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An Advent Meditation

The whole problem of our time is not lack of knowledge but lack of love

Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island

The season of Advent has an interesting character: it is one of joyful waiting, as we await our yearly remembrance of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Birth, the dawning of the new hope of Salvation for mankind. It is also a season of penitence, when the church considers the Four Last Things, one for each week of Advent: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. Such matters are nowadays rather passed over in our Christian discourse, and while this is understandable, it is not a good thing. Human life on earth, is, by its very nature finite: we are born and we die, we may live for minutes, or decades, even a century – but in the end death comes for us all. This is not morbid, it is a fact of life. The world around us finds death strange and scary: it is sanitised, medicalised, shut away in a hospital or a care home. What was once commonplace and domestic has been put out of sight and out of mind as we seem no longer willing or able to face our own mortality.

As Christians we have hope that this earthly life is not all that there is, we believe that Jesus Christ, who was born in Bethlehem, died on the Cross, and rose again on that glorious Easter morn, and after forty days ascended into Heaven to show us that this is our hope, this is the fruit of our reconciliation with God, and each other. As the Preface for the Dead puts it:

Tuis enim fidelibus, Domine, vita mutatur, non tollitur: et dissoluta terrestris hujus incolatus domo, aeterna in caelis habitatio comparatur.

For the life of thy faithful people, O Lord, is changed, not taken away: and at the dissolution of the tabernacle of this earthly sojourning, a dwelling place eternal is made ready in the heavens

Hence the Christian talk of a good death, a happy death. It is nothing to be feared, but rather to be embraced, as a means to an end, namely the hope of unity with God.

After death comes judgement, and the simple answer is that no single human being deserves to go heaven (with the obvious exception of the Holy Family). We all deserve to go to Hell, ours is a fallen world and we sin, each and every one of us, every day in a multitude of ways. It is that simple, and we cannot work out way to heaven through works, but rather through God’s grace and mercy, through our Baptism, which makes us one with Christ. He gave S. Peter the power to loose and bind, to remind us that sin is a serious matter, it destroys the soul, hence the sacrament of reconciliation, an outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace of God, of forgiveness and mercy. The message Our Lord first declares is exactly the same as John the Baptist ‘καὶ λέγων ὅτι Πεπλήρωται ὁ καιρὸς καὶ ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ· μετανοεῖτε καὶ πιστεύετε ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.’ (Mk 1:15 ESV) This is the message of Advent: repent and believe in the Good News of the Kingdom of God, Good News which starts at the Annunciation, which brings about Our Saviour’s Birth. This is why we say Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus!

This leaves us a question, ‘Will we follow Him?’ There are two ways, one leads to Heaven, one leads to Hell; the road to Heaven, the life of faith is not an easy journey, it’s hard. That’s why we have the Church, a frail body, comprised of sinners, but who trust in God’s mercy, and though we keep failing, yet we stumble on, knowing that Heaven is our goal, that the way of the world leads to a future without God, bleak, cold, and devoid of love.

God is a God of mercy, a God who will judge us, knowing that His Son has paid the price, conquering sin and death, so let us believe in Him, trust in Him, and follow Him, let us prepare to celebrate His Birth with joy, and commit ourselves to walking in His way, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Let us experience that mercy and forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, let us be fed with His Body and Blood, nourished by His Word, and the teaching of His Church, praying together, loving and forgiving together, so that together our hope may be of Heaven, where we and all the faithful may sing the praises of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.

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The Only Remedy

Ours is a sick world, which longs for healing, which longs for the reconciliation which Christ alone can bring. As we prepare to welcome the Saviour, let us remember why He came among us, and why He is the Balm of Gilead which heals the sin-sick soul. Come Lord Jesus!

Here’s Sam Cooke saying more with music than I can just with words:

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Christ the King Year C

The death of Our Lord on the Cross reveals that we are meant to be perpetually dissatisfied here below. If earth were meant to be a Paradise, then He Who made it would never have taken leave of it on Good Friday. The commending of the Spirit to the Father was at the same time the refusal to commend it to earth. The completion or fulfilment of life is in heaven, not on earth.

Fulton Sheen, Victory over Vice, 1939: 99

Today the Church celebrates the last Sunday before Advent as the Solemnity of Christ the King, as a feast it is both old and new, while a relatively recent addition to the calendar, what it represents is something ancient and profound: as Christians we recognise the sovereignty of God over the world, and we ask that Christ may rule in our hearts and lives, so that we may live lives of love, so that our faith is proclaimed by word and deed.

Before we start Advent, the beginning of the Church’s year, the season of preparation for our yearly remembrance of Our Lord’s birth in Bethlehem; we stop for a moment to ponder Christ’s majesty, His kingship, and what this means for us and for the world. As someone of the House of David, it is good to start by looking back. Just as the Lord said to David ‘You shall be shepherd of my people Israel’ (2Sam 5:2) this also looks forward to Christ who is the the Good Shepherd, the one who lays down His life for His sheep. In him we see the meaning of true kingship, and true sacrifice.

In this morning’s epistle, St Paul praises his Lord and Saviour as ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.’ (Col. 1: 15–20). It places Christ before and above everything, it sets the scene for our worship of him.

Jesus Christ shows the world His kingship when He reigns on the Cross. It bears the title ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’ it proclaims His kingship, but those who are standing by cannot understand – if he is the Messiah, who saved others, why isn’t he saving himself? His kingship is not marked by self-interest, he rules for the sake of others, or as St Paul puts it ‘making peace by the blood of his cross’. Thankfully in Luke’s Gospel the penitent thief can say to him ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom’ (Lk 23:42). The thief recognises Jesus’ kingly power, he acknowledges it, and puts himself under it. We need to be like him. We need to acknowledge Christ as our Lord and King; we need to recognise both who he is and what he does. We need to, the whole world needs to, acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.

Jesus’ kingship is not the ruthless exercise of power by a dictator; it is rather shown by sacrificial self-giving love, to reconcile God to all things. It is costly, and His Body still bears the wounds of love, which heal our wounds of sin and division. But He is also transfigured and glorious, so that we can have confidence in whom we worship. As He gives himself for us on the Cross, He gives himself to us under the forms of bread and wine; he feeds us with himself, so that our nature may transformed, and we may be given a foretaste of heaven.

So let us worship Him, let us adore Him, let us acknowledge His universal kingship, the Lord and Redeemer of all. What looks to the world like defeat is God’s triumph, it opens the gates of heaven, it inaugurates God’s kingdom of peace and love, into which all may enter. So let us enter, and encourage others to do so, so that the world is transformed one soul at a time, let us invite people to enter into the joy of the Lord, that they may believe and to sing the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.

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Augustine on the works of mercy

Two works of mercy set a man free: forgive and you will be forgiven, and give and you will receive.

When you pray we are all beggars before God: we stand before the great householder bowed down and weeping, hoping to be given something, and that something is God himself.

What does a poor man beg of you? Bread. What do you beg from God? – Christ, who said, ‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven’.

Do you you really want to be forgiven? Then forgive. Do you want to receive something? Then give to another. And if you want your prayer to fly up to God, give it two wings, fasting and almsgiving.

But look carefully at what you do: don’t think it is enough to fast if  it is only  a penance for sin, and does not benefit someone else. You deprive yourself of something, but to whom do you give what you do without?

Fast in such a way that you rejoice to see that dinner is eaten by another; not grumbling and looking gloomy, giving rather because the beggar wearies you than because you are feeding the hungry.

If you are sad when you give alms, you lose both bread and merit, because ‘God loves a cheerful giver’.

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St Augustine on imitating Christ

Pride is the great sin, the head and cause of all sins, and its beginning lies in turning away from God. Beloved, do not make light of this vice, for the proud man who disdains the yoke of Christ is constrained by the harsher yoke of sin: he may not wish to serve, but he has to, because if he will not be love’s servant, he will inevitably be sin’s slave.

From pride arises apostasy: the soul goes into darkness, and misusing its free will falls into other sins, wasting its substance with harlots, and he who was created a fellow of the angels becomes a keeper of swine.

Because of this great sin of pride, God humbled himself, taking on the form of a servant, bearing insults and hanging on a cross. To heal us, he became humble; shall we not be ashamed to be proud?

You have heard the Lord say that if you forgive those who have injured you, your Father in heaven will forgive you. But those who speak the world’s language say. ‘What! you won’t revenge yourself, but let him boast of what he did to you? Surely you will let him see that he is not dealing with a weakling?’ Did the Lord revenge himself on those who struck him? Dying of his own free will, he uttered no threats: and will you, who do not know when you will die, get in a rage and threaten?

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St Augustine on Ps. 19:9

The Pharisee

Shall a Christian go and live apart from the world, so that he may not be tried by false brethren? Shall he who has progressed in a righteous life separate himself so that he need not suffer from anyone? Perhaps people have suffered from before he was converted. Has no one anything to put up with from you? It would surprise me – but if it is so, then you are stronger and thus able to endure other people’s failings.

Do you propose to shut out bad men from good men’s company? if that is what you say, see if you can shut out all evil thoughts from your own heart. Every day we fight with out own heart.

You say you will go apart with a few good men and admit no wicked brother to your society. How do you recognise the man you wish to exclude? Do all come to you with their hearts bare? Those who wish to come do not know themselves, they cannot be proved unless they are tried.

Nowhere in this life are we secure, except in God’s promise – only when we have attained to it, when the gates of Jerusalem are shut behind us, shall we be perfectly safe.

Beloved, mark the apostle’s words: ‘Support one another in charity.’ You forsake the world of men and separate yourself from it. Whom will you profit? Would you have got so far if no one had profited you?

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A Thought from S. Teresa of Avila – When discouraged trust in God’s Mercy

Beware, daughters, of a certain kind of humility suggested by the devil which is accompanied by great anxiety about the gravity of our sins.

He disturbs souls in many ways by this means, until at last he stops them from receiving Holy Communion and from private prayer by doubts as to whether they are in a fit state for it, and such thoughts as: ‘Am I worthy of it? Am I in a good disposition?I am unfit to live in a religious community. ‘

Thus Christians are hindered from prayer, and when they communicate, the time during which they ought to be obtaining graces is spent in wondering whether they are well prepared or no.

Everything such a person says seems to her on the verge of evil, and all her actions appear fruitless, however good they are in themselves. She becomes discouraged and unable to do any good, for what is right in others she fancies is wrong in herself.

When you are in this state, turn your mind so far as you can from your misery and fix it on the mercy of God, his love for us, and all that He suffered for our sake.

The Way of Perfection 39:1, 3

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Advice from S. Benedict

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The Ascension

One of the loveliest things about today is that it tends to focus, in religious art at least, on feet:  the smelly things we like to keep hidden away from the world. Today we see Jesus’ in all their glory going back to where they came from, but they go back differently than they descended: they go back marked with nails, wounded, bearing the marks of God’s love, it is this love which fills us in the Church, the same love which feeds us in His Body and Blood.

We have come here today to celebrate Our Lord’s Ascension into heaven. The world around us may well find the idea quaint or laughable – or at least physically impossible. But it is no less hard to believe than Our Lord becoming incarnate by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or his rising from the dead at Easter. The world, with the greatest confidence, will tell us that what we are celebrating are myths and fairy stories, but they fail to get the point of what’s really going on.

Our Lord ascends, body and soul into heaven, to the closer presence of God the Father, and to prepare for the sending of the Holy Spirit on his disciples at Pentecost. He who shares our humanity takes it into heaven, into the very life of the Godhead; so that where he is we may be also. We have seen the promise of new life in Easter, a new life which is in the closer presence of God, which we celebrate today. We can see where it leads – what started at the Incarnation finds its goal and truest meaning in the unity of the human and the divine.

But rather than seeing this as an end it is surely far better to see in it a beginning – a beginning of the Church as we know it – a church which goes and makes disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that Our Lord commanded us. This is exactly where we have been for nearly two thousand years. Inspired by the Holy Spirit they did what their Lord commanded them to do and that is why we are here today celebrating this fact.

But like them we too are called to follow Our Lord’s commands and to share his good news with the world so that it may believe. We are called to live lives where our faith is enfleshed in us – it is not abstract and private, but concrete and public. The Atheist who finds our beliefs laughable now joins forces with an Enlightenment Rationalist who wishes faith to be a private matter rather than a public one. This will not do: Our Lord did not say ‘Don’t do this if it’s inconvenient’ or ‘There’s no need to make a fuss in public about me’. He speaks as one given authority, ‘all authority in heaven and on earth’, so we can gladly place ourselves under His authority, to do his will.

He makes us a promise: ‘Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ He is with us by sending His Spirit on the Church at Pentecost and ever since. He is with us in his Word, Holy Scripture and in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. It is through this (and the other Sacraments of the Church) that God’s grace can perfect our human nature – so that we can prepare to share the divine life of love in Heaven. Where our Lord goes we can hope to follow, through his sacrifice of Himself upon the Cross, a sacrifice made present here and on the altars of churches all throughout the world, to strengthen us, so that we may be close to him, sharing in the divine life of love poured out on us.

Once Jesus has ascended in glory and before he returns as our judge the only place where we can encounter him is in and through the Church, in its sacraments, in the word of Holy Scripture, and in people, filled with His Holy Spirit: it is a huge responsibility, but a movement which started with 12 men in Jerusalem is still going strong nearly two thousand years later. We have been given the gift of faith and it is up to us to pass it on, so that others may come to share in the joy of the Lord.

We can all hope to follow Him, and to spend eternity contemplating the Beatific Vision, caught up in that love which is the Divine Nature, sharing in the praise of all creation of the God who creates, who redeems, and who sustains all. We can have this hope because Christ has gone before us, he has prepared the way for humanity to follow him and share in the divine life of love.

Let us prepare for this by living the life of faith, strengthened by Him, proclaiming his truth, praying for the gift of His Spirit at Pentecost, that the Church may be strengthened to proclaim His saving truth and the baptism of repentance, so that we and all the world may sing the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.

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Easter IV

In John’s Gospel, Jesus says of himself, ‘I am the Good Shepherd’  It discloses something important about who and what he is — he is one who tends, who looks after his sheep. The Jews in the Temple for Hanukkah don’t seem to have been listening. Jesus has told them and they do not believe that He is the Messiah. What he does in the Gospels testifies to who and what he is, the Word made flesh, God with us.

Those of us who are in the Church, through our Baptism belong to Him, we are His. So we are to listen to what Jesus tells us, in the words of Scripture and through prayer. Jesus knows us and we know him – in word and sacrament, through the outpouring of His grace, and so we follow Him, we do what He tells us to do, to love, to forgive each other, we are humble, we don’t think of ourselves as better than we are, we know our ned of, our dependance upon God. We put our faith into practice in our lives, so that it becomes a reality in the world.

Christ offers us eternal life, as we share in His death, so we too share in His Resurrection, and are assured of eternal life with Him, something wonderful and freely given, and a reason why we, as the Church, celebrate Easter in an extravagant and exuberant way, because it is a sign that God loves us, and saves us, that salvation first shown to the world by Noah , a man who trusts God, who listens to God, who obeys Him. We are sharing in that Eternal Life here and now, as we are nourished by Him, in Word and Sacrament, strengthened by Him, to live His risen life

We are to bear witness to our faith in the world so that it may believe. We are called to be witnesses regardless of the cost. We may not face persecution in this country; we are more likely to be faced with indifference, a coldness of heart, which denies the fact that what we are and what we say is important or has value. Yet we are to live lives which proclaim the fact that our life and death have meaning and value through Jesus Christ, who loves us, who died for us, and rose again so that we might have eternal life in him. It is a gift so precious that we have to share it, we cannot keep it for ourselves. In sharing it, it becomes a greater and more wonderful gift. In sharing it we are preparing for that moment seen by St John when all of creation will sing the praise of God, filled with his love, healed and restored by him.

We are preparing for that moment here and now preparing to be fed by him, to be fed with him, looking forward to that time when we and all creation will sing the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as it most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.

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Lent V

This morning’s Gospel asks us some serious questions: do we love Jesus this much? Would we risk being laughed at or criticised for our extravagance in being like Mary of Bethany and pouring ointment on Jesus?

How can we do this for Jesus in our lives? Can we really show him how much we love him, and how much we want to serve him? What might this look like in our lives, and how might we do it together as a Church, to proclaim God’s saving love to the world. As we begin Passiontide we look to the Cross that more radical costly act of generous love, the love of God for us. God does this for us, what are we going to do in return? Are we going to be like Judas and moan about the cost, the extravagance? Do we want to be a penny-pinching miserly church, or do we want to be something else, something which makes the world stop and take notice, which doesn’t make sense, which shows the world that there is another way, and it is the way of the Kingdom. God’s generosity gives his Son to die for us, he feeds us with His Body and Blood so that we might have life in Him. What are we going to do in return?

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Christmas 2015

 

Αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν· ‘He became human so that we might become divine’

Athanasius De Incarnatione Dei Verbi 54.3

 

Love tends to become like the one loved; in fact, it even wishes to become one with the one loved. God loved unworthy man. He willed to become one, and that was the Incarnation.

Fulton Sheen The Divine Romance New York 1930: 70

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We have come here tonight to celebrate something which defies our understanding and expectations. The simple fact that the God who created all that is took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary and was born for us in Bethlehem as the Messiah, the Anointed of God, who would save us from our sins, should still feel strange and odd. It simply doesn’t make sense, nor indeed should it. In human terms, Mary should have been stoned to death for extra-marital infidelity, and some thirty three years later her son is executed as a blasphemer, a rabble-rouser, a trouble maker, in an awkward backwater of the Roman Empire, having gathered round himself a small group of misfits and undesirables appealing to the baser elements of society. There is nothing respectable here, just the rantings of religious extremists.

And yet here we are, some two thousand years later, celebrating the birth of a child who changed human history and human nature, because we do not judge things solely by human standards. We come together so that we may ponder the mystery of God’s love for us, a God who heals our wounds, who restores broken humanity, who offers us a fresh start, who can see beyond our failures and shortcomings, and who becomes a human being so that humanity might become divine, so that we may share in the divine life of love, both here on earth and in heaven.

If that isn’t a cause for celebration, I honestly don’t know what is. We are so familiar with the story of Christmas that I wonder whether we, myself included, really take the time to ponder, to marvel at the mystery which unfolded two thousand years ago in Bethlehem. God, who made all that is, comes among us, taking flesh in the womb of a young girl through the power of His Holy Spirit, so that in His Son we might see and experience God and His love for us.

God comes among us not in power or splendour but as a weak, vulnerable child, depending on others for love, and food, and warmth, laid in an animal’s feeding trough, insulated from the cold hard stone by straw – beginning his life as he will end it placed in a stranger’s tomb.

Throughout his life all that Christ says and does shows us how much God loves us. The Word becomes flesh, and enters the world, he dwells among us, a wondrous mystery which provokes us to worship, to kneel with the shepherds and to adore the God who comes among us, who shares our human life so that we might share His divine life, not because we asked for it, not because we deserve it, we haven’t worked for it, or earned it, rather it is the free gift of a loving and merciful God, this then is the glory of God – being born in simple poverty, surrounded by outcasts, on the margins of society, to call humanity to a new way of being together, where the old order is cast aside, turning the world upside down and offering us the possibility of living in a radically different way, a way of peace and love and joy, not one of power. Heaven comes to earth, born in the womb of a Virgin, so that we might behold the glory of God in a new-born child. So that we might experience the love and truth of God.

The word is made flesh so that prophesy might be fulfilled, so that the hope of salvation might be dawn, so that a people who have languished long in darkness might behold the glory of God where heaven and earth meet, in a stable in Bethlehem, where men and angels may sing together ‘Alleluia, Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace to people of goodwill’ The worship of heaven is joined with earth on this most holy night, that in the quiet and stillness all the earth might be filled with the praises of Almighty God, who stoops to save humanity in the birth of His Son.

The Son who lives and dies and rises again for us will be here tonight under the outward forms of bread and wine so that the heavenly banquet may nourish our souls. He gives Himself so that we might share His Divinity, that God’s love can transform our human nature, having redeemed it in His Nativity. So let us come to sing his praises, and be nourished with His Body and Blood and experience here on earth the joy of Heaven and the closeness and the love of God, let it fill our souls with joy, and let us live lives which recognise the wondrous thing which happens tonight, that it may be a reality in our lives, that we may may proclaim in word and deed the reality of the Word made flesh, so that others may be drawn to kneel and worship like the shepherds, like the Holy Family of Mary and Joseph, and come to believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed all might, majesty, glory, dominion and power, now and forever.

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Advent IV (Year C)

bvm-visitation-web‘God does not love us because we are loveable of and by ourselves, but because he has put his own love into us. He does not even wait for us to love; his own love perfects us. Letting it do this with no resistance, no holding back for fear of what our egotism must give up, is the one way to the peace that the world can neither give nor take away’

Fulton J. Sheen Lift up your Heart

The fulfilment of prophesy is the great hope of Israel in times of tribulation, it speaks of their relationship with a loving God. The prophet Micah, after the destruction of Samaria, looks back to David of the tribe of Ephraim, to look forward to the saviour who will save Israel, who will be a true shepherd to his flock, one who will bring Peace. Whereas the first David sinned by sending a man to die: Uriah the Hittite, the husband of Bathsheba, the second of David will go to his death willingly to save from their sins even those who kill him. Prophecy is fulfilled, humanity is restored, and the peace of God’s kingdom can be brought about. His coming forth is from old from ancient days. Our salvation is both the fulfilment of prophesy and the outworking of God’s love. This is what we are preparing to celebrate

In the letter to the Hebrews we see the prophecy of Psalm 40:6-8 ‘In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, “Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”’ fulfilled in Christ. The sacrifices of the old covenant are replaced in the new covenant with the sacrifice of God for humanity: sacrifice is fulfilled and completed, once and for all. It is this sacrifice, which the church, through its priests of the new covenant pleads and re-presents: the eternal offering of a sinless victim, to free humanity of its sins, to restore our relationship with God and one another. It is an act of perfect obedience: the body prepared by God for Christ will do his will and will sanctify humanity: heal us and restore us.

In this morning’s Gospel Mary does not tell Elizabeth that she is pregnant. But by the power of the Holy Spirit John the Baptist, the forerunner, the last of the prophets announces the coming of the saviour by leaping of the joy in his mother’s womb. It’s important, there’s no time to waste: Mary arose and went with haste. Time is of the essence, for us too, not for the frantic fulfilment of consumerism: last-minute presents, or enough food to satisfy even the most gluttonous, no, we have to prepare our hearts, our minds, and our lives, so that Christ may be born again in us, so that we may live his life and proclaim his truth to the world.

Through the prompting of her son and the gift of the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth can cry ‘Blesséd are you among women, and blesséd is the fruit of your womb!’ She recognises that Mary’s obedience, her humble ‘Yes’ to God undoes the sinfulness of Eve. That she who knew no sin might give birth to Him who would save us and all humanity from our sin. It is through the love and obedience of Mary that God’s love and obedience in Christ can be shown to the world, demonstrated in absolute perfection, when for love of us he opens his arms to embrace the world with the healing love of God. He will be the good Shepherd, laying down his life for his flock that we may dwell secure. We prepare to celebrate Christmas because it points us to the Cross and beyond, in showing us once and for all that God loves us, how much he does, and why he does. It is this trust and confidence in a loving God which means that Mary can sing her great song of praise, the Magnificat: a song of joy, and trust in in a God who can turn the world around. It is a song of revolution, which turns the established order of sin and human power on its head: God’s way is different, it is the way of suffering love, of self-giving, it is truly revolutionary, and it still has the power to change the world two thousand years after it was first sung with joy.

Safe in the knowledge that God loves us, that he feeds us with word and sacrament, that he heals us, let us love God and love one another, truly, deeply, with all our lives. Let us prepare the greatest gift we can, ourselves:  that this Christmas Christ may truly be born in us, that as the Sanctified People of God, we may live that goodness, that holiness, that charity, which reflects the bountiful goodness of God who gives himself to be born and to die and rise again that we might truly live and have life in all its fullness, sharing the joy and the love of God with everyone we meet, safe in the knowledge that he has the power to change the world through us. As he will come to be our judge let us live His life, proclaim his saving love and truth to a world hungry for meaning and love and thereby honour God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the consubstantial and co-eternal Trinity, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.

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Homily for the 19th Sunday after Trinity Year B


Again and again outsiders who wanted to alleviate the simplicity and austerity of their way of life found no one ready to receive the money or goods offered. Thieves were therefore no threat, partly because the hermits had nothing worth stealing but also because they wanted to have less and not more:
When Macarius was living in Egypt, one day he came across a man who had brought a donkey to his cell and was stealing his possessions. As though he was a passer-by who did not live there, he went up to the thief and helped him to load the beast and sent him peaceably on his way, saying to himself, ‘We brought nothing into this world (1 Tim. 6:7) but the Lord gave; as he willed, so it is done: blessed be the Lord in all things.’
A brother was leaving the world, and though he gave his goods to the poor, he kept some for his own use. He went to Antony, and when Antony knew what he had done, he said, “ If you want to be a monk, go to the village over there, buy some meat, hang it on your naked body and come back here.”
The brother went, and dogs and birds tore at his body. He came back to Antony, who asked him if he had done what he was told. He showed him his torn body. Then Antony said, “Those who renounce the world but want to keep their money are attacked in that way by demons and torn in pieces.”
Macarius and Antony as cited by Benedicta Ward in The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks (London: Penguin Books, 2003) 53.
The key message in this morning’s Gospel is to put it plain and simply that God calls us to be generous. We know that this is how God is towards us, so we are to follow his lead and example. It sounds simple and straightforward, and to put it simply, it is. But it isn’t easy – oh no, far from it; it’s fine in theory but when it comes to practice it is a different matter entirely.
People simply don’t like doing it! Following Christ makes demands upon us: who and what we are, what we do, how we live our lives. It is far easier to be selfish, self-absorbed, to love wealth, power, and influence, than to love and follow Christ.
SO this leads me to my next question this morning, how do we? How do we live lives of generosity? I suspect that there’s no magic formula, no deep spiritual insight other than to say simply by doing it! The more we try and do it, then the easier it gets. If we get on with it TOGETHER then: it is less strange, there is camaraderie, and it gets easier. This is what being a Christian community, and living a Christian life together looks like. It’s easier if we do it together, we can love, forgive and support each other, carrying each other’s burdens.
The world around will tell us otherwise. It will tell us that we need to care about wealth, and power, and stuff. That it’s the way to be happy, to be powerful, and successful, to gain respect, and value in the eyes of others and ourselves, that this is where happiness and respect lie. It is certainly a seductive proposition, and many are seduced by it, both inside the church and outside, the temptation to be relevant, to give people what they want rather than what they need, to go along with the ways of the world. To be seduced by selfishness, self-interest, and sin. But we need to get some perspective: these things do not matter in the grand scheme of things. Wealth, power, and influence, are no use to us when we are dead, they won’t help us to stand before our maker, we cannot take them with us when we depart from this world. They may benefit our immediate family and friends, but that is no guarantee of anything in the long term. Would we not rather, when all is said and done be remembered as kind, generous, loving people, quick to forgive, and seek forgiveness. Isn’t this a better way to be?
What does matter, however, is firstly loving God, and listening to Him, and secondly loving your neighbour – putting that love into practice. This is the core of our faith, what we believe, and how we are supposed to live our lives. The costly love of God and neighbour is how we need to live, to be fully alive and live out our faith in action. This is what Jesus shows us in the Gospels, this is what he teaches and why he dies and rises again for us, and we need to listen to Him, and to follow His example.
It’s why he gives us the Eucharist – to make us one in Him, and to give us strength. It is why we are here this morning, so that we can be nourished body and soul with word and Sacrament, so that we can be transformed more and more into His likeness, fed with the bread of life for our journey of faith, strengthened to live like Him, to live with Him, and in Him, strengthened by the gift of his Holy Spirit, poured into our hearts. So let us come to Him. Let us be fed by Him and with Him, and transformed more and more into his likeness, to live out the same generous self-giving love in the world, let us lose our life so that we may truly find it in Him, who is the source and meaning of all life.
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Twenty-fourth Sunday of Year B ‘Who do you say that I am?’


We must learn to wait on the Spirit of God. As he moves us, we are led into deeper purgation, drawn to greater self-sacrifice, and we come to know the stillness, the awful stillness, in which we see the world from the height of Calvary
Mother Mary Clare slg
Picture the scene if you will: you’re walking along a dusty road, going uphill in the heat towards Caesarea Philippi, and Jesus asks the question, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ You answer, saying what you’ve heard people say, ‘some say John the Baptist, others Elijah or one of the prophets’ Jesus has been proclaiming the Good news of the Kingdom of God. Then Jesus asks, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Then, quick as a flash Peter replies, ‘You are the Christ, the Messiah’. Jesus asked his disciples then, and through the Gospel he asks each and every one of us today the question, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ It is a question which we all need to answer. Are we happy to say that he’s a prophet, but just a man, to deny his divinity, or can we say that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. If we are happy to say this is this simply the end of the matter or is more asked of us? At that time Jesus tells His disciples not to tell anyone of Peter’s confession of faith, it isn’t the right time. Instead he goes on to tell them what the Son of Man will undergo and suffer, how he will be rejected by the religious authorities, be killed and rise again. Peter is at one level understandably annoyed – he’s declared his belief only to see it rejected by others, it’s worse that sad, it’s awful, why should Jesus have to suffer and die? But Peter can only see things from a human point of view, he forgets that the suffering is already foretold, as in the Suffering Servant in Isaiah in this morning’s first reading, and Jesus’ proclamation will lead to rejection, torture and death. It is sad, and awful, and very human, and yet in the midst of the pain and rejection we see something of divine love. This is how much God loves us, that he gives his own Son to live and die for us, for you and me, so that we might live in Him.
          It also makes demands upon us: how we live our lives is important, as the Letter of James is at pains to point out – we are to live lives which proclaim our faith in word and deed. Jesus also invites those of us who follow him to take up our own cross and follow Him. What Jesus does for us and for humanity is wonderful, an amazing demonstration of God’s love for us, and he calls us in following Him to bear our own Cross: to follow Him in living out that same suffering love, to show the same compassion to the world, the same forgiveness. To follow Christ is to experience pain and anguish, heartache and loss, there is no magic wand to make things disappear, but rather as we try to live out our faith, stumbling and failing as we go, we are drawn ever more into the mystery of God’s love and forgiveness, we become people of compassion, of reconciliation, who can see beyond petty human trifles, squabbles, and arguments, to the Kingdom of God where restored humanity can be enfolded for ever in the love of God.
          Opposed to this we say the ways of the world: of money, of power; yet none of us can be saved by our possessions, and once we die they are of no use to us, and what then? All the wealth and power in the world cannot save our soul, cannot make us truly happy in the way that following Christ, and entering into his suffering can. God’s love is shown most fully when Christ dies for love of us, when he bears the weight of human sin, wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. This is how the Messiah reigns, not on a throne, but on a Cross. And when he comes at the end of time to judge the world, as he surely will, a judgement of which the Apostle James is all too well aware, let us not be among the adulterous and sinful generation of those who are ashamed of Christ, but let us instead be in Him, conformed to Him, fed by His Body and Blood, showing our faith through our works, conformed to the Passion of our Lord and Saviour, giving of ourselves out of love, love of God and of our neighbour, costly self-giving love, which gives regardless of the cost, gladly and freely, generously, and in losing our life so we can find it in Him, and truly live in Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,
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Trinity XIV Evensong


From the Sayings of the Desert Fathers: an instruction sent by Abba Moses to Abba Poemen:
A brother asked the old man, ‘Here is a man who beats his servant because of the fault he has committed; what will the servant say?’ The old man said, ‘If the servant is good, he should say, “Forgive me, I have sinned.”’ The brother said to him, ‘Nothing else?’ The old man said, ‘No for the moment he takes upon himself the responsibility for the affair and says “I have sinned,” immediately the Lord will have mercy on him. The aim in all these things is not to judge one’s neighbour. For truly, when the hand of the Lord caused all the first-born of Egypt to die, no house was without its dead.’ The brother said, ‘What does this mean?’ The old man said, ‘If we are on the watch to see our own faults, we shall not see those of our neighbour. It is folly for a man who has a dead person in his house to leave him there and go to weep over his neighbour’s dead. To die to one’s neighbour is this: To bear your own faults and not pay attention to anyone else’s wondering whether they are good or bad. Do no harm to anyone, do not think anything bad in your heart towards anyone, do not scorn the man who does evil, do not put confidence in him who does wrong to his neighbour, do not rejoice with him who injures his neighbour. This is what dying to one’s neighbour means. Do not rail against anyone, but rather say, “God knows each one.” Do not agree with him who slanders, do not rejoice at his slander and do not hate him who slanders his neighbour. This is what it means not to judge. Do not have hostile feelings towards anyone and do not let dislike dominate your heart; do not hate him who hates his neighbour. This is what peace is: Encourage yourself with this thought, “Affliction lasts but a short time, while peace is for ever, by the grace of God the Word. Amen.”’ [1]
There is something very human and recognisable about the prophet Jonah: God speaks to him, and tells him to go to Nineveh to proclaim the Word of the Lord, he tries to escape, and do what he wants to do, it all goes horribly wrong until Jonah prays to God and goes to Nineveh, and issues a call to repentance, which the people of Nineveh, from the king downwards take to heart, they fast and pray, and are spared. So far so good: all is well, or so we might think. This is not, however, the end of the matter: Jonah is angry that God has forgiven the people of Nineveh. This is quite understandable, as the people of Assyria, who live in Nineveh are enemies of Israel, these are people who will conquer Israel, and lead its people off into captivity and exile. Job’s dilemma is a simple one, how can the God of Israel be loving and forgiving towards the enemies of his people?
      Jonah’s fundamental problem is that his conception of God is far too small, too nationalistic, and he forgets that God, is first and foremost a God of love, mercy, and forgiveness. There is a tendency to argue that in the Old Testament God is a God of judgement, retribution, who rains down fire from heaven, whereas in the New Testament we see in Jesus Christ a God of Love.  This is a false dichotomy, a trap into which Christians have been falling, and continue to fall, from which they need help. From Marcion in the second century adto the liberal German protestantism of Adolf von Harnack and others, and the Jesus Seminar of late twentieth century America, we see people who, when faced with a difficult and complex picture of God, have preferred to make the complex simple, and to refashion the Divine into what they want it to be, rather than live with the fact that at one level God is ‘beyond our ken’ that the love and mercy of God are beyond our human comprehension.
      This is for a perfectly good reason, namely that intellectual comprehension is not the point, but rather the love, mercy and forgiveness of God is something which is to be experienced rather than understood. It is something demonstrated to the world when Our Lord Saviour, who took our flesh for our sake was scourged, and nailed to a Cross to die for us, to bear the burden of our sins, to pay the debt which we cannot, to heal us and restore us. The world did not understand this two thousand years ago, nor does it today. What looked like failure was in fact a great victory, the King of Heaven and Earth reigns nailed to the wood of a Cross. His flesh bears forever the mark of nails and spear as they are the wounds of love: God’s love of us, frail, sinful humanity, and through these wounds we are healed and restored, in them we find the inexhaustible store of God’s mercy poured out for and upon us.
      God does not need to do this, but as a God of love and mercy, who longs to heal and restore humanity made in His image what else can he do? As those healed and restored by him we are to live lives of radical love and forgiveness like those Christians in the Egyptian Desert who practised what they preached, and through their faith and humility inspired others to come to Christ and to follow Him, turning away from the ways of the world, and to Christ, who alone can heal and restore us, the God of love and mercy. Let us be healed and restored by him, and share that love and mercy with others so that they too may praise God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.  

[1] Sr Benedicta Ward(tr.) The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, London: A. R. Mowbray 1975: 120-121
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Trinity XIV 23rd Sunday of Year B ‘Let us be healed by Him’


From the Sayings of the Desert Fathers: ‘When blessed Antony was praying in his cell, a voice spoke to him, saying, “Antony, you have not yet come to the measure of the tanner who is in Alexandria.” When he heard this, the old man got up and took his stick and hurried into the city. When he had found the tanner … he said to him “Tell me about your work, for today I have left the desert and come here to see you.”
He replied, “I am not aware that I have done anything good. When I get up in the morning, before I sit down to work, I say that the whole of this city, small and great will go into the Kingdom of God because of their good deeds, while I alone will go into eternal punishment because of my evil deeds. Every evening I repeat the same words and believe them in my heart.”
When blessed Antony heard this he said “My son, you sit in your own house and work well, and you have the peace of the Kingdom of God; but I spend all my time in solitude with no distractions, and I have not come near the measure of such words”
When Our Lord begins the Sermon on the Mount, he starts by saying ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of God’ To be poor in spirit is not to have a false idea of who and what you are, and it is to know your need for and dependence upon God, and God alone – to trust Him to be at work in your life, to heal and restore you.  That is how we are to live as Christians. In this morning’s Old Testament reading we see Isaiah prophesying about the Kingdom of God: he speaks of joy, refreshment and new life in God, it’s what the Kingdom of God looks and feels like – these are the promises fulfilled in the Word made flesh, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who took our flesh and lived and died to heal us, to restore in us the image of God, in which we were created.
This is why in the Gospels Jesus performs miracles: not to show off his power, or to attract followers, or to win popularity or power, but to show God’s healing love for people who know their need of God. The miracles are first and foremost prophetic acts which announce God’s Kingdom among us: a kingdom of love and mercy and healing, where humanity is restored and valued. This morning’s second reading from the Letter of St James shows us how to live our lives as Christians in an authentic manner. Just as St Antony was not afraid to see a greater example of faith than his own lived out in the world, by a man who tanned animal hides in urine all day long, hard, demanding and smelly work; so we should not make the distinctions of which the world around us is so fond. If we live our lives without judging others, we can be as free as the deaf mute healed by Jesus. The ways of the world will not bind and constrain us; we can instead serve Him, whose service is perfect freedom.
To return to the desert for an example ‘A brother in Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which abba Moses was invited, but refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to him saying “Come for everyone is waiting for you”. So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug with him filled with water and carried it with him. The others came to meet him and said, “What is this, father?” The old man said to them “My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.” When they heard that, they said no more to the brother but forgave him’
This morning’s Gospel shows us God’s love and God’s healing. It is what we all need. I certainly need it: as I’m weak, broken, vulnerable, and sinful, and in need of what only God can give us. All of us, if we were to be honest are in need too – we need God to be at work in our lives, healing us, restoring us, helping us to grow more and more into his image. It would be foolish or arrogant to think otherwise: that we know it all, that we’re quite alright, thank you very much. Can we come to Jesus, and can we ask him to heal us, through prayer, through the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, the true balm of Gilead which can heal the sin-sick soul? We can and we should, indeed we must so that we can continue to live out our baptism as Christians.
 As those loved and healed by him we need to live out the reality of our faith in our lives, showing the love and forgiveness to others which God shows to us. So that all of our lives may give Glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion, and power, now and forever.

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Trinity XIII 22nd Sunday of Yr B ‘Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers’


From the Sayings of the Desert Fathers: an instruction sent by Abba Moses to Abba Poemen
A brother asked the old man, ‘Here is a man who beats his servant because of the fault he has committed; what will the servant say?’ The old man said, ‘If the servant is good, he should say, “Forgive me, I have sinned.”’ The brother said to him, ‘Nothing else?’ The old man said, ‘No for the moment he takes upon himself the responsibility for the affair and says “I have sinned,” immediately the Lord will have mercy on him. The aim in all these things is not to judge one’s neighbour. For truly, when the hand of the Lord caused all the first-born of Egypt to die, no house was without its dead.’ The brother said, ‘What does this mean?’ The old man said, ‘If we are on the watch to see our own faults, we shall not see those of our neighbour. It is folly for a man who has a dead person in his house to leave him there and go to weep over his neighbour’s dead. To die to one’s neighbour is this: To bear your own faults and not pay attention to anyone else’s wondering whether they are good or bad. Do no harm to anyone, do not think anything bad in your heart towards anyone, do not scorn the man who does evil, do not put confidence in him who does wrong to his neighbour, do not rejoice with him who injures his neighbour. This is what dying to one’s neighbour means. Do not rail against anyone, but rather say, “God knows each one.” Do not agree with him who slanders, do not rejoice at his slander and do not hate him who slanders his neighbour. This is what it means not to judge. Do not have hostile feelings towards anyone and do not let dislike dominate your heart; do not hate him who hates his neighbour. This is what peace is: Encourage yourself with this thought, “Affliction lasts but a short time, while peace is for ever, by the grace of God the Word. Amen.”’ [1]
In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus is uncompromising when dealing with the hypocrisy of the Scribes and the Pharisees: their religion is a façade, a sham, something done for show, for outward appearance, whereas we know, from the prophets onward that God looks on the heart, and if our motives are suspect then, we’re in trouble. The point is simple: what we do affects who and what we are, hence the need for the people of Israel to observe the statutes and ordinances without addition or subtraction. Likewise, the advice of the Letter of James is that people should in all gentleness and humility both listen to the word of God and do what it says, so that their thoughts and words and actions proclaim the truth that Christ died to save them from their sins and rose again that they might have new life in Him.
Rather than the pharisaic obsession with exterior cleanliness (and the letter of the Law) Our Lord and Saviour is concerned with the cleanliness of people’s souls, as it is from within, from the human heart that sinfulness can spring: his point is a simple one we become what we do, and thus the formation of a moral character is important, and can only be brought about by doing the right things.
There is a problem, however, that despite our best intentions we will fail in our endeavours. So what do we do? Is it simply a case that having tried and failed we are written off, cast aside and prepared for hell and damnation? By no means! Just as in the Gospel Jesus commands his followers to keep forgiving those who sin; our lives should be ones where we are continually seeking God’s forgiveness and that of our brothers and sisters in Christ, so that slowly and surely, as part of a gradual process, as people forgiven and forgiving, we try day by day to live out our faith in our lives. It is something which affects us all, each and every one of us, and it is only when we can live it out in our lives that our proclamation of the Kingdom can look authentic rather than running the risk of  being accused of hypocrisy.
So, by seeking forgiveness and forgiving others, by being close to God in prayer, in reading the Bible, and in the sacraments of the Church, and in the love which we have for each other as a Christian community, which recognises both that we fail but also that together we can be something greater and more wonderful than we could apart, through the love of God being poured into our hearts, and through that love forming who we are and what we do, that self-giving sacrificial love shown to us by Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in his dying for us, so that we might live in Him, let us be attentive to the Word of God, the Word made flesh, and not simply listen but also act – relying not upon our own strength but upon the love and mercy of God, seeking His forgiveness, to do His Will. 
When we do this together then we can be built up in love, as living stones, a temple to God’s glory, which proclaims his love and truth to the world, which shows how forgiveness and sacrificial love can build up, rather than being bitter and judgemental and blind to our own faults: like the scribes and Pharisees, eager to point out the sins of others and yet blind to their own faults, failures and shortcomings. Instead, clothed in the humility of our knowledge of our need of God, his love and mercy, let us come to Him, to be fed by Him, to be fed with Him, to be healed and restored by him, so that we can live lives which speak of the power of his kingdom so that the world may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.

[1] Sr Benedicta Ward(tr.) The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, London: A. R. Mowbray 1975: 120-121
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Trinity XII – 21st Sunday of Year B – ‘Lord to whom can we go?’


After the miraculous feeding of the Five Thousand in John’s Gospel, Jesus proceeds with a long Eucharistic discourse on the Bread of Life, which reaches its climax in this morning’s passage.
       Those who eat the Body and Blood of Christ abide in Him and He in us: to abide, to remain, there is something comfortable and comforting about its permanence. We sing the hymn ‘Abide with me’ which expresses the hope that this might happen, the longing to be close to Christ.
Christ gives himself to us so we may have life in this world and the next – it is a tremendous thing to say, and a troubling one. Jesus is speaking in the synagogue in Capernaum to Jews for whom the consumption of human flesh and blood is anathema – it is unacceptable, and unthinkable. What Jesus is promising goes against everything which they know and understand about their faith. He calls them to do the unthinkable.
Thus, is it hardly surprising that His disciples reply, ‘This teaching is difficult, who can accept it’. That is a normal reaction. But it is not one which Jesus will leave unchallenged. As he is the living bread which came down from Heaven so He will go back. After His death and Resurrection, He will ascend to the Father. Our being fed with the Lord’s Body and Blood is important, and what It is is clearly linked with who He is: God, born for us, who gives himself for us. It is linked to the proclamation of the Gospel, the Good News – the words are Spirit and Life – and God gives himself so that His Church may be nourished by Word and Sacrament.
It is sad to think that even then ‘many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.’ Jesus had said something difficult, something troubling, something which turned the accepted order on it its head. People were unable or unwilling to accept what Jesus asked of them, and so He turns to his disciples and asks them if they want to go away too. Peter the leader of the disciples is the first one to reply: ‘Lord to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God.’ Who can offer what Jesus Christ does? Life, freedom, the Love of God. He has the words of eternal life, and the disciples have come to know that he is the Messiah. His words are our words, his confession of faith is ours so that we too can have that same closeness to Jesus that the disciples did.
We come so that we may hear the words of eternal life, the Good News of Jesus Christ, and so that we may be fed by Him, and fed with Him, with the Body and Blood of Christ, so that we can live forever because of Him. We can have a foretaste of the Heavenly banquet of the Kingdom, here and now, we can be fed with Jesus so that we can be transformed more and more into His likeness and prepared, here and now, for eternal life with God, and that we start living that life here and now, so that our faith is not a personal or a private matter but one which affects who and what we are, and how we live our lives, so that our faith affects who and what we are, and what we do, so that the Eucharist is our bread for the journey of faith, so that strengthened by Christ and with Christ, we may live lives which proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom. This is how are supposed to live together as a Christian community, living in love, fed with love itself, here in the Eucharist, where we thank God for His love of us. As children of God, loved by God, we are to imitate him, we are to live after the pattern of Christ, who offered himself, who was a sacrifice who has restored our relationship with God. It is this sacrifice, the sacrifice of Calvary, which has restored our relationship with God, which will be re-presented, made present here today, that we can touch and taste, that we can know how much God loves us; that we can be strengthened and given the hope of eternal life in Christ – that God’s grace can transform our human nature so that we come to share in the Divine Nature forever.
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Sermon for Trinity IX (18th of Yr B) John 6:24-35

Jan van Eyck The Adoration of the Lamb from the Ghent Altarpiece


In Exodus the people of Israel moan an awful lot, in this morning’s reading they are hungry and they long to be fed, and so God answers their prayer and gives them manna and quails, they are fed with bread and meat, a miracle which points forward to the more miraculous feeding when Christ will give his flesh, the bread of life, so that we his people may have life in Him, so that we may be built up in love, so that His Divine nature may transform our human nature and prepare us for heaven.
In this morning’s Gospel, we see people who have been fed in the miraculous feeding, the feeding of the five thousand, following Jesus around. Perhaps they’re hoping for another free lunch? They have seen and yet they have not seen the signs; they haven’t understood what’s going on. They haven’t seen what Jesus is doing and why he is doing it
Jesus feeds people not as a combination of magic trick and mass catering, but as a sign of God’s generous love, his healing and forgiveness. That God loves us, you and me, all of us, so much, that he longs to feed us with himself, that he gives himself to be tortured and die on the Cross for us, to show us that he loves us, to heal our wounds, to take away our sins. His feeding of the people of God points to this, so that they might believe in Him. And believing in Him, be fed by Him, fed with him, so that they might have life, and life in all its fullness.
Jesus wants us to believe in him, to trust in him, to be fed by him, with him, the Word of God made flesh, to be fed by word and sacrament, to be strengthened to live our life of faith, growing into His likeness, and to live out that faith in the world around us. Jesus is the true bread come down from heaven which satisfies our spiritual hunger in a way which the world: success, money, possessions, what we have and what we do, cannot. He is the living water which satisfies the thirst of our souls. If we believe in Him, and in Him alone, we will never be thirsty. He gives us not what we want, but what we need: a love, a true love which gives meaning to human love, and to all of human existence: a generous self-giving love.
One of the Desert Fathers was asked by a soldier if God accepted repentance. After the old man had taught him many things, he said, ‘Tell me my dear, if your cloak is torn do you throw it away?’ He replied, ‘No, I mend it and use it again.’ The old man said to him, ‘If you are so careful with your cloak, will not God be equally careful about his creature?’ God’s grace does not abolish our human nature but transforms it, through the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we may live forever in Him, living out our faith.
If we trust in God, and live our lives according to his will, loving God and each other, with faith in him alone we can win a reward which lasts far longer than human praise or glory: the crown of eternal life and the glory of heaven. So let us be fed by him, with him, let us be nourished by word and sacrament, let us believe in him, let us love Him and love one another, and live lives which proclaim his life, his truth and his victory to the world around us: a victory which allows us to win a greater prize, a greater glory than anything this world can offer – true life, true glory, and true joy with him forever in Heaven, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
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Seventeenth Sunday of Year B (John 6:1-15)


As you were getting up this morning, to get ready to come to church, you probably went into your bathroom to wash your face and brush your teeth and turned on the tap marked ‘C’, and all was well. If you went on holiday to Italy and you wanted to have a drink, wash your face or brush your teeth, you may well stand by a sink and turn on the tap marked ‘C’ and you would get a nasty shock. It stands for Caldo the Italian word for Hot. What you needed to do instead was to turn on the tap marked ‘F’ for Fredo or Cold.
This mistake is easily made, especially since we are so used to seeing the letter ‘C’ on cold taps back home. But it shows us the problem of misreading the signs. In today’s Gospel we have several examples of people misreading signs. First, we have Philip: he is asked by Jesus where they can buy bread for the crowd to eat. He replies that 200 denarii would only buy them a mouthful each. Six months wages just for a mouthful! So Philip can see no way that the people can be fed. He is unable to see past the practicalities.
Andrew begins better. He shows Jesus a boy with two fish and five barley loaves, the bread of the poor. But he cannot see the point and asks ‘what is that between so many?’ The disciples cannot read the signs and give the wrong answers to Jesus’ questions
The people are also a bit of a mixed bag. They have followed Jesus as they are impressed by outward things, his miraculous healing of the sick. Once they have been fed, they recognise the sign as a declaration of Jesus’ identity, but they misinterpret it. They are about to take him by force and make him king. This is not what Jesus’ kingship is about, he isn’t a political ruler, and his kingship is not of this world. All three have expectations which are met, but not in the way they were expecting.
The context of the Gospel story is important. It was just before the Passover, the festival commemorating Israel’s journey from slavery in Egypt, across the Red Sea towards the Promised Land. It is a festival of Hope and Freedom, of Liberation, of a God who will feed them with manna from heaven.
It is also the same time that Jesus will celebrate the Last Supper with his disciples, instituting the Eucharist, which Christians have faithfully celebrated ever since and the reason why WE are here today. The blessing, breaking and sharing of bread is a serious matter then, and not just an excuse for a conjuring trick.
The fact that it is a serious matter explains why Jesus will devote so much time and effort to teaching the people about this in the Gospel passages we will read over the next few weeks. It matters because it is how we encounter Jesus and are fed by him.
In the Gospel, it is Jesus who takes the initiative. He recognises that people are hungry, and that they need to be fed. He takes the basic foodstuff, bread, to show us how God works with simple things. These may be, like the barley loaves, poor, the kind that the world despises and looks down its nose at, but for God, nothing or indeed nobody is scorned or cast aside. Ours is a God who takes what is available and uses it. Jesus takes what he is given and thanks God for it, in recognition that all we have, our lives and all of creation is a gift, for which we should thank God.
It is through prayer and blessing that bread can be broken and distributed and provide sustenance, on a scale and in a way that defies our expectation and understanding. Not only are the people fed but as a sign of the superabundance of God’s love and mercy, there is more left over at the end than there was to begin with. Thus, in giving thanks to God and sharing his love, the kingdom of God of which the bread is a sign, grows, is shared, and satisfies people’s deepest needs.
Jesus takes, blesses, breaks and distributes bread to demonstrate what the Kingdom of God and the message of the Gospel is. This looks forward to the Institution of the Eucharist, just before Passover. It points to the great Passover, where the world is freed from the slavery of sin, washed in the Red Sea that flows from Calvary, and given the Law of love of God and neighbour.
This miraculous feeding by the shore of the Sea of Galilee will happen here today, when we, the people of God, united in love and faith offer ourselves and like the little boy, give the bread that we have, so that it may be taken, blessed, broken and given that we may be partakers in the mystical supper of the Kingdom of God. We eat the Body of Christ not as ordinary food – that it may become what we are – but that WE may become what HE is. THIS is our bread for the journey of faith. THIS is the sign and token of God’s love. THIS is the means by which we too may enjoy forever the closer presence of God.
So then, as the five thousand received and were satisfied, let us prepare to eat that same bread, the body of Christ, which satisfies our every need and fills us with a foretaste of the Kingdom of God
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Trinity IV (Thirteenth Sunday of Year B)



Our society has got rather caught up with the cult of the individual, and while matters of healing and salvation have been seen as individual matters, they are best understood as community affairs: what affects us affects our family, our friends, and community, as we do not live in isolation, likewise Christ’s healing love is poured out on individuals who are part of a community.  Likewise the church is to be a place of healing and love, for individuals, and for the community.
Given the events of the last few days it is impossible for us not to describe our world as one in need of healing. Our human proclivity for violence seems as strong as ever, which reminds us that when things are left up to ourselves they don’t always end well.  We need some help, and that can only come from God.
       St Antony the Great once said ‘Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ.’ In the words of Rowan Williams:
‘Winning the brother or sister isn’t – in the perspective of St Antony – a matter of getting them signed up to something, getting them on your side, but opening doors for them to God’s healing. If you open such doors, you ‘win’ God, because you become a place where God ‘happens’ for someone else, where God comes to life for someone in a new and life- giving way – not because you are good and wonderful but because you have allowed the wonder and goodness of God to appear (and you may have no idea how). When we shift our preoccupations, anxiety and selfishness out of the way and some space appears for God, we ourselves are brought in touch with God’s healing. And so, in winning the brother and sister, we win God.’[1]
       This morning’s Gospel is concerned with healing, that of Jairus’ daughter and the woman with a haemorrhage. They show us the power of God to heal and restore humanity, which points to the Cross which is the greatest place of healing, where Christ bears our sins: for by his wounds we are healed, we are washed in his blood, healed and restored to new life in Him. Christ who was rich, for our sake made himself poor, so that we might become rich by his poverty. Likewise he gives himself under the outward forms of bread and wine, so that we can be healed by Him. Unlike the physicians who have taken all of the woman’s money and not made her better but worse; Christ’s healing is free. The woman is afraid, but Christ does not want to single her out, but rather is conscious that someone is in need of healing, hence his words: ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’  She has faith: she believes that simply by touching his clothes, by being close to Jesus, that she can be healed. Likewise Jairus, a well-known pillar of the community, who sits at the front of the synagogue, falls at Jesus’ feet and begs him repeatedly: here is a desperate man, whose concern is not for his own station, but rather that his daughter may be made well and live. He comes to Jesus, who raises his daughter, who restores her to health and life. Jairus is humble; he knows his need of God.
       We, too, know that we need God’s healing, in our lives and in the world around us. We need to come to Jesus, so that we can be healed by Him, and restored by Him, to have life and life in all its fullness. We are given a foretaste of it here, this morning, in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, given to us so that we might be healed, body and soul, and given a foretaste of eternal life in Christ.
       Let us come to him, so that we too might be healed and restored by him, so that we might be built up in love, and our families and communities too might be healed and restored, living life in all its fullness – this is what Christ comes to bring to a world in need of healing. Let us come to him, so that we might be built up in love, so that the Kingdom may grow, so that we can invite others so share in God’s gift of his healing love, so that ransomed, healed, restored, and forgiven by him, through Christ’s saving death, we may sing the praises of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed, as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.

[1]Rowan Williams Silence and Honeycakes: The wisdom of the desert , Oxford 2003: 104-5

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Evensong – Trinity II


Abba Poemen said, ‘There is no greater love than that a man lays down his life for his neighbour. When you hear someone complaining and you struggle with yourself and do not answer him back with complaints; when you are hurt and bear it patiently, not looking for revenge; then you are laying down your life for your neighbour.’
When Abba Apollo heard the sound of singing from the monks who welcomed us, he greeted us according to the custom which all monks follow … he first lay prostrate on the ground, then got up and kissed us and having brought us in he prayed for us; then after washing our feet with his own hands, he invited us to partake of some refreshment…
          One could see his monks were filled with joy and a bodily contentment such as one cannot see on earth. For nobody among them was gloomy or downcast. If anyone did appear a little downcast, Abba Apollo at once asked him the reason and told each one what was in the secret recesses of his heart. He used to say ‘Those who are going to inherit the Kingdom of heaven must not be despondent about their salvation … we who have been considered worthy of so great a hope, how shall we not rejoice without ceasing, since the Apostle urges us always, “Pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks”?’
The community founded here by St David was a monastic community, which looked to the Desert Fathers and Mothers of Egypt and the Levant as their source and inspiration: as it was here that through prayer, the recitation of the Psalms and of the reading of Holy Scripture that their common life was formed. There is a little bit of the Egyptian desert here at least in spirit. There are those who would wish to characterise Christianity in general and monasticism in particular in negative terms, as gloomy, focussing on what one cannot do, and yet when we consider the parting advice of St David to his followers, he began with ‘Byddwch llawen’ ‘Be joyful’ just like the Desert Fathers quoted earlier. The Christian vocation then is one of JOY, we are to be joyful Christians, joyful in the knowledge that God loves us, that God died and rose again for us. To have the humility to accept the fact that God loves us, not because we are loveable but so that we might become so, requires that we circumcise the foreskin of our heart, or perhaps more literally ‘cut away, therefore, the thickening about your hearts and stiffen your necks no more’ (JPS Tanakh). The advice given in Deuteronomy 10-11 has at its heart the gentleness and generosity which lies at the heart of the Christian faith, in the same way that St Paul despite many trials and tribulations en route to his eventual execution in Rome remains joyful and generous.
       This is how we live out our faith in our lives, not jealously guarding our faith as some treasured possession too precious to be sullied or shared, but by recognising that such things were given to us freely, and so should be likewise shared freely. We can be serious, as after all there are souls at stake, it is a serious business, but not so much that our seriousness of purpose and resolve should ever overshadow the generosity and joy inherent in our loving God and our neighbour.
       The Christian life may be many things but it is certainly rarely easy, which is why it needs to lived together by a community of faith, so that we can support each other when times are tough, as St Antony the Great said: ‘Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ.’ How we support each other is how we live out our faith in our lives, and how we as Christians convert others – actions speak louder than words – and if our faith affects who we are and what we do and how and why we do it then it will be attractive, it cannot fail to be – hence the need for joy, given that one may catch more flies with honey than vinegar. It is the joy of being loved by a God whose service is perfect freedom. This is the pearl of great price, and the heart of the Gospel, so let us live it together in love.
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Trinity Sunday


Today’s apparently the day which clergy dread, apparently we are petrified of the fact that today the Church celebrates the Triune nature of God, and that being required to preach about it, we might need to know some theology, and explain it to you. Apparently you don’t want this, though I cannot understand why – how could a Christian not want to deepen their faith and their understanding? At one level the Trinity could be seen as baffling: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons and one God, not three Gods, but a trinity of persons, co-equal, co-eternal, consubstantial. Yet what the Church celebrates today is not something abstract but something concrete and personal.
       The Church is a community, the Body of Christ, a fellowship of the baptised, who are loved, redeemed, and sanctified, by Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We like to think of ourselves as loveable, as fairly good, decent, well-meaning people, but by divine standards we fail to come up to the mark, we’re not good enough, and all our efforts cannot make us get to heaven, such us the power of sin, of the human condition, and yet by the will of the Father, and through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ became incarnate for our sake, and was born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he showed us that God was not an angry, vengeful deity, but a loving Father who longs to welcome his prodigal children. God loves us not because we are loveable, that’s sin for you, but rather so that in being loved we might become loveable, so that God’s grace might transform our human nature, and prepare us for eternity with God. Along the way we will fail, again and again, we will get on each other’s nerves, but if we seek, give and receive forgiveness, then we can allow God’s redeeming love and forgiveness to be at work in us: ‘love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be, oh who am I that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh and die’.
       Jesus Christ proclaimed the Good News of God’s love, which some accepted, many rejected, he was crucified to show us just how much God loves us, wretched sinful humanity, he sends his Spirit on the Church at Pentecost to strengthen it, to give it life, to live for God, and in God. We do not deserve it, I certainly don’t, the fact that I have been ordained does not make me a better Christian, I don’t have a hotline to the Divine, I can’t ‘have a word with the Man upstairs about the weather’, it just doesn’t work like that: all I know is that I am a wretched sinner who needs God’s love and mercy, every moment of every day. Thankfully, through the comfort of prayer, Holy Scripture, and the Sacraments of the Church, we can be built up in love – that’s how God works – we are not left comfortless, or without help or guidance, but like any loving relationship it cannot be one-sided, we have a part to play, which begins with our recognising our need for God, and for his love to be at work in us, to seek his forgiveness, and to be loving and forgiving to others, where we stay close to the channels of Divine Grace, so that our lives may be filled with them, so that they can transform our nature. It is an ongoing project, the work of a lifetime and beyond, which starts with humility, develops through obedience, and flourishes in charity.
       ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’ John 3:16-17 (ESV) These few words spoken by Jesus to Nicodemus in John’s Gospel encapsulate what we believe as Christians, and why we believe it, may we live them, strengthened through prayer, our study of the Bible, nourished by Our Lord’s Body and Blood, forgiven and forgiving, preparing to be caught up forever in the love of the consubstantial and coeternal Trinity, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, to who be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
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Easter VII – Sunday after Ascension – A Radical Alternative

The prophet Ezekiel has a vision (in Chapter 36) of a messianic future, of the restoration of  Israel, which is found in his Son, Jesus Christ and the Church, we are those sprinkled with the clean water of baptism, who have been cleansed. God gives us a new heart and puts his Spirit within us, just as he did on the day of Pentecost, so we are to live as the people of God, lled with his love, and forgiveness, and proclaiming his Truth to the world.

This Sunday in the Gospel we are in the middle of Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer, which is the summit of his teaching just before his arrest and Passion. Christ has made God’s name known to us, we know him in a different way, we pray to him as ‘Father’ and we are his, we are not our own, despite the Western Liberal infatuation with personal freedom, we are God’s, which affects who we are, and what we do.

Christ speaks to us, and teaches us so that our joy may be complete in him, lled with his love, and the Holy Spirit. The world’s reaction to this is a negative one: because what we are, what we stand for, and how we live as Christians is to be opposed to what the world around us stands for – selshness, greed, which it makes into false gods, as though material wealth, or power, or status could save us – such things are transient and fleeting. It offers us a short-cut, an easy road, whereas if we are following Christ, then we are walking the way of his Passion, we are walking the Way of the Cross, dying daily to sin, and letting God’s grace be at work in and through us. It is not easy, it is difficult, most of us are unable to manage on our own, we need the love and support of the Christian community to help us, even the rst Christians, those who had been with Jesus, needed each 0ther’s help and support, so they can continue what Jesus started.

We need to be together, to meet together to pray for our needs and those of the world, and to be nourished by the word of God, the Bible, and the Sacrament of Our Lord’s Body and Blood, not because they’re something nice to do on a Sunday morning: an add-on, an optional extra that we can opt into and out of as we feel like, but because as Christians they are crucial to who and what we are, if we are to remain in the love of God then we have to live this way. Only then can we offer the world an alternative to the ways of selshness and sin. It will hate us for doing this, it will despise us, it will call us hypocrites when we fail to live up to the example of Jesus, but as Christians who live in the love of God we forgive each other our trespasses, so that we can live out that same radical love and forgiveness which sees Jesus die upon the Cross for love of us and all the world. It is a message of such love, such forgiveness that the world cannot or does not want to understand it, we may not understand it, but we know that it can be experienced, and we are living testimony to its power. It turns our lives around and sets us free to live for God and to proclaim his saving truth in our words and actions, calling the world to repentance, to turn to Christ, and to be renewed in and through Him.

So as we wait with the Apostles for the gift of the Holy Spirit let us pray that God may be at work in us, building us up, and giving us strength to live his life and to proclaim his truth, to offer the world that which it most earnestly desires, a peace, a joy and a freedom which pass human understanding, and the gift of eternal life in Christ.

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Easter II

The Cross had asked the questions; the Resurrection had answered them…. The Cross had asked ‘Why does God permit evil and sin to nail Justice to a tree?’ The Resurrection answered: ‘That sin, having done its worst, might exhaust itself and thus be overcome by Love that is stronger than either sin or death.’        Thus there emerges the Easter lesson that the power of evil and the chaos of the moment can be defied and conquered, for the basis of our hope is not in any construct of human power but in the power of God, who has given to the evil of this earth its one mortal wound—an open tomb, a gaping sepulchre, an empty grave.

Fulton J. Sheen Cross-Ways

 
This morning as we rejoice in the joy of the Risen Lord, as we are filled with joy, with hope and with love, we can reflect on what the Resurrection does: when Jesus comes and stands among the disciples he says ‘Peace be with you’ Christ’s gift to the world in His Death and Resurrection is Peace, the Peace ‘which passes all understanding’. He shows the disciples his hands and side so that they can see the wounds of love, through which God’s Mercy is poured out on the world to heal it and restore it. In this peace Christ can say to them ‘As the Father sent me, so I send you’ as the baptised people of God the Church is to be a missionary community – one sent to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world, that it may share the joy and life of the Risen Lord.
       As well as giving the Apostles the Holy Spirit, ordaining them as the first bishops of the Church, we see that the power of the Cross to bring peace to the world is also the power to absolve sins – priests and bishops can absolve the people of God in God’s name, and by God’s power – this is what the Cross achieves – reconciling us to God and each other. The Church, then, is to be a community of reconciliation, where we are forgiven and we, in turn, forgive, where we are freed from sin, its power and its effects.
       When Christ breathes on the disciples and says ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ it is this gift of God’s Holy Spirit which transforms them from frightened people sat in a locked room in fear into the confident, joyous proclaimers of the Gospel, such as Peter in his sermon to the people of Jerusalem. In Peter’s sermon we see that all that Christ is and does is confirmed by Scripture – it is the fulfilment of prophesy, such as we find in Isaiah 25:6—9:
 
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death for ever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
 
       As the Church we know that Jesus is the Messiah, the one who gives freedom to Israel, a freedom from sin – a bringing to completion of what God started in the Exodus, in the crossing of the Red Sea – we too are free, freed by the waters of baptism, sharing in Christ’s Death and Resurrection.
       Thomas was not present with the disciples, he cannot believe in the reality of Jesus’ Resurrection unless he sees with his own eyes, and feels with his own hands – such is his grief, such is his love for Jesus. Our Lord says to him ‘Doubt no longer but believe’ which leads to his confession ‘My Lord and my God’. Blessed are we who have not seen and yet have come to believe, and through this belief we have live in Christ’s name, we have the hope of eternal life and joy with him forever.
       The disciples go from being scared and stuck in an upper room to missionaries, evangelists, spreading the Good News around the world, regardless of the cost, even of sacrificing their own lives to bear witness to the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he died for our sins, and that he rose again, on this day for us, that God loves us and tells us to love Him and to love one another. It is a simple and effective message which people still want to hear – we need to tell it to them, in our thoughts, our words and our actions.
       The heart of our faith and the Gospel is forgiveness – no matter how many times we mess things up, we are forgiven. It is this reckless generosity of spirit which people find hard – to believe that they toocan be forgiven, by a loving God, and by their fellow Christians. That we can, despite our manifold shortcomings be a people of love, and forgiveness, and reconciliation. That God’s Grace will in the end not abolish our nature, but perfect it, that being fed by Christ, with Christ: so that we too may become what He is. That faced with the sad emptiness of the world, and its selfishness, its greed, we can be filled with joy, and life, and hope. That like the first apostles we too can spread the Gospel: that the world may believe.
It’s a tall order, perhaps, but one which God promises us. That is what the reality of the Resurrection is all about, it’s either nothing, in which case we are the most pitiable of deluded fools – idiots who are more to be pitied than blamed, orit is the single most important thing in the world. It should affect allof us, every part of our life, every minute of every day, allthat we do, all that we say, all that we are. This may not fit in with a reserved British mentality, we think we’re supposed to be polite and not force our views on others. But this simply will not do. We are, after all, dealing with people’s souls, their eternal salvation, it’s a serious matter. And what we offer people is entirely free, can change their lives for the better, and make life worth living.


So let us be filled with the joy of the Resurrection this Easter, let us share that joy with others, may it fill our lives and those of whom we meet with the joy and love of God, who has triumphed and who offers us all new life in Him, that all that we do, all that we are, all that we say or think may give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, dominion and power, now and forever.
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Easter Homily 2015

It is early in the morning; the sun has not yet risen when Mary Magdalene, Peter and John come to the tomb. They have seen their Lord and Saviour betrayed, falsely accused, flogged, and killed. We can scarcely imagine what’s going through their minds: grief, anguish, bitterness, Peter’s regret at having denied Jesus, of not being brave enough to say that he was a follower of Jesus, Mary and John who stood by the Cross, just want to be close to him in death as in life. They can’t take in what has happened: a week ago he was hailed as the Messiah, God’s anointed, the successor of David, now he has been cast aside: all his words of God’s love have fallen on deaf ears, he has been cast aside, ignored, a failure, a madman who wanted to change the world.
        Mary sees the stone rolled away, in the darkness, she doesn’t understand but says to Simon Peter ‘they have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre and we know not where they have laid him’ her concern is for the dead body of Jesus. She does not know, she does not believe. As Mary has run away from the tomb, John and Simon Peter run towards it. John sees the cloths but does not go in. Peter goes in first and sees everything. Then John sees and believes: he believes that God has raised Jesus from the dead. It is his love for Our Lord and Saviour which allows him to see with the eyes of faith, to make sense of the impossible, of the incomprehensible.
        As Christians we need to be like the Beloved Disciple: to love Our Lord and Saviour above all else, to see and believe like him, and through this to let God work in our lives. For what happened on that hillside nearly two thousand years ago, early in the morning, on the first day of the week is either nothing at all: just a delusion of foolish people, a non-event of no consequence or interest, something which the world can safely ignore or laugh at, mocking our credulity in the impossible, childish fools that we are; or it is something else: an event of such importance that the world will never be the same again.
        In dying and rising again, Jesus has changed history; he has changed our relationship with God, and with one another. He has broken down the gates of Hell to lead souls to Heaven, restoring humanity to the loving embrace of God, to open the way to heaven for all humanity, where we may share in the outpouring of God’s love, which is the very life of the Trinity. His death means that our death is not the end, that we have an eternal destiny, a joy and bliss beyond our experience or understanding: to share in the life and love of God forever – this is what God does for us, for love of us, who nailed him to a tree, and still do with our dismissals or half-hearted grudging acceptance, done for propriety’s sake.
        There can be no luke-warm responses to this; there is no place for a polite smile and blithely to carry on regardless as though nothing much has happened. Otherwise, we can ask ourselves: why are we here? Why do Christians come together on the first day of the week to listen to the Scriptures, to pray to God, to ask forgiveness for our manifold sins, to be fed by Christ, to be fed with Christ: with his body and his blood, for Christ: to be his mystical body, the Church in the world?
        We are called to be something different, something out of this world, living by different standards and in different ways, living lives of love not selfishness, self-satisfaction and sin. In baptism we died with Christ and were raised to new life with him, we are to live this life, and to share it with others: ours is a gift far too precious to be kept to ourselves, it is to be shared with the whole world, every last human soul, that they too may believe, perfecting creation, and bringing all of prodigal humanity into the embrace of a loving Father, filled with His Spirit, conformed to the pattern of His Son. This is our life, our calling, to have the singularity of purpose of those first disciples, who saw and believed, who let God in Christ change their lives and share this great free gift of God’s love.

So let our hearts be filled with joy, having died with Christ and raised to new life with him. Let us take that new life, and live it, in our thoughts, our words, and deeds, and share that life with others that the world may believe, that what happened outside a city two thousand years ago has changed all of human history and is still changing lives today. Christ died and is alive so that we and all the earth may have life and have it to the full, sharing in the life and love of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever. 
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Good Friday 2015


Love has three and only three intimacies: speech, vision, and touch. These three intimacies God has chosen to make his love intelligible to our poor hearts. God has spoken: he told us that he loves us: that is revelation. God has been seen: that is the incarnation. God has touched us by his grace: that is redemption. Well indeed, therefore, may he say: ‘What more could I do for my vineyard than I have done? What other proof could I give my love than to exhaust myself in the intimacies of love? What else could I do to show that my own Sacred Heart is not less generous than your own?’
          If we answer these questions aright, then we will begin to repay love with love …. then we will return speech with speech which will be our prayer; vision with vision which will be our faith; touch with touch which will be our communion.
Fulton J Sheen The Eternal Galilean
The prophets of Israel spoke the word of the Lord to the people of their day – there is a lot in the prophet Isaiah which relates directly to the exile of Israel in Babylon – but this is not the only way that such scripture can be read. As well as talking to the present, they speak to the future and tell of things to come. They like all of the Hebrew Scriptures find their fullest meaning in Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh. He is the fulfilment of Scripture – it finds its truest and fullest meaning in Him: the Scriptures point to something beyond themselves, to our Lord and Saviour, and it is thus understandable that there have been times when Isaiah has been called the fifth Gospel, because of his prophesies especially concerning Our Lord’s Birth, Suffering and Death.
This is not a new phenomenon; in the 8th Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we see the meeting of Philip and an Ethiopian eunuch, who is reading this very passage which we have just heard – the Suffering Servant. Philip asks him if he can understand what he is reading. He replies that he cannot, unless someone shows him the way. ‘Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus.’ (Acts 8:35 ESV). Isaiah’s prophesy is fulfilled in Jesus and this is the proclamation of the Church: we proclaim Jesus Christ and him crucified.
We read scripture so that we can understand it, and see in its words how it discloses the truth of the Word made flesh, who suffered and died for our sake. Isaiah prophesies Our Lord’s Passion and Death, and thus it makes sense, it can be understood, and the more we come to understand, the more we come to know just how much God loves us.
       Today Christ is both priest and victim, and upon the altar of the Cross he offers himself as a sacrifice for sin, for the salvation of humanity. A new covenant is made in his blood which restores the relationship between God and humanity, we are shown in the most graphic way possible how much God loves us, and thus how much we are to love God and to love each other, with that costly self-sacrificial love embodied by Our Lord in his Passion and Death.
After scourging him the soldiers put a purple robe around our Lord, they crown him with thorns, and give him a reed for a sceptre. They think they’re being clever and funny: they’re having a laugh, mocking a man about to be executed, but this is God showing the world what true kingship is: it is not pomp, or power, the ability to have one’s own way, but the Silent Way of suffering love. It shows us what God’s glory is really like: it turns our human values on their head and inaugurates a new age, according to new values, and restores a relationship broken by human sin.
          In being raised upon the Cross, our Lord is not dying the death of a common criminal, but rather reigning in glory – the glory of God’s free love given to restore humanity, to have new life in him. His hands and feet and side are pierced, as wounds of love, to pour out God’s healing life upon the world. In his obedience to the Father’s will, he puts to an end the disobedience of humanity’s first parent. Here mankind who fell because of a tree are raised to new life in Christ through his hanging on the tree.  Christ is a willing victim, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the Silent lamb led to his slaughter, the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep that have gone astray. At the time when the Passover lambs are slaughtered in the temple, upon the Altar of the Cross, Christ as both priest and victim offers himself as the true lamb to take away the sins of the whole world, offers his death so that we may have life, new life in Him.
          Death and hell, the reward of sin, have no power over us: for in dying, and being laid in a stranger’s tomb, Christ will go down to Hell, to break down its doors, to lead souls to heaven, to alter the nature of the afterlife, once and for all. Just when the devil thinks he’s won, then in his weakness and in his silence Christ overcomes the world, the flesh, and the devil. The burden of sin which separates humanity from God is carried on the wood of the Cross.
On the way to Calvary our Lord falls three times such is the way, such was the burden, so we too as Christians, despite being reconciled to God by the Cross, will fall on our road too. We will continue to sin, but also we will continue to ask God for his love and mercy. But those arms which were opened on the cross will always continue to embrace the world with God’s love.
We don’t deserve it and we haven’t earned it, that’s the point, but it is there to help us become the people God wants us to be: to be strengthened, fed, healed, and restored by him: to die to sin and be raised to new life, and to share that life and love with others, that the world might believe and be saved through him. Christ pays the debt which we cannot to reconcile humanity to his loving and merciful Father. He shows us the meaning of true love: that we might live it out in our lives, forgiving one another, bearing our own cross, and living lives of love for love of him who died for love of us.
          We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, for he is our salvation, our life, and our resurrection, through him we are saved and made free.
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Maundy Thursday 2015

Since our Divine Lord came to die, it was fitting that there be a Memorial of his death. Since he was God, as well a man, and since he never spoke of his death without speaking of his Resurrection, should he not himself institute the precise memorial of his own death? And this is exactly what he did the night of the Last Supper….His memorial was instituted, not because he would die and be buried, but because he would live again after the Resurrection. His Memorial would be the fulfillment of the Law and the prophets; it would be one in which there would be a Lamb sacrificed to commemorate spiritual freedom; above all it would be a Memorial of a New Covenant…a Testament between God and man.
Fulton J. Sheen Life of Christ
My brothers and sisters, we have come together on this most holy night to enter into the Mystery of Our Lord’s Passion: to be with him in the Upper Room and in the garden of Gethsemane, and to prepare to celebrate his suffering and death – to behold the glory of the Lord and his love for the world he created and came to save.
            Obedient to the Old Covenant, Our Lord and his disciples prepare to celebrate the Passover: the mystery of Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt to the new life in the Promised Land. While they are at table Our Lord lays aside his outer garments and takes a basin and a towel and washes the Apostles’ feet. He says to them I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you.
The new commandment given to the disciples by our Lord at the Last Supper in John’s account is to love one another as he has loved us. The washing of the disciples’ feet is an act of loving service:  God who created the universe and who will redeem it kneels and washes the feet of sinful humanity. This is true love in action. . It is a gesture of humility and intimacy, which shows us how God loves us and how the events of the next few days will show us the depth of this love, a love which brings the entirety of the human race, past, present and future into a relationship with a loving God, through his sacrifice of himself upon the cross and through his bursting from the tomb
            But before this love is disclosed in our Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection, it is shown in loving service and humility, the Greek word for which is diakonia, which gives us our English word Deacon. All those who are ordained are set apart for the service of Almighty God and his church and we are all called to serve God and his people fashioning ourselves after the example of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. All ordained Christian ministry is rooted in the diaconate, in a ministry of loving service, after the form and pattern of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, following HIS example and living it out in our lives. This is a most wonderful and humbling task which can fill us with both joy and fear and I would humbly ask that you continue to pray for me and for all of us who serve the church in this place, since we can do nothing without you.
            Christ then takes bread and wine and blesses them and gives them to his disciples. Again, this would look and feel like the Passover celebration to which they were accustomed. Except that before he broke and distributed the bread he said ‘Take, Eat. This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And before the Cup was distributed he said ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ He feeds his disciples with his own body and blood to strengthen them, to show them what he is about to do for love of them and of the whole world. When, earlier in his public ministry, he has fed people he taught them in the synagogue at Capernaum ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.  Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.’ (Jn 6:52–7 ESV). ‘Was ever another command so obeyed? For century after century, spreading slowly to every continent and country and among every race on earth, this action has been done, in every conceivable human circumstance, for every conceivable human need from infancy and before it to extreme old age and after it, ….  just to make the plebs sancta Dei—the holy common people of God’ [Dix The Shape of the Liturgy 744] Our Lord institutes the Eucharist, the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, to feed us, to nourish us, so that we may become what he is, that we may have a foretaste of heaven and the divine life of love, of the beatific vision of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Holy, Eternal and Consubstantial Trinity. It re-presents, it makes present again, here and now, the sacrifice of Calvary, where upon the Altar of the Cross, as both priest and victim, Christ sacrifices himself for the sins of the whole world. He is the Lamb of God, foreshadowed in the ram offered by Abraham and Isaac, in the bread and wine offered by Melchisedek. In the blood and water which will flow from his side we are washed and creation is renewed. Christ gives the Church the Eucharist so that his saving work may continue, so that people may be given a pledge and token of their eternal life in him. It is loving service for our Lord to feed his disciples with his own body and blood. This the church was formed continue, offering the same sacrifice of Calvary at the altar, feeding His people with His Body and Blood, nourishing the church as a mother feeds her children, filling us with his love and grace, to transform our human nature through our sharing in the divine life of love. This is what priests and deacons are called to be, those who serve the people of God and nourish them with the word and sacrament, building up the body of Christ. We are to live exemplary lives of love, service, and prayer, which can serve as examples for the whole baptised people of God to copy and imitate in their own lives. This is a great, an awesome and wonderful task, for which we rely upon the grace of God’s and the help and support of you, the people of God in this place. It is not something which we can do on our own, relying on our own abilities or strengths, but on God. For we all, as Christians, are called to love one and to serve one another in a variety of ways. In this we follow the example of Christ, who washes our feet, who institutes the Eucharist to feed us with himself, to transform our nature by his grace and bring about the full flowering of the kingdom of God. He sets his disciples apart, consecrating them to God, for a life of prayer and service and to carry on the sacrifice of Calvary through their offering of the Eucharist of the altars of his church, to feed his people. This is the glory of God: in transforming bread and wine into his very self for the life of the whole world – a sign of love and a pledge and foretaste of eternal life. This is love that we can touch and feel and taste – given for us so that we might have life in him.
            So then, let us prepare for Christ to wash our feet, as the blood and water which will flow from his side tomorrow on Calvary will wash away all the sins of humanity, let us be fed with his body and blood, which tomorrow he will offer upon the altar of the cross as both priest and victim, reconciling humanity and embracing a world with his loving arms as he is nailed to the wood. And let us follow his example, in living lives of prayer and loving service, supporting one another so that the world may believe and give praise to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion and power, now and forever. AMEN.
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Monday of Holy Week Reflection

Gospel
John 12:1-11

Judas really cannot understand why the myrrh is being lavished on Jesus. He doesn’t care for the poor, he’s looking for a chance to embezzle from the common fund. He’s thinking about himself and about worldly things. Jesus enjoys the things of this world: he’s having dinner with friends, he hangs around with all sorts and is accused of being a drunkard. He doesn’t care a jot for social convention, for keeping up appearances. It’s what on the inside that counts. He knows that Mary is acting out of love. As a costly extravagant act it points to his own death on the cross for love of us, wretches that we are. There is something wonderful and exuberant about divine generosity: it’s over the top, it is lavish and excess – such is the love of God, who spared not his own son for love of us. That’s how much God loves us. Can our response to that love be exuberant, or will we be like Judas: miserly, thinking of ourselves.

The Jews don’t get it either. They can see an event: Jesus is news and so is Lazarus: celebrity culture is not a new thing. The Religious Authorities think it’s all about power and influence: they don’t get it either. They can only see a zero-sum game. They are concerned with things of this world and are unable to the Kingdom of God in their midst. It’s always troubling when the church starts to look like the Pharisees: concerned with the things of this world, power, influence, courting popular opinion or popularity with politicians. Jesus has always had the ability to unsettle the powerful. They feel threatened by the freedom of the Kingdom, a freedom which sees Christ lay down his life freely. Such things can truly change the world. And they do. The Cross will show God’s power in weakness, his love in rejection and humiliation. It’s scandalous insofar as it turns the values of the world on their head. It announces and inaugurates the Kingdom of Christ: let us stay close to him, follow in his footsteps, and live his life by his rules, spurning the ways of the world to have life in all its fullness in Him.

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Homily for Lent V

During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reflects upon who and what he is and what he has come to do (Mt 5:17) “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.” Christ comes to fulfil the law rather than to abolish it, and to inaugurate a new covenant in his blood which will flow from Calvary. This has been pointed to in Scripture: in the first reading this morning the prophet Jeremiah looks forward to a future covenant that will bring faithless sinful Isræl back to the Lord their God. They broke the covenant, they were unfaithful, and though they were married to the Lord their God, here we see not divorce but covenant faithfulness – it’s how God is, this is God’s love in action: self-giving, sacrificial, and costly. Christ fulfils Scripture – it finds its fullness and its true meaning in and through him, the Word of God made Flesh for our sake. God in Christ restores and heals that which was broken through human sinfulness: ‘But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Isræl after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’ Ours is a God who forgives our iniquities and forgives our sins through the New Covenant in Jesus’ blood.
       Jesus Christ is our great high priest: priests offer sacrifice for sin, as on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement where once the people were sprinkled with blood each and every year, whereas under the New Covenant, the covenant of grace rather than law, Christ the mediator of the new covenant sheds his own blood as both priest and victim to reconcile us with God. He is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, whose name means King of Righteousness, the King of Salem, better known as Jerusalem, brings out bread and wine, which point to the Eucharist, he is a priest of God Most High, before the priesthood of Aaron, the Levitical priesthood, so this is the true worship of Almighty God which points to Christ and finds its fulfilment in and through Him, who suffered for our sins.
In this morning’s Gospel some Greeks go up to Philip and say ‘Sir, we want to see Jesus’. They approach a disciple with a Greek name, and though they are not Jews themselves, they try to follow the law and to worship God. They are good people with an innate sense of the religious and they have a simple request: they want to see Jesus. Nearly 2000 years later there are people who will ask exactly the same question. What can be said to them? If they come to Mass on a Sunday morning, they will meet the Lord in Word and Sacrament. But will they also see Jesus in us Christians who are the body of Christ? We too are to be His presence in the world. Everything that we say, or think, or do, can proclaim Christ and his saving love to the world. It is our duty as Christians to try at all times and in every way to model our lives upon Christ’s, and by our sharing in his passion, death, and resurrection, to form our lives so that they may reflect his glory so that the world may believe. Each and every careless word and thoughtless action speaks to the world and says that we are hypocrites, who do not practice what we preach. We are perhaps judged more harshly nowadays than at any time before – ours is a world which does not know or understand forgiveness; but we should nonetheless try with all the strength we can muster to live Christ’s life in the world.
       ‘Now the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified’ Jesus Christ is looking towards his passion and death. God shows the world the fullness of glory, the most profound expression of self-giving love in the events of his passion and death. This is why we celebrate it: week by week and year by year. We prepare ourselves during Lent to walk with Christ to Calvary and beyond. We see how much God loves us, how much God gives himself for us: totally, completely, utterly. If we serve Jesus we must follow him, and where we are he will be too. In the midst of the troubles which beset the church, Christ is with us. When we are afraid or troubled, Christ is with us, he has felt the same feelings as us, and was given the strength to carry on. When the church is written off as an irrelevance, Christ is with us.
       When secularism appears strong, we should remember our Lord’s words: ‘now sentence is being passed on this world; now the prince of this world is to be overthrown’. The World and the Devil are overcome in Christ’s self giving love, when on the cross he pays the debt which we cannot, he offers us a new way of living a life filled with love, a love so strong as to overcome death, a love which offers us eternal life.
       So then as we continue our journey through Lent our journey to the cross and beyond to the empty tomb of Easter, let us lose our lives in love and service of him who died for us, who bore our sins, who shows us how to live most fully, to be close to God, and filled with his love. Let us encourage one another, strengthen one another, and help each other to live lives which proclaim the truth of God’s saving love. All of us through our baptism share in Christ’s death and resurrection and we should proclaim this truth to the world. This truth, this way, this life, overcomes the world, and turns its selfish values on their head. Together we can love and strengthen and encourage one another to do this together: to be Christ’s body in our love and service of one another, in our proclamation to the world that God loves all humanity and longs, like the father of the Prodigal Son, to embrace us, to welcome us back. And as we do this, growing in love and fellowship we will fulfil the will of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion and power, now and forever… 
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Lent IV – Looking to the Cross

‘For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that through him the world might be saved.’
It is far too easy nowadays to see the church in a negative way –  it’s the fashionable thing to do – as the church we’re corrupt, we’re filling people’s heads with nonsense. We can be characterised as strange, quaint, and out of touch. It suits people to see us entirely in negative terms: as opposed to certain things. We are prescriptive: we limit people’s freedom, and in failing to practice what we preach, we can be written off as hypocrites, with no right to proclaim objective truth, to offer the world a moral framework, within which to live its life; to offer the world an alternative paradigm, a new way of living and of being through which to have life, and have life in all its fullness. It’s less a valid criticism and more of an excuse for people not to bother. It’s an easy way out, which saves people from the more difficult task of living Christ-like lives of love and self-sacrifice. The church does not claim to be perfect, but rather a collection of sinners justified by the grace of God, through faith in Christ.
          The simple truth is that people like to moan and grumble – we all do, and I’m as guilty of it as anyone, but there is a fundamental difference between being dissatisfied with the way things are and longing for change, and hopefully bringing about good change, change in a god-ward direction, and the corrosive moaning rooted in selfishness, which betrays a lack of trust in God. The Israelites in the desert represent this negative moaning, they are unable or unwilling to trust God to lead them on a journey towards the Promised Land, and while they realise their mistake their poisonous moaning has disastrous consequences for them. And yet even in this they are not abandoned by God, they gaze on the bronze serpent, they look to that which prefigures the Cross, through which God heals his people, taking their sins upon himself. That’s why it appears in stained-glass windows in churches, because it points to the Cross, it’s why when talking about the Cross Jesus mentions it, so that people might understand how and why God loves them and how it might affect their lives.
St Paul in his letter to the Ephesians can state with confidence, ‘For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast’ (Eph 2:8-9). It’s not about what we can do, but about what God can do for us. Our relationship with God is the result of a gift, which we can receive and which can transform our lives, if we only let go, and let God…
          This morning’s gospel reminds us of the fundamental truth that God loves us – it is the heart of the Good News – the Gospel, what we preach and what we live as Christians. There are few words as comforting as ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’ (Jn 3:16-17). They may be familiar to us, they certainly should be, but we must not let our familiarity with them cloud the significance of simply stating that God loves us, does not condemn us, but saves us, in and through Jesus Christ. That’s why we are Christians, it’s why we’re here, and recognising God’s love for us will have a transforming effect upon our lives.
In the Incarnation Jesus comes among us as a poor helpless baby, laid to rest in the rough wood of an animals’ feeding trough. He is cared for through the love of his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who in her love, her service, and obedience, stands as the model for all Christians to follow. She is the first Christian, the greatest, a pattern for us to imitate, of loving trust and obedience, of care and costly love, and a foreshadowing of our great mother the church, through which we are saved by grace through faith.
          Upon the rough wood of the cross, Jesus will suffer and die for us – such is the cost of human sin. His mother, Mary, stands by and watches and weeps. As the church we too should watch and weep for the wounds of human sin and division which still scar Christ’s body. We feel helpless. What can we do? We should do all that we can to live God’s life of sacrificial self giving love: living lives of light, which shine in the darkness. It isn’t easy, but if we try and do it together then all things are possible, through him who loves us.
          The salvation and eternal life which Christ offers freely to all, comes through the church, which we enter in baptism, where we are nourished in word and are sacrament, where we are nourished, given food for the journey, strengthened and taught, to live his risen life, to share in the joys of Easter.
          God cares so much about the world and its people that he takes flesh, and lives a life of love, amidst the messiness of humanity, to show us how to live lives filled with love, life in all its fullness. God in Christ comes among us not to condemn the world but to offer it a way of being, of being truly alive in Him. God has made us for himself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in him. The spiritual needs and searching which characterise people in the world around us can be satisfied in God and in God alone, through the church. We can rejoice, and relax our Lenten discipline for a little while to give thanks for the wonderful gift of God’s love in our lives, in the church, and for the world.
          But we also need to trust God, to listen to what he says through Scripture, to be fed by him, and to live lives in accordance with his will and purpose, together, as a family, as a community of love, cared for and supported by our mother, the church. And in so doing we look to Our Lady as Mother of Our Lord and Mother of the Church, as a pattern for love and obedience, as a model for all mothers: loving and tender, putting the needs of others before self, self-giving, sacrificial, and open to both joy and pain, trusting in God.

This, as any mother can tell you, is not easy, it’s difficult, really hard, but its rewards are likewise great. So let us, as we continue our Lenten journey towards the cross, where God shows his love for us most fully and completely, giving his body to be broken and his blood be shed for us, a sacrifice which will be made present here today under the outward forms of bread and wine, to strengthen us to live the risen life of Easter, to offer the world an alternative to selfishness, to self-centredness, to the sin which continues to separate us from God, an alternative shown to us in a self-giving love of mothers, and of our mother the church. So that we may join the Angels in our song of love and praise to the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to whom..