lawrenceop

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HOMILY for Beato Angelico

Heb 11:1-7; Ps 144; Mark 9:2-13

A few days ago, the Rosary Shrine welcomed its first group of pilgrims of this year: five women and one Dominican friar had come on pilgrimage to England, and they were devotees of Fr Bede Jarrett OP who had served as Provincial for 16 years; revered as a retreat giver, spiritual writer, and tireless in his work of expanding the Dominican mission in this country. Like all good Catholics, Fr Bede had a great aesthetic sense, a love for beauty, which is inherent in human souls, and also in beautiful things made by the ingenuity and hard work of human hands. He once spoke of beauty being found “not as a secret but as a gospel, not as a thing hidden but as a friend revealed.” 

This love for beauty, which must be both spiritual and material in order for it to reflect the splendour of the incarnation of Christ, a splendour glimpsed in its magnificence by the three disciples on Tabor, is ultimately a love for God, for the Son who is the splendour of the Father, the icon of the unseen God. As such, when Dominicans preach the Word, they don’t only focus on what is spoken, nor even just on what is written, but also on what is seen, expressed artistically through the painter’s brush, the sculptor’s chisel, or the photographer’s lens! 

For the Dominican seeks and preaches beauty, “not as a secret but as a gospel”, as good news in a world darkened by sin and destruction, and in moments when we might be tempted to cast our eyes downwards in the face of so much ugliness and brokenness. In such a world, beauty is needed all the more, to give us faith in God and his goodness and beauty and power to save and redeem. Thus Christ revealed his divine beauty to his disciples, transfigured on the heights, to help them look up and give them hope of the Resurrection in advance of the terrible suffering of his Passion and Cross which was to come. Likewise, the Dominican find and makes manifest beauty “not as a thing hidden but as a friend revealed”. For the One who has befriended us, and who has revealed his glory to us, even when we were made ugly by sin, is Christ, who is Beauty himself and the greatest Friend of humanity. Dominican preaching, therefore, calls us to look and see that God is with us, and his grace fills this world with divine light, to dispel the darkness, and to beautify us. 

Bede Jarrett thus wrote to an aspiring Dominican who did not think he was much of a public speaker that “Fra Angelico used his paint brush” to proclaim the Gospel, and “these [paintings] are effective” and perhaps more so than the voice. For spoken sermons fade and become mere memory but, he implies, paintings live on. Clearly the painted sermons of Fra Angelico (or Blessed John of Fiesole, as he is properly called), this blessed Dominican friar who we commemorate today, and who is the patron saint of artists, have an endurance and an interior beauty that powerfully communicates the Gospel to us even today. Indeed, many, who would not read a sermon or spiritual writing, do still flock to the museums and churches that are blessed with Fra Angelico’s works, and there they can see in his frescoes and paintings a world transfigured by divine light, and a beauty that gives hope and draws us forward in life’s journey, calling us to look up towards heaven. 

In part due to the example of Fra Angelico, who himself was inspired by the preaching of St Antoninus, Dominican bishop of Florence in his lifetime, beauty, then, has been firmly established in our Dominican life, especially in our churches and in every aspect of our liturgical life. So, I want to momentarily pay tribute to our Dominican Sisters of the English Congregation of St Catherine of Siena, who are based in Stone (Staffordshire), and who were renowned for their beautiful and painstakingly embroidered vestments and liturgical furnishings. This past week, a significant part of the Sisters’ beautiful heritage was handed down to us to be used in the Rosary Shrine, for the glory of God. My hope is that we can have an exhibition of these works in October this year. Such things are, unfortunately, regarded these days by many people, even Catholics, as unnecessary luxuries that shouldn’t concern serious Christians. After all, we should be feeding the poor! However, the Sisters who educated the poor (and fed them) knew that Catholics also couldn’t neglect beauty and art. For the human person needs to be fed in body and soul; the human heart longs for beauty, longs for God and so looks for his beauty to be revealed as gospel and as friend. 

Hence, the austere observant Dominicans, of which Fra Angelico was a member, also had paintings in their monastic cells at San Marco in Florence for we pray not just with our lips and in our minds, but also with our eyes, and indeed, our whole bodies. The goal, therefore, was that such external beauty would lead to interior beauty, so that as we look on the face of Christ and Our Lady and the Saints, our lives would be transfigured by the gospel of Jesus Christ, made beautiful by his grace as, through beauty, we befriend Jesus and so we are made beautiful. For as St Thomas Aquinas says the divine communication of beauty is beautifying, ie, the revelation of divine beauty and our recognition of it  produces beauty in things; Beauty himself acts to make us truly beautiful. 

May Blessed Fra Angelico pray for artists today, and for create beautiful things in this world. May God use the work of their hands to reveal himself to us. Amen. 

#beauty #fra angelico #Bede Jarrett

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HOMILY for the 4th Sat per annum (I)

Heb 13:15-17,20-21; Ps 22; Mark 6:30-34

Jesus today has advice for his apostles, to those who minister in the Lord’s vineyard by preaching and teaching the Gospel. As such, he is speaking to us priests first of all, but since a priest is first of all a Christian and a disciple like you, then what Jesus says to us, to his apostles, can also be applied to every one of us Christians gathered here today. So the Lord says to us after we have been engaged in work and ministry and the service of the Gospel: “You must come away to some lonely place all by yourselves and rest for a while”. 

Many of us in the world today fear loneliness; we fear being alone, or having no one around us. But to be in a lonely place all by ourselves, as Jesus put it in the Gospel, is not to become isolated and without support and friendship. The Greek word for the lonely place is eremos, that is to say, a place that is uninhabited, where nobody else is present. So, it is a place of solitude, and Jesus calls us to be by ourselves so that we can truly be ourselves, taking off our masks and our ‘brave faces’ which can be the cause of so much anxiety and stress. All of us will know, I think, that in our dealings with other people, whether as priests, or as mums, or nurses, or teachers, or shop assistants, people come to us looking for help, advice, or sometimes to offload their grievances, or to ask questions. Not infrequently, I think, we have to think on our feet, and speak in our ‘professional’ capacity, even if we don’t really have the answers. And so we put on a persona, one that is projected onto us, or which is somehow expected of us; we put on a brave face and a facade for others to see as we go about our work. 

Perhaps this is what the apostles had been doing, as they went out on their mission of preaching and exorcism and healing – after all, they hadn’t been trained for any of this, but they just went and did what they could, trusting in the Lord who had called them and sent them out, and hoping for the best. We know that when they returned they were often amazed and elated at the fact that God worked through them, frail and weak vessels that they were. As St Paul would say: “we have this treasure in earthern vessels” (2 Cor 4:7)

The Lord, full of mercy and compassion, knows our weaknesses, and that we often have to adopt a persona in carrying out our work. And what does he say, then? “You must come away to some lonely place all by yourselves and rest for a while.” Why? Because, in a place of solitude, where nobody else is present, we can be ourselves, we can let our guard down, we can relax. But we are never really alone. For God is present, God is with us. So Christ is calling us to follow his example, and to go off to be alone in prayer with God. Prayer, therefore, must be authentic: we can be ourselves, we can speak freely, openly, and honestly to God, and we must lower our barriers, our pretence, our facades so that we can allow God to look upon us, and to shine his grace and light on our face. Prayer, then, is coming away from the world and from work, in order to be with God, and indeed, to rest in God. Thus St Augustine says, “our hearts are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you.” 

Jesus, knowing what the human heart needs, and knowing what we long for, thus calls you and I to retreat in prayer, and to find rest in God. It is God who will restore us, and heal us, and strengthen us; He will love us after the knocks and bruises and negligence that hurt us in our daily interactions with others. And this is what we need: to rest in God. 

The Gospel tells us that, however, Jesus is followed by a crowd who he teaches. But what about the apostles? Are they there too, hard at work again? The next verse which is not included in today’s passage suggests that they were not. So, Jesus himself ministered to the people, and he also ministered to his apostles by making sure they were able to steal away and be by themselves, and so find rest in God. Hence, I found the advice of Pope Francis, given on 2 February to the priests and seminarians and religious of the Democratic Republic of the Congo very timely, and he gives us some practical reminders on how we can follow Jesus’s command to go away to a lonely place. 

The Holy Father said: “The Presentation of the Lord, which in the Christian East is called the “feast of the encounter”, reminds us that the priority in our life must be our encounter with the Lord, especially in personal prayer, because our relationship with him is the basis of everything we do. Never forget that the secret of everything is prayer, since the ministry and the apostolate are not primarily our own work and do not depend solely on human means. You are going to tell me: yes, true enough, but commitments, pastoral priorities, apostolic labours, fatigue and so on risk leaving us with little time and energy for prayer. That is why I would like to share a few pieces of advice. First of all, let us remain faithful to certain liturgical rhythms of prayer that mark the day, from the Mass to the breviary. The daily celebration of the Eucharist is the beating heart of priestly and religious life. The Liturgy of the Hours allows us to pray with the Church and with regularity: may we never neglect it! Then too, let us not neglect Confession. We always need to be forgiven, so as then to bestow mercy upon others.

Now, a second piece of advice. As we all know, we cannot limit ourselves to the rote recitation of prayers, but must set aside a time of intense prayer each day, to remain “heart-to-heart” with the Lord. It may be a prolonged time of adoration, in meditation on the word, or with the Holy Rosary, but a time of closeness to the One whom we love above all else. In addition, even in the midst of activity, we can always resort to the prayer of the heart, to short “aspirations” – which are a real treasure – words of praise, thanksgiving and invocation, to be repeated to the Lord wherever we find ourselves. Prayer takes the focus off ourselves, it opens us up to God, and it puts us back on our feet because it puts us in his hands.”

#Pope Francis #prayer #priests #religious life #authenticity

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HOMILY for Conversion of St Paul

Acts 9:1-22, Psalm 116:1-2, Mark 16:15-18

My parents named me Paul. So, for many years, today was a special feast day for me because this was St Paul’s day - not shared with St Peter, but just St Paul. And as I had also been a convert to Catholicism, so this feast of the Conversion of St Paul has always resonated with me, and it was a festive, joyful day. But ten years ago, in 2013, that changed. Ten years ago I was woken from sleep by my mobile phone ringing repeatedly; it was my mother. And with her voice breaking with emotion she told me that her mother, my grandmother who lived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, had unexpectedly died in her sleep. My uncle had found lying peacefully in her bed on the morning of the 25th of January, and they couldn’t wake her up. She was aged 81 and had not been suffering any particular illness; she had just passed away in her sleep. So, since 2013, today’s feast has become bitter-sweet, a poignant day full of memories. 

My earliest memories of my grandmother are of the view of her sitting at the desk in her room; as a child I slept in a bed facing her bed in her room. I would open my eyes early in the morning, and see her seated at her desk as the sun rose, and she would be reading the Bible or deep in prayer. My grandmother took me to church and thus she taught me to pray, much as Lois in the Bible taught her grandson Timothy to pray - St Paul mentions this in his 2nd letter to Timothy. And so, as I think of St Paul who was brought to faith in Christ in such a miraculous way, on this day I also remember the more ordinary ways in which we come to faith in Christ: we are led by the good example and teaching of others, especially family members who love us, and teach us, and discipline us. Indeed, as we mark the Day of Prayer for Christian Unity today, it is fitting that I remember and give thanks for my grandmother’s example of Christian life: though she was not a Catholic she was baptised into Christ as we all are, and she imparted that faith in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour to me. 

For in the first decade of my life, I had been brought up by my grandmother. Hence, I learnt to love music from the 1950s, learnt the table manners and decorum of an older generation, and I also learnt to love God and Jesus and the Gospel. Many of us think of St Paul’s ‘Damascus moment’ as an explosion of converting grace that happened once-and-for-all. However, such experiences of grace are extraordinary. After all, St Paul’s mission to the Gentiles was extraordinary. But for the rest of us Christians, we have the grace of a series of Damascus moments, or rather, the grace of St Paul’s singular moment of conversion is being drawn out over our entire lifetime. And this is what we want, what we need, and what we can pray for: that God’s grace will be granted us over a lifetime, daily deepening our love for Christ until death. And we pray that death will not be so sudden and unexpected as to leave us unprepared. Many Catholics rightly worry about an unprepared death, and we should be careful not to die without the strength and consolation of the Sacraments.

But I subsequently learnt from my grandmother’s younger sister, a devout Christian woman herself, that she and my grandmother would pray every night for the last decade of her life for a peaceful death; my grandmother prayed to just fall asleep in Christ. For a non-Catholic Christian who do not understand nor know the necessity of the Sacraments, to pray to fall asleep in Christ peacefully, means to pray for the grace of final perseverance in Faith. Hence I believe that my grandmother was thus prepared to meet her Lord and Saviour; and I trust that she was granted the grace of the kind of peaceful death that she had prayed for. 

The end of a life that was marked by daily prayer and surrender to Christ rightly ends with Christ, with a coming to rest in his peace. Over the years, I saw my grandmother change and grow and develop in her love for God, and her love for others – her temper mellowed, she became deeply forgiving even though she had suffered greatly at the hands of others, and she had a deep humility and simplicity. This, too, is the path of conversion. Indeed, this is the ordinary, by which I mean, the normal and proper way, by which we Christians are daily and gradually converted to Christ. There is no short cut, no sudden change, no once-and-for-all Damascus moment but often a process, a deepening and intensification of our relationship with Jesus Christ, so that gradually we grow into a deeper friendship with him, a more intense love for God. Therefore, each day, let these words of St Paul inspire us: “He [Christ] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” [So] I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor 12:9-10)

What faith St Paul had! His encounter with Christ on the Damascus road shaped the rest of his life, empowered him through his graced friendship with the Risen Lord, to endure all things for love of God, knowing that Christ was with him, abiding in him through grace. This same faith I realised lived in my grandmother, and she imparted that to me, by God’s grace and providence. And as a priest and Friar Preacher my hope is to hand this Faith on those I meet and catechise and teach. I hope it is your goal too. For Christ has ultimately called on us, the Baptised, to “go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation.” My grandmother was no street evangelist, though, but in her own quiet way, seated at her desk in prayer, or helping her neighbours and bringing them gifts, she was, quite definitely, proclaiming the Gospel. For her life had quite evidently been touched by the grace of the Risen Lord, and so people knew her to be a believer. And as Christ says in the Gospel: “He who believes and is baptised will be saved”.   

#conversion #st paul #grace #remembrance #Por Por

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for 2nd Wed per annum (I)

Heb 7:1-3, 15-17; Ps 109; Mark 3:1-6

At the start of last week I was invited to join the priors and bursars of our Province in Oxford for a meeting on fundraising. At the end of the week, someone came from Detroit to view our church and to speak to me, again, about fundraising. With the current spike in the cost of living in London, and as the living wage has gone up, and as we reviewed our budgets this week, much of my time in the past few days, then, has been spent thinking about raising funds for the maintenance and also for the extension and improvement of the work that we do here at St Dominic’s. Visitors from outside the UK, when they see the size of this historic church, its many beautiful features and details, and when they consider the range of services and works we do from this church and priory, always wonder about how we manage to keep this church open and in relatively good condition.

My answer is always the same: by the providence of God, because this is Our Lady’s house and Shrine, and it is her work and mission to preach the Rosary, and her Son’s Gospel of salvation. And so, my basic outlook is that if we do our part and are faithful to the ministry and work given to us, to the best of our ability given the time and energy we have, then God will give us what we need through the donations and contributions made by the community who worship here regularly, through the donations that come from visitors around the world, and through the gifts that are occasionally left to us in legacies. Last year I had expected a shortfall of over £30,000 but thanks to a legacy and some increased work on our part, and thanks to increased giving and Gift Aid, we were able to close that budget deficit. Bit by bit, God provides for our needs, and I continue to trust in God’s providence and the generosity of so many people, of your good selves. 

Now, you might wonder, why am I telling you all this and what has this to do with the Scripture readings we’ve heard? 

In the letter to the Hebrews, a reference is made to an incident recounted in Genesis 14: Abraham, who is our “father in faith”, had just been victorious in battle and, as was the custom, he had “brought back all the goods” he had won in battle. On his way home, Abraham encounters Melchizedek, the mysterious ‘king of peace’, and this priest-king offers a sacrifice of bread and wine to God, a sacrifice of thanksgiving for the victory. He declares: “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” Melchizedek has been seen as a forerunner of Christ, an image of the priesthood of Christ and of the sacrifice of the Mass, wherein we now offer bread and wine to God, in a great act of thanksgiving for Christ’s victory over sin. Hence, Abraham and Melchizedek are both mentioned in the ancient Roman Canon (Eucharistic Prayer) of the Mass.

Immediately after Melchizedek offers the sacrifice of thanks to God, we’re told that “Abram gave him a tenth of everything.” So, from the goods that he had won in battle, from his surplus, then, Abram gave a tenth to God, entrusting a tenth of his goods to Melchizedek the “priest of the Most High God”. This is the first instance in the Bible of what came to be called tithing, which means, giving a tenth to God. In many Catholic parishes in the USA, tithing – giving ten percent of one’s income after all essentials and needs have been accounted for – is not at all uncommon, and it is expected in Bible-based Protestant churches. This is why my visitor from Detroit told me that a parish of our size and demographic in the USA would have a weekly collection of around $40,000. So, my friends in the USA and S.E. Asia are often quite bewildered when I tell them that our weekly collection is 4% of that on a good week! How, they wonder, can we possibly keep things going? 

Most of our parishes in the UK can only dream of receiving tithes, but tithing is a Biblical practice, mentioned in both Old and New Testaments. The letter to the Hebrews just states: “it was to him that Abraham gave a tenth of all that he had.” This point, therefore, might give us pause for thought and reflection. I may not be able nor even want to give a tenth of all my goods, but what proportion do I give of my surplus income, or my time, or my service? Do I consciously set something aside to offer to God? How can I help my parish and Church community? For it’s not just money that we can offer to God and his Church, but also, our time and our talents. Each of these - time, treasure, and talents - after all are given us by God. As the Gospel says, the Sabbath itself was given us by God to be used to do something good, beautiful, and life-giving. So, as an act of thanksgiving to God for his blessings, we’re being invited by the example of Abraham, our “father in faith” to offer our goods to God. 

Personally, I am grateful for whatever comes to us by God’s providence and by your generosity especially in these frightening and difficult times. Thank you for trusting us to use your gifts and donations to do something good, beautiful, and life-giving here at Our Lady’s Rosary Shrine, at St Dominic’s. 

#tithing #donations #gifts #benefactors #Providence

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for the 1st Wed per annum  (I)

Heb 2:14-18; Ps 104; Mark 1:29-39

I hope that at least some of you will have watched The Chosen which is now in its third season and which portrays the life of Christ in a fresh and appealing way, bringing new life and insight to many familiar stories from the Gospels. The Chosen is available online for free. In one episode in season 2, Christ has spent the whole day healing and praying over the crowds who flock to him. 

I was reminded of this because in the Gospel passage we’ve just heard, St Mark depicts a very full day’s work for the Lord. Right after calling his first disciples, he enters a synagogue and teaches, and then he casts out demons, and “immediately” after, he heals Simon’s mother-in-law. All this has happened in one day, it seems, and at last we’ve come to the evening and still “the whole city” comes, and Jesus heals many and casts out demons from many. 

But after all this activity, Mark lets us into a precious glimpse of Jesus’ life: “And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed” (Mk 1:35). Prayer, time alone with God the Father, gives strength and new life and vitality to Jesus so that he can carry on his work. So prayer, the Lord is showing us, is as necessary as food and fresh air and rest. For prayer is, ultimately, resting in God, being with God, and so receiving from God all the good that he desires to give us. Prayer, indeed, is the “daily bread” for which we pray since prayer sustains the life of our souls in faith, in hope, and in charity. 

Tragically, we often think of prayer as a luxury, as something we fit into the gaps in the daily schedule of activities, but the example of Jesus shows that we need to make prayer part of our schedule - to set aside time to pray just as we make time for the other important things and people in our lives. I am reminded of a wonderful story in which a journalist had interviewed Mother Teresa and spent the day observing her works. At the end of a long and tiring day, he asked the Saint what empowered her daily schedule, and she said she spent an hour in adoration each day. The journalist said: “But what about your really busy days?” And St Teresa of Kolkata replied: “On those days I spend two hours in adoration”. 

The letter to the Hebrews today tells us that “because [Jesus] has himself been through temptation he is able to help others who are tempted.” So in prayer, coming before the Lord with all our weaknesses and addictions and temptation, we receive help from Jesus.  The saints, like St Teresa, all bear witness to the importance of prayer to enable them to do good works, to live their daily lives. 

But this help from Jesus may not always be the instant quick-fix that we want, in that our flaws and failings are not immediately removed, nor are the obstacles and problems of life instantly solved. Rather, we are helped in the manner that is best suited to us human beings, so that we grow in virtue and become better, more wise and loving people. And so this takes time, and perseverance, and a firm desire to change and improve, and to trust in God’s goodness and wisdom. Many people, it seems to me, give up on prayer and think it to be a waste of time because they do not see instant change and improvement. But maybe this isn’t because prayer is impotent, but because we human beings need time, because we need to learn patience and perseverance and fortitude, we need to mend and grow slowly so that the growth is durable and the break is well-healed. 

In The Chosen, Jesus is shown at the end of the exhausting day turning to God in prayer - but he does this in the arms of his mother Mary who silently cradles his head. We can do the same: pray the Rosary daily, set aside time for this, and pray it meditatively, and so let Mary cradle you and lead you into the rest that is our compassionate and loving God who, as the letter to the Hebrews says, has come to “set free all those who had been held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death.”

#prayer #Adoration

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HOMILY for The Baptism of the Lord (A)

Isaiah 42:1-4. 6f; Ps 29; Acts 10:34-38; Matt 3:13-17

The other time that St Matthew tells of a voice being heard from heaven, it declares: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (17:5). We hear the exact same declaration today, but there is an interesting difference. Today, at the start of Jesus’s public ministry we’re not explicitly being told to listen to Christ. Rather, we’re presented today with Christ, our God, who has come to listen to us. As Ven. Louis of Grenada observes, Christ spent thirty years in silence – we know nothing of his so-called ‘hidden life’ – and then, from his Baptism onwards, three years of preaching. In this way, Christ shows us that he “valued the silence of recollection”, and I would add, he spends this time observing us, listening to us, coming to understand our human condition and human experience.

For at Christmas, we celebrated the Incarnation of Christ; God’s eternal Word taking flesh, being born as a baby. And as such, the Word is helpless, needy, and wordless if not silent. Thus, God humbled himself to share in our humanity; he comes to listen to us, becoming one with us. And today, on the last day of Christmas, we see the depths to which Christ shares in our humanity. By descending into the waters, a symbol of death, we see a prefiguration of the death that Jesus will choose to undergo in order to ‘listen’ to what it is to be mortal. And also, in humbling himself even to accepting John’s baptism of repentance, Christ shows that he chooses to identify himself with sinful humanity. So, our God chooses to humble himself to become Man, and not just to stand apart from us as a perfect human being, but to stand alongside us sinners; standing with sinful humanity in the Jordan, joining us in the waters of repentance. 

As the late great Pope Benedict XVI said: “Jesus loaded the burden of all mankind’s guilt upon his shoulders: he bore it down into the depths of the Jordan. He inaugurated his public activity by stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture was an anticipation of the Cross.” So, Christ identifies with sinners for our sake, in order to save us from sin. For as St Gregory Nazianzen says: “What has not been assumed has not been healed”.

However, we note that Jesus also says to John, more specifically, that he comes to be baptised in order to “fulfil all righteousness” (Mt 3:15). So, it is for God’s sake, for the sake of his justice, in other words, that he comes to the Jordan. Hence we hear in Isaiah that God’s faithful servant comes to fulfill God’s righteousness; to “bring forth justice to the nations” (Isa 42:1). So when Christ comes to the Jordan he does this, not by sitting in judgement, but by lowering himself into the river and listening to us, to our experience. For, as Isaiah says, the reed has been bruised by sin, the wick burns dimly. And so Christ doesn’t come to break us or extinguish the light. On the contrary, God’s justice and holiness is served when he comes to heal the wounds of sin and to fan our wavering love into an ardent flame. And this, too, is why Jesus comes to the Jordan to be baptised: For Jesus comes, like the doctor, to listen to us and to observe our symptoms but, more importantly, he also comes to cure our diseases; to heal and vivify. And what he prescribes is baptism. Or, to be more, precise, Christ himself is the cure. For our fundamental disease is sin which cuts us off from the life of God.

So, today, Christ descends into the waters and dies alongside sinners, joining us in the depths. But he also rises out of the waters, and we, too, are called to rise up from our sins, and to rise with Jesus to new life; the sinner becomes a beloved son or daughter of God. Hence when Jesus goes up from the water, St Matthew says that “the heavens were opened”, the Spirit descends, and a divine voice is heard (Mt 3:16f). So, too, in the sacrament of baptism we have died with Christ and rise to new life in him; we are healed of sin and filled with the Spirit of God’s love; heaven is opened to us, and we hear this declaration said about each of us individually: “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased”. Therefore, when Jesus comes to the Jordan and says “thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness” (Mt 3:18), he is speaking of the righteousness he will bring about in us, in all peoples, through baptism and the other sacraments of his Church. 

So, although we’re not told explicitly in today’s Gospel to listen to Christ, in fact, if we’re attentive, there is something we’re being called to listen to today: Christ’s own example, and we’re called to follow him, and to share in his divine life. So Baptism, a vital sacrament that begins our Christian life, is still only the start of a new life, indeed, it inaugurates a new relationship with God. For through the Son of God, Jesus Christ, we can now be called sons and daughters of God. If so, then we need to receive the grace of God the Son, the graces and virtues and gifts that flow from Christ, and which makes us holy as Christ is holy. This requires from each of us a daily, on-going response – a life of faith and prayer in order to sustain and cultivate a living relationship of Faith with Jesus Christ. 

In particular, speaking of the baptism of infants and the role of the parish, Pope Benedict XVI said: “after Baptism [children] must be educated in the faith, instructed in accordance with the wisdom of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church so that this seed of faith that they are receiving today may grow within them and that they may attain full Christian maturity. The Church, which welcomes them among her children must take charge of them, together with their parents and godparents, to accompany them on this journey of growth. Collaboration between the Christian community and the family is especially necessary in the contemporary social context in which the family institution is threatened on many sides and finds itself having to face numerous difficulties in its role of raising children in the faith. The lack of stable cultural references and the rapid transformation to which society is constantly subjected, truly make the commitment to bring them up arduous. Parishes must therefore do their utmost increasingly to sustain families, small domestic churches, in their task of passing on the faith.”

This, in a nutshell, is my hope and my plan and my intention for this parish and for our long-term catechetical plan for St Dominic’s. Please pray for this plan, and for the spiritual renewal and support of our families, and please do what you can to help make this church and this place a living community of the Baptised where we can come to know God, hear his Word, and grow to love God more deeply. Thus the prophet Isaiah says to you and me, to us Christians today, that “I, the Lord, have called you to serve the cause of right; I have taken you by the hand and formed you; I have appointed you as covenant of the people and light of the nations.” We can only do this if we are lit up from within by the grace of Jesus Christ, with a burning love for God, and a desire to obey God’s commandments, as a faithful child of God:All this is what Baptism leads to.

#Baptism of the Lord #Baptism #righteousness #holiness #salvation #parish renewal #pastoral #Benedict XVI

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for the Christmas Mass during the Night

Isa 9:1-7; Ps 95; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14

Christmas is a declaration of war! Or to be more precise, the birth of God in the flesh, in our world, in our human condition, makes visible and manifests in blood and bones and in our own human body, the spiritual warfare that began when the angels had fallen in love with themselves. For the angels had fallen through pride, which is essentially an overblown love of one’s own excellence, and an overestimation of one’s own correctness combined with a desire to dominate others, and so to get my own way always. Pride, in short, is believing that “I know best”. 

And so the angels’ rebellion infected humanity, and Eve had thought she knew better than God how to gain for herself happiness, and freedom, and the knowledge of good and evil. This temptation to create our own meaning, and reality, and happiness independently of God has never gone away, so dictators wage wars, and families continue feuds, and our hearts become battlegrounds – all because of pride. So Mankind fell out of love with God, and so we began to “walk in darkness” as Isaiah says.

But tonight God comes to shatter the darkness: “On those who live in a land of deep shadow a light has shone.” By his coming as Man, Jesus himself enters into the fray, and because he is God so he comes with victory to end this mad war, this insane rebellion against Mankind’s highest and truest good. For one of the insights of St Thomas Aquinas is that every act of sin is a lapse of reason, a kind of momentary insanity as we knowingly choose an apparent good over the true Good, God himself! Hence God comes to break the heavy burden of Mankind’s sin, the rod of pride that stiffens our will. Thus (Isaiah says) “the yoke that was weighing on him, the bar across his shoulders, the rod of his oppressor, these you break as on the day of Midian” – just in case you’ve forgotten, this refers to a battle between Gideon and his 300 soldiers against the vast army of Midian, and Gideon was victorious against the odds because God’s power was with Gideon and his men. And so at Christmas, God declares war on all that separates us from him, or turns us against him, and in doing so, they would diminish our humanity. 

Hence, an army of the good heavenly angels appears in the night sky outside Bethlehem declaring “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace to men who enjoy his favour.” This, in fact, is a declaration not merely of war but of victory already won as peace is restored to men and women who live by God’s favour, meaning, for anyone who will receive his grace and live by it; anybody who will thus allow God to be their ally and friend. As St Paul said to Titus: “God’s grace has been revealed, and it has made salvation possible for the whole human race and taught us that what we have to do is to give up everything that does not lead to God, and all our worldly ambitions”. In other words, Christ comes to lead us away from all that would lead us away from God and so end the strife begun so long ago. Therefore, tonight, by his birth among us, God declares war on sin, on pride, which leads us away from God. God comes to us to fight for humanity’s liberation from vices and evil, not with material weapons nor even with a mighty army of angels. Rather, God takes flesh and is born of the virgin Mary, born for us, as a vulnerable, little, human baby. There, lying in the manger – a domestic animal’s feeding trough! – helpless and vulnerable in his little body, is the Creator and Sustainer of All that Is. Isaiah, excitedly gives him a string of titles: “Wonder-Counsellor, Mighty-God, Eternal-Father, Prince-of-Peace” – many of us will hear these titles, I think, and hear the stirring music of Handel in the back of our minds. Nevertheless, no grand music, nor red and gold decor, nor warm glowing lights should distract us from this strange truth, this marvellous mystery, the sheer creativity of the divine stratagem of war that bring us our peace. 

For born in the cave at Bethlehem, and gawped at by outcast shepherds, and wrapped in simple strips of linen cloth is God himself, God-with-Us, a human baby. And this baby, even before he is full grown, is already our champion and warrior and victor in the ancient war against sin and pride. 

How? For the root of all sin, as we saw when the angels fell, is pride. So God, in answer, comes in all humility to demonstrate humility. Come to the manger and see the humility and meekness of God in the flesh. And Christ comes to teach us humility. This is enacted in a striking manner if you were to visit the Grotto where Jesus was born in Bethlehem: To get down into that small cave, you’d first have to stoop down and make yourself small, squeezing through an ancient doorway that leads into the birthplace of Christ. However, Christ teaches us not to become small physically - that is not his intention – but rather he wants to teach us to humble our thoughts, our intellect, our fundamental attitudes. 

And so tonight Christ, born for us, is here to teach us humility. For when we come to the altar, here in church, we see the humility and meekness of Christ. Because Jesus is present for us in the Eucharist, hidden under the appearances of bread and wine. So, in the Mass, the Blessed Sacrament is held up for us to adore and worship as God, and given to us here in Holy Communion, but we can only do this fruitfully if we have learnt to be humble and docile, if we can truly say, “God knows best”, and so we trust in the teachings of God’s Word given to his Church. God knows how this mystery of the Eucharist comes to be – our human minds will always fail to fathom this sublime sign of God’s love and humility. Certainly, the angels themselves marvel and wonder at the humility of this great Sacrament. Hence St Francis of Assisi said: “O sublime humility! O humble sublimity! That the Lord of the whole universe, God and the Son of God, should humble himself like this and hide under the form of a little bread, for our salvation.” So, if you marvel that God is so great that he can humble himself and become a little baby, so we marvel that Jesus, who took flesh from the Virgin Mary, is truly present here and now, just as he had been in Bethlehem. For tonight, and indeed, at every single Mass, the church becomes Bethlehem, which means ‘the house of bread’, and the altar becomes the manger, the feeding trough, because from it you and I are fed with Jesus himself – we receive his Body and Blood into our own bodies, we become united to his flesh. This is the true wonder of Christmas that is extended to us day after day in the Mass. As Pope St Leo the Great said: “God took the nature of a servant… enlarging our humanity without diminishing his divinity.” 

Christ comes to us in the Sacraments, therefore, to enlarge our humanity. Christ comes, therefore, to fight with us, alongside us, and indeed, within us. As St Paul says to Titus that Christ has “sacrificed himself for us in order to set us free from all wickedness and to purify” us. Hence Christ empties himself and gives us himself, giving us his grace in the Sacraments especially in the Eucharist, so that we might share in his victory, so that we might taste the goodness of God, and enjoy his peace.

Today, then, war has been declared and victory has been won. For today the Word became flesh and dwells among us. The prophet Isaiah says that it is the “jealous love of the Lord of Hosts” that motivates this, meaning, God’s all-consuming and intense love for humanity, for you and for me. St Thomas Aquinas suggests that God became Man, a little baby lying in the manger in Bethlehem, “so that even children could know and love God as someone like themselves”. Therefore, in this Christmas season do visit the Crib, our Nativity Chapel, or whatever favourite image of the birth of Jesus you have, and pray and ask that you can come to know and love Jesus, God-with-us, who is born for this. Or, if you ever find yourself sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death, if you are anxious and frustrated and lonely and feeling unloved, come to Mass more often, and come to adore the Lord in the Eucharist, and discover the true beauty and miracle and wonder of Christmas. For as J. R. R. Tolkein said: “Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth”. 

Therefore, tonight, gathered around the manger that is this altar, we sing our victory song: “O come let us adore him, o come let us adore him, o come let us adore him, Christ the Lord!” 

#Christmas #Eucharist #Jesus Christ #Saviour #incarnation #pride #humility #grace

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for the Immaculate Conception

Genesis 3:9-15,20; Ps 97; Ephesians 1:3-6,11-12; Luke 1:26-38

There’s a certain irony that Eve means ‘mother of all that live’. In a physical, biological sense, that is true. But in a deeper metaphysical sense, her sin is the cause of our spiritual death. Mankind had initially been created in friendship with God, and so, had access to eternal Life. But because of the original sin of Adam and Eve, mankind turned inward on himself, selfishly navel-gazing. In the imagery of Genesis, man becomes aware of his nakedness. And Adam hid from God, so humankind rejected God’s friendship, and became lost to God. So that God had to say “Where are you”, for God cannot force himself on to us; we have to be open to him. And finally, Eve had trusted in the promises of the serpent, a mere creature, rather than in the Word of the loving and beneficent Creator. And this, of course is the lasting effect of original sin: that we trust in ourselves, place our hope in created things, and find it hard to trust in God, and believe in his wisdom and his promises. So, under the reign of sin, we befriend the serpent rather at God, and are at enmity with the Lord.

Our Lady overturns the situation, so that, in the words of the Marian hymn that we sing at Vespers, she changes the curse of Eve, ‘Eva’, by her ‘Yes’ to the angel’s ‘Ave’. For Mary trusts completely in God’s promises, she is opened up and outwards in love to God’s plan. Her life is turned upside down by Gabriel’s message, but still she gives herself completely to God’s Word. In fact, she is so open to God’s Word that the Word becomes flesh and dwells in her womb; she is thus the true Ark of the Covenant, the living Temple of God. Completely turned away from sin and the deception of the ancient Enemy of mankind, Mary is, as Genesis foretold, the one who is at enmity with the Serpent – through her comes his decisive defeat. The demons, therefore, tremble at her name, and so every ‘Hail Mary’ that we say, especially in the Rosary, is like a battering ram that weakens the stronghold of the Enemy. 

Henceforth, Mary is truly the “Mother of all that live”, because through her ‘Yes’ to God’s plan, salvation had come to the world, Mankind is restored to friendship with God, and we are set free from sin and it deadly effects. For through her comes Life itself, Jesus Christ. 

All this is possible by the power and working of God’s grace. For it is by grace that Mary said ‘Yes’ to God’s plan of salvation, and God providence for Man’s redemption in Christ is so complete that he even prepares the Mother of the Redeemer for her role, giving her “prevenient grace”, as the Collect says today, namely, a grace that comes beforehand. God, as it were, anticipates the salvation that is won for all humanity by Christ, and so he prepares Mary from the moment of her conception by uniquely filling her with grace, with God’s own activity and saving presence. It is fitting, of course, that Christ, the second Adam who inaugurates a new creation by his Resurrection and his grace, a world freed from corruption and sin, should thus be born of the second Eve, the true “Mother of all that live.”

So, in St Luke’s Gospel, when the angel Gabriel says Mary is “full of grace”, in fact the Greek word he coins – and it only appears here in the whole corpus of Greek literature – ‘kecharitomene’ has the fuller sense that Mary had already been transformed and perfected by grace, a prevenient grace. So, from the moment of her conception, this grace had been at work, preserving Mary from the distrustful and destructive effects of original sin, and from any susceptibility to sin. Because God had chosen her to be “holy and blameless before him”, he had destined her “in love to be his [daughter] through Jesus Christ”, he had chosen her in an act of divine predilection to be Theotokos, the Mother of God, the Bearer of Life himself. The grace of Mary’s preservation from sin, then, comes through Jesus, and because of Jesus, who as the eternal Son of God, will redeem all humanity including his human mother. 

But Jesus has also given Mary to the Church, to all the Baptised, and so she is also  our Mother. Hence what is said about her can also, albeit in a lesser degree, be said about us, who have been redeemed by Christ, and who, through baptism, are conceived, so to speak, free from sin in the womb of Holy Mother Church. Reborn of water and the Spirit, you and I are destined, gradually, to become holy like our mother Mary is from the first moment of her physical conception. For from the first moment of our baptism, God’s grace has been at work in our lives to cause us to trust God and reject the lies of the ancient Serpent; God’s grace moves us from within to walk in God’s ways, so that as we turn away from our old habits and former ways of thinking and doing, we too can say ‘Yes’ each day to God as Mary did from the moment of her conception. 

Last Sunday, I baptised two children, our youngest parishioners, and I always look at our newly-baptised and I can truly say that I am looking into the faces of two Saints. For that is who we are, and that is how we should remain, freed from sin by God’s grace, so that we shall truly be Saints. The Baptismal Liturgy thus reminds us that we should keep ourselves unstained by sin by walking always in the light of Christ’s grace. Our Lady did so, and so we ask her to help us and protect us from sin. As St Maximilian Kolbe said: “The Immaculata descends on earth as a good Mother among her children, to help them save their souls. Thus, she desires the conversion and sanctification of all souls, without exception… Most often, she urges the children who love her to cooperate with her in situa­tions of normal everyday life. These same souls consecrated to her, live by her, often think of her, love her wholeheartedly, and endeavour to discern her desires.”

Therefore let us entrust ourselves to Jesus through Mary, and ask the Immaculate Virgin, our Mother, to teach us to love her better. As we are gathered here today in this Marian sanctuary, and in this church which was raised up to honour the Immaculate Conception who appeared at Lourdes, I suggest that we are already in the right place. All we need to do now is ask: “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you”. Amen.  

#Immaculate Conception #consecration #sin #grace #Baptism

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for 34th Sat per annum (II)

Apoc 22:1-7; Ps 94; Luke 21:34-36

The Church has its own liturgical rhythm and pace, and so, even as the world seems to gear up for Christmas and the new year, the Church’s Liturgy strikes a different tone as we stand on the cusp of Advent – she calls us to slow down and be watchful. As Jesus says in the Gospel, “watch yourselves” or, looking to a different translation, “take heed to yourselves.” 

The sense is that we should look after ourselves, indeed, we should be watchful of our own hearts and be careful not to let our hearts be “coarsened.” For a coarsened heart, weighed down or panicked by temporal cares, and so seeking to escape from life’s worries through drunkenness and other sensual pleasures, is a heart that becomes less sensitive to God; we become less open to the many opportunities to receive his graces; less attuned to his coming among us, and indeed we’re do not notice God’s Presence in our lives. 

Christ the divine Physician, therefore, is our cardiologist, who counsels us to watch ourselves, to guard our hearts, by seeking refuge in his Sacred Heart. Thus he calls on us to stay awake and pray at all times. Prayer, therefore, is not an after thought or a desperate measure, not something that we squeeze in between the other pressing engagements or the more entertaining pursuits that consume our time and capture our hearts. Rather, prayer is necessary for our spiritual health, like the exercise the cardiologist recommends, and so the Church’s Liturgy calls us to slow down, to retreat from the world’s demands, and to pray. We’re called to be like St John the Beloved Disciple, who leaned against the breast of the Lord, and so let the heartbeat of Jesus set the pace for our lives. For this is what prayer does to us.  

As Pope Benedict XVI said in a letter he wrote to seminarians, but which applies to every one of us: “When the Lord tells us to “pray constantly”, he is obviously not asking us to recite endless prayers, but urging us never to lose our inner closeness to God. Praying means growing in this intimacy. So it is important that our day should begin and end with prayer; that we listen to God as the Scriptures are read; that we share with him our desires and our hopes, our joys and our troubles, our failures and our thanks for all his blessings, and thus keep him ever before us as the point of reference for our lives.” These words seem to me good advice at the close of another liturgical year, calling us to centre ourselves around the Lord, even as St John saw him enthroned at the centre of the heavenly city, and so from Christ flows life, and healing, and fruitfulness. We are called to become that city, with Christ enthroned in the centre, and his light illuminating our minds and our actions. Our daily prayer, therefore, is Maranatha; Come, Lord Jesus! Come, and be the centre of my life.   

As always, our model in prayer and discipleship is the Blessed Virgin Mary, to whom the Lord Jesus came so perfectly and uniquely when she said to the angel, Fiat mihi secundum Verbum tuum. And so, on this final day of the liturgical year, we look to Our Lady. For it is from Mary that we learn to take heed of ourselves and to guard our hearts; to refine our motivations and desires; and to turn to God so that his light might shine upon us. 

Fittingly, therefore, next Saturday as Advent begins, we shall observe the devotions and reparation asked of us by Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima. Here in the Rosary Shrine we do this every first Saturday of the month throughout the year, with prayer and meditation before the Blessed Sacrament, pondering the Word of God in silence, examining our hearts and going to Confession, receiving Communion in reparation for sins against the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and then praying the Rosary together in the monthly Rosary procession as we carry blessed candles. These acts of reparation and prayer, prescribed by Our Lady, are intended to repair those hearts that have been coarsened; to attune us to God’s grace which convicts us of sin and converts us; and to fill us with the Presence of God through a worthy and well-prepared reception of the Sacraments.

Through the first Saturday devotions, we respond to the words of Christ in today’s Gospel: “Stay awake, praying at all times for the strength to survive all that is going to happen, and to stand with confidence before the Son of Man.” As ever, our Blessed Mother shows us the way to obey the Lord, and she leads us into a deeper intimacy with him.

#prayer #grace #First Saturday #devotions #Mary #reparation

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for 33rd Sunday per annum (C)

Annual Parish Requiem 2022

Mal 3:19-20a; Ps 97; 2 Th 3:7-12; Luke 21:5-19

“Do this in remembrance of me”, says the Lord Jesus. One of the few explicit instructions that the Lord gives his disciples is this: that we should gather as a community and remember his sacrificial love, his death on the Cross for us, which has saved us from our sins and from the terrors of eternal death. He calls us to remember him, to remember his enduring love for us, to remember that he has saved us from death. So we say during the Mass, echoing the words of St Paul: “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your Death, O Lord, until you come again. 

Every single time we celebrate the Holy Mass we remember all this, which is why the Church requires us to come to Mass weekly or even more often because, rocked by the world and its uncertainties and so many preoccupations and troubles, we can forget this fundamental truth: that because of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, even death is no longer the dead end it was without Christ. Because with Christ, and believing and trusting that Jesus is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”, then we shall, ultimately, at the very end, receive Life itself, the divine life, from God. Thus Jesus promises us in the Gospel that even though we may suffer betrayals and scorn and humiliations in this life, or even if we’re subjected to the pains of war and climate disasters and disease. As he says in the Gospel, despite all this, “not a hair of your head will be lost.”

How? Through the resurrection of the body, which we profess in the Creed every Sunday. For we believe that in Christ, all shall rise again, and God’s beloved ones – those who have kept faith with Jesus, who have hoped in Jesus, and who have loved Jesus and received his love and grace – will be raised to eternal life with Christ; to share in the glory of the Risen Lord of Life.

Again, the Holy Mass reaffirms this because at every Mass because we receive in the Mass the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ; we receive God himself in our mouths, and God gives to us a share in his holiness, his divine life; the Eucharist is this called the “seed of immortality”, the “pledge of future glory”, the promise of eternal life given to us Christians. Of course, for Holy Communion to have that sanctifying effect on us, we have to be sure we’re prepared for Holy Communion every time we come to Mass: we’re need to be properly disposed and open to God’s grace, by making sure we examine our consciences and go to confession before receiving Communion if we’ve seriously sinned. Otherwise, Holy Communion can have no positive effect on us. 

And then Jesus says in the Gospel: “Your endurance will win you your lives.” So let us endure in our faith, and keep faith in Christ, especially when we’re tempted by hardship and sorrow and sadness and sickness and pain to doubt God’s goodness. Never ever forget – remember – that Christ died for you on the Cross. He suffered and died for us, so that in our sufferings and in our dying we can remember that God is with us. And if God is with us, then his love will conquer death itself, then death is not the end.

Indeed, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “Because of Christ, Christian death has a positive meaning: ‘For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.’ ‘The saying is sure: if we have died with him, we will also live with him.’ What is essentially new about Christian death is this: through Baptism, the Christian has already “died with Christ” sacramentally, in order to live a new life; and if we die in Christ’s grace, physical death completes this “dying with Christ” and so completes our incorporation into him in his redeeming act.” (CCC 1010)

Our prayer, therefore, on Remembrance Sunday, and at this annual parish Requiem, is that all those who have died in battle for this nation, all our beloved dead, and especially all those who have died and been buried from this church in the past year will be incorporated into Christ, will be joined with Jesus in glory, and so will be remembered  and known by God in heaven. 

“Remember me at the Altar of the Lord”, St Monica told her son, St Augustine, as she lay dying. This is the request of every Christian soul: that we should remember them at the Holy Mass, and pray for them to be released from purgatory, and to be with God in heaven. This is our prayer today as we remember our dead, and we ask God to remember them, which means that we ask God to love them with his undying love in heaven. 

Through the Sacrifice of the Mass, through the saving Blood of Christ that is poured out here from the Cross, and through the loving mercy of God who died for us sinners, may God have mercy on the faithful departed. As the prophet Malachi said: “For you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness will shine out with healing in its rays.” So, we now pray: “May everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord, with thy Saints in eternity, for thou art merciful. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may everlasting light shine upon them.” Amen. 

#Requiem #War Dead #Remembrance #Eucharist #Mass #grace #Communion

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for 31st Sat per annum (II)

Phil 4:10-19; Ps 111; Luke 16:9-15

Philippians 4:13 is rendered in this translation in a way that makes it sound rather unfamiliar to me. This Jerusalem Bible translation says: “There is nothing I cannot master with the help of the One who gives me strength.” The RSV translation, for example, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.” But what does this mean? Does it mean that, even if I haven’t mastered the Spanish language or flamenco, that if I want to, then Jesus will enable me to do so? Does it mean, really, that I can do all things, including become a NASA astronaut or successfully perform brain surgery through the strength of God? Now, if in fact I can accomplish these great feats, it is well and fine, and we would do well to be reminded that all the good things we do have God as their first cause and origin. But what if we try and try again and we fail? Does this mean that God hasn’t helped me or strengthened me? Or have I just not tried in the right way or often enough? Or does it mean God doesn’t want to help, or maybe, he doesn’t care or maybe, even, he can’t help us? These are all various problems that arise if we understand this sentence too broadly: “I can do all things in him who strengthens me.”

The words we need to examine, it seems to me, are the ones translated as “master” or “do” which sound to me like verbs. In the original Greek, in fact, there is no definite sense of doing or mastering any thing because there is no verb. Rather, the sentence in Greek, literally translated is: “For all things I have strength in the One strengthening (or empowering) me.” So, God strengthens and empowers us not so much to do things but rather for all things. So, it seems to me, we’re strengthened by God not to do things but for things, for tasks entrusted to us, for missions given to us, or for situations and circumstances in which we’re landed. 

If we look at the context of the passage, then, it becomes clearer that St Paul is talking about the circumstances he’s been in, the hardships he’s endured, and God has empowered him to push through, to persevere, to be content. Unfortunately, this context is somewhat obscured in the translation we have in the lectionary. We heard: “I have learnt to manage on whatever I have, I know how to be poor and I know how to be rich too. I have been through my initiation and now I am ready for anything anywhere: full stomach or empty stomach, poverty or plenty.” Now, this sounds to me like St Paul saying he’s able to manage his finances, and can cope with time of feast or famine. But a better translation like the RSV would say: “I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want.” (Phil 4:11b-12)

Now it becomes clearer that it is Christ’s strength, his power, his grace, that has enabled St Paul to learn to be content in any and all circumstances. There is a great strength to such a man, because he is not rocked by the ups and downs of the world and this life, because he has built his house on the rock that is Jesus Christ. You’ll recall the parable that Jesus gives of the wise man who built his house upon the rock, so that “the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.” (Mt 7:25)

Rains, floods, and rains will certainly come, my friends, but like St Paul, let us wisely be founded on the firm foundation of Christ, on the living Word of God; found on his promise, his last word in St Matthew’s Gospel: “I am with you always.” (Mt 28:20). Indeed, he is with us as the power of God from on high, as the strength of God strengthening us, as the one who is our dynamite, giving us an explosion of power. For the word in Greek is en-douna-moun-ti, from dunamis, for divine power, might, or strength. But where is the power of God seen? St Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that “to us who are being saved [the Cross] is the power of God.” (1:18) So, it is from the Cross, from the person of Christ Crucified, that we receive power and strength to endure and to be content in any and all circumstances. 

The wise man, therefore, will build his house on the firm foundation of the Cross. For it is from the Cross and by the Cross and in the Cross that we are saved from sin, from our fears, and from all that this mortal life and the devil can throw at us. Thus St Paul, at the end of this passage speaks of the “sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God” which is the Cross of Christ, and which is made present in the Holy Mass. So, it is in fact from the Mass that, as St Paul says, “my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches”. Therefore, it is well and wise that we are here at the Holy Mass, since it is here that we are empowered by Christ for all things, to be strong in any and all circumstances. 

#power #strength #Cross #Jesus Christ #grace #endurance #perseverance #content

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for St Charles Borromeo

Phil 3:17–4:1; Ps 122; Luke 16:1-8

St Charles Borromeo’s life could have ended in disaster. For a human being, it would be a disaster to end up in hell, self-alienated from God by our own selfish desires and our own sinful choices; this is the only true disaster for a human life. But what could have sent Charles Borromeo to hell? In short, the abandonment of his role as a bishop, which is what his family and the surrounding corrupt culture of the late 16th-century Church had in store for him. For his influential and powerful family had wanted wealth and great political power in the Church for him, and so at 12 he became a titular Abbot of a wealthy abbey; at 22 he became a Cardinal, and at 27 he finally became Archbishop of the prized diocese of Milan. 

However, each of these titles, although it brought more wealth and power, also brought great responsibility, and so they imperilled his soul. For as an abbot, the young Borromeo would have a solemn care for souls. As Cardinal, he would have to share the Pope’s responsibility of preaching and teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the salvation of souls. And as Archbishop, Charles Borromeo would have become the shepherd of his own diocese, with the care for souls in Milan, one of Italy’s largest dioceses. Each of these pastoral roles, whether the Borromeos were aware of it of not, entailed a solemn commitment to sharing in the mission and work of Jesus Christ, to preach and teach the Gospel and its commandments in its fullness. Hence Jesus said that “Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more.” (Lk 12:48) Indeed, the acceptance of the ministry of Bishop would require the life of a man. As St Thomas Aquinas says: “Bishops are farther bound to sacrifice their lives for the salvation of those committed to them, and thus to put in practice the words of our Lord, “I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep””.

To this end, St Charles rose to the challenge, dying to himself and being willing to even risk his life by tending to plague victims and opposing clerical moral laxity; one priest had tried to assassinate him for this. But with the grace of God Saint Charles rose above the swamp of cultural Catholicism and the corruption and sin and nepotism all around him. He thus became an important player in the reformation of the Catholic Church begun at the Council of Trent but catalysed by the crisis of Protestantism. For St Charles had  committed himself as Archbishop of Milan to becoming a reforming bishop, keen to institute all the moral and structural reforms of the Council of Trent. He began by reforming his own life, taking ‘Humility’ as his personal motto. He took seriously this insight of St Thomas Aquinas, that “it is their duty [as bishops] to feed their flocks, not only by word and example, but likewise by temporal assistance… if need arise, to distribute their worldly goods among those committed to their care.”

St Charles, therefore, was renown for the personal austerity if his life, and he overturned the conventions of the day in order to benefit the poor and needy. In 1576 when a famine hit Milan and was struck with plague, he, as Archbishop, risked his life by remaining in the city when other rich and powerful men had fled. He single-handedly organised the relief of the dying, cared for the hungry by arranging for the religious houses of his diocese to feed around 70,000 people daily, and he used up his own funds and even went into debt in his personal efforts to feed the poor. At the same time, St Charles also reformed the seminary, exhorted his clergy to holiness, and preached and taught the Faith, striving to improve the morality of the people under his care. St Charles’s passion for catechesis following the Council of Trent has led him to become patron saint of catechists. For he knew that poorly-catechised Catholics would be led to disaster, and so, as a good shepherd, he strove to prevent this. 

This week, I was dismayed to read of an Irish bishop who silenced a priest who had preached against the moral decay of our times, and who had reminded us all of the need to acknowledge our sins, repent, and turn to Christ. Otherwise, he told his congregation at Mass, we risk consigning ourselves to hell. Everything in that sermon had come straight from the Bible and the Catechism. Yet the bishop responded to the ensuing outrage online (as the sermon had been livestreamed) by saying that “the views expressed do not represent the Christian position.” 

This incident makes me think that in our time, now, great is our need of catechists and good shepherds, fine Bishops who will rise to their vocations like St Charles did and lay down their lives for the salvation of souls. For it seems to me that too many Church leaders behave as St Paul says, “as the enemies of the cross of Christ” because “the things they think important are earthly things.” St Charles Borromeo is also patron of seminarians, priests, bishops and Church leaders. So, we need his prayers, that we not become enemies of the Cross of Christ. As I said, the fine example of episcopal leadership was not inevitable for St Charles, but, drawing on the grace and power of Christ, he fought the expectations of his time, he opposed the laxity and immorality both in the Church and in society in his time, and he overcame his own sins and reformed his own life. For as St Paul said: “our homeland is in heaven, and from heaven comes the saviour we are waiting for”. St Charles looked always to the Saviour, knowing that without him and without behaving with Christian integrity, then, we “are destined to be lost”, as St Paul warns. But with Christ, we shall indeed reach our homeland in heaven.  

So, may St Charles Borromeo pray for us and lead us home!

#reform #bishops #holiness #humility

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for St Ignatius of Antioch

Eph 2:1-10; Ps 99; Luke 12:13-21

In the lectionary at this time we’re reading from St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. It’s thought that the apostle wrote his letter during his imprisonment in Rome, so around 62 AD. Just 55 years later, sometime between 107-110 AD, another letter is written to the Church in Ephesus, and the author is the Saint and Bishop and Martyr we honour today, St Ignatius of Antioch. 

Antioch was one of the oldest Christian cities, now in south-central Turkey but just 12 miles northwest of the Syrian border. In Roman times, this whole region was known as Syria and Antioch was its capital. Many Jews lived in Antioch, and from this community came the first Christian converts. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that Christians had fled Jerusalem after the martyrdom of St Stephen, c.36 and they went to Antioch. It was here that St Paul and St Barnabas preached, and it was in Antioch that the name ‘Christian’ was first used (cf Acts 11:26). The Christians of Antioch had strong ties to Jerusalem, which was then the ‘headquarters’, so to speak, of the Church, but Antioch also traced its foundation as a ‘diocese’ to St Peter, who tradition says was bishop in Antioch before he went to Rome and became bishop or pope there. So, St Ignatius, as bishop of Antioch was, in a sense, a successor of St Peter too. 

Hence, among his writings, seven letters were preserved by the early Christian churches, including a letter that had been written to the Ephesians. From this letter we learn that St Ignatius had come from Syria to the coastal Roman city of Ephesus, bound up as a prisoner, and headed for Rome where he would be fed to the lions in the amphitheatre. Ephesus, we know, was the city where St John the Beloved Disciple had lived with Our Lady after the death and resurrection of Our Lord; Ephesus was another apostolic church founded by St Paul and enriched by apostolic teaching. St Ignatius’s letter tells us that the bishop of Ephesus was someone called Onesimus. This name should ring a bell because St Paul writes his letter to Philemon, one of the writings of the New Testament, and in it he tells his friend Philemon that he had met Philemon’s runaway slave Onesimus in prison, he had converted him to Christianity, and he asked Philemon to treat Onesimus, upon his return to Philemon’s household, as “a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord.” The tradition is that this same Onesimus had become a successor of the apostles as bishop in Ephesus when St Ignatius passed through on the way to his execution in Rome. 

St Ignatius mentions the bishop because one of the central themes of his letter to the Ephesians, as with St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, is that of unity among Christians, and the focus of that unity, which is not merely spiritual but concrete, is the bishop who he says is put in position “by the will of Jesus Christ”. Just as St Paul says that, through grace, we are each to become “God’s work of art, created in Jesus Christ to live the good life”, so St Ignatius also uses an image drawn from the arts to describe the ‘good life’ for a Church community. 

St Ignatius writes, “you should act together in harmony with the mind of the bishop, as you are in fact doing. For your priests [are] attuned to the bishop as strings to a lyre. Therefore in your unanimity and harmonious love, Jesus Christ is sung. You must join this chorus, every one of you, so that by being harmonious in unanimity and taking your pitch from God you may sing in unison with one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father, in order that he may both hear you and, on the basis of what you do well, acknowledge that you are members of his Son. It is, therefore, advantageous for you to be in perfect unity, in order that you may always have a share in God… Let us be careful, then, not to set ourselves in opposition to the bishop, in order that we may be subject to God…  It is manifest, therefore, that we should look upon the bishop even as we would upon the Lord Himself.” 

There is a dissonant cacophony, and one that repels others from the Church, therefore, when Christians place themselves in opposition to their bishops, and this disunity is certainly not from God but from the Enemy who seeks to divide us, scandalise onlookers, and drive people away from Christ’s holy Church. 

Therefore, the voice of today’s apostolic Martyr recalls us to unity in the Church, to treasure it, and to seek it, and to work for unity, as he said, “by being harmonious in unanimity and taking your pitch from God you may sing in unison with one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father”. And the key here is to take our pitch from God. Neither the bishop nor the priest nor the lay person has the song or even sets the pitch. Rather, these come from God, and so we must all, as Christians, listen to him. 

The Gospel, therefore, warns those who are rich – and we have been made rich in grace, and our bishops and Church leaders have been made rich in their responsibilities and gifts – to remember always that their riches come from God, and that they must account for their lives and their stewardship of things before God. Likewise St Paul says to the Ephesians: “it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith; not by anything of your own, but by a gift from God; not by anything that you have done, so that nobody can claim the credit.”

As such, we must become a listening Church, as Pope Francis likes to say, but this means above all listening to God, together (or 'synodally') listening to God's voice in the sacred Scriptures; in the sacred Tradition of the Church; as well as, with humility and prudence, to what the Spirit might be saying to the Church today through our shared experiences. But, as St Ignatius says, this sharing happens when we gather at the Altar together “breaking one and the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but [which causes] that we should live for ever in Jesus Christ.” And that – eternal life in Christ – is our common goal and hope.

#synodality #unity #bishop #obedience

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for St Teresa of Avila

Eph 1:15-23; Ps 8; Luke 12:8-12

St Paul prays that we Christians will see “what rich glories [God] has promised the saints will inherit”. And today we celebrate a joyful and loquacious Saint, a Doctor of the Church, a Carmelite reformer, mystic, and teacher of the way of sanctification, interior perfection, who is rightly regarded as one of the greatest Saints of the Church. In St Teresa of Avila, truly one sees rich glories promised by God and made manifest for our benefit, so that, learning from her writings and her example of prayer and charity, we shall inherit the rich glories of friendship with Christ. For this was St Teresa’s goal, which she called ‘perfection’. As she wrote: “I discerned that I should follow the evangelical counsels as perfectly as I could, and invite others to do the same. It was was my desire that since the Lord has many enemies, and so few friends, that his few friends should be good ones.” 

However, St Teresa was not always as fervent as this. In fact, she had entered the Carmelite convent in Avila in 1535, aged around 20, and although she began well, her health collapsed, and then, for fifteen years or so as a nun she lived a divided life, with little genuine prayer or desire for God, and she fell into a worldly spirit, externally doing religious things but internally she wasn’t focussed on God and doing his will wholeheartedly. If we’re honest, I think many of us, religious or not, can identify with this. Like St Teresa at this time, we can be divided in our living of the Christian life, and our prayer can be rote and just a ritual but without any heart. And this division, and even a distaste for prayer, will bring us deep sorrow. As St Teresa writes: “Souls without prayer are like bodies, palsied and lame, having hands and feet they cannot use”, or again she writes: “The soul is like a crystal in the sunshine over which a thick black cloth has been thrown so that however brightly the sun may shine the crystal can never reflect it.”

In 1555, however, aged 39, St Teresa, by God’s grace, has a second conversion. She sees an image of Christ tied to a pillar – a beautiful and striking image with a piercing gaze – and this sculpture pieces her soul. The statue is in Avila, and it is featured in my book, Mysteries Made Visible, the second Sorrowful Mystery. And so, St Teresa realises her coldness of heart towards Christ, and she realises, as we’ve heard, the need to follow the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and to befriend Christ. 

Thus she wrote that, for her, prayer “is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us. The important thing is not to think much but to love much and so do that which best stirs you to love. Love is not great delight but desire to please God in everything.” This simple but profound insight into prayer and love for God inspired the other great Teresas who were named after her, and we can hear St Teresa of Avila’s wisdom in their words and their lives: St Therese of Lisieux, and St Teresa of Calcutta. 

Often, in prayer, we are discouraged because we’re distracted or we feel distant from God, we struggle with praying well. However, St Teresa reflected on the humility that this can engender, and so she said: “If it should be accompanied by great temptations, dyness, and trials leaving me with greater humility, I would consider it a good prayer. That prayer is the best prayer that pleases God the most.” This kind of child-like confidence in God gives much cheer and humour to St Teresa who once said: “May God protect me from gloomy saints!” Her secret, I think, was to focus always on Christ, on his love and goodness, and less on herself in an introspected, navel-gazing way such as we are tempted to do. Thus she said: “We shall advance more by contemplating the Divinity than by keeping our eyes fixed on ourselves”, or “When I think of myself my mind cannot soar to higher things but is like a bird with broken wings.” So, instead, St Teresa calls on us to trust always in God, and to not worry or be disturbed. 

Her ‘Bookmark’ prayer, Nada te turbe is rightly famous, and during the lockdown in 2020, there was a wonderful rendition of this in song by Carmelite nuns from around the world – a beautiful witness to St Teresa’s call to surrender our worries to God. As she says: “Leave it all to God and leave your interests in His hands. He knows what is fitting for us…” This surrender to God is the hardest especially when we want something dearly, but St Teresa calls us to find peace in wanting nothing other than God: Solo Dios basta. 

The Gospel today calls us to this same radical abandonment to God, to allow the Holy Spirit to speak to us and to teach us and to defend us. God shall be our strength, our refuge and our defence; Christ shall declare himself for us before the angels. So, as St Teresa faced opposition from her fellow Carmelites when she tried to reform and reinvigorate her Order, she must have found strength in this, knowing that Christ would defend her. 

However, St Teresa’s great partners in this work of reform, in addition to the Carmelite Saint John of the Cross, were her confessors and spiritual directors. As a novice I remember visiting the Dominican church of San Esteban in Salamanca, and preserved in the cloister here is the confessional used by St Teresa. For throughout her life, St Teresa cultivated a close relationship with the Dominicans, and she had Dominican confessors everywhere she went, and she was deeply influenced by their learning which gives her writings an affinity with the theology of St Thomas Aquinas. So when St Teresa was attacked for her reforms of the Carmelite order in the 16th-century, and when her writings were being examined by the Spanish Inquisition, it was her Dominican confessors who came to her defence. Although the Carmelites resisted St Teresa’s attempts to reform the Order, the Dominican pope St Pius V sent Visitators to Avila to help and encourage her work of recalling the Carmelite friars and nuns to a life of penance and prayer. In her mystical visions, St Teresa would be visited by St Dominic who comforted her, and conversed with her. And finally, St Teresa would retire to the Carmelite convent at a village called Alba de Tormes, just a few miles from Salamanca, and her relics still lie here. In the old Dominican breviary, therefore, on this feast day we sing: “St Teresa accomplished such a work of reform, aided by the help of the Preachers”, and we recall, moreover, the words of the Saint: “Yo soy la Dominica in pasione”, I am a Dominican in my heart. Through her prayers, may we Dominicans be Teresians in our hearts, befriending Christ and loving him so thoroughly as she did. 

#Teresa of Avila #prayer #trust #friendship #love #Dominican

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for Our Lady of Walsingham

Eccl 11:9–12:8; Ps 89; Luke 9:43-45

Joy is not an emotion. Unlike mere enjoyment, which is transient, like youth, as the first reading suggests, joy is more resilient and abides because it is founded on a profound truth that is grasped by the intellect. Joy, therefore, is an intellectual virtue that directs our emotions. And so, even when faced by suffering, and the Cross, and the spiritual piercing of her Immaculate Heart with sorrow, Mary remains the Woman to whom the angel had given the greeting: Chaire, Hail, Rejoice! For Mary’s joy is rooted in the Annunciation and the angel’s message that through her Fiat, this world, ruined and fallen into sin and captive to the devil, has been saved, rebuilt, raised up. 

So, those of us who go to Walsingham today would see the sad ruins of the abbey and Shrine that once marked the site where Our Lady had directed Richeldis to build a replica of the Holy House of Nazareth, Mary’s home where the Annunciation took place, so that Mary’s own body would become the home, a living tabernacle, for the Incarnate Lord Jesus Christ. And yet, our sorrow at the destruction and devastation wrought by the so-called Reformation, and the ongoing effects of Christian disunity, is tempered by the joy that nevertheless, alongside all our human miseries and failures and sorrows, God is with us. For at the Annunciation, God became Man in Mary’s womb. This was her great joy, and it is meant for the whole world. Walsingham stands as a reminder of this, even in its current state, and it is our privilege and mission as English Catholics to rejoice in this cosmic-changing truth of the Incarnation.  

Hence the 15th-century Pynson Ballad declared: “O England, you have every reason to be glad that you are compared to the promised land of Sion. This glorious Lady’s grace and favour attest that you can be called everywhere the holy land, Our Lady’s Dowry, a name given to you from of old. This title is due to the fact that here is built the house of new Nazareth in honour of our heavenly Queen and her glorious Salutation. As Gabriel hailed her with an ‘Ave’ in old Nazareth, so here that [great event] is daily remembered with joy.”

Daily, because our troubles and sorrows are also daily, so daily, we need to remember the Incarnation with joy. For behold, God is with us. Because of this, we shall be raised up from our sins and sadnesses and even from death. Thus, daily in this Marian Shrine of the Holy Rosary, we recite the Angelus so that in our minds and imaginations, we are brought to Nazareth, or even to Walsingham, England’s Nazareth. We recall the Annunciation in order to share the Virgin Mary’s joy, and to receive a share in her graces. Thus the Pynson Ballad says: “Therefore, pilgrims all, strive to serve Our Lady with humble love. Apply yourself to doing as she would wish, remembering the great joy of her Annunciation.”

So, in the Gospel today, although Jesus’s disciples did not understand his meaning, we can be sure that Christ’s most perfect disciple, his mother, understood. From the moment Simeon spoke his prophecy, and she began to ponder these things in her Immaculate Heart, she knew that her Son would be “handed over into the power of men”, that he, the Immaculate Lamb of God, would have to be offered up as a Sacrifice for sin. Yet through her tears and despite her pain, the Mater Dolorosa is always the Woman of the Annunciation too. Thus, her faith in God’s Word, her hope in his promises, and her love for God keeps her always joyfully open to his divine will. With her Son, Mary too has handed herself over to whatever God allows, whatever is necessary, so that the Saviour’s mission will be accomplished. 

For knowing that the Son of Man came to “give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45) so Mary can, ultimately, rejoice. As she sings in her Magnificat, “My spirit rejoices in God my Saviour”. So with her, and through the prayers of Our Lady of Walsingham, may we share Mary’s joy and rejoice in God who is with us and who is daily working to save us.

#sorrow #suffering #joy #Incarnation #Emmanuel #Mary

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for feast of Saint Matthew

Eph 4:1-7,11-13;  Psalm 18:2-5; Matt 9:9-13

One of our brothers is currently learning Chinese, and learning any language requires repetition and consistent practice. As Chinese is a tonal language, so one has to repeat the sounds, the right tones, again and again so as to say the word correctly. For the meaning of the word, you might say, is bound up with how the word is said, how it sounds, and so, we have to train our ear and our vocal cords to learn to speak the word properly. 

So when the Lord says: “Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice” he means something like this. The language of mercy, which is a dialect of the language of Christian love, must be learnt through repetition and consistent practice, and our bodies must be trained, therefore, to act according to reason. For love, as well as mercy, is something willed and not merely something felt. Christ our God, therefore, wills to become Man, to dine with sinners, to sit down at table with us, and to suffer and die for sinners, alongside sinners. For as he declares, “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners”, so how could he do this if he were distant from us? The mercy and compassionate love of God, therefore, is shown in his coming so close to us, so near, in fact, that he is placed on our tongues and enters into our souls.

For it is by the wonderful gift and Sacrament of the Eucharist that Jesus comes to teach us the meaning of mercy; placed on our tongues, Mercy himself, hidden under the appearances of bread and wine, teaches us to know the language of mercy. For in the Mass, God sees our misery and need of him, and so he comes to us and gives himself to heal and sanctify and save us. Thus, filling our souls with grace, Love himself dwells in us to transforms us from within, and to move us to love as Christ loves. Here, then, in the Mass, Jesus is seated at table with us as he sat with St Matthew the tax-collector, and so here he calls us, though we are sinners, daily to follow him, to become like him, and so to be merciful. In his mercy, God has come to rehabilitate us, and so calling us to learn to be merciful as he has been with us. 

There are many indications that, more than ever, we Christians need still to learn the meaning of mercy, to forgive, and to rehabilitate others. For more often than not we nurse grudges, and go the way of anger and revenge. Hence Christ, the divine Healer, calls us instead to learn the ways of God, the ways of mercy. St Matthew’s Gospel in unique ways shows us the mercy of God. 

So we’re called to show mercy to ourselves, when we are weakened by sin and beset by anxiety and when we’re disappointed by ourselves and perhaps by our slow progress in Christian discipleship; the daily struggle against sin. We’re called to show mercy to others, by refraining from destructive gossip, thinking the best of others and their intentions and motives, by forgiving others as God has forgiven us in Christ; and praying for the repentance of sinners so that they may be saved by grace. As St Paul says: “live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love.” And so we’re called to exercise mercy towards God, by seeing Christ our incarnate Lord in the most vulnerable of human beings, as we’re told in Matthew 25. This parable of the Last Judgement is only found in this Gospel, and it gives a spirituality and mysticism to Christian acts of practical help and acts of compassion for “as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me”, says the Lord. In these three ways we learn to love God and to “love your neighbour as yourself”. 

But these acts of mercy and love will always require sacrifice on our part. We need to die to ourselves and our comforts and conveniences and our desires if we want to learn to desire mercy as God desires it; if we seek to love others as Christ loves us. For mercy and love will mortify us and take us to the Cross. Why, then, does Jesus say “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”, when mercy entails sacrifice? 

The issue, I think, is with acts of sacrifice that we choose, which can become ritual acts, or formal acts like novenas, Friday fasts and abstinences, and so on. These formal acts can become just rituals that have lost their meaning. It’s like saying a word in Chinese but the tone is all wrong and so the meaning isn’t right. 

So Jesus calls us, in the words of the prophet Hosea, to focus on the heart of the action, on the true meaning of the things we do, which is to show forth the mercy and love of God, from whom we have received abundantly in Christ. Jesus, therefore, calls us simply to be merciful, to show compassion and to give of ourselves to the least; we’re to leave all judgement to God, and simply “bear with one another through love”, as St Paul says. For the only Sacrifice that is adequate is not any act that we’re capable of, and so, in his mercy, God allows us to participate in Christ’s one great act of sacrifice, the Sacrifice of Calvary, which is made present here in the Holy Mass. So, here in the Mass, Christ teaches us the meaning of these words: What I desire is mercy, not sacrifice. For here, through Christ’s sacrifice of himself for the salvation of all, we learn that God’s mercy embraces all, and calls all to himself; his “message goes out through all the earth”. It is our privilege, with St Matthew, to become preachers of that message of mercy calling not the righteous but sinners to come to Jesus and follow him. 

#mercy #sacrifice #Mass

[lawrenceop]

HOMILY for the Deceased Benefactors et al. of our Order

“Sweet Jesus, have mercy on the Benefactors of this Church and Priory”. This prayer is carved in stone in the Lady Chapel, and above it, inscribed into tablets of white Carrera marble are the names of the major friends and benefactors who have contributed to the building and ongoing restoration of this church. Begun over 150 years ago, this church is a prayer of thanksgiving for this church was built by the friends and benefactors of the Dominican Order to be a building that was “worthy to mark the gratitude of the Catholics of the United Kingdom for the many blessings and graces received” from the Immaculate Virgin Mary. This church, therefore, is a votive offering to God, a prayer expressed in stone and wood and glass. 

Today, in this annual commemoration, we offer a Requiem Mass and pray for our deceased friends and Benefactors. In this Holy Mass, we actualise the prayer carved in stone: “Sweet Jesus, have mercy on the Benefactors of this Church and Priory”. Indeed, in this Mass we pray not only for the benefactors of the Order in London, but for all our deceased friends and benefactors throughout the world. As a mendicant Order, the Dominicans depend on the support and help of so many people for the continuation of our preaching mission, and so it is right and just that we pray for all of them, our friends and benefactors who have helped us over the centuries and who continue to do so today. So, every day, two blue votive lamps carried by angels that flank the Rosary Altar, burn as a symbol of the prayers that we offer for our friends and benefactors of this Rosary Shrine. Every day, when the Dominican community eats together, we pray for our benefactors, both living and dead. Every day, in a church like this, the inscriptions all around the building call on us to pray for our friends and benefactors, both alive and passed away. And once a year, we pray for our deceased friends and benefactors in a solemn Requiem Mass, on this day, the 5th of September. 

I have often wondered about the timing of this annual Requiem for our deceased friends and benefactors. We also have an annual Requiem for our deceased parents, and for some reason this is in February. But why do we have this commemoration for our benefactors in September when November is the usual month for remembering the dead? A reason can be found, I think, in looking to the Holy Cross. For us Dominicans, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on 14 September, is of great importance: Our religious life is patterned after the Lord’s Cross, and as preachers we focus on the saving power of the Cross, and as witnesses of the Risen Lord, we glory in the triumph of the Cross. Therefore, if we began a novena today, on the 5th of September, after nine days of prayer, we would be arrive at the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, on the 14th of September. It is fitting, then, that a Requiem is celebrated today, at the start of this novena period leading to the feast of the Holy Cross, because in death we are united to the Cross of Christ. 

So in death, we die with Christ, the Crucified One; we go down into the tomb with Jesus. But the grave could not hold the Lord of Life. And so, we who have been united to him in Baptism and through the Sacraments, who have received the Holy Eucharist, will also not be held by the grave. So as the Cross was lifted up in triumph, and is now seen to be the instrument of God’s victory over death, so the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, nine days from today, declares that our deceased friends and benefactors will also share in Christ’s victory. This is our prayer today, this, our Christian hope: Sweet Jesus have mercy on the Benefactors of the Order; have mercy on us. Amen. 

#benefactors #Requiem #Holy Cross #triumph #victory #death #Rosary Shrine