Lent Week 1 Year B

1st Sunday of Lent 2021  

Genesis 9:8-15; 1Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15

Mark’s Gospel is amazing in that he is able to say so much in such a short space. In two short paragraphs today, he takes us through, not only Our Lord’s time in the wilderness, but also His basic proclamation, or kerygma: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.”

Every word in this short extract is significant. It begins with a word which doesn’t appear in the English translation—one of Mark’s favourite words in the early part of his Gospel—the word euthus “at once, immediately”.

It is a pity that the translation leaves this out, because it is a significant word. It points to the urgency with which Jesus prepares for, and begins, His public ministry; an urgency which Mark constantly stresses.

The episode begins immediately after the baptism of the Lord. Jesus is given no time to reflect on His baptism, no time to bask in the descent of the Spirit, or the encouraging testimony of the Father—“You are my Son, the Beloved”. Instead, He enters the wilderness at once. No time must be lost.

Notice how He comes to enter the wilderness. He doesn’t go of His own accord: instead, the Spirit is responsible, that same Spirit which had descended upon Him at the Jordan. Now the Spirit has Him go straight into the wilderness—and the Spirit will guide us, taking us where we should go, if only we are open to Him.

How does the Spirit guide Jesus? It “drove Him out” we are told: the Greek is actually ekballei “threw Him out”. There is almost an element of force in the Spirit’s action: Jesus is going into the wilderness whether He wishes to or not.

What is the wilderness? The wilderness is the place of wandering, of bewilderment; the place without signposts, where we must give up our comfortable securities and allow ourselves to be led by God.

The wilderness is the place where the Israelites wandered for forty years on their way to the Promised Land; but, as the prophet Hosea pointed out, it is also the place where they were drawn closer to God, where they came to know Him more fully. In His forty days (shorthand for a fairly long time) in the wilderness, Our Lord became identified with His people in their forty years (shorthand for a very long time) of wandering: and we too, in our Lenten forty days’ journey, are identified, as the pilgrim people of God, both with Our Lord and with our Jewish forebears.

In the Greek of the New Testament, the word for wilderness is eremon , the empty place. Our Lenten practices of prayer, self-denial, and generous giving, are intended to empty us of attachment to unnecessary things, in order that we may be filled by God.

Yet the wilderness is not entirely empty: the Tempter is there. Matthew and Luke describe the temptations which Jesus faced, whilst Mark does not. Our own wilderness times, whether chosen by us or inflicted on us, may open us to temptation, but they also serve to clarify our vision, to enable us to recognize our temptations and to resist them.

Mark is alone in using a peculiar expression: “He was with the wild beasts.” What is their significance? Were they a source of danger and of fear? Probably. We all face wild beasts of some description—people who are hostile; people who do not share our values, and who  may tempt us to abandon those values; threats to our mental or physical well-being. Yet in saying “He was with the wild beasts,” is Mark implying that Our Lord tamed them, made them His companions? Can we tame and befriend the wild beasts of our nature, whether these be rage, lust, selfishness, unkindness, or whatever?

“And the angels looked after Him.” Let us not forget that God sends His angels, both spiritual and human, to look after us in our wilderness times.

We looked at the kerygma, the basic proclamation, a few weeks ago. It is worth mentioning though, that the Second Reading interprets the story of Noah’s Ark, in which people and animals were saved by passing through water, as looking forward to baptism, the Easter sacrament, by which we have been saved through water. We seek to live out our baptism daily, and especially during this season of Lent.

6th Sunday Year B

6th Sunday in OT 2021

Leviticus 13:1-2; 45-46; 1Cor 10: 31-11:1; Mark 1: 40-45

Is it just me, or does the beginning of that Second Reading remind anyone else of the old Status Quo hit “Whatever you want”? “Whatever you eat, whatever you drink, whatever you do...” Whether it evokes musical nostalgia or not, the whole of that reading effectively encourages us to live the two great Commandments of love of God and love of neighbour.

First, St. Paul calls us to do everything for the glory of God. Straightaway, then, we have a challenge: am I conscious of the presence of God always in my life, and do I try to do His will in everything? Paul then continues his theme from last week’s reading, of seeking to be of service to all—for their advantage indeed, but also to draw them closer to Christ, to cause them to say “These Catholics/Christians are good eggs: they have something going for them.”

Moving from there to the First Reading and Gospel, I find nostalgia breaking out again. In the late fifties, Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Black Arrow” appeared as a serial on children’s television, and I can still recall the sheer terror evoked by one scene in which a leper, hooded and cloaked, and ringing a bell to warn people away, turns and pursues the young hero and heroine. It turns out that he is not a leper at all, but the rather sinister Sir Daniel Brackley, but that episode captured the horror which lepers provoked, suffering from a highly contagious disease for which there was no cure.

Nor was it only the physical ravages of the disease which aroused such fear. There was also the knowledge that, once infected, you were literally an outcast, forced to live apart from society and, in the case of Jews, banned from playing any part in worship, and in any of the religious activities which formed the basis of community life. Hence, lepers were shunned, and for their part were desperate to find healing if Jesus could offer it.

This gives rise to an incidental question that you might wish to ponder. Is there anyone, or any group of people, whom I shun, from whom I shy away? You are probably familiar with some of the stories of St. Francis of Assisi and his encounters with lepers whom, as a particularly fastidious young man, he used to avoid, literally like the plague. One of the major stages in his conversion occurred when he saw a leper coming towards him. Overcoming by a huge effort his initial impulse to head off in the opposite direction, Francis leapt down from his horse, embraced the leper, and changed clothes with him.

We are probably not called to such dramatic gestures, but we are called to recognise the human being behind anything which we may find offputting, and to embrace that human being metaphorically, if not literally, though, in this context, I must recall another story of a literal embrace.

In Scorton, as some of you will be aware, there is no Catholic primary school, so I was always concerned to maintain an involvement with the Church of England school, and I would sometimes be invited to assembly. On one such occasion, the Headteacher devoted the whole assembly to an incident, considered newsworthy at the time, when Pope Francis embraced a man with a dreadfully disfigured face, the Head’s point being that this was an outstanding example of Christianity in action, and a lesson which the children should ponder—so we are actually brought back to St. Paul.

With all these considerations in mind, it is no surprise that the leper of today’s Gospel was so anxious to be cured by Our Lord. Along with that anxiety, he also had deep faith: “If you want to, you can cure me.” There may be a slight point of danger for us there. Some people will claim that, if we have faith, God will cure us of anything—therefore, if we are not cured, we don’t have enough faith. I can’t help feeling that this attitude confuses faith with magic: it also overlooks the leper’s opening words “If you want to”. It may not be God’s will that a particular prayer should be answered in a particular way at a particular time: God is not a slot-machine.

There is something else worth pondering, namely the difference between being cured and being healed. Diseases are cured: people are healed. Someone may be cured of a particular disease, but remain unhealed: they may be angry, selfish, unpleasant people, on whom the cure’s effect is purely physical. On the other hand, a person’s disease may not be cured, but s/he may still be healed—of inner hurts, of resentment, of anger, of dis-ease rather than disease. So there we have a final question: do I need to be cured, or do I need to be healed?

4th Sunday Year B

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021

Deuteronomy 18:15-20; 1 Cor 7: 32-35; Mark 1: 21-28

I think that I have spoken before about the two Latin words for “authority”. There is imperium which is authority in the sense of “power” or “control”, as in “having authority” over someone, or in the way that we speak of “the authorities”.

Then there is auctoritas, from which the English word “authority” is derived. This is “moral” authority, when someone knows what s/he is talking about, is “an authority” on a subject, and so has the ability, not to force, but to persuade. This word has its root in the verb augere “to cause to increase”, which implies that this form of authority is intended to help people grow.

Which sense of the word is being employed here, on the two occasions on which it is used? “Unlike the scribes” we are told, “Jesus taught them with authority”. It seems fairly clear that this is auctoritas: Jesus knew what He was talking about, and it is rather disturbing that the scribes, the people with imperium, apparently didn’t.

Later, the word occurs again. It is unfortunate that Greek doesn’t make the same distinction as Latin, but uses the same word exousia for both kinds of authority. This time, it is the people who are speaking: “Here is a teaching that is new,” they say, “and with authority behind it”. This would appear to be auctoritas again, but they go on to say “He gives orders even to unclean spirits and they obey Him.”

This is imperium. Our Lord has power over these spirits, and is able to drive them out. In effect, though, it is both. His imperium derives from His auctoritas. Nobody appoints Him to a position of power: His power is based on His knowledge and understanding.

That is how it should always be: temporal authority should always be based on moral authority, and should enable people to grow. Is that how it works in our world today?

In the best situations, we may say that it is. In a functioning family, for instance, parents have power over their children, but this derives from their love for their children, and their desire to help them grow. A tyrannical father, who lords it over the family, may have power, but he lacks moral authority, and will not contribute to his family’s growth.

What about the world at large? In a mature society, power should again be based on moral authority, but how often is that so in practice? If we counted up the nations of the world, I suspect that dictatorships might outnumber free societies. So often the truth of Lord Acton’s dictum is demonstrated: “All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

Even in the self-styled “land of the free” the United States, we have seen how dictatorship can arise. For four years, someone whom mental health professionals defined as “a narcissistic sociopath” exercised power on a whim, and when that power was due to be taken from him as the result of a democratic election, tried all means to cling on, and sought to destroy his compatriots’ trust in democracy. In our own country, Prime Ministers have sought to bypass Parliament, and have been thwarted only by the vigilance of the Parliamentary Speaker.

Many of us of a certain vintage will have experienced the abuse of power in schools, especially in all-boys schools, where the bullying schoolmaster of legend was frequently a flesh and blood reality. And what about the Church? The horrors of clerical sex abuse are as dreadful an example as one could find of the abuse of power, and whilst the age of curate-breaker parish priests may largely have passed, there are still plenty of prince bishops and hectoring priests, keen to lecture people on their supposed failings, teaching without auctoritas, imposing rules at will, and refusing to surrender what they regard as their just imperium.

So where do we stand? If we have power of any sort, we must strive to ensure that it is rooted in moral authority. The more firmly we are fixed in Christ, bringing our plans and decisions before Him in prayer, and in the light of His word, the more likely is this to be the case. Also we must be vigilant, questioning abuses of power where we see them, whether in society or in the Church. But let us always ensure that we allow others, and especially Christ who speaks in our inmost heart, to question us.

3rd Sunday Year B

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021

Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1Cor 7: 29-31; Mark 1:14-20

What’s going on? This is the second time since Christmas that we have had St. John’s account of the calling of the first four disciples, followed a few days later, in this case a week, by the very different version in one of the Synoptic Gospels. The two accounts differ markedly. Does this make them incompatible, and present us with a problem?

Far from it, I would say. It strikes me that John and the Synoptics are interdependent; that, without John, today’s episode would make little sense. Imagine these four fishermen working away, along with their colleagues, when some random bloke comes along and says “follow me”. Would they have done so? Would they heck as like! They would have given him a mouthful and carried on with the task of earning a living.

They would have followed, only if they knew Him already, only if there was a relationship in existence, the sort of relationship described by John, who tells us that they were pointed towards Jesus by John the Baptist, and that they spent time with Him, being drawn into closeness with Him. Hence they would have been waiting for His call, and would have followed with alacrity.

There are lessons for us there. We too are called into relationship with Jesus the Christ, which means that we too have to spend time with Him; time given to prayer, time of stillness in His presence, time to reflect on His word, time to recognize Him in other people and in the events of life, time especially to recognize Him in the Eucharist. Then we will be ready to respond “at once” as did the fishermen, when Jesus has a special call for us, that expression “at once” (euthus) appearing in the call of each pair of brothers.

So they follow. Who (or “whom” if you wish to be grammatically precise) or what are they following? It is definitely “who”: it is a person, not a programme, or an ideal, or a slogan. That is something which we must always bear in mind: we are following the Person, Jesus Christ, God-the-Son-made-man, called into relationship with Him, and nothing and no one else.

This is something which is forgotten by the critics and opponents of Pope Francis. His whole aim is to focus us on Jesus, to make the Church more Christ-like, to steer her away from the temptation to become a Church of the Scribes and Pharisees, obsessed with rules and prohibitions. Hence he is accused (usually, it seems, by people involved in far right American politics) of being ambiguous, “liberal” (whatever that is supposed to mean) lax, or even a heretic. Such people would doubtless have regarded Jesus as a heretic, with His lightness of touch where rules and regulations were concerned.

That, then is the next question for us: am I focused on the person of Jesus, within the context of the Church, but not making an idol of the Church or of our own particular understanding or version of it?

I have said that we are following a person, not a programme, yet Jesus does set out a programme, a programme which our following of Him will entail. “The time has come” He says “and the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News.”

Scripture scholars call this the kerygma, the basic proclamation, from the Greek word keryx  meaning “a herald”. What is its essence? It begins “the time has come”. The word used for time is kairos which means a special time, the time for which we have been waiting, as distinct from the general word for time, which is chronos.

This is THE time, the time which matters, and it refers both to the time of Jesus’ proclamation and to our time, the here and now in which He is calling us. This is ho kairos for us; the time when we must follow.

Why? Because the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Because the Son of God has come into the world, therefore the Kingdom is here. Jesus Himself tells us that “the Kingdom of God is entos humon”, meaning either “within you” or “among you”: the Greek word will bear either interpretation. The Kingdom of God is already here: the reign of God has begun. It is our task to make it ever more fully present.

How are we to do this? “Repent” says Jesus, a word which means in essence not “be sorry”, as the reading today from the Book of Jonah might suggest, but have a change of heart, a change of focus. Make sure that your gaze is fixed on God, on Jesus, on His will and His Kingdom—“and believe the Good News”.

What is the Good News? It is the same word evangelion which we use for “Gospel”, not just the written Gospels, because they didn’t yet exist at the time that Our Lord was speaking—effectively He was Himself writing them by His words and his actions—but the whole Good News of His abiding presence among us by His suffering, death, and resurrection, and by His sending of the Holy Spirit.

Our repentance, our believing the Good News, is essentially a matter of focusing on Him, and of learning to recognize His presence, and the presence of His Kingdom.

2nd Sunday Year B

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2021

1Sam 3:3-10, 19; 1Cor 6:13-15, 17-20; John 1:35-42

One of the first Latin verbs which I learnt at the Boys’ Grammar many moons ago was voco-are, meaning “call”. That is quite appropriate when you think about it, because “calling, being called” forms a major part of Christian life, and voco is the root of the word “vocation”.

Today’s readings are full of God’s call, indicating that this is something which we must take seriously in our daily lives. We hear of Samuel, called persistently during the night; the Psalm is a response to God’s call—“You do not ask for sacrifice and offerings, but an open ear. You do not ask for holocaust and victim: instead, here am I”—while the Gospel relates how the first disciples were directed to the Lord.

I always feel sorry for Eli when I hear about the call of Samuel. There is Eli, an old man trying to get a decent night’s sleep, and here is this dratted kid, who wakes him up not once, but three times. What is interesting though is that Eli is needed to point Samuel to God: “Samuel had as yet no knowledge of God,” we are told, and so it falls to Eli to teach him how to respond.

There’s a thought for your life and mine: who pointed you towards God, and taught you how to respond? For most of us it was probably our parents in the first place, but their work has continually been reinforced by others, whether by teachers, a parish priest, a spouse, friends, work colleagues or whoever; and it is a work which continues. I received fresh pointers to God from my university chaplaincy, and still others from the seminary, and the various situations in which, and the people with whom, I have worked as a priest.

For Andrew and the other disciple (John?) it is John the Baptist who fulfils Eli’s role of pointing them towards God in the person of Jesus the Christ. “Look, there is the Lamb of God”, he says, using the words by which we are directed to Jesus in Holy Communion. The disciples follow John’s direction, and spend time in Our Lord’s company. The tenth hour is four o’clock in the afternoon, so they probably went for their tea, and stayed for the evening.

There is a process in the calling of these disciples which is relevant to our lives. Someone, in this case, the Baptist, points them to Jesus; they spend time getting to know Him; then they bring others to Him: Simon Peter in Andrew’s case, and probably his own brother in the case of the other disciple.

How does that play out for us? Having been pointed in Jesus’ direction, we need to spend time with Him. We need to listen and to speak to Him in prayer; we need to encounter Him in the Scriptures, reading and reflecting; we must meet Him (when it becomes possible again) in the sacraments and in the gathering of His people; we find Him in the events of daily life. Prayer and reflection are so important here, because we are called into relationship with Him, and as with all relationships, this requires time, listening, and presence to the other person.

Then, at least in theory, we bring others to Him. How do we do that? For a parent, priest or teacher, it may be reasonably obvious. For others, it will be largely a matter of example. If people know that you are a Catholic, they will want to see what effect this has on your life, and in your interactions with others. Does your relationship with Jesus affect your behaviour, your attitudes, your response to other people and to different situations—and if not, why not?

Today’ readings call—there’s that word again—us to reflect. From them, I would pick out three prayers which you might usefully make your own. “Here I am: I come to do your will.” “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” “Rabbi, where do you live?”

Baptism

Baptism of the Lord 2021

Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7; Acts 10:34-38; Mark 1:7-11.

I am going to make you a promise. I am not going to talk about the three parts of Epiphany, of which the Lord’s Baptism is the most important, nor am I going to complain that the Church’s understanding of this has become mangled over the centuries. I am not even going to mention that what is said by the Father to Jesus at His baptism is said also to us because we are baptized into Christ. I say these things every year, and so I am going to take them as read, and to focus instead on that First Reading from the prophet whom we call Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah.

This is one of the prophet’s Songs of the Suffering Servant. We do not know who exactly the prophet had in mind (always assuming, as we cannot necessarily do, that he knew himself) but we can see how these prophecies fit the Messiah, whom we recognize as Jesus, into whom we have been baptised. Consequently, we can reflect on how they apply to us.

The Song which we are considering begins “Thus says the Lord”. It is God who is speaking to us, who loves us with a parent’s love, who has given His Son out of love for us. It continues “Here is my servant whom I uphold”. We are called to serve God, and we are upheld by Him, supported by Him in our difficulties.

“My chosen one, in whom my soul delights.” These words are repeated to Jesus at His baptism, and therefore to us. God’s soul, His very being, delights in us. You and I are objects of delight to God: we make His soul happy: we give Him joy.

“I have endowed him with my spirit.” The Holy Spirit has come down on us, as it hovered over the waters at creation, as it overshadowed Our Lady at the Annunciation, as it descended upon Jesus at His baptism. God the Holy Spirit lives in us.

“That he may bring true justice to the nations.” Repeatedly, the Servant of the Lord is called to be the bringer of justice: “faithfully he brings true justice...until true justice is established on earth.....I, the Lord have called you to serve the cause of right.”

How eager are you and I for justice? Do we think and speak justly about other people? Do we behave justly? Are we concerned about justice in the wider world? Do we pray for justice? Do we support campaigns for justice, for the liberation of those who are persecuted, especially for their faith, the freeing of those who are unjustly imprisoned, the relief of debt for developing countries? What part does justice play in our mindset?

“He does not cry out or shout aloud, or make his voice heard in the streets.” Aggressive behaviour in support of justice tends to be counter-productive: yelling at people rarely convinces them. The marshalling and presentation of facts, courtesy, quiet but determined nudging carry more weight.

“He does not break the crushed reed, nor quench the wavering flame.” Encouragement, which literally means “putting heart into” is always better than discouragement. Those who are struggling, whether with their faith or their particular situation, need our support, not our censure or disapproval; they need us to be Christ for them, Christ who redeems sinners rather than condemns them. If we are truly to embody the Servant of the Lord, our attitude must always be positive, not negative; constructive rather than destructive.

“I have appointed you.... to open the eyes of the blind, to free captives from prison, and those who live in darkness from the dungeon.” There are more ways than one of being blind, prisons which have no bars or locks, darkness of the soul and mind no less than of the eyes. How do we support those who cannot see the right way forward? those who are trapped in addiction, or in abusive or otherwise destructive situations? those who live in the blackness of depression or despair?

God has indeed said to us, as to Jesus at His baptism, “You are the Beloved; my favour rests on you”. The Holy Spirit has descended on us. How are we responding?

Christmas Day Mass

Christmas Day Mass 2020

Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1: 1-18

Where’s the baby in the manger then? I don’t mean in the chapel: I am not that short-sighted or bog-eyed. I mean in the Mass readings. It is interesting that, each year at the Day Mass, the Church reads from one of the two Gospels (the other being Mark) which doesn’t have an Infancy Narrative.

Or does it? Well, yes, there is a hint of one when John says “the Word became flesh”, but there is no description—no angels, shepherds, or wise men. John takes them as read. Instead, he gives us what might be described as a pre-Infancy Narrative, or even a packaged history, setting the Bethlehem event very much in the context of Salvation History, and indeed of World History.

If we had only Luke’s account to rely on, we would have recognised the Nativity as the fulfilment of God’s promises to the Jewish people, the birth of the Messiah who would reconcile them to God. Matthew would then take us a step further, pointing out, through the visit of the Wise Men, that this birth, this gift of salvation, was intended for the whole world, for Gentiles as well as Jews. John though, expands our vision through all of time and space by taking us back before Creation began, declaring that the Christmas event was the fulfilment of God’s eternal plan, the entry of God Himself into time, the entry into our world of the Word who is God from all eternity, and to all eternity, the transformation and fulfilment of reality.

Long before the science fiction writers had imagined worlds beyond worlds, and long before the scientists had explored many of the truths of time and space—millennia indeed before Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins—John the Evangelist had expounded it all in this, the prelude to the Fourth Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...and the Word became flesh.”

In this short passage is the meaning of “life, the universe, and everything” to quote Douglas Adams, and the answer is not 42, but God the Son become man, the eternal Word born before creation and taking flesh as the man Jesus, announced by John the Baptist, and born of the Virgin. This Word comes from and within eternity into the world of time, a world which, says St. John, “had its being through Him”.

Here we have the source of light and life, the origin of all that exists. In eighteen verses, John gives us a complete cosmogony and cosmology, and at the same time keeps us rooted in earth, because this same source of Creation Himself came to be a creature of earth.

John will go on to describe, with his own particular insights, the events of the life of the Word-made-flesh, culminating in His suffering, death, and resurrection, but the meaning of it all he has already expounded here in his Prologue. Interestingly, at this point, he doesn’t mention Jesus by name; the only name to be found here is that of John the witness. At this stage, he is more interested in the meaning behind the events, in the descent of eternity into time, of God into His creation, in the true identity, as the co-eternal Word, of the one whom he will go on to name as the man Jesus.

For now, we have the setting in context of the Bethlehem event, bringing us to ponder and, to the best of our ability, to understand, what is conveyed to us by Luke and Matthew in their words, and by that which the crib presents to our sight. Let us consider that, to sight, this morning’s Gospel adds insight.

Christmas Midnight Mass

Christmas Midnight Mass 2020

Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14

Isn’t this the strangest Midnight Mass ever? Over the years, I have attended and celebrated Midnight Mass in many different settings, firstly in my home parish as a lad and a young man, and then, after ordination, in locations near and far, in buildings grand or makeshift, in parishes urban and rural.

For two of the first three Christmases after ordination, I drove for miles to Overton, at the mouth of the Lune, finally crossing a cattle grid and celebrating Mass in a wooden hut, where the crib was constructed out of bales of hay from the farm next door. I have offered an early Mass at St. Thomas More’s, on the Marsh, in the shadow of the long derelict Williamson’s lino works, before returning to the splendour of Lancaster Cathedral , with the Bishop presiding over a magnificent liturgy with a choir to die for, and servers at the peak of their form.

Yet never have I, or you, welcomed the Christ child with a masked congregation, socially distanced, forbidden to sing—or even to exchange the customary greetings—before returning home for what will be, for some, a solitary day, or at least a day with fewer people gathered than usual, where some will be anxious or grieving over sick or deceased relatives.

Please God, this situation will pass before too long, and will not be repeated, but perhaps it may encourage us to think about, and to pray for, those many people throughout the world whose Christmas will be even starker and more difficult than ours.

There are the many who are persecuted, and who are rarely, if ever, able to practise their faith openly. There are others who live under tyrannical regimes, or in abusive situations closer to home. There are refugees huddled in camps or detention centres; the hungry, the homeless, the sick, the bereaved, prisoners (including many who are unjustly imprisoned), those in care homes, and those whose work keeps them from home. Let us remember too those millions to whom the birth of the Saviour conveys no meaning.

The first Christmas was a fairly bleak and lonely affair, celebrated by a husband and wife, with a newborn child, a handful of strangers, and the odd farm animal, yet it was an event which has changed history and reverberated though the millennia. May our celebration of this most unusual Christmas, which at least demonstrates our faithfulness, play its own part in the redemption and renewal of the world; and may the joy of Christmas transform your hearts and the heart of that same world.

Advent week 4

4th Sunday of Advent 2020

2 Sam 7: 1-5, 8-11, 16; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1: 26-38

“And the angel left her.” Well, he would, wouldn’t he? That’s angels for you: they are a bit like double glazing salesmen, waiting for you to sign on the dotted line, then clearing off, leaving you wondering “What was all that about? What have I just done, and why on earth did I do it?”

I do wonder how it was for Mary. Paintings often depict her as a courtly lady, standing at a writing desk or prie-dieu, discoursing sedately with the angel. There is nothing wrong with that as a representation of who she is for us, and what she has achieved for us, but it is far from being a literal depiction of what must have taken place.

Far from being a mature and stately lady, she would have been a teenager, presumably with all the mixed up emotions which the teenage years bring. She was sinless, but that doesn’t mean she was emotionless, spiritless, bloodless, lifeless, a paper doll or a plaster saint. If she had been those things, how could she have resembled us—and she was and is one of us, her Immaculate Conception and her Assumption fulfilling the destiny of human beings, not separating her from them?

How then would this person have reacted to such a visitor? “She was deeply disturbed” says St. Luke, presumably reporting what Mary herself told him: the Greek word is dietarachthe meaning deeply confused, confounded, bamboozled, thrown into confusion. “What the hang is going on?”

She is a young lass, and she is called kecharitomene--full of grace, highly favoured, totally gifted by God—and told that the Lord is with her. Did she become conscious of the presence of God at that moment? Surely she must have done, with a deep awareness, of which we can catch fleeting glimpses during our times of deep prayer. Yet God’s presence, though it may be consoling, is at the same time deeply disturbing, reminding us, as the German theologian Karl Rahner wrote, that God is more than simply one more thing among those with which we have to deal.

For Mary, God’s presence was, at that moment, all-encompassing, turning her world upside down, throwing her plans into disarray, changing her future irrevocably. Did she grasp the full implications of what was being asked of her? How could she? Yet she is aware that the whole course of her life is about to change. “How will this come about, since I do not have carnal knowledge of a man?” It seems that she realises, however faintly, that this will not involve Joseph, but...........what?

Why did she say “Yes”? Deep faith, complete trust in God, but not clarity of understanding—far more than any of us, she was going to have to journey in faith, to follow a dark road, to put her hand into the hand of God, a hand which she could not even feel. We celebrate the Annunciation as one of the Joyful Mysteries: at the time, I feel there would have been more mystery than joy for young Mary—you know the one: Joachim and Anne’s lass, to give them their traditional names.

What about them? Were they still around? Mary seems very independent, but if her mother was still alive, she would surely have confided in her. Was it St. Anne who suggested the trip to the hill country to visit Elizabeth?

“Go and see Aunty Betty, then you will know one way or the other. She will need some help if she really is pregnant, and Uncle Zach has lost his voice through some business in the Temple”—perhaps with the added thought that this would get the girl out of the way of any malicious gossip.

So Mary went, trusting, wondering, fearing, hoping; as we too travel through life, trusting, wondering, fearing, hoping.

“Mary, mother of Jesus, mother of us, OUR Lady because you are OURS, one of us, the best of us: you know better than any of us what it is to walk in faith. Please walk with us: hold us up when we stumble, encourage us when faith is weak, and lead us to an ever deeper love of your Son, the Son of the Most High, our Saviour and our Brother. Amen.”

Advent week 3

3rd Sunday of Advent 2020

Isaiah 61:1-2, 10-11; 1Thess 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

I have a friend who has a unique way of finding directions. He rules out the places he doesn’t want to go, and so, by excluding them, he is, in theory at least, left with his destination.

For instance, if he is travelling from Blackpool to Lancaster, he will see signs for Lytham and St. Anne’s and say to himself “I don’t want to go there”: consequently, he will find himself on the M55. As he approaches Preston, he will consider that he doesn’t wish to go to Preston or Birmingham, and so will head to the M6 northbound. At Junction 33, not wishing to continue to Barrow, Carlisle, or the Lakes, he will take the slip road which leads him to the A6 for Lancaster. I exaggerate to a certain extent, but he genuinely does work on the exclusion of negatives. I should perhaps add that he has a tendency to arrive late and rather breathless.

John the Baptist takes a similar approach when questioned about his identity. He establishes first that he is not the Messiah (the Christ) or Elijah or the unnamed prophet. What then are we left with? He is the fulfillment of Third Isaiah’s prophecy of the voice that cries in the wilderness, the forerunner who makes a straight highway for the Lord.

Once we have ruled out what John the Baptist is not, we can see more clearly what he is. He is, as we have already been told, a witness to speak for the light: he makes very clear what the Evangelist has already declared—that he is not the light, not the central figure in salvation history, but the one who points to that figure. He could have got away with making all sorts of exaggerated claims about himself, including Messiahship, but he is at pains to rule all of them out, to point to the one who is coming after him, and not to himself.

What about us? Clearly, we would claim to do the same, to point away from ourselves to Jesus, to direct people to Him, and yet…..Is there not in all of us a desire, sneaking or evident, for the limelight? We may hide under a cloak of modesty, but is that cloak at times a little threadbare?

I have known priests who sincerely believed that they were the right men to be bishops, and who were deeply miffed when they were passed over; or who actually became bishops, and who turned into Prince Bishops, drawing glory to themselves. Even those of us who are not that way inclined may want to be thought of as “good priests”, as the “go to” people in our particular role within the priesthood. There may be a temptation to want people to focus on us, rather than on the Lord. For the religious and the laity among you, transfer that notion as best you can to your own vocation in life, and ask whether any of that clings to you.

Perhaps the most important lesson tht John the Baptist teaches us is to remember who and what we are not. We are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet. We are not the light, but witnesses to the light, and we must never thrust our own light forward so as to obscure the true light, Jesus who is the Christ.

And yet, whilst we are not the Christ, there is a sense in which we are. “The least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than [John the Baptist]” said Jesus. Why? Because we are the Body of Christ, and what is said of Jesus the Christ by the prophet applies to us. In and through Christ, the spirit of the Lord has been given to us. We have been anointed to bring good news to the poor, and so on; to exult for joy in the Lord, to rejoice in our God.

The prophecies in the Book of Isaiah are to be fulfilled in us, because we have been baptised into Christ. They are to be fulfilled, though, not for our benefit, but for the glory of God. They are to draw people, not to us, but to the Christ who has anointed us. People may see us as signs on the way: they must never see us as the destination.

Advent week 2

2nd Sunday of Advent 2020

Isaiah 40: 1-5, 9-11; 2Peter 3: 8-14; Mark 1:1-8

Beautiful, beautiful First Reading. We could do much worse that spend time reflecting on it, and if I don’t have time to finish it, you can take it away and complete it for yourselves.

“’Console my people, console them’, says your God.” We all need consolation at times, and we need to be consolers. Sometimes we are called to console others without waiting to be consoled ourselves. God will console us in His own good time, and St. Francis de Sales urges us to “seek the God of consolations, rather than the consolations of God.”

Lord God, console us in our times of grief and darkness, but more importantly, help us to console others.

“Speak to the heart of Jerusalem.” Many people speak to our ears, some speak to our minds, but how many speak to our hearts? How many people penetrate below the surface, speak to us in the deepest part of our being, and how often do we achieve that for others? St. John Henry Newman had the motto “cor ad cor loquitur—heart speaks to heart”: Lord help us to be people of depth, who speak to the heart of others, and do you speak to our hearts, which lie open to you.

“Call to her that her time of service is ended, that her sin is atoned for.” How many people today are longing for the end of a time of suffering? Think of the people of Syria, or of Afghanistan, battered for years by long wars and brutal regimes. Think of Christians persecuted in Pakistan; North Korea; China; parts of West and East Africa and Mozambique, where terrorist gangs are active. Think of those for whom the pandemic is a long road of suffering; of people unjustly imprisoned; of the victims of abuse. Pray for them, that their time of service, of slavery, of suffering may be ended.

“A voice cries ’Prepare in the wilderness a way for the Lord.’” Where is the wilderness? Is it not everywhere that people wander and are lost, bewildered, unhappy, knowing nothing of God and of His love for them? Is it not, sometimes, our own hearts and minds, when we are in turmoil, confusion, depression?

How do we prepare a way for the Lord in these wildernesses? By opening our hearts to Him in prayer, we open a way into our own wilderness. By opening our hearts to our brothers and sisters, we prepare a way for Him to enter their lives. I saw a poster once which said “Smile at everyone you see today; it will drive them crazy”—or perhaps it will prepare a way for the Lord.

“Make a straight highway for our God across the desert.” Like the wilderness, the desert is a place of need. It is a place which needs gentle rain to fall upon it, but it is also a place where we can find God in solitude—or more accurately, we can open ourselves to His finding us. The highway which we are called to make is for God, not for ourselves. It involves clearing clutter from our lives; creating space through which God can come to us.

“Let every valley be filled in, every mountain and hill be laid low.” On this Sunday in 1986, I had to drive on a glorious autumn morning from Keswick to Windermere to celebrate Mass. As I drove, I was reflecting on this reading and thinking, “Not these hills, please Lord. They are far too beautiful.”

Yet there are other hills, the hills of our own lives, which are an obstacle to God. These are our ingrained sinful habits, our self-centredness, our impatience with others, our over-busyness, our lack of awareness of God’s presence and His call. These are the hills which we need to dynamite, the troughs and valleys which we need to fill in, so that God may reach us, and reach into us, and transform us.

That is enough for now. Read the rest, and ponder it, and let it speak to you of God, and of His love for you.

Advent week 1

1st Sunday of Advent 2020

Isaiah 63: 16-17, 64:1-8; 1 Cor 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37

“Oh, I could hide ‘neath the wings

of the bluebird as she sings,

six o’clock alarm would never ring”

But it does ring, for us no less than for Davy Jones and the rest of the Monkees more than half a century ago. Waking and rising may be an easier business now than in the days before central heating, those now departed days of frost patterns on the windows and ice cold lino underfoot, but it is still a shock to the system. I have to confess that I prefer to be awake and up before the deadly clangour of the alarm, in order to ease the shock, but a shock it remains.

It is strange that, as a child, I and probably you resented the time given to sleep, considering it a waste of the time to be spent exploring and enjoying life, yet now I grasp at it as the most welcome of friends. Today, though, and throughout these early days of Advent, the call of the Lord constantly rings in our ears, as insistently as that six o’clock alarm: “Stay awake, stay awake, stay awake!”

Did you count the occurrences of the phrase in today’s Gospel? It cropped up seven times in four and a half lines, so more than once every two lines. Something which is repeated so frequently cannot be ignored: somehow, despite the dulling allure of the short winter days, we must in some way or other stay awake.

Why? In order that our senses may remain sharp enough to recognize and respond to the Lord’s coming; that threefold coming of which St. Bernard speaks—Jesus’ first coming, born of the Virgin in our human nature; His final coming as our judge at the end of time; and, perhaps most importantly of all, His present coming in every moment and every situation of our lives.

“Oh that you might tear the heavens open and come down”, prays the prophet. The Lord has done so, and will do so, and is doing so. Are we sufficiently awake to notice?

“We could hardly fail to notice His first coming,” you may suggest, not least because, in this year of restrictions and limitations, people have begun to prepare earlier than ever. Yes, but what are they preparing for? How many Nativity scenes are there among the trees and streamers? And what of Advent calendars? No longer do they display holy pictures: behind the windows now are chocolates, courtesy of Spiderman or Peppa Pig. In any case, if we are truly awake, we will be aware that preparation to recall that first coming doesn’t begin until 17th December.

What then of His final coming? “You do not know when the master of the house is coming” says the Lord. We do not know when life on earth will end; more particularly, we cannot tell when our own earthly life will be snuffed out. Young, middle aged, elderly, can all fall victim to that sudden illness, that unforeseen accident: how well prepared will I be to see God face to face?

Fifty years ago, give or take a couple of weeks, I would have been sitting in a train as it pulled out of Euston station on my way home at the end of term, to be confronted in a moment or two by a gable end to the right of the tracks—whether it is still there I have no idea—proclaiming in huge letters “Prepare to meet thy God”, not the most encouraging message at the beginning of a rail journey, but nonetheless conveying an important message. If indeed the Lord did make His final visit today, how prepared would I be?

Finally, how awake am I to the coming of the Lord, to His Advent, in every moment? To His presence, as we were reminded by last week’s Gospel, in our neighbour? To His coming in the events, and even the non-events, of our daily round? In the challenges and opportunities of this time of pandemic? In the Eucharist, the ultimate sign of Jesus’ presence, though not yet in glory? That Eucharist to which so many now have access only remotely, via the streaming of Mass and Eucharistic adoration? We awoke and rose this morning. How awake are we now?

Christ the King

Christ the King 2020

Ezekiel 34: 11-12, 15-17; 1Cor 15: 20-26, 28; Matthew 25:31-46

If we are honest, I think we have to admit that today’s feast is a liturgical sore thumb, an anachronism. Kings have no real standing in today’s world. Our own Queen is probably the wisest and most astute diplomat on the world stage, and is certainly the only public figure in this country who will openly and unashamedly refer to Our Lord in her national broadcasts, but she is the exception which proves the rule: in most of the world, monarchy is regarded as an outmoded concept.

The way in which the feast was celebrated in the younger days of many of us would also be questioned now. It was a triumphalist feast, with an afternoon procession of the Blessed Sacrament; the monstrance, in my home parish, carried beneath a canopy borne by four stalwarts, the bells at the four corners tinkling away until they inevitably fell off, one by one, with a series of resounding crashes. After we had completed a lengthy circuit of the church grounds, we would return to the church building to enthrone the Eucharistic Christ for solemn Benediction.

I have no objection to processions of the Blessed Sacrament, or to solemn Benediction, both of which have their place in deepening devotion to Christ present in the Eucharist, but at least as far as the readings of the current Lectionary are concerned, they do not fit the mood of the feast as the Church now wishes us to understand it, in an attempt to re-imagine the concept as an alternative to what might have been the better option, namely to abandon the feast altogether.

Next year, Year B of the liturgical cycle, we shall encounter the captive Christ, explaining the nature of His kingship to the cynical and unheeding Pontius Pilate. In Year C, it will be Christ the crucified king, the proclamation of His authority a calculated insult by Pilate both to Jesus Himself and to the Jewish people.

Today, admittedly, the risen and ascended Jesus is shown in majesty as the shepherd king who will return as judge, but note that He has attained this authority only by His identification with the lowest of the low; the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, the stranger. Had He not first lowered Himself to be present in the suffering people and the outcasts of the world, He would not have been in a position to judge those who fail to serve Him. Perhaps, rather than celebrate with processions and Benediction, it would have been more appropriate if we had headed into town to seek out the poor and the suffering; Christ the outcast who stood in need of Christ the healer.

What then can we do if we are to make something of this feast? We must indeed encounter the Eucharistic Christ, as far as is possible under present social restrictions, but we must then look for Him, not only in the flesh and blood of His Eucharistic presence, but in the flesh and blood of His human presence.

Admittedly, our options may be limited, not only by the conditions created by the present pandemic, but by the general difficulties of ordinary life. Even in optimum conditions, we cannot simply wander into prison to start visiting the inmates, and even hospital visiting is less straightforward than in former days. (Bear in mind too that insensitive visitors are a menace, rather than a comfort to hospital patients, as I remember from my own experience in a hospital bed.)

None of this though, excuses us from involvement and concern. We can use the telephone and social media to keep an eye on neighbours who may be suffering behind closed doors; we can ally ourselves with campaigns for justice; we can give financial support to organisations which seek to alleviate suffering, and to the likes of Aid to the Church in Need, working for persecuted Christians; and we can pray. Christ can always be found in the neighbour of all circumstances, a king whose royal identity is always hidden.

33rd Week

a33rd Sunday 2020

Proverbs 31: 10-13, 19-20, 30-31; 1Thess 5:1-6; Matthew 25: 14-30

What is today’s Gospel about? Is it about making the best use of our talents? If not, what is it about?

As Our Lord recounted the parable, it wouldn’t have been about using talents in the sense that we understand the word. In biblical times, a talent was not a natural gift, but a piece of metal, the highest form of currency in the Graeco-Roman world. Consequently, the New English Bible translates the word as “bags of gold”.

What message then did Jesus seek to convey? Did He wish His followers to be financial speculators? Surely not: the desire for money-making would be at odds with the rest of His teaching. What did He have in mind?

This parable has to be understood in the setting in which we find it. It is set among a whole list of prophecies and parables of the return of the Son of Man, and of judgement. It follows immediately last week’s parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, and is followed in its turn by that great parable of judgement, the sheep and the goats, which we shall hear next Sunday, the Feast of Christ the King.

So it is a parable of judgement, and a call to be alert, alert to the presence and challenge of Christ, the Son of Man, and of His forthcoming return as judge, when judgement will be based on our response in life to the responsibilities and the call which He has given us.

It is not so much our talents, in the sense of outstanding abilities, which we are required to use to the full, but our opportunities, the situations in which we find ourselves, and which speak to us of the presence and the demands of God. This may entail putting any special gifts at God’s service, as St. Paul urges us to do: more importantly, though, as St. Paul also says, it involves making our every action an item in God’s service, performed as if at God’s orders.

What does this mean in practice? It seems to be rooted in what Jean Pierre de Caussade, the 17/18th centuries French Jesuit, and other writers have called “the grace of the present moment”. God is among us: we live, as Karl Rahner wrote in the twentieth century, in a permanent Advent, because God is always a God who comes.

Every moment, therefore, is a moment for serving God, for using His gifts to build His Kingdom. This may involve something very small, such as biting back the angry retort or the wounding criticism. It means showing compassion, putting ourselves in the shoes of the other person, recognizing as far as we can, and as next week’s Gospel will remind us, that this other person is Christ, even if his/her behaviour may not seem very Christ-like.

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote: “Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not His”. Yet Christ plays also in the less lovely limbs, and the less lovely eyes, inviting us by our response to that apparently less lovely person to draw out the Christ who dwells in him/her, so that the same Christ may transform ugliness into beauty.

You and I may feel, rightly or wrongly, that we haven’t been endowed with outstanding talents, though some may well have been so. What every single one of us has been given, and is being given, is the indwelling Christ, who invites us to be a presence of Him in our everyday circumstances, thus ensuring that His investment in us has not been, and will not be, wasted.

32nd Week

32nd Sunday 2020

Wisdom 6:12-16; 1Thess 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.”

Many of you will recognise the opening words of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”; and, if you think about it, you may also recognise the situation today—which was exactly Dickens’ point: that every age, when it comes down to hey lads hey, is very similar to, if not identical with, every other.

Our present age is a very puzzling one, admittedly. Few people, I suspect, would describe it as the best of times, even if, in the West, we enjoy a level of comfort previously undreamed of. Can we claim that it is the worst of times? Surely not: there is a great deal of suffering, and even more of inconvenience, but we can at least retire to bed without the fear of air raid sirens heralding the fall of bombs, and whilst many people are anxious for the well-being of their loved ones, at least we are not in a situation where, for the majority of families, the man of the house is overseas, confronting death on a daily basis.

Yet these times may remind us of our own mortality, as death rates rise again, and movements are restricted with a view to saving lives, as other lives are lost through suicide or missed opportunities for early diagnosis of illness, as a result of these same restrictions. In addition to “A Tale of Two Cities” we may detect elements of a more recent novel, Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22”.

If there is one word which describes what is required of us in these moments, that word may be “alertness”. We have to be alert to the needs of our neighbour, whether that involves taking precautions against infection, or being conscious that s/he may be facing mental health problems or financial difficulties in the current situation—or may simply require help with shopping.

Looking at the broader picture, however, we may realise that we are called to a wider alertness, one to which the Church’s liturgy invariably summons us at this time of year. November is the month when we recall all those who have gone before us in the pilgrimage of life, but to whom we are still inextricably linked as members of the Church. It is a time for reuniting ourselves with them through mutual prayer—prayer which should indeed continue throughout the year, but which is particularly urged on us in this month.

We are also at the end of the Church’s year, and shortly after, of the calendar year. In this part of the world, the season chimes in with the sense of ending, of mortality. The days are growing shorter, the leaves are falling, the trees are assuming their winter starkness. Nature itself, in the Northern hemisphere, joins in the call to be conscious that, in this life, all things must pass.

The foolish bridesmaids of today’s Gospel are content to ignore the signs, to blot out awareness in sleep. The consequences for them are disastrous and sound a warning to us. The bridegroom will come, is coming. When, we do not know, but his coming is certain as the dawn, a dawn which, one day, will not arrive for us on earth.

Many years ago, I attended the Diamond Jubilee celebration of my first teacher, Mother Mary Bernadette, SHCJ. After Mass, Mother Bernadette commented to me: “If anyone asked me about life, I wouldn’t say that life is hard, though I know that it is for many people: I would say that life is short.”

It grows shorter with every day that passes; the bridegroom comes daily closer. Are we alert to recognise His coming, indeed His presence among us already, not least among those who need our support, care, and concern? “The bridegroom is here.” Are we ready to meet Him?

All Saints

All Saints 2014

November has been called the kindest month, because it is the month in which we remember. All Saints is followed by All Souls, by Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day, and we can even throw in Bonfire Night for good measure: Remember, remember, the fifth of November... Indeed the whole month is given up to remembering, and to praying for, those who have gone before us.

Is this simply an exercise in nostalgia or, to put it more kindly, in entertaining good thoughts, or is there something here of greater importance? To remember is, literally, to re-member, to put the members, or limbs, back together, and that is what the Church invites us to do, at all times of the year, but especially in this, the year’s penultimate month.

We are,  as St. Paul impressed upon us, members, or limbs, of Christ’s body, the Church; and not only we, but all those who have gone before us, throughout the ages and throughout the world, members of Christ and of one another, joined in a unity which cannot be severed even by death. When we remember, we consciously reunite ourselves with one another, and especially with the dead, who are alive to God and to us, and that reuniting has its positive, practical effect in prayer, as we seek the prayers of our departed fellow-members, and we offer effective prayer for them, that their unity with God, their perfection as members of Christ, may be complete.

And so our prayer is the active, vital, positive part of our re-membering, strengthening us as the body of Christ, building more firmly our unity with the world-wide, time-wide, eternity-wide Church, reinforcing our mutual support.

By holding two separate feasts of All Saints and All Souls, we distinguish those whose need for perfection to bring them into complete unity with God is complete—the saints—from those whom we call the Holy Souls, for whom that perfection is still a work in progress; yet in reality, the two feasts are part of one whole. Whilst there are some whom the Church has officially named as saints, for the vast majority of the dead we cannot know exactly how they stand before God. In any case, the question is an artificial one, brought on by our tendency always to think in terms of time, and to view eternity as a long, long, ever-so-long time, whereas it is a different dimension altogether.

What is clear, both from the scriptures, and from our own experience, reason, and logic, is that everyone who has ever lived, with the exception of Jesus Our Lord, and of His Blessed Mother, who was preserved by His merits from every stain of sin—everyone else has needed/needs/will need that cleansing, perfecting, purifying which we call purgatory, and therefore both needs and offers to us that beautiful gift of mutual support which is prayer.

If we were in any doubt about that, today’s Second Reading should banish those doubts. “What we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed” says St. John. “All we know is that, when it is revealed, we shall be like God, because we shall see Him as He really is.”

To see God as He really is: what an awesome experience that will be, at once both glorious and terrifying. What effect will that have on us? It will make us like God, says St. John. Are you like God? Are you heck as like, any more than I am. Well, perhaps a bit more than I am, but still not like God.  How will we become like God? By a change so drastic, so dramatic, so mind-boggling, that we cannot even begin to imagine it. What is the one thing which we know about change? That it is painful. Birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, midlife, old age, death: none of these changes takes place without pain—we even have a saying “No pain, no gain”—so the change to become like God will inevitably bring the sharpest pain of all, and that pain will be purgatory, our purging, our purifying, our perfecting, a pain which will nonetheless be welcome, because we shall already have seen our glorious goal. As the late Fr. Vincent Smith put it: “Purgatory will be seeing God, and realising that we are not fit to be seen”.

What form that purgatory will take, nobody knows, as St. John points out. The lurid pictures conjured up in the Middle Ages, which caused some of the more extreme Reformers to throw out the baby of Purgatory with the bath water of the imagery, were simply an attempt to picture the unpictureable, to give the mind something to hold onto. Nor does it matter. What truly matters is our unity in the one body with all those who have gone before us, and our concern for mutual support, as we seek the helping prayers of the saints and Holy Souls, without worrying too much about who falls into which category, and offer the help of our prayers. Thus our remembering becomes truly a re-membering, and November is genuinely the kindest month.

30th Week

30th Sunday 2020

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

Jesus said “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second resembles it: you must love your neighbour as yourself.”

All three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew Mark and Luke) record this incident, though the setting varies from Gospel to Gospel. In Mark, Our Lord makes His pronouncement in answer to the “good scribe” who heartily endorses His words, and the two establish a rapport. Luke, on the other hand, describes Our Lord as drawing the answer from the lawyer who wanted to disconcert Him (ekpeirazon), which provides the cue for the parable of the Good Samaritan. Finally, Matthew has the Pharisees, like the lawyer, trying to “disconcert” Jesus—the same word which we find in Luke, though slightly less emphatic (peirazon).

Why do they question Him in this way? They must know that, as a practising Jew, He knows the commandments by heart. Do they perhaps think that He rejects the commandments because of His conduct, especially His healings on the Sabbath, and His forgiveness of the woman taken in adultery?

Jesus does not reject the commandments. Instead He draws out their full meaning and purpose, pointing out that they are all intended to build on and to further the basic demands that we love God and our neighbour. It is interesting that the command to love our neighbour as ourselves is not one of the Ten Commandments; it is taken from the Book of Leviticus. Yet none of Jesus’ interlocutors question His assertion that this, rather than any of the Ten, is to be regarded as the second great commandment, resembling the first.

This makes me wonder why we give such attention to the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. I remember learning them by heart at primary school but not learning what Our Lord said about the two greatest commandments. I must confess that, to this day, I have never coveted my neighbour’s ox: perhaps it is a temptation which still lies in store. Likewise, in older Anglican churches, you will sometimes find the Ten Commandments listed on a board near the altar, again without reference to Our Lord’s interjection.

Both the Pharisees and we, it seems, accept in theory Our Lord’s summary, but how does this work out in practice? Is it not the case that we sometimes find it more convenient to harden our hearts like the Pharisees, taking refuge in rules and regulations, rather than embarking on the more difficult road of love of neighbour?

St. Therese of Lisieux, towards the end of the nineteenth century, commented that she understood why Our Lord spent so much time arguing with the Pharisees, because, she said, “There are still many Pharisees today”. Well over a century later, we would have to admit that very little has changed. The attacks upon the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and, more recently, upon Pope Francis, spring from a desire to hide under a comfort blanket of familiarity, rules and regulations; rather than, as Pope St. John Paul II expressed it, to “put out into the deep”, trusting to the searing wind of the Holy Spirit, whom Pope St. John XXIII invited to blow through the Church when he convened the Council, and to engage with the person of Jesus, and with all those for whom He shed His blood, in love, rather than simply in obedience.

Sadly, even in the higher echelons of the Church, we see people behaving, not even like the Pharisees, but more like Pontius Pilate or Caiaphas, as bishops and other religious superiors refuse to lift a finger in support of priests who have clearly been falsely accused—I felt obliged to suggest to one bishop, not of this Diocese, that it will be very sad if the only person to speak for him on Judgement Day is Pontius Pilate—but before we distribute blame to others, each one of us needs to examine our own conscience, to ask ourselves: how fully am I living out those two basic commandments? How deeply do I, in practice, love God and my neighbour, that neighbour who is Everyman and Everywoman?

29th Sunday

29th Sunday 2020

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

If, like last Sunday, today’s readings are a jigsaw, they are a jigsaw whose pieces are well and truly scattered. It will be quite a task to fit them together.

Let’s begin with the prophet whom we call Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah, who was active during and after the return of the Jewish people from exile in Babylon.

Many many moons ago, when I was a bright and shiny new priest, I had the task of teaching Ancient History to gangs of hulking Sixth Formers. The Greek History component of the course was entitled “Herodotus and the conflict of Greece and Persia”, and there was often a question on the A Level paper along the lines of “What evidence is there, apart from Herodotus, for the events of this period?”

One important piece of evidence, as I used to remind the lads, was this passage from Deutero-Isaiah. Cyrus was a king of Persia (so a baddie in the eyes of the Greeks) who conquered Babylon in 538 BC, and allowed the Jewish exiles to return to their homeland. So this earthy ruler, a villain to the Greeks, was a hero to the Jews, who saw him as an instrument in God’s hands, carrying out God’s purposes even though he wasn’t aware of it. Indeed, the prophet goes so far as to call him the Lord’s anointed—in other words, His Messiah or Christ.

This is a remarkable title to apply to a pagan king, but it underlines God’s control over the whole universe. Even a powerful ruler, who has no knowledge of the one true God, may be fulfilling God’s purposes.

Here we have a link, albeit somewhat tenuous, a piece of the jigsaw which has to be forced into place, with the Gospel. There the Pharisees, and the adherents of Herod Agrippa (son of Herod the Great) are attempting to catch Our Lord out.

They do this via a question about paying taxes to the occupying Romans. It was an attempted Catch 22. If Jesus agreed that the tax was lawful, He could be denounced as a traitor to His own people, not least because the coinage in which the tax was paid, carried a reference to the Roman Emperor as a god. If, on the other hand, He rejected the lawfulness of the tax, He could be reported to the Romans as a rebel.

Our Lord’s solution to this dilemma is, I think, sometimes misinterpreted. He throws the question back at His interlocutors by asking them, effectively, to whom the coin belongs. As it bears the Emperor’s inscription, it presumably belongs to the Emperor, and may, and should, be returned to him. The response which Jesus gives—“Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s”—have sometimes been taken to mean that there are some things which are reserved to earthly powers, and are no business of the Church, but this is to ignore His conclusion “and to God what belongs to God”.

In fact, everything belongs to God, as our reading from Deutero-Isaiah indicated. Cyrus was doing God’s will, even though he was unaware of it, because God is the Lord of all., Similarly, the Roman Emperor belongs to God and is ultimately answerable to God, as are today’s rulers, whether they recognise God or deny Him or, like some, attempt to use Him for their own ends.

Consequently, the behaviour of rulers and governments is a legitimate concern of the Church, which must always advocate justice, as successive Popes have done, through Catholic social teaching, and as the present Holy Father is doing through prophetic documents such as Laudato Si and Fratelli Tutti.

It must beware however of being sucked into partisan politics, about which I will say no more.

Finally, there are two sets of three phrases each from St. Paul which we would do well to take away and ponder: “shown your faith in action, worked for love, and persevered in hope” and “the Good News came to you....as power, and as the Holy Spirit, and as utter conviction”.

28th Sunday

28th Sunday 2020

Isaiah 25:6-10; Philippians 4: 12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

Are you any good at jigsaw puzzles? I have to confess that I don’t have the patience. However, we have something of a jigsaw presented by our readings today. Let’s see if we can put the pieces together.

The prophet Isaiah speaks of the Messianic banquet, the feast to be enjoyed in the Kingdom of Heaven by God’s people gathered around the Messiah, the Christ. He talks of a banquet of rich foods, of fine wines. If I get there, I am going to ask for an alternative of real ale, which strikes me as more heavenly than wine. If St. Bridget of Ireland is around, I should be fine, as she allegedly envisaged heaven as a lake of beer—an extremely sensible saint.

Whenever we celebrate Mass we are already sharing in the Messianic banquet, at least in embryo. We are called by the Messiah to His table and are given the most sumptuous food of all, His very self, hidden under the forms of bread and wine.

There is more, though: another piece of the jigsaw to be slotted in. Immediately before communion, before we share in the foretaste of the Messianic banquet, the priest proclaims “Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb”.

What does that mean? “That’s easy,” I hear you cry. “It means that we are about to receive Jesus, who gave Himself to us as food and drink at the Last Supper, AND we are about to take part in the Messianic banquet.”

That is true, but there is even more to it than that. We find the next piece of the jigsaw outside today’s readings in the last book of the Bible, the Apocalypse or Book of Revelation. There St. John, assuming him to be the author, is told by an angel to write “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb”. (Rev 19:9)

So we are being called, invited, to something which is the fulfilment of the Last Supper and of the Messianic banquet. We are being summoned to the completion of all that is holy, when the glorified Christ, the Lamb of God, is united completely to His bride, the Church. This is far too deep, far too complex, for our limited minds to grasp fully, but it does mean that, in receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion, we are entering into heaven itself, into total union with the Lamb of God. That union will become permanent in eternity, but our earthly communion is a genuine sharing in it, which underlines the tragedy of so many people’s having been deprived, by the pandemic, of that which fulfils us.

All of which brings us to what may be the final piece of our jigsaw, as Our Lord, in the Gospel, tells us the parable of the wedding banquet of the King’s Son. This, He says, is an allegory of the Kingdom of Heaven: we are indeed being invited to that banquet, of which our communion is a foretaste.

As last week, with the parable of the tenants of the vineyard, we have the originally chosen people proving unworthy, with the result that the invitation is now extended to outsiders, to the Gentiles. We are now among those who are invited to that heavenly banquet, in all its stages, in all its manifestations.

That is wonderful news, but it comes with a warning in that postscript of the new guest who is thrown out because he isn’t wearing a wedding garment. Who is he? He is a Gentile, a member of the Church, indeed, who can’t be bothered. He doesn’t appreciate the invitation. He hasn’t taken the trouble to make himself presentable. He represents the person who makes no attempt to live as God would want, who sees the Kingdom as an entitlement rather than as a gift, who fails to respond at any deep level to God’s call. God forbid that you or I should be that person.

Have we completed our jigsaw? Not quite. We will fit the last piece into place only when we make all this a reality, receiving Holy Communion with deep fervour and faith, and responding to God’s invitation in every moment.

27th Sunday

27th Sunday 2020

Isaiah 5:1-7; Psalm 79; Philippians 4:6-9; Matthew 21:33-43

Unless it was bearing grapes at the time, I wouldn’t recognise a vine if I fell over it. I recall a previous parish which possessed a very attractive modern set of tabernacle veils. The green one was embroidered with a leafy plant which looked to me like ivy but which, I was assured, was a vine.

To the people of Palestine in Our Lord’s day, a vine would have been immediately recognisable, as viticulture (the care of vines) was an important local industry. To Christians throughout the centuries the vine has had particular significance as the bearer of grapes, the source of wine, which Jesus changed into His blood. We recall too one of His great “I am” (ego eimi) sayings from St. John’s Gospel, “I am the vine” which would have immediately struck a chord with His audience.

Hence, it is not surprising that the vine occupies such a prominent place in the scriptures. Isaiah, writing in the eighth century BC uses the vineyard, and the vines enclosed there, as a symbol of Israel. This is a beautiful passage in which the prophet expresses God’s love for His people, in terms of the tender and skilful care with which Isaiah’s friend prepared a vineyard from scratch, clearing the ground, adding all the buildings which might be needed, and planting the best quality vines.

This is an allegory of God’s care for His chosen people, preparing for them the land of promise, tending them by the work of the judges and prophets, giving them every opportunity to grow and flourish in the love and knowledge of Him.

Yet, says Isaiah, all this love, all this careful attention, have been in vain. The people have let God down. In terms of the allegory, the vineyard has produced sour grapes: this represents the people’s abandonment of God, their worship of false gods, their neglect of justice. In response, the owner will allow the vineyard to go to rack and ruin: in practice, God’s people endured a succession of attacks and invasions, culminating in the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel, and the deportation of the inhabitants of the southern kingdom of Judah to Babylon, the latter event occurring more than a century after the time of Isaiah.

Today’s psalm pursues a similar theme. Once again, Israel is a vine, brought out of Egypt, and planted in a well prepared vineyard. For the psalmist, the destruction envisaged by Isaiah has already taken place. At first, the psalmist claims to be shocked and puzzled: “Then why have you broken down its walls?” Then he implicitly accepts that it is Israel’s own fault, by promising that, if God rescues them from present distress, “we will never forsake you again”.

Our Lord, in the Gospel, produces a parable which has explicit echoes of Isaiah’s allegory. Now however, the villains are not unfruitful vines but murderous tenants, who want to claim the vineyard for themselves. The vineyard is now not Israel but the Kingdom of Heaven, yet it is still the chosen people who are at fault, attacking and murdering the owner’s servants, who represent the prophets, and preparing to murder Jesus, the owner’s Son.

What is threatened is not the destruction of the vineyard, but its transfer to other tenants, the Gentiles, the new people of God. All is fine for us: the vineyard, the Kingdom, is given to us, and all we have to do is to produce its fruits.

Oh dear! Can we honestly say that we have done so or are doing so? Over the centuries have we, the Gentiles, the new people of God, behaved any better than the original chosen people? They, as a people, have suffered persecution at our hands: was that bearing fruit for God? Admittedly, the Church has done many good things, has produced many holy men and women, but it has also been guilty of many grave offences, not the least of which is the clerical abuse crisis. We still have a very long way to go, a massive amount of work to do, if we in our turn are not to deserve the strictures of Isaiah, of the psalmist, and indeed of Our Lord Himself.