32nd Week

32nd Sunday 2019

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

“As I was going to St. Ives”, you know the rest, don’t you? “I met a man with seven wives.                                

“Every wife had seven sacks, and in the sacks were seven cats. Every cat had seven kits. Kits, cats, sacks, wives: how many were going to St. Ives?” the answer, of course, being “one” because, if you met them, they must have been COMING FROM St. Ives.

It is a riddle, intended to catch you out, and the same is true of the tall story told by the Sadducees. They are not looking for a serious answer to what is a frivolous question: they are simply trying to catch Jesus out.

And Jesus is weight for them. He is not so naive as to attempt to answer in their own terms. Instead He cuts through their supposed argument by referring to something which He could presume that they would accept: namely God’s appearance to Moses in the burning bush. God speaks of Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Because He is God of the living, they must be alive and must therefore have shared in the resurrection of the dead.

It may not seem the most convincing or earth-shattering of arguments, but it is more than the Sadducees deserve. It may at least teach them not to be smart-alicks. At the same time, it has a serious point, in asserting the truth of the resurrection of the dead, an important element not least in this month of November, when we pray for those who have gone before us on the journey to God.

You will probably encounter people who will play similar games to try to catch you out. Many years ago, I met a man who claimed to be a freethinker, which seemed to mean that his mind ran on very narrow lines through an extremely dark tunnel. He claimed to want to know where all the dead people are now. I made some sort of brief remark about the difference between time and eternity, but I wasn’t going to be fooled into attempting some sort of serious explanation. He wasn’t looking for an answer: he simply thought that he could score a cheap point. With people like that, I think that the message is “Don’t be drawn in.”

I see that Dicky Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, who seems to spend less time doing science than worrying about the God in whom he claims not to believe, has brought out yet another book on the subject of God. There will be some serious points in it, which people of faith will need to consider in order to refute them, but there is certainly, as always, a considerable amount of nonsense, of tilting at windmills, of demolishing Aunt Sallies, versions of God in which no Christian believes.

He apparently attacks the doctrine of the Atonement by describing it as a punishment for “the sin of Adam who didn’t exist” as he puts it. Hang on, Dicky! Adam is Hebrew for “man”, for “human being”. So you are saying that human beings didn’t exist? So what are you?

Of course he is playing his usual game of pretending that Christians read the creation stories literally, rather than as poetic accounts of underlying truths. Clearly, human beings have sinned, and have fallen away from God. It is unworthy of an intelligent man like Professor Dawkins to ignore wilfully the genuine Christian understanding, and to substitute his own version of Christian belief, which he can then knock down. In that respect, he is simply a successor of the biblical Sadducees, playing word games.

So what can we take from today’s readings? It is spelt out by the fourth brother of the Maccabees saga, and reinforced by Our Lord: it is nothing less than our belief in the resurrection of the dead.

31st Week

31st Sunday 2019

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

Before turning to the Gospel, I would like to ponder St. Paul’s words at the beginning of today’s extract from his Second Letter to the Thessalonians.

“We pray continually that God will make you worthy of His call, and by His power fulfil all your desires for goodness, and complete all that you have been doing through faith.”

Are you aware that you have been called by God—in fact, that you are constantly being called by God? Whatever situation you are in, whether you are fully active or constrained by poor health; whether you are married, single, widowed, in consecrated life or whatever; whether you are serene, or struggling, or conscious of failure; God is with you, and is calling you, in every moment, to be conscious of His grace, to be a source of blessing to those around you, to be a sign to others of God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s presence everywhere and at all times.

Do you have a desire for goodness? All of us are conscious of sin and failure, but do you genuinely desire to do what is right, to fulfil God’s will? If so, God will not let you down. Despite setbacks and failures, He will fill you with His goodness.

Have you been doing things through faith? If you have been praying, if you have been showing love to others, if you have been giving of your best, then you have been working in faith, and God will complete your efforts.

That opening half sentence from St. Paul chimes in with the other two readings, and combines with them to encourage us, to put heart into us, which is the literal meaning of “encourage”, from the Latin word for a heart. “You love all that exists,” says the author of the Book of Wisdom, addressing God. That means that God is on our side, that we are on a winner, that He will not let us fall out of His hands, that He will look favourably on our feeble efforts and fulfil them.

Even when we fail, God will correct us gently, and lead us back to Himself. “Little by little...you correct those who offend”—no suggestion of punishment, or of harsh measures, but of a gentle and gradual calling back to Himself—“so that they may abstain from evil, and trust in you, Lord.” Sinners are to be enabled to abstain from sin because they know that they can trust in God, that He loves them, that He is on their side.

There is nothing there that we do not know already, yet I wonder whether we really take it to heart: whether we are conscious of God’s love for us, or whether we are more inclined to trust our negative feelings of fear and self-reproach. Yet these words are borne out by the Gospel, when Jesus asserts that “the Son of Man has come to seek out and save what was lost.”

In other words, the whole point of the Incarnation, of God becoming human, was salvation. God, in the person of Jesus, came to save, not to condemn. He looks kindly on our efforts—probably more kindly than we look upon them ourselves—and He calls us gently to Himself.

To what does He call us? To welcome Him into the house which is our deepest self; to feast with Him, in the Eucharist, and in the Messianic banquet of heaven; to share our joyful welcome, the welcome which Zacchaeus gave, with our brothers and sisters who gather at the Eucharistic table.

“Hurry, because I must stay at your house today” was Jesus’ call to Zacchaeus: “Hurry, because I must stay at your house today” is Jesus’ call to us. Let us hurry to receive Him at the Eucharistic banquet: then let us hurry to take Him into our homes, where He will indeed “make us worthy of His call, fulfil all our desires for goodness, and complete all that we have been doing through faith.”

30th Week

30th Sunday 2019

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

Who are you, then; the tax collector or the Pharisee? “The tax collector” you will say, “I am a sinner. I don’t give myself airs. I have no illusions about myself.” Mmm... I wish I could say the same.

Sometimes, every once in a while, you can find yourself in a situation in which you are confronted with truths about yourself, of which you hadn’t been conscious. Some of these truths may be pleasant: other people may reveal, for instance, that you have helped them in ways of which you were not aware. In one of my previous parishes was a lady who would frequently express her gratitude for something which I had, allegedly, said to her in the confessional about her son. From that day to this, I have no recollection of ever saying anything about her son, even to the extent of wondering whether she was mistaking me for another priest, but she was convinced, and I can only hope that, when she died, she put in a good word about me to the Lord.

On the other hand, people or circumstances may reveal to us aspects of ourselves with which we are less comfortable, things of which we may have been blissfully unaware, things which may shock us. “O would some power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as ithers see us” as Robert Burns wrote.

If there are less savoury aspects of our character or conduct which come to light at certain times, we can guarantee that there are other such aspects which continue to remain hidden. Purgatory will, I suspect, largely entail being faced with these, coming to terms with their existence, and having them healed by God’s searing grace.

Very often, I fear, I am prepared to admit, perhaps to my confessor, certainly to myself, those sins with which I am reasonably comfortable, while perhaps burying things which would, and should, cause greater unease. When people come to the sacrament, and make the same confession which they have been making since childhood, I sometimes struggle to help them to go deeper, to recognise the deeper-lying sinfulness of which the lies and the lost temper are merely the symptoms.

And what about the Pharisee? “Oh, he’s a right so-and-so”, you may say; “self-satisfied, smug, sanctimonious, a real hypocrite.” Excuse me, but who gave you the right to judge? That’s what’s interesting about the tax collector: he doesn’t judge. He doesn’t say “I thank you, God, that I am not like this Pharisee here.” He is genuinely concerned about his own sins, his own condition as a sinner.

Can any of us say, hand on heart, that we are actually like the tax collector in that respect? You have head me criticise people who want to change the Church into a church of the scribes and Pharisees, focused on rules, rather than on the person of Jesus Christ, on the love of God and neighbour. Do I actually have the right to say that? Is it for me to judge? No, is it heck, any more than it is the Pharisee’s right to judge the tax collector; yet how many of our conversations, particularly on church related matters, are actually a litany of criticisms?

Often, when we identify with the tax collector, we are really behaving more like the Pharisee, wearing our admission of sinfulness almost as a badge of honour, using it as a stick with which to beat the Pharisees whom we see around us, failing to recognise that this is not what the tax collector does.

So should we content ourselves with echoing the tax collector’s prayer “God, be merciful to me, a sinner”? Yes, provided we mean it sincerely, and are not using it as an excuse to avoid going deep, to evade the responsibility of unearthing and facing the reality of our sins. I think that we need that prayer in conjunction with an openness which allows God, and other people, to reveal to us what, in our own individual case, it really means.

29th Week

29th Sunday 2019

Exodus 17:8-13; 2Tim 3:14-4:2; Luke 18:1-8

“I want justice from you against my enemy.” From how many hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world, and even in our own country, must that cry rise daily? Unjust judges, unjust juries, unjust regimes, unjust religious authorities abound, and the innocent fall victim to them in numbers beyond reckoning.

We can think of the victims of ISIS and other terrorist groups, of the Iranian/British woman Mrs.Ratcliffe in prison in Iran on trumped up charges, of the Uighurs in “re-education camps” in China, of the prisoners in the USA, often wrongly convicted, who remain on Death Row for decades, of priests and others falsely accused, wrongly convicted, or sidelined by the authorities. All of these and many more are crying out for justice, yet their prayers seem to strike a brazen heaven, to quote Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Why does this happen, and where is God for the millions who are oppressed throughout the world? The simple answer, which may appear simplistic, yet which is in reality profound in its implications, is that He is there with them, as He is not with their oppressors. In the prison cells, in the torture centres, among the people who lack the necessities of life, is the suffering Christ, bearing the torment with them, working in and through them, giving them the courage and hope to survive, fulfilling Gethsemane and Calvary for the redemption of the world.

Some years ago, I was lent a book written by a priest who had been arrested by the Soviet authorities and sent to Siberia. In the apparent hopelessness of his situation, he gradually became aware of the presence of Christ, and of opportunities of living out his priesthood in new, unconventional and yet deeply Christ-like and effective ways. In retrospect, he would probably consider this to have been the most fruitful period of his life, despite the physical and mental scars with which he was left.

Eventually, his cries for justice were heard and he was released, but this is not always the case. There is a danger that we can use stories like this for cheap consolation, telling ourselves that good will come out of them, excusing ourselves from taking them sufficiently to heart.

Jesus promises that God “will see justice done, and done speedily”. If and when this is not happening, it is up to us to redouble our efforts on behalf of the victims of injustice, doing whatever we can in practical ways, by lobbying, writing letters, signing petitions, and above all by praying, by pestering God, by making a nuisance of ourselves by our constant prayer to the Father and our invocation of Our Lady and the saints.

We are the chosen, to whom Our Lord refers as crying to God day and night. Like Moses, we must intercede constantly, and when our arms grow weary, as Moses’ arms grew weary, we must enlist the support of others.

And we must not lose faith. “When the Son of Man comes, will He find any faith on earth?” asks Jesus. That question kept drumming in my head in the early 80s, during my brief spell carrying out parish missions, as I knocked on the doors of nominal Catholics fifty times a day, finding faith behind perhaps four or five of those doors. Almost forty years on, as we are all aware, the situation is much worse, Jesus’ question still more urgent. Perhaps it is no surprise that, as faith weakens, justice becomes more difficult to obtain.

So we must never lose heart, as St.Luke comments at the beginning of today’s Gospel. We at least must remain faithful—faithful to God, and faithful to all the victims of injustice, crying ceaselessly to God on their behalf, and crying too to their oppressors, that the justice of God may prevail, not only in eternity, but also on this earth.

28th Week

28th Sunday 2019

2 Kings 5:14-17; 2Tim 2:8-13; Luke 17:11-19

If “faith” was the key word last week, I would suggest that, this week, there are two words: “gratitude” and, less obviously, “inclusivity”.

Let’s take the case of Naaman first. He is grateful for his cure: grateful to Elisha, the human agent of that cure, but grateful also to God, the author of it: hence his request for a quantity of the soil of Israel to take back with him to Syria. The people of those days believed that they should worship the gods of the land in which they were. Naaman takes the soil of Israel in order that, when he stands on it, back in Syria, he will technically be in Israel, and so entitled to worship the God of Israel who, he has come to believe, is the one true God.

Moving from Naaman to ourselves, we are faced with the question: am I a grateful person? Am I grateful to those around me, and am I grateful to God? This goes deeper than the surface question: do I remember to say “thank you”? That is an important question, and we need always to remember our thanks to God, as well as to the people who help us; but there is a more fundamental issue: is gratitude built into my psyche, into my very being?

There is always a danger of our being negative people, of seeing the difficulties and never the opportunities; of recognising the pain, but never the blessing. There is a deeply rooted human tendency, especially, I suspect, in the western world, to grumble, and grumbling is very destructive, destructive of harmony and well-being, destructive of ourselves. Grumbling is the way we create hell for ourselves, because ultimately we become incapable of recognising our blessings, of seeing goodness in anything.

This doesn’t mean that we should become Pollyannas, relentlessly cheerful, refusing to face difficulties. That attitude can be as destructive as its opposite. If you want an illustration of that, read GK Chesterton’s Fr. Brown story “The three tools of death”. What is demanded of us is that we have a pre-disposition to recognise goodness, and to rejoice in it: to be aware that, whatever we suffer, we are blessed in so many ways, and to have an inbuilt tendency to thank God, the author of our blessings, and to thank people who minister those blessings to us.

So much for gratitude—what about inclusivity? Notice that it is a foreigner, a Syrian, who is cured, someone who is not a member of the chosen people. Our Lord was to point this out to the people of His own day, reminding them that “there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these was cured, except the Syrian, Naaman.” This infuriated the people so much that they tried to kill Him, because their own attitude was narrow, exclusive, blinkered.

We see something similar happening in our own day, when the Pope is striving to broaden people’s horizons, to encourage us to recognise the breadth of God’s mercy, and he is coming under relentless attack, particularly in publications emanating from North America which are constantly sowing seeds of disunity. As Abbot Cuthbert pointed out recently, this is the work of the devil. These publications, sincere though they may, are literally diabolical, in the fullest sense of that word.

That same inclusivity on God’s part is found in today’s Gospel episode, in which Jews are cured along with a non-Jew, a Samaritan, a heretic. It is ironic that it should be this outsider who shows gratitude both to Jesus and to the Father.

What is the reason for the apparent lack of gratitude on the part of the chosen people who, incidentally, have been at one with the Samaritan in their suffering? Sadly, it is actually their religious attitude which causes the problem. They have to receive clearance from the priest before they can be re-admitted to the community, and they are so focused on this that they neglect the call to gratitude. We see the same problem in the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the priest and the Levite are so concerned not to incur ritual defilement that they ignore the wounded man.

Religious observance is of vital importance, but it must be an expression of our inner attitudes, and must never be allowed to hinder the practice of virtue. Gratitude to others, and especially to God, must be part of this inner attitude, a God whose mercy is inclusive: if that is not present, to be expressed in our religious observance, then the latter will be empty—nevertheless, we must never forget the importance of that observance.

27th Week

27th Sunday 2019

Habbakuk 1:2-3, 2:2-4; 2Tim 1:6-8, 13-14; Luke 17:5-10

“Faith” seems to be the key word in our scripture readings today: “faith” not so much in the sense of “belief that” but “belief in”, trust in God, reliance on Him, confidence that, however tough the going may be, He will be with us, and He will bring us through.

I don’t know how you feel, but I can’t help identifying with the entire complaint, if that is the word, which Habbakuk utters.

“How long, Lord, am I to cry for help

While you will not listen;

To cry ‘Opression’ in your ear,

And you will not save?”

Oppression does appear to be rife throughout the world. Whether it is the oppression of religious and racial minorities in so many countries; the oppression of the poor by governments and wealthy corporations as, for instance, in the Amazon Basin; or the oppression of those who are falsely accused and denied justice in this country, oppression seems to hold sway.

“Why do you set injustice before me?

Why do you look on where there is tyranny?”

Why indeed? Justice seems very difficult to attain, especially for those who lack the financial resources to buy what may pass for justice. The powers-that-be seem very little interested in justice, and those who are denied justice have no recourse.

“Outrage and violence, this is all I see

All is contention and discord flourishes.”

That seems to sum up the political discourse in the country at the moment. You may well, like me, be shocked by the bitterness and hatred which characterise the current political shouting match, which cannot be called a debate, because a debate entails a willingness to listen. Ordinary decent people seem to be inflamed by hatred of those who hold views different from their own. The word “traitor” is bandied about, a very destructive word indeed.

Those who take a particular viewpoint, whether they be politicians or ordinary citizens, may be mistaken, they may be wrong-headed, they may be self-seeking, but they are entitled to a degree of respect: to descend to the levels of abuse which we are hearing shames us as a nation.

So where do we go from here? The scriptures are very clear: we have faith. We put our trust in God. “The upright will live by their faithfulness” says Habbakuk.

Does this mean that we sit back and rely on God to sort things out? Surely it does not. We take on the role of the servants in the Gospel, who work for the Lord, who realise that they can make only a limited contribution, who recognise that they are “unprofitable servants” as the Greek text actually says.

We do our best, recognising that we have received the Holy Spirit, “the Spirit of power and love and self-control” as St. Paul wrote to Timothy. That is what the Pope is doing in calling an Extraordinary Synod on the Amazon. That is why he constantly speaks out on behalf of migrants and refugees, and why he is always seeking to build bridges with Muslim leaders.

That is why some of us are pressing the bishops to be more pro-active on behalf of those who are falsely accused. That is also why all of us must be peacemakers in our own particular circles, why we must avoid inflammatory language, why we must try to calm others when they lack self-control, to encourage everyone to recognise the humanity and intrinsic goodness of those from whom they differ.

And we must pray. We do not expect God to wave a magic wand, but we ask Him to make use of our own small efforts, and to touch hearts and minds, trusting that He hears our prayers.

26th Sunday

26th Sunday 2019

Amos 6:1, 4-7; I Tim 6:11-16; Luke 16:19-31

Last Monday, as the community here knows, was a difficult day for me. I had to return to my old parish to celebrate the funeral Mass of a young man who had died at the age of 24 in a tragic accident, just weeks before he was due to be married.

I felt that there was little that I could say without sounding trite or patronising, so after a very few words about the Mass readings, I went to the congregation to ask Michael’s family to express briefly their thoughts and feelings about him. His fiancée couldn’t bring herself to speak, but his mother, father, brother and two sisters all had their say.

From all of them it was clear how highly Michael was regarded, how deeply he was loved. His sixteen year old sister commented “He was an annoying big brother, but the best big brother anyone could have.” At this point, her mother chipped in: “Don’t forget Andrew.” “Oh yes, him and Andrew,” a correction which brought rare laughter on an occasion when many were in tears, myself included at one point.

Now the family must adjust to a normality which will never be normal, as a vital component is missing, something of which his father David will be reminded every moment of every day, as Michael used to work with him on the farm. If you can spare some prayers for the Gornall family of Claughton (pronounced Clyton) you will be performing a work of charity.

“Fine,” you may say, “but what has that to do with the parable of Lazarus?” In a way, the family is what, in the science experiments of your and my schooldays, used to be called a control. I am sure that I can say that there is no Lazarus in that family; because, let’s face it, Lazarus isn’t only the homeless man begging in the city centre or the hungry child in the disaster zone. He IS these, but he is more. He is the awkward one , the outsider, the sore thumb, the difficult member of the family, the community, the neighbourhood.

Lazarus comes in both sexes and all ages. Maybe nobody is cruel to him/her, but remember: the rich man in the parable wasn’t cruel. Either he didn’t notice Lazarus, or he noticed him but chose to ignore him—and yet he was condemned.

Perhaps it is important for each of us to ask ourselves: is there a Lazarus in my circle, someone whom it isn’t easy to get on with? If so, what is my attitude to him/her? If we think about it, we may be shocked by the answer.

At the moment, I am one of a number of people trying to support a particular Lazarus in the person of a priest serving a long prison sentence for an offence which, not only did he not commit, but it would have been impossible for him to commit. Our bishop, and the Archbishop of Liverpool, are being very positive in their attitude, but the priest’s own bishop has taken on the role of the rich man in the parable, doing nothing for Lazarus,  parroting the claim “We have to trust the Justice System. There is no reason not to trust the Justice System.”

In response to that, I was able to quote to him no less an authority than the recently retired Detective Sergeant from the Cumbria Constabulary PPU, the unit which deals with sexual allegations and offences, who commented, “This is the one offence where you are guilty until proven innocent. You cannot rely on juries.”

I also pointed out to the bishop in question that it will be very serious if, on the Day of Judgement, the only person willing to speak for him should be Pontius Pilate. Had Bishop Swarbrick not undertaken to arrange a meeting to seek a way of working together to help Lazarus, and suggested that, in the meantime, it may be best not to contact the rich man, I might have added a few choice words about today’s parable.

There is many a Lazarus in the world. Do we notice him/her? If not, why not? And do we do our utmost to help?

25th Sunday

25th Sunday 2019

Amos 8:4-7; 1Tim 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13

Oh come on, St. Luke. Play the game! That’s three particularly difficult Gospels in recent weeks. What on earth do we make of this one? Lord, whatever did you have in mind when you told this parable?

One practical point to begin with: some scholars have suggested that what the steward was doing was to reduce his own commission, so that he wasn’t actually cheating the master. I don’t think that this holds water. Jesus calls the steward “unjust”—the Greek text actually says that the master praised the steward “of injustice”, whilst the Jerusalem Bible paraphrases by referring to the “dishonest steward”—so we have, I think, to accept that the steward was cheating.

Yet the steward is praised. To use the current expression: what is that about?

I think that it is important to notice who it is that praises him. It isn’t Jesus. Our Lord is not commending dishonesty, or encouraging us to be unjust. It is actually the master in the parable who praises the steward for his astuteness, presumably because he recognises a kindred spirit. Jesus is implying that the master has made his money by sharp practice: that in his own way, he is as much of a scallywag as the steward: that they are two of a kind.

Throughout this episode, Jesus is expressing a deep distrust of money, and of money making. He speaks of money as “tainted”, using the same word adikia (literally ‘injustice”) as He had applied to the steward. Jesus is no friend of what we now call capitalism. The extreme right wing in America has criticised the present Holy Father for many things, not least his distaste for capitalism, and he has been called a Marxist. Those same people would be utterly horrified if they actually took note of what Jesus has to say, because they would be forced to realize that the Pope is merely repeating the message of his Master, not Karl Marx, but Jesus Christ.

Our Lord accepts that money has its place in society, but warns that it has the power to corrupt its users. St. Paul followed in His footsteps, stating, not as the Andrews Sisters sang, that “money is the root of all evil”, but that “love of money is the root of all evil”. At one level, we are brought back to Our Lord’s words about “hating” in the sense of “not being possessive of” with the additional warning that money has its own particular power to do harm and to possess its users.

He goes on to say, in effect, that we must use money justly. We will understand better his instruction to make friends who will welcome us into the tents of eternity when we hear, next week, the parable of Lazarus and the rich man whose eternal fate would have been different if he had used his money to befriend Lazarus, the poor man.

In all that Our Lord has to say, there is that same concern for justice which we find in the prophets. Amos, today, is scathing about those who exploit the poor, yet we would have to admit that very little has changed. Modern slavery is a massive issue, and there are other cases of exploitation closer to home. There have been countless examples of multi-national corporations moving jobs from this country to places where they can pay lower wages, not in order to provide jobs in those countries, but simply to increase their profit margins.

But we too have questions to face about our own purchasing habits. Do we always look for “bargains” without considering whether those who produced these goods are being exploited? Do we challenge the big retailers about working conditions among their suppliers? Are we prepared to pay a little more in order that workers in developing countries may receive a fair return for their labour?

If we consider seriously today’s Gospel, we may feel that Jesus has opened a can of worms. But let’s face it: cans of worms are there to be opened. 

24th Sunday

24th Sunday 2019

Exodus 32:7-11 13-14; 1 Tim 1:2-17; Luke 15: 1-32

Gloriously encouraging readings today, speaking to us of God’s willingness to forgive—or rather, of His eagerness to forgive. The Book of Exodus relates how, in answer to Moses’ prayer, God forgave the Israelites their sin in making the golden calf. The psalm is part of the Miserere, the greatest of the penitential psalms, admitting our sins and seeking forgiveness, while St. Paul reminds us that the whole purpose of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was to save sinners. Finally, we have those three parables of mercy from chapter 15 of St. Luke’s Gospel: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.

I used to be puzzled by the story of the lost coin. I couldn’t understand why the lady threw a party which probably cost her more than the value of the lost and found coin, until someone pointed out to me that this is the very nub of the parable: that God has spent on us the life of His Son, who is worth more than all of us put together.

It became even clearer when something happened to me. It occurred in January 1977, during the long hard winter which followed the long hot summer of 1976. I was on the staff of the Junior Seminary at Upholland, responsible for the first years (Year 7 in new money: Underlow as they were known there). On a Monday afternoon we teamed up with the second years (aka Low Figures) for football, but in that freezing January, with the snow lying thickly on the pitches, footy was out of the question.

So instead we made a virtue of necessity, and went out onto the nearby golf course to sledge and hurl snowballs, spending a thoroughly enjoyable hour and a half in “winter pursuits”. Come half past four or thereabouts, it was time to return to the college for tea. As we were leaving the confines of the golf course, I pushed back my cuff to check my watch and—horror of horror of unspeakable horrors—my watch wasn’t there. At some point in the last hour and a half it had slipped off my wrist, and was lying somewhere out there in the snow—and now in the dark.

I was devastated. This wasn’t just any old watch: it had been my 21st birthday present from my mother and father, and to lose it was unthinkable; but lose it I had. I spent a wretched evening and night, thinking, planning, worrying. I couldn’t afford to buy one similar, and even if I could, I would know that it wasn’t THE watch. I pestered St. Anthony fit to bust, whilst realising that it was asking a bit much, even of St. Anthony, to find a watch on a golf course in the snow.

The following morning I gave the lads Latin class off, and set out with them to search for my lost watch. Crazy wasn’t it? The proverbial needle in the equally proverbial haystack would have been kids’ stuff in comparison. Of course we didn’t find it, and I was trudging back miserably for the next lesson when I heard footsteps padding through the snow behind me.

“Father, Father, is this your watch?” and there was Bill Butterworth holding out my watch, none the worse for its night in the snow.

The lady in the parable had nothing on me. I bombarded the Lord, His mother, and St. Anthony, with “thank you” prayers. I gave the lads “prep off”, much to the disgust of the Headmaster who found them running around the place when he thought they should have had their noses to the grindstone. Could I have cared less what the Headmaster thought? Could I heck as like! Finally, I arranged a trip out for the lads on their next free afternoon, no expense spared.

Ever since then, I have understood that parable—the sheer jubilation which that lady felt on finding something precious which she had lost. And that, says Our Lord, is a pale imitation of the jubilation which God feels when he can forgive a sinner, throwing a party for the angels. You can’t beat it, can you?

23rd Sunday

23rd Sunday:    Love and hate

Wisdom 9:13-18; Philemon 9-10,12-17; Luke 14:25-33

For the second time in recent weeks we have a particularly difficult Gospel, one which puzzles us as well as presenting us with a challenge. What on earth do we make of “hating” our closest family members, and how do we reconcile the call to carry the Cross with parables which seem to urge caution and calculation?

Before we face those questions, there is something else worth noting: this passage in St. Luke’s Gospel follows immediately upon the parable of the great banquet to which all are invited, brought in from the highways and byways, the streets and the hedgerows. So the “great crowds” which are mentioned at the beginning are likely to be hoi polloi, the odds and sods who are gathered in from here, there, and everywhere, with an invitation to the banquet of the Messiah.

Now they are effectively being told that there is no such thing as a free lunch, as Jesus spells out the implications of accepting the invitation, which is truly an invitation to follow Him. What are the consequences? They involve a radical self-surrender, a wholehearted commitment to Him.

That is where the “hating” comes in. Of course, Jesus is not actually telling us to hate anybody: that would contradict the whole essence of His message, which is a call to love. The word “hate” here is a typically Semitic exaggeration, used to underline a basic point. The clue to the real meaning of the word comes in the final sentence of the passage, where Our Lord calls us to give up all our possessions. In other words, “hate” here means not to be possessive of, not to cling onto, not to make a god out of.

The follower of Jesus must not prefer anybody or anything to Him—must, in fact, obey the First Commandment, which is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. In a strange, paradoxical way, the call to “hate” is actually a call to genuine love, because to love someone involves allowing them their freedom, not attempting to control or possess them, not to cling onto them.

Possessiveness is the real obstacle to discipleship, and we can be possessive about all sorts of things. You may know people who are possessive of their children, who won’t allow them to grow up. The law of the land now recognises that there can be a destructive possessiveness in relationships, and has made “control and coercion” an offence. If any of you are followers of “The Archers”, you may recall the story of Rob and Helen, a few years ago. He was possessive and controlling of his wife who eventually stabbed him, and was acquitted. The whole story line was introduced to highlight the problem of control and coercion.

We can also be possessive of our time, of our routine, of our own way of doing things, and the irony is that, when we think that we are controlling these things, we are actually being controlled by them. Consequently, the call to “hate”, the call to take up the Cross, is actually a call to freedom, a call to liberate ourselves from the desire to possess, a desire which actually possesses us, which prevents us from being free.

This call to freedom is a radical call, one which affects the very root of our being. That is the reason for the two parables which follow, the parables which urge us, like the tower builder and the warlike king, to weigh up the consequences of our actions. Are we ready and willing to respond to the call of Jesus, the call to take up the Cross, the call to free ourselves from possessiveness? We may hesitate, but if we are wise we will answer “Yes” because this is a call to true freedom, a call to become the people whom we were created and called to be, a call to alleged hatred which is, on the contrary, a call to full and genuine love.

22nd Sunday

22nd Sunday 2019

Ecclesiasticus 3:17-20, 28-29; Hebrews 12: 18-19, 22-24; Luke 14:1, 7-14

Every so often it happens that there is a single word which seems to encapsulate the Mass readings. I would suggest that today is such an occasion, and that the key word is “humility”. The passage from the Book of Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach) contains both “humbly” and “the humble”, while the concept of humility is contained in Jesus’ instruction to take the lowest place, and to invite the outsider to one’s own parties.

What do we mean by humility? As I have mentioned before, it is connected to the Latin word “humus” meaning “soil” or “ground” , and involves being “grounded”—not as children are “grounded” when confined to barracks (the modern equivalent of a clip around the ear or a kick up the backside)—but in the sense of “having our feet on the ground”.

This entails recognition of our weaknesses and limitations, but also of our strengths. It means recognising our status in relation both to God and to our neighbour, realising both that we are dependent upon God AND that we are His beloved sons and daughters: seeing our neighbours as our brothers and sisters beloved by God, and recognising the beauty of each of them as a child of God.

During pastoral studies in the seminary, I remember examining Transactional Analysis, of which the guiding principle is “I’m OK, you’re OK” as distinct from the various other options (“I’m OK, you’re not OK;” “I’m not OK, you’re not OK; “I’m not OK; you’re OK”). Genuine humility involves recognising the intrinsic goodness both of yourself and of the other person, and being at ease with that.

This is light years away from the false humility of self-abasement, the cringing mock servility of Uriah Heep, who was proud of his humility, a humility which masked a devious, plotting nature. That sort of false humility is often a cover for a loathing of, or contempt for, the other person, as brought out in the old Jewish story of the rabbi, the cantor, and the synagogue cleaner.

The rabbi stood at the front of the synagogue, and beat his breast, exclaiming “I am nothing, I am nothing.” Next to him stood the cantor, who beat his breast, exclaiming “I am nothing, I am nothing,”. And at the back stood the little cleaner, who beat his breast, and exclaimed “I am nothing, I am nothing.” And the rabbi turned to the cantor and said “Just look who thinks he is nothing.” For rabbi, cantor, and cleaner, read priest...........

We can guarantee that this mythical rabbi would not have invited the synagogue cleaner to his party, since his professed humility scarcely disguised a pride in himself and a contempt for others. Only a genuine humility, based on an honest assessment of our standing before God, enables us to recognise the intrinsic worth of every other person and to realise that s/he is well worthy of an invitation.

I remember a school group of 15-16 year olds attending a residential week at the Diocesan Youth Centre at Castlerigg Manor. In the group was a girl who stuck out like a sore thumb. She was plain, not very bright, and socially inept. Shortly after they had returned home, I received a letter from one of her room-mates from the week, who, among other things, mentioned how, during the week, she had come to recognise the good qualities in this particular lass. How much that owed to our input, I have no idea, but I suspect that, when they returned to school, there would have been far more involvement of this girl in their plans and activities. I hope that they may even have invited her to their parties.

So what about us? What is the state of our humility? How do we stand before God, and how do we regard other people? Are we free from both cringing and contempt? Do we recognise our own God-given worth, and that of others? And whom do we invite to our parties?

21st Sunday

21st Sunday 2019

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

Last week’s readings, if you recall, were somewhat disturbing. Today, we have something of a mixture of the encouraging and the disturbing.

We begin with an uplifting text from the Book of Isaiah. The prophet foresees people pouring into Jerusalem from the whole of the known world, being accepted among the people of God, serving Him as priests, ministering at His altar.

So far, so positive, and in many ways we see this prophecy being fulfilled. God’s people do indeed come today from the whole world: we have a Pope from Latin America, and several religious orders are now centred in Africa or Asia, rather than in Europe. Forty years ago, it was earth-shaking when a non-Italian was elected Pope: at the last papal election, short odds were offered on an African Pope.

There is encouragement too from the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, who reminds us that we are sons and daughters of God. Perhaps we need to ponder that thought more often than we do. To be a child of God—to be able to address God as our Father as we do every day—is an awesome privilege from which we should draw consolation and joy.

This positive message, though, comes with a caveat, a warning. As sons and daughters of God, we are subject to God’s discipline: in other words, we will have to carry the Cross. “Suffering is part of your training” we are told. If Jesus the Son of God, had to suffer, then we, as His adopted brothers and sisters, will suffer in our turn, and the closer we draw to Him, the greater will be our share in the Cross.

That word of caution is spelt out still more sharply in the Gospel, where Jesus urges us to enter by the narrow door, and warns us that, if we have not truly tried to know Him, then the influx of outsiders will be at our expense.

It seems ironic that, for the second successive week, the most disturbing words come from the Lord Himself, the Redeemer, the lover of humankind, and that they are reported by St. Luke, the scriba mansuetudinis Christi—the one who writes of the gentleness of Christ. There is no place here for the “Smile, Jesus loves you” approach to living the Gospel: we are being called very firmly to know Jesus intimately, and this will involve the discipline to which the writer to the Hebrews referred; it will entail carrying the Cross.

We need to be conscious here of the setting in which Our Lord is speaking. He is, says St. Luke, “making His way to Jerusalem.” Luke has previously described Him as “setting His face toward Jerusalem” almost as if He were gritting His teeth. Jesus is under no illusions: He is aware that this is a journey to suffering and death, and those who wish to enter into life must make that journey with Him.

What does this entail? Remember that those who are cast out are people whom Jesus does not recognise, who have not made the effort to get to know Him. We need to be people who know the Lord, and who are known by Him. This means that we must be people of prayer, people who have met Him in the Scriptures, in the Sacraments, in our neighbour, and in the silence of our hearts. We must be people who seek His will in the events of every day.

Finally, we must be people who are prepared to take up the Cross, to unite our sufferings to those of the Lord for the salvation of the world, to recognise that our status as God’s sons and daughters requires us to share the sufferings of the only begotten Son. We should be heartened by all the encouraging aspects of today’s readings but, having been encouraged, we must be prepared to accept the more difficult aspects of our call.

20th Sunday

20th Sunday 2019

Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10; Hebrews 12: 1-4; Luke 12:49-53

Not the most comfortable or, indeed, comforting set of readings: Jeremiah is persecuted and almost killed, the writer to the Hebrews speaks about fighting to the point of death, and Jesus, perhaps most shockingly of all, declares that He has come to bring, not peace, but division.

In Jeremiah’s case, we encounter cowardice on the part of the king. When the so called leading men approach him, demanding Jeremiah’s death, Zedekiah fails completely to stand up for what is right. “He is in your hands, as you know,” he replies, “for the king is powerless against you.”

Does that remind you of anyone? It makes me think of Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of responsibility for Our Lord, taking the line of least resistance. I am afraid too, that it reminds me of certain bishops, failing to stand up for falsely accused priests, hiding behind their Safeguarding Commissions, stating untruthfully “My hands are tied”.

Cowardly bishops have been a plague on the Church in recent years, and we must hope and pray that recent appointees are made of sterner stuff. We should remember, though, that this is nothing new. In the time of Henry VIII, of all the English bishops only St. John Fisher had the courage to stand up to the king, and he paid with his life.

Before we point the finger too eagerly though, we need to examine ourselves. Do we always stand up for what is right? Are there times when we take the line of least resistance, when we settle for comfort rather than truth or justice, the quiet life rather than possible confrontation? Of course, we shouldn’t go looking for confrontation, seeking to stir trouble, making a stand through obstinacy rather than a concern for truth, but there are times in all our lives when we must be valiant for truth, when we have to find the courage to say “This is what I believe to be right” and to hold to it.

I have mentioned previously my classmate from the Boys’ Grammar School who is a Methodist lay preacher. He and his minister are deeply troubled at present because the Methodist Conference has recently approved a motion accepting the validity of gay marriage, and seeking to conduct such marriages in church. Geoff and the minister sincerely believe this to be wrong, and must work out the consequences of their belief.

As Jesus points out, though, it is not only within churches that a concern for truth—and remember tht Jesus is the truth—will bring division, but also within families. I remember a lady informing me that, when she informed her family, many years ago, that she was becoming a Catholic, they put her out of the house. That story was not uncommon at one time: much more recently, a young man from an atheist background provoked a similar reaction when he announced that he had become a Christian.

A religious vocation too may provoke anger, distress, even rejection on the part of a family. Cherished parental hopes may be shattered, and the reaction may be a bitter one.

For all of us, the call to follow Jesus is a call to take up the Cross, and the Cross comes in many forms. When Our Lord speaks of a baptism which He must still receive, this evokes memories of His question to James and John: “Can you drink the cup which I must drink, and be baptised with the baptism with which I must be baptised?” Their positive answer led James to martyrdom and John to exile. Our “yes” to Jesus will lead us where He alone knows, but we would be very foolish to assume that our path will be strewn with roses.

Assumption

Assumption of the BVM 2019

On 14th August, 1972, very late at night, I arrived in Athens, having travelled by train and boat. On waking the following morning, I made my way into the city to find that everything was closed: it was the Feast of the Dormition of Our Lady, the term which the Orthodox use for the Assumption, and Greece was holding festival.

And so it should—and so should we, for this is our feast. It is our feast because it is a feast of Our Lady, and she is OUR Lady, because she is ours.

More than that though: it is a feast of the Church, because Mary is a member of the Church. She is the first member, the first to bring the Son of God into the world; the only truly faithful member. Mary represents the Church—indeed, IS the Church, at its best. She is always what we are called to be—what we shall be, in eternity.

Thus, the Assumption is not only about Mary: it is also about us, the Church. What we believe about Mary, we believe about the whole Church. Mary has been assumed body and soul into heaven, and we ARE TO BE assumed body and soul into heaven. Elizabeth pronounced Mary to be blessed because she believed that what was promised her by the Lord would be fulfilled. We are blessed if we believe that what has been promised to us by the Lord will be fulfilled, that we shall be raised from the dead.

In the Assumption of Our Lady, we see the fulfilment of that promise, for she is the first of the redeemed, the representative of the Church. The woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, is Mary, but she is also the new Israel, the Church, personified in her. She has been raised to share her Son’s glory, not simply on her own behalf, but on ours. She is what we are called to be. Rightly we rejoice in her feast because she is ours, she is us, and her feast is ours.

19th Sunday

19th Sunday 2019

Wisdom 18:6-9; Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19; Luke 12:32-48

I have always had a liking for the absurd: my humour, such as it is, is rooted in the paradoxes and sheer insanity of the Goons. Hence, it is not surprising that I cherish the memory of a car sticker which I saw years ago, and which read simply “Be alert! Your country needs lerts.”

Daft isn’t it—gloriously so? Yet “be alert” could almost be the summary of today’s Gospel. What is the point of our alertness? It is simply that we shouldn’t be taken by surprise by the coming of the Lord.

What, though do we mean by “the coming of the Lord”? There is the coming of Christ as judge at the end of time, and there is the moment of our death. The latter is something of which previous generations tended to be more aware, because they had a closer acquaintance with death. Not only were there two World Wars, with daily reports of casualties, and, in many parts of the country and the world, the possibility that a bomb would bring a premature end to earthly existence;  there were also many diseases which were likely to have fatal consequences. I remember, as a child, three lads in the neighbourhood  losing their fathers to sudden deaths within a very short time of each other.  These would have been men in their thirties who had, presumably, returned from war service. Devastating though these deaths must have been for their families, they were treated in a matter-of-fact way, as something which simply happened, by the neighbours.

I also recall that, over my parents’ bed, hung a papal scroll, promising the grace of a happy death to my grandfather and his family, provided that, if unable to receive the sacraments, we at least invoked the name of Jesus. My grandfather and father both died suddenly, I suspect without time to utter the Holy Name: perhaps that was in itself a response to their lifelong prayer and state of alertness. My mother was suffering from dementia by the time of her death, but was still able to invoke the name of Mary, perhaps calculating that Our Lady might have more leisure than her Son to respond to prayer.

Incidentally, both my parents died while I was offering Mass for them, which has always struck me as an answer to prayer, though a friend of mine did comment wryly “Well, if I become ill, please don’t offer Mass for me.” Finally, there was the lady, now in her nineties, who told me the story passed on by her mother about the latter’s wedding night. The newly weds knelt down for their night prayers, but when the new wife began a prayer for a happy death, her husband broke in with “Nay, dammit lass, we’ll pray for a happy life.”

Yet our death is not the only occasion when the Lord will come into our lives, and we need to be alert to recognise His presence daily and hourly. He comes to us in our neighbour, both the neighbour whom we encounter in person, and the distant neighbour whom we shall never meet, but who has a right to demand our prayers, and our practical concern for his/her wellbeing.

As the author of the Letter to the Hebrews suggests, the Lord also comes to us, as He came to Abraham, in those situations which call for faith, when we need the courage to step out into the dark, to follow where God is leading us, even though the road may be unfamiliar. He may call us to sacrifice our time, or our cherished projects, trusting that He will see us through, as He led Abraham fruitfully and positively through the ramifications of the call to sacrifice Isaac.

There are the times too when the Lord is calling us to prayer, which itself entails a stepping out in faith, as does the call to join our brothers and sisters in that greatest of all encounters which is our weekly or daily celebration of the Eucharist.

If we are truly alert, we shall realise, gradually or suddenly, that God is, in fact, coming to us in every moment and in every situation; and, if we are wise, we shall learn to respond to Him in love.

18th Sunday

18th Sunday 2019

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

It must be around forty years ago that I read a newspaper article about a man who had effectively worked himself to death, slaving every hour God sent in order to raise the money to send his daughter to a private school. He succeeded in his aim, but suffered a fatal heart attack brought on by overwork.

The newspaper in question was full of praise for his self-sacrifice: I have to say that I was appalled. I am sure that his daughter would gladly have binned her new school place to have her father back—or even to have had his company at home during all his hours of overwork. Unlike the man in the parable, this father was not guilty of avarice—he wasn’t seeking personal gain—but his sense of priorities was equally disordered.

In certain parts of the world today, there are still people who must work desperately long hours in order simply to put food on the table, and modern slavery is a widespread phenomenon. This is a grave injustice, and we have a duty to do all in our power to change the situation. Our own desire for cheap food, cheap clothing, cheap commodities is partly to blame , and we need to be more discerning than we are about the working and living conditions of those who produce the food and goods that we buy; we must be more concerned that our greed does not come into play, making life more harsh for our brothers and sisters. Was it CAFOD, or some other organization, which coined the slogan “Live simply, that others may simply live”? Whoever devised it, we need to take it to heart, but, I suspect, we rarely do.

The situation of those who are forced to overwork in order to survive is very different from that of the tragic father whom I mentioned at first. His was a case, not of necessity, but of mistaken priorities. His daughter did not need the advantages, real or imagined, conveyed by a private education: what she needed was the presence of a loving, caring father.

For more than a century, beginning with Pope Leo XIII, the Church has been building up a body of social teaching, which is often ignored, if not unknown altogether. For so many who would love to wield power in the Church, and who are appalled by the present Holy Father, social justice plays no part in their understanding of morality, which is concerned purely with sexual ethics, and with who should, or should not, be allowed to receive Communion. I could not help rising an eyebrow a few year ago on leaning that, in one seminary, candidates for the priesthood were studying Pope St. Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae, on the subject of birth control, but not his far more important Populorum Progressio, on “ the progress of peoples”.

Does the Church’s emphasis on social justice, which has been a preoccupation of all the twentieth and twenty first century popes, detract from St. Paul’s injunction “Let your thoughts be on heavenly things, not on things that are on the earth”? Far from it: if people haven’t enough to eat, if they are exhausted by overwork, it is very difficult for them to contemplate the things of heaven, and one of the most heavenly instructions that we have is the commandment to love our neighbour as ourselves. If we are not striving for the well-being of our neighbour, then we are failing to give proper thought to heavenly things, no matter how regularly we worship; and, in fact, if we are serious about our prayer, then we will not be able to continue to be indifferent towards those who suffer.

All three of today’s readings make it clear that our chief preoccupation must be building up our life in God, fulfilling God’s call to us. That call entail a concern for justice: it does not entail a concern for relentless material advancement.

17th Sunday

17th Sunday 2019

Genesis 18:20-32; Colossians 2:12-24; Luke 11:1-13

Have I told you about Terry? Even if I have, I am going to tell you now. Terry was a sad character who used to do the rounds of the Preston presbyteries, though I have seen him as far afield as Carlisle. I suspect that he had fallen through the net of care in the community.

When he rang the doorbell, Terry always had the same request: “Some tea—in a cup.”

One night, I was awakened by the doorbell. I switched on the light, and looked at my watch: it was half past eleven. Slipping on my dressing gown, I went downstairs, and opened the front door. There stood Terry.

“Some tea—in a cup.”

“Terry, I am not making tea at this time of night.”

“Some tea—in a cup.”

“Terry, it’s half past eleven. You have woken me up. I am not making tea now.”

“Some tea—in a cup.”

“Terry...”

“Some tea—in a cup.”

Terry got his tea, in a cup. When I went into the sacristy next morning to prepare for Mass, I give you one guess as to the Gospel of the day. Admittedly, Terry was half an hour short of midnight, and he wasn’t asking for bread, but as far as I am concerned, the parable was spot on.

But does it work in terms of our prayer? Does the one who asks always receive? Does the one who searches always find? Does the one who knocks always have the door opened? I wouldn’t mind betting that you have prayed for things and haven’t received them.

Sometimes, of course, you would probably admit with hindsight that it was better that you didn’t receive what you asked for. That relationship which you were anxious should work would have proved toxic, and was replaced by something better. That item which you were sure you needed was superfluous if not harmful. You may have thought that you were asking for an egg, but it would have turned into a scorpion, and given you a painful sting. Parents know full well that it is not always good to give their children what they ask, and God is the wisest and most loving parent of all.

And yet...and yet...There must have been times also when you prayed for something which seemed unarguably good. It may have been the recovery of a sick person who died despite your prayers. It may have been prayer for a young person who took a self-destructive path. I suspect that all of you could think of examples when your prayer struck a brazen heaven, to quote the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.

What response do we make to that? Firstly, I think we have to be careful not to be glib, not to come up with specious reasons why God should not have answered that particular prayer. That is insulting to the person who has prayed, who may be deeply wounded, and does no favours to God, who doesn’t need us to defend Him.

Sometimes we have to admit that we do not know. God has His reasons, which we cannot always fathom. On occasions, it may help if we remember that God sees the whole picture of our lives and our eternity, whereas our own vision is limited. Sometimes, as the Book of Job points out, we have to remember that God is God, and that we are not.

 It may also be worth drawing attention to the closing words of today’s Gospel: “How much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him.” Perhaps rather than an egg or a fish, or even some tea in a cup, God is giving us the Holy Spirit, a deeper understanding of His ways, a less self-seeking attitude, a greater surrender to His will.

The answers are not always straightforward. Keep asking, searching, knocking. And don’t forget that we belong to the communion of saints. We are one body in Christ not only with those around us, but also with those who have gone before us—the Holy Souls, the Saints, and especially Our Lady, who will also pester God on our behalf. I often find that the Memorare encourages the Blessed Virgin to give God a nudge.

16th Sunday

16th Sunday 2019

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

Have you ever been to one of those gatherings where they ask you to quote the piece of scripture which speaks to you particularly powerfully? I knew of one priest who would invariably reply “A vain hope for safety is the horse”: if I had ever had the misfortune to be made a bishop, I would have taken as my motto “He stinketh, for he is four days buried”.

Taking the question seriously, though, I would opt for the opening sentence of today’s Second Reading: “I rejoice to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ, for the sake of His body, the Church.”

Is that because I welcome suffering? Is it heck as like! I loathe and fear suffering as much as the next person, but I also know that suffering comes: there is no avoiding it. Consequently, I find it consoling to know that it is serving some purpose by being taken up into the redemptive sufferings of Christ, and therefore helping to redeem the world.

As a child, I was taught, if something was painful, to “offer it up”. For a time, that sort of spirituality went out of fashion; I suspect because it was thought to glorify suffering. That I am sure is a misinterpretation: the phrase “offer it up”, with which I grew up, was expressing in a simple way the response which Paul described more eloquently and more accurately as helping to complete the redemptive suffering of the Christ.

We are able to do this because, as Paul states a little further on, Christ is en humin, which is here translated as “among you”. Inevitably, I am reminded here of the late Bishop Brewer, Fiery Jack, who was not redhaired for nothing.  His finger would stab the page and he would declare loudly “Christus IN vobis—Christ IN you”.

Bishop Brewer had a point, though he wasn’t 100% correct in objecting to this translation. The Greek en, like the Latin in can be translated “among” as well as “in”, and maybe a degree of ambiguity is fruitful here: Christ is among us, in the gathering of His people, and He is also in us, dwelling within us with His Father and with the Holy Spirit. Either way, or indeed in both ways, Christ is present, deeply and abidingly, giving us life, and giving value to our suffering.

Mention of the indwelling Trinity provides a link to the First Reading. There is a famous icon which depicts the three men who visited Abraham, and which sees them as, in some way, representing the Trinity. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews encourages the early Christians to practise hospitality because, he says, “by doing this, some people have entertained angels unawares” (Heb 13:2). He probably had Abraham’s visitors in mind, and it is worth remembering that, in the Hebrew scriptures (the Old Testament) there is often no clear distinction between the “angel of the Lord” and God Himself.

Abraham’s hospitality is linked to the hospitality shown to Jesus by the two sisters. Abraham may have entertained God: Martha and Mary certainly did. Why then does Mary receive a gentle reprimand?

Her problem is that, whilst she is keen to welcome the Lord, she fails to consider how He wishes to be welcomed. His desire at present is more for her company and her attention than for her meat and potato pie. I can’t help thinking of gentlemen of the road and others who have called in the past at my presbytery door. They too are Christ, yet I tend to see them as a nuisance. Rarely have I given such people time and attention, rather than a quickly assembled food parcel, or even a couple of pounds, which I have heard described as “bugger off money”.

Yet it is not only such callers who come to us as Christ. How much attention do we give to anybody, and are we sometimes too eager to leap in with our solutions to what we see as their problems? May the Christ who is within us (and among us) teach us to respond to the Christ who comes to us seeking.......what? We will have to listen to find out.

15th Sunday

15th Sunday 2019

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

Has it ever occurred to you that you should read this Gospel standing on your head? You see it is upside down. The lawyer asks “Who is my neighbour?” and Our Lord is making the point that everyone is my neighbour, and that the lawyer must love, and go to the aid of, everyone in need. We might have expected then a parable in which a lawyer, or at least an observant Jew, goes to the aid of an outsider, a Samaritan. Instead, the positions are reversed, and it is the outsider, the outcast, the heretic, in the person of the Samaritan, who does the helping, who shows the love, who fulfils the commandment.

I wonder whether we have realised quite how shocking this is. The Son of God is saying that the one who does not have the true faith may be fulfilling the commandments better than the chosen people, and is, presumably, being saved thereby. This should kick into touch the claim of the extreme evangelicals that only those who “have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour” are saved. This has always struck me as too individualistic to fit in with the life and the teachings of that same Jesus Christ, and this parable explodes it completely. The Samaritans were heretics, yet one of them is used by the Saviour as the paradigm for the fulfilment of the commandments.

Do such things as right doctrine, membership of the chosen people, membership of the Church, not matter then? Indeed they do. The First Commandment is still the demand that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength; and God formed a people, and sent as Saviour His Son, who established a Church, and who declared Himself to be the truth. Love of God, then, demands that we align ourselves as fully as possible with all of that, and I don’t think that we need to give serious consideration to the childish cliché which did the rounds a few years ago—“Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom, and it was the Church that came”. That is simply adolescent smart-alickry.

Nonetheless, we need to be aware that right opinion without love of neighbour is not love of God; we cannot fulfil the First Commandment if we are not fulfilling the Second. We do not need to go back into history to realise that some who profess to love God and to follow Christ can be among the harshest, the most intolerant, the most unloving of all. Again that doesn’t mean that we have to accept every daft idea, approve every lifestyle, which comes along. It does mean that our attitude must always be based on love, and that the language of condemnation has no place in our vocabulary.

As in so many things, Pope Francis has shown us the way, embracing the self-professed gay man who, accompanying a group on a televised visit to the Vatican, at first refused to meet the Pope, as he assumed that he would be condemned, only to be reduced to tears and to be completely won over by Francis’ Christ-like attitude.

A few years earlier, Francis fulfilled the Lord’s command “Do not judge” by saying to another homosexual man who approached him, “Who am I to judge?”, which caused uproar among the present day “lawyers”, the neo-Pharisees, who are based largely, though not entirely, in North America, and who are horrified by the Holy Father’s desire to make the Church more Christ-like. Of course we must not judge them, but it is difficult to avoid the feeling that, if Jesus were to return, they would crucify Him anew.

We can never afford to be smug, though. The lawyer spells out the commandments of love of God and of neighbour, and the parable hammers them home. Every day, we must be striving to fulfil both of them, well aware that they cannot be separated.

14th Sunday

14th Sunday 2019

Isaiah 66:10-14; Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20.

During my time in seminary, one word which cropped up was “pre-evangelisation”, which in effect meant preparing people to hear the Gospel. It is a word which assumes that we are dealing with people who are not yet ready to encounter Jesus the Christ, but stand in need of some degree of preparation. In a way, it is what John the Baptist did, preparing a way for the Lord, and it is what the seventy two disciples are sent to do, visiting towns and villages to prepare the groundwork for Jesus’ own mission.

Increasingly, it seems to be the task of the Church in the Western world today. Successive Popes have called for a new evangelisation—a new preaching of the Gospel—yet so many in the West seem to be at an even earlier stage. So great has been the drift away from faith, and from knowledge of the things of God, that groundwork has to be done even before the Gospel can be preached. It is ironic that a self-professed atheist like Richard Dawkins has deplored the ignorance of the British people with regard to the Bible and to Christian culture.

There is still a vague link to Christian life, belief, and practice in many quarters, but it is becomingly increasingly tenuous. Many people still want to have their children baptised, even though their next visit to church will be when those same children are presented for First Confession and First Holy Communion. A smaller number come to be married in church. In my early days as a priest, it was a cliché that we preferred funerals to weddings, because there was more faith to be found there, but even that scarcely holds true today. As the generations have passed through, it is increasingly the case that, even if the person in the coffin had faith, it has not taken root in their children and grandchildren.

I remember, almost thirty years ago, celebrating a funeral Mass for a lady to whom I had taken communion daily during her final illness. At the requiem, it was noticeable that none of her children came to communion, because they knew that they were lapsed, but that all of her grandchildren did: they didn’t even realise that they were lapsed. I strongly suspect that, when their time comes, those children (and certainly the grandchildren) won’t even bother with a church service, especially now that funeral directors are offering home-made cremations, with whatever music, readings, and tributes the bereaved wish, with the undertaker conducting the entire proceedings, and with no need to approach a priest, or to incur the imagined cost of a religious funeral.

So if we are, as I presume, in a condition of pre-evangelisation, what are we to do about it? Firstly, no doubt, we take to heart Our Lord’s instruction to “ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to His harvest”. Incidentally, it may be worth recalling the rather scathing rebuke delivered by a colleague of mine on the Junior Seminary staff many years ago to a sixth former whose principal interest appeared to be in dressing up and playing at liturgy: “The Lord wants labourers for His harvest, not fairies for the bottom of His garden”.

Yet, even if we find these labourers, how are they to go about their task? Eighteen months ago, I spent a weekend looking after a parish on behalf of a priest, a member of the Neo-Catechumenate, who, together with his Neo-Cat brethren was, for a fortnight, taking literally the words of today’s Gospel. They were being dropped off, in pairs, the length and breadth of the country, with nothing in their pockets but the return half of a train ticket. They were to spend that fortnight knocking on doors, relying on the hospitality of others. Whether that is the right way to go about things I do not know. What I do know is that it is amazingly courageous, and that I could not do it.

So what can I, what can you, what can anybody do? Is it a cop-out to say that we do what we are able, in the circumstances in which we find ourselves? For a monastic community, in addition to prayer, this will entail hospitality, and a compassionate presence, for those who appear at the door. For me, in my school chaplaincy days, it meant having an open door and a listening ear, and delivering assemblies about wrong buses, scarlet knickers, and girls with beautiful legs.

It means seizing opportunities when they arise. A priest told me, a few years ago, that he had been called in to prepare a funeral. On visiting the family, he was presented with a set of readings (secular) music (secular) and tributes. “There doesn’t seem to be much space for me,” he commented: “You don’t really need me,” and off he went.

I can’t help feeling that he missed an opportunity, however small, for doing something, however little. In general though, what should we be doing? Praying? Of course. But what else? Answers on a postcard.