2nd Sunday of Lent Year A

Genesis 12:1-4a; 2 Timothy 1:8-10; Matthew 17:1-9

Just as the Temptations of Our Lord are always to be found on the First Sunday of Lent, so the Transfiguration invariably forms the centrepiece of the Second, before the Gospels go their separate ways in the three year cycle of readings from the Third Sunday of Lent onwards. Why should this be? Why is the Transfiguration considered to be so significant in Lent as to be set before us year after year?

A simple answer is that each of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) covers the Transfiguration, but that does not explain why it is always regarded as an aspect of Lent. Why does that happen?

Thinking about it, we can see that the Transfiguration looks forward both to Jesus’ Passion and Death, and to His Resurrection. Luke’s Gospel, which we read in Year C, specifically states that Moses and Elijah were speaking with Jesus about His “passing”. Significantly too, the three disciples Peter, James, and John, who witness the Transfiguration are the same three whom Our Lord will take forward with Him to be the closest witnesses of His Agony in Gethsemane. Having witnessed the glory, they must also witness the anguish.

Indeed, we can surmise that those three were chosen to see the Transfiguration in order to prepare them for the Agony. If that is the case, it wasn’t entirely successful. Just as they were overcome by fear at the sight of the transfigured Lord, so also they were overcome by fear at the sight of that same Lord in agony: they couldn’t cope, and took refuge in sleep. Both on the mountain of glory and in the garden of anguish, Jesus must come to them and encourage (put fresh heart into) them, the difference being that in Gethsemane, He has to do it three times.

There, then, is the link between the Transfiguration and the Passion, but where is the connection with the Resurrection? Generally, the Transfiguration is regarded as a foretaste of the Resurrection. At Cana, at the instigation of His mother, Jesus had anticipated His “hour” (ho Kairos) by letting His glory be seen, “glory” being a word which indicates divinity, the presence of God. Now, on Mt. Tabor, the hour is anticipated again, as the cloud covers them with shadow, that cloud from which God spoke to the Israelites in the wilderness, the cloud which both concealed and manifested the glory, and which now does so again: that glory which will be completed by the Resurrection.

“That’s all very well,” you may say, “but how does it concern us?” Perhaps it is a matter of the Transfiguration moments in our own lives, about which I have spoken before. These are the moments of sheer joy, the moments when we realise, perhaps for a fleeting interval, that life is worth living, that—just for now—I am deeply happy.

They may fill us with a consciousness of God’s presence, or they may be, to the outward observer, completely mundane. They may not occur often, but I hope and trust that everyone experiences them at some point. Among the more obvious “God moments” I can recall nipping into Lancaster Cathedral on my way back to work during my dinner hour in 1968. I became overwhelmed by an awareness of Jesus’ presence in the tabernacle. I had always believed in this: now I was conscious of it beyond any possible doubt, and this proved to be one of the key moments in my sense of vocation to the priesthood.

Less obviously God-related, but clearly God-given, were the childhood walks with Mum and Dad on a Wednesday afternoon or evening (Wednesday being half day closing in the shop); times of sheer bliss. Or, perhaps, the most seemingly mundane of all, leaning on a railing close to the River Lune while acting as a marker during a cross country race in my first stint as chaplain to Our Lady’s HS, Lancaster, in 1985, when I found myself reflecting on the sheer joy of my dual role, in the school and in St. Mary’s parish Morecambe, a situation which I knew would not last, but which, at least for the time, I could savour to the full.

I trust that these have indeed been glimpses of the promise of sharing in the Resurrection. Have they helped me to cope with the times in the Garden of the Agony? I trust that they have. Perhaps today you might recall and reflect on your own Transfiguration moments and the effect they have had, and will have, on you. I trust that you have had such moment, and that you will have more.

1st Sunday of Lent Year A

Genesis 2:7-9, 3:1-7; Psalm 50 (51); Romans 5: 12-14; Matthew 4:1-11

What do we make of Jesus’ time in the wilderness and of His temptations? First of all, notice how He comes to be in the wilderness. He is led by the Spirit: Mark actually says that the Spirit “drove Him into the wilderness”. So He was meant to be there, and Matthew specifically states that He was led there in order “to be tempted by the devil”. It was the Father’s will, and the work of the Spirit both that the Son should be in the wilderness, and that He should be tempted.

What are the implications for us? We too will find ourselves in the wilderness, and we too will be tempted, but we mustn’t be anxious, because it is God’s will, and because God will be with us. Is it fair to suggest that we undergo two types of wilderness experience? Firstly, there is Lent, when we go voluntarily into the wilderness, accompanying Jesus, sharing with Him our prayer, our giving, our fasting or self-denial.

There has been a tendency in recent years to play down the self-denial aspect of Lent; to say that we should focus on doing positive things. Yes, of course we should, but we shouldn’t omit the fasting, the self-denial. Jesus fasted, and so should we. Indeed, He takes it for granted that we shall. Remember the Ash Wednesday Gospel, when Our Lord says “WHEN you pray, WHEN you give alms, WHEN you fast—“when”,and not “if”. Fasting in some shape or form should be part of our Lent.

There is, though, a second form of wilderness time, which may coincide with Lent, but which may strike us at any time of year. What is a wilderness? It is a place where we are not at home, where we are uncomfortable, where we wander. It need not be a physical place: we may be in a wilderness in our own living room, when we are distressed about something, struggling, uncertain.

For me, such times have, on occasions, coincided with Lent. In 1995, Ash Wednesday fell on 1st March. I remember it well, because I had just sunk into the depth of depression. On Ash Wednesday, I gave a blood donation, and I remember thinking “By heck! The old doctors were right. Blood letting is good for you. I feel lighter in my head.”

Alas, I was fooling myself. A fortnight later, I had to go into a nursing home. The Sunday after that was the third of Lent, and the chaplain there chose to focus his homily on the text “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did”. “Thanks a bunch,” I thought. That was just what I needed to hear when I was already feeling like death—I don’t think.

Yet in those wildernesses too, Jesus is with us. His presence may be difficult to detect, but He will gradually make Himself known, and lead us through, and out of, the wilderness. Similarly, though it may seem unbelievable at the time, we will be enriched by, and benefit from, the experience.

What, though, of the temptations? To be tempted to turn stones into bread may involve, for us, feeling an urge to give in, too much, to our appetites. Our appetites are good and holy, but we have to be in control of them, not the other way round. We ae turning stones into bread when our appetite for food, alcohol, sex, or self-indulgence of any kind, runs away with us, takes us under its control.

To throw oneself down from the Temple pinnacle which, from childhood, I have aways identified in my mind’s eye with the balcony at the base of Lancaster Cathedral’s steeple, would be to take unacceptable risks with health, with relationships, or perhaps when driving; trusting, or pretending to trust in God to sort everything out. It may well be a sin of presumption. During the pandemic, there were some extreme evangelical groups in North America which carried on meeting as usual, claiming that God would keep them safe. This was the equivalent of throwing themselves from the Temple, expecting God to work miracles for them. Unsurprisingly, they suffered high casualty rates.

To desire the kingdoms of the earth: what is this but to lord it over people, to belittle or humiliate them? Do you or I give in to any of these temptations? Let us remember that God is with us in the wilderness, calling us to resist, with the aid of our voluntary penances, and that He will lead us through.

7th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A

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

After hearing last Sunday’s Gospel, which recounted Jesus’ demand for a deeper morality than can be expressed by the mere keeping of rules, someone commented to me “That was a very difficult Gospel”. If that was difficult, what do we make of today’s, the call to non-resistance, which strikes me as the most difficult passage in any of the Gospels?

From the outset, I think that it is important for us to recall that Our Lord practised what He preached. He lived to the letter the prophecy of the Suffering Servant proclaimed by Deutero-Isaiah: “For my part I made no resistance. I gave my back to the smiters, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard. I did not cover my face against insult and spittle”.

“Pray for those who persecute you,” He said. He fulfilled that through His prayer at His crucifixion “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”. I should perhaps say that I may be just about able to manage that, in terms of what I might class as a very feeble form of persecution. When I read or hear unjust criticism of the Church, or the sillier comments of self-styled atheists, or remarks which generally condone unjust behaviour by governments or others, I can usually force myself to pray for them, though generally only after an initial burst of rage. It is hardly the sort of spontaneous forgiveness which Jesus showed under infinitely greater provocation.

There have been others, in addition to Our Lord, who have lived the Gospel of non-resistance. It is over fifty years since I read “Strength to love” by Martin Luther King, but I still recall how staggered I was by his total refusal to hate, in spite of the brutality which had already been inflicted upon him. Throughout all his calls for racial justice, there was not a single word of condemnation of white people, even the most vicious and murderous of them. Dr. King’s non-violent campaign succeeded, at least in terms of legislation, but, as with Our Lord, it cost him his life.

Nelson Mandela’s autobiography “Long walk to freedom”, and his efforts, as President of South Africa, to create a Rainbow Nation, were also amazingly free of rancour. He survived, to be honoured throughout the world, though he must have grieved to see the inequality which endured, and the corruption which had begun to plague the government in his retirement.

Non-resistance, then, is achievable by individuals: what are we to make of nations? Is it, should it be, practised by nation states? Were Britain and her allies required by Jesus to allow Hitler to complete his conquest of Europe, if not of the world; to succeed in his aim of exterminating the entire Jewish race? Should a present day Hitler, in the form of Vladimir Putin, be permitted to seize control of, and impose a brutal regime on, a neighbouring country?

Noticeably, Jesus directs all of His remarks in this context to individuals. What then are we to make of nations? Recently, there has been much reflection on, and much criticism of, the Just War theory, by which the Church has traditionally given conditional approval to defensive wars. Many people argue that, given modern weaponry, no war can be justified, and Pope Francis has been particularly vocal in his condemnation of the arms trade.

And yet, in the present instance, can we maintain that Putin should not be resisted, or that countries were wrong to overthrow the brutal Caliphate which ISIS sought to establish? Even the Pope has declared that Ukraine is justified in defending itself, and has also stated that non-combatant nations are right to supply Ukraine with weapons for that defence. If Putin should succeed in imposing his will on Ukraine, the Pax Russica would be the equivalent of Tacitus’ description of the Pax Romana: “They make a desert and call it peace”.

We must all not only long for, but also strive for, that state of universal harmony envisaged by the prophet Isaiah, but we must also accept that it will be achieved only when, as Jesus points out, we and the world have been perfected, thoroughly made, completed. In the meantime, we must recall the words of Pope St. Paul VI, “If you want peace, work for justice”. May justice sometimes demand armed resistance, and is this compatible with Jesus’ words? You tell me!

6th Sunday of Ordinary time Year A

6th Sunday in Ordinary time 2023

Sirach 15:15-20; 1 Cor 2:6-10; Matthew 5:17-37

Well, that’s a relief: the chapel hasn’t emptied. When I read Jesus’ words “If you are bringing your offering to the altar, and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, and go and be reconciled with them first,” I half expected a clattering of feet as everyone rushed through the door.

Jesus is using a very emphatic illustration of the duty of mutual reconciliation, declaring that it must come before the duty of worship: indeed, we are not fit to worship if we are at odds with our brother or sister, meaning, presumably, those who, like us, belong to the one body; but then those outside the body. If the Church is truly the body of Christ, then we cannot truly receive that body in the Eucharist if we are responsible for a wound in the body which is the Church.

There is a tremendous need for reconciliation within the Church. Critics of the Holy Father accuse him of creating division, but this is a distortion of the truth. What Pope Francis is doing is, like Jesus Himself, to call the Church to a more radical following, a deeper faithfulness to God. In the resistance to him, we see that same adherence to rules, whilst neglecting their deeper purpose, of which Jesus accused the Pharisees.

The Pope has been accused of being lax, which was precisely the complaint which the Pharisees levelled against Our Lord. Today’s Gospel shows that Jesus was actually demanding something more difficult than the mere keeping of rules: in other words, a complete conversion of heart. Very few of us, I suspect, are tempted to break the commandment “Thou shalt not kill”: how many of us can say, hand on heart, that we never become angry with those whom we call our brothers and sisters, that we never say harsh things to or about them?

Jesus’ command to love is not, as it might appear at first sight, an easier option than the simple avoidance of rule breaking but, as those examples show which he gives us today, something far more demanding. If love is indeed a soft option, why do so many songs lament the pain and heartache which love brings? Admittedly, they are speaking of erotic love, but the same holds true of every kind of love. The song “Love hurts” has, according to Google, been recorded more than a hundred times.

I am reminded of the two elderly Jewish ladies who were on the visiting list of the parish where I did my diaconate placement. One of them said to me “Religion is the Lord, and religion is love, and love means sacrifice”. Forty eight years on, I still haven’t found a better definition.

The need for, and the demands of, reconciliation, were demonstrated both by the Pope’s gesture of kissing the feet of the warring President and Vice President of South Sudan, and by his joint pilgrimage to that country with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, something which would have been unthinkable not many years ago. How many other parts of the world show that same need, when a self-professed Orthodox Christian President of Russia is killing thousands of his fellow Orthodox Christians in invading another country, when Muslims are the most numerous victims of Muslim jihadists, and when religious differences provide the excuse for persecutions, invasions, and massacres?

What, though, of Jesus’ call to rid ourselves of erring hands or eyes? This is an instance of Semitic hyperbole—if we took it literally, the world would be full of one handed, one eyed Christians, but what else? Surely few, if any, of us would possess a tongue, because that would be the first part of our body to be surrendered. As St. James points out in his epistle, the tongue is a whole wicked world in itself.

Which brings us back to our starting point. Whilst it is a relief that the chapel is not deserted, it is worth considering whether we have ground to make up in terms of sins of the tongue. But, what about sins of the mind???

5th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year A

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

In Canada there is a Catholic radio station named Salt and Light. It seems a strange title, but today’s Gospel shows why it was chosen. Christians are called to be the salt of the earth, and the light of the world. What does that mean?

Salt has had a bad press in recent years, as studies have shown that it is harmful if used in quantities too great. Yet it is, in the correct amount, essential to life. If you have undergone an operation, you will probably have been connected subsequently to a saline drip, infusing a salt solution into your vein. Without a sufficient amount of salt in your system, you die.

It is also seen as a savour, adding flavour to food which would otherwise be bland and tasteless. Again, there is an argument now about how much salt should be used, but that wouldn’t have been an issue in Our Lord’s time. He is making the point that we should be giving both life and flavour to our world.

When He calls us the light of the world, Jesus is applying to us a title which He claimed for Himself. To be the light of the world, we must somehow be a presence of Jesus.

So the usual question arises: am I being salt and light for the world? It strikes me that the two things operate in different, though complementary, ways. Salt works from within: light from outside. Salt is inserted into food, exerting its influence within the dish, whilst light guides the way for someone carrying or following it.

Do I work within the situations in which I find myself, improving their condition from the inside? I grew up behind, above, and in a shop, my father being a “retail confectioner and tobacconist” meaning that he sold sweets and cigarettes. In fact, he did much more. Simply by being himself, he made our shop what would now be called a community hub for people in our part of Scotforth. People would naturally gravitate there. One of the local hooligans, on being released from his latest spell of detention, commented to his mates “I’m going to Mr. Keefe’s tonight for a chat”. On a bus, I overheard a small boy, who had forgotten the name of the stop, ask the conductress for a ticket to Mr. Keefe’s.

That, I think, was being salt to the earth, giving life and flavour from within. I would claim that he was also a light to that little corner of the world. Everyone knew that we were Catholics—“big RCs” as one customer expressed it—and without ever uttering a word of preaching, Dad exhibited Catholicism at its best. Interestingly, when he was rushed into RLI with a burst ulcer one Saturday night in the pre-ecumenical 1950s, his first visitors next day were first the Baptist minister, second his Congregational counterpart, both customers in the shop.

We can be salt and light by being ourselves at our best. Sadly, we know that the institutional Church hasn’t always been either; and that has been obvious to the world. As Our Lord comments, a city built on a hilltop cannot be hidden, and the sins of the Church have been blatantly clear. Most fair minded people have been favourably impressed by outstanding representatives of the Church, such as Pope St. John XXIII and St. Teresa of Kalkota. The more knowledgeable admire also St. Oscar Romero, and the world hangs on the words of Pope Francis, but there is no doubt that the image of the Church, and its ability to be salt and light for the earth, have been grievously damaged by recent revelations of monstrosities.

The Church has lost all credibility and all moral authority in matters of sexuality. There was a deafening silence from Church leaders over the recent legal decision endorsing the abortion of children with Downs Syndrome right up to birth. This is clearly infanticide, with more than a hint of genocide, but our leaders are effectively silenced because the Church is regarded as a force for harm, not good.

Perhaps there was never a greater need for you and me to be salt and light. We have to be a presence within the Church, imparting, by our own lives, both life and flavour. Similarly, we need, by those same lives, to demonstrate that Christ is the way, truth, and life; and that the Church, despite its failings, remains His body, to belong to which is well worthwhile.

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Zephaniah 2:3, 12-13; 1 Cor 1:26-31; Matthew 5:1-12

On 31st January 1987, I was at the top of one of the smaller hills around Derwentwater. Scattered around were members of the 5th Year (Year 11 in new money) from Fisher-More High School, Colne, who were taking part in a School Leaver Course at Castlerigg Manor, the Lancaster Diocesan Youth Centre.

In the valley below, a dog could be seen chasing sheep across a field, which gave rise to the following conversation between two of the lads on the course:

“Is that a dog running after those sheep, or a rabbit?”

“Don’t be daft. Rabbits don’t run after sheep.”

“Well it would, if a dog was running after IT”.

At this point I decided that the conversation was becoming too deep for me, and I moved on.

I can’t help thinking, though, that this rather odd exchange is relevant to the Sermon on the Mount, and especially to the Beatitudes, which you have just heard. Jesus went up a hill to proclaim the Beatitudes, and from a hill top the world can turn upside down: everything looks different, proportions change, and rabbits run after sheep.

In taking the disciples up the hill, Jesus was planning to turn their world upside down. He was going to change their perspective by speaking of a Kingdom, the true Kingdom, in which it is not the powerful who are blessed, but the humble, the downtrodden, the persecuted, the simple, gentle folk.

As St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, he points out that this world, this Kingdom, is already coming to pass among them. God, he points out, has chosen them, and they are, by and large, not outstanding, powerful, or influential people. Indeed, they are the very people identified by the Beatitudes.

Think of the really good people whom you have known. Haven’t they tended to be the ordinary, workaday folk; the everyday saints who often pass through life unnoticed; the small people who actually make the world go round?

I am thinking of Winnie. Winnie was a housewife married to Harry, a retired window cleaner, who lived in that part of St. Gregory’s parish, Preston, known as the Canary Islands, where all the streets are named after birds. I don’t remember where theirs was Plover St., Kingfisher St., Dove St., or one of the other members of that grouping of terrace houses built for the millworkers of a now departed era.

Winnie was a daily Massgoer until she developed cancer, and became housebound, whereupon I would visit every Friday with Holy Communion, invariably finding Winnie seated behind her altar, a table covered by an immaculately laundered white cloth, on which stood a crucifix and two lighted candles.

One Saturday morning, the presbytery doorbell rang, and I opened the door to a rather agitated middle aged man, who introduced himself as Winnie’s and Harry’s son.

“Me Dad’s had a stroke,” he began, “and me Mum wanted you to know. They’re taking him to hospital. She doesn’t want you to come, because she knows how busy you are, but she thought you should know.”

Now, when someone says “She doesn’t want you to come,” my initial reaction is not to go, and I returned to the tasks of the day. A moment later, I was struck by a thought. “I am not really that busy, and even if I was, which is more important? At the very least, if I anoint Harry, it will save the hospital chaplain a job.”

I got my car out, and drove to the Canary Islands. An ambulance was at the door, the paramedics were working on Harry, and Winnie was sitting patiently, her altar set up, the crucifix in place, and the two candles already lit. I was overwhelmed by the realisation that here was someone far closer to God than I was, and with far more influence over Him.

As time went on, Winnie’s cancer worsened, and she went into a nursing home in a different parish. Nonetheless, I felt that I should visit her. As I entered her room, Winnie’s response was “Oh, Father, you shouldn’t have come; you’re not well” (which was actually true). “Thank you, Jesus, for sending Fr. Keefe.” Oh heck: once more I realised that I was completely out of my depth.

Eventually, Winnie died, and I conducted her funeral. Some time later, her daughter-in-law described Winnie’s death. She had been lying quietly when she suddenly said “Thank you Jesus. I’m ready now. I am sorry for all my sins”, and died. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Isaiah 8:23-9:3; 1Cor 1:10-13,17; Matthew 4:12-23

Although this is the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, there is a sense in which it is the First. Until now, we have been dealing with the second and third parts of Epiphany: today, there is a feeling that we are embarking on a new chapter as Our Lord begins His mission, a mission of which we are called to be part.

It starts, the Gospel tells us, with the arrest of John the Baptist, which seems to spur Jesus into action, into the living out of His baptism, just as we are called to live out our baptism. Why should this be? Did it close the door on any hope that John’s mission might succeed in converting the people, and cause Jesus to accept fully that the task of proclaiming the Kingdom devolved on Him? We tend to think, I suspect, that Jesus had the whole of His earthly life mapped out fully from the beginning, but that interpretation rules out the uncertainty which is part of the human condition, and in which the fully human Redeemer must have shared to some extent, as part of His humanity.

Now, it seems, the arrest of the Baptist rules out any hesitation, and the public life and ministry of Jesus begin in earnest. This beginning is marked by what is commonly known as the kerygma.

“Ah yes,” you may say, “the kerygma. They speak of little else in Yealand.” Or you may not. It means the proclamation, the basic message of Jesus, and it is expressed in these terms: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is close at hand.” What does it mean and, in particular, what are its implications for us?

“Repent” first of all: we are well used by now to being told that this has its roots in the Greek word “metanoia”, meaning a change in our basic attitude and outlook, often described as a change of heart. It is more than simply being sorry for our sins; it entails a refocussing of our whole outlook, our whole identity, what makes us tick. In the far off days of my youth, Jodrell Bank, with its radio telescope, was often in the news, as it tracked the stars and planets and, after the launch of the first Sputnik in 1957, man made satellites as well. As it did so, it had to be frequently turned to follow movement in the skies. Similarly, our focus has to be constantly adjusted, as we seek to recognise what God is asking of us at any given time: thus, repentance is an ongoing process.

Why should we repent? We should repent because “the Kingdom of Heaven is close at hand”, reminding us that the Kingdom or reign of God was always the focus of Jesus’ preaching. Yet, if it is close at hand, where is it? We appear to see little sign of it in today’s world. Everywhere there are wars and rumours of wars. Sometimes it appears that our very civilisation is reaching its end, along with the inhabited world. What signs are there of the proximity of the Kingdom?

Where two or three still gather in the name of Jesus, despite difficulties, opposition, cynicism and apathy, the Kingdom is present. Wherever the mystery of Calvary is re-enacted in the Eucharistic sacrifice and meal—in other words, wherever Mass is celebrated—the Kingdom is present. Wherever people receive the Body of Christ in order to become the Body of Christ, the Kingdom is present. Wherever the word of God is proclaimed, reflected upon, and taken to heart, the Kingdom is present.

Yet the Kingdom is not restricted to its more obviously religious manifestations. Wherever kindness is shown to those who need it, the Kingdom is present. When people put their talents and time at the service of others, the Kingdom is present. When parents seek baptism and the other sacraments for their children, however faltering their own faith may be; when they feel the need to ask for a priest or other minister to conduct funeral rites for their loved one, however distant they may be from regular religious practice, the Kingdom is present. It may be in the form of a very faintly flickering flame: it is our task to keep that flame alive, however dimly it may burn.

When are we to do this? One phrase in English, translated from a single word in the original Greek, gives us the answer. It is a phrase used twice in describing the calling of the first apostles and their response: it is the phrase “at once”.

2nd Sunday ordinary Time A

Isaiah 49:3, 5-6; Psalm 39; I Cor 1:1-3; John 1:29-34

If you were here last week, and if, which is rather more unlikely, you were awake during the homily, you will have heard me mention the three parts of Epiphany: the first part, the showing forth of Jesus to both Jews and Gentiles in His birth and in the visit of the Wise Men; the second part, His showing forth as the Beloved Son of the Father at His Baptism; the third, the showing forth of His glory at the marriage feast at Cana.

Holy Mother Church has restored the second part by giving us the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which we kept last Sunday; and one year in every three she gives us the third part, albeit in a rather understated manner, when the marriage feast forms the Gospel of the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. This is not one of those years.

And yet, there is an element of Epiphany about it as Jesus is shown forth by John the Baptist as the Lamb of God. The Lamb of God: that is a phrase which we take for granted. We use it at every Mass. You, the congregation, address Jesus three times as “Lamb of God”, after which the priest, holding up the Body and Blood of Christ, proclaims “Behold the Lamb of God. Behold Him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb.”

Like most people, I suspect, I am not a great enthusiast for the “new” translation which was given to us (I am tempted to say “imposed upon us”) a decade or so ago. However, this is one instance in which it is an improvement on what we had before. The priest used to say, simply, “This is the Lamb of God”. John the Baptist says ide-- “See”, or “Look” as the Lectionary translates it; “Behold”, as the priest now says at Mass. That is an improvement because it draws attention to Jesus as John the Baptist did, helps us to focus on His sacramental presence.

But what about the phrase itself? John the Baptist is, apparently, the first person to speak of Jesus as the Lamb of God. What does he mean by it? It strikes me that there are two aspects to it. Firstly, there is the Paschal Lamb, the lamb slain at Passover, whose blood saved the Israelites from the destroying angel. Jesus was to be the true Paschal Lamb, whose blood was to save the human race from everlasting death.

Secondly, there is the Suffering Servant of the Lord, as described by the prophet Deutero-Isaiah, who was “like a lamb that is led to the slaughter”, as we read on Good Friday. The Songs of the Suffering Servant fit the events of Jesus’ life and death, whilst “the supper of the Lamb” is described in the Apocalypse: the marriage feast which celebrates the heavenly union of Christ with His bride, the Church.

Today, we have heard another of the Servant Songs, in which the Servant is described as “the light of the nations”. We are familiar with the image of Jesus as the light of the world, but we shouldn’t forget that He Himself referred to the disciples, who include us, as “the light of the world”. If, like Jesus, we are to be the light of the world, then, like Him, we must be the Servants of the Lord.

This theme is taken up in the psalm. The whole of this psalm applies to Jesus, but equally it applies to each one of us. Every one of us”.  should be able to say “I waited for the Lord, and He stooped down to me”. Each of us should pray “You do not ask for sacrifice and offering but an open ear: you do not ask for holocaust and victim; instead, here am I.” Each of us can repeat “In the scroll of the Book it stands written that I should do your will: my God, I delight in your law in the depth of my heart”.

If we seek in all things to do God’s will, to identify ourselves with Jesus the Suffering Servant, then we shall be able to proclaim His justice. Then we will recognise Him shown forth to us as the Lamb of God, present in the Body and the Blood.

Baptism of Our Lord Year A

 Baptism of the Lord

Isaiah: 42:1-4, 6-7; Acts 10:34-38; Matt 3:13-17

How does today’s feast grab you? Not very firmly, I suspect. After all, we have celebrated the great feasts of Christmas and Epiphany; even the Holy Family has been and gone. Today’s feast of the Baptism may feel like something of an afterthought, an appendix tagged on to ease us back into normality, to prepare us for the green of Ordinary Time after the heady seasons of Advent and Christmas.

And yet, it wasn’t always thus. In the early Church, the Baptism of the Lord was seen as one of the focal points of salvation history, and so as a focal point also of the Church’s year. In the first two or three centuries of Christianity, Christmas didn’t feature particularly highly. Quite rightly, Easter was seen as the great feast of Christians, whilst at this time of year, Epiphany had a prominent role.

“Ah,” you may say, “we know about Epiphany. It is the showing forth of Jesus to the Wise Men, who represented the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people, and it thus shows that Jesus is the Saviour of all, and not only of the original Chosen People.”

“Quite right!” may come the answer. “Go to the top of the class and kiss the teacher. But bear in mind that, originally, Epiphany was far more than that. It had three parts, as those who pray the Divine Office are, perhaps a little puzzlingly, aware.”

The first part involved a running together of what, since the fourth century, have been celebrated as the two separate feasts of Christmas and Epiphany: in other words, the “showing forth” of Jesus both to the Jews, in His birth as a Jew of a Jewish mother, and His revelation to the Jewish shepherds and other Jewish people in Bethlehem; and to the Gentiles, as represented by the Wise Men.

The second part was the “showing forth” of Jesus as the Beloved Son of the Father at His Baptism, when the heavens opened, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove, and the Father’s voice bore witness. This was the central, and most prominent part of Epiphany, putting even the Christmas event in the shade. Finally, the third part was His “showing forth” in the marriage feast at Cana, when He “let His glory be seen”, His glory as God Himself.

In the showing forth of Jesus, rather than in His birth, the Church of the first two or three centuries found its locus at this time of year. How then is Jesus to be shown forth today? Baptism provides the starting point for us, as it did for Jesus Himself.

“You are my Son, the Beloved. My favour rests on you” proclaimed the Father, as the Spirit descended on the Son at His Baptism. “You are my son/daughter, the beloved. My favour rests on you” proclaimed the Father as the Spirit descended on us, as you and I were baptised in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So the task of showing Jesus forth devolves on us.

How are we to fulfil that task in an increasingly uncomprehending, uninterested world? A few nights ago, I watched on you-tube an episode of “Tales of the Unexpected” from around forty years ago. In the background of one scene, Christmas carols could be heard. If the programme were to be remade today, I suspect that the carols would be replaced by Slade, Wizzard, or Bing Crosby: I have certainly heard “Here it is, merry Christmas” far more frequently than “Silent Night” in recent days.

In Britain, Jesus is being quietly forgotten, rather than deliberately shut out. In recently Catholic Ireland, by contrast, the state, in its various forms, seems intent on eradicating all traces of its Christian past, which it seeks to depict as uniformly dark and evil. I read before Christmas that the Lord Mayor of Dublin was planning to replace the live crib in the city centre with a “winter wonderland”. There was to be no room at the inn.

So how do we fulfil the reality of this feast, these feasts? How do we show Jesus forth? You and I at least must be faithful. You and I must be open and receptive to the God who comes, the one who is always Emmanuel—God with us. If we are faithful, He Himself will do the work through us, His beloved sons and daughters. Let us remember always that He IS with us.

Christmas Day Mass

Christmas Dawn Mass 2022

If you were at Midnight Mass, you will have heard me recite one of my speeches as First Shepherd in my Primary School Nativity play, AD 1960. Explaining things to the innkeeper, I had to say “In that stable, host, in the manger, lies the Saviour of the world. A child has been born there this night who will redeem Israel.”

Actually, I suspect that the shepherd wouldn’t quite have said that. After all, shepherds were ordinary working blokes, not theologians. Historians differ as to whether they were scallywags or respectable citizens. Either way, I imagine that the shepherd’s speech would have been more on these lines:

“I haven’t got an effing clue, mate. All I know is this effing angel appeared and told us that in this effing stable there’s a baby who is going to turn the effing world upside down. In fact there was a whole effing army of them. It was like one of them effing religious festivals.

“Oh sorry, luv. I didn’t mean to swear. Ey, watch your effing language lads, there’s a lady here.”

“And everyone who heard it was astonished at what the shepherds had to say” reports St. Luke. Aye, I bet they were. “When they saw the child, they repeated what they had been told about Him…and the shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen.”

Does it strike you that the shepherds are now fulfilling the role of angels: angels with dirty faces, maybe, but angels nonetheless? After all, an angel is a messenger, from the Greek word angelos.

In the parish of St.Thomas the Apostle, Claughton-on-Brock, we found ourselves a shepherd short. It was actually a king who went missing on his way back to the East: he probably fell off his camel. In any case, he ended up in pieces. Being a resourceful parish, we promoted a shepherd to kingly status, giving him a fresh dab of paint, placing a gold painted box at his feet. After all, you can get by with one shepherd: two wise men would lack a certain je ne sais quoi.

Also, we didn’t have an angel, which created a useful point for a homily. At the Mass which most of the children attended I asked “Is anything missing from the crib?”

Being largely from farming backgrounds, some of them latched onto the shortage of shepherds.

“Is there anything else?” Eventually, it dawned on some bright spark that there was no angel.

“Are you sure? I can see lots of angels. I can see a dozen angels standing here at the front, and looking around the church, I can see loads more.”

At this point, some clever mick spotted the two marble angels over the altar, and had to be slapped down. I then explained the meaning of the word “angel”—there’s nothing like a Greek lesson to put rural Lancashire children in the Christmas spirit—and gave them the task of being angels, with or without dirty faces, in the coming year.

Right then! Have WE got an angel? Not in the crib we haven’t. You know what that means, don’t you?

Midnight Mass

CHRISTMAS MIDNIGHT MASS 2022

May I ask you a question? When you were in Primary School, did you take part in a Nativity Play? If so, was it in the Infants or the Juniors, or even both?

In my Primary School over sixty years ago, the Nativity Play was a very serious business. It was very much a matter for the top forms, with weeks of rehearsal and a complex and sometimes quite witty script, parts of which have remained in our heads across the decades.

A few years ago, someone who had been a couple of classes ahead of me in Primary School, quoted some of the lines which she recalled from the Nativity Play of her final year. She had been the innkeeper’s wife, and she recited from memory her lament about the rising cost of goods, before scolding her husband, a genial lad named Wieslaw Muhler, one of the sizeable contingent of Polish pupils whose parents had come to England at the end of the Second World War, fleeing the Soviet invasion of their homeland. (Substitute Ukraine for Poland, and consider how history repeats itself.)

I was able to respond with some of my lines as First Shepherd at Christmas 1960. After commenting to the Junior Shepherd, played by the smallest lad in the class, “You’re very late, my boy”, I had the task, much later in proceedings, of explaining the situation to that year’s innkeeper, whose identity I do not recall: “In that stable, host, in the manger, lies the Saviour of the world. A child has been born there this night who will redeem Israel.” Clearly, this was a shepherd who was thoroughly theologically literate.

The Nativity Play was probably the most important event of the year bar the eleven plus, and involved only those who could learn their lines and deliver them with a due degree of decorum. It saddens me, therefore, that in many schools, if it hasn’t been abandoned altogether in favour of some sort of Winter Wonderland, it tends to be reserved to the Infants, over whom parents can drool, whilst the Juniors follow it with some supposedly more serious drama about any subject under the sun.

In other words, the birth of the Redeemer has been reduced almost to the status of a fairy story, something to be depicted by tiny tots, but not to be taken seriously by older children, and certainly not by adults.

That isn’t good enough. The Nativity is a thoroughly adult story, perhaps deserving of an 18 rating—adults only—because it concerns the destiny of the human race. It tells us that the eternal God has broken definitively into the world of humankind in the most radical way possible, by becoming Himself human, and so making humanity divine.

This event assures us that the history of the human race, and indeed of Creation, isn’t “a tale told by an idiot”, but a matter of supreme and ultimate significance. The birth of this child, and all that was to follow, is the final piece of the jigsaw, a jigsaw which began with the Big Bang, or whatever if anything preceded that, and which will remain intact even when the universe folds in on itself, or whatever it is that the scientists predict will happen.

Christmas says, or indeed shouts, that there is no such thing as futility or pointlessness; that all the mess and ugliness of the world is potentially beautiful, capable of transformation, because eternity has descended into time, and humanity has become divine. This is far too important a message to be left to the Infant classes, though it certainly begins with them. It is an adult reality, on which every one of us needs to ponder, and in which everyone is invited to rejoice.

4th Sunday of Advent

4th Sunday of Advent 2022

Isaiah 7:10-14; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25

Drat, bother, and confusticate the Jerusalem Bible and its sloppy mistranslations. Yes Joseph was a “man of honour” as he showed in his intended behaviour towards Mary, but that is not what the original text says. It tells us that he was dikaios, which means “just”. Why was he just? He was just because he had faith, which justifies us, makes us just, as St. Paul points out. It was his faith, his trust in the God who calls us to do the right thing, which enabled him to form an honourable intention, which demonstrated that he would be a worthy guardian of God’s Son. There is a whole world of meaning in that one word, which today’s translation fails to convey.

What about St. Joseph, then? You may, or more probably may not, remember Flanders and Swann, a pair of musical comedians whose popularity continued for years, even though they ceased performing in 1967. Michael Flanders, large, bearded, and confined to a wheelchair by some sort of stroke during his wartime naval service, and Donald Swann, balding and bespectacled, were always immaculately turned out as they delivered a series of witty songs, often reflecting on contemporary events. I mention them because one of their compositions concerned the Unsung Heroes of the World, and St. Joseph, though not mentioned in this ditty, is surely the greatest unsung hero of them all.

We never hear him speak—not a single word of his is recorded—yet he was always there, in the background, the original Quiet Man, supporting Our Lady, playing a father’s role for Jesus, protecting Him from harm, teaching Him his own trade so successfully that Jesus became known as “the carpenter’s son”, and indeed, as “the carpenter”.

Possessing justifying faith, Joseph was always obedient to God’s call. In Matthew’s account, this call is repeatedly conveyed to him in dreams, a conscious reflection of an earlier Joseph, the son of Jacob and “the man of dreams”. Matthew, in his genealogy, also calls St. Joseph’s father “Jacob”, thus strengthening the connection.

According to Matthew, these dreams of St. Joseph not only led to his becoming the husband of Mary and guardian of the Christ child, but also took the family to Egypt and back, and resulted in their settling in Nazareth. It has to be said that some of these events cannot be reconciled with the time frame presented by St. Luke, and it seems that Matthew was more concerned with emphasising Joseph’s faithful response to God’s call than with strict historical accuracy.

The last mention we have of St. Joseph, apart from those references to “the carpenter’s son”, is to be found in St. Luke’s account of the finding of the boy Jesus in the Temple, aged twelve. Here, Joseph appears to receive something of a put down. After Mary has spoken to her Son of “your father and I” the boy retorts “Did you not know that I must be (literally) ‘in the things of the Father?’”, a stark reminder to Joseph that God alone was his foster son’s true father. Yet young Jesus still recognised their earthly authority, and returned home with them.

In 1964, the Italian director Pasolini’s film “The Gospel according to St. Matthew” appeared on British screens, and I remember Eamon Duffy, later to be Professor of Church History in Cambridge and an acclaimed author, reminiscing that a scene in this film brought the incarnation to life for him. It depicts Jesus as a little boy, three or four years old, seeing Joseph heading home from work. The boy’s face lights up in sheer delight and he races to Joseph before leaping into his arms: Joseph a pivotal figure, along with Our Lady, in shaping the human character of the Son of God.

One more thought: this child, comments Matthew, is the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy. He is Emmanuel—God with us—which reminds us of the deepest meaning of the Christmas event. God IS with us: He came to be with us as the child of Mary, the foster child of Joseph; and through His Resurrection and Ascension, and the descent of the Holy Spirit, He continues to be with us, now and always.

3rd Sunday of Advent

3rd Sunday of Advent 2022

Isaiah 35: 1-6, 10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11: 2-11

Many many moons ago—39 years ago to be precise, which is 468 moons if my arithmetic is correct—in the parish of St. Mary, at Morecambe, I asked an artistically gifted young man in the parish if he would consider producing posters to be attached to the church pillars for the four Sundays of Advent. I supplied him with the readings, and left him to his own devices.

The results were all excellent, but it is today’s poster which remains in my mind. The artist had focused on the opening verses of the extract from Isaiah: “Let the wilderness and the dry lands exult, let the wasteland rejoice and bloom”. He painted a bleak industrial landscape, the silhouettes of factory buildings in the background, their very greyness suggesting abandonment and decay. In the foreground was an oily, stagnant pool, beside which a single golden flower was blooming, the only spot of brightness in the entire picture.

This was indeed a wasteland, a symbol of post-industrial Britain, a context with which we are still familiar. The single flower, standing out bravely among its bleak surroundings, was a statement that the wilderness does indeed and will exult, but that its full glory is not yet. For that glory we have to wait in patience.

All of this was pointing, not towards some sort of national revival, but to the Kingdom of God, both present and future. These may seem to be dark days for the Kingdom, darker even than they were almost forty years ago. The results of last year’s census have been revealed in recent weeks, indicating than fewer than 50% of people in England and Wales now identify themselves as Christian. Those grey, abandoned factory buildings could equally well be depicted today as churches.

What price the Kingdom then? Every one of today’s readings speaks words of encouragement. “Strengthen all weary hands” says the prophet Isaiah, “and say to all faint hearts ‘Courage! Do not be afraid!’” while James urges “Do not lose heart”, and Our Lord insists “Blessed is the one who does not lose faith in me”.

Discouragement is one of the most destructive of all sensations. Those who are prone to depression realise that. We feel not only without comfort in the present, but devoid of hope for the future. At such times, I feel myself to be at the bottom of a black well, with neither the energy nor the incentive to attempt to climb out; or in a dark tunnel which appears to stretch to infinity.

It seems that John the Baptist felt much the same. He had devoted his whole life to preaching the Kingdom; he had invested all his trust in Jesus. Yet here he is, languishing in gaol, expecting at every moment to be executed. Consequently, his confidence begins to waver: have his faith and trust been in vain? Has his whole life been based on an illusion? And so he sends that anguished message: “Are you the one who is to come, or must we wait for someone else? Have I been fooling myself? Have you been fooling me?”

The answer which he receives is in effect the answer given by Isaiah, later to be given by James: “Patience”. The signs of the Kingdom are there, like the single flower blooming in the wasteland, like the tiny glimmer of light at the mouth of our well, at the end of our tunnel. There may be no instant miracle to resolve everything in a flash, but recognise the signs, see that the Kingdom is here, even if not yet in its glory.

As He spoke to John the Baptist, so Jesus speaks to us. He says “Courage”. He says “Patience”. He says “Do not be afraid! Do not give way to discouragement!” The signs of the Kingdom are all around, if only you have eyes to see, ears to hear. The wilderness is exulting; the wastelands rejoice and bloom; the rope is dropping which will haul you out of your dark well. Glory is not yet—but comfort is, and hope, and trust. Do not be afraid.

2nd Sunday of Advent

2nd Sunday of Advent 2022

Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-9; Matthew 3: 1-12

Last Sunday, the key PHRASES were “Wake up” and “Stay awake”: today, we can claim that the key WORDS are “Repent” and “Prepare”. These words are closely related, as Matthew links the voice crying “Prepare” with John the Baptist’s call to “Repent”. To prepare a way for the Lord entails repentance. What does that mean?

I am sure that you have heard many times that the Greek word translated “repentance” is metanoia, literally a change of heart, outlook, focus, general direction, whatever term you wish to use. We are being called to prepare a way for the Lord who comes into our lives, the Church, the world by re-directing ourselves. This is not something which we have done once and for all, but something which we must do repeatedly.

Perhaps you may recall such re-focusing in your own lives. I certainly remember one incident very clearly. I was in my mid-teens, it was a Wednesday afternoon, and we had been allowed home from school early. Unbelievably, I had very little, for once, of the usually overwhelming homework, and as I settled down to some rare recreational reading, I was suddenly struck by the realisation that I was extremely self-centred and selfish, and that I needed to do far more for my mother and father. Whether I actually achieved it is another matter, but the awareness that I should, hit me like a sledgehammer.

There have been other occasions when I have been brought up short by the realisation of shortcomings, whether it be a lack of concentration in prayer, a tendency to make witty remarks which can wound, or, as often as not, a lack of awareness of other people. These have all imprinted on me the need of constant and ongoing  metanoia—repentance if you like—if I am to prepare a way for the Lord, and to prepare myself for the continuing encounter with Him.

Nor is it only as individuals that our preparation must entail repentance. There is an expression “ecclesia semper reformanda”, which is sometimes mistranslated as “the Church always reforming”. It actually means “the Church always needing to be reformed”, reformanda being gerundive, as those of you who knew the joys of schooldays Latin will be aware.

In my pre-conciliar childhood, the impression seemed to be conveyed that the Church was the perfect society, standing in no need of change, a view which was rudely shattered by the Second Vatican Council, though some people who wish to turn back the clock appear to adhere to it. The Council reminded us (as indeed had the Council of Trent, though the concept had been forgotten) that the Church, no less than its individual members, is in constant need of renewal, of refocusing, of repentance. Always she must examine herself to see that she still has the mind of Christ, to use an expression of Saint Paul’s, to consider whether certain attitudes and practices some of which may even have been suitable for their time, stand in need of adjustment.

To take a simple example, of a situation which was never appropriate, though it was taken for granted; if you visit an old presbytery, you will probably find poky little quarters at the back which were considered adequate for a resident housekeeper, or even a married couple. Such members of the people of God were not regarded as needing much space or liberty, a clear offence against justice, but one which, for decades, went unrecognised.

If the presbytery belonged to a large town centre church, there would probably also be a series of attic rooms for the maids. My own mother was, until her marriage, a maid in a presbytery, and subsequently in Bishop’s House, and could tell some hair-raising tales about a situation which went unquestioned by good and holy men.

As the Church stands constantly in need of repentance, so too does the world. The kingdom of universal harmony envisaged by Isaiah is a world away from realisation. Not only does the wolf not live with the lamb, even human beings, created in the image and likeness of God, appear incapable of living with one another, whether in families, society, or international relationships. Truly, all the world over, the need to prepare a way for the Lord is glaring, but it must begin with us.

1st Sunday of Advent Year A

1st Sunday of Advent 2022

Isaiah 2: 1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24: 37-44

“Wake up! Wake up! Stay awake! Stay awake!”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, why? It’s almost winter. Sensible animals are hibernating. Why do we have to stay awake?”

Of course, you already know. It is because Christ is coming. No, I don’t mean at Christmas, plonked in a manger, looking old enough to be at school, serenaded by often gloopy carols. That is a past event, to be recalled and celebrated certainly, though we don’t begin preparing for that until 17th December.

Nor do I just mean at the end of time, when He will come for judgement, bringing everything to a close, establishing the fullness of the Kingdom; though you will hear more about that than about the first Christmas during the early part of Advent.

No, I mean what St. Bernard called the third coming of Christ, which falls between His first and second comings, and which happens every day. Christ is coming here and now, today, in every moment of your life and mine; and it is for that coming, that Advent, that St. Paul, writing to the Christians of Rome, and Jesus, warning His disciples, call us to wake up, to stay awake, to be alert.

Christ is coming, and He is here. Where? You know that too. Especially is He present in the Mass, in four ways, as the General Instruction of the Missal reminds us. Firstly, He is here in the gathering of His people; in you, and the people around you. “Wherever two or three gather in my name, I shall be there with them” He told us, so already He is here, in and among you. Take a quick look around, and see the face of Christ in all the people here, and remain awake enough to take that recognition of His face, in the faces of His people, away with you.

He is here in the person of the priest, standing at the altar, representing Christ the High Priest, offering the sacrifice with and on behalf of you, God’s priestly people. He is here in His word, proclaimed in the scriptures, sinking into you now, being absorbed by you to become part of you and of your ongoing daily life.

Most powerfully, He is present in His body, broken for you, and in His blood poured out for you, making present here and now the sacrifice of Calvary, offered to the Father, given to you as food and drink, the very life of the crucified and risen Jesus.

The Eucharist is the sacrifice which reveals the meaning of Advent, which speaks always of the already and the not yet. All through the early weeks of Advent, we shall be reminded of the already and the not yet of the Kingdom. We shall repeatedly hear the Prophet Isaiah looking forward, mentioning some sign of the Kingdom; then the Gospel will show us Jesus fulfilling that sign, revealing that the Kingdom is already present, though its fullness is not yet.

In the broken body and the poured out blood of the Eucharist, we share in the Messianic banquet which Isaiah will foretell as part of the Kingdom, though that banquet is far from complete as yet. We shall see, touch, and receive Jesus the Son of God, but hidden under signs, not yet present in glory. And so we shall be reminded of the truth of Advent, that Christ is coming, and that He is here; that the Kingdom will be established, and that it is already present.

All of this was set in train by the first coming of Christ at the first Christmas; it will be completed by His second coming at the end of time; it is present in that third, intermediate coming which takes place every day, which is both revealed and concealed in the Mass, and which we shall fail to notice if we are not awake. Wake up to the present Advent of Christ, and His future Advent will not take us unawares.

Christ the King Year C

 Christ the King 2022

2 Sam 5:1-3; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:35-43

“The Queen is dead: long live the King”, if anybody is interested. Now, don’t misunderstand me: I am well aware that millions of people throughout the world were interested in the Queen. The death of Elizabeth II brought expressions of admiration and respect from all parts of the globe. Even Sinn Fein, which used regularly to be described as “the political wing of the IRA” expressed condolences, and two of its leaders told King Charles that his mother had contributed greatly to the peace process.

Queen Elizabeth was admired for her personal qualities. For seventy five years, she strove to fulfil the promise made on her 21st birthday that she would devote her life “whether it be short or long” to the service of the people of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. Two days before her death at the age of 96, she was still working. How many of us, if we live so long (which God forbid in my case) will be able to claim the same?

Elizabeth II’s faith was something which she wore on her sleeve, as the only public figure who would repeatedly refer to Jesus as “Our Lord” without an instant’s hesitation. She was also a good friend of the Catholic Church, enjoying a warm relationship with both Cardinals Hume (to whom she referred as “our cardinal”) and Murphy-O’Connor.

Now, as she has gone to her reward, we have a king, though I am not sure that anybody has noticed. He is the Duke of Lancaster, which confers some importance on him, but, other than that, King Charles III seems largely to pass under the radar. To misquote a song made famous by Max Bygraves “Kings ain’t what they used to be”.

But stop a moment. What kind of king was the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords? He was a joke king, deliberately so. The sign affixed to the Cross—“This is the King of the Jews” as Luke reports it—was a jest, a calculated insult both to Jesus Himself, and more particularly to the Jewish people.

Pontius Pilate was declaring that the Jewish people, on their own soil, were so abject, so pathetic, that a humiliated, bloodstained wreck of a man wearing a crown of thorns, was the only person fit to be their king. Yet the insult went far deeper than that. For centuries, ever since their return from the Babylonian Exile, the very concept of a king had been abhorrent to the Jews, who now acknowledged no king but God Himself. To have a dying criminal declared as their king was a religious, as well as a national, insult.

Effectively, it meant that this despised and rejected figure was being presented to them as God. Isn’t that the greatest irony of all? For so indeed He was. This broken man was indeed the one in whom and for whom all things were created, as the Letter to the Colossians declares: He was the beginning, and was to be the first born from the dead, truly the King of the Jews because truly God.

Who noticed? A thief, a crook, one who by his own admission deserved his sentence and punishment. As, throughout His life, Jesus had attracted the poor and the wretched, beginning with the Bethlehem shepherds, so at His death it was one of the lowest of the low who glimpsed the truth behind the appearance, who realised, however dimly, the truth of Jesus’ kingship.

What are the implications for us? I suggest that they are twofold. Firstly, if we are to understand who Jesus is, we must somehow see Him with the eyes of the poor and lowly, and not from the viewpoint of the ambitious, the power-seekers, those with a sense of self-importance. Secondly, because we have been baptised into the kingship of Christ, we must be imitators of Jesus in His self-sacrificing love, a love “costing not less than everything” as TS Eliot expressed it: a love which sees the potential for paradise even in the most wretched of people. And incidentally, if we are going to have a king, nay even a Duke of Lancaster, perhaps it will be no bad thing if he largely passes unnoticed.

33rd Week Year C

33rd Sunday 2022

Malachi 3:19-20; 2 Thess 3:7-12; Luke 1:5-19

It is some years since I travelled by train out of London Euston, so I don’t know whether that slogan is still painted on a gable end, to be seen to the right of the tracks within the first minute or so of your journey. It reads (or read) “Prepare to meet thy God” not perhaps the most comforting message when you have just entrusted your life to the railway company.

I recall too the Sporting Sam cartoon strip in the Sunday Express of the 1950s and 60s. The particular version which I have in mind came at the end of the football season when all the issues of promotion and relegation had been settled. In the first frame, Sam is confronted by a man wielding a placard reading “The end of the world is nigh”. He smirks, and heads around the corner, where a newspaper flyer reads “Who goes up: who goes down. Official”. In the final frame, Sam can be seen gulping, his hair on end and his eyes like saucers.

Are we confronting the imminent end of the world? Certainly, there are enough wars and revolutions to disturb the most sanguine among us. Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, Nigeria, Iran, Nicaragua, Lebanon, DRC, Ethiopia are only some of the countries where either open war is raging, or rebel movements or oppressive governments are making life precarious for many.

Earthquakes, plagues, and famines are numerous. Recently we have heard of high death tolls from crushes at a football match in Indonesia and an outdoor party in Seoul, South Korea; mud slides in the Philippines, and a bridge collapse in India. Famine again stalks parts of Africa, and the effects of pollution and global warming threaten the very survival of the human race.

So is the writing on that north London wall grimly prophetic? Is the end of the world at hand? Are these the last days?

I think we have to admit that we do not know. Jesus warned His disciples that the Jerusalem Temple, the focal point of the Jewish faith, would soon be destroyed, a prophecy fulfilled during the crushing of the Jewish revolt against Roman rule in 70 BC.

This must have seemed to many Jews like the end of the world, but says Our Lord “the end is not so soon”. The so-called Wailing Wall of the Temple stands to this day, a reminder of both glory and destruction, and a sign of ongoing conflict, as Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians struggle over the holy site and the right to live in Jerusalem and surrounding areas.

Many thousands have died in this conflict, and in its equivalents throughout the world. For such victims of violence, their times have indeed been the end times, as their own lives, and much that they fought for, have been destroyed. Natural and man-made disasters have brought the end times for countless others. Growing up in the 1950s and 60s, many of us feared the end of the world via a nuclear holocaust, particularly at this time of year sixty years ago during the Cuban missile crisis.

Now our fear concerns the destruction of planet Earth, the result of a catastrophic rise in global temperatures, many of whose effects are already both visible and tangible. It is surely ironic that the Cop 27 Conference, meeting to discuss ways of averting disaster, entails the pumping of vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as delegates fly to and from Egypt.

What does all of this tell us? It reminds us that we, at least as individuals, are not built to last. We have built-in obsolescence, and we need to be conscious of living each day in the light of eternity. Each day, we must indeed prepare to meet our God.

Perhaps, for the world as a whole, it is still true that “the end is not so soon”. We do not know, but we must do all in our power to ensure that we leave a beautiful and habitable planet for succeeding generations for as long as God deems it good. Let our carelessness not be responsible for a premature ending.

32nd Sunday Year C

32nd Sunday 2022

2 Macc 7:1-2, 9-14; 2 Thess  2:16-3:5; Luke 20:27-38

I know that it is good for us to be exposed to as much of the Bible as possible, but I do wonder how much inspiration we are likely to draw from today’s Gospel account of the Sadducees and their tall tale of the one bride for seven brothers. Its chief value seems to me to be a warning to us not to become involved in silly and pointless arguments with people who have no interest in serious discussion, but are simply trying to score points. Our Lord gives these people short shrift, simply pointing to the absurdity of the case they invent, and refusing to be drawn into a lengthy debate: we would be wise to do the same.

There will be people who will ask questions because they seriously want to understand the nature of, and the reasons for, our faith. In such cases we need to engage seriously with them, doing our best to answer their questions, to meet their objections, and to tease out difficulties.

This demands of us that we have a deep relationship with God, and a clear understanding of what we believe. We need to be familiar with the Bible, and with the teachings of the Church, drawn both from the Bible and from the tradition developed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit over two thousand years.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1994, is our best guide here. If that seems a bit too heavy, then the Compendium of the Catechism, published a dozen years later by the CTS, and comprising just 174 pages, with an appendix of familiar prayers, should prove accessible to anybody. I don’t think that we can still be satisfied, as adults, with the old “Penny Catechism” on which many of us were brought up, and which doesn’t answer some of the challenges thrown up by the modern age.

Today’s First Reading, set in the context of the Jewish revolt led by the Maccabean clan against the Seleucid occupation of the second century BC, appears to be linked with the Gospel on the fairly flimsy ground that it also deals with seven brothers who die. The two Books of Maccabees belong to the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (aka the Old Testament) and in their case, and a number of other books such as Wisdom, and Sirach, there is no Hebrew version. Hence, they tend to be given less weight than those which appear in both Hebrew and Greek.

Hence they are known as deutero-canonical—effectively, second string. In Catholic editions of the Bible, the deutero-canonical books are usually included in the main body, whereas non-Catholic versions often refer to them as the Apocrypha, and to print them together, at the end of the Old Testament. This can be slightly confusing, as the Apocryphal Gospels are something else entirely, rejected as not genuine, and not included in the Bible at all.

Today’s extract is valuable in reminding us of the threat of persecution, remote perhaps for us, but very real for our ancestors, and for huge numbers of Christians in many parts of the world today.  The history of our own English, Lancashire, and indeed Lancaster martyrs is a reminder of the courage demanded of our forebears in keeping the Catholic faith, and especially the Mass, alive in this country, and a valuable ecumenical resource as an example of courage in faith to which all can relate.

Yet for many, persecution and martyrdom, far from being an historical memory, are a present reality. Not only are there active persecution of and discrimination against, Christians in many, though not all, majority Muslim countries , and attempts by Islamist groups such as Isis, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and al-Shabbab to destroy Christianity in the Middle East and large parts of Africa, but even in nominally Christian nations in Latin America, people of faith are being murdered for their witness against dictatorial regimes, rapacious landowners, and drug barons.

Today, as always throughout history, persecution exists, along with cultural assaults on faith. We need to be well-informed about our faith, and constant in prayer and solidarity with all who suffer, anywhere in our world.

31st Sunday of the Year

31st Sunday 2022

Wisdom 11:22-12:2; 2Thess 1:11-2:2; Luke 19:1-10

Do you like tax collectors? No, neither do I. In fact, at present I am scrutinising my bank statements to ensure that I will be able to keep the tax man happy come 31st January. No one, I suspect likes paying taxes, yet we know that, without them, we would have no health service, no schools, no public services at all.

Consequently, we see HMRC (formerly the Inland Revenue) as a necessary evil. For the Jewish people of Jesus’ day, however, there was a more serious issue: tax collectors were seen, not merely as a burden, but as a set of traitors. They were collecting taxes on behalf of the occupying power: to use a term popular in the Second World War, they were collaborators.

Some were also extortionists. The publicani, as they were known (why, I wonder, has the word “publican” come to mean a licensed victualler rather than a tax collector? Someone will know.) were assigned a certain amount which must be handed over to the Roman authorities. What they chose to collect beyond that, as their own salary, was up to them, and it was assumed, rightly or wrongly, that many of them demanded more than was reasonable.

It was, however, their association with the hated Roman state which put them beyond the pale. It reminds me of a true story which I was told about a Catholic postman in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. The unionists wouldn’t speak to him because he had “stolen a Protestant job”: the nationalists disowned him because he wore the Crown on his uniform.

For the Jews of Palestine there was a further issue. The coins in which the taxes were paid bore the head of the Emperor, who was designated “divus”, or divine. So the publicani were regarded as religious and not simply national traitors, and so were classed with the prostitutes as public sinners.

Yet this particular tax collector Zacchaeus was to undergo a conversion. Something must have been stirring in him already to move him to make a public exhibition of himself. He was, we are told, a senior tax collector, a high ranking public official, yet he was prepared to make a spectacle of himself by shinning up a tree, acceptable behaviour perhaps for hoi polloi, but not for someone of his status.

Then Jesus looks at him, and speaks to him, and his conversion is complete. To allow Jesus to look at us, and speak to us, calling us by name, is to open us to conversion. Like Zacchaeus, we need to put ourselves in a position to be looked at, to be called by name. We need to put aside, for a time, the daily routine; to make a space and a time to be alone, to clear our minds of the turmoil of every day, and to wait in stillness and silence.

Jesus will come to us, will look at us, will call us by name. We won’t hear a voice, but if we are patient, we will feel the stirring of His call to us; we will know the areas in which we need to change, to be converted. And, as Jesus went to Zacchaeus’ house to spend time with him, so He will spend time with us, provided we are not too busy, too distracted, too caught up in the affairs of the world.

Many tax collectors became followers of Jesus. Did they abandon their jobs in order to do so? We know that Levi Matthew did; perhaps others also decided that a more radical following of Jesus was required, and left their employment, which may help to explain the false accusation at Jesus’ trial that He opposed the payment of taxes to Caesar.

There is no indication that Zacchaeus intended to do the same, or that Jesus demanded it. Perhaps Our Lord saw the accusations of treason and religious disloyalty as expressions of nationalism rather than of true piety. It was a change of heart that He demanded, rather than a change of employer. What change of heart does He demand of you and me?

30th Sunday Year C

30th Sunday 2022

Ecclesiasticus 35: 12-14, 16-19; 2 Tim 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14

Which are you then: the Pharisee or the tax collector? I suspect that no one today would admit to being the Pharisee. In fact, modern society has rewritten this parable. Today it runs: “I thank myself”—today’s society won’t thank God—“that I am not like this Pharisee. I don’t go to church, or say prayers, because I am not a hypocrite. I don’t have hang ups about sex, or obey silly rules around it. I hold all the fashionable viewpoints. I criticise the Church as being wealthy, but I would never dream of giving anything myself to help the poor, because that is the job of the state, or the Church, or their families, or somebody. I respect all opinions, provided they agree with mine, and I am glad that I don’t believe in sin, like this silly tax collector, who would be all right if he didn’t cling to old fashioned notions.”

All of this shows that the Pharisee is actually alive and well, and living in.....well, is he living at all in us? It doesn’t mean that he isn’t, if we agree with the tax collector that we are sinners, because even that can be a form of self-indulgence, as is shown in the old Jewish story of the rabbi, the cantor, and the synagogue cleaner, which could just as easily be a Catholic story about a bishop, a priest, and a church cleaner.

The rabbi stands at the front of the synagogue, and beats his breast, exclaiming “I am nothing. I am nothing.”

Beside him stands the cantor, who beats his breast, exclaiming “I am nothing. I am nothing.”

And at the back of the synagogue is the little cleaner, who beats his breast, exclaiming “I am nothing. I am nothing.”

And the rabbi turns to the cantor, and says “Just look who thinks he is nothing!”

What is the real difference between the tax collector and the Pharisee? The tax collector doesn’t make comparisons. He doesn’t judge the Pharisee: rather, he looks at his own sinfulness, and confesses that. Notice something else: he doesn’t go rooting in his conscience to decide which sins he is prepared to confess, or how to dress them up to make them look less serious than they are; or how he can exaggerate them to show what a wonderful penitent he is. He simply recognises his sinfulness for what it is, and admits it, and throws himself on God’s mercy.

So I ask again: which are you, the Pharisee or the tax collector? If you or I make comparisons, if we judge people, if we consider ourselves better than other people in any way, then you or I are/am the Pharisee.

Can you, can I, honestly claim that we never do that? If I were to ask your views about politicians, Church leaders, this celebrity or that one, could you honestly tell me that you don’t have opinions ready formed, opinions which are, more likely than not, negative? If I were to ask you about the people down your street, about young people, about unemployed people, about Jews, about Muslims, about wealthy people, about poor people, what would your reaction be?

Sometimes your opinion may be correct, but that is not the point. “Who am I to judge?” asked Pope Francis on a famous occasion, for which he was castigated by self-righteous people in the Church. What was he doing other than obey Our Lord’s command “Do not judge”? No doubt the people present at Calvary judged the thieves crucified with Jesus to be villains, and they were correct, yet one of them was promised an immediate place in Paradise.

“God be merciful to me, a sinner” says the tax collector of the parable, and he goes home at rights with God. He concerns himself with his own sin, not that of the Pharisee, and he asks for God’s mercy. Do you and I do the same?