14th Sunday of the Year C

14th Sunday 2025

Isaiah 66:10-14; Psalm 65 (66); Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

“Cry out with joy to God, all the earth.” Well, the earth may cry out with joy to God, but do we? Do you and I? This is one of those “rejoice” days. If we include all the repetitions of the psalm refrain, the words “joy” or “rejoice” occur thirteen times in the First Reading, the Psalm, and the Gospel.

So are we people of joy, or are we miserable so-and-sos, whose name is Legion, for they are many? Every couple of months, I submit n article on some vaguely religious topic to the Westmorland Gazette. (Yes, I know we are in Lancashire, not Westmorland, but we are only a handful of miles from the county boundary, and in any case it wasn’t my idea.)

My latest, sent in a few days ago, began by claiming that, if there is one phrase which I detest above all others, it is “The Good Old Days”. Why should that be? People who talk about the Good Old Days always seem to imply that the good days are inevitably behind us, that today is a miserable time, that there is nothing to rejoice in. It is a phrase which rules out joy, which refuses to recognise goodness in people, and in the world around us; that denies joy in the present, and hope for the future. To tht extent, it is profoundly unChristian.

When were the Good Old Days anyway? For my generation of seventy-somethings, they appear to have been the 1950s and 60s. Wait a minute, though! From those days, I distinctly remember my grandmother complaining bitterly how awful the times were compared with the Good Old Days, which for her were the last two decades of the nineteenth century.

Perhaps, then, the Good Old Days belonged to the reign of Queen Victoria. That won’t work either. In the Office of Readings in the breviary, we find St. Augustine rebuking his congregation for always going on about the Good Old Days, which they claimed were so much better than their own times. Augustine lived from 354 to 430 AD, so moaning about the Good Old Days is at least 1600 years old, and probably far older.

Augustine declares that the reason people think that the old days were better than today is that they are not living in them. They, and we, look at the past through rose tinted spectacles: we filter out the bad memories, and exaggerate the good. It strikes me that there is another factor involved: in those past days we were young, the world was our oyster, and we were going to change it for the better. Now we are not young, our opportunities are more limited, not all our dreams or ambitions were fulfilled, and so we hanker after that imaginary glorious past.

Does it matter? Yes, I believe that it does. It prevents us from responding to God’s call to rejoice, to find joy in our world today, in creation, in people created in the image and likeness of God, in the presence of God in every situation, in the reality that our names are written in Heaven.

It is an attitude which, in blinding us to the presence of Heaven, can actually create Hell for us. I have quoted before CS Lewis’s “The Last Battle” the final part of his Chronicles of Narnia. There, the Dwarves, who have been constantly grumbling and moaning, reach the logical conclusion of their attitude, in that they no longer have the ability to see or to experience anything good.

Thus, they are sitting on a sunlit hillside, but are convinced that they are chained up in a dungeon: they are eating a magnificent banquet, but believe that they are being force fed straw. They have literally created Hell for themselves, by refusing to recognise goodness when the encountered it. Are we in danger of doing the same?

Today’s scriptures speak thirteen times of joy and rejoicing. Are we going to respond in kind? Are we prepared to recognise God’s goodness to us today, beginning with His self-giving to us in this Mass, and continuing from there?

St. Peter and St. Paul Year C

Saints Peter and Paul 2025

Acts 12: 1-11; 2Tim 4: 6-8, 17-18; Matthew 16: 13-19

On the evening of this day in 1961, I along with a gaggle of future classmates and a cluster of parents, was ushered for the first time through the portals of the establishment which was to be responsible for my secondary education. We were told some things, asked others, and then sent away to return on a September Thursday.

How, you may ask, am I so certain of the date? That’s easy: it was a Holy Day of Obligation, and the four of us who were attending Catholic Primary schools had enjoyed a day off, whilst our contemporaries in state or C of E schools hadn’t.

The principle of giving children a day off to celebrate a Holy Day was a sound one, though no doubt difficult or even impossible in today’s very different social conditions. After all, a Holy Day originally entailed a holiday as a matter of course—that is the origin of the word “holiday” which was a day free from work to celebrate, through attendance at Mass, but also through recreation, whatever Church festival (Holy Day) was occurring.

In sterner centuries, and as the nature of work changed, and the Church was no longer responsible for setting the agenda of countries, the concept of holiday for a Holy Day was lost, and the rule of obligation prevailed. No longer were Catholics free from work to celebrate the Holy Day to the full: instead, they were (and are) expected to fit Mass in before work, or during their dinner hour (if such a thing still exists) or after their return from work, and the priest, conscious of people’s needs, feels obliged to keep Mass as short as possible to facilitate the rush to work.

Many years after that original approach to secondary education, I found myself, as a priest, attempting to instil the delights of Latin, Greek, and Ancient History into a new generation of lads. On a Sunday morning, I would usually supply a Mass for Fr. Donald Gordon, the delightfully gentle and prayerful parish priest of Sacred Heart, Hindley Green, on the outskirts of Wigan. Fr. Gordon was far from being a radical, but he would maintain, quietly and logically, that if there was no holiday, there could be no obligation, a view which failed to find favour with the powers-that-be.

Today, we keep the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. Had it not been a Sunday, priests would be hastening from church to church, seeking to make Mass as available as possible, while the faithful would be scratching their heads, attempting to work out where and when they could “fulfil the obligation”.

It is an important feast, though whether it really deserves to impose an obligation, or to displace Sunday’s liturgy, is another matter. Peter and Paul are universally recognised as foundation stones of the Church, the former even owing his name to that role. They are giants, on whose shoulders we stand, and whose very peculiarities remind us of the pre-eminence of grace: only the grace of God could have built the Church on two such different and such flawed characters.

There is an antiphon for today’s feast in the Roman breviary, which claims “They loved each other in life”. In your dreams, matey! There are indications in the scriptures that they could barely stand each other. Paul openly sneers to the Galatians about the authority of Peter and the other apostles, whilst demanding from the Corinthians respect for his own authority. Also to the Galatians, he brags about calling out Peter’s cowardice in a way which contradicts Jesus’ own instructions.

That same cowardice of Peter emerged even more dramatically in his threefold denial of Jesus. Add to that his tendency to promise more than he could deliver, and Paul’s ability to fall out with anybody and everybody, and we may feel justified in applying the term “flawed genius” to both.

This is where grace is seen at work. Would you or I have chosen either Peter or Paul to guide the Church in its infancy? I doubt it; yet Jesus did so, with results which will endure as long as time lasts. Today we honour Peter and Paul, warts and all, we reflect on our own flaws, and we thank God for using these two saints to enable us to belong to the Body of Christ almost two millennia later.

Corpus Christi Year C

Body and Blood of Christ 2025

Genesis 14:18-20; 1Cor 11:23-26; Luke 9:11-17

Sister Michaela remembers everything. Among other things, Sister remembers a homily which I delivered on this Feast in Our Lady’s High School, Lancaster, forty years ago, when she was a member of Sixth Form.

I remember it too. At the time, the Assembly Hall, where Mass was taking place, was so arranged that, as I stood at the lectern, I was looking up in the direction of Lancaster Castle where fifteen men, both priests and laypeople, had been tried and imprisoned before being dragged on hurdles through the streets to the Low Moor, where they were hanged, drawn, and quartered. I think that I am correct in saying that Lancaster can count more martyrs than anywhere else in England, outside London.

Why were they martyred? Purely and simply, they were martyred for the Mass. The case of the Elizabethan and Jacobean martyrs was, to a degree, different from that of their predecessors such as Thomas More and John Fisher, who suffered under Henry VIII. For the Henrician martyrs, the principal issue was the authority of the Pope: for their successors, it was the survival of the Mass on the island of Great Britain.

All of this, I brought into my homily. I began by noting that some people complained that Mass was “boring”. After pointing out the suffering and horrendous deaths which the Lancaster martyrs and others throughout the country had been prepared to suffer to keep the Mass in existence, I asked, somewhat more dramatically than is my wont, “How the hang can that be boring (pun intended)?”

Yes of course we have all sat through sloppily prepared liturgies, tedious homilies, and the self-advertisement of over chatty or outwardly pious priests. But in the last analysis, so what? There is an old adage: “You don’t go to Mass for the priest”. Conversely, you don’t stay away from Mass for the priest. You go to Mass—I go to Mass—to encounter the living God.

Whatever the quality or the style of the liturgy, Jesus is there in the gathering of His people, in the word proclaimed, in the person of the priest—not in himself but in his standing in the place of Christ—and above all in the sacrament and sacrifice of the Lamb of God, who makes present in every Mass his once and perfect sacrifice offered on Calvary. That is true whether it be a coffee table Mass in a student room, solemn High Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, or anything between.

Some time ago, I read a letter in the Tablet from a gentleman who claimed that he had followed Mass on line during the pandemic, and that he would continue to do so, even though public Mass had been restored, because the homilies and the liturgy were better than in his home parish. I had to check the date to make sure that this wasn’t 1st April.

What on earth (or in heaven) did this man consider the Mass to be—the Royal Variety Performance, or what? Did the presence of Christ in the gathered community—together, not on the other side of a television screen—mean nothing to him? Or did he consider himself superior to the great grey unwashed collection of plebs who formed the Body of Christ in his parish?

Above all, how was he to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, the focus of today’s Feast, through a TV screen? Seemingly, that Body and Blood, which his ancestors and ours had risked their lives to offer and receive as they crept secretly to Mass “in silent farm, on lonely hill” (Ronald Knox) were less important than his own intellectual and aesthetic superiority. Apparently, he cared nothing for Jesus’ words “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever, and revealing them to mere children”. He was one of the “learned and the clever”, and the anawim , the Poor of the Lord, with their second rate liturgy, could go hang. Arrogance of that sort really takes some beating.

I was once asked whether, if I had been alive at the time of the English Reformation, I would have conformed to the new order of things. Making all due allowance for my innate cowardice and fear of pain and hardship, I replied that I hoped not, as I could not live without the Body and Blood of Christ, which the “reformed” order could not offer me. I actually suspect that sheer bloody mindedness might have supplied what courage lacked, and that I would have refused conformity because I am by nature downright contrary, and ever since my schooldays have resented unjust and arbitrary authority.

Nevertheless, I do hope that my motivation might have risen higher, that I would always have been driven, that I always will be driven, by hunger and thirst for the Body and Blood of Christ, which are vital, beyond our liturgical preferences and our intellectual or aesthetic sensibilities.

Trinity Sunday Year C

Trinity Sunday 2025

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

To begin, something which has nothing to do with the Holy Trinity, except insofar as the Trinity is at the root of everything good. I have to tell you about an insight which blew my head apart on Tuesday evening.

I was still very much on the sick list, still not steady enough to celebrate Mass, and so I was waiting for one of the Sisters to bring me Holy Communion. As part of my preparation to receive Our Lord, I flicked my phone onto the Rosary from Lourdes. The camera was focused on the mosaic of the Annunciation in the Rosary Basilica, while the (African) priest was reading St. Luke’s account of the event.

Just as he reached the moment of Our Lady’s consent, Sister arrived, bringing the Eucharistic Jesus, and, as I received Him, it struck me with overwhelming force that, at that moment, I was in a similar position to Our Lady, both of us having the Body of the Redeemer within us. As that awareness grew in the moments after Communion, I found it filling my mind, and I was soon sobbing my heart out.

That isn’t the point, though: the point is that this is true of everyone, every time we receive Jesus in Holy Communion. Each of us is, at that moment, what Mary is and always has been, a Theotokos—a God-bearer—each carrying the living God within ourselves. That is truly mind-blowing.

Okay—after the ecstasy, go and do the laundry. What do you and I need to know about the Blessed Trinity? Firstly, it is the best that we humans can do as an attempt to describe God. We will always fall short, because God is greater than our understanding, and will always be beyond our grasp and comprehension.

This doctrine states that God is three distinct persons, yet one God. I shy away from terms like “nature” and “substance”, because it is very easy to stray into heresy. In the early centuries of the Church, during the Arian controversy, a large proportion of the Church was in heresy and schism, literally because of one iota—the Greek equivalent of the letter “i”. “The Arians put an iota, where they really shouldn’t oughter.” (I am quite chuffed with that.)

We assign to the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity the titles “Father” “Son” and “Holy Spirit”, again the best we can do. The most important aspect of the Trinity is that it is an expression of total, self-giving love. Theologians interpret it in terms of the Father eternally begetting the Son in a perpetual expression of mutual love, that love being the Holy Spirit. Once again, this is our best effort at grasping the ungraspable.

For us, the most important factor is that God does not (cannot?) keep this love to Himself. It has spilled over into the act of Creation, in whatever way Creation has taken place and continues to take place. Furthermore, it continues to spill over in ongoing love for the world, and particularly for human beings made “in the image and likeness” of God, again whatever exactly that may mean.

Essentially, from our point of view, the Holy Trinity is the ultimate expression of total love, a love which animates us. It enables us to love, and demands of us that we be people of love. If we know nothing else about the doctrine, that should be enough.

Pentecost Year C

Pentecost 2025

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

No, no, no, no, no! Bloomin’ ‘Erbert, Holy Spirit! You’ve got me in a right tangle here! I had the perfect introduction all worked out for my Pentecost homily. I knew exactly what I wanted to say: I wanted to focus on the different ways in which the Holy Spirit came to the apostles on Easter Sunday—the gentle breathing of the power to forgive sins—and at Pentecost—the spectacular descent in wind and flame for the preaching of the Gospel. For that reason, I opted to keep the Year A readings, rather than use the optional readings offered for Year C.

Then what? For no particular reason, I decided to check my homily from last year, and discovered to my horror that my bright new ideas were identical with those which I’d had a year ago, even down to the expression “all bells and whistles” which I had planned as a description of the Pentecost event.

“Ah” you may say, “that’s an example of the Spirit at work, stopping you from repeating yourself”. That’s all very well, I will reply, but couldn’t the Spirit have stopped me coming up with the repetition in the first place, and will the Spirit inspire me with something else to say?

Incidentally, I mentioned last year that I had changed my planned introduction, and wondered whether the Holy Spirit might have had a hand (or a wing) in that—SNAP! Another question strikes me: should I speak of the Holy Spirit as He, She, or It? In Latin, the Holy Spirit is masculine—Spiritus Sanctus—in Greek, neuter—hagion pneuma—and I am told that the Hebrew ruah is feminine, though I don’t know that for certain.

That in itself is useful. The Holy Spirit has no gender: the Holy Spirit simply IS. The Spirit does not descend wearing a badge indicating His, Her, Its preferred pronoun. God is above and beyond gender. We follow Jesus, the human face of God, and a male face at that, in speaking of Father and Son, but the Spirit defies categorisation. As Jesus says in another place: “The wind (or Spirit) blows where it will, and so it is with everyone who is born of God”. The Spirit blows where It will, and in whatever form It/He/She will, appearing as a dove, or a tongue of flame, or as a wind which shakes our foundations and our comfortable and comforting categories.

God cannot be defined, because to deFINE someone is to put a FINIS, a limit, upon them, and God has no limits. That is why, at the burning bush, God refused to answer Moses’ question about a name, because a name too imposes limits, and to know someone’s name is to give you power over them: you can track them down, “put tabs” on them, summon them.

In the person of Jesus, God for a time put limits on Himself, by taking a name and a human form, restricting Himself largely by the limitations of human nature, and allowing Himself to be understood in terms of human Fatherhood. The Holy Spirit has no such restrictions: The Spirit may come as breath, as a shattering wind, or as fire, but the Spirit is not breath or wind or fire, is not a He, She, or It. All that we can say is that the Holy Spirit comes from Father and Son as gift, pure gift, unrestrained gift.

How then does the Spirit come to you? And make no mistake—the Spirit does come/has come/will come to you, not only at your Baptism and Confirmation, but always, now and every day. And for what purpose does the Spirit come? The Easter Sunday Spirit came to impart the power to forgive sins: the Pentecost Spirit came to begin the preaching of the Gospel. For what does the Spirit come to you?

Firstly, the Spirit comes to you to enable you to say “Jesus is Lord”, to enable you to have faith and to profess that faith. Every time you kneel, sit, stand, or walk to pray, the Holy Spirit is moving you to that prayer, however inadequate or distracted your prayer may seem. Every good action you perform, every kind word you say, every positive thought that you have, is a gift from the Holy Spirit. Every occasion on which you keep your temper in spite of provocation, bite back the criticism you were about to utter, push aside the bad thought from your mind, the Holy Spirit is working in you. Easter, Pentecost, Baptism, Confirmation are all particular occasions of the Spirit in action, an action which continues always, and for which you should remember to ask.

7th Sunday of Easter Year C

7th Sunday of Easter 25

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

Last week, it seemed to me that there were three statements which formed focal points in the day’s Gospel: today, I would suggest that there are three words which are “come”, “one”, and “love”.

Let’s take “come” first of all. Were it not for a final blessing—“the grace of the Lod Jesus be with you all”—the Bible would end with the call “Come, Lord Jesus”. The Book which we identify as the word of God effectively ends with a prayer that Jesus, who is Lord, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, will come.

Come how? Come when? Come where? “Ah, that’s easy,” you may say. “Come in glory at the end of time”—and you will be correct. We do indeed pray for the Second Coming of Christ, when the glorified Jesus will return in that glory to judge the world, and to call His people to Himself. That is how the early Church interpreted this prayer. They believed that the end of the world was imminent, and prayed that it would happen in their lifetime.

The end of the world and the Second Coming of Christ may occur in our lifetime: the increasing degradation of planet Earth, which is liable to accelerate with the election of climate change denying governments and, in this country, of similarly minded Local Authorities, may make that event more likely than in former ages. Yet whilst we do pray for Jesus to return in glory, we do not have the right to hasten that coming by wilfully destroying our world, any more than we have the right to hasten our own deaths by self-destructive lifestyles. The end of things must happen in God’s own way, and in God’s own time.

Yet this prayer “Come Lord Jesus” has a second and deeper meaning. We should recall at all times something of which we are reminded each Advent, assuming that we do not reduce Advent to nothing more than a preparation, however spiritual, for the Feast of Christmas. Advent too entails a preparation for the Second Coming. In addition, we need to recall St. Bernard’s words about a “third coming, between the other two” as he expresses it. We pray, in Advent, but also throughout the year, that Jesus will come more completely into our lives today, here and now, changing those lives and changing the world by his presence. Thus, every day, we should make those closing words of the Bible our own: “Come Lord Jesus”, not only at the end of time but today and every day.

Moving on to the word “one” we find it four times in the six verses of today’s Gospel. In verse 21 of this High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, as it is known, Our Lord prays for those who believe in Him “that they may all be one, just as you Father are in me, and I in you”. In the following verse He adds “That they may be one, even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly (or ‘ultimately’) one” in order that the world may believe in God’s love.

In this prayer, therefore, which John sets in the supreme context of the Last Supper, Jesus the High Priest prays repeatedly for the complete unity of all who believe in Him. This then must be our prayer too. Great progress has been made since the Second Vatican Council sixty years ago, yet there is also another trend which currently acts against unity.

This is the rise of self-styled “evangelical” churches which, ironically, ignore the Gospel (evangelium) from which they draw their name, by giving little or no importance to the Eucharist. In some places, particularly in South America, they are actually drawing people away from the Catholic Church in which, as the Council reminded us, the Church founded by Christ “subsists”. Pope Francis made great strides in drawing these groups towards unity, but we must still pray more earnestly that the Holy Spirit will reveal to them the centrality of the Eucharist.

As the prayer of Jesus reveals, unity is to model that unity between the Father and the Son which is itself the Holy Spirit, and is the source and sign of the love within the Trinity, and of God’s love for the world. This love, the third of today’s words, undergirds not only the whole of Jesus’ prayer, but also the whole of His mission. It is the reason for our prayer “Come” and for the desire for unity. COME, Lord Jesus, that we may be ONE in your LOVE.

Ascension Thursday Year C

ASCENSION THURSDAY 2025

Acts 1:1-11; Luke 24: 46-53

Many, many moons ago, when I was based at Upholland College, another of the priests on the staff was chaplain to the Carmelite convent across the road. One Ascension Thursday, he returned from early Mass at Carmel with the information that the Sisters would be spending an hour standing in choir.

I don’t know whether this is standard Carmelite practice on this Feast, but despite my immense regard for Carmel, it struck me then, as it strikes me now, as a very odd thing to do. It seems to entail the exact opposite of the angels’ rebuke to the disciples, when they told the latter not to stand around gawping, but to get on with the task in hand.

What was that task? It was, St Luke tells us, on Jesus’ authority, to “stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high”. In other words, they were to prepare for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Did they carry out this task, and if so, how? They, we are told, “worshipped Him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the Temple blessing God”. We know also from the Acts of the Apostles that for the rest of the time, they gathered in the Upper Room praying in the company of Our Lady, along with the women and the members of Our Lord’s extended family.

During this time, says Luke, they had great joy. Note that: “great joy”, not “great fear”, as careless preachers and writers would have you believe. They have kept company with the Risen Christ, they have seen Him return to the Father, and now they rejoice to carry out His commands, awaiting the empowerment which will enable them to be His witnesses.

Now comes the weekly—indeed daily—question “What about us?” We should imitate Our Lady and the disciples. We shouldn’t stand around gawping, we should have great joy, we should spend time in worship, and we should pray for the Holy Spirit to come down on us, to make us witnesses to the Risen and Ascended Christ in today’s world. Let’s get on with it.

6th Sunday Year C

6th Sunday of Easter 2025

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

Three different statements by Our Lord in today’s Gospel strike me very powerfully. Firstly, “If anyone loves me, they will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we shall come to them and make our home with them.” Secondly, “The Helper (Advocate, Encourager, Paraclete) whom the Father will send in my name will teach you everything”, and thirdly, “Let not your hearts be troubled, nor let them be afraid.”

On the principle that the last shall be first, I shall look at the first of them and ask “Is your heart troubled…and if not now, is it ever troubled?”

I suspect that we should be very strange people if our hearts were never troubled: in fact, we should be insensitive people. We inevitably feel our own troubles and, please God, the troubles of others; and some of us are prone to depression, a painful yet potentially fruitful illness. The questions are: what troubles us? And how do we deal with those troubles?

There is a story about a barmaid who went down into a cellar to change a barrel. After half an hour, she hadn’t reappeared, so the landlord went down to look for her. He found her sitting on the floor, her head in her hands, weeping, the tap of the barrel open, and the beer escaping in torrents.

“I was thinking” she moaned. “What if I should get married one day, and have a daughter, and she should come to work here, and come down into the cellar, and someone should have spilt beer on the floor, and she should slip in it, and fall and bang her head, and die?”

Are some of your troubles and mine like that: worries about things which may never happen, and over which we have no control? When I am troubled, anxious, angry about anything, I tell myself to ask myself—though I don’t always obey myself—“Can I do anything about this?” The answer is always “Yes”, because I can always pray: I can put the matter in God’s hands.

Then, is there anything else that I can do? Perhaps I can actively intervene, and deal with whatever the problem is. If it is a wider issue, perhaps I can email someone, or sign a petition, or make a financial contribution. If there is nothing in which I can actively participate, then once again I can pray. Ultimately, I can place whatever it is in God’s hands, and ask Him to deal with it: He is far better at it than I am, and He has had more practice. Then, as far as possible, I should stop worrying, and I should lift up my heart. Our hearts should be engaged, but our trust should be in God, and our troubles, as far as we are able, handed over to Him.

Now, let’s move on to that first statement: “If anyone loves me, they will keep my word”. Do you, do I, try to keep God’s word, to direct our life by it? If we do, “My Father will love them, and we shall come to them, and make our home with them”. Do you believe that God—Father, Son, and Spirit—lives with and in you? Is your heart open in welcome to God? Jesus is not a teacher, whose example we follow: He is God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and He, the Father, and the Spirit, live in us and are at home in us. What greater gift, what greater source of encouragement and consolation, can there be than that?

If even that is not enough for us, “The Advocate, whom the Father will send in my name”—notice the Trinity working together—“will teach you everything”. A fortnight from today, we shall celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, recalling the outpouring of the Spirit upon the infant Church, and we shall be reminded also of the gentle breathing of that same Spirit which occurred on Easter Sunday evening. As with our weekly or daily celebration of Mass, that is not merely the remembering of a past event, but the making present of that event, here, and now, and forever.

Are you and I prepared, over the next fortnight, to open ourselves to a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit? Are we open to recognising the presence of God, dwelling in us? If you and I are willing to answer “Yes” to those questions, then we can confidently hand over to God whatever may trouble our hearts.

5th Sunday of Easter Year C

5th Sunday of Easter 2025

Acts 14:21-27; Apocalypse 21:1-5; John 13: 31-35

“There’s glory for you” said Humpty Dumpty.

“I don’t know what you mean by glory” said Alice

“When I use a word” said Humpty Dumpty, “it means exactly what I want it to mean, neither more nor less”. (Lewis Carroll)

Humpty Dumpty is far from alone: all sorts of people from advertisers to politicians manipulate words, giving them the meaning which they have decided, shaping them to their own agenda. George Orwell’s “1984” shows where this can take us, with Oceania’s Ministry of Peace, which exists to make war; the Ministry of Truth, which handles propaganda; and the Ministry of Love, which is responsible for torture. We need to be on our guard, not always taking words at their face value, and being careful that we, at least, mean what we say.

For Humpty Dumpty, “glory” allegedly means “a good knock down argument”. What does it mean for us? Or, to be more precise, what did it mean for Our Lord when He spoke of being glorified, and of God being glorified in Him?

We need first to recall the basic scriptural meaning of the word. In the Bible, “glory” is shorthand for the presence of God, especially as revealed to human beings. This revelation often took the form of a cloud, as in the cloud and the pillar of fire which led the Israelites through the wilderness, and the cloud from which the Father spoke to Peter, James and John at the Transfiguration.

Jesus, as the Son of God, shared in that glory. In his Prologue, John tells us that “we have seen [Jesus’] glory, that glory which is His as the only begotten of the Father” (John 1:1-14) and at Cana, the same author tells us that Jesus “let His glory be seen “ (John 2:11) even though it was not yet His hour. Then, at the Transfiguration, the three disciples “saw His glory” (Luke 9:32).

If then the glory is the revelation of God’s presence, what does Our Lord mean when He speaks of Himself, the Son of Man, being glorified, and God being glorified in Him? Jesus’ glory is found and realised in His total conformity to the Father’s will. It will entail His being lifted up on the Cross, because for John, glory, the revelation of God, is shown not only in the Resurrection, but in the Crucifixion itself, the ultimate sign of surrender to God.

Are we to share in that glory? Indeed we are, by loving one another jut as Jesus has loved us.  How has He loved us? By giving His life for us, so that our love for one another must be a self-sacrificing love, a love which brings US to the Cross. There is nothing soppy or sentimental about it: if it is genuine, it will lead us at times to Gethsemane and to Calvary.

Yet it was through Gethsemane and Calvary that Our Lord attained the fullness of His glory. As it was for Him, so it is for us. Paul and Barnabas, as they approached the end of their First Missionary Journey, warned the disciples that “through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God”. That doesn’t mean that we should go looking for “tribulations” or that we should be miserable people. Tribulations will come, but in their own way they can and should be a source of joy. They are the price of love, as anyone who has lost a loved one will know. More than that, they are a share in the sufferings of Jesus the Christ, and therefore both a sharing in His redemptive work, and the means of glory.

The author of the Apocalypse (whether he is the author of the Fourth Gospel or not is disputed) tells us that “God will wipe away every tear from our eyes”. Before tears can be wiped away, they must have been shed. We must, if we are to be the loving disciples whom Jesus demands, weep in compassion with our brothers and sisters throughout the world: their sufferings must be ours. Their Cross is the Cross of Jesus: it is through bearing with Him, and with them, that we come to glory.

4th Sunday of Easter year C

4th Sunday of Easter 2025

Acts 13: 14, 43-52; Apocalypse 7:,13, 14-17; John 10: 27-30

Fifty years ago, on this Fourth Sunday of Easter—Good Shepherd Sunday, Vocations Sunday, whatever you wish to call it—I was let loose for the first time on an unsuspecting world to preach. Along with the rest of my year group in the seminary, I was approaching ordination to the diaconate, and in preparation we were sent two or three times into local parishes to deliver a homily.

On this Sunday in 1975, I turned up at the small church in Sacriston, a village in Co. Durham, where the parish priest rejoiced in the name of Malachy Mulligan. His sister, who kept house for him, addressed him as “Father”, and referred to him as “the priest”. The church proved to be packed with people of all shapes, sizes and ages, though in the 1970s North East, of only one colour.

I have never visited Sacriston since that day. If I were to return now, I would probably find that the church, if still open, no longer has a resident priest, or if it has, that he is responsible for at least two other churches. I suspect that it is no longer packed on a Sunday, and that there will be few people present below middle age.

Meanwhile, the seminary at Ushaw, home in my day to well over a hundred students, closed some years ago, whilst the Senior Seminary at Upholland, on this side of the country, will have been fifty years closed this summer. St. John’s, Wonersh, in the South of England, has also gone. Only two seminaries remain within these shores: Oscott, in the Midlands, and Allen Hall in London. For British students there are also Valladolid in Spain, which provides an introductory year, and the English and Scots Colleges in Rome, as well as the Beda, which trains older students from the whole English speaking world.

We are enduring in the western world, and not least in Great Britain and Ireland, a shrinkage in the number of priests which would have been unthinkable in the heady days of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Yet we can claim that this isn’t our main problem. The real issue is a shortage of people, from whom priests, religious sisters, monks and others are drawn. How many young people are to be found in church, especially in the former Catholic heartlands of Northern England? Some larger cities, London in particular, may fare better because they have benefited from the presence of immigrant families from Africa, India, and Eastern Europe, whose children largely practise their faith, which in turn has a knock on effect on home grown teenagers, who feel less isolated in church when they see people of a similar age.

In that respect, we are beginning to see a slight growth further north. Until recently, the great majority of immigrants into Northern England have been of Pakistani Muslim heritage: in once Catholic Preston, there are far more people to be found in the mosque than in church. A less numerous arrival of Catholics from Africa and India is now beginning to affect congregations in northern towns and cities, which brings some hope for the future, whilst the Church of England is finding potential ordinands among newcomers from Iran, of all unlikely places.

How does all this relate to Good Shepherd Sunday? Our Lord makes the point that His sheep follow Him because they hear His voice, and they know Him. How well do you and I know the Lord? How prepared are we to listen to His voice? How willing are we to follow?

Great efforts have been made, great initiatives undertaken, to spread the Gospel and to build the Church. For decades the cry was “We must do something for the youth”. In addition to spending on Catholic schools, youth centres were established, both residential and non-residential, all over the country; Catholic Youth Workers were employed; and a National Youth Service was established. All of this was highly commendable and apt for its time.

Times, however, change. “Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis”—“Times change, and we change among them”. Has the time perhaps come for fewer initiatives, less activity? Are these the days for less speaking, more listening? For less attempting to lead, more commitment to following? Vocations are, by definition, calls, and calls must be heard. If we are constantly busy, constantly talking, how will we hear the voice of the Lord? How will we know where to follow? Perhaps Good Shepherd Sunday is, above all, an invitation to listen, and, in listening, to read the signs of these times, which ae not the times of fifty years ago—to listen, to know, and to follow.

3rd Sunday of Easter Year C

3rd Sunday of Easter 2025

Acts 5: 27-32, 40-41; Apocalypse 5:11-14; John 21:1-19

I don’t know about you, but I am not wildly enthusiastic about some of the Mass translations which have been with us now for a dozen years or more. Today, for instance, I miss the previous version of the Opening Prayer which included the words “you have made us your sons and daughters, and restored the joy of our youth”.

“You have restored the joy of our youth”. In other words, “you have made us young again”. For those of us who were altar servers in the days of the Tridentine Mass, that statement may recall the dialogue during Psalm 42, when the priest declared “Introibo ad altare Dei” (I will go in to the altar of God) to which we responded “ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meam” (to God who gives joy to my youth). Whether that was a correct translation of the original Hebrew I have no idea, but it was gloriously encouraging.

Such a prayer becomes more significant, the older we become. To have the joy of our youth restored, to become once more enthusiastic, excited, filled with hope, willing to learn—the greater our number of years, the more we need these qualities. In the film “The Young Ones” itself now more than sixty years old, Cliff Richard sang “We may not be the Young Ones very long”. In one sense that is true: in its deepest sense it need not be so.

One of the youngest people I have known was the late Mgr. Lawrence McCreavy, Professor of Moral Theology in the seminary at Ushaw. “Bomber” or “Bull Mac” as he was known was approaching eighty when I knew him, yet he remained young. By his own admission, he had short fuses, but he was always capable of laughing at himself. His homilies were short and to the point, he never missed a College sporting fixture, and he was keenly interested in every student, both present and past. He had never lost “the joy of his youth”; the years told one story, whilst his attitude told another.

Every Christian should be youthful because of Easter, because Christ is risen. Each Easter we are reborn in Him. For all of us at this season, those sentiments apply which GK Chesterton, in his autobiography, lavished upon the penitent who emerges from the sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession): “He stands, as I said, in the white light at the worthy beginning of the life of a man. He may be grey and gouty, but he is only five minutes old.” So I have to ask: are you the Young Ones, and if not, why not?

But what about Peter, who is told what will happen to him when he is old? “You will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go”. Allegedly, this was a recognised circumlocution (By heck! I’m chuffed with that word!) for crucifixion. Peter will have to be young enough in spirit to face a cruel death. He will have to retain the enthusiasm which martyrs have.

There are many ways of being carried “where we do not want to go”. I was very young, indeed a deacon approaching priestly ordination, when I was told that I was to go to the Junior Seminary to teach Classics. My years in Grammar School had given me a hearty dislike of teachers, and I certainly had no desire to be one, but the appointment in fact helped to keep me young, with the company of teenagers, and sport several days a week making up for the delay in taking up parish life.

Job losses, illness, relationship breakdowns take many people where they would rather not go, but their attitude to these setbacks can make such experiences into opportunities for growth and learning, if there is sufficient youthfulness of outlook to find positivity in what may seem wholly negative. The Sisters of Nazareth who are based at Nazareth House in Lancaster were shell-shocked a few months ago when told that their community was to be dispersed among several different houses, but they are facing a painful situation with determination and positivity, displaying their own youthfulness and joy in the Lord.

Are you and I positive? Do we rejoice in the new life in the Risen Christ? In that case, we will cope with anything, and so will whoever is chosen to follow Pope Francis as the next successor of St Peter. Remain, please, young and enthusiastic enough to pray that the Holy Spirit will be active in the real life Conclave which approaches, and in guiding the new Pope in the way in which the Lord wants him to go.

2nd Sunday of Easter Year C

2nd Sunday of Easter 2025

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

As I began, as usual, writing this homily on a Monday, I am still reeling at the news of Pope Francis’ death, which I received via a Bidding Prayer at morning Mass. As well as praying for the soul of this great Pope, we must pray fervently for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that this same Spirit may inspire the cardinals who must choose the new successor or St. Peter to guide the Church during the next few years.

I suspect that only the most naïve of individuals would deny that the sort of politicking depicted in the novel and film “Conclave” takes place. Our prayer must be that the Holy Spirit may cut through the shenanigans and ensure that we receive the Chief Shepherd that we need. There is, I am sure, something serendipitous about the timing of Pope Francis’ death, as he, like Pope St. John Paul II, died at Easter, as we celebrated the Lord’s Resurrection and triumph over death.

Turning to today’s readings, I would encourage you to take careful note of the first paragraph of the Gospel, and to consider to which day it refers. Clearly, it speaks about Easter Sunday, when the disciples were both disbelieving and fearful. Remember the timing when you hear that reading again at Pentecost, and recall that it is NOT speaking about Pentecost. Then, if anyone tries to claim, on the basis of that paragraph, that the disciples remained in fear until the Spirit came upon them at Pentecost, you may, with a clear conscience, knock them down and sit on their heads—charitably, of course.

The Risen Christ’s appearances on Easter Sunday banished their fears, and gave them new heart. It was to be another week, however, before Thomas shared in their experience and found his own scepticism overcome. For that, we should be grateful, for Thomas speaks for modern man and woman, the “man on the Clapham omnibus” beloved of early twentieth century writers, but having his origins in the English law courts. Today (perhaps always) people are sceptical about many things, whilst being remarkably credulous about many more, particularly if they appear on social media: “If it’s on Facebook, it must be true”.

In many ways, Thomas represents the Facebook generation. “I didn’t see it first on social media, so I won’t believe it. Prove it!” There is something deeply irrational in the belief that only what is provable can be true, coupled as it so often is with a willingness to believe all kinds of nonsense. Over and over again, the statement attributed to GK Chesterton, though not found in any of his writings, is validated: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing—they believe in anything”.

Thomas fits in well, with his refusal to believe in what he cannot see and touch. “Right!” says the Risen Christ, “See and touch to your heart’s content”. There is enough there to convince the sceptical Thomas, and to encourage us during those times when faith is difficult. It will not convince those who refuse to believe in Thomas, but at least it acknowledges the possibility of difficulty, of the struggle which faith may sometimes entail. Someone who had walked with Jesus, who had seen all that He did, and who had heard all that He said, could still have stumbling blocks to faith: we, therefore, should not feel guilty if our own faith is sometimes far from crystal clear.

Yet, as well as consoling us when we struggle, Thomas may perhaps offer us another form of encouragement. His declaration “My Lord and my God” takes the faith of the early Church a huge step forward, as it is the first unconcealed, unambiguous proclamation of the divinity of Christ. It also provides us with a prayer which demands from Jesus a response of encouragement. If we can pray “My Lord and my God”, as many of us were taught to do at the elevation of the sacred Host and the chalice, we are entitled to hope and trust that He will respond with the gifts of strength, of wisdom, and of courage for which we are crying out.

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday 2025

Acts 10:34, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9

What are the words that spring to mind today? Joy, jubilation, resurrection, victory, new life—these are some of them, all appropriate, and there are many more besides. This cannot be stressed too much, or even enough. This is the feast of the victory of life over death, of good over evil. It tells us that ultimately, sin, evil, even suffering and death, cannot win. By rising from the dead, Jesus the Christ has conquered sin and death, and that conquest is for all of us and for ever. “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it”—for it is an eternal day.

Bank all those positive words. They are ours: they are safe. At the same time, let us not be naïve, or callous. Evil cannot win, but it will continue to have a damned good try—and I use the word “damned” deliberately. Look around the world, and you will see that evil is still rampant, and in so many lives suffering still holds sway. We cannot ignore this, and we must not. To do so would be foolish, and cruel to those who suffer, in so many places, in so many ways.

What then should our reaction, our attitude be? We must not let our awareness of suffering displace our joy. We must wallow in our faith in the Risen Christ. At the same time we must pray, and we must work, that the defeat of evil, already assured, may become ever more complete in our time. As St. Augustine said, many centuries ago, “Sing, but keep on walking” and, we might add, “working”. But do keep singing. “Christ is risen. He is risen indeed, Alleluia!”

Easter Vigil

The Easter Vigil 2025

Luke 24:1-12

We have been keeping vigil: we have been watching and waiting. Yesterday we venerated the Cross, but now the Cross is empty, and today we have been through a non-day, liturgically speaking: nothing has happened until tonight. And tonight, we have no longer waited: we have prepared.

We have scattered the darkness, as the darkness was scattered at creation. We have recounted the works and wonders of God in creation and in the history of salvation. We have sung our Gloria and our Easter Alleluias, all leading up to the greatest proclamation of all—that Christ is risen.

Yet, in one sense, what a half-hearted proclamation that has been. We have found, in St.Luke’s Gospel, more puzzlement than proclamation; more questioning than jubilation. The women are perplexed, the apostles are scornful, Peter is running and marvelling, though the verse about Peter isn’t found in all the manuscripts. After all our build-up, Luke’s account may seem something of a damp squib.

Of course, there was more to come. There were the appearances of the Risen Christ: to Mary Magdalene and the other women, to the apostles in the Upper Room and on the lake shore, to Cleopas and his pal on the road to Emmaus, and so on. It was a gradual unfolding. The penny dropped by stages.

We are more fortunate than the disciples. We have the benefit of hindsight: we know the whole story. No need of puzzlement, of doubt, of questioning for us. Our celebration, our jubilation, can be, and is wholehearted. We can sing our Alleluias with full voice.

But if there is anyone who remains puzzled, who still has questions, there is consolation in tonight’s Gospel. Don’t worry. Don’t be disheartened. You are sharing in the experience of the women and of the disciples. The penny took a while to drop for them: please God, it will drop, in stages, for you.

Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday 2025

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

What should we focus on tonight? Should it be the Passover, and the meal with which, every year, the Jewish people celebrate their escape from slavery in Egypt, when the paschal lamb was sacrificed and the blood smeared on the doorposts, in order that the avenging angel might pass over them?

That certainly deserves our attention, since we believe that Jesus Christ is the true paschal lamb, who was sacrificed for us, saving us by His blood. Hence we have our own version of the Passover meal: the Mass, the Eucharist, which incorporates many features of the Jewish Passover, in which Jesus shared, and in which He transformed the unleavened bread, and one of the ritual cups of wine, into His own Body and Blood.

Perhaps too our minds are drawn to the Passover in these days when we see the Holy Land again in turmoil. We appear to witness a situation every bit as intractable as the Jewish slavery in Egypt. We see a Jewish nation, Israel, planted in Palestine, the ancient Jewish homeland, but one already inhabited by a different people.

The horrors of the situation, present at least since 1948, have reached new levels in the past eighteen months, and it is difficult to envisage a just and equitable solution which might deliver justice for both groups, not least since the Big Powers continue to meddle. We can only pray, and we have a duty and a responsibility to do so, tonight perhaps above all other nights since, as the question and answer of the Jewish Seder, or Passover meal, remind us, this night is different from all other nights.

We should, then focus on the Passover—but not only on the Passover. Every year we read from St. John’s Gospel, which is remarkable, in that his focus differs from that of the other evangelists. He has already set out His Eucharistic theology in chapter 6, so he emphasises the loving service of Jesus in washing the disciples’ feet, and the demand that we love one another as Jesus has loved us.

Here, the Sisters have already carried out the foot-washing within the community, but that doesn’t prevent us from reflecting on its message. We should be metaphorical foot-washers—but also we should be people who need to have our own feet washed. As the Church, we are called to be the People of Mucky Feet, people whose feet have gathered mud, dust, and dirt from tramping around in the service of others.

And if we are true to ourselves, we should be doing that tramping in the less salubrious places, and washing those feet which are most in need. Pope Francis has given us the classic example. Abandoning the tradition of washing the feet of cardinals—who may well stand in greater need than most of spiritual washing—he has taken the ceremony into prison where, changing the rubrics from “viri”, which means “men” in the sense of adult males, to “homines”, “people” without distinction, he has washed women’s feet as well as men’s, Muslims as well as Christians.

It is a demand made of all Christians that we be both foot-washers and people of mucky feet, but perhaps there needs to be a particular emphasis on priests, on whom the spotlight was turned this morning in the Chrism Mass. With fewer priests, often responsible for several parishes, traditional methods of pastoral care, such as knocking on the doors of everyone on the parish register, are no longer feasible. All the more reason then to devise new methods, and not to take refuge in the parish office, struggling full time with Safeguarding policies and Heath and Safety toolboxes.

Right, that’s two focal points considered. I reckon that two remain. St. Paul gives us, tonight, the earliest written, as distinct from oral account, of the institution of the Eucharist, “the source and summit of the Christian life” as the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council described it. The Church makes the Eucharist, and the Eucharist makes the Church: by and through the self-offering of Christ in the Eucharist we live, and by it we are nourished.

Finally, we contemplate the sufferings of Christ which He endured on this night. At the end of Mass, the Blessed Sacrament will be transferred to the Altar of Repose. To me this always seems symbolic of Jesus’ journey from the supper room to the Garden of Gethsemane, and I see the time of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament as our spiritual union with the suffering Christ, sharing His Agony in the Garden, and His mock trials before the High Priest and before Pilate, our being one with Him in His desolation, as we prepare to share, tomorrow, in Hs journey to the Cross. There is indeed much to claim our attention tonight.

5th Sunday of Lent

5th Sunday of Lent 2025

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

“Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on, sin no more.” Why are so many people so eager to condemn others? And in particular, why are self-styled Christians so often the first to condemn? Surely, if we pay attention to Our Lord’s words and actions, we should be the last people to utter condemnations….and yet….

The history of the Church is riddled with anathemas: “If anyone…. Let him be accursed”. “Heretics”, “schismatics”, people with various new theories, have over the centuries been quick to incur the Church’s wrath, often with terrible consequences for their bodies, allegedly for the good of their souls. Everyone has heard of the terrors of the Inquisition, torture and burning at the stake inflicted on all manner of people by men who genuinely believed that they were doing God’s will. One wonders if they had ever read the Gospels.

Today that mindset still exists, though it is found more often among fundamentalist evangelicals than among Catholics, and it has, thank God, effectively disappeared from pronouncements by the Magisterium, the Church’s teaching office, with the Inquisition transformed into the Holy Office, then into the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and currently into a dicastery. Nevertheless, those of a certain age will recall the harsh penalties inflicted, mostly upon priests, if dissent was suspected following the issuing, in 1968, of Humanae Vitae, the encyclical which, contrary to expectations, reaffirmed the Church’s official ban on artificial birth control.

One of the most notorious cases involved the distinguished British theologian Fr. Herbert McCabe OP, who suffered a year’s suspension after beginning a leading article in the Dominican publication “New Blackfriars” with the words “Of course the Church is corrupt”. His reinstatement coincided with the notorious “nun running” scandal which affected the Church in part of India, and which led Fr. McCabe to begin his first leading article on his return “As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted…”. His books, including “The New Creation”, “God Matters”, and “God Still Matters” should convince anyone that Herbert McCabe was a faithful son of the Church.

What really raises hackles, and sets condemnations flying, is anything relating to sexuality. It has been said, not untruthfully, that “today’s society has sex on the brain….which is a very strange place to have it”. Yet the same remark could, I feel, sometimes be applied to the Church, and to religious people in general.

Some months ago, I stumbled across a discussion on Facebook. It was clearly based in America, where these issues are more inclined to have people manning the barricades than is the case on this side of the Atlantic. It was also clearly rooted in the Evangelical community.

A mother had posed the question, which I suspect that most Catholics have by now settled reasonably calmly for themselves: “What should I, as a Christian, do if my child has come out as gay?” One would have thought that the first answer would have been, in the light of Jesus’ words and behaviour: “Keep loving your child. Be accepting. Above all, do not judge or condemn him or her”.

Not a bit of it! Not only did most responses insist that the child in question was destined to burn in Hell: they seemed to relish the thought. Basing their answers on their own interpretation of passages in the Book of Numbers and St. Paul, they took delight in the prospect of torments in store for gay people. Eventually someone--a man, whereas most previous contributors had been women of a particularly vindictive disposition--raised the question “Has no one looked at the Gospels?”

Shock and horror ensued. It was as if someone had broken wind very loudly in church. These people, who regarded themselves not only as Christian but as Evangelical ie. rooted in the Gospel, were horrified that anyone would invoke the Gospels, and Jesus Himself, to question their convictions and their delights.

Yet we must. Elsewhere Jesus is reported as saying “Do not judge: do not condemn…so that you may not be judged, not condemned, yourselves”. His attitude towards the adulterous woman underlines His words for all of us, for we are, ourselves, sinners.

4th Sunday in Lent

4th Sunday of Lent 2025

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

You know that parable, don’t you? Where do you fit into it? Are you the younger son? I suspect that most of us would instinctively identify with him. We know that we have sinned, and that we have a genius for keeping on sinning, even when we have resolved not to. There is something of the selfish, self-centred younger son in all of us.

Perhaps you are someone who can identify with him still more closely. Perhaps you have been out of contact with God, unaware of Him, defiant of Him, or following a lifestyle not in keeping with His will, for some time. If so, then in some ways, so much the better. You will be better able to rejoice in your homecoming, in your return to the embrace of the Father. The confession which has given me the most joy over the years was the one which began “It has been thirty seven years since my last confession”. I wanted to jump through the screen and embrace them.

If you are in that situation—and even if you are not—notice one or two things about both the younger son and the Father. The son doesn’t have what used to be spelt out to us as “perfect contrition”, that is sorrow purely out of love for God. He is sorry for what he has done, he does want to be reconciled with his Father, but in the first place, he is hungry: he wants to be fed. That is his prime motivation.

Then, look at the Father. He doesn’t carry out an interrogation. He doesn’t say “No, you are only out for what you can get”. He doesn’t demand a promise of good behaviour. Firstly, he is on the lookout for his wayward son. He sees the lad while the latter is still “a long way off”, while he is still imperfect, still only on the way. Then he feels compassion: the original Greek says that “he was moved in his entrails (in his guts)”. He feels completely for this scapegrace son.

What does he do next? He takes the initiative. He doesn’t wait for the lad: instead he runs—daft old buffer; he could have done himself a mischief running at his time of life—embraces him (literally “falls on his neck” and kisses him.

What’s that about? The son—perhaps you or me—has been a bad lad. The Father—God—doesn’t care. He is so overjoyed to have him back that he makes a fool of himself. He cuts short the lad’s Act of Contrition, and lavishes favours on him: rings on his fingers, and bells on his toes; roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Do you remember Meatloaf singing “Bat out of Hell”? “Like a sinner before the gates of heaven I’ll come crawling on back to you.” There’s none of that. It’s sheer jubilation. So if you do identify closely with the younger son, you are in for a treat. Get yourself to confession, quick as you like.

But what if you are less like the younger son and more like the older son? You have done your best to be faithful. That is excellent. You have tried not to sin—also excellent. (Incidentally, in the most common form of the Act of Contrition, I would always say “I will try not to sin again” rather than “I will not sin again”, because you will, however hard you try.) There is nothing wrong with the dutiful elder son. Well, except….

Except what? Is it only duty? What about love? Duty can be a dry and bloodless thing: we need more. The alternative title given by Gilbert and Sullivan to “The Pirates of Penzance” was “The Slave of Duty”. Who wants to be a slave? And who wants a slave? Duty is good, but God wants us to love Him, and not merely do our duty by Him. “Why did God make you?” “God made me to know Him, LOVE Him and serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” Duty needs love to accompany it, otherwise it can be lifeless.

The elder son lets himself down. He gives the impression that he is merely dutiful, rather than dutiful and loving. Perhaps this is a superficial impression. Maybe he is merely put out by what strikes him as unfair, but he makes a meal of it (or rather, he refuses to make a meal of it, or to have a meal out of it). Does his attitude ring any bells? Do you or I ever resent favour shown to others, especially if they are “no better than they ought to be”? In human affairs we may be justified, but not where God is concerned. Peevishness, resentment are destructive, and, as with the elder son, they may cause us to miss out on the good things on offer. Last week, we were warned “Don’t grumble”; today it is “Don’t be resentful”.

3rd Sunday in Lent Year C

3rd Sunday of Lent 2025

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

Today’s Gospel strikes me as a strange choice for a Sunday of Lent. On the equivalent Sunday next year (Year A), we shall hear of Our Lord’s encounter with the woman of Samaria: the following year, it will be His cleansing of the Temple. Both of these were significant events in the life and mission of Jesus. Here, by contrast, we have no event recorded. Instead, we have a warning and a parable; important indeed, but lacking that powerful descriptive force which we associate with Lenten Sundays.

(Incidentally, I do recall that thirty years ago, I had gone to stay at Boarbank Hall in the middle of a particularly severe attack of clinical depression. There, the priest who presided at Mass had the invariable habit of picking out one sentence from the readings to repeat before the dismissal, in order that the people could take it away and ponder it. On this occasion, he lighted on the sentence “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did”, exactly what I needed to hear—I DON’T THINK—as I was wallowing in the depth of misery.)

Repentance, a change of heart, mind, and outlook, a rearrangement of our priorities, is an important Lenten theme. The parable too is significant. Am I bearing fruit by my way of life? Can people see that Christ is living in me? If not, how will I repent, and change, and when? The time is growing short.

Nevertheless, I feel that the First and Second Readings may provide more material for reflection. In the Book of Genesis, Moses encounters God in the burning bush, a significant milestone in salvation history. Why was the bush aflame, but not consumed by the flames? Is this an indicator of God’s love, which sets us ablaze, but doesn’t burn us up—instead, it fires us up, and continues doing so.

What does God mean when He speaks of holy ground? Is all ground holy because, as the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote “The world is charged with the grandeur of God”? And are there particularly holy places, such as churches where Christ abides in the tabernacle, which are to be entered with particular reverence? I strongly suspect that the answer to both that second and that third question is “Yes”.

This passage is important too because it sets in train the events which will culminate in the Exodus, the escape of the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt, and their pilgrimage to the Promised Land. This in itself symbolises, as St. Paul explains to the Corinthians, our own escape from slavery to sin, and our pilgrimage to the Kingdom.

Moses wants to know God’s name, in order that the Israelites may have their own tribal god, like those of the Egyptians and the tribes which surround them. God will have none of this. He is not a tribal god: He is I AM, the true, living and only God. He does not have a name like the false gods of the nations: He alone IS.

That makes a nonsense of the practice, popular a few years ago, of filling in the vowels in the title by which God reveals Himself and giving Him the name Yahweh. That is to do what God explicitly refused to do—to give Himself a name and so reduce Him to the status of one of the tribal gods. It is a practice which has been banned by the Church, not only because it is offensive to the Jewish people, but also because it is indeed nonsensical. Hence God’s title is rendered as “THE LORD”.

This in turn gives rise to the I AM sayings attributed to Jesus in St. John’s Gospel: “I AM the bread of life”, “I AM the way, the truth and the life”, “I AM the resurrection and the life” and so on. In His use of I AM, Jesus is claiming identity with the God of the burning bush.

Turing to St. Paul, we find him depicting the Exodus as the template for our pilgrimage to the Kingdom. He reminds the Christians of Corinth that God led the Israelites through the wilderness in a pillar of cloud, which in time took them through the sea. He regards their journey under the cloud and through the sea as a form of baptism. He then mentions “the spiritual food and the spiritual drink”, as they were fed with manna and drank water from the rock. Here we have a foretaste of the spiritual food and drink of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist.

Paul specifically states that Christ was the rock from which they drank, and that Christ followed them through the wilderness. This refers not only to Moses’ striking of the rock at Meribah to draw water from it, but to an ancient legend that this rock followed them. Finally, we have an important warning which we all need to heed: “Do not grumble”, because nothing is more destructive. If I were to leave you with something particular to take away, it would not be “You will all perish” but “DO NOT GRUMBLE”.

2nd Sunday of Lent

2nd Sunday of Lent 2025

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

“Master, it is good that we are here.” Is it? Of course it is., because we are in the presence of God, of that God who spoke to the apostles on the mountain of Transfiguration, of that God who is the Beloved Son, of that God who is the Spirit who enlightens us and guides us, leading us to the mountain.

Where is the mountain of Transfiguration for us? It is here, where Jesus gives Himself to us as food and light. It is everywhere that He gives us a glimpse, however limited, of His glory.

For Martin Luther King, assassinated in 1968, it was in Memphis, where he met his death, and where he apparently had some sort of vision of his own. Do you remember the speech which he made on the eve of his death?

“I’m not fearing any man tonight. Like Moses, I have been to the mountaintop, and I have looked over, and I have seen the Promised Land….mine eyes have seen the glory of the company (sic) of the Lord.”

On the Second Sunday of Lent in 1994, I was asked to preach at the Chaplaincy Centre at Lancaster University. I had in mind my own experience of chaplaincy life more than two decades earlier, and I suggested to the congregation that, for them, this was the mountaintop, that it could be a Transfiguration experience.

I was at university, though not Lancaster, from 1968 to 1971, and those were heady days, though also disturbing days. They were the days of student revolution, of the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, and of the immediate aftermath of Humanae Vitae, the papal encyclical which reaffirmed the ban on artificial birth control.

At times, I didn’t know whether I was on my Catholic head or my Catholic heels, but it was an experience which brought about a deeper understanding of my faith, a new awareness of the Church as community, and a greatly enhanced inner vision of the person of Jesus and of my relationship with Him. For me, the chaplaincy was a mountain of Transfiguration, and I suggested to the new generation of students that it might prove to be the same for them, enabling them to recognise Jesus in a new and brighter light.

What happened after the Transfiguration? Peter had wanted to linger, to stay there forever; hence his suggestion of building three tents. This was not to be: the vision faded, and Jesus was found alone. Peter, James and John had to make their way with Him down the mountain to the valley of everyday life. They were to see Jesus, no longer transfigured, but sweating as if with blood, in the Garden of the Agony, where their memory of the Transfiguration should have sustained them with hope for the future; but it didn’t, their sleepiness on Mt. Tabor matched by their sleepiness in Gethsemane.

My point was that the student congregation too would have to head back down the mountain to the valley of ordinary parish life, to sustain their vision, to recognise the Transfigured Christ in the perhaps less dramatic context of their local parish, among people not of their own age, not always sharing their vision. There they could and should play their own part in rekindling the vision of the Transfiguration, if it had grown dull among perhaps less inspired and less inspiring priests or people.

Interestingly, the chaplain, the late Fr. Joe O’Connor, remarked to me that, for him, the University was the valley, and he looked forward to his return to parish life. I could sympathise, because, in spite of my experience from the student side of the fence, the thought of being a university chaplain filled me with horror. Like Fr. Joe, I found my Mt. Tabor in parish and secondary school life.

So, we come to the inevitable question: what about us? Have you had your Transfiguration moments, the times when you have said “Master, it is good that we are here”? They may not have been overtly religious occasions. Any experience, however apparently secular, which brings us real joy is a sharing in the Transfiguration, because Jesus and His Father are in it, transforming it for us.

It may be falling in love, spending time with a friend, watching a sunrise; there we encounter the Transfigured Christ. In reality, it occurs whenever we gather as God’s people, to be nourished with them by His word and by His body and blood, to share in the sacrifice of Calvary, and in the Resurrection.

It would be too much to expect to have a conscious experience of Transfiguration joy in every celebration of Mass, in every encounter with God’s people. Those “felt” moments are rare. Even the deepest love entails more routine than ecstasy. Two sayings come to mind:

“The glances over cocktails that seemed so sweet, don’t look so amorous over Shredded Wheat”

“After the ecstasy, go and do the laundry”.

Life and love contain more Shredded Wheat than cocktails. Like Peter and His companions, like chaplaincy students, we have to head back down the mountain. Nonetheless, let the memories of our own Transfiguration experiences sustain us, and let us be awake and alert to receive and rejoice in such moments when they come to us again—as they will.

1st Sunday of Lent

1st Sunday of Lent 2025

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

Where are you going? Where are WE going? This is Jubilee Year, Holy Year, and it has been given the overall label “Pilgrims of Hope”. Pilgrims are people who are going somewhere, and so it is fair to ask “Where are you going?” and “Who is going with you?”

The Israelites, led by Moses, and later by Joshua (but ultimately by God) knew where they were going: they were going to the Promised Land. Jesus “full of the Holy Spirit”, we are told, knew where He was going: He was going into the wilderness, led by that same Holy Spirit. There He would learn more about His ultimate journey, to Jerusalem, to the Cross, and finally to Resurrection.

So I ask again “Where are you going? Where are WE going?” The simple answer is: “We are going with them; we are going with Him”. We are going through the wilderness to the Promised Land. We are going into the wilderness, we are going to Jerusalem, to Death, and to Resurrection. AND WE ARE GOING TOGETHER.

Why do I say that? I say that because we are a People. We are the Pilgrim People of God, as the Second Vatican Council reminded us. We are Pilgrims of Hope, as we are told especially this year, and we are journeying, together, to the Kingdom.

Have you ever been ambushed by those people who will seize you, metaphorically, by the throat, and will demand to know “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour?”? I haven’t been so grabbed, but if I were, I think that I would reply “Well, not too personal”. I do, I hope, have a personal relationship with Jesus, but I am saved by Him, not in isolation, but as a member of a People, of that Pilgrim People which journeys together, in the footsteps of the children of Israel, in the footsteps of Jesus the Lord, supported by the whole People of God, the Communion of Saints, those who are with us now, who worship with us now, but also those who have gone before us throughout the ages, the saints and faithful departed, who support us on our way.

It is fascinating that, in what is described as a secular age, this concept of the Communion of Saints lingers, albeit unrecognised. A few years ago, I attended a Humanist funeral. At one point, the teenaged grandchildren of the deceased were invited to speak, and they all uttered what amounted to prayers, trusting that their grandad was watching over them—and you find similar sentiments in Facebook posts. The reality of the Communion of Saints is rooted deeply in the human psyche, even if it is not called explicitly by that name.

There then we have the overall pattern of the Pilgrim People of God, journeying together through the wilderness of life. What though of the particular wilderness of Lent, which we have entered voluntarily—or have we?

Are we not, in fact, led into the wilderness by the Spirit, as Jesus was? And will we not therefore do what Jesus did and, to an extent, encounter what He encountered?

In the wilderness, Jesus prayed and fasted: must we not do the same? I must confess that I have no patience with the view that fasting, self-denial, giving things up, whatever term we use, is negative, and therefore we shouldn’t do it. BALONEY! Jesus did it. Are we going to complain that He was being negative? That He shouldn’t have done it? Do we know better than Jesus? I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy trying that argument.

Will we also be tempted? I imagine so. What? To turn stones into bread? To worship Satan for the sake of earthly power? To throw ourselves down from the steeple of Lancaster Cathedral or the tower of Lancaster Priory? I doubt that—but in ways that attack our weak points.

If you notice, two of Our Lord’s temptations were aimed at His identity. “If you are the Son of God….” said the devil. He wanted Jesus to doubt His identity, to feel the need to prove it, and thus to abandon His trust in the Father. How might we be tempted over our identity?

“If you were really a Christian, you would be doing such and such.”  “If the Church was of God, it wouldn’t have done A B or C.” “If there was a God, this thing or that wouldn’t happen.” All of those temptations to discouragement, to doubt, to despair, may strike us, either from outside, from what people say, or from within ourselves. We can only put our trust in God, cry to Him for help—and that trust will be vindicated.

The other temptation was aimed at that lust for power which lurks, in some form, in all of us. “I will give you…” not for us, all the kingdoms of the world, but a sense of superiority, the ability to put other people down, to consider ourselves better than them, to believe that we are always in the right.

Satan’s temptations were tailor made for the Lord, and they will be tailor made for us. If we are seriously using those aids which Our Lord gave us in the Ash Wednesday Gospel—namely prayer, giving, and self-denial—we will, please God, be able to resist, especially if we remember that we are a people, journeying together, supporting one another, and supported by the whole Body of Christ, travelling with the Lord as Pilgrims of Hope.