They asked Abba Makarios ‘How should we pray?’ And the old man replied, ‘There is no need to speak much in prayer; often stretch out your hands and say “Lord, as you will and as you know, have mercy on me.” But if there is war in your soul, add, “Help me!” and because he knows what we need, he shows mercy on us.’
Sermon for Evensong Trinity XXII
War may be either a crusade or a curse: either a token of man’s love of God, or the fruit of man’s godlessness; either a sign that men are with God, or a token that they are againsthim
Fulton Sheen Whence come Wars? 1940: 1–2
There is something about martial or manly language when used in Christian context which is apparently politically incorrect these days. We have hymn-books which no longer allow the faithful to sing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ instead we are supposed to sing ‘Onward Christian Pilgrims’ and other such trite nonsense because well-meaning so-called ‘liberals’ tell us that we should. Despite their best intentions the Christian life is one of constant warfare: spiritual warfare against the powers of this world, and the Prince of Lies, Satan, who though utterly defeated on the Cross still wages a campaign against the Body of Christ. Our vocation, then, is to fight, armed in the way described by St Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (Eph. 6:11–17).
In this evening’s second lesson we see St Paul giving advice to Timothy, the Bishop of Ephesus. He addresses him as ‘my child’ not only because he is younger but also because the Church is a family, which is one in Christ – we are a family which cuts across gender, race, class, and time. Timothy is strengthened ‘by the grace that is in Christ Jesus’ it is the only source of grace, and it alone can strengthen us, the Church, and her bishops. He is encouraged to pass on to others what he has heard from St Paul in the presence of many others – the teaching office of the Church is something public, to pass on the truth and to share it with others so that they too may pass it on. It is a serious task, one which is entrusted to me, and which I am to entrust to you. We are all part of the greater whole charged with the spreading of the Good News of Jesus Christ by thought and word and deed. It is a serious business, and not to be taken lightly. It is of the utmost importance, so that we all may stand strong in the faith, entrusted to the Church.
It is something which will lead us to share in suffering – our sharing the Good News will lead us to share the suffering of Christ, we are to be conformed to Him, sharing his pain, his trials, for His sake. The world is always ready to persecute the Church because the message of the Gospel seeks to transform it, to turn away from the ways of selfishness and greed and sin, to establish a kingdom of love. All around the world our brothers and sisters are persecuted for their faith, they have to practise it in secret; they risk imprisonment, torture, and death, all for their allegiance to Christ Jesus. As those who have been baptised, we are to share in Our Lord’s death and new life; we are to place our allegiance to Him before anything else. It is radical; it has the power to change the world. The world is rightly scared of the power of the Gospel – nothing, not even Satan himself, can stand against it.
We are to approach our faith with the training and resolve of a soldier – we are to be single-minded, and not led astray by worldly things, so that we can do the will of Him who loves us, and who died for us. We are to be like athletes, competing to win a prize, playing by the rules, living out the love which we have received. We are to toil like a farmer – it is hard, back-breaking even, but we will receive our reward. It is through doing this and through thought and prayer that we can come to understand what God has in store for us.
It is not an easy undertaking, it is not for the faint-hearted, and if we were to rely upon our own human strength then we would most surely fail – but if we rely upon the God who became human so that we might become divine, who understands our weakness, who proclaimed the Gospel of love, and healing, and forgiveness, then we can do marvellous things for the love of Him who loves us. It will be difficult; we will face opposition, from a world which would rather not be transformed into the image of God, but it is our calling. So let us stand firm, and fight the good fight, so that the world so that it may believe and be transformed to sing the praise of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Homily for the Thirtieth Sunday of Year C
Humility is not self-contempt but the truth about ourselves coupled with a reverence for others; it is self-surrender to the highest goal.
Fulton Sheen Thoughts for Daily Living, 1955: 121
Most of us, I suspect, almost all of us don’t really like paying taxes; we know that we have to, but we’d rather not. There were taxes in Jesus’ day and tax collectors were privatised in the Roman Empire: they had to pay for the contract to collect the taxes, and recouped the cost of gaining the contract by over-charging people. They were not popular people, they were resented, they were hated, and with good reason.
We know that in this morning’s Gospel that he’s supposed to be the villain of the piece, the Pharisee, a religious authority, is supposed to be the person to whom we look up, the example one might expect to follow. The parable, then, turns our understanding of the world on its head. The key to understanding the parable lies in Luke’s opening comment regarding those: ‘who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt’ (Lk 18:9). There is a fundamental problem with the difference between how they think of themselves and others. The Pharisee isn’t praying, he isn’t talking to God, he’s praying to himself, justifying what he thinks of himself, saying to God, ‘Look at me, am I not good?’
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ (Lk 18:13). His prayer is that God will be merciful. He is so conscious of his own sin and need of God that he opens up a space in which God can be at work. It is in this space that we all need to be. We need to recognise that we need God to be at work in us, that we need to rely upon him to change us, to transform us – so that we can become the people that God wants us to be. All the prayer, all the rituals, all the externals of religion, are of no use unless they go hand in hand with an attitude which recognises that we need God, that we are sinful, and need his love and his mercy to transform us.
That is why, as Christians, we pray, why we come to Mass each and every week to be fed by word and sacrament, so that God’s grace and transforming love may be at work in us, transforming our nature, making us more like him. Everything that we say or think or do needs to be an outworking of our faith, so that our exterior life and our interior life are in harmony with each other – so that our lives, like St Paul’s, may proclaim the Gospel. This is what we are called to, and how we are to live. Unless we start from the point where we know our need of God and rely upon him, where we too make that space where God can be at work in us, in our souls and our lives, we are doomed to be like the self-righteous Pharisee, talking to ourselves, massaging our own egos, wallowing in selfishness and narcissism, proud and cruel.
Is this the kind of life we really want to lead? Is this really the path of human flourishing? Or are we called to something better, something greater, something more lovely? So let us put our trust in the God who loves us and who saves us, let us know our need of him and his transforming grace to fill our lives and transform all of his creation so that the world so that it may believe and be transformed 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.
A Thought for the Day from the Desert
Abba Poemen said, ‘There is no greater love than a man lays 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.’
Trinity XXI Evensong
For the joy of the Lord is your strength
Living as we do in difficult and uncertain times it is all too easy to become downcast, to let the cares of the world, our worries and our frailties get us down. It can be all too easy not understand quite what God may have in store for us. We can be like Mary and Martha perplexed at why Jesus does not come immediately, why he goes away, only to return once they fear all hope is lost.
In such moments which happen to us all from time to time, we can trust that our vocation as Christians is one of JOY, a joy which comes from the Lord. The following words of Fulton Sheen are helpful in reminding us of this:
Lightness of spirit is related to Redemption, for it lifts us out of precarious situations. As soon as a priest goes in for revolutionary tactics in politics he becomes boringly serious. This world is all there is, and therefore he takes political involvements without a grain of salt. One rarely sees a Commissar smile. Only those who are ‘in the world, not of it’ can take events seriously and lightly. Joy is born by straddling two worlds – one the world of politics, the other of grace.
Those Mysterious Priests 1974: 238
In this evening’s first lesson we see the people of Israel celebrating. They are told to ‘Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord’ (Neh. 8:10). There is something about feasting and rejoicing which is good for the soul, the Christian faith should never be dour or miserable, we proclaim Good News to all the world. There is also the instruction to give to those who have not. Our faith is something which needs to be put into action – it requires a generosity of spirit, of showing love and care to all those around us – to care for the spiritual and physical well-being of our fellow men and women. This generosity and care, like that of God for us, forms the church into a community of love, a place where people may have an encounter with the living God, and through His Holy Spirit receive joy and peace.
As Christians it is up to us to help make this a reality here and now. We live in the expectation of Our Lord’s Second coming, so surely we should be doing what he tells us, living out our faith in the world, so that it may believe. Our lives need to be attractive, and filled with joy, freed from the cares of this world, freed to sing God’s praise, freed to share his love with others.
As people rooted in the joy and generosity which characterise the love of God, shown to us in Christ Jesus Our Lord, we can all be truly joyful, knowing that the joy of the Lord is our strength. Our strength as the people of God comes from Him who saves us out of love, who commands us to feast (as well as fast) a feast we celebrate day by day and week by week when we feed on the Sacrament of Our Lord’s Body and Blood in Holy Communion, to be strengthened body and soul to love Him and serve Him, and to live out His joy in our lives. It really is the most wonderful thing, it should leave us with beaming smiles and joyous expectation to share the love and joy with others. So let is live out our vocation, to be joyous Christians, servants of a loving God, to the praise and honour of his name.
A thought for the day from S. Ignatius of Antioch
Constantly pray for others; for there is still hope that they may repent so as to attain God. And so, allow them to learn from you, at least by your deeds. In response to their anger show meekness; to their boasting, be humble; to their blasphemies, offer up prayers; to their wandering in error, be firmly rooted in faith; to their savage behaviour, act civilised. Do not be eager to imitate their example. Through gentleness we should be their brothers. And we should be seen to be eager to imitate the Lord. Who was mistreated more than he? Or defrauded? Or rejected? Do this so that no weed planted by the Devil may be found in you and you may abide in Jesus Christ both in the flesh and in the spirit, with all holiness and self-control.
To the Ephesians 10
More advice from S. Teresa of Avila
Beware 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 them on the verge of evil, and all their actions appear fruitless, however good they are in themselves. They become discouraged and unable to do any good, for what is right in others they fancy is wrong in themselves.
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 endured for our sake.
A thought for the day from S. Teresa of Avila
So far as you can without offending God, try to be genial and behave in such a way with those you have to deal with that they may take pleasure in your conversation and may imitate your life and manners, instead of being frightened and deterred from virtue.
The more holy someone is, the more cordial they should be with others.
Although you may be pained because their conversation is not what you would wish, never keep aloof if you want to help them and win their love.
Try to think rightly about God. He does not look at such trifling matters as you suppose; do not alarm your soul or lose courage for you might lose greatly. Keep a pure intention and a firm resolve not to offend God, as I said, but do not trammel your soul for instead of advancing in sanctity you would contract a number of imperfections and would not help others as you might have done.
St Isaac of Nineveh on the Mercy of God
As a handful of sand thrown into the ocean, so are the sins of all flesh as compared with the mind of God.
Just as a strongly-flowing fountain is not blocked by a handful of earth, so the compassion of the Creator is not overcome by the wickedness of his creatures.
Someone who bears a grudge while they pray is like a person who sows in the sea and expects to reap a harvest.
As a flame of fire cannot be prevented from ascending upwards, so the prayers of the compassionate cannot be held back from ascending into heaven.
Advice for Christian Living from S Francis de Sales
One form of gentleness we should practise is towards ourselves. We should never get irritable with ourselves because of our imperfections. It is reasonable to be displeased and sorry when we commit faults, but not fretful or spiteful to ourselves.
Some make the mistake of being angry because they have been angry, hurt because they have been hurt, vexed because they have been vexed. They think that they are getting rid of anger, that the second remedies the first; actually, they are preparing the way for fresh anger on the first occasion. Besides this, all irritation with ourselves tends to foster pride and springs from self-love, which is displeased at finding that we are not perfect.
We should regard our faults with calm, collected and firm displeasure. We correct ourselves better by a quiet persevering repentance than by an irritated, hasty and passionate one. When your heart has fallen raise it gently, humbling yourself before God, acknowledging your fault, but not surprised at your fall. Infirmity is infirm, weakness weak, and frailty frail.
(S Francis de Sales Introduction to the Devout Life III:9)
A thought for the day from S. Thérèse of Lisieux
‘Love is repaid by love alone’ (St John of the Cross)
I saw that love alone imparts life to all the members, so that should love ever fail, apostles would no longer preach the gospel and martyrs would refuse to shed their blood. Finally, I realised that love includes every vocation, that love is all things, that love is eternal, reaching down through the ages and stretching back to the utmost limits of the earth.
Beside myself with joy, I cried out, ‘Jesus, my love, my vocation is found at last – my vocation is love!’ I have found my place in the Church, and this place, Jesus, you have given me yourself; in the heart of the Church I will be love. In this way I will be all things and my wish will be fulfilled.
But why do you say ‘beside myself with joy’? It is, rather, peace which has claimed me, the calm, quiet peace of the sailor as he catches sight of the beacon which lights him to port. The beacon of love.
I am only a weak and helpless child, but my very weakness makes me dare to offer myself, Jesus, as a victim to your love. In the old days, only pure and spotless victims of holocaust would be accepted by God, and his justice was appeased only by the most perfect sacrifices. Now the law of fear has given way to the law of love, and I have been chosen, though weak and imperfect, as love’s victim.
A thought for the Day
It is one of the paradoxes of Christianity that the only things that are really our own when we die is what we give away in His name. What we leave in our wills is snatched from us by death; but what we give away is recorded by God to our eternal credit, for only our works follow us. It is not what is given that profits unto salvation; it is why it is given.
Fulton J Sheen The Seven Virtues 1953:72-73
A thought for the day
Be watchful of time and how you spend it. Nothing is more precious than time. In the twinkling of an eye heaven may be won or lost.
Time is made for man, not man for time.
I hear you say sadly, ‘How shall I fare? And if what you say is true, how shall I give account of each moment of time? – I, who am now twenty four, and until now have never paid heed to time … Help me now for the love of Jesus.’
That is indeed well said: ‘For the love of Jesus.’ For in the love of Jesus you shall find your help.
So then love Jesus, and all that he has is yours. Knit yourself to him by love and faith.
from The Cloud of Unknowing Chapter 4
A thought for the Day
It is easy to find Truth; it is harder to face it, and harder still to follow it.
Fulton Sheen Lift up your Heart, 1942:106
Homily for the 25th Sunday of Year C
True generosity never looks to reciprocity; it gives neither because it expects a gift in return, nor because there is a duty or an obligation to give. Charity lies beyond obligation; its essence is the ‘adorable extra.’ Its reward is in the joy of giving.
Fulton Sheen Way to Inner Peace, 1955: 108
‘What shall I do?’ (Lk 16:3) As Christians we are charged with nothing more than the transformation of the entire world and its conversion to Christ. In this we do the will of him ‘who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.’ (1Tim 2:4) It is something which is rooted in prayer, which should characterise our lives, which fills our hearts with love so that we may lift ‘holy hands without anger or quarrelling’ (1Tim 2:8). We live such lives so that our faith is lived out, and that it may be attractive, inviting and so that it may convert the world.
The world around us is cruel, selfish, and unfair. Profit is everything. The behaviour criticised by the prophet Amos is still widespread. It is something which we have to combat as we live out our faith. In Amos’ prophesy we hear ‘we will buy the helpless man for silver’ (Amos 8:6) and we know that he was bought for thirty pieces of silver. This was his price; he was bought and suffered for us, to take away our sins, to transform the world, giving Himself out of love so that humanity might share His Divinity.
Such is the generous love that redeems the world, giving ‘Himself as a ransom for all’ (1Tim 2:6). This too is the generosity which we see in this morning’s Gospel. It’s something of a shock to the system to see Our Lord condoning unjust or immoral behaviour. He has been charged with wasting his master’s possessions, so he goes to the people who are in debt to his master and writes the debts off. He shows a generosity and love which is reckless, which does not count the cost. At one level he does what he is accused of doing and is commended by his master. We’re expecting him to be condemned for acting like this, and yet he is praised. It reminds us that we are called to be generous, even to the point of being reckless, sitting lightly to the things of this world, and holding no store by wealth, or position, or influence, but instead giving it away, sharing it with others. If we cannot serve God and money, then as Christians we are to serve God. In this we can show that we are faithful in small things and hope to receive a place in the eternal dwellings.
This sort of behaviour looks completely mad in the eyes of the world, but we are not to conform ourselves to the ways of the world, but rather to those of the Kingdom of God. This is how we can transform the world around us, and conform it to God in Christ. It starts with our baptism; it continues with prayer, with reading Scripture and receiving Holy Communion, so that God’s grace may be poured out on us, to transform our human nature, so that His Kingdom may be a reality, so that the world may believe and be saved. So let us live out our faith, practising the same generosity which God poured out on us, shedding His Blood to take away our sins. Let us transform the world so that it may turn away from the ways of greed and selfishness and put its trust in the true riches of the Kingdom. If ‘no servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money’ (Lk 16:13) we have to choose between money and God. We cannot take it with us when we go, we cannot put pockets in our shrouds; money is no use once you’re dead, other than for buying you a fancier coffin or a grander funeral. Let us rather love God, and fashion our lives after the generosity which God shows to us, sparing not even His only Son, who died for our sake, so that we might live, and have eternal life in Him.
It is this generous God who comes to us today in Word and Sacrament, to heal us and restore us, to give us life in him. He entrusts to us the true riches of the Kingdom so that we may share them recklessly, generously with the world so that it 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.
The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
Let those who think that the Church pays too much attention to Mary give heed to the fact that Our Blessed Lord Himself gave ten times as much of His life to her as He gave to His Apostles.
Fulton J Sheen The World’s First Love 1956: 88
It is a fair thing to say, and I am certainly not embarrassed to admit the fact, and hopefully she is not too embarrassed to hear it, but I love my Mum! I am lucky to be the son of such a lovely lady, and in an ideal world, all of us would like to or are able to say a similar thing. It is a relationship of love, of nurture, and support, which gives rise to human flourishing; it is a building block of human society, it is something fundamental, which should be both valued and celebrated.
As great as human motherhood is, in the Church we celebrate something even greater: the fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the mother of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour, the world’s Redeemer, who entrusted her to the world, and the world to her care, as He hung on the Cross at Calvary. As such she is the mother of the Church, the Queen of Heaven and Earth and the Queen of Peace. Today the Church celebrates the birth of the one of the Saviour of the World was born. She is one special lady! We cannot praise or honour her enough for the simple reason that her saying Yes to God at the Annunciation undoes the No of Eve in the Garden of Eden. She is obedient, and likewise her husband, S. Joseph, when he hears the angel’s message, trusts and obeys. In them both we see true love and obedience, a model for humanity in how it relates to itself and to God.
Mary (and Joseph) listen and obey, which brings about the birth of Him who restores humanity’s relationship with God and ourselves, who gives us the hope of heaven, who gives Himself out of love, sharing our human nature so that we might share His divinity. That is why we have come here this morning, to he nourished by Him, and with Him, with His Word, with His Body and Blood, under the outward forms of bread and wine, so that through grace, the free gift of God, He might transform our nature so that we might share His nature.
It really is the most wonderful news – the good news of the Gospel, that God loves us, dies for us, and rises again, so that we and all who turn to Him can be saved, and have life in its fullness. It is not without its cost, as Our Lady found out, in the prophecy of Simeon a sword would pierce her own soul when she saw her Son dying on the Cross. Yet here too she is obedient, she has been told that he will save His people from their sins. Here too she trusts in God, and through her trust snd obedience we can enkoy the fruits of her Son’s saving work. This is something which we can and should celebrate: the fruits of her obedience and trust. It should encourage us to imitate her and be obedient to God, to trust Him, and fo what He tells us to do. She is the model Christian, living the model Christian life; she receives the reward promised by her Son in her Assumption, sharing His risen life and glory at His right hand in Heaven. She shows the world what it means to be obedient to God and to trust in Him, and what the rewards of God’s promises are.
It is not easy to be like her, to be obedient to the will of God: more often than not humans are more inclined to follow their own will, their own desires or pleasures, because they want to, and because such self-gratification is all that matters. In our modern capitalist consumer society we are taught want things and to get them, even if we have to borrow to get them. It is enticing, but where does all this self-gratification lead? Nowhere! Other than death and emptiness: you cannot simply buy your way into heaven. You can pay to have your body frozen, but it cannot save your soul: nothing we can say or think or do can. It’s that simple, and thanks to the obedience of the woman whose birth we celebrate today, we are given something which money cannot buy: the love of God poured into our hearts, restoring our lives and relationships, forgiving our sins, helping us to become the people God wants us to become, to prepare us to share the joy of paradise, in God’s presence for ever.
Such a wonderful free gift should have a serious effect upon our lives, who and what we are, and how we live our lives here and now. If we are willing to accept the free gift of God, we have to accept that it has consequences for who and what we are, and yet we know that the service of God is perfect freedom: we are not faced with tyranny or oppression but love and mercy. Do let us live, following the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary and aided by her prayers, so that we may transform our lives and the whole world, so that it too 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.
Such a wonderful free gift should have a serious effect upon our lives, who and what we are, and how we live our lives here and now. If we are willing to accept the free gift of God, we have to accept that it has consequences for who and what we are, and yet we know that the service of God is perfect freedom: we are not faced with tyranny or oppression but love and mercy. Do let us live, following the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary and aided by her prayers, so that we may transform our lives and the whole world, so that it too 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.
A thought for the day from St Augustine
quia fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te. (Conf. 1.1)
You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless, till it rests in You.
Homily for the 21st Sunday of Year C
To the bad conscience God appears always the God of wrath. The boy who broke the vase by throwing a ball at it says to his mother: ‘Now Mummy, don’t get mad.’ Anger is not in the mother; anger is in the boy’s projection to his mother of his own sense of justice. Anger is not in God; anger is in our disordered selves.
Fulton Sheen Preface to Religion, 1946: 50
The Cross of Calvary stands at the crossroads of three prosperous civilizations as eloquent testimony to the uncomfortable truth that the successful people, the social leaders, the people who are labelled niceare the ones most capable of crucifying the Divine Truth and the Eternal Love.
Fulton Sheen Peace of Soul, 1954: 69
Growing up is probably best described as not an easy or indeed a pleasant process. Learning right from wrong, what to do and how to do it, takes time and invariably involves mistakes. The problem comes not from making mistakes themselves but rather from not learning from them. Learning lessons requires humility – knowing that you do not know everything, that you have much to learn, that you are not the finished article but rather a work in progress. That through God’s grace working in you, you may become something greater, something better than you are.
This recognition of one’s limitations and failings opens up a space where God can be at work in our lives, transforming us to live the Divine life of Love. This is the narrow door of this morning’s gospel: narrow because if we have a sense of our own self-importance or our worth which is too big then we cannot enter – our sense of who and what we are gets in the way. It’s not enough to have eaten and drunk in God’s presence, to have been around when he taught in our streets – it’s a question of engagement – are you a bystander or have you been fed by God, with God, and through the grace of the sacrament lived out your faith in your life – living out the love of God in your life? Have you been around when the Gospel has been taught, or have you both listened to it and lived it out in your life?
It isn’t an easy thing to do – it is costly, difficult, and hard and it is something which we need to do together. That’s after all what the Church is for – it’s a collection of sinners trying to live in response to the love of God which has been poured out on us. It’s something which we have to do together – loving each other, loving our enemies, living out forgiveness as we have been forgiven and loved by God. It’s a radically different way of life to that which the world would encourage us to practice. It isn’t easy, it’s really difficult, and we willfail at it, but that’s the point! The point is not that we fail and that’s it, but that we keep trying, loving and forgiving, together, built up as the body of Christ, humble enough to let God be at work in us, transforming our nature by his Grace – making us the people of God, living out his love in the world.
We have come here this morning to be fed by Word and Sacrament, to be nourished by God, with God, to have false ideas of who and what we are stripped away, and recognising our dependence upon God and each other, to try and live out our faith – to grow in holiness together as the people of God, loved, healed, and restored by him – and through this to grow up into the full stature of Christ and to transform the world that it may reflect more fully the glory of God. The Gospel really is this radical, it’s not nice, or comfortable, it’s challenging and difficult, and utterly wonderful, releasing people from the slavery of this world and its false ideas to live in the freedom and love of God.
We have to look to Jesus and to His Cross to see God’s love for us. What is shameful in the eyes of the world, we can see as glorious – true love which gives regardless of the cost, which forgives sins, which heals and restores broken sinful humanity, which gives us the hope of heaven. This is grace the free gift of God, giving Himself who shared our humanity so that we might share His divinity, strengthened by Word and Sacrament to live out our faith.
The world cannot understand this, it doesn’t make sense, it isn’t logical, it shouldn’t happen. But it does, and it calls the world to something different, something radical and world-changing, which can re-form human society in the image of God and His Love. It will be hard: the world will laugh at us and our feeble attempts to follow God. Yet, we believe in a God who loves us, and who would never laugh at us, or belittle our feeble efforts to follow Him and conform ourselves to Him. So may the fire of God’s love be kindled in our hearts and lives, that we may be ablaze for Him, aflame with love for God and neighbour, love our enemies and our friends, and lets us change the world, not just this village, or this county, but all of God’s creation, all of humanity, that they may know God’s love and that it may rule in their hearts and lives.
God takes the initiative in Christ to help us to have life in its fullness – it’s not a life without rules, or discipline, it isn’t easy, it’s costly and difficult, but it is good and rewarding. It may not feel like that, we may struggle to experience its goodness or even its rewards in this life, but it prepares us for an eternity with God, in his closer presence. Humility is the key – in it we recognise our utter dependence upon God, our own sinfulness, our need to be loved and to share that love with others. God loves us not because we are loveable, but that through His love we might become lovely. So let us hasten to enter through the narrow gate, so that God may continue to transform our human nature, that his saving love and power may be at work in our hearts and our lives, so that we can transform ourselves and all the world so that it may believe and 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.
A thought for the day
O LORD, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth: Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee: Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen
Admittedly it is the collect for Quinquagesima (The Sunday before Lent) but it’s something to live by all year round, if we’re honest!
Homily for the 20th Sunday of Year C
… it has been said that Christianity does not suit the modern man, therefore scrap Christianity. Now let us say, Christianity does not suit modern man, therefore let us scrap modern man
Fulton Sheen Philosophies at War, 1943: 98–99
We are more than used to seeing Christianity as a religion characterised by love: love of God and love of neighbour, which is quite right. It can be all too easy for this to be transformed into a religion of niceness, but at no point in the Sermon on the Mount does our Blessed Lord say ‘Blessed are the nice, for they will have a nice warm fuzzy feeling deep inside’. We are not called to like people but to love them. It is costly and difficult, and the religion of nice offers us syrupy sentiment in place of costly love. It plays down the cost and difficulty of living a Christian life, and offers us something superficial and worthless.
It is difficult when we read passages like this morning’s gospel. Our Lord comes not to give peace but division. Given the massive strides made in the last fifty years towards Christian unity and healing the wounds of our past and divisions, this can sound shocking or even wrong. And yet what Christ comes to bring will cause division because it forces people to make a choice – do we wish to follow the ways of the world or the Gospel? These two can never be reconciled – only in the City of God can we see the rule of love. Only by choosing Christ over the world can His love rule in our hearts and our lives. It is a difficult and a costly choice – we will face ridicule, we will be considered fools, who have chosen a hard and difficult path over the easy path of the ways of the world.
People have always rejected Christianity, ignored it, or treated it with contempt, because it is difficult and costly, it asks a lot of us, and what it offers can be easily mocked – when we proclaim it by our words and actions we have to expect to be treated like Jeremiah and thrown down a well, what we stand for is dangerous and awkward, a truth which the world does not wish to hear. It isn’t as though living the Christian life is easy – we will fail often, we will be like Jeremiah sinking in the mud – but the love and grace of God can lift us up, this can heal and restore us, and help us to continue our pilgrimage through this life and the next.
We are, as this morning’s epistle puts it, surrounded by ‘so great a cloud of witnesses’ martyrs, those who have borne witness to the faith, the saints whose life and prayers can strengthen and inspire us – they show us the path we should tread. We have to look to Jesus and to His Cross to see God’s love for us. What is shameful in the eyes of the world, we can see as glorious – true love which gives regardless of the cost, which forgives sins, which heals and restores broken sinful humanity, which gives us the hope of heaven. This is grace the free gift of God, giving Himself who shared our humanity so that we might share His divinity, strengthened by Word and Sacrament to live out our faith.
The world cannot understand this, it doesn’t make sense, it isn’t logical, it shouldn’t happen. But it does, and it calls the world to something different, something radical and world-changing, which can re-form human society in the image of God and His Love. It will be hard: the world will laugh at us and our feeble attempts to follow God. Yet, we believe in a God who loves us, and who would never laugh at us, or belittle our feeble efforts to follow Him and conform ourselves to Him. So may the fire of God’s love be kindled in our hearts and lives, that we may be ablaze for Him, aflame with love for God and neighbour, love our enemies and our friends, and lets us change the world, not just this village, or this county, but all of God’s creation, all of humanity, that they may know God’s love and that it may rule in their hearts and lives.
That is why we have come here, today, to be fed in word and sacrament, to be fed by God, to be fed with God, with His Body and Blood and His Word, so that it may nourish us and prepare us for heaven, so that it can transform our human nature and fill us with the Divine life of love and forgiveness, which we can start living out here and now and change all the world, so that it may believe and be transformed 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.
A thought for the day
A great burden is thrust upon all men who call themselves religious. In this fatal hour, all of their energies should be spent recalling man to his spiritual destiny …. Let those who call themselves Catholics, or Protestants, or Jews recall that the function of their religion is to intensify the spiritual life of man and not to empty the vials of bitterness into hearts, stirring up one against another. It is not to the politicians and the economists and the social reformers that we must look for the first steps in this spiritual recovery; it is to the professed religious.
Fulton J Sheen, Way to Happiness, 1954: 168-9
Trinity XI Evensong
To be worthy of the name Christian, then, means that we, too, must thirst for the spread of the Divine Love; and if we do not thirst, then we shall never be invited to sit down at the banquet of Life.
Fulton Sheen The Rainbow of Sorrow, 1938: 70
Living a Christian life can never be said to be easy, or without its surprises. To put it simply it makes demands of us: that we live out our faith in our lives, that we put what we believe into practice so that it affects the world around us. It is not easy, as Mother Mary Clare slg puts it:
You are dedicated to love and reconciliation. Your life is directed to that end, and you must learn to stand at the Cross. It is a long learning, a long road, but a sure road if it is up the hill to Calvary. It is a road on which you by being stripped of all self, may mediate to the world the dawning knowledge of the glory that descends.The essence of the good news of the Gospel is that we are new creatures. In the Transfiguration we see the meaning of the new creation in the light of the Holy Spirit, the perfection of man which cannot be held by death but goes through death to the victory of union with God. God draws us not merely into the dark cloud, but into the tremendous stillness of the height of Calvary and through Calvary to the dawn of the new day.
Thus we can see how divine glory is deeper and more profound than human glory, it aims not at glorifying itself but rather in sharing that glory with others, as a sign of the generous self-giving love which speaks of God’s nature. It is this love which comforts us in our affliction and strengthens us to endure patiently all that this world may throw at us.
Thus we can say with confidence the words of the prophet Isaiah from this evening’s first lesson: ‘“Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.” With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.’ (Isa 12:2–3). Just like the vision of messianic peace with which Chapter 11 starts, where the wolf lies down with the lamb, here the prophet looks forward to the peaceful reign of the Kingdom of God. That hope is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ, and we, his body, the Church are called to live this out in the world, for great in our midst is the Holy One of Israel. In the feast of the Transfiguration which the Church celebrated on Tuesday we see a glimpse of God’s glory and greatness, the hope to which we are called. It is a glory which is shown to the world most fully in His death on the Cross, which stands as a signal for the peoples, a contradiction which is the antithesis of human glory, which rises from the tomb at Easter – ‘on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again’ (2Cor 1:10) ‘for all the promises of God find their Yes in Him’ (2Cor 1:20).
This is the source of our confidence as Christians – the victory of Christ over death, sin, and the world. We cannot be shaken in this, it is complete and total. It is why we share the good news with others, why we live out our faith in our lives, as a sign of this victory and of the love of God which has been poured into our hearts. What the world sees as terrible cruelty, the slaughter of an innocent man as Christians we can see as the greatest and most pure expression of God’s love, the love which saves and redeems us and all humanity. It is recognising the fact that God loves us, and that his love can transform us, through His Grace, and give us the promise of heaven and sharing His Divine Life – that our human nature may be perfected through His Love. This is what Christ comes to bring, the reason why we celebrate the Incarnation where God takes our flesh to redeem it, the God who gives us His flesh so that we may have life in Him. This simple truth has shattered the world for nearly two thousand years, it has overpowered human empires, totalitarian regimes cannot expunge it, the modern world may turn its back on it, but it is the only lasting cure for spiritual hunger, this supernatural food, this pledge of immortality. This free gift which demands that we share it, and give our lives in His service; this is the greatest consolation for which we could ever ask or receive. So, fed by it, may its divine love transform our human nature, and may we share the gift with others that they may believe and transform the world that it may sing 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.
Sermon for Evensong (Trinity X)
‘Remorse is the negative presence of God in the soul, as grace is the positive presence of God. Remorse is incomplete, for it is self-disgust divorced from God; but remorse can become sorrow, and then hope, the moment the soul turns to God for help.’
Fulton Sheen Lift up your Heart 1942: 17
“Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.”’
But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.
We all of us sin, a lot, in what we think or say or do, or indeed do not say or think or do. If we say that we have no sin then we deceive ourselves. The simple fact is that I am a miserable sinner; I am to be pitied for the wretched way in which I do or do not do things. I am no better or worse than any of you, we’re all the same in this, and yet somehow God has called me to serve him, and to say this to you, and he calls each one of us to live out our baptism in our lives.
Possibly the hardest thing to learn is the fact that God loves us: he heals us, and restores us. Most of us if the truth be told struggle with this world-shattering truth – God loves us. We don’t feel worthy of the love, that we are good enough to be loved in the first place, or that we can do anything back.
It is, I suspect, the work of a lifetime and beyond to try and come to terms with the fact that God loves us, that he gives himself for us, that he loves us so much that he opens his arms on the Cross to embrace the world with his healing love. This is what Grace is, the free gift of a generous God, who loves not because we ARE worthy of His love, but that through His love, we may BECOME worthy of it. His grace perfects our human nature, and because we are loved and forgiven, healed and restored in Christ, we can love and forgive others; we can share in Our Lord’s work of healing and reconciliation. God takes the initiative so that we do not have to, he does what we cannot so that our nature may be transformed by him, but first it needs to be accepted, so that it can transform us, and we can then transform others, and eventually transform the whole world.
This is exactly what the Church has been doing for the last two thousand years, saving it, one soul at a time, showing the world that God loves it, and helping it to experience that love as a reality in its life, the one true reality. It all started with a young girl in Nazareth hearing the words ‘Hail, full of grace the Lord is with you’ this is how much God loves us, a God who takes a risk, and uses ordinary unsurprising people to be extraordinary, to do extraordinary things and live extraordinary lives. It is strange and surprising, and it’s not what we would expect to happen, but that’s just how God works. He can take the raw material that in earthly terms is not terribly promising and do things with it. God uses us the people of God to serve him in the Church and the World, to make us saints who may enjoy his closer presence for all eternity.
God loves us, so that we can love each other and love Him, with a love that is costly and pure and generous, a love which forgives the sins of others just as we ourselves have been forgiven. This is the love that can change the world, by transforming our human nature, perfecting it by the Grace of God, rather than abolishing it, so that we can have life in all its fullness, so that we can be prepared for a life of beatitude in Heaven in the closer presence of God.
It is this radical revolutionary love which lies at the heart of the good news of Jesus Christ, it is from this gospel love that the Church’s concern for the world, and politics, and social action flows, for these are not an end in themselves, but a means of bringing about the Kingdom of God among us in all its fullness. We are called as Christians to participate in something radical, revolutionary, and world-changing, something which scared the Roman Empire, and which has outlived it; it is by no means perfect, or the finished article – that’s the point: the Church is a work in progress called to transform the world. It will fail, it’s made up of human beings like us; the Church has been failing ever since Peter denied Our Lord three times, and it will continue to do so, as it cannot rely upon itself and its own strength, but rather upon the God who loves us, who heals us and restores us. In his strength and his truth, we may live out our faith, our hope, and our love, and through His grace transform the world that it may sing 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.
Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday of Year C: A Sermon about Stuff
The poor in spirit are those who are so detached from wealth, from social position, and from earthly knowledge that, at the moment the Kingdom of God demands a sacrifice, they are prepared to surrender all.
Fulton J Sheen The Cross and the Beatitudes, 1937: 54
There is a profound difference in quality between the possessions that we need and use, and actually enjoy, and the accumulation of useless things that we accumulate out of vanity or greed or the desire to surpass others
Fulton J Sheen Way to Happiness, 1954: 45
The world around us tells us constantly that if you want to be happy, to be yourself fully and most really then what you need is more stuff: a new car, a mobile phone. It’s the latest model – it’s been improved, you can’t do without it! The world tells us this and we listen, we take it in and we do what it says. We all of us do this, I’ve done it myself. It says you can have what you want TODAY, we’ll even lend you the money for it and charge you an interest rate which is usurious and wrong. It will make you and your family happy, in a way that nothing else can.
Nothing could, in fact, be further from the truth. Salvation by stuff has never and will never work. It leaves us empty, craving more and more, never satisfied. Hence Our Lord’s teaching in this morning’s Gospel: ‘Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ (Lk 12:15) Wanting more stuff is never a good idea; Our Lord tells us this and warns us against it, and we do not listen.
So He tells us a parable – there’s a man who’s got loads of stuff, he’s well-off in worldly terms, he has done well. All he’s interested in is keeping his stuff, building bigger barns into which to put stuff, so that he can sit back, and relax and take life easy.
Then he dies, quite suddenly, and learns that important lesson: you can’t take it with you when you go – you can’t put pockets in your shroud, and when you are dead then stuff doesn’t really help you. It may buy you a swankier funeral, a more expensive coffin, a more expensive hearse to transport your dead body, but basically you are dead, and even if you spend thousands of pounds having your head frozen in liquid nitrogen, you are still dead. Money and stuff can’t help you with that. It has never been able to, nor will it. So Our Lord encourages us to be rich towards God, and to turn away from the world and its vanity.
In St Paul’s letter to the Colossians, just after this morning’s second reading finishes we read this:
‘Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.’ (Col 3:12–17)
This is the life which stores up treasure in heaven, when we have ‘Set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth’ (Col 3:2) This is what a Christian life really looks like, when lived out in the world. This is the sort of radically different life which can and does both change and transform the world: offering it a way that is different to the way of stuff. It is the way of love and forgiveness, of knowing that as Christians that we are loved and forgiven, no matter who we are or what we’ve done. That we can be a community which lives out this radical love and forgiveness in the world to offer it a new way of being, which turns the ways and values of the world on its head. It is that radical, that revolutionary, and that revolution has to start right here and today. We are listening to Our Lord speaking to us through His Scriptures; he calls us to live this life for our own good and the glory of the God who made us, the God who loves us, and the God who saves us: to be free from the tyranny of stuff and sin, and to live for him.
This then is what the Church is meant to look like, and be, and live out in the world, like a lamp set upon a lamp stand or a city upon a hill, shining, attractive, a light amidst the darkness of this world, a radical alternative, life in all its fullness. So let’s live it, together.
That is why we have come here, today, to be fed in word and sacrament, to be fed by God, to be fed with God, with His Body and Blood and His Word, so that it may nourish us and prepare us for heaven, so that it can transform our human nature and fill us with the Divine life of love and forgiveness, which we can start living out here and now and change all the world, so that it may believe and be transformed 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.
Homily for 17th Sunday of Year C: Luke 11:1-13
Prayer is helplessness casting itself on Power, infirmity leaning on Strength, misery reaching to Mercy, and a prisoner clamouring for Relief.
Fulton J Sheen Life is Worth Living, 1954: 213
‘Lord teach us to pray’ the disciples ask Jesus in this morning’s Gospel. Their words are our words, we want to know how to pray, what to say to God, how to have a conversation – one that is meaningful and has value. They ask the Lord, and he shows them what to do and what to say.
The prayer starts with the word Father, it defines our relationship, our connection. It presupposes love, as a parent has for a child. It continues with the petition that the name of God, Our Father, may be hallowed, kept holy. It is the loving response of a child to a parent. In stressing holiness it puts God in his proper place, it ensures that things are done properly. Then the prayer looks forward, ‘your kingdom come’ it looks for the coming of God’s kingdom, which goes hand in hand with ‘your will be done’ God’s kingdom is tied up with doing God’s will, the responsibility is ours to do it. We then pray that we may be fed, that we may be nourished, that we may have bread for the journey of faith. This feeding goes with the petition that our sins may be forgiven, in the same way that we forgive those who sin against us. The two are linked – feeding and forgiveness, and so they should be in our lives. As people who are forgiven and forgiving we pray that we may not be led into temptation, that we may continue as forgiven and forgiving people.
It is a model of what to say to God, what to ask for, and how to ask for it. It is concise and profound, it is not lengthy or wordy; it does not ramble or drone on for ages. It says what needs to be said, it defines our relationship with God and each other, it defines our spiritual life as one where we are fed and forgiven. It characterises what we are doing here today, to seek God’s forgiveness and forgive others, and to be fed by Word and Sacrament, to do God’s will and bring about God’s Kingdom, a kingdom of love and forgiveness, which looks radically different from what might be if humanity were left to its own devices – it calls us forward to something greater, something more wonderful, than we can imagine. And yet it is a reality – God forgives our sins , giving his life for us, nailing our sins to the Cross, suffering in his flesh so that we who have died with Christ in our baptism may also share His risen life, fed by Him, fed with Him, with His Body and Blood, transformed by the sacrifice of Calvary, loved redeemed and nourished, forgiven and forgiving, to transform the world so that it may be conformed to God’s will, that His name may be Holy, so that all creation may sing His praise. So that the Church, which is Christ’s body, may bring about God’s kingdom and do God’s will.
It is a generous response to a generous and loving God, it takes people who know their need of God, and shows how those needs are satisfied at the deepest possible level. We ask God to teach us how to pray, and he shows us in a way which both defines and transforms our spiritual life and all of creation, conforming them to the will of God, helping to bring about the Kingdom of love and forgiveness which is shown to us in the person, teaching, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the giving of His Holy Spirit, to nourish us and transform us and all the world, so that it may believe and be transformed to sing God’s praise 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.
A thought for the day from Fulton Sheen
Repentance is not concerned with consequences. This is what distinguishes it from remorse, which is inspired principally by the fear of unpleasant consequences.
The Priest Is Not His Own, 1963: 180
A thought for the day from Mother Mary Clare
He who prays stands at that point of intersection where the love of God and the tensions and sufferings we inflict on each other meet and are held to the healing power of God.
A thought for the day from Mother Mary Clare
Today we can easily become paralysed by a sense that there is nothing we can do in the face of so much suffering, such a lack of love and justice in man’s relationship with man, but the Cross of Christ stands at the heart of it all, and the prayer of Christ, now as always is the answer to man’s need
A thought for the day from Mother Mary Clare SLG
We must try to understand the meaning of the age in which we are called to bear witness. We must accept the fact that this is an age in which the cloth is being unwoven. It is therefore no good trying to patch. We must, rather, set up the loom on which coming generations may weave new cloth according to the pattern God provides.
A Thought for the Day from S. Theresa of Avila
When I see people very anxious to know what sort of prayer they practise, covering their faces and afraid to move or think, lest they should lose any slight tenderness and devotion they feel, I know how little they understand how to attain union with God, since they think it consists in such things as these.
No. Our Lord expects works from us!
If you see someone sick whom you can relieve, never fear losing your devotion; have compassion on them; if they are in pain, feel it as if it were your own, and, when there is need, fast so that they may eat, not so much for their sake as because you know your Lord asks it of you.
This is the true union of our will with the will of God.
If someone else is well spoken of, be more pleased than it were yourself; this is easy enough, for if you were really humble it would vex you to be praised.
If you possess fraternal charity, I assure you that you will attain the union I have described.
The Interior Castle 5:3, 11
Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday of Year C
One of the penalties of being religious is to be mocked and ridiculed. If Our Lord submitted Himself to the ribald humour of a degenerate Tetrarch, we may be sure that we, His followers, will not escape. The more Divine a religion is, the more the world will ridicule you, for the spirit of the world is the enemy of Christ
Fulton Sheen, Characters of the Passion, 1946: 56
The people of Israel in this morning’s first reading have known much pain and desolation, exile, misery, the desecration and destruction of the Temple. Here they have a word of comfort, of healing, hope for the future. ‘As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you’ (66:13). It’s intimate, and comforting, in that it speaks of God who shows love and care for us, and who promises a future of peace. It reminds us that true peace and healing are the gift of God, and a sign of his love. It is a love shown in its fullness in the person and life of Jesus Christ; it is His suffering and death which bring us peace beyond our understanding.
In this morning’s Gospel we see something of the early spread of the Gospel, people are sent out by Jesus to prepare the way for Him, they are to be prophets, heralds, announcing the nearness of the Kingdom of God. They are sent out ‘as lambs in the midst of wolves’ it sounds risky and vulnerable, it’s not comfortable, it doesn’t make sense, but that’s the point: only then can we be like the Lamb of God, and proclaim his message of healing and reconciliation. If we’re concerned about the shortage of labourers in the Lord’s vineyard, then we need to pray, to ask God to provide, to trust and rely upon Him, and in His strength alone. Only then are we looking at things the right way: if we trust ourselves, our strength and abilities, we will fail. If we trust in God, all things are possible. It’s a hard lesson, and in two thousand years we haven’t managed to learn it.
The heralds of the kingdom travel light, unlike most of us: they are unencumbered by stuff, and reliant upon others to provide what they do not have. They are dependent upon the charity of others – they rely upon God and his people. They live out a faith which stresses our interconnectedness, our reliance upon those other than ourselves. It’s quite strange for us to hear, we’re used to being told that it’s all about me, what I am, what I can do, what I have. These are the values and ideas of the world; those of the kingdom are entirely different. The interesting thing is that the seventy two listen to what Jesus tells them, they obey Him, and when they return they have done what He asked them to do. Their obedience bears fruit amidst the disobedience of the world, of selfishness and sin. Here then is the pattern for ourlives, Christ calls usto follow in the footsteps of the seventy two, to fashion our lives after their example, so that we too might be heralds of the Kingdom. So that we can say with the Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Galatians: ‘But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world’ (Gal 6:14).
Such is the power of the Cross: this instrument of humiliation and torture displays God’s glory and saving love to the world. That is why we are here today to see the continuation of that sacrifice enacted in front of our very eyes, to eat Christ’s Body and drink His Blood, so that our human nature may be transformed by His Grace, fed by God, with God, strengthened to live out our faith in our lives, to walk in the light of this faith, as heralds of the Kingdom, proclaiming the Gospel of repentance, of healing and reconciliation, brought about by Christ on the Cross, so that the world may share in the new life of Easter, filled with the Holy Spirit.
It is not an easy task, or indeed a pleasant one, the world will mock us, as it mocked Him. It will tell us that we are irrelevant and turn its back on us, just us it ignored Him. Let us trust in Him, proclaiming His peace and mercy, so that the world may believe and be transformed 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.
A Thought for the Day from Pope Francis (Lumen Fidei 60)
Let us turn in prayer to Mary, Mother of the Church and Mother of our faith.
Mother, help our faith!
Open our ears to hear God’s word and to recognize his voice and call.
Awaken in us a desire to follow in his footsteps, to go forth from our own land and to receive his promise.
Help us to be touched by his love, that we may touch him in faith.
Help us to entrust ourselves fully to him and to believe in his love, especially at times of trial beneath the shadow of the cross, when our faith is called to mature.
Sow in our faith the joy of the Risen One. Remind us that those who believe are never alone. Teach us to see all things with the eyes of Jesus, that he may be light for our path. And may this light of faith always increase in us, until the dawn of that undying day which is Christ himself, your Son, our Lord!
SS Peter and Paul, Apostles
We cannot choose our family, we may not like them, we may find them difficult to get along with, it is not always easy to get along with them, but we do so because of the ties of blood and kinship, because blood is thicker than water. The Church is a family rather than a society of friends, we are related to each other through our baptism: we have been clothed with Christ and share in his death and new life. Living in the Church means being part of a family where our relationship with each other flows from our relationship with Jesus Christ.
In this morning’s Gospel Jesus asks his disciples ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ and he asks us ‘Who do you say that I am?’ It is a question which we have to answer. The world around us can provide us with any number of answers – there are those who deny that Jesus even existed, that he’s made up, a figment of an over-active religious imagination, there are those who say that he was a human being, a prophet, a charismatic healer and rabbi, misunderstood, who died, but whose resurrection is doubted. This will not do: either Jesus is exactly what he says he was, or he is a liar and a fool. He is the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one of God, who brings freedom and liberation, he is God, the God who created the world and who redeems it, by giving himself for us.
Can we give this answer? If we do that’s not the end of the story, but only the beginning. At the end of John’s Gospel, Our Lord asks Peter, ‘Do you love me?’ he asks it three times, and each time he replies, ‘Feed my sheep’. Peter replies, ‘Lord you know everything, you know that I love you’ Our Lord knows that Peter loves him because he shows this love by feeding the sheep given to him to tend. We show our love for God by living out our faith in our lives, by bearing witness to what we believe in our hearts in what we say, and think, and do in our lives. We bear witness, we are not afraid to confess our faith in a world which demands that we compromise it, that we sacrifice to its idols.
In the Acts of the Apostles we see King Herod persecuting certain members of the Church. We too have to expect persecution in our lives as it is what the powers of this world want to conform us to their will. They can try, but they will never win: Christ’s victory over sin, the world, and the devil, wrought upon the altar of the Cross, where he as priest and victim offers himself for us, is complete and total, its effects extend through time and space. We who are called to follow him are called to take up our own Cross daily and to bear witness to our faith and risk all for love of him who died for us. This is what being baptised means – it isn’t something ‘nice’ we do to children as the excuse for a party or substitute for a wedding – it is sharing in Christ’s death and new life, it is taking a stand against those who wish us to worship false gods: money, power, sex, the European Court of Human Rights, the High Court of Parliament, pleasure, influence.
This is why St Peter is a firm foundation upon which to build the Church: he is not a man of power or intellect, but he trusts in Christ, he is rooted in him, he recognises and proclaims his divinity to the world, just as St Paul trusts and proclaims Christ to the world, as he says in his Letter to the Galatians, ‘I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ (Gal 2:20) As Christians, Christ is our identity: we share his death and new life and proclaim his saving truth to the world.
Our faith is precious, just like the Word of God and the Sacraments of the Church – they are precious and they nourish our body and soul, we celebrate them as God’s transforming presence among us – a gift which transforms us by God’s grace, his free gift, so that we can become like him and have eternal life in him. It is the transforming power of our faith which frightens the world: for two thousand years it has transformed the lives of countless billions of people just like you and me, like nothing else before or since. It cannot be silenced, political regimes cannot eradicate it, other faiths cannot stamp it out, thanks to the courage of those who bear witness to their faith, who live it out it in their lives. We are here today to celebrate God’s saving love, a saving love which transformed the lives of men like Peter and Paul, which transforms bread and wine into the very body and blood of Christ, so that we may feed on Him, and be transformed by Him, given a foretaste of heaven, strengthened for our earthly pilgrimage and the journey of faith, bearing witness to Him who loves us.
There is something quite subversive about this: it stands in opposition to the power of this world, it is something which the world cannot contain or control, because it is of the Holy Spirit. So let us come to be fed by Him who died for love us, fed with Him, with His Body and Blood, to be strengthened by Him to live out our faith in our lives, to confess that Jesus Christ is God to the glory of the Father, to proclaim him to the world, so that the world too may believe and that all humanity may repent and believe in the God who loves them and saves them. Let us transform the world so that it may serve God, and Him alone, and resound with 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.
A thought for the day from Mother Mary Clare
You are dedicated to love and reconciliation. Your life is dedicated to that end, and you must learn to stand at the Cross. It is a long learning, a long road, but a sure road, if it is up the hill to Calvary.
It is a road on which you, being stripped of self, may mediate to the world the dawning knowledge of the glory that descends.
St Paul’s Advice to a Bishop (today’s Epistle)
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4 Διαμαρτύρομαι ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ, τοῦ μέλλοντος κρίνειν ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς, καὶ τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν βασιλείαν αὐτοῦ· 2 κήρυξον τὸν λόγον, ἐπίστηθι εὐκαίρως ἀκαίρως, ἔλεγξον, ἐπιτίμησον, παρακάλεσον, ἐν πάσῃ μακροθυμίᾳ καὶ διδαχῇ. 3 ἔσται γὰρ καιρὸς ὅτε τῆς ὑγιαινούσης διδασκαλίας οὐκ ἀνέξονται, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὰς ἰδίας ἐπιθυμίας ἑαυτοῖς ἐπισωρεύσουσιν διδασκάλους κνηθόμενοι τὴν ἀκοήν, 4 καὶ ἀπὸ μὲν τῆς ἀληθείας τὴν ἀκοὴν ἀποστρέψουσιν, ἐπὶ δὲ τοὺς μύθους ἐκτραπήσονται. 5 σὺ δὲ νῆφε ἐν πᾶσιν, κακοπάθησον, ἔργον ποίησον εὐαγγελιστοῦ, τὴν διακονίαν σου πληροφόρησον.
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4 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry.
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Fulton Sheen on Mary
Let those who think that the Church pays too much attention to Mary give heed to the fact that Our Blessed Lord Himself gave ten times as much of His life to her as He gave to the Apostles
The World’s First Love, 1956: 88
… she is what God wanted us all to be, she speaks of herself as the Eternal blueprint in the Mind of God, the one whom God loved before she was a creature. She is even pictured as being with Him not only at creation but before creation. She existed in the Divine Mind as an Eternal Thought before there were any mothers. She is the Mother of mothers – she is the world’s first love.
The World’s First Love, 1956: 11
A Thought for the Day from Fulton J. Sheen
The Mass causes the historically past events of His life to emerge here and now in their eternal reality. Here there is no subjective recollection, but the re-emerging of Christ’s Death and Resurrection into our contemporaneous situation. The Lord opens the bridge between the eternal and the temporal; that which was past is re-summoned for active operation here and now.
Those Mysterious Priests, 1974: 148
A Thought for the Day from Fulton Sheen
“When John the Baptist saw Our Blessed Lord approaching, he said: “I must decrease; He must increase”. Herein lies the secret of mental and spiritual stability. It is only by making ourselves little that we become great; it is only by creating an emptiness that Heaven has a place to fill.”
Homily for the 12th Sunday of Year C: Zech 12:10–11, Gal 3:26–29, LK 9:18–24
Christianity does not begin by reforming society; it begins by regenerating men.
Fulton Sheen Missions and the World Crisis(1963) 62
To be in the Church is surely the most wonderful of all things, it may not really feel like it, in fact it may well feel the complete opposite, but that may in fact be the point: the Church is not simply made up of people whom I like or whose company I keep, but rather of all the baptized. Through our baptism we enter the Church, we put on Christ, we share in his death and resurrection, we are regenerate: born again of water and the Holy Spirit to share new life in Him and to live out that new life and love in the World.
This is what Christ gives us freely, as a gift through his offering of himself upon the Cross. Thus, the prophet Zephaniah in this morning’s first reading can say that ‘I will pour out a spirit of grace and a plea for mercy when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced’ it anticipates the saving work of Christ, it is a prophesy which finds its fulfilment in Him. That is why a few verses later at the start of Chapter 13 he says ‘On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness’. Our baptism and the death of Christ on the Cross is that fountain which washes us from our sins and uncleanness, which heals and restores us to live Christ’s risen life.
This is why St Paul in his letter to the Galatians can extol the wonderful nature of baptism – we are all equal in our common baptism, there are no distinctions whatsoever between those who are saved in Christ, who have put on Christ. There is then an equality in baptism and salvation, which makes Christianity radically different, we are the new Israel, the body of Christ, and the community of the baptized is open to all those who believe and trust in Jesus Christ. In becoming his we are called to be like him and to share in both his joy and sufferings, so that we find our true identity and true meaning in our lives when we put on him.
It is not then for nothing that Our Lord asks ‘But who do you say that I am?’ It is a question which he asks his disciples and which he also asks each and every one of us, ‘Who do we say that he is?’ Some long-haired proto-hippie communist? A prophet? A misunderstood charismatic healer? Or God? The Creator and Sustainer of all, begotten of his Father before all worlds; con–substantial, co–eternal, and the only name under heaven or earth by which we may be saved, the gate, the sheep–fold, the Good Shepherd, Our Great High Priest and willing victim, pierced for our transgressions, wounded for our iniquities, to cleanse us and all humanity of its sin and uncleanness, to heal and restore us, so that we may share his risen life, and have eternal life in Him.
Our response to this has to be to take up our Cross and follow him – we have to be ready to be crucified, to suffer and die just like He did, and to live in a world which sees us and our faith as of no relevance or importance whatsoever, where we are to be pitied and blamed by ‘enlightened’ secularists and atheists who with a patronising sneer despise us and all for which we stand. Their attitude is not different from those Roman magistrates who condemned our forebears for refusing to worship a human being, the emperor, and saving that honour for God, and God alone.
As Christians we honour and worship the God who loves us, who gave himself for us, gladly and willingly, to heal and restore our human nature, so that we might be born again not of the flesh but by water and the Spirit, so that we and all the world might be transformed and have the fullness of life in him.
Since we are all one in Christ Jesus let us follow him, let us live lives where we carry our Cross each and every day and love him and serve him, in that knowledge that whatever happens there is nothing which can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Our lives may not be easy, but whatever we face good or ill we do so in the knowledge that we are loved by God, and that in living out our faith in Him in the world, His grace is at work in us, transforming us through the sacrament of his Body and Blood which we have come here to receive, to be strengthened for our journey of faith, proclaiming Christ’s truth and saving love to the world, and following him, by taking up our cross, and losing our lives for his sake, for what indeed would it profit someone to gain the whole world but lose his own soul? Power, wealth, possessions, position, honour, all the things of this world are empty and without meaning or worth compared with Christ.
Let us follow him, and deepen our trust and faith in Him, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and pray that his grace may be at work in us So that we may believe and be transformed, and share our faith with others that they too may believe and be transformed 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.
Sermon for Evensong Trinity III
“Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” Our Lord asks this question to the disciples and he asks it to us – to challenge us to live out our faith amidst the storms of this life. This year the Third Sunday after Trinity also falls on the Feast of the Translation of St Richard of Chichester, Bishop and champion of the church against the state. I like many people came to know him through the words of his prayer, most of which was recited by him upon his deathbed: Thanks be to thee my Lord Jesus Christ for all the benefits Thou hast given me, For all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me.
Richard had a difficult and eventful life, trying to reform the life and practices of the clergy, and defending the church from interference by the state – some things it would seem in this country never change! In the face of a secular power who wished to tell the Church what to do, Richard said No. He was a man of great learning and sanctity, a great friend to the poor who lived out his charity in his life, but above all else he was a man of principle who resisted the encroachment of secular power into matters which belong to the Church. Oh that we had his like amongst our bishops nowadays! Someone to tell the lower House of Parliament to mind its own business and not meddle in matters which do not concern it, that the Church cannot be bullied into accepting the will of such a godless brood of vipers: corrupt, amoral, and enslaved to a godless ideology – seeking to conform the Church to the world and to make up a perversion of the Gospel after their own tastes. And may God have mercy on their souls.
The only way to resist is by being both polite and firm, but most of all by practising that charity which lies at the heart of the Gospel of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ – in our care for the poor and the downtrodden, in our living out of our faith. If we follow the example of St Richard, and refuse to compromise the Gospel and live out our faith we can truly said to be following Christ, who came to call the world to repentance, to turn away from selfishness and sin.
We cannot let the light of our faith be hidden under a bushel, it has to shine as a light to the world, dispelling the darkness of sin and sloth, or that polite indifference so inimical to the zeal of the gospel. Only through this can the Church grow to be like the mustard tree so that all may be safe in its embrace, freed from sin, and rejoicing in the new life of Christ. It’s not easy, but that’s the point, when was anything worthwhile easy to achieve? Let us remember that we have that greatest of treasures, the pearl of great price which is faith in Christ, so let us share it, unafraid of the storms of this world since we trust in Him, who has overcome this world, sin and death, for our sake. Let us trust him, and love him, and each other, so that the world may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now, and forever.
Sermon for the Third Sunday after Trinity: Luke 15:1-10
There are three different ways in which we may judge others: with our passions, our reason and our faith. Our passions induce us to love those who love us; our reason makes us love all people within certain limits; our faith makes us love everyone, including those who do us harm and are our enemies.
Fulton Sheen Way to Inner Peace (1955) 110.
You can tell a man by the company he keeps, or so the saying goes. The Scribes and the Pharisees certainly subscribe to this idea and in this morning’s Gospel are not afraid to express it. They are more than happy to be judgemental – to only be seen with the right sort of people, certainly not with sinners, outcasts, people who ‘aren’t like us’ It’s a good thing that God doesn’t treat humanity like it treats itself: as to put it simply the human judgement of others, to which each and every one of us falls prey from time to time, has no place in the Christian Faith at all. God in Christ seeks the lost, the outcast, the people outside the religious in-crowd, seeks them out and eats with them. How shocking! It offends our human sensibilities and breaks down human distinctions to show us the radical freedom of the Kingdom of God.
We are each and every one of us sinners, we are not worth of having God come to and eat with us, but that is exactly what happens day by day and week when Christ feeds us with himself, so that we may become what he is, so that we can be transformed by grace and share in the divine life. That is why we are here this morning to be fed by Him and with Him, to be healed and restored by Him, to share in His life. God takes the initiative, He goes to seek out the lost, He doesn’t wait for them to come to Him. The banquet of the Kingdom is one to which everyone is invited, if they turn away from sin, if they repent and believe the Good News of Jesus Christ.
God does the hard work, so that we have the simpler task of turning away from all that separates us from Him and each other. To do this takes humility – knowing our need of God, and his grace and mercy, knowing that without his help we are and can do nothing. Our response to His love is to love Him and our neighbour – to put our faith into practice in our lives. This is a cause of joy in heaven, whereas its opposite, the reaction of the Scribes and Pharisees is to moan and begrudge, to criticise. It is a response of misery and bitterness, a smallness of mind and heart. Such feelings should have no place in the Church.
Christ is the Good Shepherd, who goes after the lost sheep to carry them back on his shoulders – likewise the Church is meant to be there for those outside it, to welcome them back inside the fold rejoicing. Our faith then should be the cause of our joy, a deep happiness that comes from being known and loved by Our Heavenly Father, who sent His Son to die for us, so that we might live.
With our joy there comes freedom, a freedom from being constrained by the ways of the world, from conforming to its ways, a freedom to welcome them to Banquet of the Kingdom, where the clothes that matter are those of baptism a sign of humility, where God gives himself to feed us to transform our human nature, to prepare us for eternal glory. So let us cast our cares on him so that his grace may be at work in us So that we may believe and be transformed, and share our faith with others that they too may believe and be transformed and give glory to of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Pentecost (Yr C)
About fifty days ago around the time that the Jews celebrate the Passover from slavery in Egypt to freedom, we celebrate Easter – Our Saviour Jesus Christ’s rising from the dead. Now as they celebrate the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt Sinai, we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit. The disciples have witnessed the Resurrection, they have seen Our Lord ascend into Heaven, and now He sends His Spirit on them, so that they may be filled with it, strengthened by it, strengthened to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ and the Salvation of mankind.
It is easy to marvel at the thought of the apostles speaking in more languages than the Eurovision Song Contest, but it also marks the transition of the Apostles from men who were afraid, who hid in the Upper Room, to those who spread the Gospel. We do not however simply celebrate the events of the past, but rather the reality of the present. The Holy Spirit is God’s gift to the Church, which we receive in the Sacraments of Confirmation and Holy Order – a gift to strengthen and empower God’s people, the New Israel, the Spirit of life, which raised Jesus from the dead, which gives life to his Church.
In this morning’s Gospel Jesus says to his disciples, which includes you and me by the way, ‘If you love me you will keep my commandments’. We will love God and our neighbour and live lives like Jesus. It sounds simple, but in practice it isn’t. We need to love Jesus and keep his word so He and the Father will make their home with us. In St Paul’s Letter to the Romans we see what life in the Spirit is like. It is a turning away from the ways of the world and the flesh – not despising it, since Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ came in the flesh in the Incarnation, it was in the flesh that Our Lord ascended into heaven taking our flesh into the life of the Godhead, so that where he has gone we may also go. We are to sit lightly to the world and its ways, and through submitting to God to find perfect freedom in him. In the service of the Triune God we can be truly free, free to live for him and to proclaim his truth to the world. If we love God this is what we are called to be, how we are called to live. Only in the Spirit can we enter fully into the divine life of love, and live out this love in the world. In the power of this love we can begin to understand the mystery of Our Lord’s Incarnation, his life, death, and resurrection, and we can let these mysteries shape our lives as Christians.
God will make his home with us in his word – Holy Scripture and the sacraments of his Church – outward signs of the inward grace which he lavishes on us in the power of his Spirit. That is why we are here today – to be fed with the Body and Blood of Christ, to see the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary, to stand by the Cross so that we may be washed in the blood and water which flows from his side. In this we see God’s love for us, and we are strengthened to live the life of the Spirit – we can remain close to the God who loves us and saves us. We can be taught by his Spirit to remain in the faith which comes to us from the Apostles who first received the Spirit on this day. Let us live strengthened by Spirit, nourished by word and sacrament, in holiness and joy, proclaiming the truth and love of God, so that the world may believe and give glory to 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.
The Ascension of the Lord Mt 28:16-20
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.
We can 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.
Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter: Jn 14:23-29
God does not love us because we are lovely or loveable; His love exists not on account of our character, but on account of His. Our highest experience is responsive not initiative. And it is only because we are loved by Him that we are loveable.
Fulton Sheen Rejoice, 1984, 9
God loves us; we can say this with the utmost confidence because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is what we celebrate at Easter. We show our love for God by keeping his word, by loving each other as he has loved us. We are called to the same sacrificial, self-giving love which Our Lord shows us. It’s a big ask. It should make us stop in our tracks and realise the enormity of the task and our utter reliance upon God’s grace. We show this love by keeping God’s word, by doing what Jesus tells us to do and not simply going along with the ways of the world.
Our Lord promises his disciples that the Father will send the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name to teach us all things and to bring to our remembrance all that he said to us. The Holy Spirit speaks through the Church so that we can profess our faith in the co-eternal and consubstantial Trinity. His gift to us is His peace – not as in the absence of war or violence, but something deeper and more profound. The peace that Jesus promises is that which characterises the life of the Godhead: a peace which passes all human understanding.
We can have peace through our relationship with the Trinity, the source of our peace, and joy, and love. Grounded in this relationship we need not be afraid or troubled – we are free to live lives which proclaim God’s love and victory so that the world may believe. Through God loving us, we can truly love him and each other. We experience this most clearly at the Eucharist when God feeds us with His Body and Blood, which he as both priest and victim offers to God on the Altar of the Cross. That self same sacrifice which heals the world through the pouring out of God’s love feeds us here and now. We are fed so that we may be nourished and share in the divine life. We receive the free gift of God’s grace so that it may perfect our human nature, so that we may go where Our Lord is going and share in the joy, and love, and peace of the Triune God.
We should rejoice in the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost after Our Lord has ascended, as in this we see the birth and spread of the Church – it’s why we are here, because people filled with the love of God and His Holy Spirit have brought us into His loving embrace. Loved by him, we are to share that love with others, so that the world may believe and share in the source of all love, and peace, and joy. It’s not somebody else’s responsibility but ours as the baptised people of God to follow in the footsteps of the apostles and share what we have received 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.
Homily for S. George’s Day – Jn 15:18-21
Today we celebrate the Patron Saint of this land, George. It should have nothing to do with flags, or nationalism, or dragons. George was a soldier, but one who fought for the army of the Lord, who obeyed not the rulers of the world but God. In his life and his death he bore witness to the saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and valued heavenly things above those of the earth.
We celebrate S. George because he bore witness to his faith during the persecution of the Church by the Roman emperor, Diocletian. Above all else and regardless of the cost he put his trust in the love of God shown to the world in Christ Jesus, and we should do the same. We should do the same because then we are truly following Christ – we are living out our faith in our lives so that the world may believe. The world will not like this, it will prefer us to submit to its ways, to acquiesce, to sell the Gospel short for the sake of a quiet and an easy life.
We see this in today’s Gospel: Our Lord tells us that the world will hate us because it has hated him first. The world hates, whereas Christians love – we love each other, we love our enemies, but above all else we love Christ and through him God the Father. We love the God who for love of us and all creation opened his arms on the Cross to embrace it with his love. The world’s reaction is to reject the God who created it, to reject his love and to hate all that he is. Thus while we are in the world we cannot be ofthe world – we cannot let who and what we are and what we do come from hatred, but rather from love alone.
We may face persecution for our faith, we may be mocked or dismissed as irrelevant, outdated or insignificant, we may even lose our lives. But whatever happens we cannot do anything other than be filled with the joy of the Resurrection, the joy of him who overcomes the world, who saves it. We are servants of our heavenly master – we are obedient to him, and to him above all else. Like S. George we are obedient to the one who loves us, so that we may proclaim his saving truth to the world. So we can be like those in the vision of S. John who ‘have conquered by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death’ (Rev 12:11). We can prefer nothing to Christ, and in this we will follow the example of S. George, his life, and his death. The world will hate us for this, dismissing us as zealots, extremists, or religious fanatics; it may even try to ignore us. But through living lives of faith and trust in God and showing that faith and trust in our lives, in loving service of him who died for us, we bear witness to the truth which sets us free. It is a freedom the world cannot understand – it dislikes it and cannot control it – it shows the tyranny of the world for what it is.
So let us celebrate the glory of bearing witness to Christ in all things, so that the world may believe in the God who loves them and saves them – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right, and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
Sermon for Evensong of the Second Sunday after Easter: “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”
Death is an affirmation of the purpose of life in an otherwise meaningless existence. The world could carry on its Godless plan if there were no death. What death is to an individual, that catastrophe is to a civilisation – the end of its wickedness. This is a source of anguish to the modern mind, for not only must human beings die, but the world must die. Death is a negative testimony to God’s power in a meaningless world, for by it God brings meaningless existence to nought. Because God exists, evil cannot carry on its wickedness indefinitely. If there were no catastrophe, such as the Apocalypse reveals, at the end of the world, the universe would then be the triumph of chaos….
Death proves also that life has meaning, because it reveals that the virtues and goodness practised within time do not find their completion except in eternity.
Fulton J. Sheen The Power of Love
It is always important to remember that even though Lazarus was raised from the dead he would still die. He was raised from the dead so that in him God might be glorified. As someone who believed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, he like countless billions through the centuries could have the hope of eternal life in Christ. That is why Our Lord can say ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.’ We can know and trust that death is not the end but rather a beginning, we feel grief at the loss of someone whom we know and love, but have hope that it is not the end of the story.
The raising of Lazarus from the dead points to Jesus’ resurrection. It shows us that God’s power is beyond our understanding, and the events leading up to Our Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection are a means for God to be glorified. In all of these we see the Love of God poured out on the world in and through Jesus, true God and true man. Evil has not had the last world; fear and hatred are conquered by love, and that victory is final. This is the source of our joy – this is what we celebrate for 5o days, a week of weeks, a celebration which defines the nature of the church: we are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song. We rejoice that through our baptism we too share in Christ’s death and new life. We have the hope of heaven, where we may experience the fullness of love in God’s presence.
We have a foretaste of it here on earth – we are nourished by Word and Sacrament – given food for the journey of faith so that we may be prepared for what lies ahead. We have the Sacraments so that God may pour out his grace upon us, a free and unmerited gift, shared so that his love may abound in our lives. We have the Church and its teaching so that we may truly flourish and live the lives God intends us to, loving and supporting each other – living out our faith in our lives, sharing our love and joy with others, living out the forgiveness and reconciliation which we have received and sharing it with ours, helping in God’s work of healing and reconciling the world. It’s truly wonderful, gifts beyond our comprehension, which we do not deserve, but which we are given so that we may have life in all its abundance in Him. Our God is not an angry old man in the sky, but one who washes the feet of sinners and invites them to the banquet of His Kingdom, forever, having picked up the tab on Calvary.
So let us rejoice that we have been called to so great a feast and let us look 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.
Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter (Yr C) ‘Feed my Sheep’
In this morning’s first reading Saint Peter and the apostles are told not to preach in the name of Jesus. Naturally, it is impossible for them to do this; they have to tell the world about him and his resurrection. They do this so that the gospel may be proclaimed: the gospel of repentance and forgiveness of sins through him. To be a Christian is to turn away from the ways of sin, the ways of the world – we are obedient to God, we hear what he is said in Christ and we obey him. The church then must always be on its guard lest it ceases to be obedient to God and turns instead to the ways of the world, the ways of humanity. As St Paul says in his Letter to the Romans ‘be not conformed to this world’. It is a difficult thing to do, it is hard, it takes strength of character and confidence, and it will not be popular. But just as the apostles rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name, and did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus Christ, so the church is always called to do the same: to risk persecution, to speak the uncomfortable truth which the world does not want to hear.
In this morning’s gospel the risen Lord gives an invitation to his disciples: ‘come and have breakfast’ he feeds his disciples before asking Peter if he loves him and commanding him to feed his lambs. He asks him the same questions three times, something which clearly looks back to Peter’s denial on the night of his arrest. Peter is upset: it’s his conscience at work reminding him of his failure. But Jesus does not condemn him, he simply reminds him so that he may be encouraged in his task: to feedChrist’s sheep, to be a shepherd, a good Shepherd, and to lay down his life for his sheep after the example of his Lord and Master. This is how Peter is to fulfil his command ’Follow me’.
Peter is fed by the Lord before he is called to go and feed others, and to care for them. We too have come here today to be fed by the Lord, to be fed with the Lord, with his body and blood, under the outward forms of bread and wine, to share in his divine life, so that we may become what he is, and have a foretaste of heaven. We are fed so that we may go out and feed others, so that we may follow the example of the apostles and not cease teaching and preaching Jesus Christ. When we do this we will give honour and worship to God no different from the heavenly worship we have seen described in this morning’s second reading. This is the heavenly glory of which we have a foretaste here on Earth. 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.
Sermon for Evensong of the First Sunday after Easter: Isaiah 52:13–53:12; Luke 23:13–35
Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread
The Disciples on the Road to Emmaus are astounded when the man to whom they are talking does not know what has been going on: ‘Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?’ He asks them so that they may tell him. They ‘hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel’, they have been told of the Empty Tomb, but do not yet believe. They need Jesus to explain the Scriptures to them in order to show them that what happened had been foretold in the Law and the Prophets.
In this evening’s first lesson from the Prophet Isaiah we have the greatest of the prophesies of Our Lord’s Passion and Death. It is read on Good Friday because it shows us how what happened was clearly foretold. In Acts 8, when the apostle Philip meets the Ethiopian eunuch, he is reading this passage. When he is asked if he understands what he is reading he replies ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ Philip shows him how verses 7 & 8 of Isaiah 53 point to Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,
The Ethiopian needs Philip, the disciples need Jesus, and we need the Church to show us how scripture is to be read: it’s meaning is not necessarily plain and while anyone could read Scripture in any way in which they chose, the Church has never said that all interpretations are ok, or that any one is as good as another. Instead, the proper interpretation of Scripture is rightly the teaching office of the Church, through the Apostolic Tradition: to unfold the mystery of Christ, to proclaim Him, and to save souls.
The Church reads the Old Testament christologically, because it points to Christ, it finds its fulfillment and its fullest and truest meaning in him, who is the Way and the Truth. As Our Lord says, ‘Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ In other words through Our Lord’s suffering, and death, and resurrection we behold God’s glory, the glory of the divine life of love, poured out on the world to heal it and to save it. We see both what God is and how he loves us, to the extent of giving his only Son to die for us, to heal the wound of sin, to restore our humanity, and so that we may share eternal life with him.
As a foretaste of this heavenly joy he takes bread and blesses it and gives it to them. Christ, who as both priest and victim offered himself upon the altar of the Cross, as a willing, spotless pure and sinless victim, now feeds his people with himself so that they may share his risen life – so that they may be given a foretaste of the heavenly glory and the divine life of love. That is why we day by day and week by week we too come to be fed by him, so that we too may share, having first heard the Scriptures explained to us.
We see here in this evening’s second lesson how and why the Church looks and feels like it does, why it understands Scripture in the way that it does, how errors may come about, and how the Church guards against these by deciding what is authentic in terms of Scripture and Tradition. Almost two thousand years after these events took place there is something fresh and current about what we have heard read to us this evening, it doesn’t feel odd, or strange, or backward or outdated, but simply part of how the Church is. It is good that after two thousand years the message has not changed; it shows us that it is authentic: that it is of God, and not of the world.
So let us be like the disciples at Emmaus with warmed hearts, fed by our Lord with word and sacrament, sharing his Easter Joy and his victory over sin and the world and sharing his peace and joy with the world, so that it may believe and give praise to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
The First Sunday after Easter (BCP) John 20:19–23
The Disciples are afraid, tempers are still running high – they fear a backlash from the people who put Jesus to death, they have been told by Peter that the tomb was empty; Mary of Magdala has seen Jesus. They are confused – not knowing what to believe, or whom to trust. Into the midst of their fear and confusion comes Jesus, saying ‘Peace be unto you’. The first gift of the Risen Lord to his disciples is peace. He who was prophesied to be the Prince of Peace, who has brought about peace through his suffering and death, speaks what he has enacted in his own body. He shows them his hands and his side, as a sign that it is really him, that he is really alive – the Resurrection is a reality, not a fairy story, not idle gossip, not something which people want to be true but isn’t. It’s real in a flesh and blood way. It too was foretold in Scripture, and Jesus has told his disciples before his death what was to happen. But now having seen they believe.
‘Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord’ the peace of God leads to Joy, the joy of new life in him. This is where true joy is to be found. It is reinforced by the fact that Jesus repeats the words ‘Peace be unto you’ as it is in Christ alone that our true joy and peace can be found. It is in his death and resurrection that our relationship with God and with each other can have its truest meaning and fullest expression.
Immediately Jesus says to his disciples, ‘As the Father hath sent me, even so I send you’ The disciples are sent, sent to proclaim the Good News of Jesus, sent into the world to continue the saving work. Here we see the birth of the Church: it is thanks to them that we are here, today. Then he breathes on them, he gives them the Holy Ghost, to strengthen them, to encourage them, to equip them to be sent out to share the Good News, and build up his body, the Church. They are also empowered: ‘Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained’. In a moment which looks and feels a lot like ordination, we see men sent out to restore humanity, to restore their relationship with God and each other. It is through Christ’s death that such a restoration can take place, and here we see both ‘power and commandment’ given to men best understood as bishops. It reminds us that the Church is to be a place of healing and restoration. The fact that it is not always should encourage us to strive to follow this example, through the grace, the free gift of God working in us. We are sinners, and by God’s gift of his Son, we can be forgiven, redeemed, healed, and restored.
It is the most wonderful news, the greatest gift we could ever wish to receive. It reminds that, in the words of this morning’s Epistle ‘whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world; and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith’. We are regenerate, born again of God in our baptism, our sharing in Christ’s death, which overcomes the world; as we share in his death we also share in his new life. Our faith is in a crucified and risen Saviour, who loves us and who gave himself for us, who comes to us in word and sacrament, to feed us with himself, so that we might have life in all its fulness, life in him. It is the faith which we profess in the words of the Nicene Creed: orthodoxy rather than heresy concerning the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Church must always be reminded that in Christ it has overcome the world; it does not need to be conformed to it – to a liberal spirit of the age which seeks to remake the Church and the faith which it professes in its own image, where clergy are little more than social workers, and bishops little more than managers – how meagre, how small-minded that such a great thing should be reduced to this pitiful and wretched state. As sucessors to the Apostles they need to realise their vocation and live it out, rather than be be conformed to the ways of the world, favouring error over truth. The Church has been here before and no doubt it will again. We need to stay close to Christ, close to his word in Scripture, fed by his body and blood, believeing in the faith which comes to us from his apostles, and in the knowledge that he has overcome the world, and that we know his truth which has set us free rather than to be slaves to the spirit of the age, and sharing his peace and joy with the world, so that it may believe and give praise to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever.
An Easter Thought for the Day from Metropolitan Anthony
The joy of the resurrection is something which we, too, must learn to experience, but we can experience it only if we first learn the tragedy of the cross. To rise again, we must die. Die to our hampering selfishness, die to our fears, die to everything which makes the world so narrow, so cold, so poor, so cruel. Die so that our souls may live, may rejoice, may discover the spring of life. If we do this then the resurrection of Christ will have come down to us also.
But without the death on the cross there is no resurrection, the resurrection which is joy, the joy of life recovered, the joy of the life that no one can take away from us any more! The joy of a life which is superabundant, which like a stream runs down the hills, carrying with it heaven itself reflected in its sparkling waters.
The resurrection of Christ is reality in history as his death on the cross was real, and it is because it belongs to history that we believe in it. It is not only with our hearts but with the totality of our experience that we know the risen Christ. We can know him day after day as the Apostles knew him. Not the Christ of the flesh, but the ever-living Christ. The Christ of the spirit of whom St Paul speaks, the risen Christ who belongs to time and eternity because he died once upon the cross but lives for ever.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh Meditations on a Theme (Mowbrays, 1972) 119–20 [adapted]
