16th Sunday Year B

16th Sunday 2024

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Ephesians 2:13-18; Mark 6:30-34

Oh heck! Jeremiah tells us naught for our comfort or, to be precise, he tells me naught for my comfort, or for the comfort of priests, bishops, or anyone who has pastoral responsibilities in the Church. As you probably know, “pastor” is simply the Latin word for shepherd, so none of us who have shepherding roles can hear Jeremiah’s words without a certain degree of discomfort.

We can hardly deny that the sheep have been scattered. Some time ago, I revisited the area of Barrow-in-Furness known as Old Barrow, where my mother grew up. As a child, on holiday, visiting our Barrow relations, I would be taken to Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s, close to the shipyard, and set among a phalanx of terrace houses and sandstone tenements where the working class employees at the shipyard lived with their families. St. Patrick’s was buzzing, served by three priests, and packed to the doors for Sunday Mass, and later for Benediction.

The shipyard is still there, though admittedly on not quite the same scale as in its heyday. The tenements and terrace houses are still there, though Egerton Buildings, where my grandmother brought up her family of nine in a two bedroom flat, is now nationally notorious as a centre of the drugs trade. St. Patrick’s, however, is no longer there, turned into housing years ago. Of my army of cousins, offspring of my mother’s siblings, though they are fine and generous people, very few retain any connection with the Church.

All over Great Britain—indeed over western Europe—the pattern is the same. We have lost what we might still call the working class, formerly the backbone of the Church in this country. We have also lost the young. In 1990, at St. Mary’s Kells, a parish comprising three council estates on a hill above Whitehaven, I carried out the funeral of an elderly lady. When it came time for Communion, none of her (middle aged) children came forward, because they knew that they were “lapsed”. Their children, on the other hand, came forward, having no concept of “lapsation”. Those children will have young adult children of their own now: I would lay odds that the latter have no contact with the Church.

Is it our fault? Will the Lord pronounce doom for us? Certainly, the abuse crisis has done immense damage, but that is far from being the whole story. I may have quoted before my conversation with a relatively young mother, when I noticed that she and her friends had disappeared from Mass at St. Gregory’s, Preston, in the mid 90s.

“Ey, Debbie, what’s happened? Is it me—something I said or did?”

“Oh no, it’s nothing like that. Well, you know that the blokes never came. Now most of the women have got jobs, and it’s all over my head, so it must be over the kids’ heads. And with all that’s going on in the world, you can’t really believe it, can you?”

I assured her that I could, whilst sympathising with her difficulties. Yet I had always prided myself, perhaps wrongly, on taking account of the capacity for understanding on the part of the people in church when I preached, and the parish provided a well organised Children’s Liturgy of the Word. The Diocese had a thoroughly professional Youth Service, and there had even been Catholic Youth Centres in Blackpool, Preston, Lancaster, and Barrow. We had genuinely tried, and were trying, but it wasn’t working—and isn’t!

What is the issue? A huge amount, I am convinced, is down to changes in society. What we might term “tribal Catholicism” for better or worse no longer exists, as Catholics have assimilated more into the world around them. My parents’ generation saw the parish as the fulcrum of much of their lives: that is no longer the case.

Two developments have struck heavy blows to all the Churches, namely the Sunday Trading Laws and the transfer, if you’ll pardon the pun, of youth football from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning. Sunday is now much the same as any other day: or, if it differs, it is as a day for pursuing leisure activities. Meanwhile, religion, as a source of cohesion in society, with its practices and its taboos, no longer has a hold on a more materialistic population, which prizes what it sees as “freedom” and “choice” above all other considerations.

What is to be done? “Trying harder” is, I suspect, not the answer. Perhaps, in one sense, we need to try less hard. We need to remember, as the Psalm tells us, that the Lord is our real shepherd. He knows what we need, and our own shepherding is, in the last analysis, not our own work, but a channelling of His Spirit. In His earthly life, Jesus the Good Shepherd called the apostles to “come away and rest for a while”; to take time off from being God; to allow Him to do the work.

If that is not the beginning of an answer, might it be, at least, a clue to the beginning? We must put our focus on God, and on the Risen Christ: we must allow the Spirit to work on us and through us. We may not be very good shepherds, but He is. Let us be more receptive, less convinced of our own ability, and even of the extent of our own responsibility. BUT IF YOU HAVE ANY BETTER IDEAS, PLEASE LET ME KNOW.

15th Sunday Year B

15th Sunday 2024

Amos 7:12-15; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:7-13

A little over thirty years ago, it was decided by the powers-that-be to offer the priests of the Lancaster Diocese a support programme. We were offered the choice of two, one of them called the Emmaus Programme, the other Ministry to Priests. The two programmes were presented to us on different days: Emmaus by a couple of American priests, Ministry to Priests by two priests of the Diocese of Westminster, immaculately turned out, speaking perfect “received pronunciation” English, and bearing unmistakeable signs of having been trained at the English College, Rome.

Unanimously, we opted for Emmaus. We may not have been too keen on being told what to do by Yanks, but they were seen as infinitely preferable to people regarded as “posh Southerners”, especially “posh Southerners” from the English College.

There is something similar to be seen in Amos’s rejection by Amaziah, the priest of Bethel. Amos may not have been posh, but he was definitely a Southerner. He came from the southern Kingdom of Judah, and he was preaching in the northern Kingdom of Israel. Hs accent would have given him away, and he was told in no uncertain terms to clear off back where he came from. No one, I expect, enjoys taking instruction from outsiders, especially when those outsiders are relatively close neighbours.

Yet the reason which Amaziah puts forward for giving Amos the bum’s rush is bizarre: “We want no more prophesying in Bethel; this is the royal sanctuary, the national temple”. Excuse me, Amaziah, but isn’t a temple the very place where you would expect prophecy? Ah, maybe not, because prophecy is disturbing, and none of us likes to be disturbed, especially where religion is concerned.

I still recall, as may some of you, the alarm caused by the Second Vatican Council, or rather by the way it was reported. No doubt the theologians, and those well versed in the history and inner workings of the Church were delighted, but for the average person in the pew, the response was frequently one of confusion. Everything seemed to be changing, and no one appeared capable of explaining why, least of all the parish clergy, who were as ill-informed as anybody. Reading the Council documents, one can see what a powerful and indeed prophetic event it was, but who, at the time, had ready access to the Council documents?

The priests and religious should all have been given copies, and guidance on how to read them, in order that they could interpret them to the rest of us, but I am fairly confident that they weren’t. I was introduced to them only when I entered the seminary, six years after the end of the Council, and I found them a revelation, a joy, a delight. Most of the laity, however, had to rely on crumbs of information, often shaped by the prejudices of those who passed them on, and who were themselves frequently relying on rumours and half truths.

We are still, I suspect, a long way from grasping fully the prophetic call of the Council, and some of those who believe that they have understood it have rejected it, because it is too disturbing, too demanding. Only a week or so ago, Archbishop Vigano, the former nuncio to the United States, was excommunicated for publicly rejecting the validity of the Council, and the authority of the Pope. In that rejection, it is possible to hear an echo of Amaziah’s complaint: “We want no more prophesying in the Church. This is the house of God, the possessor of eternal truths”.

Yet it is in the house of God that prophecy must begin, because the Church is the Body of Christ, and a body must have breath if it is to remain alive, and that breath is the Holy Spirit who will inspire us, but who, in inspiring us, will disturb us, will not allow us to drift along comfortably, giving notional assent to our faith, what a former parish priest of mine used to refer to as “an occasional nod to God”.

Jesus warned His apostles that their message would be too disturbing for some, and would be rejected, as He Himself was to be rejected. Their message was to be of repentance, of casting out evil, of anointing and healing the sick. Ever and again we need to hear and respond to that call to repentance both as individuals and as the Church, however much it may disturb us.

14th Sunday Year b

14th Sunday 2024

Ezekiel 2:2-5; 2Cor 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6

We know, do we not, that St. Paul could be a real pain in the neck? (Well, I am convinced of that, even if you aren’t.) That should never cause us to forget, however, how much he achieved in terms of spreading the Gospel, building the Church. Nor should it cause us to overlook his courage, his determination, his single-minded commitment to the Lord.

Furthermore, we shouldn’t ignore the deep insights which he offers us into the Christian life. Remember that, in the First Letter to the Corinthians, he gives us the earliest written account (since his letters were composed before the Gospels achieved their written form) of the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, and that it was he who combined a recognition of the role of the one bread of the Eucharist as the Body of Christ in establishing the Church as the Body of Christ.

Today’s extract from the Second Letter to the Corinthians provides deep wisdom as we strive to understand our own relationship with Jesus the Christ. Paul tells us that he himself was given a thorn in the flesh which caused him immense difficulty. The word which he uses—skolops—actually means a stake, or pointed stick, which would be many times more painful than a thorn, though the English idiom of a thorn in the flesh comes more naturally to us.

What was this thorn in the flesh? Some people think that it was epilepsy; one translation renders it as a “physical ailment”, though I see no reason why it should not have been a mental affliction such as depression. The exact nature of this sharpened stick does not matter: what counts is the suffering which it caused and God’s refusal to remove it.

Notice the Lord’s response to Paul’s prayer: “My grace is enough for you; my power is at its best in weakness”, a reply on which Paul builds and elaborates. He more or less admits that, without this affliction, he might have become too proud, attributing his success to his own wisdom and ability. The thorn pulls him up short; causes him to realise his limitations; and also makes him aware both of his need of God’s grace, and of its sufficiency.

What about you? How gifted, how powerful, are you? Can you conquer the world by your own efforts, or do you have weaknesses? Do these weaknesses depress you, derail you, as they can easily do, or do they cause you to turn to God, to seek His grace and His help? Do you (do I) become disheartened, or do we have the gumption to recognise our dependence on God, our need of Him, and His willingness and ability to compensate for our deficiencies?

Paul goes on to say that he will gladly boast of his weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may stay over him, and adds that it is when he is weak that he is strong.

That is fundamental to our self-understanding, and to our understanding of our relationship with God. We do not come closer to God by achieving great things. Indeed, we are closest to Him when things are a mess; when we realise that we are struggling, even that we have failed, messed up, sinned badly, for then we become conscious both of our need of God, and of His presence and His power available to us.

Many years ago, I recall a team of priests conducting a mission at Lancaster Cathedral. One of them was a pleasant enough character, and it was impossible to disagree with the content of his sermons. Unfortunately it was impossible also to become excited by them or moved by them: the word which best described them was “bland”. A fellow priest, a recovering alcoholic, who heard them, commented to me: “You know the problem with this man. He has never needed a saviour.”

I suspect that he was right. The missioner knew his doctrine, presumably said his prayers, but appeared never to have cried out to Christ from the depth of his need, never to have suffered a sharp stick or a thorn whether of distress or of failure, not to understand with real depth that claim of St. Paul “It is when I am weak that I am strong”.

(As a counter to that, my writing of this homily has just been interrupted by a phone call from someone in the midst of a deep bout of depression, to whom I was able to say “THIS is what I am doing at the moment” to which he replied that he aways identifies with those words of St Paul. How opportune was that?)

One final point: according to Mark, Jesus COULD work no miracle because of the people’s lack of faith, whilst Matthew states simply that “He worked no miracle”. Even the Son of God, in His human nature, could be handicapped by people’s lack of faith, a reminder to us to keep our faith strong, a faith in the God whose power is at its best in weakness.

Election reflection

Westmorland Gazette July 2024

2024 is a huge year for elections around the world. Discounting the farcical re-election of Vladimir Putin in Russia, ruling parties have taken hard knocks in India, (the world’s largest democracy) and South Africa. Voters have also gone to the polls in the EU, in Slovakia, and in one or more Scandinavian countries. President Macron has staggered France, and particularly his own party, by calling a snap election in our continental neighbour.

In autumn, the world will hold its breath as the USA elects a President—what a terrifying thought that either Biden or, even more alarmingly, Trump, will once more be entrusted with breathtaking power—and, of course, there is the United Kingdom, us, you and me.

Tapping out these thoughts towards the end of June, I can say that I was given pause for thought by this morning’s Gospel reading. “Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth” said Jesus “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Where are the hearts of the UK’s electorate? If the politicians are to be believed, they are rooted very firmly on earth, among earthly treasures. How many of our would-be political leaders have appealed to our generosity, our large-heartedness, our compassion, our concern for others, even to our moral sense? Some may have done so, but they appear to be a minority. Everywhere, we read and hear promises of wealth and prosperity beyond our imagining. Are we, as a nation, really no better than that? Is that really where our hearts lie?

St. Peter and St. Paul

Ss Peter and Paul 2014

If you were founding a Church, would you choose to found it on the basis of Saints Peter and Paul? If you were calling disciples, would Peter and Paul be among the front runners? Somehow, I doubt it.

Let’s look at the evidence. Peter was impetuous, a bit of a loudmouth, better at promising than at delivering, with more than a hint of cowardice about him. Paul was difficult, prickly, not the sort of person you would choose to go on holiday with: and if you did go on holiday with him, it’s odds on you would have been returning home sooner than you had planned.

Think of some of Peter’s failures. He sees Jesus walking on the lake. “Lord, if it is you,” he cries, “bid me come to you across the water”. Yet when he begins to walk, his nerve fails him, and he has to be rescued by the Lord, who chides him for his lack of faith.

Then, immediately after the incident in today’s Gospel, when Our Lord has named him as the rock on which the Church is to be built, he opens his mouth and puts his foot in it. Jesus begins to speak about His impending Passion, so Peter sets out to prove what a good leader of the Church he will be, by taking control of the situation. “No, no,” he interrupts, “that isn’t going to happen,” the implication being that the Lord can rely on him to prevent it, just about as unfortunate a  misreading of his role as you can imagine.

How many times does he promise to stand by Jesus, to die for Him if the occasion demands it? And then how drastically does he let Him down? Falling asleep in Gethsemane, when the Lord has need of his support, cutting off the ear of the High Priest’s servant—the wrong reaction again; finally suffering complete failure by his three fold denial, as the crowing cock mocks the total collapse of the man of straw.

Even after that, and after his tears of repentance, there were slips and stumbles to come. Peter was too slow on the uptake to understand why the Lord questioned him three times about his love, failing to grasp that a threefold assertion was needed to offset the threefold denial. Finally, there was his moral cowardice when he abandoned his principles and stopped eating with the Gentile Christians, earning a holier-than-thou rebuke from Paul.

What about Paul? Leaving aside his pre-conversion zeal in persecuting the Church, there are enough charges against him in his days as a disciple to cause eyebrows to rise and lips to purse. Take his criticism of Peter for starters. Certainly Peter was in the wrong in failing to stick to his guns in the face of criticism from Jewish Christians, but what about Paul’s reaction? Our Lord left very clear instructions that correction was to be carried out privately and quietly, a principle totally abandoned by Paul as he brags in the Letter to the Galatians of his moral superiority in giving Peter a dressing down. I have always felt that Peter would have done us all a favour if he had taken Paul round the back and given him a good smack in the mouth, thus taking him down a peg or three.

Yet Paul himself was extremely touchy if he was criticised, displaying what could almost be described as temper tantrums in some of his letters, and giving hints that he wasn’t immune to the very fault which he condemns in Peter, as he struggles to rebut the charge that he was strong in his letters, but weak when he encountered people face to face.

And isn’t there something questionable in the character of someone who falls out with one companion after another: Demas, Mark, even Barnabas, who had worked so hard to ensure Paul’s acceptance by the Church at large? Over all, I think it is fair to say that Paul was not someone you would have wanted your daughter to marry.

Yet these two deeply flawed characters formed the foundation stones of the Church, Peter recognised as the first Pope, and Paul spreading the Gospel throughout the Mediterranean world. The Church built on these bases has endured through two millennia, not without stumbles, failures, and grave sins: and the Gospel has been preached the length and breadth of this planet. Our presence in this church today is testimony to the work of Saints Peter and Paul—and to God’s ability to write straight with crooked lines.

Maybe that last point is of particular importance to us. Do you and I have flaws in our characters? Without a doubt. Would Christ have chosen any of us as foundation stones for His Church? Would He heck! But has He chosen us, with all our faults, to be members of that Church, to play our part in building the Kingdom and spreading the Gospel? Indeed He has! Can we wriggle out of our responsibilities on the basis of our weaknesses, our inadequacies, our sins? ‘Fraid not. If God could build a whole Church on such flawed characters as Peter and Paul, then He can certainly achieve His purposes with and through us, and we have no excuses which will allow us to evade our responsibilities, to ignore our own individual call.

12th Sunday Year B

12th Sunday 2024

Job 38:1, 8-11; 2 Cor 5: 14-17; Mark 4:35-41

In your mind’s eye, where do you see that episode on the lake taking place? If you have been to the Holy Land, you will probably be able to envisage a storm springing up on the Sea of Galilee. I haven’t been there, but I did spend two years in Keswick, so I always picture the boat struggling against the wind on Derwentwater.

Generally, do you form a mental picture as you read or listen to the Gospel? It seems to happen automatically for me. St. Ignatius Loyola took this a stage further in developing a method of prayer, which many people find helpful. I have to confess that it is a method which doesn’t really work for me, but that is neither here nor there. It is important THAT we pray; the method is secondary, and we should pray in a manner which works for us, though there is no harm in having to struggle with prayer at times—indeed, I would say that it is inevitable.

Basically, St. Ignatius proposes inserting yourself into a biblical scene, and accepting whatever follows. Allow yourself to take in the sights, the sounds, the smells of your imagined surroundings. Let yourself be absorbed by the scene and allow the Holy Spirit to take you wherever the Spirit wills. A vivid scene such as today’s may be fruitful territory for such a way of praying.

Leaving that aside, what do you make of this incident? Jesus is with the disciples in the boat: He IS with them. When the storm springs up, they panic, even though they are in His presence. They shake Him awake and yell at Him, and He answers their prayer, though He also rebukes them for their lack of faith. What does this passage have to say to us?

Firstly, it is inevitable that there will be storms in our lives. I cannot imagine that anyone goes through life completely undisturbed. It may be a serious illness, a job loss, a bereavement, an uprooting from one place to another, a financial crisis, problems in a marriage or in a family, depression, a moral dilemma—you name it, there will be something. Panic may be a natural response, but it is never a helpful one.

Secondly, Jesus will be there. He will not have deserted us, however grim things may seem. Indeed, He will probably be at the heart of the storm, as in that that other account when, walking on the water, He spoke out of the very situation which frightened the disciples saying “Courage! It is I. Do noy be afraid”.

When our initial panic subsides, we need to ask “Where is Jesus in this seemingly overwhelming storm?” What is He saying to us? What is He asking of us? Is He teaching us something, and, if so, what?

Very often, our times of crisis, of struggle, of suffering, prove to be our times of greatest growth. In them and through them, God may be showing us a new truth about ourselves, a new direction for our lives, a strength which we didn’t realise that we had. In those times, He may be giving us a share in His Son’s Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, from which Jesus emerged with a new determination, and a new strength to face the trials which lay ahead. Remember too that we are told in the Letter to the Colossians (1:24) that our sufferings are helping to complete Jesus’ own sufferings, and consequently are helping to redeem the world.

Whilst accepting that Jesus is with us, we may feel that He is keeping His head down, as He did literally on the boat while He slept. What do we do then? When the disciples woke Him, He rebuked them, not for disturbing His rest, but for their fear, and for their lack of faith. The implication is that, had they trusted Him, He would have brought them safely through the crisis.

Perhaps then we should attempt to develop a serenity of trust in the Lord, recognising that He is with us, and relying on Him to keep us from harm. That, it seems, would be the ideal approach. Yet notice something: even though He criticises them, He does what they ask. Perhaps their behaviour has been second best, but it has achieved the desired result. They may have lost the opportunity to learn more—hence their question at the end—but at least they are still alive, and will learn further lessons in the future: lessons which they will still fail sometimes to take to heart.

This brings up the question again: what is this incident saying to us? Ideally, we should keep a deep trust in Our Lord to do what is best, but if we cannot rise to that, then we should take the second best course. We should shake Him awake, we should bellow in His ear. Don’t be afraid to use the disciples’ prayer: “Master, do you not care? We are going down.” When the crisis is overwhelming, and serenity is beyond our grasp, then it is worth risking a little annoyance on God’s part by giving Him a good yell.

11th Sunday Year B

11th Sunday 2024

Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Cor 5:6-10; Mark 4:26-34

I have known a number of great men and great women in my time. When I say “great”, I don’t mean “famous”: I mean possessed of integrity, goodness, inner strength. Some have been laypeople, some have been religious sisters, not a few have been priests.

Among that third group, I would count Mgr. Lawrence McCreavy, professor of moral theology and Canon Law at Ushaw, the Northern seminary, now sadly closed. It wasn’t for the quality of his teaching that I rate Bomber, as he was known—that was by no means of the highest rank, and belonged to a different epoch—but for his personal qualities. He was a man of deep prayer: whatever time I arrived in chapel to pray before Mass, I could be certain that Bomber, along with several other members of staff, would be there before me.

He was aware of his own shortcomings: he would admit, publicly and humorously to his short fuses, commenting in a homily on the feast of St Jerome, that “it is good to know that irascibility and sanctity are not incompatible”, and his homilies were always directed, first and foremost, at himself. He took a personal interest in every student both present and past: On a return visit to Ushaw, I received a thump on the back which almost drove me through the wall, as a prelude to a fusillade of questions from Bomber as to my progress and wellbeing.

One incident which stands out in my mind is a reunion at which Mgr. McCreavy was heartily applauded on attaining his 80th birthday. His response came with typically self-deprecating humour: “I don’t see why one should be congratulated on longevity. It has nothing to do with us, and if we are created for the beatific vision, why should we rejoice because it is being delayed?”

In that, he was echoing St. Paul, whom we have heard declaring “We are full of confidence, I say, and actually want to be exiled from the body and make our home with the Lord”. Those of a certain vintage will recall the catechism question and answer “Why did God make you?” “God made me to know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this life, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” It is easy to forget, yet important to remember, that we were created, not for this life only, but for eternity.

The story, probably apocryphal, is told of a conversation between the Heads of a public school and of a Catholic school. “We prepare our pupils for life” declared the former, to which the other replied “And we prepare ours for death”. A facile response, and almost certainly invented, and yet it contains a grain of truth. We ARE preparing for death, and for what lies beyond, which depends, as St. Paul reminds us, on how we have lived our lives, on whether or not we have responded to God’s call to us and his purpose for us.

Have our lives been selfish and self-interested, or have we attempted to fulfil God’s command to love Him above all things and our neighbour as ourself? Incidentally, that question should influence our vote in the impending General Election. It is tragic that so many politicians are appealing to our self-interest, and beyond that to a rather narrow, nasty, and exclusive nationalism. Are we, as citizens of God’s Kingdom, capable of rising above that to seek the values of that Kingdom? Do we live each day as if it is to be our last? One of them will be, and how will we stand before the face of God?

It is clear that a response and an effort is required from us, yet today’s First Reading and Gospel remind us that the initiative is God’s. He it is who “stunts tall trees and makes the low grow”; He who is going to “plant the cedar on the mountain of Israel”—perhaps a reference to the sending of the Messiah—to provide fruit and shelter, as it is He who enables the mustard seed to grow beyond all imagining.

Returning to the topic of the seminary, I recall a retreat led by Fr. Simon Tugwell OP in Lent 1974. One of his themes was that we should take time off from being God, and allow God to be God. Both the crops of Jesus’ first parable and the mustard seed of His second require an initial sowing, but then they should be left alone until they grow. If the farmer were to keep digging and poking, examining them for signs of progress, he would kill them; and we sometimes interfere with God’s work by our own prodding and poking.

As some people are aware, I am not an enthusiast for programmes and projects, of which the Church, both nationally and locally, has endured more than can be shaken at by the proverbial stick. “A time for building”, “The Church 2000”, the National Pastoral Congress, “Renew” in some dioceses, “New start with Jesus” and “Fit for Mission” (better known as “Brave New Start” and “Fit to Drop”) in our own have come and gone: all attempts to do God’s work for Him.

Can we not leave it to God to provide the initiative? He is better at it than we are, and has had more practice. Meanwhile, we can concentrate on responding to His call, striving to achieve that love of God and neighbour which He has commanded, and remembering that we live each day in the light of eternity, doing our job, and allowing God to do His.

10th Sunday Year B

10th Sunday 2024

Genesis 3:9-15; 2 Cor 4:13-5:1; Mark 3:20-35

I don’t know whether you have noticed, but the only creature to emerge with any credit from today’s Genesis story is the serpent, since he is the only one not to attempt to evade responsibility. The man says “It wasn’t my fault: it was the woman’s—the woman YOU put with me (so it’s her fault, and YOURS)”. The woman says “It wasn’t my fault: it was the serpent’s”. And the serpent says “I haven’t got a leg to stand on”.

Does all that sound vaguely familiar? Is it characteristically human to try to shift the blame, to evade responsibility? “I didn’t wreck the economy. It was the Deep State.” “I didn’t invade Ukraine. I have just gone to rescue my compatriots from Nazis.” “I m not suppressing freedom in Hong Kong. I am simply stopping people from destroying unity and the rule of law.”

What about you and me? Can any of us look into ourselves, and claim honestly that we have never attempted to excuse ourselves by shuffling off the blame onto someone else? It is a fault so deeply rooted in human nature that I wonder whether it, rather than humankind’s initial disobedience, is the real original sin. If Adam and Eve, representatives of the human race, had been honest, had admitted their guilt, would their original transgression have been blotted out, as our transgressions are blotted out by a sincere and honest confession? A metaphorical window had been opened for both the man and the woman to confess and to repent. They slammed it shut by their refusal to own up, and this has been the pattern of human behaviour ever since.

As a matter of interest, what was their fault in the first place? “Disobeying God’s command” we might say; “going against His will”. Certainly that is the root of all sin, but do we have to be a little more nuanced, to examine things rather more deeply? Ronald Rolheiser, the Canadian spiritual writer, describes it in terms of taking something which should have been received only when offered. In that sense, it was theft, but also the basis of rape, a word whose root is rapio the Latin for “I seize”. We have no right to seize anything, especially the sexual integrity which is crucial to a person’s identity.

To identify original sin simply with disobedience is to head down a dangerous road. I have been puzzled at times, in the confessional, to hear an elderly lady confess to being disobedient. Perhaps I should have asked them what they meant, but I have never had the nerve. I suspect that they were confessing to not doing what their husbands told them, to which I should have asked “Why should you?” This attitude is probably rooted in the old promise now, thank God, removed from the marriage service, “to love, honour, and OBEY”, a promise which, I suspect, has given rise to a huge amount of domestic abuse in its time.

Obedience is a tricky concept. Members of religious orders take a vow of obedience; secular priests and deacons promise obedience and respect to our bishop. What does this mean? The word obedience comes from the Latin obaudire, of which the audire part means “to hear”. In other words, obedience entails hearing what the other person says and responding appropriately. Despite what many superiors, I imagine, and many bishops, definitely, have tended to claim, it does not entitle them to tell people to do anything and everything, and to expect them to do it. Blind obedience may be necessary on a battlefield, where everyone’s life may depend on an instinctive response—though even there soldiers have been punished for obeying unjust orders—but it has no place in Holy Church, where all parties must act in accordance with conscience, which must have its basis in the will of God which never condones or demands unjust behaviour.

Another thought: is it reasonable, indeed necessary, to assume that God would have, at some point, freely given human beings the fruit of the tree of knowledge? Without it, human beings would have been trapped in an eternal childhood, innocent, but essentially without free will. Our Lord tells His disciples that they must have the simplicity, the openness, the enthusiasm, the spirit of wonder which children have, but He also warns them to be as shrewd as serpents. At some point, the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil had to be eaten: the fault lay in seizing it, instead of waiting to receive it as a gift.

Taking, receiving, thinking, acting, speaking, ordering, obeying, must all be in accordance with the will of God. Hence, Jesus says that anyone who does that will is His brother, sister, and mother. Why His mother? Because she is the only one to have fulfilled that will perfectly, as expressed in her response to the angel: “Let it be done to me according to your word”. Thus, she who was “fully graced” renewed her total commitment to God’s will. If we were able to live a similar commitment, we should be as close to Jesus as is Our Lady.

People also wonder who the brothers and sisters of Jesus may have been, causing some to question Mary’s perpetual virginity, others to make Joseph a widower with children at the time of his betrothal to Our Lady. This displays the limitations of the western world’s concept of family. A Ugandan priest who lodged with me told me that he would be greeted by strangers in a village with the words “I am your brother/sister. My father is such and such, my mother is such and such who is related to your father: I am your brother.”

Notice too that, at the foot of the cross, there stood, according to St. John, “His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas”. We surely cannot assume that Joachim and Anne, if those were indeed the names of Our Lady’s parents, were so lacking in imagination that they had two daughters and called them both Mary. Mrs. Clopas must be, at best, Our Lady’ cousin. No one needs to get their nether garments in a twist over the “brothers and sisters” of Jesus.

Corpus Christi

Body and Blood of Christ 2024

Exodus 24: 3-8; Psalm 115 (116); Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14: 12-16, 22-26

Many many moons ago, during my days at university, I recall the chaplain, the late Fr. Richard Incledon, commenting that a lady had come to him after Mass, seeking reassurance that the chaplaincy really was a Catholic church. Her unease was created, not by any liturgical oddities, but by observing that practically everybody went to communion. Apparently, this was not the norm in her own parish.

If that lady were still around, and were to come to Mass at Hyning, she might ask a similar question. Again, this would not arise from liturgical deviations, but because so many people receive the Precious Blood. (By the way, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE never say “Take the wine”. We do not take wine: we receive the Precious Blood.) From my experience of parishes, I have been surprised how few people in them receive from the chalice.

Of course, there is no obligation to receive from the chalice. We know that Jesus Christ is received whole and entire, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity under either species—either under the appearances of bread or under the appearances of wine—which incidentally makes a nonsense of an instruction received some years ago from some half-baked Roman congregation that, at a concelebration, priests who have consumed the Sacred Host and move forward to receive from the chalice at the altar, should genuflect before receiving. As my father pointed out to me when I was a small boy, once I have received the Host, I am a walking tabernacle. Consequently, if I then genuflect to the tabernacle (or to the chalice) it is as if Jesus is genuflecting to Jesus.

As soon as we receive the Host, we receive Jesus fully, but to receive Him also under the appearances of wine makes the sign complete, and it is how Jesus first administered His Body and Blood. Therefore, it is appropriate both to eat and to drink, and it is sad that the opportunity was denied to the laity for so many centuries.

In recent weeks, I have been surprised to discover that many parishes have still not restored the chalice to the laity in the wake of the pandemic. No lay person is obliged to receive from the chalice, but they have the right to decide for themselves, and I am puzzled by the ongoing delay in many parishes.

This issue is particularly striking this year, when the readings focus particularly on the Blood. The Book of Exodus quotes Moses as saying “This is the Blood of the Covenant” as he throws the blood of the sacrificed animals towards the people. Jesus takes up Moses’ terminology at the Last Supper: “This is MY blood, the blood of the Covenant, which is to be poured out for many”. Here we have the New Covenant, foretold by Jeremiah, sealed in the Blood, not of bulls or goats, but in the Blood of Jesus, made present and offered to us.

Similarly, the author of the Letter to the Hebrews focuses on the Blood of Christ, which he specifically identifies as belonging to a New Covenant. Jesus, he tells us, took His own poured out Blood into the Holy of Holies, into the presence of the Father, and that Blood is given to us.

Even today’s Psalm focuses on a Cup of Salvation, which is linked to a sacrificial death. It is evident that all the Readings today, in Year B of the three year cycle, have been chosen to emphasise the importance of the Blood of Christ, both in this Feast, and in our Eucharistic lives. Yes, of course that Blood is present when we receive the Host, but its presence—His presence—is made more obvious when we obey His injunction to eat and drink.

Our reception of Jesus brings us into communion not only with Him, but with one another, as we not only receive the Body and Blood of Jesus but become what we receive. We are part of the Body of Christ, brought into the Communion of Saints, united with the whole Church, not only throughout the world, but also throughout the ages, one body with Our Lady and with all the saints, and with all who share today in the Body and Blood of Christ in every corner of the world.

That communion is made visible in the congregation gathered here at the altar, as we represent the whole Body of Christ. Consequently, we are privileged today to welcome Rachael into full communion with the Catholic Church, one Body with Jesus, one Body with us, and with the whole Communion of Saints. Let us take a moment to reflect on this awesome union and Communion, which we have the privilege to receive, and to which we have the privilege to belong.

Trinity Sunday Year B

Trinity Sunday 2024

Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40; Romans 8: 14-17; Matthew 28: 16-20

I have invented something. Actually, I probably haven’t: no doubt thousands of people have come up with this idea before I did, but never mind—I thought of this without assistance from anyone, and so I am going to claim it. “What is it?” you may ask. It is a classification of feasts under the headings “static” or “dynamic”.

Bear with me. By “dynamic”, I mean those feasts or seasons which celebrate something which happened and/or is happening, and which constitute the vast majority of feasts and seasons throughout the Church’s year. Thus, the Church’s year begins with Advent, which expresses our never ending longing for God who came, who will come, and who is coming at every moment of our lives.

This leads into the feast of Christmas, the rejoicing in the Incarnation, the coming of God in our human flesh; and then into Epiphany, the showing forth of that same Son of God to the nations, represented by the wise men; as Beloved Son of the Father at His Baptism, and as one who shared the glory of God, revealed at the marriage feast at Cana.

Soon we move into Lent, as we enter into the wilderness journey of Jesus; and Holy Week, when we travel with Him to the Cross, before keeping vigil, awaiting the greatest feast, the Easter celebration of the Resurrection. The Easter season encompasses the Ascension, and culminates in Pentecost, recalling and re-living the descent of the Holy Spirit. All of these are what I would call dynamic feasts and seasons.

Now, however, we have a series of what I term “static” feasts, celebrating something which IS, rather than something which happens. These are Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi, and the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart. The Trinity IS: the Body and Blood of Christ ARE. Admittedly the Body and Blood are given to us, consecrated in every Mass, but that feast marks their reality, not their origins, which are recalled on Holy Thursday. The Sacred Heart shows us an aspect of Jesus the Lord, rather than something which He did, and the liturgical year is rounded off with the anachronistic Solemnity of Christ the King, which was already outdated at the time of its institution in the 1920s, when kings were already fading from the scene.

Why do we have these static feasts? They remind us of truths which we might take for granted, or even forget. We shouldn’t forget that God is a Trinity, three persons in one Godhead: after all, we assert it every time we make the Sign of the Cross, and the Church uses a Trinitarian formula, addressing the Father through the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit—God—at the conclusion of most of our liturgical prayers. Yet, when something is done regularly, it may sometimes fade in importance, become part of the background: consequently we are given this annual reminder of the central truth of our faith.

The Trinitarian reality of God is too vast a subject to tackle in a Sunday homily. The early Christian Fathers wrote volumes on the subject, and if you suffer from insomnia, I suggest that you try reading some of them. Today I would like to focus on one aspect of the Trinity, namely community and/or communion.

In the first account of creation, in chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis, God tells the sea creatures, the birds, and finally human beings to be fruitful and multiply. In the different account provided by chapter 2, God comments that “it is not good for the man to be alone”, and out of man He creates woman. Solitariness is seen to be not a good thing.

Why should this be? It is because God Himself is not solitary, though He is not part of a pantheon of various gods as pagan cultures believed. Instead, His whole nature is a community, a community and a communion of love, the Father begetting the Son through the Holy Spirit, who forms the bond of love between them.

If then we are to share the life of God, we too must be communitarian: we are made for one another. In the opening chapter of Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, we are told that the Church is “a kind of sacrament or sign of intimate union with God, and of the unity of all humankind”. Lumen Gentium goes on to state that God’s plan was to “dignify human beings with a participation in His own divine life”.

All humankind is created to share “intimate union with God”, and the Church “subsisting in the Catholic Church which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in union with that successor” as the document states, exists to be an effective sign of that union. That is the case because God Himself is unity, community, and communion. The Trinity reveals that to us, and gives us our own nature and the point of our striving.

Pentecost

Pentecost 2024

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

I don’t know about you, but I tend to think that you need the gift of tongues to get through that First Reading, with all those names of ancient peoples to pronounce. I recall a young man at Castlerigg Youth Centre launching into that reading: we held our breath to see how he would cope, and he received a round of applause at the end, the shoals safely negotiated.

What is described is the reversal of the Old Testament incident at Babel, when God confused the languages of the earth: what is needed is a new gift of tongues, so that the people of the earth may speak a common language of justice, of peace, of faith, and of mutual love. We need Palestinians and Israelis, Muslims and Jews, Russians and Ukrainians, factions within such countries as Sudan, Syria, Iraq to learn to speak together, putting aside the language and the spirit of violence and hatred; and we need a similar gift from the Spirit to the Church, where polarisation so often raises its literally diabolical head. Perhaps that should be our first prayer today, for a new version of the gift of tongues to descend upon all the peoples of the earth.

(That isn’t how I originally planned to begin my homily. Did the Holy Spirit stick an oar in—assuming   that the Holy Spirit has an oar—to change things around? I do not know.)

My original plan was to raise the question “Did you receive the Spirit?” a question raised by St. Paul on his visit to Ephesus, and adopted as a book title by the Dominican scholar Fr. Simon Tugwell more than fifty years ago. It is a question which, initially at least, we can answer without difficulty. “Yes, we did receive the Spirit,” when we were baptised and confirmed, and we have continued to receive the Spirit throughout our lives.

After that answer, I would like to raise a second question: “How did you receive the Spirit?” Was it the Pentecost, or the Easter Sunday evening giving of the Spirit? The Spirit’s descent at Pentecost was spectacular—all bells and whistles: a loud and powerful wind, tongues of fire, and the gift of languages.

On Easter Sunday evening, by contrast, the Spirit was breathed gently into the disciples by Jesus, the Risen Christ, and the Spirit’s gift was the power to forgive sins. So how have/do you experience the Holy Spirit’s descent upon you?

Speaking personally, I have never been involved in the Charismatic Renewal, so I am not in a position to speak about it. People who are involved appear to experience the Pentecost Spirit, with powerful and exuberant reactions. Indeed, the Charismatic Renewal is sometimes called Catholic Pentecostalism.

I suppose that I am not naturally given to exuberance, unless I am watching football or cricket, where I do recall throwing my school cap in the air when Lancaster City scored their ninth goal against Prescot Cables on a December Saturday afternoon in 1962. Temperamentally, I am more at home with the Easter Sunday bestowal of the Spirit, the gentle breathing which has equally powerful though less spectacular results.

Traditionally, that event has been seen as the origin of the sacrament of Reconciliation, Penance, Confession, whatever we wish to call it, and that is a legitimate interpretation. The power of that sacrament, when used prayerfully, thoughtfully, and wisely, is immense; it is a sacrament in which the Holy Spirit is manifestly at work.

Are there, though, wider implications? Just as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was a gift for the whole Church, and not merely for those gathered in the Upper Room, so the breathing of the Risen Christ at Easter was not limited to its immediate recipients. The apostles and their successors were indeed empowered to be ministers of sacramental forgiveness, but the whole Church was enabled to be a forgiving people. The Holy Spirit has been breathed into YOU in order that you may share God’s forgiveness in and with the world.

As baptised and confirmed Christians, you have been literally INSPIRED—breathed into—to be a people of forgiveness, people who do not bear grudges, people who encourage others to forgive. The Holy Spirit has enabled the Church to minister God’s forgiveness to the world, and we must be, not a people who condemn, but a people who forgive, and who help others to receive and to share the gift of forgiveness.

What else does the Holy Spirit give to us, and through us, to others? What are the further implications of both Pentecost and the evening of Easter Sunday? You may recall, as you were preparing for Confirmation, learning lists of the gifts, and even the fruits, of the Holy Spirit. That is fair enough, but those lists mustn’t limit us. The gifts of the Spirit are, in fact, innumerable, and may differ, as St. Paul tells the Corinthians, from person to person.

“The particular way in which the Spirit is given to each person is for a good purpose” he writes. Firstly, you have been given the gift of saying “Jesus is Lord”. After that, the sky is the limit. One task for you this Pentecost is perhaps to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you your own spiritual gifts. And then all of us must pray for a new outpouring of the Spirit throughout the Church and throughout the world.

7th Sunday of Easter

7th Sunday of Easter 2024

Acts 1:15-17, 20-26; 1 John 4:11-16; John 17:11-19

To an extent, we are in a similar situation to the disciples in today’s First Reading. It is the time between Ascension and Pentecost. Christ has returned to the Father, and we await the coming of the Holy Spirit. What then did the disciples do at this point?

According to St. Luke, both in His Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles, they did a great deal. After the “two men in white” had chased them away from the location of the Ascension with an instruction to stop gawping, they gathered in the Upper Room to pray for the Spirit to descend upon them. They also, at the instigation of Peter, chose a replacement for Judas.

Furthermore, according to St. Luke’s Gospel, they spent a lot of time in the Temple, praising God because they were full of joy. What they did not do, as I never tire of pointing out, was to hide away in fear: that was an aspect of the immediate aftermath of Calvary, and it came to an end with the appearances of the risen Christ.

What then should we be doing, disciples in the twenty first century? We should be full of joy, we should praise God, and we should pray for the Holy Spirit to come upon us anew. And don’t forget something which we were told last week, and which has been emphasised again today: we should love one another.

I don’t think that it is possible to overstate the importance of praying for a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit. As Our Lord Himself taught us, it is the Spirit who gives life. The Spirit hovered over the chaos at Creation, and brought it into life; and that same Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, continues to give life. The Spirit gives life to the created world, to the Church, to us as individuals and as members of the Church, and to every man and woman on the face of the earth, if only they are open to receiving that life.

Surely the need is great today to pray for creation, that it may yet be rescued from what St. Paul calls its bondage to decay, from the destruction wrought by human exploitation and human greed. There is a need to pray for those people who resist the promptings of the Spirit, and who seek instead to dominate others by force, fear, or lies, whether at international, national, or domestic level.

We need to pray also for a new outpouring of the Spirit on the Church, that members of the Church may cease to pursue their own agendas, that they may open themselves to being led by the Spirit, guided by the Pope whom God has given us, and who is so clearly a man of the Spirit. And we need to pray for ourselves, that each one of us may be filled with the Holy Spirit to play our own part in building the Kingdom of God.

Prayer for the Church and for the members of the Church is the essence of today’s Gospel, which is part of what is commonly known as the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus. St. John sets it in the context of the Last Supper, an appropriate location as Jesus there exercised His priesthood, that priesthood which remains for ever. There He was both priest and victim, offering Himself to the Father, consecrating bread and wine to be His Body and Blood in anticipation of His complete self-offering on the Cross, leaving that Body and Blood as the perpetual memorial and presence of that one perfect sacrifice.

As Jesus consecrates Himself—makes Himself a sacred offering—so He prays that His disciples too may be consecrated in the truth, that they too may be victims consecrated to the Father in the truth that is Christ Himself. Annoyingly, today’s Gospel extract ends one verse early. In the very next verse (v20) Jesus goes on to say “Not for these alone do I pray, but for those also who believe in me through their word”. In other words, you and I, and the whole Church throughout the ages are brought into Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer: whatever He says about those at table, He says about us as well. We too are consecrated in the truth, sharing as priest and victim in the self-offering of Jesus Himself, all of this to happen through the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

So these days between Ascension and Pentecost are busy days. They are days of rejoicing, days for prayer, days to be open. We pray for the Spirit to come anew upon us and upon the world. We pray that we may be consecrated in the truth with all God’s people, that we may, with Christ, be both priest and victim both in the Mass and in the whole of our lives, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

6th Sunday of Easter Year B

6th Sunday of Easter 2024

Acts 10:25ff; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17

Do you get the impression that St. John is trying to tell us something? Might that be “Love one another”? If so, what does it mean?

Many moons ago—during the last week of January 1987, to be precise, which is 444 moons if my arithmetic is correct—I was leading a course for Fifth Years (Year 11 in new money) in other words 15 to 16 year olds, at the Diocesan residential Youth Centre at Castlerigg Manor. They came from Fisher/More School, Colne, who invariably sent a good gang of young people, these being no exception.

During one session, having broken up into small groups, we were discussing the topic of love, and I asked my group if anyone could define love. Needless to say there was total silence, so I said: “Right. I will give you a definition which I have thought of, and you tell me what you make of it. I would say that love is wanting what is best for the other person”.

Again there was silence for a moment; then a lad named Darren (who will now be in his fifties) commented “Well, I think you are about half right”. “Tell me more” I responded, intrigued. “I think” continued Darren, “that it is wanting what is best for the other person, and wanting what is best for yourself as well”. I have spent the last thirty seven and a quarter years trying to work out whether he was right.

What do you think? Who thinks that was a better definition of love? Ponder it. Is it perhaps a matter of emphasis? May it be the case that, if you are genuinely wanting what is best for the other person, you will, by definition, automatically be wanting what is best for yourself? Or does that lay you open to abuse? Answers on a postcard!

Throw something else into the mix! Our Lord comments “No one can have greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”. That is what He went on to do, clearly wanting what was best for us, and judging correctly what that was. Was it best for Himself as well? In human terms, clearly not, yet it may indeed have been so, as being the completion, the fulfilment, of His destiny as man.

When preaching at a wedding, I have been known to tell people about the carpet sewing room. For three summers in the 1960s, I worked in the carpet and beds department of the Co-op, at Market Square, Lancaster, where TKMaxx is now. The Co-op building stretched, on the upper floors, along much of New Street and Church Street, and was a warren of passages with rooms leading off them. Sometimes I was sent on an errand to the carpet sewing room, where Lena presided over a small corps of ladies, who would be binding the ends of newly sold and cut carpets.

An enterprising and artistic member of staff had decorated the walls of the room with a series of cartoons, all depicting Charlie Brown, and carrying a caption beginning “Love is…” One of them remains in my mind to this day. It was a night time scene, with a crescent moon in the sky. Snoopy was lying on the roof of his kennel, whilst Charlie Brown stood on the back doorstep of his house, clad in a nightshirt, and carrying a glass of water. The caption read “Love is bringing someone a glass of water in the middle of the night”.

There are more ways than one of laying down one’s life for one’s friends—or one’s spouse. Sometimes, this may involve a huge sacrifice, but more often than not it will be a small, niggly, perhaps annoying need to put yourself out for the other person. And if you are not prepared to do that, then it is unlikely that you will be willing to make that major sacrifice if it should come down to hey-lads-hey.

At the same time, I should repeat that we ae not required to lay ourselves open to abuse. If the other person shows no willingness to respond in kind, then something is amiss.

Where do we gain the strength to practise this self-sacrificing love? It comes from God, who gives us both the ability and the example. God sent His Son into the world, and that same Son gave Himself up to death for us. In the Eucharist, that self-sacrificing death, the ultimate act of love, is made present for us again. That is the effective sign of God’s love for us, and it should give us the strength to love others, whatever definition of love we prefer.

5th Sunday Easter

5th Sunday of Easter 2024

Acts 9:26-31; 1 John 3:18-24; John 15:1-8

Would you recognise a vine if you saw one? I would—provided it had bunches of grapes hanging from it: otherwise I wouldn’t have a clue. In Holy Family Church, Morecambe, now, sadly closed, there was a set of tabernacle veils with leaves embroidered on them. To me, they looked like ivy, but I was assured that they were vine leaves.

That was appropriate, because vines produce grapes, which in turn produce wine, which is transformed into the Blood of Christ, the Eucharist, which, under the appearances of bread, is contained in the tabernacle. Thus, vines have a deeply Eucharistic significance.

And we, says Jesus, are branches of the vine, parts of Him who is the true vine, the vine which ultimately bears fruit in His Blood, just as we are parts of His Body, which is both the Church and the food of the Church. Our Eucharistic union with Him is both integral and intimate, and we will never exhaust its meaning, as we reflect on the mystery of His Body and Blood.

As branches of the vine, He tells us, we are called to bear fruit. How are we to do that? Well, how do the branches of any vine bear fruit? They do that simply by being themselves. The life of the parent vine passes through them, and so the life of Jesus passes through us. It is not our doing: it all comes from the main stem, which is Jesus.

Our calling then is to be fully receptive to the life of Jesus passing through us, to be conduits of that life. How do we do that? St. John explains in our Second Reading: “We believe in the name of [God’s] Son Jesus Christ, and we love one another as He told us to”. It’s a doddle.

Or is it? What does belief in the name of Jesus entail? It is more than accepting His biography: it is recognising Him as the source of our life, and allowing Him to live in us, being open to His grace and to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Just as the sap from the main stem is the source of the branch’s life, so must the grace of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit be the source of our life. As St Paul wrote: “I live; no, not I, but Christ who lives in me”. We must be open always to the promptings of grace, seeking always to conform our lives to the presence and the leading of God who dwells in us.

As part of that response to grace, we must “love one another as He told us to”. Is that a doddle? Anybody who has been part of a family, a religious community, a parish, will roll their eyes at that suggestion. Those who are closest to us create the greatest friction with us. It can be far easier to love the people whom we do not know, whom we will never meet. People love their idols, whether these be sporting personalities, rock stars, film stars or whoever. Those who marry them have a very different experience of them, and few such marriages survive. “Love hurts” as one well known song declares.

There is still more: Our Lord tells us to love our enemies. Somehow we have to love that difficult person up the street, and Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, the editor of the Daily Mail, the militant atheist who constantly attacks religion, and all those other people whose world view is at odds with ours. We may disagree with them profoundly, we may wish their power and influence to be broken, but we must pray for them, desire their conversion, long for them to be filled with the love of the Holy Spirit.

What, though, do we make of the demand that we bear fruit? Do you perhaps feel, particularly in these days when the Church appears to be in decline, when the name of Jesus is less known and less believed in, when your own children may have rejected the values you sought to give them, that you have failed, that your efforts, your life have been fruitless?

I remember a lady coming to confession and claiming that she had failed. Her daughter had rejected all her values, was living in a way which appalled her. “And” she added, “what makes it worse is that I am a Marriage Guidance Counsellor.”

“Right” I replied, “and when people come to you with similar stories, I bet you tell them that it’s not their fault; that they mustn’t blame themselves.”

“Yes I do,” she said. “But it’s different when it’s your own.”

But it isn’t really. You can only do your best, co-operate with God’s grace, and leave the outcome to Him. You and I will never know, this side of eternity, what fruit we have borne, often in ways that we have never imagined. I remember another lady, who used to thank me profusely for some advice that I had allegedly given her about her son. From that day to this, I cannot recall ever giving her advice about her son. Yet something had clicked, without my ever knowing or intending it: perhaps she had misinterpreted something which I had said. No matter: God had done something in spite of me.

Oh, and one other thing. God will prune us, and at times that will hurt.

3rd Sunday of Easter Year B

3rd Sunday of Easter 2024

Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; 1 John 2:1-5; Luke 24:35-48

Last week’s Gospel which, as you will recall, recounted two appearances of the Risen Christ a week apart, stressed His physicality. First, He showed the disciples His hands and side. On His return, He invited Thomas to touch His wounds. Today, He again insists on the physical reality, drawing attention to His wounds and taking food. He has solid flesh, bones, and a digestive system. There is nothing wraith-like about Him.

It is clear from the Gospel accounts that the Risen Christ is not merely spiritual: He is also corporeal. He is body as well as spirit. He is also something else: He is wounded. At least three times, He points  to His wounds. Why should that be?

His body, though real, was different from what it had been. It could pass through locked doors. It could appear and disappear, as it did for the disciples on the Emmaus road. It could apparently cover distances previously unattainable. It was still a human body, but enhanced: perhaps we might say perfected.

Why then did it still have wounds? If our bodies suffer injuries such as cuts or gashes, we expect those injuries to heal: to leave nothing but a faint scar. Why then does the risen body of Jesus so clearly display His wounds? Wouldn’t we expect them to have cleared from this enhanced and perfected body? Why do they remain so evident?

Seemingly, it is important (crucial, if you will pardon the pun) that the risen Christ should continue to be the wounded Christ. Why? Partly, I assume, because those wounds retain their healing power. “By His wounds we are healed” the First Letter of St. Peter tells us, and that is an ongoing process. These wounds continue to heal us. This was not something which ended when the body of Jesus was removed from the Cross. The gashes in His hands, feet, and side remain forever, to heal forever, and to remind us whence our healing comes. The risen Christ is not the ubermensch, the superman. He is still Jesus of Nazareth, fully human, and His perfected body is a wounded body.

There are further implications for us. Our physical wounds may heal and fade, but they are still part of us, and our psychological wounds run still deeper. They form part of who we are, and as such are part of our call to be perfect, to be complete, to be thoroughly made. If, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, the Son of God was made perfect by suffering, the same must be true of us who are His body.

Suffering may do lasting damage, but it may also bring lasting benefits, because it gives us compassion, the ability to suffer with others, without which we are, at best do-gooders, at worst cold and uncaring. As Christ is the wounded healer, and continues to be so after His resurrection, so must we be, as members of His risen but still wounded body.

None of us can know or share the full extent of another’s suffering, but because we have been wounded we know what suffering is, and we can bring a degree of healing, if only by the silent accompaniment of the other in their pain. Our healing of others will not be clinical, in either the best or the worst senses of that word; it may be clumsy and stumbling, but in emerging from a wounded heart it will be genuine, it will be fruitful.

This is one reason why Pope Francis is so critical of aloofness on the part of priests. If we, as pastors, do not display the compassion arising from our own woundedness, what we offer will be superficial. The risen Christ shows us the wounds that heal us, and they transform our own wounds into means of healing, whether we be priests, religious, or lay people because they draw their strength from His wounds.

2nd Sunday of Easter Year B

2nd Sunday of Easter 2024

Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31

You don’t need me to tell you that a honeymoon doesn’t last forever. After the initial ecstasy, it is necessary, inevitable, that people come down to earth, and start living the daily reality of the relationship to which they have committed themselves. There is a saying “The glances over cocktails which seemed so sweet, don’t look so amorous over shredded wheat”. Yet life contains far more shredded wheat, or corn flakes, or whatever, than it does cocktails.

The same is true of our relationship with God, where there is a similar saying: “After the ecstasy, go and do the laundry”. We may be emotionally and spiritually exalted by a new encounter with God, but soon we have to settle to developing that relationship amid the ups and downs of daily life.

People sometimes ask, in a tone of complaint, “Why isn’t the Church today like the early Church?” as described in today’s First Reading, when there was dignity, mutual respect, and everything, we are told, was held in common. A brutal, and perhaps not very helpful answer would be “Why aren’t you?”

It might be more helpful to point out that the Church, at this stage, was on honeymoon, living in the first ecstasy of the Resurrection and Pentecost, and that, very soon, it would have to settle to the reality of daily existence. It might also be fair to point out that, even at this stage, there were serious problems. Chapter 5 of the Acts of the Apostles chronicles the attempted fraud on the part of Ananias and Sapphira, followed by the attempt of Simon Magus to buy spiritual powers.

Soon, there would be major disagreements about policy. We need to pray for the Church, that she may be constantly purified and renewed, but we should not be so naïve as to suppose that if only THEY (those other people) would reform, the Church would become the perfect society. Two expressions may be useful here: “ecclesia semper reformanda”—the Church always in need of reform—and “Lord, reform your Church, beginning with me”.

Our Second Reading, from the First Letter of St. John, underlines that this reform depends on our faith, and on our love for God and for one another, before John’s Gospel recounts two appearances of the Risen Christ, a week apart.

There shouldn’t be any need to append a health warning to the description of the first appearance, but unfortunately there is. Because of Jesus’ gentle breathing of the Holy Spirit into the apostles, this episode is used as the Gospel for the Feast of Pentecost, and people who don’t have their wits about them fail to realise that this incident took place on Easter Sunday, and not at Pentecost. Thus you will find preachers and spiritual writers, who should know better, asserting that the disciples were cowering in fear until Pentecost, whereas they were liberated from that fear by the appearances of the Risen Christ and by His Ascension.

In a previous parish, I explained this very carefully during Eastertide. After Mass on Pentecost Sunday, a lady approached me and asked triumphantly “Well, who is right then, you or St. John?” Resisting the urge to strangle her, I began again, explaining how I was in full agreement with St. John: I am still not sure that she was convinced. She was a retired Deputy Head from a Catholic Primary School, and had clearly spent her career teaching that the disciples were frightened until Pentecost, a belief which she was not going to surrender easily.

Jesus’ appearance on the Second Sunday—today—deepens our understanding. Firstly, the physical nature of the Risen Christ is underlined. He may be able to pass through locked doors, but He is flesh and blood, and can be touched. Secondly, He still carries His wounds. The Risen Christ is still the wounded Christ. “By His wounds we are healed,” states the First Letter of St. Peter, and those wounds are the sign of His ongoing compassion with us. We too carry the wounds which Christ has dealt us, and which enable us to have that compassion, and therefore that love, which our Second Reading demands.

Thomas is characteristically down to earth. “None of your airy fairy theories” he demands. “Show me!” And Jesus does. What is the result? The first profession of faith in the divinity of Christ. In exclaiming “My Lord and my God”, Thomas gives us not only a prayer to offer at the elevation of the Host and the Chalice, but a fundamental statement of faith, a faith which is ours, and which undergirds our love.

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday 2024

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

The Easter of 1972 was my first as a seminarian, a student for the priesthood. More than half a century on, I still remember the homily, which was preached by Mgr. Philip Loftus, the President of the College. Mgr. Loftus was, in many ways, a great man, but he suffered from two handicaps, one of which was his voice, and the other his face, which resembled nothing so much as a particularly doleful bloodhound. His voice, meanwhile, had earned him the nickname Clank, sounding as it did like a rusty chain being dragged across rough ground.

Consequently, it seemed somewhat incongruous when Mgr. Loftus began his homily “TODAY---IS---A -DAY-----OF---UNRESTRAIN-ED JOY!”

But was he correct? For a long time I believed that he was. The resurrection of Jesus the Christ, true God and true man, marked the ultimate defeat of evil. Jesus took all the evil of the world, and carried it with Himself into death. In doing so, He brought about its defeat, ensuring that evil can never have the last word. Whatever may attack us, whatever may afflict us, whatever may defeat us, cannot defeat humanity, because it has all been conquered by the risen Christ. In the end, evil cannot survive: surely this is a reason for glorious, thrilling, immense joy.

Indeed it is. The early Christians used to greet each other in the streets with the words “Christ is risen” to which the response was “He is risen indeed, Alleluia!” Sheer joy filled them, and it should fill us: it should be the driving force of our lives.

And yet, can it really be unrestrained? Can it be unrestrained when so much of the world’s population still goes hungry? When hundreds of thousands of people die by violence every year; tens of thousands of them in the land where Jesus died and rose victorious over death, tens of thousands more in Ukraine, and in Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Haiti, and in countless forgotten conflicts? Can it be unrestrained when human rights are denied to so many in China, North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, among other nations? when the Soviet Gulags are flourishing again in Putin’s Russia? when our own lawmakers hold life cheap? when obscene wealth and even more obscene deprivation stalk the towns and cities of the developed world?

The philosopher Pascal claimed that Christ is in agony until the end of time. He is in agony because His body on earth is racked by suffering. Christ suffers with and in a suffering world, and we suffer with and in Him. Pope St. John Paul II was right to declare that “We are the Easter people, and Alleluia is our song”, but we are also, and at the same time, the Holy Thursday night people whose cry is “Let this cup pass me by”, and the Good Friday people, and “My God, my God” is our prayer.

So joy definitely is ours today, and throughout the Easter season, and indeed our whole life long, but it cannot truly be unrestrained, because of the suffering of suffering humanity, and the groaning of creation. Christ is risen: evil is defeated. Let us rejoice and be glad, but let us never be unmindful of those who suffer.

Easter Vigil 24

Easter Vigil 2024

What a remarkable Gospel we have tonight. Did you notice how it ended? “And the women came out and ran away from the tomb, because they were frightened out of their wits; and they said nothing to a soul, for they were afraid.”

That is how St. Mark’s Gospel originally ended: the remaining twelve verses, telling of the appearances of the risen Christ, His commission to the disciples, and His Ascension, are generally believed to have been added later.

Contrast that with Matthew’s account: “Filled with awe and great joy, the women came quickly away from the tomb, and ran to tell the disciples”. Which version do you imagine is the more accurate?

Well, when studying classical languages in Sixth Form and at university, we were given a dictum to be applied, not universally, but generally: “Difficilior lectio melior”—“the more difficult reading is the better one”. In other words, a difficult reading is more likely to have been altered to make it easier than the other way round.

Can we suppose then that Mark’s terrified women are more original than Matthew’s joyful women? It makes sense. Arriving in semi-darkness to find an empty tomb and a strange young man—a scene which turned upside down all their expectations—wouldn’t you expect them to be terrified? Joy would come eventually when the denarius dropped, but aren’t mystical experiences which confound our suppositions likely to be frightening rather than re-assuring?

To encounter God is alarming, because He turns our world upside down. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” the scriptures tell us. If we are not, to an extent, afraid of, in awe of, God then we do not truly know Him: we know rather a god of our own construction. When they hear that the Lord is risen, these women suddenly discover that their previous understanding of Jesus, and of God, has been woefully inadequate, and in the disturbing of their comfort they can begin to know the true Jesus, the true God.

As we rejoice tonight in the resurrection of Jesus the Christ, let us realise that, however well we believe that we know Him, our knowledge, this side of the grave, will always be inadequate; and if there isn’t an element of fear, then our understanding is probably still superficial. He is risen, a cause for joy, but also for deep reverence and a healthy dose of holy fear.

Holy Thursday 2024

Holy Thursday 2024

Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; Psalm 115 (116); 1Cor 11:23-26; John 13:1-15

We have begun. We have set sail. We have launched into the Sacred Triduum, the most important three days of the year, when we follow closely in the footsteps of the Lord: entering the supper room; emerging into the bleakness of Gethsemane; watching in the High Priest’s palace and the Governor’s headquarters; carrying the Cross; standing at its foot; keeping vigil as we trace the history of salvation—OUR salvation through water and the Holy Spirit; and finally erupting in joy as we proclaim the triumph which gives meaning to existence: Christos aneste CHRIST IS RISEN.

For now, that triumph lies a long way in the future, for we are at the beginning. Where do we begin? We begin in Egypt, among the enslaved Israelites, as they prepare to sacrifice the lambs of Passover, and to eat, for the first time, the Paschal meal. The Israelites are to be saved by blood, the blood of the innocent lamb to be smeared on the doorposts, as a sign to the Lord to pass over their houses, liberating His people from slavery and from death.

Why does that matter to us? It matters because we are the new people of God, inheriting the same promises which He made to Israel, recalling that He sent His only Son to become an Israelite, a Jew, who performed the same rituals as His ancestors, who ate the same Passover meal with it bread, its roasted lamb, its bitter herbs, its series of wine cups.

All that the Jewish people had done throughout their history, and which they continue to do today, Jesus did. It is in the context of that meal that we begin our Triduum, our three days’ journey, seeing in it the roots of our own faith and of our own redemption.

It is St. Paul who, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us the earliest written account of the Passover meal which Jesus celebrated with His disciples on the eve of His death, as He prepared to become the true Paschal Lamb who would redeem, not merely a single nation from slavery, but the whole world from unending death. As if that were not enough, Paul informs us that the Lord Jesus gave thanks—literally “made Eucharist”—over the bread and wine, transforming them into His Body and Blood, instructing us to make present that one sacrifice of His Death and Resurrection throughout the ages by “making Eucharist” in our turn. Thus in every celebration of Mass, Jesus gives Himself to us in the Body and Blood offered to the Father, and draws us into that same self-offering.

All of this is proclaimed to us in our Readings tonight, but there is more. The Gospel passage which we read on this night is always from St. John, who has set out his explanation of the Eucharist in chapter six of his Gospel, and who leaves to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as well as Paul, the task of recounting how the Eucharist came about.

What John does is to link inextricably with the Eucharist the duty of serving with love. It was the responsibility of the slave to wash the travel-stained feet of guests, yet it is Jesus, the Lord and Saviour, who assumes this task at the Last Supper. Thus, the Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacrifice of loving service cannot be broken apart. If we take part in the one, we must undertake the other, or our Eucharistic celebration will be falsified. Sacrifice, salvation, service all form part of our Eucharist, our Mass: over the next three days, we shall be drawn more deeply into all of them.

5th Sunday in Lent Year B

5th Sunday of Lent 2024

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33

Our Lenten journey with Christ is far advanced. Next Sunday, we shall be entering Holy Week, travelling no longer through the wilderness but along the road to Calvary, and finally to the Resurrection. We catch hints of that journey today.

Jeremiah sets us on the way by speaking of the New Covenant. This draws us towards Holy Thursday, when Jesus first gave us the blood of that Covenant, when He consecrated the wine of the Passover meal, which was thus transformed into His Blood, the Blood which was to be shed next day, and was to be available to us through the rest of time as a sign of our union with and in Him. Our first questions therefore are “How reverently do I approach the Body and Blood of the Lord?” and “How deeply do I appreciate the Covenant which is thus sealed between God and me and the whole of God’s people?”

The anonymous author of the Letter to the Hebrews, from which our Second Reading is taken, also points us toward the events of Holy Week. He writes that “during His life on earth, Christ offered up prayer and entreaty, aloud and in silent tears, to the one who had the power to save Him out of death”. Does that put you in mind, as it does me, of the Agony in the Garden, when Jesus’ mental struggle caused His sweat to fall like drops of blood, and He prayed “If it be possible, let this cup pass me by, but let it be as you, not I, would have it”?

I am often critical of the Jerusalem Bible’s translation of the New Testament, but here its compilers deserve praise.  The Greek text states that the Father had the power to save Jesus ek thanatou which can mean “from death” or “out of death”. Here, the JB opts for the latter which, I think, is the more helpful of the two. Our Lord was not saved FROM death: He died, and “descended into hell” a statement which deserves closer analysis, though that is another task for another day. He was dead, and He had to be lifted OUT OF death; otherwise, the Resurrection would have been nothing more than resuscitation.

There is another statement in the Letter which is mind boggling. We are told that Jesus “learned to obey “from what He suffered, and HAVING BEEN MADE PERFECT…..”. If that doesn’t boggle your mind, nothing will. The Son of God had to be made perfect.

At this point, the sisters are searching desperately for missiles to throw, as they know what is coming next: they have heard it so often. Perfection is a process, rather than a state: it comes from the Latin “perfectus” meaning “thoroughly made”, “complete”. The Greek equivalent, which is what we have here, is teleiotheis, from telos meaning “the end”. So Jesus was completed, fulfilled, made the end product, by suffering. Until He suffered, He lacked something in His humanity. It was suffering which made Him complete—perfect in that sense. As with Him, so with us: we mustn’t worry that we are not yet perfect.

Turning to the Gospel, we find another reference to the Agony in the Garden. “Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say: Father, save me from this hour? Yet it is for this very reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.”

This is the nearest that John comes to describing the Gethsemane experience of Our Lord. If we didn’t have the other three Gospels, we would make little of it, but in the light of Matthew, Mark, and Luke we can grasp the reference.

There is a reason why John doesn’t enter into the physical details, but allows the other three to describe them. His intention is to describe the Passion and death of Jesus as a triumph. For John, Our Lord’s victory came, not only in His resurrection, but in the whole process of accepting Passion-Death-Resurrection. Jesus is to be “lifted up from the earth” not only in His Resurrection or Ascension, but in the lifting of His body on the Cross. This is the Fourth Gospel’s particular contribution to our understanding of the Passion.

One other thing should be said of John. His use of the term “the Jews” has contributed, tragically, to two millennia of anti-Semitism, to the extent that some have argued that we shouldn’t use His Gospel on Good Friday. Anti-Semitism is totally abhorrent and to be condemned, but what is needed is an explanation of what John means by “the Jews”. It is his shorthand way of referring to the authorities, to those who rejected Jesus. We must never forget that Jesus, Mary, John himself, and the early disciples were Jews, and his use of what was for him a technical term should not lead us into misunderstanding, or cause us to lose his unique insight into the Passion.