31st Week Year A

31st Sunday 2023

Malachi 1:14-2:2, 8-10; Psalm 130 (131); 1 Thessalonians 2:7-9,13; Matthew 23:1-12

OUCH! As a priest, that is my response to today’s readings: OUCH! Yes, I know that Malachi is speaking to the priests of the Jewish Temple, and not directly to the priests or the priestly people of the New Covenant; I know that Our Lord is referring to the Scribes and Pharisees; but if the cap fits, you should at least check whether it is truly your size.

In so many ways, there has been so much straying from the way, in terms of sexual abuse by priests, and psychological and physical abuse by religious orders. Of course, this can be, and is, blown out of proportion. The vast majority of abuse cases concern family members, yet there is something outstandingly wicked when the perpetrators are those ordained to love, protect, lead and guide God’s most vulnerable people.

Similarly, when religious orders, who should be witnessing to God’s love, act cruelly, this is particularly egregious, though again it is important to keep a sense of proportion: the great majority of religious have always displayed the compassion of Christ to those in their care; yet as with abusive priests, wrongdoing by institutions, even if not recognised as such by the standards of the time, is especially destructive when carried out in God’s name.

I would add to the mix a particular bugbear of mine, which has been increasing, namely the cowardice of bishops who are so anxious to appear good citizens in worldly terms that they refuse to support innocent priests who are falsely accused. Instead, they tend to suspend priests on mere hearsay, and to encourage both the police and the public to regard such priests as guilty. In terms of Malachi’s strictures, there is still, today, much to repent.

Turning to the Gospel, we priests again have cause to examine our consciences. I am not talking about the silly nonsense put forward by militant anti-Catholics who use Jesus’ words to object to priests being called Father. Our Lord here is clearly pointing to God as the source of all fatherhood, whether spiritual or natural, and as the reference point for all who have the role of teachers.

I am much more concerned about the criticism of the scribes and Pharisees which forms the bulk of Jesus’ complaints. Do we, as priests, practise what we preach? Are we seen as, and are we truly, examples and purveyors of God’s love? The same can be asked of fathers and mothers, which is where Our Lord’s words about fathers are relevant. Does the Church, and do priests, “lay heavy burdens on people’s shoulders” without lifting a finger to move them?

Beware of assuming, as many people are prone to do without serious thought, that the answers to those questions are inevitably to the detriment of priests and of the Church. Jesus Himself tells us to take up His yoke and His burden: not everything that appears to make life more difficult is necessarily bad. As St. Paul told us in a reading during the week, we must share Christ’s sufferings if we are to share His glory.

I am, though, concerned by the rise in many parts of the world, including our own country, of what appear to be manifestations of something which the present Pope has condemned as a sin, namely clericalism. There is a growing tendency to go in for broader phylacteries and longer tassels, to dress up and become the centre of attention, both among younger priests and among the critics of Pope Francis. One of the most prominent of the latter, a disgruntled cardinal, has a tendency to swirl round in a cappa magna, the long train associated with the prince bishops of old.

St. Paul sets the standard for priests, and for all who exercise any form of pastoral care. He compares himself to a mother “feeding and looking after her own children”. That calls to mind Canon David Murphy, a much loved priest of this diocese, who died, relatively young, a little over twenty years ago, and who was nicknamed “Mother Murphy” because of his concern for the welfare of his brother priests. Paul speaks also of his own hard work. This was to earn his living, but it applies also to the work to which a priest should apply himself among his flock.

As an antidote to the self-advertisement which Jesus criticises, we would do well to reflect on today’s psalm. “O Lord, my heart is not proud, nor haughty my eyes….Truly I have set my soul in silence and peace” a sound thought, not only for priests but for all followers of Christ.

30th Week year A

30th Sunday 2023

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

You don’t need me to tell you that all the so-called Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—report an encounter in which Jesus is questioned about the greatest commandment of the Law. In Mark’s Gospel, it is the “good scribe” who questions Him, and who is delighted by His response. In Luke, it is a hostile lawyer, and Our Lord’s answer leads eventually to the parable of the Good Samaritan. Matthew’s account we have just heard; here, His inquisitors are the Pharisees and, like Luke’s lawyer, they are seeking to disconcert Him.

Were these three separate incidents, or different accounts of the same occurrence? That doesn’t matter. What does matter is that all these three evangelists felt that this question and answer were important enough to record, and that, in all of them, Jesus’ answer is the same.

What is this answer? It begins with the First Commandment of the Ten given to Moses on Mount Sinai: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind”--sometimes the word “strength” is added. Our Lord stresses that “this is the greatest and the first commandment”. Thus far, He is in total agreement with the Law passed on to the people by Moses.

There then comes a rather startling deviation. Instead of continuing with Moses’ list, Jesus takes a different commandment, not from the Book of Exodus, but from the Book of Leviticus: “You must love your neighbour as yourself”. Not only that, but He adds that these two commandments form the whole basis of the Jewish Law and prophets—in other words, what we know as the Old Testament.

A few things strike me. Our Lord hasn’t been asked about the Second Commandment, yet He regards it as essential, and links it inextricably to the First. In Mark’s account, this is enthusiastically endorsed by the scribe who has asked the original question. And Jesus is saying that if you (if we) keep these two commandments, then we shall have encompassed all the rest, and shouldn’t become sidetracked, worrying about the minutiae of graven images, or of coveting your neighbour’s donkey.

“Grand as owt!” I hear you cry. “Lennon and McCartney were right after all. All you need is love, and once I’ve done that, I can do what I like. I quite fancy my neighbour’s wife, even though I’m not too bothered about his donkey.”

Er, no. Jesus doesn’t say that love replaces all the other commandments. It doesn’t nullify them, but completes them. If your love is genuine, then you won’t covet someone else’s wife, or steal, or set up false gods. Love will rule these things out automatically. Our Lord may have simplified things, but He hasn’t made them easier. In fact, He has made them more demanding, because “thou shalt not kill” now encompasses becoming angry, hurling insults, nursing grudges. Love is difficult, and painful, and in one way or another it will bring you to the Cross.

Right then, how do you and I fulfil these commandments? How do we love God in the way that Jesus demands? We don’t achieve it by giving the occasional “nod to God” as a former parish priest of mine used to describe it, turning up reluctantly to Mass, going through the motions, fitting in the odd prayer when we remember, and can be bothered.

We do it by attempting to align our whole lives with God’s will, recognising that He is with us in every moment, that He has a call for us in every situation. Lord, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do with the rest of my life, with these precious moments, hours, and days that you have given to me? What do you want me to do for others? What do you want me to do for you? What do you want me to do today?

Love takes time and it takes effort. Do you give time to God, or is there always something else which is more important?  I remember being told in the seminary that to say that you haven’t time for something means that it isn’t really important to you. What are your priorities? Where does God feature among them? Do you give God time to operate in your life?

Then, you must love your neighbour as yourself. As I have said before, I don’t think that this means “as much as yourself”. Rather, it implies “as being yourself”. You must see your neighbour—and remember that the parable of the Good Samaritan spreads the concept of neighbour very widely—as part of you. You must have that beautiful quality, compassion—cum passio, suffering with. You must walk in your neighbour’s shoes, live in his/her skin, feel what s/he feels. Then, as the Book of Exodus demands, you will have no desire to “molest the stranger or oppress him” or to be “harsh with the widow or the orphan”, because these people are you.

Your neighbour is all over the world, but s/he is also at home. Somehow, you must love those closest to you, those with whom you have dealings, who may rub up against you—and that may be the most difficult of all. There is no point in being like Mrs. Jellyby in “Bleak House” who is full of philanthropy for people whom she does not know, but who neglects her own family. Lennon and McCartney WERE right. All you need IS love, but by heck, that isn’t an easy option.

29th Week Year A

29th Sunday 2023

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

Good old Cyrus: I’m glad he gets a mention. During my first six years as a priest, among other things I taught an A-level Ancient History course, the Greek component of which was entitled “Herodotus and the conflict of Greece and Persia”. Cyrus, as a King of Persia, featured prominently. To the Greeks, he was a baddy, as Greece and Persia were enemies: the Jews, by contrast, revered him because, after conquering Babylon in 538 BC, he allowed the Jewish exiles to return to Israel and Judah, and so was regarded as a hero and a benefactor.

The prophet Deutero-Isaiah (second Isaiah) goes further and describes Cyrus as “the Lord’s anointed”—in Hebrew, His “Messiah: in Greek His “Christ”. This is remarkably high praise for a pagan king who, as the prophet admits, did not know the one true God, yet who was used by God as an instrument for the fulfilling of God’s purpose and the benefit of His chosen people.

This shows s a number of things. It reminds us that history tends to be subjective: in other words, it is written from a particular point of view. I have heard, rightly or wrongly, that, in Northen Ireland, for instance, two different versions of Irish history are taught, depending on whether the school is a Catholic or a state school. In England, a number of Education Secretaries have demanded that the British Empire be depicted as glorious and benign: many people view it as brutal and exploitative. I remember being taught about it in term of battles among European powers for control of various territories, with no consideration being given to its effect, good or bad, on native peoples.

So was Cyrus good or bad? It depended on your point of view. For Greeks he was bad: for Jews good, to the extent of his being seen as especially chosen by God.

All of this has a bearing on the Gospel. Jesus’ opponents, we are told, were attempting to trap Him. If He approved of paying taxes to the Roman occupiers, He could be held up as a collaborator, a traitor to His own people. If, on the other hand, He opposed the paying of the tax, He could be reported to the Roman authorities as a rebel. We see again the two viewpoints of history, a situation which, at the expense of a bad pun, we could describe as two sides of the same coin.

Our Lord’s response is a smart one. The coins used to pay the tax bear the likeness and inscription of the Roman Emperor, and so can legitimately be given back to him. The terminology which Jesus uses has, however, been misinterpreted and abused through the ages.

“Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God” has been used by enemies of the Church, and even by some of its members, to tell the Church to keep its nose out of public affairs. The state has its rights, such people will claim, and the Church has no business to interfere. Thus, if the state wishes to behave in a way which is contrary to Church teaching, that is none of the Church’s business: she should limit herself to purely religious affairs.

A particular example of this arose a few months ago. In the wake of yet another school massacre in the United States, Pope Francis called for tighter gun control in that country. There was an immediate outcry from right wing nationalist Catholics in America, accusing the Holy Father of interfering in their country’s politics. Apparently, “render unto Caesar” meant to them that the head of the Church had neither the duty nor even the right to pronounce on matters of human life.

The flaw in their argument is obvious. They are ignoring the second part of Jesus’ injunction “and to God what belongs to God”. Everything belongs to God, including Caesar, and so God’s Church must always stand up for truth and justice. Even the mighty Cyrus became God’s instrument, so even the most isolationist citizens of a modern day republic cannot claim exemption.

Nevertheless, Our Lord’s words do contain a warning: Church and state should not become too closely intertwined. Present day Islamic states such as Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan reveal vividly the dangers of theocracies. Too often, the Church has allied herself with oppressive regimes, whether in mediaeval Europe or twentieth century Latin America. Even Ireland, where an Archbishop of Dublin was known to summon the president of the republic and give him instructions on the conduct of public affairs, showed too cosy a relationship, a situation which, largely as a result of abusive behaviour by institutions and individuals within the Church, has been replaced by a massive political and public backlash.

At best, the Church should be a critical friend of the state: at times, criticism must be firm, even at the risk of persecution by the state. Caesar has his rights, but he is not always God’s chosen instrument, and he must be treated with caution, but not left always to his own devices.

28th Week Year A

28th Sunday 2023

Isaiah 25: 6-10; Psalm 22 (23); Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20;

Matthew 22: 1-14

If vines and vineyards formed the link joining last Sunday’s readings, today it is fairly clear that the linking word is “banquet”. Even the Second Reading, which has no particular link to the others, has a tenuous connection as Paul speaks of being ready for “full stomach or empty stomach”. From that reading, I would commend another sentence to your attention: “There is nothing I cannot master with the help of the One who gives me strength”.

Why is that sentence so important? It reminds us that God is with us in every situation, no matter how hopeless it may appear. A priest who is a fellow depressive quoted it to me as something which helps him during bouts of depression, and I pass it on to you.

Turning to the subject of banquets, we find the prophet Isaiah describing the Messianic banquet when God’s people will sit down with the Messiah, the Christ, at the feast in the Kingdom of Heaven. At his banquet, on the heavenly version of Mount Sion, we shall find freedom from the distress and the death which are our inevitable lot in this life. Our HOPES will be fulfilled—we find the word “hoped” twice in the closing verses. Of the cardinal virtues—faith, hope, and charity—hope tends to be the most neglected. It is not a Micawberish optimism that “something will turn up” but a firm belief rooted in our trust in God, and in His love for us, a confidence that we can and must respond to His love, for our fulfilment to be attained. (Incidentally, I have one personal hope in relation to the Messianic banquet, that the best draught ale will be available in addition to fine wines.)

The idea of the Messianic banquet should be ringing bells for you, whether metaphorical bells or literal bells in the form of sanctuary bells. We will in a few minutes be partaking of the Messianic banquet as Jesus the Christ shares with us the feast of His Body and Blood. In human terms there will not yet be rich food and fine wines, because the glory of the Kingdom is not yet; but the Kingdom is nevertheless present and so in consequence is the Messianic banquet, though its glory is still hidden.

Today’s psalm reminds us of that heavenly banquet, as its author tells us that it has been prepared for us; before we hear of it again in Jesus’ two part parable. The context is a parable about the wedding feast of a king’s son, which Our Lord relates to the Kingdom of Heaven. This concept will later be taken up by the author of the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation, who declares “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” as Christ, the Lamb of God, takes the Church as His bride.

We are vividly reminded of this immediately before receiving Communion, as the priest almost, but not quite, repeats those words. What is different? The word “marriage” is omitted, in order to link the Eucharist more obviously with the Last Supper, but the anticipation of the heavenly banquet is still implicit. In Holy Communion, past present and future are united as we share, as a present reality, in the Body of Christ here and now, while making present both the past, in the form of the Last Supper and the sacrifice of Calvary, and the future Messianic banquet. We can never plumb the entire depth of the Eucharistic mystery.

There are other aspects of today’s parable which we must also consider. As in last week’s parable of the murderous tenants of the vineyard, there is a reference to the failure of the Jewish people, and the extension of the Kingdom to the Gentiles. The guests who decline the wedding invitation are those Jews who reject Our Lord: the murderers among them, those who have persecuted and killed the prophets. Once again the Gentiles are brought in, this time from the highways and byways to take their place in the wedding hall of the Kingdom.

As last week, though, it is not all beer and skittles. The Gentiles who are now invited comprise “bad and good alike”. This is reminiscent of the parables of the wheat and the weeds, and of the sprats and mackerel. There will be a final sorting when the bad and harmful are rejected.

In the second part of today’s parable, that rejection involves the guest without a wedding garment. He has accepted the invitation, but has done nothing by way of behaving appropriately. Effectively, he simply can’t be bothered. We too have been invited to the banquet, as we are reminded immediately before receiving Communion. How are we responding day by day to this invitation?

27th Week Year A

27th Sunday 2023

Isaiah 5:17; Psalm 79 (80); Philippians 4:6-9; Matthew 21:33-43

If I was looking for a word to summarise today’s readings, I would settle for “continuity”. There is a thread running from Isaiah through the Psalm, to the Gospel, and continuing to the present day. Vines, fruitful and unfruitful, form the basis of this thread. (Can a thread have a basis? I am not sure, but you know what I mean—I hope.) 

Isaiah the prophet, writing in the latter stages of the eighth century BC, provides this beautiful parable of the hard-working landowner who plants a vineyard, equipped with all mod. cons., and is dismayed to harvest nothing but sour grapes. Isaiah then explains the parable very clearly, with no room left for doubt. The planter of the vineyard is God, the vineyard is Israel, the disappointing vines producing sour grapes are the people of Israel.

“Yes, the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the House of Israel, and the men of Judah that chosen plant. He expected justice, but found bloodshed; integrity, but only a cry of distress.” 

The prophet is stating explicitly that the people have failed God miserably, but he also warns that they will face consequences. The owner, God, will abandon the vineyard, which will be reduced to a ruin, something which was to happen over and over again in the history of the Chosen People. 

Moving to the Psalm, we find a similar theme. This time the vine, representing the people, has been brought from Egypt to flourish in the Promised Land, an allegory of the Exodus of the Jewish people from their Egyptian slavery, and their re-settlement in what became Israel and Judah. 

For the Psalmist, the destruction of the vineyard has already taken place. At first, he claims not to understand why this has happened. “Then why have you broken down its walls?” he cries.

Soon, though, he is compelled to admit that he is well aware of the reason. It is the one put forward by Isaiah. “We shall never forsake you again” he claims, an admission that the people have indeed forsaken God; the Psalmist then pleads with God for forgiveness and restoration, promising repentance, a change of heart. 

More than seven hundred years after Isaiah, Our Lord borrows elements from his parable. As in the prophetic writing, the landowner, again standing for God, not only plants a vineyard, but adds a winepress and a tower. Once again, the Jewish people are accused of failure: once again, they are threatened with consequences. 

Thus, the essence of Isaiah’s parable is repeated, but there are differences. In Jesus’ version, the people--or more probably, their leaders—are represented not by the vines, but by corrupt tenants, whose faults are set out in greater detail. It is no longer a general abandonment of God, but specifically the killing of God’s prophets at which the finger is pointed, and it is prophesied that they will go on to kill God’s Son. Once again, there will be consequences: “the Kingdom of God will be taken from you, and given to a people who will produce its fruit”.

So far, so good, from our point of view, we may think. The Church, the Christian people, is to inherit the vineyard, is to be given the Kingdom. Everything is cakes and ale: or is it? The people who are given the Kingdom “will produce its fruit”. Can we honestly claim that, as individuals or as the Church we are doing, and have done that? 

The sins and failings of the Church throughout the ages are well known, whether it be corrupt Popes, the Inquisition, support for colonisers, or whatever, and they are by no means all in the past, as the abuse crisis has shown. And what about our own sins? Have we done, are we doing, any better than the Jewish people, when it comes to bearing fruit? Every bit as much as the Psalmist, we need to pray: “God of hosts, bring us back. Let your face shine on us, and we shall be saved”.

26th Week Year A

26th Sunday 2023

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

Just to confuse you, I am not going to talk about the Gospel today. Instead, I want to focus on that Second Reading.

After urging upon us a spirit of humility and of mutual love-do we have that spirit, by the way? Do you have it, do I have it?—it launches into a glorious hymn in praise of Jesus the Christ. It tells of His total self-emptying; His identification with us; His suffering, death, and Resurrection; and finally the honour due to His name.

There is a huge amount of material there for our contemplation. Firstly, let us think about the self-emptying, the “kenosis” as it is called, of the Son of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Son. Enjoying total union with the Father in the Holy Spirit, total bliss, everything desirable, He shed all of this, and became one of us. Why?

This wasn’t a question of slumming it, of getting down with the plebs out of curiosity. I recently read George Orwell’s “Down and out in Paris and London”, in which Orwell describes how he, the Eton educated Eric Blair (his real name) went to live, first among the poorest paid workers in the Paris catering industry, and then as a tramp in London.

Why did he do this?  It seems partly as if he was looking for himself, trying to discover his own identity and that of people whose lot was very different from his own. What he did was impressive, and yet, in a sense, unreal. His upper class accent always set him apart from those among whom he tried to immerse himself, and he knew that he could abandon this way of life at any time, which indeed he did.

For the Son of God, the situation was very different. In becoming the man Jesus, He became truly, irreversibly, and totally human. He had no escape route. He was entirely one of us, born in a particular family in a particular place and time. Nor was He acting out of curiosity: God’s self-immersion in the human race was purely an act of love, assuming human nature in order to redeem human nature, and to make it divine.

This entailed plumbing the depths of human suffering, undergoing mental anguish, physical pain, humiliation, and a death which effectively put Him into the power of evil; all of this purely out of love for the human race. We could reflect on this for a lifetime, and I do invite you to reflect upon it.

The second half of the hymn praises the name of Jesus. I don’t know about you, but I was brought up to use the Holy Name sparingly, and always with a bow of the head. That approach seems less popular today, which is fair enough, but being an awkward so-and-so, I continue to use it.

Devotion and respect for the name of Jesus provide a bond with Evangelicals, who speak of “lifting up” the name of Jesus. We are also reminded of the power of a name. “What’s in a name?” ask the cynics. “A great deal” we would reply. Moses wanted to know God’s name at the burning bush, but God had no name. “I am who am” was His reply: “I am pure existence”. There was no possibility of the Israelites claiming power over the living God, as the nations around them had power over their false gods through having named them. Incidentally, this makes a nonsense of the now forbidden practice of calling God “Yahweh”, which nullifies the very point which God was making.

To illustrate the power involved in knowing someone’s name, I would sometimes suggest in homilies that, if you could provide a description of a burglar, it might be of some help to the police, but not a great deal. On the other hand, if you knew his name, that would give you power over him, until an occasion when what I had suggested as an illustration became a reality, as I encountered a burglar in my presbytery in Morecambe. As he ran off down the road, I was able to ring the police and tell them “A bloke called such and such has just broken into my house. Would you like his address?”

“No,” came the reply. “We know his address. We will go and sit outside his flat until he comes back.”

In taking human flesh, and giving Himself a name, God has given us power over Him. He has allowed human beings to use that name, even to abuse it. Above all, He has given us the power to call upon Him in that name. “Anything you ask the Father in my name, He will grant you” says Jesus. This is a name of power which gives us power. Let us use it always with awe, respect, and adoration.

25th Week Year A

25th Sunday 2023

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

I am tempted to say “Hands up, anyone who sympathises with the shop stewards of today’s parable in their complaint about pay differentials”. They have a point, don’t they—or do they? In fact, they are being paid fairly. A denarius was the usual rate for a day’s work. They would have been entitled to complain about the iniquitous system by which people were expected to wait around in the hope that someone would deign to hire them, but not about their rate of pay.

In one sense, the people who were treated unfairly were the late arrivals, who were paid more than they deserved, but they were unlikely to complain; and it was really no one else’s business how much the vineyard owner chose to pay them. There are exploitative employers today, no less than in biblical times, but the employer in the parable cannot be counted among them.

As a sideline, this parable may remind us of our obligation to be concerned about social justice, especially as we approach a General Election, when politicians on all sides will appeal to our self-interest, and indeed to our selfishness, with little concern for the good of society, and indeed of the world. As Christians, we must be actively interested in matters of justice, and must be prepared to hold candidates’ feet to the proverbial fire. In my previous parish, the local Council of Churches used to organise hustings for the candidates, which made it possible to quiz them on issues which, in the normal course of events, they would have been happy to ignore. Ideally, similar events would occur in every neighbourhood in every constituency.

In the build up to the General Election of 1997, the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales produced a magnificent document entitled “The Common Good” which raised questions about a whole range of matters relating to justice, including, though by no means limited to, the killing of the unborn. The then editor of “The Times”, himself a Catholic, by the name of William Rees-Mogg, denounced it as “economically illiterate”: I trust that voters in the constituency of his son, Jacob of that ilk, will wish to know whether the son’s views differ from those of his late father.

Important, indeed vital, as social justice issues are, they are not the principal concern of today’s parable. It is essentially a parable of the Kingdom. The workers who have borne the heat and burden of the day represent the Jewish people, who have indeed laboured long and hard in their struggle to be faithful to the covenants. Before we criticise them for their failure, we need to look in the mirror, and ask ourselves how often both individual Christians, and the Church as a whole, have failed over the past two thousand years.

Where, or perhaps, when, do we Gentiles enter the parable? We are the eleventh hour workers, called way down the line of history, yet rewarded as if we had served God as His people from the outset. Far from having justifiable complaints about God’s unfairness, we have cause to rejoice in it because He, like the owner of the vineyard, has chosen to pay the last comer the same as the first.

Indeed, we have been, and are being, paid more. We have been given knowledge of God’s Son, and of His Holy Spirit. We are conscious of having God dwelling within us. We have the sacraments, and especially we have the sacrifice of Calvary made present on our altars. We have the abiding presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. We have the joy of belonging to the Body of Christ, which is the Church, nourished by the Body of Christ, which is the Eucharist.

We are paid far beyond anything that we deserve, but we are also given responsibilities. We need to recognise and give thanks (literally “make Eucharist”) for all that we have been given. We are called to be faithful to the Christ who has given His life for us. And we must recognise our responsibility to work for justice, and not simply to seek our own self-interest, especially when the politicians come knocking.

24th Sunday Year A

24th Sunday 2023

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

Three words—four in Greek—are, I believe, crucial to today’s Gospel. They are the final words of the Gospel passage and they appear as “from your heart”. Much of the time, forgiveness is easy. Someone upsets us, probably in a fairly minor way; they apologise, and all is right again.

Sometimes, though, the hurt goes much deeper. It may have been intentional, or it may be the result of insensitivity, or even a misunderstanding, but it wounds us in the depths of our being. The other person apologises. We seem to accept the apology, but how genuine, how heartfelt, is that acceptance?

I will mention two examples, similar in origin. Twice I have been approached by victims of sexual abuse. One was a schoolgirl, the other a middle-aged woman. In both cases, the abuser was the person’s father. The adult lady had, over a period of time, come to a degree of forgiveness, but was deeply hurt by her father’s ongoing dishonesty. It was particularly painful to hear him described in glowing terms at his funeral, seemingly a model citizen and a pillar of the parish, his treatment of his daughter hidden under a veneer of respectability.

In the girl’s case, her father was unmasked, and underwent a term of imprisonment. However, although admitting abusing her sister, he continued to deny his offences against the girl herself: this, she subsequently told me, was the worst wound of all, causing her to wish that she had never revealed her suffering—though, had she not done so, her sister’s child would have been a third victim.

Is it possible for the victims of abuse to forgive their abusers? Should they? I cannot answer those questions, but it does seem that, without an admission of the fault, forgiveness is inevitably limited.

Few of us, please God, will have undergone the horror of abuse. What about less heinous offences? The poet Philip Larkin was not referring to abuse when he pointed an accusatory finger at parents in general in his poem “This be the verse” which begins “They [expletive deleted] you up, your mum and dad”, a wry and indeed cynical expose of parenthood, which concludes that parental damage is inevitable.

From personal experience, I can deny this, but I have been shocked to learn of the childhood problems of many of my friends, whose parents were far from ideal, yet who themselves, in general, learned to manage things better when they themselves had children. Thus, the negative experiences had some positive effects, and their response to their parents has frequently been an acceptance that no one is perfect, and a forgiveness of parental faults which even Larkin himself admitted were unintentional.

One important consideration is that forgiveness liberates not only the one who is forgiven but, perhaps even more so, the one who forgives. The author of the Book of Ecclesiasticus speaks of resentment, which he describes as a foul thing. Resentment, which frequently arises from an unwillingness to forgive, eats away at us, damages us, imprisons us. It may hurt the person whom we refuse to forgive: it certainly hurts us.

A former Vicar General of this Diocese (not to be confused, by the way, with the Bishop’s Secretary) hurt a considerable number of priests during his time in office. I heard second hand that, following his retirement as a result of ill health, he had acknowledged that people had been hurt, and had said that he regretted it, but this did not penetrate to my heart. I remained angry, and concluded that I would not be able to attend his funeral when it happened, as it would infuriate me to hear positive things said about him.

Around a fortnight ago, I attended a priest’s funeral at which this former VG was present. He is old and frail now, and seems to have recovered some of the more attractive aspects of his personality, which were overlaid during his time in office. As I helped him down some steps, I felt all the anger  and bitterness which I felt seep away, a process completed at the graveside, when he answered my mutter that there seemed no sign of the Salve Regina being sung, by whispering from behind me “You start it!”, which I did. There was a new and tremendous freedom in letting all the anger go. I shall be able to attend his funeral, and will have no objection if he is extolled to the skies.

Up to now, I have been speaking in purely human terms. In the last analysis, we are talking about something divine. As both the Old Testament author and Our Lord point out, God is the author of forgiveness. He forgives us much, and we must imitate Him.

23rd Sunday Year A

23rd Sunday 2023

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

“Where two or three meet in my name, I shall be there with them.” Are you conscious of that? Does it occur to you that when you gather with other people in the name of Jesus Christ Our Lord, that same Jesus Christ is present among you, present in a manner different from His presence in the Blessed Sacrament, but nevertheless truly present? It may be a prayer group, a group which gathers for a faith-based discussion, an RCIA meeting, or the SVP, the UCM, at Mass, or whatever. If you are meeting in the name of Jesus Christ, He is truly present among you.

Another question: are you familiar with “The General Instruction of the Roman Missal”? “Are we heck as like” I hear you cry. “Why would we be? How could we be?”

It’s actually not as difficult as you might think. There is a small version of the Missal which is a photocopy of the altar Missal, which has the General Instruction as an introduction. It is well worth reading, easy to read, and fairly short.

One of its most important sections is paragraph 27, which states the four ways in which Jesus the Christ is present in the Mass. Do you know what they are? The most obvious one is the Eucharistic species; the bread and wine which, when consecrated, are truly the Body and Blood of Christ, a reality which abides, so that Christ remains present in the tabernacle always. Within the Mass, Christ is both priest and victim, offering Himself to the Father, making present here and now the one perfect sacrifice which He offered on the Cross, enabling us to offer ourselves in union with Him.

Secondly, Christ is present in His word, proclaimed in the Scriptures. As paragraph 29 declares, “When the Scriptures are read in the Church, God Himself speaks to His people, and CHRIST, PRESENT IN HIS WORD, PROCLAIMS THE GOSPEL”. Just as the Body of Christ is broken, and His Blood poured out, so is His word broken open in the homily—or it should be. There is really no excuse for careless preaching, or for preaching which discourages people, rather than build them up.

The third, and probably most difficult to recognise, of the presences of Christ is in the priest, who acts and speaks in persona Christi “in the person of Christ”. Christ is the true priest, offering Himself; all God’s people are a priestly people, joining in offering the sacrifice of Christ and of themselves; the ordained priest puts the offering into effect through and in Christ, and on behalf of the whole priestly people.

What remains? That presence which is listed first, and which occurs first chronologically: His presence in His people. Before the priest comes to the altar, before the Scriptures are opened, before the consecration, Christ is already present, not only in the tabernacle, but also among you. “Christ is really present in the very assembly gathered in His name” says the final sentence of paragraph 27. We speak of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist as the “real presence”, not because the other three presences are somehow unreal, but because this is His presence in re , “in a thing/substance”.

Does it surprise you that Christ is first present in you? It shouldn’t, when you think about it. You are the Body of Christ, who increasingly become what you receive. Bear in mind too those words “Whatever you did to the least of mine, you did to me”. Look around you. Every face that you see is the face of Christ. Funny looking, isn’t He? But then again, so are you, and your face is His face.

I think of Veronica, a legendary figure, but one whose story teaches us. Allegedly, she wiped the face of the suffering Christ with a towel, and the impression of His face was printed on it. I suspect that the face would have been difficult to recognise, just as it is difficult to recognise in the faces around you, but it is there nonetheless. “Where two or three meet in my name, I shall be there with them.”

22nd Sunday Year A

22nd Sunday 2023

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

You have to feel sorry for Peter: the poor lad is only trying to do his job. He has just been given the Keys of the Kingdom, and named as the rock on which the Church is to be built. He must have been feeling thoroughly confident, and so he wouldn’t have hesitated when he glimpsed an opportunity to  exercise his newly given authority in the best of all possible causes.

His Lord and Master is talking about suffering and death. Surely this is a moment for Peter to give support and reassurance; to remind Jesus that His trusty lieutenant is at hand to keep Him safe. Peter goes about his task impeccably: mindful of Our Lord’s instructions, he even takes Him aside to speak privately. Does he really deserve to be called the devil?

Actually, that is not what he is being called. Strictly speaking, I don’t think that Our Lord is speaking to Peter at all. He is addressing Satan himself, the Tempter, who is using Peter’s good intentions for his own ends and speaking through Peter.

How often does someone—how often do you—say something with the best of intentions, which turns out to be totally the wrong thing? You mean well, but your suggestion, advice, whatever, is at best unhelpful, at worst positively harmful. Indeed, it has been suggested that “s/he means well” is the most damning thing that can be said about anyone, since it implies that the person in question has missed the target entirely.

This is true especially when the person is a trusted friend, and when the suggestion fits your own desires, even though it is not the right thing. When Peter said, in effect, “You don’t have to go through with this” Jesus must have felt the force of his words. Perhaps He really didn’t have to? No, this was temptation, and He had to dismiss it as such, calling out Satan himself who was hiding behind Peter. Remember the temptations in the wilderness, when we were told that Satan “left Him, to return at the appointed time”? This is one of those appointed times, but now Satan is disguised as Peter, and must be identified and named.

There is, however, a warning for Peter. He must not assume that he is always being guided by God. It is a warning too for successive Popes: like everyone else, they will make mistakes. They must never confuse the gift of infallibility, bestowed on them only when they are expressing the God-given mind of the entire Church, with their own opinion, however strongly held.

If indeed there is a warning for Peter, there is a warning for us as well. To follow Christ will not always be a matter of beer and skittles. There will be times when the Cross weighs heavily upon us, when it chafes our shoulders; then we may be tempted by others, or by our own inclinations, to lay it down, to take the easy option. Those are the moments when Satan is tempting us, hiding behind a good friend, or within ourselves. Those are the moments when we must recognise him, and call him by name, though perhaps silently, so as not to panic our friend into thinking that we are calling him or her the devil.

We have something of a linguistic issue in what Jesus says to us. “Anyone who wants to save their life will lose it” we are told. Then we hear that crucial, life-defining question “What will a man gain if he wins the whole world and ruins his life?”. You and I may be more familiar with the more severe question “What doth it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?”. Which is the correct translation?

Well, in effect, both of them are. The Greek word in question is psuche—“psyche” in English--which originally means the essence of a person, his or her identity, what he or she is at the deepest level. As such, it can be translated as “identity” or as “mind” “life” or “soul”.

In the question “What doth it profit a man…?” the more powerful translation is “soul”. Yet it is the same word—psuche—which Jesus uses when He warns that anyone who wants to save their life will lose it. There, it wouldn’t seem right to use “soul” as the translation: surely we are right to want to save our soul? Do we use different translations for the same word in the space of a few lines? That isn’t entirely satisfactory either. Whatever translation(s) we use, we must bear in mind that our fundamental purpose is to follow Christ, and that this will involve the Cross, and the rejection of temptation.

21st Sunday Year A

21st Sunday 2023

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

I have done it again! I have come up with a new, brilliant, original idea, which has never occurred to me before—until I look back to 2020, and discover that I used it then. I wanted to talk about the symbolism of keys, which have a value beyond their practical use, and it came into my mind to use the example of the large silver key which is presented to the reigning monarch when he (as it is now) visits the Castle in his capacity as Duke of Lancaster.

At other times, this key is presented to the Constable of the Castle, the King’s representative, when s/he takes office. Whether it would actually open the castle gates, I do not know: what I do know is that it is never used for that purpose. It is a symbol of the Duke’s (ie the monarch’s) ownership of the Castle, and of the Constable’s equally symbolic stewardship.

My second “new” idea is somewhat vaguer. I think, though I may be totally wrong, that when the Yeoman warders (the Beefeaters) are shutting up shop at the Tower of London for the night, they are challenged by a sentry with the traditional question “Who goes there?”  to which, after a certain amount of persiflage, they reply “the King’s keys”. It is far from impossible that I have a) imagined or invented this or b) used it before, but if it is true, it once again highlights the symbolism of keys.

This is something which we find today both in the prophet Isaiah and in St. Matthew’s Gospel. Eliakim, the new master of the palace, is invested with the robe and sash of office, and the key of the House of David is placed upon his shoulder. This is a fairly inconvenient place to have a key for practical purposes, the point being that it is not practical but symbolic, just as a new knight is tapped on the shoulder with a sword. This key represents authority, stewardship, over the House of David, the royal line from which the Messiah is to come.

Fast forward several centuries and this same Messiah, having been acclaimed as such by Simon Peter, gives to that same Peter “the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven”, indicating his stewardship over the Messiah’s Kingdom. Add to this the play on words by which Peter is addressed as the rock on which the Church is to be built, and we can recognise the great authority invested in Peter and, we believe  as Catholics,  in his successor, the Pope.

What does this authority amount to, and why is it given to Peter? It amounts to stewardship exercised on behalf of the Messiah, the Christ, and not for Peter’s own advantage or his aggrandisement. It is given to Peter because he has expressed his faith in Jesus as the Christ, and has done so infallibly, expressing what was revealed to him by the Father.

It is neither absolute authority nor absolute infallibility. It is authority exercised under Christ and in accordance with His will: it is infallibility in expressing what has been revealed to him by the Father, and not in stating the Pope’s personal opinion or his preferences. There are massive safeguards which hedge in the exercise of infallibility: allegedly, there were occasions when Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, acting as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, fired a shot across the bows of Pope St. John Paul II, informing him that he could not claim infallibility for some of his intended doctrinal declarations.

Now we face the weekly question: what are the implications for us? Firstly, we owe loyalty and respect to the Pope, as the bearer of Christ’s keys. This does not mean that we have to agree with everything which the Pope says. Rather than imitate the 19th Century writer WG Ward, who would have welcomed a papal directive with his “Times” every morning, we would sometimes be wise to follow the advice of the late Tony Benn MP who, in negotiating a loaded question suggested that, if a document is a Papal Bull, it would be wise to move out of the way, as one normally does when confronted by a bull. What is unacceptable is the abuse and defiance which some supposed Catholics, particularly in America, direct at the present occupant of the Chair of Peter.

Another question, however, is more important. How do you respond when Jesus turns to you and asks “But you, who do you say I am?” We know the answer, but that is not enough. What are the implications for your daily life when you reply “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”? Does your answer affect the way you live, day in and day out, and if so, how? Peter answered, and continues to answer, that question on behalf of the Church, but each and every one of us must answer it for ourselves.

20th August St. Bernard

St. Bernard of Clairvaux 2023

From 1970 until the mid-eighties, the BBC ran a series entitled “Play for Today”, a collection of hard-hitting dramas, sometimes controversial, dealing with contemporary issues. It is impossible to imagine such a series being screened much earlier, and today many of the matters with which the plays dealt no longer seem so relevant. As dramas, they are still gripping and enjoyable, but they are no longer of immediate concern.

For instance, I recently watched a trilogy from the series, a trilogy known as the Billy Plays, set in Belfast in the early 80s, and originally broadcast at the time. “The Troubles” formed the background to the drama, which was played out in a Northern Ireland which, in many ways, has changed in the last forty years. These were indeed plays for their day.

I wonder whether St. Bernard, in his time, might usefully have been described as “Saint for Today”. There are saints whose appeal transcends time: they would have been at home in any era. Thomas More has been described as a man for all seasons; Francis de Sales and Jeanne de Chantal, with their sensible sanctity and chaste friendship and cooperation, would have greatly benefited the Church had they been around today. Clare of Assisi’s apostolic vision would have been allowed to flourish in the Church of the early 21st century in ways impossible in the 13th.

On the other hand, there are saints who clearly belonged to their time. The maudlin piety of St. Aloysius no longer appeals, whilst Bl. Dominic Savio, lauded in the CTS pamphlets of my youth as “the schoolboy saint” would embarrass the youth of today. There are others, who shall remain nameless, who seem unfitted to any age.

Is it fair to say that Bernard belonged very firmly to the twelfth century? He was a reformer, and the Church always needs reformers—it is ecclesia semper reformanda, the Church always needing to be reformed—but the issues and remedies of today may not be those of Bernard’s day.

A young man of what was described in those days as “noble birth”, Bernard entered the abbey of Citeaux in 1113, at the age of 22 or 23. Such was the impression he made that, only a couple of years later, aged 25, he was sent to establish, and to be Abbot of, a new foundation at Clairvaux, with which his name is forever associated.

At the heart of his spirituality lay a powerful commitment to renunciation, and, at least in his early days, he had a tendency to carry this to excess, both in his own life and in that which he imposed on the brethren. His fasts were so severe that he made himself ill, to the extent that he had to take a year out from the monastery. Subsequently he relaxed the austerity to an extent, but it is alleged that a hole was dug next to his abbatial chair to enable him to vomit.

Bernard lived a century before the establishment of the friars who owed their origins to Francis of Assisi and to Dominic: hence, he was not familiar with Thomas Aquinas’ axiom that grace builds on nature. In his case, grace had a very clearly defined nature on which to build. One of his biographers described him as “impassioned all his life”: he could never be thought of as a shrinking violet.

He threw himself wholeheartedly into controversies, never allowing charity to curb the enthusiasms of tongue or pen. He quarrelled vehemently with the abbots of Cluny, addressing one of them, Peter the Venerable, “with a pen dipped in gall” as a contemporary observer expressed it. He called Louis XVI, King of France, “the new Herod”, described the Roman curia as “a den of thieves”, a judgement with which Pope Francis might well have concurred, and had no hesitation in criticising bishops, and even the Pope.

For 26 years, from 1127 until his death in 1153, Bernard was involved every year in temporal affairs, travelling the length and breadth of Europe. This may seem a very strange trait in a cloistered monk: Bernard’s comment was “God’s business is mine. Nothing that concerns Him is foreign to me.” In the course of his journeys, he helped resolve a papal schism, which saw two rival claimants to the See of Peter; joined a mission against the Albigensians, whom Dominic too would confront a century later; stopped a pogrom against the Jews but, less commendably, preached a crusade.

In all of this, Bernard remained a faithful son of the Church. He would criticise popes, but he was loyal to the papacy. Unlike later alleged reformers—Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and others—his concern was to preserve the unity of the Body of Christ, not to tear it apart. He, rather than they, deserves the title of “Reformer”.

Known as the Mellifluous Doctor—the doctor flowing with honey—Bernard has left us 332 of his sermons, including the sublime “In praise of the Virgin Mother” as well as the outstanding Marian prayer, the Memorare. By the time of his death, Clairvaux housed the staggering number of seven hundred monks, and 160 foundations had been made from Citeaux, including the great English abbeys destroyed in the English Reformation. So many miracles were attributed to Bernard post mortem that his successor as abbot went to his tomb to ask Bernard to stop performing them, as the monastery was being overrun by pilgrims.

It does seem that Bernard was a man of his time. Had he been alive a few centuries later, his acerbic criticisms of popes and bishops might have prevented the tragic divisions in western Christianity which are yet to heal, though perhaps the papal court of those days would have been less willing to listen than was that of the twelfth century. He will never feature in a new series of “Play for Today”, but we can at least enjoy his spiritual legacy, and be grateful for his reforming spirit.

Assumption 2023

Assumption of the BVM 2023

Apocalypse 11:19, 12:1-6, 10. 1Cor 15:20-2; Luke 1:39-56

“There is nothing new under the sun.” So proclaimed the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes. Whether that is a universal truth I do not know, but it certainly holds true of my homilies. How often have I come up with a bright new idea, only to discover, in checking through files, that I used the same idea three years previously, and six years, and nine years, ad infinitum?

Today, I had the brilliant notion of relating the story of a priest friend of mine, now deceased, who stood in St. Peter’s Square on the day in 1950 when Pope Pius XII declared the doctrine of the Assumption to be an article of faith, to be held by all Catholics. I then looked back, only to discover that I had used that introduction before, though admittedly only once. Still, another priest to whom I once apologised for repeating, at the Diocesan Youth Centre, a form of night prayer which I had used on a previous course which he had attended with a different school responded “The sun rises every morning, and we don’t complain about that”. Consequently, I will proceed with my planned introduction.

My friend of St. Peter’s Square made the point that Pius XII, in promulgating the doctrine, which had in fact been believed from the Church’s early days, emphasised that it is a truth, not about Mary alone, but about the whole Church. Mary, in being raised body and soul to heaven, represented the Church, as its first and only fully faithful member, as she did in every event of her life.

“Christ has been raised from the dead” writes St. Paul, “the first fruits of all who have fallen asleep”, and he goes on to insist that “all people will be brought to life in Christ”. Mary’s Assumption vindicates this assertion by St. Paul. As the first member and the representative of the Church, she has been raised to the fullness of glory as we shall be raised in our turn—and bear in mind that we are speaking here of the events of eternity, which lies not only in the future, but is a present reality. As Our Lord Himself said, whoever believes in Him HAS, not “will have”, eternal life.

So Mary’s Assumption into heaven is for our benefit, because she is one of us. Mary is OUR Lady, because she is OURS. She is our fellow creature, redeemed by the blood of her Son; in her case, redeemed in advance, by virtue of her Immaculate Conception (which should never be confused with her virginal conception of Jesus).

Mary brought Jesus physically and spiritually into the world, as the Church is to bring Him spiritually to birth in the world of today. Mary is the woman filled by the Holy Spirit, as the Church is filled by the same Spirit. In her Magnificat, she is the woman of prayer, praise, and prophecy, as the Church is the people of prayer, praise, and prophecy.

Furthermore, Mary is the one whom her Son calls blessed (as all generations are to do) because she “heard the word of God and keeps it” and brought to birth the Word made flesh. So must the Church do. She is Jesus’ “brother, sister, and mother”, as the true disciple of Jesus which we too must strive to be. Christians are called to carry the Cross; Mary stood at the foot of the Cross, and was named the mother of “the disciple”, of the one who follows Christ.

Now she is “the woman clothed with the sun”, the woman who is Israel, and the Church, and Mary, each in their own way giving birth to the Son “who is to rule all the nations”. Mary and Israel gave birth to the Son in both flesh and spirit: we, who cannot give birth to Him in the flesh, are to give birth to Him in spirit, so that he may be enfleshed anew in us.

Moving from 1950 to the 1960s, to the Second Vatican Council, we see that the Council fathers recognised and emphasised the role of Mary as the embodiment and representative of the Church. Instead of producing a separate document on Our Lady as had been expected, the Council integrated its teaching on Mary into Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. In referring to today’s feast, the Council states “In the meantime, the Mother of Jesus, in the glory which she possesses in body and soul in heaven, is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the word to come”. In other words, Mary is what we shall be. Hence this is our feast, because Mary is Our Lady, because she is ours.

19th Sunday Year A

19th Sunday 2023

1Kings 19:9, 11-13; Romans 9: 1-5; Matthew 14:21-43

They’ve done it again. The Lectionary seems to vary between giving us a set of readings about which it is difficult to say anything, and a threesome, of which each would merit a homily of its own.

The latter is the case today. We begin with Elijah’s encounter with God in the cave on Mt. Horeb, the very spot in which God placed Moses before passing by him. Some background is needed. Elijah has just massacred the false prophets on Mt. Carmel, and the evil queen, Jezebel, has promised to do the same to him. Elijah has fled, making the traditional forty days’ trek through the wilderness, where he has suffered black depression and been supported by an angel.

Now he is confronted by God Himself. We hear of the wind, the earthquake, and the fire, and are told that God was not present in any of them, but revealed Himself in a gentle breeze, or a still, small voice, as another translation puts it.

Is it true that God was not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire? Think of your own lives. I am sure that every one of you has passed through times of turmoil, when your world was battered, perhaps even turned upside down. Those times are, for us, the equivalent of the wind, the earthquake, and the fire. Was God in them? Your first reaction may be to say “no”, but think again. Did you survive them? Did you perhaps grow as a result of them—grow in understanding, in strength, in compassion? If so, then those are signs that God was, indeed, present in them. Perhaps it is only afterwards, when there is greater calm, that you are able to hear the still, small voice, and to come gradually to realise that God was always there.

It is worth adding that God, in speaking to Elijah, sent him back to confront the very situation from which he had fled, giving him a series of radical tasks. Now, though, Elijah was secure in the knowledge that God was with him.

St. Paul, meanwhile, agonises over the situation of the Jews. Are they lost? If so, Paul clams that he would be willing to be cut off from Christ, if that would help them. When you consider how devoted he was to Christ, you can see what a huge claim that was. As the Letter to the Romans progresses, we will learn that Paul came to believe that the alienation of the Jews was only temporary, and took place to enable the Gentiles to be saved.

Tragically, hostility to the Jews took firm root, and it wasn’t until the Second Vatican Council, sixty years ago, that the Church definitively declared that the Jewish people have their own way to God. More recently, Pope Benedict XVI, in his magnificent “Jesus of Nazareth” trilogy, insisted that we ae not in the business of converting Jews, who are still bound to God by the covenants.

As is often the case, today’s Gospel contains echoes of the First Reading, as Jesus comes to the disciples in the course of a storm. Like the still small voice which follows the turmoil for Elijah, Our Lord calms the storm, but it is clear that He was present in it, showing His control of the elements by walking on the water.

Not for the only time, Jesus calls to the disciples, “Courage, it is I. Do not be afraid”. That which you fear is actually me: your fear is unnecessary. As it was for the disciples, so it is for us. Our Lord, the Son of God, is present in our fear, our anguish, our distress, and He calls to us “Courage, it is I”. When He is present in a situation, as He always is, we have no need to be afraid.

Peter attempts to take Jesus at His word: “Tell me to come to you across the water!” Tell me to put complete trust in you. Tell me to step outside my comfort zone, to take the difficult, the seemingly impossible way. Again, Peter’s prayer should be ours. We should wish to approach Jesus, stepping out of the boat of comfort, of routine, of non-disturbance. We should allow Our Lord to disturb us, to call us to Him even by a difficult way; and if our courage fails, we can call out to Him, and He will hold us up. For us, God is present in the wind, earthquake, and fire; He calms the storm, and He calls us to Himself, holding us up when our own strength fails.

19th Sunday Year A

19th Sunday 2023

1Kings 19:9, 11-13; Romans 9: 1-5; Matthew 14:21-43

They’ve done it again. The Lectionary seems to vary between giving us a set of readings about which it is difficult to say anything, and a threesome, of which each would merit a homily of its own.

The latter is the case today. We begin with Elijah’s encounter with God in the cave on Mt. Horeb, the very spot in which God placed Moses before passing by him. Some background is needed. Elijah has just massacred the false prophets on Mt. Carmel, and the evil queen, Jezebel, has promised to do the same to him. Elijah has fled, making the traditional forty days’ trek through the wilderness, where he has suffered black depression and been supported by an angel.

Now he is confronted by God Himself. We hear of the wind, the earthquake, and the fire, and are told that God was not present in any of them, but revealed Himself in a gentle breeze, or a still, small voice, as another translation puts it.

Is it true that God was not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire? Think of your own lives. I am sure that every one of you has passed through times of turmoil, when your world was battered, perhaps even turned upside down. Those times are, for us, the equivalent of the wind, the earthquake, and the fire. Was God in them? Your first reaction may be to say “no”, but think again. Did you survive them? Did you perhaps grow as a result of them—grow in understanding, in strength, in compassion? If so, then those are signs that God was, indeed, present in them. Perhaps it is only afterwards, when there is greater calm, that you are able to hear the still, small voice, and to come gradually to realise that God was always there.

It is worth adding that God, in speaking to Elijah, sent him back to confront the very situation from which he had fled, giving him a series of radical tasks. Now, though, Elijah was secure in the knowledge that God was with him.

St. Paul, meanwhile, agonises over the situation of the Jews. Are they lost? If so, Paul clams that he would be willing to be cut off from Christ, if that would help them. When you consider how devoted he was to Christ, you can see what a huge claim that was. As the Letter to the Romans progresses, we will learn that Paul came to believe that the alienation of the Jews was only temporary, and took place to enable the Gentiles to be saved.

Tragically, hostility to the Jews took firm root, and it wasn’t until the Second Vatican Council, sixty years ago, that the Church definitively declared that the Jewish people have their own way to God. More recently, Pope Benedict XVI, in his magnificent “Jesus of Nazareth” trilogy, insisted that we ae not in the business of converting Jews, who are still bound to God by the covenants.

As is often the case, today’s Gospel contains echoes of the First Reading, as Jesus comes to the disciples in the course of a storm. Like the still small voice which follows the turmoil for Elijah, Our Lord calms the storm, but it is clear that He was present in it, showing His control of the elements by walking on the water.

Not for the only time, Jesus calls to the disciples, “Courage, it is I. Do not be afraid”. That which you fear is actually me: your fear is unnecessary. As it was for the disciples, so it is for us. Our Lord, the Son of God, is present in our fear, our anguish, our distress, and He calls to us “Courage, it is I”. When He is present in a situation, as He always is, we have no need to be afraid.

Peter attempts to take Jesus at His word: “Tell me to come to you across the water!” Tell me to put complete trust in you. Tell me to step outside my comfort zone, to take the difficult, the seemingly impossible way. Again, Peter’s prayer should be ours. We should wish to approach Jesus, stepping out of the boat of comfort, of routine, of non-disturbance. We should allow Our Lord to disturb us, to call us to Him even by a difficult way; and if our courage fails, we can call out to Him, and He will hold us up. For us, God is present in the wind, earthquake, and fire; He calms the storm, and He calls us to Himself, holding us up when our own strength fails.

Transfiguration Year A

Transfiguration of the Lord 2023

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; 2Peter 1:16-19; Matthew 17:1-9

“This is my Son, the Beloved. He enjoys my favour. Listen to Him.” Where have we heard something like this before? Yes! Spot on! It closely resembles the Father’s endorsement of the Son at the latter’s baptism, the beginning of His earthly mission.

Why is it, effectively, repeated now? This is a new beginning, the beginning of the end which shall itself be a beginning. From this point onwards, Jesus is focused on His forthcoming passion and death, which will in turn bear fruit in His resurrection. As He, and the three who form His inner circle, are descending the mountain, Our Lord refers to His resurrection from the dead: soon, He will go on to provide the Twelve with the second prophecy of His passion.

Winston Churchill described the Battle of El Alamein as “the end of the beginning” of the Second World War. We might say the same of the Transfiguration in the context of Our Lord’s life and mission. It is a powerful and positive event, closing one stage in His life, and carrying the seeds of what lies ahead.

The Transfiguration unfolds in a manner which must have bewildered Peter, James and John. Firstly, they see Jesus in His glory, as something of His divinity is revealed to them. Then, two seminal figures from Israel’s past appear: Moses, representing the Law, and Elijah who represents the Prophets. Thus they find themselves in the presence of the great ones of their history and their destiny: no wonder Peter wants them to capture the moment, to enable them to remain in it. Have there been wonderful experiences in your life, which you wanted to capture and retain?

This awe-inspiring incident is to become more wonderful yet, as they are enwrapped in the Shekinah, the bright cloud which is the presence of God’s glory, and they hear the very voice of God. Now terror seizes them, as terror seized Abraham as he encountered the God of the covenant. Another question arises for you and me to ponder: have you known times of fear and awe, when you sensed that you were in a special moment; in the presence of something or someone beyond the humdrum experiences of every day? One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is “wonder and awe” also described as “fear of the Lord”, so it is far from impossible that you should have experienced those times of dread which are also times of joy.

They pass, these moments, for us, as they passed for the apostles. What do they leave behind? Anticlimax, puzzlement, or a lasting and recurring joy because we have known them? Do they sustain us in darker times, or do we forget them, fail to trust in their return? What part do faith and hope play when our Transfiguration moments pass?

For Peter, James and John there has to be a re-assessment of all that they have known so far, of all that they have understood of their faith. Moses and Elijah are gone: in their place, the voice of God calls them to listen to Jesus. Could they grasp the significance of this, namely that the Law and the Prophets are fulfilled in and by Jesus, that it is on Him that they must now focus, in Him that they must now trust?

As they seek to understand, they must head back down the mountain into the valley of every day, before they will see Jesus in a very different light. These three who have witnessed the Transfiguration will also witness the Agony in the Garden, when the transfigured Jesus will be seen as the anguished Jesus, the Jesus who cries out to the Father who has spoken to them, the Jesus whose sweat will fall like drops of blood.

At that time, the strength, the confidence, the comfort which they might have drawn from the Transfiguration will fail them, and they will take refuge in sleep, later to take to their heels. Did something linger though, enabling Peter and John to follow their captive Lord into the High Priest’s palace? If so, Peter’s nerve would soon fail him again.

All of which brings us to the weekly question: what about us? Do we have our own Transfiguration moments when joy fills us, when God seems very close? Do they sustain us when we return to the valley of every day, and when we are led into the Garden of the Agony? If they fail us, then let us remember something else, that Gethsemane and Calvary led ultimately to the empty tomb, and to the glory which the Transfiguration, and our Transfiguration moments, prefigure.

17th Sunday Year A

17th Sunday 2023

1 Kings 3:5,7-12; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13:44-52.

What price the Kingdom? The late Fr. John Dalrymple gave his 1975 book, subtitled “Notes on holiness today” the title “Costing not less than everything”, a phrase borrowed from the Anglo-American poet TS Eliot.

Our search for the Kingdom, which might equally be labelled our desire to fulfil God’s will, demands our whole self, our whole being. The treasure hunter and the pearl seeker of today’s two parables sell everything they own in order to acquire the object of their desire, and that, implies Jesus, should be our attitude to following Him. It should cost us not less than everything.

What does that mean in practice? Are we to give away all our possessions like St. Anthony of Egypt, the greatest of the Desert Fathers, who divested himself of all his belongings, to live the life of a hermit? Some people may be called to such a way of life, but if all of us did the same, society would collapse.

Are we then to practise great austerities, abandoning all luxuries, treating our bodies harshly? St. Francis of Assisi took that approach, calling his body “Brother Ass” and subjecting it to all manner of hardship. That risks damaging our God-given health, and despising the body which is itself a gift from God, and which should therefore be treated with respect. We should not regard our body as the be all and end all, seeking the perfect body or, on the other hand, giving in to every bodily desire, but a degree of reverence is demanded towards something which is a gift from God.

Perhaps, then, we are to subdue our bodily appetites, saying “no” to every pleasure? We need to be in control of our appetites, certainly, recognising that to give in to every desire will prove destructive both to ourselves and to others, but we know that absolute self-denial creates curmudgeonly, miserable, harsh and cruel people, lacking in affection and empathy, the sort of people who chain up children’s swings on the Sabbath, or who tear babies away from unmarried mothers.

How then are we to seek the Kingdom after the manner of those single-minded searchers in the parables? How are we to interpret the words “Costing not less than everything”?

Is it, perhaps, much simpler, much more straightforward than we realise? Does it, in reality, come down to attempting to live out as fully as possible those two commandments which Our Lord defined as the greatest, the most fundamental of all; namely, to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbour as ourselves? (And bear in mind that, if we do regard ourselves with contempt, our love of neighbour will amount to very little.)

If we practise it genuinely, there is nothing more costly than love. Ask anyone who has lost a loved one: ask yourself about your own bereavements. To love God entails wanting to do His will in everything: to love our neighbour is to live compassionately, in the literal sense of cum passio—suffering with—walking in our neighbour’s shoes, wearing his or her skin. If we are doing our best in both of those interrelated areas, we will soon discover the cost. To quote another poet Oscar Wilde: “He who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die”. Genuine love brings us to death many, many times.

What though of today’s third parable, the fish caught in the dragnet? That complements last week’s account of the wheat and the weeds. If we are not willing to attempt to fulfil the two great commandments, then we shall be the weeds, we shall be the sprats. There is, however, one major difference: whereas darnel cannot become wheat, or sprats turn into mackerel, we can, by the grace of God, be changed from negative into positive, from uncaring to compassionate, from outsiders to children of the Kingdom—but it will cost.

16th Sunday Year A

16th Sunday 2023

Wisdom 12:13, 16-19; Romans 8:26-27; Matthew 13:24-43

They’ve done it again! Once again the compilers of the Lectionary have provided us with three readings and a psalm, each of which could produce a whole homily’s worth of reflection.

I would like to begin with the Second Reading, Paul’s consideration of prayer. “The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness,” he begins, “for when we cannot choose words in order to pray properly, the Spirit itself expresses our plea”. How important are words in prayer? Clearly, they are not unimportant, especially in communal prayer. We need words in order to pray together, as the Body of Christ. In particular, we need those words which have been hallowed by centuries, indeed millennia, of usage; which have expressed the needs, the joys, the praise, the thanksgiving of the Body of Christ through the ages.

But what about our private prayer? Once again, there is a need for words at times, both the words given to us by Christ and by the Church, and those words which are our own, springing up spontaneously within us. We need to remember, though, that, in the last analysis, our prayer isn’t really OURS at all: it is God’s gift, as the Holy Spirit speaking in us, and it is crucial that we allow the Holy Spirit to get a word in edgeways.

Forty years ago, I heard a talk by the Jesuit Fr. Damian Jackson, in which he suggested a simple framework for prayer. It appealed to me, and I have used it ever since. It consists of three simple stages: be still, be grateful, be generous.

We begin with that injunction: be still. Take time and space to settle yourself, to become calm, to let the world drift away. Become comfortable but, at the same time, alert. Don’t slouch. Some people prefer to sit, with a straight back, their feet firmly planted on the floor, their hands open, palms upward in an attitude of receptivity. There are some who like to close their eyes, but in my case that is liable to lead to sleep: perhaps instead focus on a crucifix, or an icon, or, if you are in church, the tabernacle.

Personally, being of a somewhat quirky disposition, I prefer to lie full length, face downward. That does require a carpet, or some form of soft basis, if you are not to end up with rheumatism.

Then begin by simply being still. Know that you are in the presence of God. Don’t worry about wandering thoughts: when you become conscious of them, draw your mind gently back. Simply BE, knowing that God is there with you in the stillness and the silence. Fr. Jackson’s comment was “Waiting is the greatest form of adoration”.

In that stillness and silence, the Holy Spirit can operate, expressing your prayers “with unutterable groanings” as the Greek text actually puts it. It may be useful to have a passage of scripture to hand—perhaps one of the Mass readings of the day—but leave the work to the Holy Spirit.

This stillness, this openness to the Spirit, provides the context for the second and third stages—be grateful, be generous. Recall, in the stillness, some of the myriad things for which you have cause to be grateful: life, health, family, friends, fresh air, food, and football. Don’t forget the deeper things: the coming of God in our human flesh, His suffering and death for us, His Resurrection, His gift of the Spirit; your membership of His Body and your nourishment with His Body and Blood: His work of forgiveness.

Then, be generous. “Lord, what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do with the time and the talents that you have given to me? What do you want me to do for others? What do you want me to do for you? What do you want me to do today?”

Of course, this is merely one form of prayer among many. I have dwelt on it today because it chimes in with St. Paul’s words. And I haven’t mentioned the other readings. Ah well, they will come around again in three years’ time.

15th Sunday Year A

15th Sunday 2023

Isaiah 55:10-11; Romans 8:18-23; Matthew 13:1-23

Doesn’t it make you want to spit? as a friend of mine used to exclaim in our teenage years. Some weeks, it is a struggle to find anything to say about any of the readings; then you have a day like today, when you could devote a whole homily to each of them.

Soil, creation, growth, feature in all of them: fruitfulness and new life are the aim of each. I can never hear that reading from the prophet Deutero-Isaiah without recalling a day on the Lake District hills, with a perfect blue sky, a golden sun, and a blanket of pure white snow enwrapping the fields. It was very easy to envisage the snow sinking slowly into the earth, enriching it, preparing the grass to spring up more lush, more abundant than ever.

It is this sinking in which is crucial. When earth is baked hard from prolonged drought, or when grass has been replaced by concrete, rain bounces off, runs to collect in one place, and creates havoc in the form of floods. So with us, claims the prophet: we must allow God’s word to seep into us, to enrich us, to make us fruitful.

What does that mean in practice? It means that we have to spend time with the scriptures, to ponder them, as Mary our Mother pondered the things of God, the words of her Son and of the aged Simeon. Meditation on scripture has been likened to a cow chewing the cud, turning it over and over, constantly calling it back. To give time to such an activity may appear difficult in our busy lives, but, as we were told in seminary, to say that you haven’t time for something means that you don’t really value it highly. Is it important to you that God’s word should bear fruit in your life? Only you know the answer to that.

Our Lord’s parable of the sower is, in effect, a continuation of the prophecy, and it raises the question “What kind of soil am I?” Am I stony ground at the edge of the path, not truly interested in God’s call to me, not worried if His call is carried away? On the other hand, am I too worried, choked by the thorns of anxiety, which smother the consolation, the encouragement which the word of God can bring, if I give it the openness, the time, the space to do so? Or are those the thorns of ambition, which leave no room for the word?

The thin soil, which gives rise to short-lived enthusiasm, is a regular feature of everyday life. How many fads and fashions seem to dominate our world for a time before vanishing as if they had never been? Do you remember Citizen Band radio, a craze of the seventies, which was everywhere for a while, but is now almost totally forgotten? Line dancing: that was another. Would anyone admit to being a line dancer today? I hope that I won’t offend anybody if I express the hope that tattoos will literally fade away.

Enthusiasm can be a feature of religion too. In my days at the Diocesan Youth Centre at Castlerigg Manor, it was invariably the case that, by the end of a week’s course, young people would be bursting with fervour, but how long would that fervour last? I recall leaving the chapel as a group of 15/16 year olds sang their hearts out at the close of the final Mass of the week, and being struck by the words of today’s Gospel coming unbidden into my mind: “They have no root in them”. How do we enrich the soil, that faith and the love of God may take deeper root? How do we cultivate fruitful soil in ourselves and others?

Meanwhile St. Paul, in a remarkable passage, declares that creation, like ourselves, longs to bear fruit, to attain the purpose which God has in mind for it and for us. Concern for the environment should not be, primarily, an obsession with keeping ourselves safe: rather, it is a sacred purpose. Benedict XVI was known as the first green Pope, a mantle assumed by Pope Francis, and set out by him theologically in his document “Laudato Si”. It seems to me, though I stand open to correction, that well meaning campaigners who cause inconvenience and distress to others by blocking roads, interrupting sporting events, or whatever, are shooting themselves in the foot. They are turning people against an important cause, and are ensuring that nothing will be done in the short term, as no government can afford to give in to blackmail.

They would do far better to read St. Paul and “Laudato Si”, and to recognise the deep sanctity which underlies this issue; to see it as a holy purpose; and to recognise, as the early Church Fathers pointed out, that people are attracted more by honey than by vinegar.

Soil, literal or metaphorical, fills all our readings today. How do we ensure that, in both forms, it bears fruit?

14th Sunday Year A

14th Sunday 2023

Zechariah 9:9-10; Romans 8:9,11-13; Matthew 11:25-30

Beautiful readings, powerful readings, positive readings, with only one problem attached: are they true? are they realistic? (You may see those as two problems, but they strike me as two expressions of the same underlying question.)

“Rejoice heart and soul!” exclaims Zechariah, “Shout with gladness!” He was prophesying after the liberation of the people of Israel from their seventy year exile in Babylon, so he had every reason to rejoice, to shout with gladness. Pondering his words in our own day, we can consider that we have been liberated by the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus the Christ from the far more bitter exile from friendship with God. That gives us a still greater reason to rejoice and to shout with gladness. Let us then be people of rejoicing, people of gladness, and let us be happy to say that, so far, Zechariah’s prophecy IS true and realistic. 

Zechariah goes on to point to the arrival of the King, “victorious, triumphant, humble, and riding on a donkey”. That must set bells ringing, taking us to Palm Sunday, and to the arrival of that same Jesus Christ, the true King, in Jerusalem and in His Temple.

The donkey is a despised beast, with none of the trappings of the war horse, a concept which Zechariah develops by proclaiming the banishment of that same war horse, and of all the accoutrements of war. Once again, we can rejoice in recognising Christ as the Prince of Peace; once again we can say “Yes, this is true”.

Or can we? Indeed Jesus fulfilled the symbolism of peace, of humility, of the rejection of war, but what happened to Him? He was rejected, overwhelmed, slain by the men of war. Yes, of course He was raised from the dead, so that ultimately our vindication is assured--another cause for rejoicing—but do we have to accept that Zechariah’s promise of the banishing of war has been delayed?

“He will proclaim peace for the nations” declares Zechariah. True, but apparently not yet. Take a look around the world: Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, much of West Africa, to say nothing of injustice, repression, and violence in every country of the world, from China to South Africa, from Europe to the Americas. The King has proclaimed peace, but it is in short supply.

Do we have to say, then, that in this respect Zechariah’s words are untrue, unrealistic? No: the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of Peace, has been inaugurated by Christ, but its fullness is not yet. The onus is on us, the people of the Kingdom, to work for that fulfilment. We must pray untiringly for peace; we must work for peace and especially we must respond to the call made by Pope St. Paul VI: “If you want peace, work for justice.” We must reject the sort of phoney peace which is built on  injustice; a “peace” which may silence the guns but which leaves innocent people dispossessed or imprisoned, which favours the strong at the expense of the weak, the rich at the expense of the poor, the invader at the expense of the invaded. We must be prepared to pester governments and others in authority, and to accept personal inconvenience, rejoicing in the ultimate triumph of the Prince of Peace.

We must also take to heart Our Lord’s encouragement of us in today’s Gospel. Jesus praises the Father “for hiding [the mysteries of the Kingdom] from the learned and the clever, and revealing them to mere children”. These are words which the Church often appears to forget. In this country at least, the working class Church, which was the backbone of the Church for generations, has largely vanished, and we are in danger of becoming “the chattering Church of the chattering classes”. At both a national and a Diocesan level, we have had more talking shops than you can shake the proverbial stick at, producing enough hot air to heat a mediaeval cathedral, but nothing of any real value or substance. Pope Francis’ synodal approach to Church life holds immense potential, but only if the voices of the little people are heeded.

Jesus also invites us to come to Him when we labour or are overburdened, a situation in which, I suspect, we all find ourselves at times. Do we find rest for our souls? Do we experience His yoke as easy, and His burden as light—always? sometimes? never? Only you can answer that, and you can answer it only when you have tried it—and persisted.