Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32

I have been doing my sums, and have worked out that it is 51 years since I heard the Late Fr. Herbert McCabe OP preach on “A New Creation”: that is seventeen cycles of three years each of liturgical readings.

Fr. McCabe’s homily (or “conference” as they were known at Fisher House) made a deep impression on me. He was elaborating on St. Paul’s words which we have just heard from the Second Letter to the Corinthians: “For anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation”.

Ponder that for a moment. If we belong to Christ, the whole world is made new for us. It is a positive place, a place re-created in Christ, reconciled by Him to its Creator, God the Father.

That word “reconciled” is fascinating. The Greek word is katallasso and Paul uses it, or the noun katallage (reconciliation) five times in a very short passage. Five times, St. Paul points out that the incarnation, suffering and death of Jesus the Son of God have reconciled the world to God; have undone the damage caused by human sin; and have thus created the world anew, if only we have eyes to see, hearts to accept.

As you know, “Reconciliation” is now the official title of the Sacrament of Penance, or Confession, and the great twentieth century English Catholic writer GK Chesterton experienced the New Creation precisely in the context of that sacrament. In his Autobiography, published in 1936, he wrote “When a Catholic comes from Confession he does truly, by definition, step out again into that dawn of his own beginning....He stands, as I said, in the white light at the worthy beginning of the life of a man....He may be grey and gouty; but he is only five minutes old”.

Chesterton had captured the essence of the sacrament, which is a renewal of that New Creation which is ours by virtue of our belonging to Christ. As a convert, he experienced Confession first as an adult, and I would maintain that it is an adult sacrament. I hope that I won’t be burned as a heretic for saying this, but I have come to believe that it is a pity that children make their First Confession. I say that for two reasons: firstly because, in today’s world, it is, as often as not, their last confession, as they make no further use of the sacrament: secondly because so many, though by no means all, of those who have continued with the practice of confession, have continued with their first confession all through their lives, presenting their shopping list of peccadilloes, never coming to an adult grasp of the wonders of the sacrament. What, I have wondered more than once, does it mean when an elderly person comes to me and confesses to having been disobedient?

I am heading off at a tangent here, but I believe that Reconciliation, and not Confirmation, should be the sacrament of the teenage years. The current practice of administering Confirmation to adolescents comes perilously close at times to heresy, in the form of Pelagianism. Confirmation is a sacrament of Initiation, and should be administered with baptism, whether to adults or to babies.

It was my experience at the Diocesan Youth Centre which persuaded me that First Confession is for teenagers. On a Wednesday evening at Castlerigg we would have a Reconciliation Service, after which I would go into “the box”, and would often be swamped by the number of confessions. I remember one course, during which the 15/16 year old participants kept me occupied till midnight with individual, and very mature, confessions. The following evening, there were requests for confessions again, and it was one am before I emerged from the confessional box, frozen to the marrow because the heating had long switched itself off. Those teenagers had shared GK Chesterton’s experience: they had encountered the New Creation.

“Hang on!” I hear you cry, “What about the Prodigal Son?” The parable ties in with St. Paul, who writes “For our sake, God made the One who did not know sin (in other words, Jesus) into sin”. God actually made Jesus into the Prodigal Son, returning to the Father carrying the sins of all the world, and effectively dumping them. Consequently, Father and Son, and the whole of creation, a creation now made new, could celebrate in enjoyment of the new dawn of the world.

3rd Sunday of Lent Year C

3rd Sunday of Lent 2022

Exodus 3:1-8; 1Cor 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9

Some years ago, I surprised a burglar in the presbytery at Holy Family, Morecambe. Come to that, he surprised me. You don’t expect to walk into your house in the middle of the afternoon, and find it being burgled. We had the briefest and most bizarre conversation.

“What the h**l are you doing here?” I exclaimed.

“Breaking in” came the reply, which at least had the virtue of being honest. Then he pushed past me, and ran off across the car park and down the road. I dialled 999.

Now if I had been able to give the police an accurate description of the man, it would have been helpful. I didn’t, because I had a far more powerful tool at my disposal: I knew his name. He was one of the regulars, constantly knocking at the door with increasingly elaborate and far-fetched stories as an attempt to gain money.

Consequently I said “A bloke called Such-and-such has just broken into my house, and is now running down Westgate. Would you like me to give you his address?” to which the reply came “No, we know his address. We will send someone to his flat to wait for him to come back.”

The ancients believed that, to know someone’s name, gave you power over them. That incident proved that they were correct. Ironically, in homilies, I had twice used the example of an imaginary burglar breaking into a house where the householder knew his name, to illustrate the point, though I never imagined that such a scenario would play out in reality.

This is the point of God’s self revelation to Moses at the burning bush. Moses wants to know God’s name, in order that the Israelites may worship Him as their own tribal god, just as the other nations worship their tribal gods—but God will have none of it. He doesn’t have a name because, unlike the tribal gods of the nations, He exists, and He cannot be controlled, as their names would allow them to be controlled, if they existed.

The God of the burning bush is the one true God, self sufficient, pure existence, beyond the reach of any name. “I AM WHO AM” He replies: “I AM the one who exist, who have no name, over whom no one has power”.

That is why it was nonsensical when the custom arose in the 70s, and which has now been forbidden by the Church, of translating the non-name of God as Yahweh, thus doing precisely what God refused to do. To give God a name, to call Him Yahweh, is to reduce the true God to the level of the non-existent tribal gods: no wonder the Church forbade its use.

But here’s the rub. In the fullness of time, God gave Himself a name, and so gave people power over Him. That name is Jesus, a name which, says the Letter to the Philippians, is above all names and every knee shall bow to it; yet it is also a name which gave human beings power over God, to do with Him as they wished, to mock and scourge Him, and to kill Him as a criminal.

Thus did God, in the person of Jesus, prove the old adage that to know someone’s name is to have power over them; but in today’s Gospel, he rejects another ancient belief, namely that suffering is punishment for sin. Those victims about whom we hear were not, Jesus maintains, being punished for their sins.

Bizarrely, however, that belief persists today. People will talk eagerly about karma, the belief that “what goes around, comes around”, that bad people will get their come-uppance. On the reverse side of the coin, people who are suffering, or who believe that they are—a more usual situation—will plead “I don’t know what I have done to deserve this” or “Why me?”

Suffering happens. I would never be glib about it, yet it often seems to be the case that people who are genuinely suffering deeply are more likely to be philosophical about it, and, if they have faith, to recognise it as a share in the sufferings of Jesus, the God who accepted a name so as to become compassionate with us, to give us the means and the power of approaching Him, and to be the healer of all our wounds because He has Himself been wounded.

2nd Sunday of Lent Year C

2nd Sunday of Lent 2022

Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9: 28-36

I don’t know whether you have noticed, but whatever the Gospel readings may be on the third, fourth, and fifth Sundays of Lent, the themes for the first and second Sundays are unvarying. The First Sunday always tells us of Jesus’ time in the wilderness, to which He was led by the Spirit, and in which He fasted and was tempted; the Second Sunday always describes the Transfiguration. The authors are changed according to a three year cycle, but the subject matter is not.

It is easy to understand why the wilderness and the temptations are there, as they set the pattern for our own Lenten journey, but why the Transfiguration? There is a clue in the identity of the disciples who witnessed the event.

These are Peter, James and John. Where else do we encounter them as a threesome? It is in the Garden of Gethsemane, where, you may recall, they are separated from the rest and taken forward to be the close witnesses of Jesus’ Agony. What is the connection? It seems reasonable to suppose that they were given the vision of the Transfiguration to prepare them for the ordeal of Gethsemane: that Jesus hoped that the foretaste of His glory revealed at Mount Tabor would sustain them through this new and contrasting vision in which He cried aloud to the Father and His sweat fell like gouts of blood.

If that was Our Lord’s intention, is it fair to say that it failed? The mention of sleep provides a link. At the Transfiguration, Luke tells us, the disciples were heavy with sleep, but they stayed awake: in Gethsemane, sleep overcame them, because the experience was too much to bear. Even the recollection of what they had seen on the mountain wasn’t sufficient to uphold them in the time of trial. The memory and the promise of glory could not carry them through the present experience of agony.

As always, we have to ask ourselves “How does this relate to us?” We too have our Transfiguration moments, those times when we are filled with joy, when God seems very close to us, when the promise of future glory is thoroughly credible. We also have our Gethsemane times, when anguish threatens to overwhelm us, when God seems far away, when His promises may feel like pie in the sky.

Do the Transfiguration times carry us through their opposite? When we are in Gethsemane, do we remember Mt. Tabor, when the promise of resurrection, of final victory lifted our hearts? If not, we should not despair—the same thing happened to Peter, James, and John—and yet we do need to call to mind those times of promise, those experiences of the closeness of God, and to look beyond present agony to the reality of resurrection. If our hearts have failed, we need to lift them up again, as we claim that we do in every celebration of Mass in the preface dialogue as we approach the Eucharistic Prayer.

It is important to remember too that any experience we have of the presence of God is always likely to be a matter of both light and shade. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is variously described as “fear of the Lord” and as “wonder and awe”. When the disciples on Mt. Tabor are covered by the cloud, which indicates the presence of God as it had done for the Israelites during their wilderness journey, they are afraid. God is a loving and generous God, but He IS God, beyond our comprehension, not to be trifled with.

At such times, we may even share the experience of Abraham, who witnessed the presence of God under the signs of the smoking furnace and the firebrand. Like the Gethsemane disciples, Abraham takes refuge in sleep, and terror seizes him. That terror is the prelude to God’s gift of a covenant. In every Mass, God’s covenant is renewed with us in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, transformed into the very essence of the Son of God. We do not, I trust, seek refuge in sleep, but we should be seized by awe, as we witness something greater than Abraham’s vision, greater even than the Transfiguration, as the Son of the Father, the Chosen One, becomes present for us as our food. Every Mass should be a Transfiguration moment for us, to sustain us during our own Gethsemane times.

1st Sunday of Lent Year C

1st Sunday of Lent 2022

Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4: 1-13

Many many moons ago, I was celebrating the early Mass on the First Sunday of Lent in St. Mary’s, Morecambe, and I posed the rhetorical question “How is Lent going?” To my surprise, a middle aged voice answered from the congregation: “Grand!”

That in itself was grand. If Lent is going well for you, that is a good thing: if you are finding it a struggle, that is good too. If you are not aware of it, if it is having no effect, that is bad; because it is a particularly important time in the year, and in life, and it should be affecting us in one way or another.

Lent is a season of preparation.” Of preparation for what?” you may ask: for Easter certainly, but perhaps more importantly, for the rest of your life, for death, for eternity. Just as, in Advent, we should not rush too quickly to the crib, so in Lent we mustn’t dash yet to the Garden, the Cross, and certainly not to the empty tomb. There is still much work for God to carry out in us before we sing the Hosannas of Palm Sunday.

We are on a journey. The journey of Lent is a microcosm of the journey of life. In Lent, as in life, we have a goal, while at the same time we are recognising the struggles, the opportunities, the sorrows, and the joys of every day. Nor do we make this journey alone. We tread it in company not only with all our brothers and sisters who are alive today throughout the world, but with all who have made that same journey before us.

First among these are our elder brothers and sisters of Israel. As the First Reading reminded us, the Jewish people were commanded to recall the saving work of God among them: their entry into Egypt and their subsequent enslavement, their Exodus from Egypt, and their wilderness journey to the Promised Land.

We are making that journey with them, throughout our lives, and with particular emphasis in Lent. We too have escaped from slavery--in our case, through our baptism—and we too are journeying through the wilderness to the Promised Land. In that wilderness journey, we, like our forefathers of Israel, encounter temptations, failures, setbacks; but we are aware that, like them we are accompanied by God in the pillar and the cloud, the pillar of fire which lights our way, and the cloud of unknowing which hides God from us, but through which we must pass on our journey with and to Him.

From today’s Gospel we see that our Lenten journey and our life’s journey take us through another wilderness, the forty day wilderness of Jesus, which was the immediate postscript to His baptism, and the prelude to His public ministry.  Notice that it was the Holy Spirit which led Him into and through the wilderness—Mark, in his Gospel, tells us that the Spirit DROVE Jesus into the wilderness—and it is that same Holy Spirit which leads us into and through the wildernesses of Lent and of life. Incidentally, it strikes me that Lent often brings its own wilderness experiences, regardless of the voluntary penances which we undertake, times of difficulty and struggle which were not part of our personal plan.

Those voluntary penances, however, need to be there. On Ash Wednesday, we heard Jesus say, not “IF you give, IF you pray, IF you fast” but “WHEN you give, WHEN you pray, WHEN you fast”: the manner of these practices is voluntary, the use of them is not.

Often, the fasting element is played down, which I think is a mistake. We are told that we should fast from sin, and that we should do something positive. Of course we should, but that does not take away either Jesus’ words “when you fast”, or His actions, when He fasted during His own wilderness journey. Self denial is every bit as much a part of our wilderness journey as are giving and prayer.

How is Lent going? Ask yourself that question now, and if the answer is that it is making no difference, then shape yourself!

8th Sunday Year C

8th Sunday in Ordinary time 2022

Sirach 27: 4-7; 1 Cor 15:54-58; Luke 6: 39-45

“Can one blind man guide another?” But who are the blind? There is a saying that “There are none so blind as those who will not see” and you and I would probably go along with that.

We, of course, can see everything clearly: it is other people who are blind. Why on earth do they not have the vision to see things as we see them, whether in matters of religion, ethics, politics, sport, or whatever? How can referees be so blind as to fail to see blatant fouls against my team? How can umpires be so blind as to turn down obvious LBW appeals? There are so many blind people around: thank  goodness you and I can see.

Our Lord warns us today against this attitude of superiority. He calls us “disciples” and a disciple is one who is always learning, and who always needs to learn. The root of the word is the Latin verb discere, meaning “to learn”. The Greek word for “disciple” is “mathetes”, from which comes “mathematics”: I am glad we have more important things than maths to learn.

And that learning is a lifelong process. Returning to the ancient Greeks, we may recall their saying “I grow old, always learning” or, as we put it, “you are never too old to learn”. Indeed, we MUST never be too old to learn the things of God. Our daily prayer must always involve an openness to God, allowing Him to speak in the depths of our being, opening the scriptures to us, revealing the mysteries of the Kingdom, guiding us along the path which He has marked out for us.

What is true for us as individuals is equally true for the Church, which must never be a static entity, immoveable, its face firmly turned to the past. Of course the Church must always learn from the past, must be true to what has been handed down—the real meaning of “tradition”. But tradition is a living thing, the work of a living Church. It should not be, cannot be, the clinging to a certain moment or era of our past, but involves a continuity and a growth. St. John Henry Newman wrote a famous essay “On the Development of Doctrine”, and the Second Vatican Council spoke of the Church as “the pilgrim people of God”.

Doctrine is developing because we are disciples, always learning from the past, but learning new insights under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As disciples, we are always on pilgrimage within the Kingdom and towards the fullness of the Kingdom. We would be blind indeed if we were to plant our feet firmly in one moment of history, refusing to advance any further along our pilgrim way, as those have done who, over the centuries, have rejected the teaching of successive Councils of the Church, including the Second Vatican Council.

Elsewhere in the Gospels, Our Lord encourages us to be like wise householders, who take from our store things both old and new. But we must be careful to do this always as disciples, as people who learn, who are conscious that we do not have all the answers, that we have our own share of blindness.

Hence, Jesus gives us the warning not to be presumptuous, not to think that we know it all. We do still have planks in our eyes, whether these be our lack of knowledge, or our own particular prejudices, which should make us hesitant to attempt to correct others, whose own splinters may be tiny in comparison with our own handicaps to understanding. This puts me in mind of the more fanatical evangelicals, who will attempt to “convert” Catholics, blissfully unaware of the limits of their own understanding arising from a blinkered reading of the scriptures, set against the accumulated discipleship of the Church in the course of two thousand years.

Always, we must retain that attitude of discipleship, so that, when we do speak, our words will be, as both Jesus and the author of the First Reading demand, an expression of goodness and a fruitful gift to our hearers.

7th Sunday Year C

7th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022

1 Samuel 26:7-23; Psalm 102; 1 Cor 15:45-49; Luke 6:27-38

Many, many moons ago, when I was based at the Diocesan Residential Youth Centre, the lay members of staff used to claim, tongue in cheek (at least, I think it was tongue in cheek) that I had only one homily, which went “compassion—cum passio—suffering with”. A few years later, on my first Sunday in St. Gregory’s, Preston, having spotted one of those former staff members in the congregation, I felt compelled to begin my homily by saying “There is someone in church who believes that I have only one homily. I am now going to prove them right”, because the Gospel on that day cried out for that selfsame homily, as does today’s Gospel.

“Be compassionate, as your Father is compassionate” we are instructed by Jesus. In one sense, the Psalm goes even further, stating not simply that God is compassionate, but that He is COMPASSION—that compassion is an aspect of His very nature.

How can this be? The Psalmist wouldn’t have known it, but God was to reveal Himself as COMPASSION, by becoming one of us in the person of Jesus, thus taking our human nature as His own, undergoing what we undergo, suffering what we suffer. Compassion is one of God’s greatest gifts to us because it is a sharing in His nature, a sharing bestowed on us in the Incarnation, the taking by God of our human nature, with all that this entails.

Sometimes the word “compassion” is devalued by being taken to mean “feeling sorry for”, but it is a far deeper reality than that. The same is true of the Greek equivalent “sun pathos” which comes into English as “sympathy” a word which also means “suffering with”, but which is generally reduced to that same concept of “feeling sorry for”—something experienced from outside. Hence, it is usually replaced, when we wish to express that sense of “suffering with”, by “empathy” (en pathos) literally “suffering in”.

That is the feeling, and the attitude, which Jesus demands of us. We must put ourselves in the other person’s skin, experience things from his/her point of view, as God, in the person of Jesus, put Himself in our skin, experiencing things from our point of view. If we have an enemy, we must walk in that enemy’s shoes, seeing things, as best we can, from that enemy’s viewpoint, not primarily to give ourselves a strategic advantage, but to understand why they behave as they do, what aspect of our common humanity is driving them.

Can a Ukrainian, indeed can we, be compassionate with Vladimir Putin, take on his skin, his mind, his soul? Can a Northern Ireland nationalist do the same for a committed unionist, and vice versa? This may seem to demand the impossible, yet it is the demand made of us by Jesus, the compassionate God, when He tells us uncompromisingly “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who treat you badly”. It is a demand which He Himself embodied to the full when He prayed “Father, forgive them,” on behalf of those apparently evil men who were crucifying Him. When He added “for they know not what they do”, Jesus demonstrated that He had entered into their mindset, understood what made them tick, become compassionate with them.

Such an attitude, such a response, is profoundly counter-cultural. You need only skim the internet, or glance at newspaper headlines, to note the venom spewed by so many on those with whom they disagree. If you were to visit certain self-styled Catholic media outlets—which I don’t advise you to do—you would be horrified by the hatred which some of them express for the Holy Father. “No compassion there” you might say, and you would be correct, but here’s the rub: you and I must be compassionate with them, must enter into their minds and hearts to understand what drives them, must do good to them, bless them, pray for them. Is this the most difficult Gospel passage of all? Possibly. Are we obliged to take it seriously? Definitely. Is compassion the most demanding of mindsets? It may be, but it is certainly the most Christ-like, and so, ultimately, the most rewarding.

6th Sunday Year C

6th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022

Jeremiah 17:5-8; Psalm 1; 1 Cor 15:12, 16-20; Luke 6:17, 20-26

St Luke, as anyone on the number 51 into Carnforth will tell you, is known as the scriba mansuetudinis Christi, “the one who writes of the gentleness of Christ”. If you continue further, on the number 55 to Lancaster, you may find those who will inform you that it was Dante who coined that expression: whether that is true or not I must rely on you to confirm or deny.

Therefore, when St. Luke of all people depicts Our Lord as speaking harshly, we must sit up and take notice. Today, in the Sermon on the Plain, Luke records Jesus delivering a starker version of the Beatitudes than we find in Matthew, and following it up with a corresponding list of woes.

Thus, whereas Matthew describes Jesus speaking of the blessedness of the poor in spirit, according to Luke it is the poor who are said to be blessed, without the addition of the spiritual element. For Matthew, the blessing comes upon those who hunger and thirst for justice, whilst Luke has Our Lord say simply “Blessed are you who hunger now”, seemingly implying a physical, rather than a spiritual hunger. Similarly, Luke is alone in lamenting the prospects of the rich, the well fed, the contented and the popular—those, indeed, whose needs are being satisfied by earthly things.

What are we to make of this? At one level, the Jesus of Luke’s Gospel is confirming the prophecies of Jeremiah and of the first Psalm. He is distinguishing those whose interests and trust are rooted in material things, and who are doomed to disappointment, from those who put their trust in God, and who, as both Jeremiah and the Psalmist declare, are like a tree whose roots reach down to the stream, relying on the ultimately reliable.

So far, so good, we may think. WE put our trust in God: we are all right Jack. But is it really as straightforward as that?

In blessing the poor and the hungry, and warning the rich and the comfortable, Our Lord is shattering any tendency that we may have towards complacency. Very few of us, I suspect, can genuinely claim to be poor, or to go hungry; yet poverty and hunger exist in our world, and even in our own country.

Nor are that poverty and that hunger inevitably people’s own fault, as some would claim. Yes, there are those who have squandered what they had, or who have pursued pleasure to the point of addiction, but that is far from being the whole story. It is very easy for people to lose their homes through redundancy, or marriage breakdown, or sudden illness. Thank God (and Aneurin Bevan) for the National Health Service, which ensures that we shall not be bankrupted by medical bills, as can be the case in poorer, or even in wealthy but less civilised nations, but the loss of income entailed in lengthy illness can have devastating effects.

Furthermore, how many of the homeless have a military background, people whom we were happy to laud as they preserved our security, but whom we ignore when they return, traumatised by their service?

The poor, the hungry, the distressed, are very much part of today’s world, as they were in the days of Our Lord; and, as this Gospel makes clear, we ignore them at our peril. It is not enough to claim that we, at least, have our priorities right: that we put our trust in God, and not in the things of earth, in material well-being. In many ways, we HAVE that material well-being. If we do not put it at the service of others; if we ignore our suffering brothers and sisters; worse still, if we join the chorus of those who point the finger and declare that it is their own fault, then far from being blessed, we shall hear those words “Alas for you” directed at us.

Lent is looming: it is two and a half weeks away. At the very least, let us commit ourselves to some contribution to the relief of the poor, making that a starting point.

5th Sunday Year C

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022

Isaiah 6:1-8; 1 Cor 15: 1-11; Luke 5:1-11

There can be scarcely anyone on planet Earth who is not aware that Meat Loaf died a few weeks ago, as it was plastered across all the communications media. Even the Queen’s guard took note: at the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, “I’d do anything for love (but I won’t do that)” formed part of the band’s repertoire. Had Christopher Robin been still alive, he would no doubt have gone down with Alice for it.

I owe Meat Loaf a particular debt of gratitude as, for the past thirty nine years, I have used the closing lines of “Bat out of hell” in Reconciliation Services, in association with today’s First Reading and Gospel. (Incidentally, some months ago I also decided that I would save that particular song from the waves in the unlikely event of my being cast away to a desert island.)

You probably don’t need me to remind you that the closing lines of “Bat out of hell” are “Like a sinner before the gates of heaven, I’ll come crawling on back to you”, and I quote them in Services of Reconciliation in order to point out that they are the exact opposite of the way that God’s mercy, and the Sacrament of Reconciliation work. Today’s Mass Readings illustrate and reinforce the point.

Isaiah’s vision provides us with a perfect template for Reconciliation/Penance/Confession and its aftermath. Isaiah encounters the majesty of God in the Temple, and all his senses are assailed. He is overwhelmed by the sight of God enthroned, surrounded by the six-winged seraphs. Their song thunders in his ears, as the foundations of the Temple are shaken, and he inhales the smoking incense. Shortly, he will feel and taste the burning coal, having used his voice to express his unworthiness.

How is Isaiah’s unworthiness revealed to him? It is not by introspection, by delving into the lumber rooms of his conscience in an attempt to unearth every single sin or peccadillo of which he may, or may not, have been guilty: rather it is by looking outward, gazing upon the majesty of God, and recognising God’s greatness and goodness, which show up his own sinfulness by contrast.

There are echoes here of the old “long” Act of Contrition, which many of you will have learnt as children, and which declares as our chief reason for sorrow that our sins “offend thine infinite goodness”. In other words, we, like Isaiah, look towards God, rather than into ourselves, and recognise God as both awesome and loving, and therefore as deserving better of us.

Gazing at God, and recognising God’s greatness, Isaiah makes his confession, and receives absolution, as the seraph uses the burning coal to purge his sinful lips, the gateway to his sinful heart. Then, having been healed of his sin, Isaiah is given a mission, to be the Lord’s messenger, as we are sent out from Confession to be messengers for God, to fulfil our baptismal role as prophets.

Our Lord’s encounter with the fishermen shows the same process at work. Peter and his companions are brought to an awareness of their sinfulness, again not by looking into themselves, but by gazing at Jesus Christ, seeing the miracle which He has worked, and recognising their own inadequacy in the mirror of His majesty.

Like Isaiah, Peter makes his confession: “Leave me Lord, I am a sinful man.” Like Isaiah, he receives absolution: “Do not be afraid”. Like Isaiah, he is given a mission: “You will be fishers of men”. (Unfortunately, the play on words—fishermen/fishers of men—works only in English: there is no equivalent in the Greek original.)

As with Isaiah and Peter, so it is with us. We gaze at the love, the mercy, the majesty of God, and so are brought to recognise our own unworthiness. We receive absolution, and we are given a mission. Where, then, does Meat Loaf come in?

Well, that is the point: he doesn’t. His image of the crawling sinner is the opposite of the reality, and yet it is the image so many people seem to have of this sacrament. “Bat out of hell” is bad theology—but, by heck, it is a cracking good song!

4th Sunday Year C

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022

Jeremiah 1`:4-5, 17-19; 1Cor 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30.

The compilers of the Lectionary (the book of readings) can be irritating at times in the way that they edit passages from the Scriptures, and, in particular, in the choice of verses which they omit. Today’s reading from the prophet Jeremiah skips twelve verses from the middle. In some cases this is understandable, as the verses in question deviate from the principal theme of the call of the young prophet, but it is galling to be deprived of verses 6-8, in which we hear of Jeremiah’s reluctance and anxieties.

These verses read: “I said ‘Ah Lord look. I do not know how to speak: I am a child.’ But the Lord replied ‘Do not say “I am a child”. Go now to those to whom I send you, and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to protect you—it is the Lord who speaks.’”

From them we learn that Jeremiah resisted his call to be a prophet, because he foresaw difficulties and opposition, the same opposition which Our Lord encountered in the synagogue at Nazareth. Jesus was rejected because He told the people some home truths, and that rejection extended to violence. Jeremiah too was to encounter violence at the hands of the civil and religious authorities, and his unease proved to be well founded.

What about us, who were anointed at our baptism to be priests, prophets, and kings, as members of the Body of Christ; who are called to be a prophetic people, witnessing to the Gospel and opposing injustice? If we are true to our calling, we shall encounter opposition or, what can be worse, indifference. Nobody is interested in what we have to say, and if they listen at all, they are unlikely to be convinced.

Some twenty years ago, the late Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, commented that we are singing the song of the Lord in a strange land. He was quoting the psalm in which the Jewish exiles in Babylon lamented their condition, asking, in the translation provided by Boney M, now more than forty years ago, “How could we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

In Babylon, the exiles refused to sing those songs, even though their captors requested them. Jeremiah, Jesus, and we do not have that choice. If we are to be true to our baptism, we must sing the Lord’s song. We have to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ by our words, but especially by the manner of our lives and we have to do it in our own country, which has become a strange land, estranged from Christ and from the values of His Kingdom.

Our greatest prophet at the present day is Pope Francis, who determinedly sings the song of the Lord and who, like Jeremiah, and like the Lord Jesus, encounters bitter opposition from his own people. It was Jesus’ co-religionists who, in His own town, rejected Him, and who wished to kill Him, not least for pointing out that pagans such as the widow at Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian had won God’s favour. Likewise, it is not pagans, but members of his own flock, who are vitriolic in their denunciation of Pope Francis for his determination to make the Church more Christ-like, and to bring the compassion of Christ to the world.

So true commitment to Christ, true proclamation and living out of the Gospel, will bring opposition. How are we to cope with that? St. Paul provides the answer in that beautiful passage from his First Letter to the Corinthians. Opposition must be countered and overcome by love. Denunciation, condemnation, demonisation of our opponents are all contrary to the message and person of Christ. All of our cherished schemes and projects, and all of our most persuasive arguments, will, in the end, fall short. Only that love which comes from God, which is developed and grown in us through our relationship with God, and which encompasses even those with whom we disagree fundamentally, will empower us as true prophets, in whatever land we seek to sing the Lord’s song.

3rd Sunday Year C

3rd Sunday in OT 2022

Nehemiah 8:2-6, 8-10; 1 Cor 12:12-30; Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21

I love that passage from the Book of Nehemiah, describing how Ezra and the scribes read from the Law—the first part of the Hebrew Bible—and interpreted it, all through the morning. Hands up if you can hear the word “Watergate” without thinking of Richard Nixon, and hands up if you are not tempted to think that anyone would be in tears if they had to listen to readings and sermons all morning.

Why were the people in tears? Bear in mind who they were. These were the exiles who had come home to Judah and Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. They were now in that homeland of which they had heard so much from their parents and grandparents, but which they themselves had never seen, having been born in Babylon, where their elders could not even bring themselves to sing the Psalms, so deep was their distress.

Those same elders—parents and grandparents—would have done their best to pass on the faith of Israel to this generation, but inevitably it would have been piecemeal, even times a little garbled. Now this new generation is, at last, learning in full of their ancestral faith, hearing the Scriptures read and explained: no wonder they are overwhelmed.

What about us? What effect do those same Scriptures, and the many more passages which we hear, have on us? Every Sunday, we hear three parts of those Scriptures—actually four, if we include the Psalm. A passage from the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, is read to us; we respond with the Psalm, before listening to part of a New Testament Epistle and, finally, the Gospel.

How does it strike us? Are we, like the exiles, moved in the depth of our being? Are we moved to tears, and are they tears of joy, or tears of boredom? I have heard priests, who should know better, being very dismissive of the Old Testament. If they haven’t steeped themselves in the Old Testament and the other readings, if they haven’t struggled to penetrate their meaning so as to convey it to their congregations, how are those congregations to be moved, to have their hearts stirred, to be brought to the verge of tears?

All of us, priests, deacons, religious, members of the congregation, need to have listening ears and listening hearts, attuned to the Word of God which we are hearing. During the Liturgy of the Word, we will bring our ears, our minds, and our hearts into harmony, allowing the Scriptures to seep into us.

A few weeks ago, I saw a cartoon: a family was sitting in church, attending Mass in person after months of following it on line. The husband was whispering to the wife “I don’t half miss being able to fast forward past the homily”. Does the homily lead you more deeply into the word which you have heard? If not, it may be worth going through the readings again, allowing them to take root, taking the Word of God more deeply into ourselves, looking out for the link between the Old Testament reading and the Gospel.

That link can be seen this week, as Jesus follows Ezra in reading from, and then interpreting, God’s Word in the Scriptures. The people are attentive: “all eyes were fixed on Him” we are told. He begins His interpretation by saying “This text is being fulfilled today, even as you listen”.

Those words are as true today, as you listen to them in Claughton, Clitheroe, or Ontario, as they were when Our Lord spoke them in Nazareth. God’s Word is a living word: it speaks to you here and now. Do you have ears to hear, and hearts to welcome and absorb?

2nd Sunday Year C

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022

If Holy Mother Church were entirely logical, which in general she sets out to be, I wouldn’t be here in green vestments celebrating the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. Instead, I would be in white vestments celebrating the third stage of the Epiphany.

Epiphany is the showing forth of God the Son become man, and in the early Church it comprised three elements. The first part was the showing forth of Jesus to the Jewish people, represented by Mary, Joseph and the shepherds, as their Messiah; and to the Gentile nations, in the persons of the non-Jewish Wise Men, as the Saviour of the world, Jewish and Gentile alike.

Secondly, as seen in last Sunday’s feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Epiphany entailed the showing forth of Jesus as the Beloved Son of the Father, through the Descent of the Holy Spirit and the Father’s proclamation. Finally, there was His showing forth as God, in the miracle at Cana, where He “let His Glory be seen”, the Glory which, in the Exodus journey of the Jewish people, was the sign of the presence of God; and where He indicated the presence of the Kingdom by providing an abundance of wine, as foretold by the prophets.

For reasons which someone may know, though I do not, the second and third parts of Epiphany became overlooked, surviving only in antiphons of the Roman breviary for the 6th January celebration of the Feast. The Baptism of the Lord was eventually restored after Vatican II as a  separate Feast, with no reference to its original role as the central part of the Epiphany; while the miracle at Cana is described in one year out of three not, as it should be, as part of the Epiphany, but as the Gospel of a Sunday in Ordinary Time. Like a striker missing an open goal, or a fielder squandering a golden opportunity for a run-out, the liturgists (or whoever was responsible) threw away the chance of restoring Epiphany to its original threefold glory.

So what is today about? It is, as I mentioned, a matter of the Shekinah, translated as doxa in Greek, and “Glory” in English, the manifestation of the veiled Godhead which led the Israelites in pillar and cloud to the Promised Land, as Jesus, the presence of God, is to lead humankind to the Kingdom, a Kingdom revealed as present in embryo through the superabundance of wine.

There is something peculiar about this third aspect of Epiphany: it wasn’t due to happen. This is a question of “the Hour” of which Jesus speaks, the time when, in John’s Gospel, He was due to reveal His Glory. This was to happen, as John understood it, in the single event of the crucifixion and resurrection, which was to be Jesus’ glorification by the Father. Until then, His Glory was to be concealed. As He says to His mother, “My Hour has not yet come”.

Yet it does happen. How? At the instigation of that same mother! Some years ago, I read a (Catholic) commentary on this passage which declared rather sternly, “This should not be the occasion of a Marian homily”. Well, all right, insofar as the emphasis should be on the Glory and the Kingdom, but it would be perverse in the extreme to overlook Our Lady’s role, which is extraordinary.

Mary doesn’t actually ask her Son to do anything. She merely points out the situation: “They have no wine”. Jesus struggles against responding, because it is not yet the “Hour”, yet Mary, whom Jesus has addressed as “Woman”, a title which indicates a solemn moment, knows that it is HER “Hour”; that she will prevail.

She may not know exactly what Jesus will do, but she is inspired to recognise that He will do something, and so she says to the servants “Do whatever He tells you”, and we know the result. We cannot overlook her role in achieving an anticipation of the Hour, a change in the divine plan; and we must apply to ourselves her words “Do whatever He tells you”.

2nd Sunday of Christmastide

2nd Sunday of Christmas 2021/22

Sirach 24: 1-4, 12-16; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-18; John 1:1-18

Do you remember the Last Gospel? Those of a certain vintage may recall the days when the priest would dismiss the congregation with the rather puzzling words “Ite missa est”, usually translated “Go, the Mass is ended”, but actually extremely difficult to translate accurately.

Literally, it means “(Something with a feminine ending) has been sent”. The missing word may be “ecclesia” in which case the injunction means “Go. The Church (or assembly) has been sent (or dismissed, or given a mission)”. 

In any case, rather like the policemen in Pirates of Penzance, we didn’t go. Instead, the priest moved to the “Gospel side” of the altar, and read “the Last Gospel”, the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, which we heard proclaimed at the Day Mass on Christmas Day, and which we have heard again today.

How did this custom arise? Clearly, it was an addition to an earlier way of ending Mass, tacked on after the people had, in theory, been sent away.

Apparently, it was originally part of the priest’s private thanksgiving after Mass, but at some point after the Council of Trent, it was made part of the Mass itself, though the Dominicans were never happy about it, and used to extinguish the candles after the Ite Missa est, to signify that they were reading the Last Gospel under protest. Incidentally, it serves as a reminder to be careful when people speak of the “traditional” Latin Mass, as this tradition goes back only so far, and was always subject to change.

What the custom of reading the “Last Gospel” does demonstrate is how importantly this passage was, and indeed, is regarded, as an exposition of the faith. It is a case of St. John doing what he does best, namely theologising, explaining the deeper meaning behind the historical events. Matthew and Luke have their infancy narratives, describing, each in his own way, the events associated with the birth of Jesus, conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin, and variously designated “Son of the Most High”, “Son of God”, “Saviour”, “King of the Jews”, and, perhaps most tellingly, by Matthew as Emmanuel, a name which, he goes on to explain, means “God is with us”.

John, for his part, goes further and deeper. The new born child is actually God Himself, the Logos or Word, who was with God eternally, who is God, and who is the agent of creation. John describes, or indeed defines, the birth of Jesus, in the words kai ho Logos sarx egeneto –in Latin et verbum caro factum est—and the Word became (or was made) flesh. This was not simply some miraculous baby: it was the pre-existing Word of God, indeed God from all eternity, hinted at in the Wisdom literature, as in today’s First Reading under the name of Wisdom, but greater than that Wisdom, as being begotten not created.

The Bible begins, in the Book of Genesis, with the words, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”. How did He create them? He created them through His Word—“God SAID ‘Let there be light’ and there was light”. John’s Gospel begins “In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. This was the Word which became flesh, in the womb of the Virgin, through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, the Word which God spoke to initiate creation.

So we can see that this passage from St. John’s Gospel, far from being abstract, or even abstruse, is in reality a statement of one of the central truths of our faith: namely that the child of Bethlehem is not only the Messiah, not only the redeemer, but God Himself, who has become one of us. Truly, this is one of the most awe-inspiring passages in the entire Bible.