21st Sunday of Year C

21st Sunday 2025

Isaiah 66:18-21; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30

The compilers of the Lectionary have been bowling us some real googlies recently, and today is no exception. My question is: are we to be encouraged by today’s readings, or alarmed?

My suspicion is that the answer to that is “a bit of both”. We should be encouraged, but we cannot be complacent. The encouragement can be found in all three readings, which remind us that salvation, and membership of God’s people, are open to everyone and not only to God’s original chosen people, the Jews.

We begin with the conclusion to the Book of Isaiah. This part of the Book, attributed to a prophet whom we call Trito-Isaiah (Third Isaiah), dates from the period after the return of the Jewish people from exile in Babylon, and their settlement in their own ancestral homeland. It was a time of optimism, expressed by the prophet who foresees “all nations and tongues” being brought into God’s people, including those who “have not heard my fame or seen my glory”.

So far, so positive, and we can, to an extent, recognise the fulfilment of that prophecy in the Church, the new Israel. Or should we perhaps say that we see its potential fulfilment? Very many people still do not recognise the one God; and the Church has, over the millennia, behaved abominably towards the Jewish people, the original People of God.

Steps have been taken to address that wrong, especially in “Nostra Aetate” the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on the Church’s relations with non-Christian Religions, which recognises that the Jewish people continue to enjoy a special relationship with God through the Covenants. This was reinforced by Pope Benedict XVI who, in his magnificent three volume “Jesus of Nazareth” stated that we are not in the business of trying to convert Jews, who have their own way to God.

“Nostra Aetate” also states that the Church “rejects nothing that is good” in other non-Christian religions, and expresses particular respect for the Muslims. Sadly, we are only too aware of the persistence of antisemitism, exacerbated by the behaviour of the current Israeli government, and of the persistence of jihadism among Muslims who seek to impose Islam on the world by force.

We find further encouragement in the Letter to the Hebrews, which reminds us that we are sons and daughters of God, a breathtaking realisation. Yet much of this passage is spent pointing out that our relationship with God isn’t all wine and roses, or cakes and ale. It involves discipline, something which Jesus Himself expressed in terms of “taking up the Cross”. Attempting a painless following of Christ is a venture doomed to failure.

Turning to the Gospel, we find the greatest challenge of all, as the Lord declares that many who claim to know Him are in for a rude awakening. The Way of the Cross to which we are called entails striving to “enter through the narrow door”. That doesn’t mean that we should be attempting to make life difficult for ourselves: rather, that if we are truly faithful to Christ, then He will give us a share in His sufferings.

If we claim to know Jesus, but do not encounter suffering, then that is not the true Jesus, but a figure of our own making. If the Cross does not chafe our shoulders at times, if our path seems completely smooth, then we are on the wrong path, and we will not find the narrow door to which Jesus directs us. There is no need to go in for self-flagellation; our genuine commitment to Jesus, our faithful carrying of the Cross, will do that for us.

This passage may at first strike us as grim, but once more there is plenty to encourage us. “People will come from East and West and from North and South to recline at table in the Kingdom of God.” Potentially, those people are us, who were not part of the original chosen people, but who have now been adopted as sons and daughters of God. In the last analysis, the question is “What are we making of that adoption?”

20th Sunday Year C

20th Sunday 2025

Jeremiah 38:4-6,8-10; Psalm 39(40); Hebrews 12:1-4; Luke 12:49-53

“Well, here’s a how-de-do” as Gilbert and Sullivan have Yum Yum sing in the Mikado. I am constantly encouraging people to be positive—to avoid negativity—yet here we have a set of readings which verge on the gloomy. Is positivity then mistaken?

“Certainly not!” I would reply. We are called to be positive, but we are also called to be realistic. The Christian life, whilst rooted in the positive, entails a sharing in the Cross. The Cross leads to resurrection, but it is still painful as we carry it, and as we share in the Lord’s death. Life in Christ is not all beer and skittles.

As Christians, we are not called to be Pollyanna, to fix our faces in a relentless grin. I have no patience with the “Smile, Jesus loves you” brigade. As I have mentioned before, I am sorely tempted to bop them on the nose and to say “Try smiling now, Sunshine”. Our call is to trust in God always to lead us through the Dark Night, to keep us positive in faith, hope, and love.

It is against this background that we contemplate today’s readings. First, we meet Jeremiah, who has a reputation as a prophet of doom. Indeed, his name has become part of the language, somewhat unfairly: someone who always looks on the dark side may be called a Jeremiah.

Yet Jeremiah’s prophecies were based on an accurate assessment of the state of things. The people of Judah and Jerusalem had turned away from God, and Jeremiah was merely warning them of the consequences, in terms of destruction and exile. Events proved him correct.

Secretly, the king knew that Jeremiah was right, and he took little persuasion to rescue and restore him. Had he and his successors had the courage of their convictions and followed Jeremiah’s instructions, the Babylonian Exile might have been averted.

Jeremiah’s plight is echoed by the psalm. “He drew me from the deadly pit, from the miry clay,” which is exactly what happened to the prophet. A seemingly gloomy psalm ends on a note of trust and hope: “Wretched and poor though I am, the Lord is mindful of me. You are my rescuer, my help: O God, do not delay.”

Likewise, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, whilst recognising the difficulties which we will face, is positive in his outlook. He urges us to look to Jesus, to contemplate His sufferings and the opposition He endured, but to recognise that He was ultimately triumphant.

Opposition is also a hallmark of Our Lord’s remarks in the Gospel. He draws attention to the sufferings which He Himself faces, and point out that He will be the object and cause of division and strife. Thus will be fulfilled Simeon’s prophecy at the Presentation of the forty day old Jesus in the Temple, which, like this passage, is found in St. Luke’s Gospel. Simeon, as you recall, declared that “this child will be the cause of the rise and fall of many in Israel” and that “He will be a sign that is rejected” (or “a sign that is spoken against” or “a sign of contradiction”).

So events have proved. Throughout the ages, presumably because of the existence of evil, wars have been fought and families divided over the name and person of Jesus. I have mentioned before the elderly lady in my home parish who described how, as a young woman, she was put out of the house when she declared her intention of becoming a Catholic. Many years later, her only son became a priest. I have also referred to the young man who, over forty years ago, told me that his atheist parents had declared that, if he became a Christian, they would no longer regard him as their son.

The following of Christ will always bring the Cross into our lives in one way or another. Far from this being a reason for negativity, it should be a cause for rejoicing as it will bring us closer to Him, and to the “cloud of witnesses” mentioned in the Letter to the Hebrews, and will lead us to the Resurrection.

Assumption 15th August

Assumption 2025

Apocalypse 11:19,12:1-6,10; 1Cor 15:20-27; Luke 1:39-56

“Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”

That line was written by William Wordsworth as a description of Our Lady. He was speaking of the Immaculate Conception—her preservation from all stain of sin—but the description is equally fitting for today’s feast of the Assumption.

In that line by Wordsworth (who, incidentally, wasn’t a Catholic) every word is significant, not least “our”. Mary is one of us: she is OUR Lady because she is OURS. We can even go further and say “she is US”.

Mary is us at our best. She is what we are called to be, a truth which is sometimes expressed by saying that she is the eschatological ikon of the Church—yet in reality, not only of the Church, but of the whole human race. She is the one created being who has fulfilled what, from the beginning, our nature was intended to be, free from sin and raised body and soul to the fullness of life with God.

The claim is sometimes made that the Assumption of Our Lady is “not in the Bible”. That depends what you mean by “not in the Bible”. There is no actual description of the event, but so much is said in both Testaments about the promises made to God’s people that it is impossible not to see the Assumption as the fulfilment of those promises.

As Elizabeth says, when visited by the newly pregnant Mary, the latter is “blessed because she believed that there will be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord”. The word for “fulfilment” is, in the Greek of the Gospel, teleiosis which conveys the concept of ultimate conclusion, of the end of things. It is from the same root—telos—as the word which Jesus was to se to mean “perfect”, “complete”, “thoroughly made” and relates to the end of time. Elizabeth may have been thinking only of the promise of the birth of the Saviour, but at this time she is prophesying under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and in speaking of teleiosis, she is unwittingly proclaiming, in Mary, the fulfilment of all God’s promises.

This is brought out still further in Mary’s response, the Magnificat. How much of this was actually spoken by Mary herself is irrelevant. This is the inspired word of God, delivered by the Holy Spirit, and at its conclusion it speaks not only of the personal promise to Our Lady, but also of the promises to all God’s people, right back to the days of Abraham.

It is these promises which are to be fulfilled in Mary, and to cause “all generations to call [her]blessed”. Those extremist self-styled evangelicals who deny honour to Mary are rejecting the very Gospel which they claim to uphold.

We find a similar teleological—end of time—theme in the extract from the Apocalypse which forms our First Reading. This clearly refers to Mary in the person of “the woman clothed with the sun” who brings forth “the male child who is to rule all the nations”. She is also the Ark of the Covenant, as she carried God within herself.

Yet scripture scholars point out that this woman is also Israel, and the Church. In other words Mary, present in heaven, is there as the representative of all God’s people. In her, the people of Israel, and of the new Israel which is the Church, are already present in heaven. This is indeed a reason for all generations to call her blessed, because her Assumption is also ours: in Mary fulfilled, in us awaited. She is indeed OUR Lady because she is ours, because she is us.

19th Sunday of Year C

19th Sunday 2025

Wisdom 18:6-9; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke12:32-48

“Everyone to whom much was given, of them much will be required.”

What have you been given? Not much, if you take heed of the moaners and groaners who appear to form a considerable portion of our society. According to them, whatever they had has been taken away; and everything, and particularly this country, is going to hell in a handcart.

Are they correct? Indeed, there are people who are in the grip of poverty, but they tend not to be among the moaners and groaners. The genuine poor are too busy trying to make ends meet to waste their time complaining. It is generally the relatively comfortable who have the leisure to bemoan their lot. It is difficult not to feel that, if they were given everything, they would still find something to grumble about. Frequently, what is involved is attitude rather than reality. Negativity is a very easy state of mind to develop, but it is destructive, addictive, contagious, and sinful.

What then of you and me? We must resist the temptation towards negative attitudes, because they will take us over and, by degrees, destroy us. We need always to consider and reflect upon our blessings, developing a positive mindset, recognising what is good, and consequently being motivated to improve what is less than good.

We have indeed been given a great deal. Indeed, we have been given everything, because we have been given Jesus Christ, God the Son, as one of us. Through our Baptism, we have been given new life in Him; we have, through Baptism and Confirmation, received the Holy Spirit. Similarly, we have been given the Mass, the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the ongoing presence of Jesus’ own sacrifice, which He offered through His life, and particularly through His suffering, death, and resurrection.

Every time we come to Mass, we encounter Christ in the gathering of His people, in His word proclaimed in the Scriptures, in the person of the priest, and in the Sacrament and Sacrifice of His Body and Blood. We have too His abiding presence in the tabernacle, His healing presence in the Sacrament of Reconciliation and in the Sacrament of the Sick, and for some in the Sacraments of Matrimony or Holy Orders.

Furthermore, we have been granted membership of the Church, the Body of Christ, united with our brothers and sisters throughout the world, in communion with them and with those who have gone before us throughout the ages, gathered in union and communion with the successor of Peter. I always cringe when I hear the term “our Church”: it isn’t OUR Church, it is the Church of Christ, and we are members of it, of Him, and of one another. Nor is it our Church as distinct from other people’s Church: it is THE Church, and it is His.

Likewise, we have been given the gift of faith which, as the Letter to the Hebrews points out, must be fulfilled in action, as it was by Abraham and Sarah, and by the other patriarchs and saints. This is where we encounter the demand, of which Jesus speaks in the Gospel.

Faith has been given to us, not to lie fallow, or to be brought out only on Sundays, though it must be brought out then, as we recognise our communion with our brothers and sisters, and fulfil part of our duty to God. It needs to be the driving force of our lives.

More and more we seek to entrust our lives to God. Like Abraham, we are constantly on a journey. We do not know from day to day what God will ask of us, as Abraham did not know where his journey would lead.

Each day we are called to recognise the events of that day as elements of our call from God. What is God asking of us when such or such a thing happens, when something unexpected occurs, or even when life appears to be a matter of routine?

Perhaps we do not know. We need therefore to be people who reflect, who ponder the events of our lives, to consider what God may be saying to us among them. Above all, as Our Lord’s parables remind us, we need to be people who realise that He is always among us, always within us; that His coming to us relates not only to our death, but is a reality of every day.

18th Sunday of Year C

18th Sunday 2025

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 21-23; Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11; Luke 12: 13-21

I have previously begun a homily with a question drawn from a song, and I make no apology for doing so again, as I believe this question to be particularly apposite to today’s First Reading and Gospel, and indeed, to today’s world. The question is

                   Sixteen tons, and what do you get?

Of course you know the answer: “Another day older and deeper in debt”, the song being “Sixteen Tons” originally recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford (yes, honestly) circa 1960, though there is a much better recent version by a band named Southern Raised. Google “Sixteen Tons by Southern Raised” and I guarantee you a treat.

Why do I quote it? I do so because it fits today’s readings, but also because it describes the situation facing many people both in our own country and around the world, particularly in the Developing World, whose development is hindered by debt and corruption. The world over, we see the situation described in Ecclesiastes and St. Luke, the rich becoming richer at the expense of the poor.

This isn’t a political matter, it is a moral and religious matter, a matter of corporate sin, about which Pope St. John Paul II used to speak so eloquently. Our Lord, in today’s Gospel, makes it clear that the rich man of the parable is guilty of sin, the sin of covetousness or pleonexia and that he will suffer the consequences.

Yet governments and political parties advocate greed and covetousness, lauding them as virtues instead of denouncing them as sins and vices. Even in the developing world, politicians and others enrich themselves at the expense of the poor. Blessed Floribert Kositi was last month beatified as a martyr. He was a devout Catholic and newly qualified customs officer in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who was beaten to death for rejecting bribes and threats, as he refused to allow into the country contaminated and therefore potentially poisonous rice.

Not only the DRC but many countries in Africa are exploited by developed countries for their mineral deposits, for which local people dig their sixteen tons whilst seeing no benefit to themselves, instead becoming “older and deeper in debt”. Debt is a massive issue on a national scale, as countries in Africa and elsewhere are crippled by interest payments. The Catholic Church, especially through the agency of CAFOD, Aid to the Church in Need, and others, has campaigned vigorously for the cancellation of debt, as have secular organisations. As individual Catholics, we should be supporting such campaigns.

Yet in our country and others, it is easy to find a similar situation, with the rich benefiting at the expense of the poor. Much of the hostility to immigrants comes from people who are struggling to survive, despite working every hour God sends, or on the other hand being unable to find work. Their situation is exploited by wealthy politicians and rabble rousers, who make immigrants their scapegoat, as their predecessors in the 1930s targeted Jews.

Our own government and, still more, the government of the USA, have slashed Overseas Aid, a move which has proved popular with struggling people, whose call is to “look after our own”. We should indeed be looking after our own, but by targeting the rich and covetous, rather than those who are poorer still.

The opposite, however, is happening. In America, Congress has approved Trump’s bill which deprives tens of thousands of poor citizens of medical care in order to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, a grievous sin which even the normally supine US Conference of Catholic Bishops has denounced. In this country, a supposedly respectable newspaper published, a week or two ago, a leading article condemning in unbelievably harsh terms the proposal for a Wealth Tax which might be a small step towards redressing the balance, while at the same time perhaps reducing the guilt of today’s equivalents of the rich man of the parable. So extreme was this article that I had to check the date to ensure that it wasn’t 1st April.

Both the author of Ecclesiastes and, most importantly of all, Jesus Himself denounce the injustice arising from covetousness, and the exploitation of the poor to benefit the rich. Are we, in the light of the Gospel and of Catholic Social Teaching, playing our part, by lobbying MPs, by supporting campaigns, not as a matter of politics but of justice and of faith?

17th Sunday Year C

17th Sunday 2025

Genesis 18:20-32; Colossians 2:12-14; Luke 11:1-13

I love that account of Abraham carrying out a Dutch auction with God, trying to persuade God to spare the people of Sodom. Unfortunately, God couldn’t find a single righteous person in Sodom, and the city was destroyed.

In truth, there are no righteous people anywhere, if we are depending on our own righteousness. As the Letter to the Colossians implies, and as St. Paul states explicitly elsewhere, we have no righteousness of our own: all our righteousness comes from Christ, who has cancelled our sins through His Cross. Even the secular world condemns people who are self-righteous, yet it is a fault to which religious people may be particularly prone, regarding themselves as virtuous and everyone else as sinful. It is a fault against which we must be on guard.

Turning to the Gospel, I have to tell again the story of Terry. It is a story which the Sisters have heard ad infinitum, but it bears re-telling, especially if you haven’t heard it.

Terry was a sad character, dirty and unkempt, who used to do the rounds of the Preston churches—and may still do so for aught I know—always with the same demand: “Some tea—in a cup!” Sometimes he would pay for the tea by putting a few coppers through the letter box; at other times, he would leave a present, often in the form of a heap of soil, though on one occasion I found myself the puzzled owner of a wheel trim.

I suspect that he had been a patient displaced by the closure of the big mental hospitals, and, like so many, had fallen through the net of care in the community. Where he slept, I have no idea, though clearly he was fed somewhere.

One night, I had gone to bed and, after reading for a while, had switched off my light and retired to the land of Nod. I was awakened by the shrilling of the doorbell. Light back on; glance at watch; it was half past eleven. Shrugging into my dressing gown, I made my way somewhat reluctantly downstairs and opened the door.

There stood Terry. His demand was the same as ever: “Some tea—in a cup!”

Half past eleven in the morning is one thing. I tend to the view that half past eleven at night is something entirely different.

“Terry,” I said, as patiently as I could manage, “It’s half past eleven. I am not making tea at this hour.”

“Some tea—in a cup!”

“Terry, you have woken me up. I want to go back to bed. You can’t expect tea at this hour.”

“Some tea—in a cup!”

“Terry….”

“Some tea—in a cup!”

Terry got his tea—in a cup—and I returned to bed, if not disgruntled, then at least rather less than gruntled, as PG Wodehouse might have said. Next morning, I made my way across to the church to prepare for Mass. I opened the Lectionary, and what should be the Gospel of the day but “Which of you has a friend who will go to him at midnight….?” Ah well, at least Terry had been half an hour early.

Thus, I proved to myself that at least one of the parables works in practical terms, and I have often wondered how I should have felt, reading those words, had I turned down Terry’s request. There is surely a moral there, that we have to be willing to take that extra, perhaps unwelcome, step to meet the needs of our brothers and sisters.

But what of the central message of the parable? Certainly, Terry proved that persistence, yes even impudence, can prevail in a human context. But is it, as Jesus declares, equally true of God? I suspect that most, if not all, of us will have prayed for something, and apparently failed to have our prayers answered.

Have we been persistent enough? Probably. Have we been praying for the wrong thing? Possibly, but not necessarily.  Does God see the whole of the picture, of which we see only a part? Yes, and so it is not impossible, in the greater scheme of things, that apparent non-answers will have been for the best. Is it true that, whilst not giving us what we wanted, God may actually have been giving us what we needed? Again, it is possible. Any of you who are parents will know that it is sometimes better if you do not give in to a child’s requests, yes even demands.

All of these thoughts are valid, but we must be careful not to be too glib in answering the distress of those whose prayers have apparently not been answered. In the last analysis, we do not know, we do not fully understand. All that we can do is to maintain our trust in God, and to support and comfort as best we can those who may feel that God has let them down.

16th Sunday Year C

16th Sunday 2025

Genesis 18: 1-10; Colossians 1: 24-28; Luke 10: 38-42

By heck! We have a triple whammy today—three very powerful readings. What are we to make of each of them?

Our reading from the Book of Genesis brings three strangers to visit Abraham. Who are they? And why are there three of them? In some sense at least, they are God, because the first verse begins “The Lord appeared to Abraham”, whereupon the three men materialise.

The Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) doesn’t always distinguish between “the Lord” and “the angel of the Lord”: sometimes the terms appear to be indistinguishable as titles of God. Here, three men appear, yet Abraham addresses them in the singular, saying “O Lord”. Towards the end of the passage we are told that “they” (plural) ask Abraham “Where is Sarah, your wife?” yet after he has answered them, we are next told that it is “the Lord” who comments further “I shall surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah your wife shall have a son”.

If anything can be called “clear” in this passage, it is clear that, in some way, the three men are a presence of God. Things become even more complex a few verses further on, though, when the three men go on towards Sodom, whilst “the Lord” remains speaking with Abraham.  So God is somehow separate from the three men, yet identified with them.

How significant is it that there are three? Is this an early intimation of the Trinity? There is a famous icon depicting the three, and effectively identifying them with the Holy Trinity. It is unlikely that the author of this passage in Genesis was thinking in Trinitarian terms, but might we consider that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit was at work?

Turning to the reading from the Letter to the Colossians, I find one of my favourite scriptural quotations. I knew a priest who, finding himself in a group in which people were asked to quote their favourite passage from the Bible, and considering this unduly intrusive, replied “A vain hope for safety is the horse” (Psalms). I was never in danger of being made a bishop: had I been so, I would have been sorely tempted to take as my motto “He stinketh, for he is four days buried” (originally about Lazarus). Here however, I find a particularly encouraging quotation.

“In my flesh, I am making up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His Body—that is the Church.” What does that mean? It tells us that, when we suffer, as all of us do at times, our sufferings can be part of the Passion of Jesus, and so can help to redeem the world. This is the understanding that underlies the old encouragement to “Offer it up”. It won’t necessarily make the suffering any less painful, but it will make it less futile, less apparently pointless, because we can understand that we are helping Jesus to save the world.

Finally, we encounter Martha and Mary. The crucial sentence here arrives towards the end: “One thing is necessary”. I still have vivid memories—which tends to be true of anything more than forty years ago, but less so of anything recent—of the Lenten retreat delivered during my first year in the seminary (1971/2) by Fr. Denis Clinch, who subsequently spent many years as the Rector of the Hidden Gem, aka St. Mary’s, Mulberry Street, Manchester.

Those words to Martha formed the backbone of the retreat, as Fr. Clinch clearly saw them as addressed to all followers of Christ. Lowering his voice dramatically, he would announce at some point during practically all his talks “Few things are necessary. INDEED—only one”.

What is the one thing necessary? It is to carry out God’s will in every moment and every situation. Martha’s problem here is that she hasn’t taken the trouble to find out what Jesus wants of her on this occasion. She is anxious to serve Him, but hasn’t asked how He wants to be served. In this moment, He has a greater desire for her attention than for her sausage and mash, even if served with mushy peas. The Jerusalem Bible translation runs “You worry and fret about so many things”. Is that as true of you as it is of me? Can you and I seek instead, the one thing necessary?

15th Sunday of Year C

15th Sunday 2025

Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37

“The word is very near to you. It is in your heart and in your mouth, so that you can do it.” What is the word? At one level, it is the Word with a capital W, Jesus Christ who is the Word of God, and who dwells within us. He is in our hearts; He will be in our mouths when we speak His word.

Can we say more than that? Yes we can, because we have the summary which we know well, and which is provided for us today by the naughty lawyer: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself”.

Do you notice something which upsets a claim which is sometimes made about Our Lord? People will allege that Jesus was the first to link the demands of love of God and of neighbour, yet according to this account the link was already familiar: the lawyer expresses it without hesitation. Furthermore, the scribe in Mark’s version of this episode endorses Jesus’ linking of the two as if it is something well known, rather than a novel idea.

Whatever the origin, it is clear that these two commandments are to form the basis of our lives. But what if the two come into conflict?

“Don’t be daft,” you will say. “They can’t.” And of course you are correct. I will rephrase it: “What if the two appear to come into conflict?”

“Explain! Explain!” you will demand, doing your best Dalek impression. “Well, look at the parable” I will reply. “Why do the priest and the Levite pass by without helping the injured man?”

“Because they are mean so-and-sos, as religious people often are” you will respond. Possibly, but what if it is more complex than that? Perhaps they are on their way to the Temple in Jerusalem to carry out their religious duties. They still have a way to go, and if they stop to help, it may cause them to be late, and if the man is dead, they will incur ritual defilement, and be unable to carry out those duties. There may be a whole Temple-full of people depending on them.

Switch the time frame. I am on my way to provide Mass at some parish or other. The people in church depend on me. I have no mobile signal, so I can’t forewarn anybody. If I am able to make an emergency call for an ambulance, I will have to wait for its arrival, and who knows how long that will take? Might I have an excuse for hurrying by, especially if you are among the people waiting in church?

“Certainly not,” you will say. “Your duty of care must take precedence” and you will be correct. But broaden things a little. Does people’s interpretation of God’s Law sometimes make them less compassionate, less committed to love of neighbour, than non-religious people? It shouldn’t, but does it?

I am thinking of the United States. Before each of the last two presidential elections, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has stated that abortion is their pre-eminent concern. Consequently, a candidate who shall be nameless has paid lip service to the pro-life cause, and has garnered support from some, but by no means all, of the bishops.

Of course, abortion is an important issue, a matter of life and death. But so is health care for all, regardless of income. So is overseas aid. So is capital punishment. So is care for refugees, and for the victims of tyranny. The candidate in question, now the President, has slashed overseas aid, and it has been estimated that fourteen million lives are at risk as a result. His cuts to Medicare and Medicaid will leave tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of his (and the bishops’) fellow citizens without access to healthcare. His enthusiasm for capital punishment will lead to the deaths, admittedly of a much smaller number, at the hands of the authorities, and many of those executed will be innocent. Many American bishops have protested vehemently against the President’s actions, now endorsed by Congress, but the complaint from the Conference of Bishops as a body can best be described as mealy-mouthed.

The point which I am trying to make is that our love of God, and our fulfilment of His commands, must always be compatible with our love of neighbour. If it appears not to be so, then it is not genuine. The Samaritan of the parable is not constrained by the religious scruples of the priest and the Levite, and so his love of neighbour in fact displays more genuine love of God than does their religious attitude. As religious people, we must avoid making similar mistakes to theirs.

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.